Identification of professional players in an online community: a case study

Authors:
Tobias Fritsch;Frederik Kerssenfischer;Julian Steinfeld;Benjamin Schuch
Affiliations:
Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany;Bonn, Germany;Berlin, Germany;Frankfurt, Germany
Venue:
Proceedings of the 4th International ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques
Year:
2011

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Abstract

In this paper we analyze different kinds of World of Warcraft players -- normal, professional and high ELO player - and evaluate their behavior in online gaming communities in an experimental environment. The experiment points out a linkage between the group of professional players and the group of high ELO players. We created an online community for the massive multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. The main findings of the experiment are a lower login rate of the high ELO players, higher count of posts for the online community by high ELO players and an overall higher game experience by these players. Some of these results are counter-intuitive to the picture of a professional player. The gathered data during the experiment does not support the hypotheses that high ELO users have a higher number of logins in the community. This implies that high ELO players tend rather to visit less and be more active in the community in this time or that they be active over a extend period of time within one login at the community site.