Thesis Presentation

Massively-multiplayer online computer games (MMOGs) are becoming increasingly common. Understanding the dynamic nature of game clients and the players that control them is critical for designers and implementors of systems and networks that host MMOGs. In addition, there has been recent interest in building MMOGs as distributed systems, for example as a peer-to-peer application where game clients now act as peers. Such distributed game designs must take into account the churn inherent in MMOG player participation in order to build reliable systems.

This thesis improves the understanding of player dynamics in MMOGS, within the context distributed games. Specifically, we present the results of a 5-month long measurement study of World of Warcraft, a leading commercial MMOG. The rate at which players entered and left a World of Warcraft server were determined, as well as churn rates pertaining to several locations within the game world. An analysis of our findings shows that for certain properties such as session length, game clients exhibit the same kinds of behavior as peer-to-peer filesharing applications, which is surprising given their different natures. There also exist several good predictors of session length, some of them related to in-game properties like character level. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results on the design of distributed games.

Thesis Committee:
Srinivasan Seshan, Chair
David Andersen