Favor Stats 09-05-05 - 09-12-05

As promised here are last weeks Favor stats. These were manually noted down by myself and some friends, so they are accurate to the point where we were online. We now have coverage pretty much every hour, except from 3am-6am GMT; but if you want to help during those times, PM me and we'll sort something out.



The shaded ares are the 3 days during sorrows furnace release and it's interesting to note the change in the way favor has been held. Korea increased during that time, because I believe that is down to the gaming culture of that region.

It's notable that the day after sorrows the US held favor pretty much all day. This is, I believe down to people paying sorrows and there not being enough players to remove the US from favor.

Europe has picked up a little in peak hours and it will be interesting see if the trend continues as people finish the expansion and go back to PvP. However Europe's overall percentage is down, as is the US's something I put firmly down to SF.

There are other threads that deal with how to resolve the favor questions, so please dont fill up this one, comments on my poor math, or the stats themselves are welcome.

PS
I think this a community interest thread, rather than a suggestion so can I politley ask the mods that it stay here.

nice information! thank you for assembling this data.
I have also noticed that Europe seems to get into swing a bit more.
Didn't realise the dominance of US was still THIS big....

thanks, Shanaeri Rynale.

good to know that if i cant sleep of a nighttime, i can join the graveyard shift of euro UW exploreres....well, i can when i acend and so on ^^

(no, not being sarcstic. i knew euro had the favour at late times, but wasnt sure it was the graveyars shift till it was alllaid out in a table)

Now, if Anet does not recognize there is an imbalance in this WoW thing....

Hurry up with an official comment on this one ArenaNet.

Otherwise, our 50+ members european guild decided that most of us will move to the US servers in order to be able to access Fissure and UW 3/4 of the time by the end of september.

Very nice work. WaW has been discussed enough by better people than myself, but it's the first time I see synthetic facts. Thanks a lot (to you all) for the effort.

Wow, I knew that USA hogged favour for most of the day, but I didn't realise it was quite to this extent... it almost defeats the object of having the system in place really.

This probably isn't the place to make suggestions, but I reckon just tweaking the number of times each region has to hold the hall depending on their success could work. For example, Euro might have the stock 5, Korea has 6, and the US has 7.

So, now when people complain that USA never holds favor or Korea always wins they can be directed to your spreadsheet.

Thanks for putting this together, it's very interesting.

I am sure ANET has their own stats too, and I bet many people would be interested in seeing some of these stats.

Thank you for your work putting this up.
Although it is really sad to see it is really that bad for us europeans and to some degree even for the koreans...

wow not thats interesting...

Very good work

I Would really like to see this WAW sorted, and its things like this that may help pave the way.

I think anet hoped that people would not complian as much with sorrows. But as good as it is its only 1 area, not really enough to keep people interested for more than what, a couple of days untill they need a change?

I think i saw favor once this week, lasted half an hour in FOW then died. Was getting another group together, but then BAM we lost favor.

I stopped playing after that.

Great data!

I don't know exactly what has changed over the last month or so to make it so but Korea used to dominate favor, and Eurpoe almost never had it In fact I remember when it seemed like Korea had for days in a row. Now America looks like it dominates and Europe is getting a bigger and bigger share of the favor all the time.

If it's of any use, since last week, Korea is up 4.5%, Americas down 2.88 and EU also down 1.6%

Good stuff Shanaeri & Co.

It's a good thing they didn't link access to GF and SF to WAW otherwise the update truly would have sucked b&lls. Now if they only find a way to fix favor for UW&FoW.

Keep the stats going... can you feed me with some raw data to play with? I can bring you some pretty interesting numbers (with the formulae used so you know I'm not cheating.)

huh? since release Korea has never ever "dominated" favor.

in fact i would put forth the argument tht the US has always since release had favor much more then Korea.

i just do not understand all the whining about Korea being so good and the rest of us being so bad.

i have seen entire weekends go by (that includes the real early morning hours in the US) where Korea did not gain favor even once.

lets get a grip people

It only stands to reason that the US would hold favor more. Following are some reasons:

US controls more times zones, thus it has a much larger "prime time" than Korea. Europe also covers multiple time zones, but factors like language, regions, etc all fragment the population - not to mention the lower sales figures. Korean population - while rabid gamers - is far less than the US. The Koreans are also playing much more Starcraft (still!), Diablo 2, Lineage I and II, etc. The US plays more WoW and EQ than GW, so it all balances out in that regard. Thus, the more US players across more time zones means more Favor.

The US shouldn't be penalized for this.

The spirit spam nerfing might also be a contributing factor, although it's hard to say (at least to me) whether it hurt the US or Korea more. Koreans were always very hardcore into Ranger builds but the US certainly didn't ignore it.

Shrug. To me, it's not just as black or white as how much time a particular region held favor, there are a lot of things to consider.

Generally, the teams holding the HoH in the US don't really care about favor. They are in it for fame/faction and sigils. The by-product is that the US maintains favor, but the guys in tombs don't normally care if you (as a player) can get into the UW or not. Other regions may be more concerned with it since they don't have favor all that often, but from the US perspective, it's a non issue for the teams holding the hall.

Thus, the whole favor thing probably needs to be scrapped, since there is a fairly large disconnect between the two goals. if ANet wanted to maintain Favor is a worldwide thing - which is cool in itself - then Favor should be it's own reward. Teams should go in and fight for Favor itself, NOT for sigils.

A separate gaming arena should be created solely for Favor - nothing else. Then, teams would fight to maintain UW/FoW runs and better drops for their region, instead of for themselves. Or, perhaps insteaed of gaining favor to get to the UW you must fight a different region's team to gain entrance instead of teh way it's set up now.

This would completely nerf the solo FoW/UW builds, and force teamwork to get into the Underworld. During times when regions would have their own primetime their entrance would more than likely be a free pass as the other regions normally aren't as active, and more teams/groups will get in.

Shrug, I dunno, just a thought.

1-2 months ago Koreans played much more. They had favor pretty often (I remember well all the cursing in ToA) and, even though US was still dominant, it was like 60% vs 40%. Europe had favor in very rare occasions, now the situation has improved a lot.

I happened to find a lot of korean teams in Tomb as well...for some reason Korea is now shoulder to shoulder with Europe in holding the HoH, even though you can find more european grps than korean in Tomb. I don't want to play the mean guy, but seems to me that since a couple of balance issues were fixed, most of the dreaded korean teams went to shit.

Maybe it's just an impression though.

EDIT: oh and Mimi Miyagi, american players aren't playing more WoW and EQ2 than GW. Last figures showed a decrease in WoW players, while EQ2 has been a half-flop since it was out. It goes like this: WoW, GW, FFXI and the rest.

Question: Were the areas on the table that show things like 16-hour blocks of American dominance- does that show that the Americans held the hall for 16 straight hours, or were there breaks in there (where, for example, Europe held the hall for 5 minutes or so?)

All of your blocks are in half hours- so there's not really any notation if a group held the hall between half hour marks.

His blocks don't show holding the HoH, it shows who has favor. Not the same thing.

The favor must be held for at least half hour marks b/c of the consecutive win requirement and the length of HoH battles. However, not all blocks are the same according to that theory.

A 1 hour block could actually only be 40 minutes or 1 hour 15 minutes depending on when it started and ended and how they checked.