[MUD-Dev] wherefor in-game artists?

[Koster, Raph]

Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> "Christopher Allen" <ChristopherA at skotos.net> writes:

>> There may be no silver numbers, but there are some interesting
>> statistics. Take a look at the UO numbers that Raph provided me
>> that are printed in my blog entry
>> http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2004/03/the_dunbar_numb.html --
>> in it you will see that a definite point of diminishing returns
>> at around 150; however, you will also see that most groups are
>> around 60 large.

> Players or characters, all active or both inactive and active? All
> guilds, or a selection? The graph states "veteran members", not
> sure what that means. It would also be interesting to know how
> many years the system had been running when it was measured.

The measurement is based on characters, nor players. Veteran members
is defined on the website thusly:

"A Veteran Member is one who has reached a maximum level of overall
skill proficiency."

In UO's case, I understand that this can now be achieved in a matter
of days. UO does not use a traditional level-based system; rather,
it is a skill-based system whereby you have a chance of improving on
a percentile scale every time you use a skill. Players can have no
more than 700 percentage points allocated across all their
skills. There are 40-odd skills.

This was measured on December 23rd, 2002; UO launched in late
September, 1997. Call it a bit over five years.

> Anyway, I am not saying that there are no limits or bottlenecks. I
> argue that there are no magic constants. So rather than looking
> for a constant you need to look for functions, unfortunately the
> number of parameters seem to be quite large when one starts to
> look into it.

It is undeniably a function, and one which we do not understand all
the variables to. In the case of online worlds in general, and UO
guilds in particular, I would expect most statistics to be inflated
because of alts and multiple account holders. It appears to be very
common for multiple accounts to all belong to the same guild, rather
than be in multiple guilds--which in itself may be support for
Dunbar's number.

-Raph
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