I love the PlayOn guys. Even though I find myself frequently questioning their methodology, they always ask interesting questions which makes me think about the games I’m building. Here’s a really simple one, based on levelling time in WoW. Take a look.
The shape of the graph is really interesting, with a slight dip at level 39, followed by a huge spike at 40. This, most likely, is caused by mounts. People grind through 39 as fast as they can to get the mount, then afterwards enjoy an emotional release. Perhaps they are relaxing after slavishly grinding, perhaps they’re focusing on earning cash to buy the mount, or possibly they’re just joyously exploring the world with their new speed buff. At any rate, it shows how powerful strong ‘threshold’ rewards can be in motivating players.
Also of interest: a lot of battlegrounds players will choose not to level up once they hit the highest level in a battleground level band (i.e. staying at level 29 so they can rule the 20-29 battleground). As such, you’d expect to see some spikes at the -9s. This doesn’t appear to be evident at all, although I note that their samples are on PvE servers. It would be interesting to see the same graph on a PvP servers, where players might be more likely to min-max for the battleground experience.
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