
Mining 60TB of EverQuest II data (plus 7k player surveys) - timf
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2009/02/virtualworlds.html
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froo
The funny thing about this article, is that if you played EQ2 (or any mmo
really) for any amount of time you'd know this kind of information instantly.

 _The researchers found that many players underestimate the amount of time
they spend playing the games_

Botting tradeskills is rampant in EQ2... the data could be significantly
skewed.

 _And players aren’t just teenagers -- in fact, the average age of a player is
substantially higher._

That's because most teenagers are playing WOW or some other similar game. It's
no reflection on those players, but a significant portion of EQ2 players came
from the original Everquest 10+ years ago...

 _But what most surprised Contractor was that even though players could play
the game with anyone, anywhere, most people played with people in their
general geographic area._

Try raiding with someone halfway around the world on a consistent basis. I did
it for awhile during my first year of University (waking up 5am for raids) and
it's not something I'd recommend for any length of time.

Its more or less about convenience to be able to find people to play/raid
with.

All up - nothing new learnt here.

~~~
josefresco
That's because most teenagers are playing WOW or some other similar game."

Are they? I don't mean to nitpick but do any MMORG's have high percentages of
teenagers? I would suspect they mostly skew older, whereas platforms like the
360 might skew younger.

~~~
froo
Actually my point was that your average teenager is more or less attracted to
the "latest and greatest" type games (enforcing your point about consoles),
which in the MMO arena would be WOW.

Its not meant as a negative sentiment aimed at WOW or its playerbase, it's
more along the lines that EQ2 has a different kind of following that stems
from it's roots as being one of the original MMO franchises. As a result, many
players migrated from EQ1 to EQ2 when Sony released it, which would suggest
that it's playerbase is traditionally a much older crowd.

