"Alone together?": exploring the social dynamics of massively multiplayer online games
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Network game design: hints and implications of player interaction
NetGames '06 Proceedings of 5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
Understanding social interaction in world of warcraft
Proceedings of the international conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology
Improving gaming experience in zonal MMOGs
Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Multimedia
A Latency-Aware Partitioning Method for Distributed Virtual Environment Systems
IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
A long-term study of a popular MMORPG
Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
A measurement study of virtual populations in massively multiplayer online games
Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games
A platform for dynamic microcell redeployment in massively multiplayer online games
Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Network and operating systems support for digital audio and video
HICSS '09 Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
An analysis of WoW players' game hours
Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Network and System Support for Games
Proceedings of the 7th ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Network and System Support for Games
MMORPG Player actions: Network performance, session patterns and latency requirements analysis
Multimedia Tools and Applications
Why MMORPG players do what they do: relating motivations to action categories
International Journal of Advanced Media and Communication
Traffic modeling of player action categories in a MMORPG
Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques
MMORPG player behavior model based on player action categories
Proceedings of the 10th Annual Workshop on Network and Systems Support for Games
Methods and network architecture for modifying extensible virtual environment to support mobility
Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments
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This paper presents an analysis of player behavior in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). We examine player behavior in terms of when, how much, and what they do in the virtual world. Player behavior is described through previously defined action categories for MMORPGs (Trading, Questing, Dungeons, Raiding, and Player versus Player (PvP) Combat) with addition of a new category for text and voice communication within a session. We conduct a player survey and perform measurements on the client side for a group of 104 players of a popular MMORPG - World of Warcraft (WoW), and discover that there are significant patterns in player behavior. Additionally we examine the importance of both voice and textual (chat) communication in MMORPGs, and note that communication makes a significant portion of average player's playtime and that voice communication is used by a large portion of players. We believe that the results of this study may be used for improving the existing and design of new MMORPGs (e.g., building better load balancing algorithms, addition of content that is more interesting for players) with more emphasis on both old and new communication aspects of the game (e.g., inbuilt voice clients, new ways of connecting the players). This work also serves as a starting point for better insight into networking requirements for such applications, which may be useful for service and network providers.