wow-statistics
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WRUP: Infographic Edition
Blizzard put together a pretty neat infographic earlier this week that pointed out all kinds of cool and interesting tidbits of information about World of Warcraft. While I did enjoy the pile of intriguing facts and figures surrounding the game, I wondered if perhaps there might be something missing from the infographic that should have been included. So I put the question to our writers this week, as well as the usual inquiry: What are you playing? As for me, I'll be bumming around on an alt. Except for Sunday. There's this big game on Sunday that I have a vested interest in and will be watching from my snow-blanketed home, somewhere in the mountains of Colorado. Adam Koebel (@bendakwow) I'll be working on my alt, farming Warbringers, and perhaps I'll do some challenge modes. I would have liked to see some class specific stats on the infographic (e.g. the 5 most tamed hunter pets), or some silly stats like the total number of deaths from falling. As for the Superbowl... I guess that means less competition on the Warbringers for me!
100,000,000 World of Warcraft accounts infographic
Blizzard has been very busy putting together a really cool infographic. It's way too large for us to repost in full here, but you can hit the link and see it in all its glory. There's a ton of interesting facts and figures, starting with some hard numbers. Over 100,000,000 WoW accounts have been created since its inception. Yes, that's one hundred million players, as they put it. I have created five accounts myself, though, so that might skew their numbers a little. Nonetheless, it's easy to forget just how high the churn rate is, how many people join and leave. Of those people, 52% have been Alliance, and 47% have been Horde, with 1% never picking a side and remaining neutral. I'm surprised that many Pandaren haven't made it off the Wandering Isle! Other interesting facts include the rarest mount -- the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent -- and the most common and rarest pets -- the Squirrel and the Tiny Red Carp respectively. On the topic of pets, there's a massive 3.6 million pet battles undertaken every day in Azeroth. Content just for a casual few? Doesn't look like it! Interestingly, too, the number of PvP instances at 670k is far closer to the number of PvE instances at 900k than the average reader might think. There's so much great information in this infographic, go have a look and read the accompanying blog too.
Razer posts results of their WoW player survey
Razer surveyed over 4,000 World of Warcraft players about how they play the game and what their primary motivations are. While it isn't exactly the greatest sample size, and is limited to people who are active in the Razer community, there is some interesting stats displayed in the accompanying infographic. Over half the respondents say they play more than 20 hours per week, and most have been playing for over 5 years. When forced to choose, 77% prefer PvE content over PvP, but if there was an option for "I participate in both aspects of the game" I think you would have seen a healthy percentage in that category as well. Perhaps the most interesting statistics are the competition numbers. 80% of the respondents would like to see more competition between guilds, and 70% say they want to see more competitive raid tournaments. Do you think there's a place for more competition in the PvE realm? Challenge mode leaderboards are the only Blizzard-supported feature we have currently, and live raid competitions are few are far between (usually just BlizzCon). You can check out the full survey results over at Razer.
What are WoW players searching for on Google?
Google is the world's largest search engine by a massive margin, enjoying a nearly 70% market share. Google processes over a billion searches every day -- searches for everything from the fate of Firefly to where to buy RPG dice to the answer to the Kirk vs. Picard debate. It even handles searches for non-geeky stuff. And of course, some percentage of those billion daily searches are WoW searches. Google has a tremendous amount of data about exactly what WoW players are looking for online -- and if there's one thing I can't get enough of, it's WoW data. With the search data that Google makes available, we can get a unique look into how WoW-related searches have changed over time with the changing popularity of the game and what kinds of topics WoW players are searching for more than others. The Google-eye view is a unique insight into the online interest and discussions of World of Warcraft.
Breakfast Topic: 8,785,350
While preparing for the raid yesterday, the subject moved from the new Cataclysm info that was announced to statistics -- specifically the statistics tab of the achievements panel. One of our warlocks stated that the Battle for the Undercity ruined his statistics, because his highest hit dealt was over 800k, something that was possible due only to buffs received during the encounter. But then something odd happened. He mentioned his highest heal cast was for 8,785,350hp -- a very odd number for a warlock. Stranger still, after checking my statistics, I noticed my largest heal cast was for exactly the same number -- and I'm a rogue! One by one people in vent started checking their statistics, and a good two thirds of the raid had the same exact number. 8,785,350. And it didn't seem to matter what class -- plate wearers and cloth casters both had it. It took a while, but we finally managed to figure out the mystery of 8,785,350 and what it meant. So what's your highest heal cast? Is it the magical 8,785,350, or some other amount? How often do you check out your statistics panel, and have you noticed any other strange coincidences with your fellow players?
Some statistics to be removed from achievement tracking
Over the weekend Thundgot on the EU forums came out and said that the attributes section of the achievements tab will be removed from the game. You can find the attributes section right now by pressing "y" on your keyboard to open up the achievement window, then going to the "Statistics" tab located at the bottom of the window, then the "Character" heading on the left hand side of the window, and finally clicking on the "Attributes" section. Your attributes will look something like the ones above, but much more uber than my priest alt has.Thundgot makes a point of saying this will improve performance. If you think about it, many of these statistics revolve around "best" or "top" attributes from a character's dataset. Collecting this much information for each character will take a few extra process cycles each time an attribute changes, or each time damage is doled out (since many spells / enchants / procs change these numbers). Multiply this by a few thousand times for a character in a given night (due to potential changes via combat), and then multiply it by around 11 million people playing the game... and you get the picture.
