WoW Learning

Credit: Michelle A. Hoyle under an Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Figure 1: Graph demonstrating that Aluminio’s reported character played times add up to more time possible in 4 years

In a previous post, I said that a player’s /played time in World of Warcraft (WoW) can be used a good indication of their experience in WoW.  In my 2010 April survey, I asked respondents to report their /played time for three types of characters: their first character ever created, the character on which they currently spend most of their time, and the character on which they enjoy playing the most. If the characters were the same, they were asked to repeat the information. When I did my calculation, I ignored any entries that were obvious duplicates. I also asked people to make an estimate to the nearest half year of how long they had been playing World of Warcraft.

While entering data in from my 2010 April survey, I noticed that case S1-025 contained /played numbers that did not add up.  In the raw survey data, the participant—whom I have called “Aluminio”—listed 3 characters:

1. Human priest ranged, played more than 700 days
2. Gnome mage ranged, played more than 900 days
3. Human paladin tank, played more than 900 days.

That adds up to more than 2500 days. Aluminio also reported playing World of Warcraft for a total of 4 years, which amounts to 1460 days. That’s far, far short of the more than 2500 days claimed for playing his three characters, as is clearly evident in Figure 1′s graph. It is impossible for someone on their own to have played all 1460 days 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Credit: Michelle A. Hoyle under an Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Figure 2: Graph showing how much of a four-year period would have been spent on each of Aluminio’s characters.

My first thought was to wonder if they were using bought accounts.  In which case the /played time would include the time the original person spent on the account and, if these were all bought accounts, then the time would overlap potentially with survey participant’s personal playing time.  It need not just be someone who has bought someone else’s account either.  A player named “Sodiumo” in my guild took over the account of a friend who stopped playing.

My partner mentioned a second possibility: multiboxing. This is where a person has multiple account and multiple instances of the game running.  You set each of the other characters to follow the character you are actually playing as you take them through dungeons.  This would accumulate /played time on all the logged in characters, even though the person is really only actively playing one character.

A third possibility is the person had multiple accounts and someone else helped them play each character.   There are several similar cases in my own guild.  For example, a player we will call “Carbona” is the primary player on his account for questing, socializing, and raiding.  He lets his son, however, engage in player versus player encounters on his character.  Another player, whom we will call “Chlorinella”, ended up taking over the account of her brother who lost interest in the game; Now that Cataclysm, the latest World of Warcraft expansion, has been released, the brother has returned to playing.

Finally, a fourth possibility that occurred to me just now is that Aluminio may have made estimates of his /played time for each character instead of checking the /played time in game. I did provide instructions on how to obtain the /played time, but it is not outside the realms of possibility. Many people, myself included, are very poor at estimating time spent when it’s on and off again across multiple accounts, but we are far more accurate about how many total years (in calendar time) we have been playing because that can be easily tied to a fixed date.

When I designed the survey, I did not take into account that people might have been cheating, purchasing accounts, or account sharing.  Basing my estimate of their World of Warcraft experience on the /played time in such a circumstance is not very accurate.  The initial person who triggered this off is willing to be contacted if I have further questions and there is an e-mail address, so I think that would be a good thing to follow up on.

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