June 21, 2006
City Migration
Edward Castronova has posted an article on Terranova about viewing synthetic worlds as petri dishes in which social experiments are being conducted.
"WoW used to have Auction Houses only in one city per side. Focusing on Alliance (Horde sucks and is evil, as everyone knows, so I will ignore it), the city was Ironforge. Then WoW opened up Stormwind and Darnassus for auctions as well. The prediction would be that if coordination effects are strong, one city would be used. If Ironforge remained as the main market, that would be inconclusive - maybe it is just history. But if it remained one city, but not Ironforge, that would confirm the power of coordination."
We have the data, so why not look at it?
This data is only for one of the servers we track, a PvP server, and only looking at the alliance side.
WoW patch 1.9 was released 1/3/06, and created auction houses in Darnassus and Stormwind, as well as the pre-existing one in Ironforge. For each census we have, I computed the percentage of players in each capitol city, out of all players seen in a capitol city that census.
It's interesting that there is both an obvious change immediately after auction houses become available in Stormwind and Darnassus, but that the change is continuing for some time, possibly some sort of exponential decay. Unfortunately we're missing quite a bit of data for February.
Btw, if you would like to examine the data from which the graph was made, download the csv file, and open it in your favorite spreadsheet.
Posted by at 09:59 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
August 30, 2005
Zone Population Map
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 7/05/2005 12:00 am - 7/12/2005 12:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 minutes
Parsing Method: We parsed the number of characters in each zone. Characters just passing through (seen for only one snapshot and not the next are not counted). Characters who were in 2 zones in an hour had both zones counted.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 50,464 zone counts
We used the zone population data and a bit of Photoshop to create the zone population map below.
Posted by nickyee at 02:35 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
August 29, 2005
Zone Populations by Character Level, Zone Type, and Time of Day
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 7/05/2005 12:00 am - 7/12/2005 12:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~12 minutes
Parsing Method: For each one hour period, we parsed the location of every unique character. Zones that a character is only observed once in (traveling through) are not counted. For each character per hour, only the first zone they are seen in is counted.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 1,249,017 Counts
We split character levels up into 3 bands: 1-20, 21-40, and 41-60. We then plotted the average zone population over time of day by zone type - Instance, Outdoor, Main City, and PvP (Alterac Valley and Warsong Gulch).
Posted by nickyee at 11:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 26, 2005
Zone Populations by Time of Day
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High), PvP (High)
Sampling Period: 7/05/2005 12:00 am - 7/12/2005 12:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 minutes
Parsing Method: We parsed the number of characters in each zone. Characters just passing through (seen for only one snapshot and not the next are not counted). Characters who were in 2 zones in an hour had both zones counted.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 50,464 zone counts
First, we graphed the average population in each zone. Unsurprisingly, Ironforge is the most populated zone, followed by Ogrimmar and The Barrens.
Next, we chart the zone populations by time of day.
Among the main cities, the average zone population (by proportion) is fairly stable over the day.
The same is true for the outdoor zones.
Among the instances, Molten Core sticks out as the only zone that seems to fluctuate proportionately as a function of time. Also, the instance population counts swell more in the evening hours than do in the Outdoor and Main City zones.
Posted by nickyee at 10:57 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
July 22, 2005
Zone Type
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/13/2005 9:00 am - 6/20/2005 9:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~14 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character. Each character was tracked across the server logs. Total playing time, lowest observed level, highest observed level, guild affiliation, and zones seen in were parsed.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 76,364 characters
We calculated the ratio of time characters spent in instances, outdoor zones, and city zones. The following graph plots the time ratio spent in these 3 zone types. City ratio is stable across levels. Outdoor zone ratio drips post 40 and again post 55. Instance ratio rises post 55.
Posted by nickyee at 11:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 19, 2005
Zone Count
Server Sample: RP (High), PvE (Medium), PvE (High)
Sampling Period: 6/2/2005 6:00 pm - 6/7/2005 3:00 am
Sampling Resolution: ~16 minutes
Parsing Method: The sample unit is each unique character. Each character was tracked across the server logs. Total playing time, lowest observed level, highest observed level, guild affiliation, and zones seen in were parsed.
Data Filter: None
Sample Size: 62,962 characters
Every log sample contains the zone that the character was observed in. The parsing script counted the number of different zones that each character was observed to be in during the sampling period (4 days and 9 hours).
Zone count increased gradually over level with a noticeable spike at level 39. This matches the spike in playing time. Also of interest is the dip at level 60. Our guesses are that most level 60 characters spend more time consistently in the same instance dungeons.
Because playing time correlates highly with zone count (r = .80), we present the same plot of level against average zone count but with effect of playing time controlled for. We see the same trends pre-40 and post-60 that we observed before. In fact, both become a little more clear.
Addendum:
After reading the comments, we redid the analysis and only counted a zone if a character was observed in it in for two contiguous snapshots. This effectively filters out zones counted before that were being traveled through. We see the same pattern as before - a a spike pre-40 and a drop at lvl 60.
The graph below has playing time controlled for.
Posted by nickyee at 11:56 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack