Since I’m in danger of falling below my Federally Mandated World of Warcraft Ramblings Quota, I grabbed this, via Virgin Worlds:
World of Warcraft: Game Statistics
Proving that the folks at Blizzard have much better things to do with their time than, say, make The Burning Crusade ready, playable and released, they bring us this invaluable reference page. I don't even play anymore, but I love stats – the numbers keep me warm on cold empty nights, so lets have a looksee:
Most Auctioned Item: Runecloth
No big surprise there then – it’s the top-end humanoid common-drop, and essential for tailors, bandages for everyone else over 50 or so, and repeatable faction grinding for the cities. Folks can't get enough of this stuff, so there's ALWAYS going to be buyers. Well, until TBC adds 'Gloomcloth' or somesuch...
Most Created Item: Soul Shard
Made by Warlocks when they cast the Drain Soul spell on an enemy in combat, these are then a required consumable to summon most pets. Little surprise that all Warlocks (Perhaps 1/9th of the player population, roughly), try to do this as often as possible. The most Crafted item is the Copper Bar, made by Miners out of two Copper Ores. There is not really any reason NOT to smelt these whenever possible – they take up less inventory and no recipes use just the Ore.
Most Dangerous NPC: Drek’Thar
Ah, the horror, the horror. The NPC who has killed the most players is not an end-game Raid Dungeon boss, or what was my guess; a newbie area trash mob, but in fact the Horde General in the Alterac Valley PvP battleground. Despite his prowess, the Alliance typically respawn instantly, about twelve feet away, and go at him again and again until they win. Clearly the AV faction grinding system, zerg tactics forced on the players by the game and the powerful epic-alternative rewards are responsible for this chap getting so many visits. The Alliance General, Vanndar Stormpike, sits at #15 on the list, reflecting the typical and consistent supremacy of the Alliance in that battleground – the Horde force rarely even makes it to him.
Monday must have been Raid Night on many servers, as the most dangerous ‘real’ PvE killer, Vaelastrasz the Corrupt, is a raid-level dragon boss from Blackwing Lair, and Onyxia is not far behind in #3 place. Other, presumably non-raid, nights see the Defias put in a good showing, in particular, the ones found in Westfall – the Human lv10-20 zone. Most of the entries in this list, however, are all found in Alterac Valley, although it’s surprising to see that Warlock pets (Succubus, Imp, Felhunter) seem to qualify as NPC killers too. A quite interesting category, which speaks volumes about what most players are actually doing in there.
Most Gathered Item: Copper Ore
Closely followed by Rough Stone, both of these items are found on the Copper vein ground-spawn nodes, and show that Mining is the most popular Gathering Primary Profession by far, and even Fishing is more popular than Herbalism. Surprisingly, Light Leather, from the Skinning profession, comes much further down the list, 67th. I can only imagine that leather from skinning counts as ‘looted’ rather than ‘gathered’, since over 98% of all players are Hunters and all Hunters are Skinner/Leatherworkers. Or something.
Most Looted: Linen Cloth
As with Runecloth above, the cloths are the most likely thing to be found on a humanoid mob’s corpse, aside from cash. This high rate of drop reflects the fact that unlike most other professions, Tailors have no 'linen nodes' they can 'mine', in-world, and the entire profession relies purely on mob-drops for their raw material. Below the common cloth types, we find the leathers – I was right. Skinning is 'looting' rather than 'gathering'. No idea where the 'gathered' leather, above, comes from then…chests, possibly.
Most Completed Quest: A Threat Within
Thottbot entry for that one here. This quest is the very first thing a new Human Character is given to do, and even folks on their sixth alt, and wanting just a bank mule, will probably take the few seconds it takes to do this very short 'courier' style quest. #2 is the follow-on quest from the above, and most of the quests listed on the first page are Northshire Abbey ones – the human newbie area. Lots of people are starting new characters it seems – whether these are alts or brand new players is another question altogether.
I’m not sure there are too many shocks or surprises in there, but what is fascinating, is how little the lists change, over the week or so of data we have so far. Day in, day out, these same six things top their lists by healthy margins, and the rest of the lists look similar also, with only the Dangerous NPC one showing much variance. Despite that, it’s still Drek’Thar 4TW every night though. All in all, it paints a picture of a very predictable kind of game, where the life-span on any 'average' player can be plotted from cradle to grave.
Apparently, then, the average player of WoW will:
Start a human newbie, do the quests put in front of them, learn mining (and probably blacksmithing rather than engineering, which hints a Paladin or Warrior), go to Westfall, get killed a lot by Defias, kill a lot of Defias back and loot much cloth. From here things become somewhat individualised, but will probably involve the Deadmines twice, and no further Instance PUG until 55+, Stranglethorn Vale a lot, Tanaris frequently, and Ungoro Crater plenty. Then, everyone comes back together again, joins a guild and from then on, our player spends his time raiding (and wiping lots) in Blackwing Lair, farming reputation in Alterac Valley, and farming and selling Runecloth, to help toward his epic mount and equipment repair bills – probably at the Twilight Hammer main camp, west of Cenarion Hold, given how busy the place was when I was last there.
Of course there will still be the odd crazy Tauren Druid out there trying to level via Exploration xp only, or the occasional roleplaying Dwarf priest conducting sermons out in the wilds of Ashzara, and of course, the poor Horde half-heartedly trying to defend Drek’Thar, but on the whole, the numbers from these lists point at a very familiar kind of gameplay, where only the minor details vary, if any do at all…