GamesBeat have published a very intersting article : Comparing the virtual worlds of Warcraft, Second Life, and Eve Online to our own yields some surprising stats. The article itself links to a funky report by digital marketing agency Epiphany with a blurb of :

The online world is very different to our own, with new rules, new races, and new ways of living. There are, however, some similarities – take a look at our breakdown of the internet’s biggest virtual worlds to find out how they measure up against real life.

This isn’t the most detailed report in the world but the site does provide some interesting stats. Introducing Second Life they say:

Second Life is seen as an online marketplace as well as a game, and many players have been able to earn serious cash thanks to the easy way in-game currency can be sold for real-world money. More casual players use the game to build, customise and create, developing a literal second life in which their character can live out the player’s desires and fantasies – whether that’s a mansion and a helipad or the romance of a lifetime!

The website has a series of icons which lead to other little gems of information when clicked, I’m not going to cover them all but I’ll mention a few. In terms of Second Life they point out that English is the most popular language with 54% of users speaking that language, which compares to 18% in the real world.

In terms of user growth we’re told :

Between 2006 and 2011, global internet usage doubled in growth – in the same timeframe, Second Life saw a 4000% increase in users.

That’s rather impressive. Another interesting point is made with regards to financial institutions and economies, although I’m not sure things happened exactly as they seem to suggest :

In 2007, Second Life saw a huge financial incident which mirrored the bank crises we’ve seen in the real world since the start of the recession. When the developers announced that gambling in-game would be officially banned, thousands of users rushed to Ginko Financial, an in-game bank offering astronomical interest rates, to retrieve and sell the currency from their accounts. This caused a run on the bank which eventually resulted in a complete shut-down – wiping out around $750,000 (£457,736) in real world money. The incident has since been used by financial experts across the web as an example of what happens when banks fail to self-regulate.

The part where I disagree with them is regarding the rush of people to Ginko. I don’t remember that happening, I do remember the Ginko scandal but I don’t recall a rush due to the gambling ban. I can recall arguing with people that if real life banks faced a close down in the manner that Second Life banks did that there would be a rush on the banks that they wouldn’t be able to handle.

When it comes to World Of Warcraft the report introduces it with :

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, where humans, orcs, elves and a whole host of races must set aside their differences to fight against the world’s monsters or battle to be the strongest and richest in the land. With over 7 million users it’s the world’s biggest MMORPG, holding the Guinness World Record for its huge population.

When it comes to wealth distribution we’re told it’s more equal in World Of Warcraft than it is in real life :

The wealth distribution is actually more equal in the Warcraft universe than it is in real life! The average player has 80,000 gold, equal to roughly $91.20.

However when it comes to distribution it seems that World Of Warcraft is most definitely a man’s world :

World of Warcraft is predominantly male, with a gender divide which matches that of the equally male-dominated United States Military Academy at West Point.

One very interesting but unintended issue with World Of Warcraft happened back in 2005 when a spell went wrong and created a pandemic, I remember reading about this at the time :

On September 3rd 2005, the World of Warcraft developers released a new spell into the game called “Corrupted Blood”, which temporarily drained health and affected any nearby players. The spell was only intended to be used in one high-level area, but an unfortunate glitch meant that the contagious affliction soon made its way across the map, killing off low-level players and causing a pandemic which emptied cities and drastically changed the style of gameplay as healthy players sought shelter from the plague. Eventually the developers fixed the glitch, and found an unexpected use for the accident, as scientists and government officials used the emergent player behaviour as a model for epidemic and anti-terrorism research.

When it comes to Eve-Online they introduce it with :

EVE online isn’t just a virtual world; it’s a whole galaxy, complete with alien races, stargates and over 7,500 star systems. Players create and customise their own captain, start the game with a small spaceship and have the freedom to carve out their own path however they see fit – exploring, mining or pirating their way to fame and riches.

When it comes to gender distribution Eve-Online does not score well, indeed it does not score well when compared to real life astronauts either :

While only ten per cent of our space explorers have been female, this is still a higher percentage than the number of women subscribed to EVE Online.

Eve-Online apparently has a male subscription of 96%. That’s quite alarming. Moving on, Eve-Online has quite the dedicated player base, and it seems they like their conventions :

Conventions are often cited as the biggest gatherings of science fiction fans, but upon combining the biggest years of some of the world’s greatest fan gatherings, EVE Online still came out on top.

Eve-Online coming in at a whopping 65,000 compared to 64,000 from their rivals. This is rather impressive when you consider Eve-Online has less subscribers than their rivals, although there may be other reasons to explain this, there are no details on that.

A startling face emerges when it comes to assassinations and how much they cost :

Perhaps the most well-known event in EVE Online history is the now infamous Mirial assassination, which took place on April 18th 2005. Mirial, the CEO of one of the game’s largest corporations, had just warped into the Haras solar system when her lieutenant broadcast a single codeword – “Nicole” – to multiple operatives of the infiltration and assassination group the Guiding Hands Social Club (GHSC). Within minutes every one of her company’s office was raided, and her character was permanently destroyed. The operation took ten months to implement, and earned the GHSC a cool 20 billion ISK – much more than the 1 million ISK originally agreed, and with a real-world cash equivalent of just over £10,000, it’s the same as the average contract killing in the UK.

I haven’t included everything from the report as I said earlier in the article, it’s a fun report and if you have a few minutes of time worth taking a look at.

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