Statistical properties of online avatar numbers in a massive multiplayer online role-playing game

Statistical properties of user activity fluctuations in virtual worlds

“…In summary, we first characterized the basic properties of the time series of 1-min instant number of online users or user activity N i (t) of 95 independent virtual worlds of an MMORPG inhabited in different servers. We confirmed the presence of intraday patterns and weekly patterns in user activities, which are common traits in human dynamics due to circadian rhythms and weekly cycles [16,21,48,60]. Based on an effective approach proposed by Clauset et al [22], we identified that there are 44 time series of absolute activity fluctuations |∆N i (t)| following power-law distributions in the tails.…”

“…In addition, the relatively sharp drop of online user of the weekend curve is probably due to the fact that most of the player have to sleep normally in the Sunday evening so that they can have a normal life on Monday. A careful scrutiny unveils that the average number on Friday increases quicker after 17:00 and remains above other four curves from 18:00 to 24:00 for all virtual worlds, which is slightly different from the result of another game in 2007 in which the prominence of the Friday curve started after lunch [16]. The intraday pattern in Friday evening is explained by the fact that Fridays are followed by Saturdays and most of the players are free in weekends, while that in the Friday afternoon 17:00 is explained by the fact that most college students do not have courses and many official institutions have much less work to do, for instance, only a small part of the officials might have obligations.…”

Non-Poisson donation behaviors in virtual worlds

“…In recent years, numerous scientific studies have been carried out based on multitudinous data sets collected from online virtual worlds [6][7][8][9][10][11]. In particular, a pioneering work was done by Edward Castronova, who traveled in a virtual world called "Norrath" and performed preliminary analysis of its economy [12].…”

“…Complex systems usually exhibit complex behavior characterized by long-term power-law correlations [35]. Extensive studies show that long-term correlations widely exist in many economic or financial, biological, and ecological systems [34,[36][37][38], especially for human interactive activities in both real and virtual worlds [8,10,39,40]. Specially, long-term correlations become stronger as the human activity level increases [39].…”

Circadian Rhythms in Socializing Propensity

“…This study employs data from the virtual world of a popular massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) called Dragon Nest. The online gaming environment is a three-dimensional space that simulates a real-world social environment in which people perform various tasks while meeting and interacting with other participants via their avatars (virtual representations of themselves), making it suited for studying human behavior (e.g., [ 16 , 17 , 18 ]). As with online social networking websites, the platform provides broad functionalities to enable participants to build their social networks.…”