While I was working on that What You Should Know Before You Roll article the other week, I became interested in incorporating race/class popularity into the piece. I figured interested onlookers would want to know how common a race is, to add that data point into the mix of attractiveness/style/class choice, etc. To do that I referenced the Warcraft Census over at WarCraftRealms.com.

The census gets its data from a plugin, meaning that the information is from a self-selecting group. Only the folks who deigned to get the plugin were counted. By the very nature of WoW addons, I’m going to posit this means overall Warcraft Census has collected data from a more dedicated group of players. The average WoW player (less than 20 hours a week, no 25 man raids) probably doesn’t have any plugins installed.

That said, I thought it was useful enough information to include a few conclusions in that post. Data from over 6 million characters is still a decent-sized set, even if it is self-selecting. I find datamining endlessly fascinating. With that in mind, I thought I’d make some more obvious statements fueled by the service and try to guess at why some things are the way they are.

So, just looking down the list of races and classes, we have the following in terms of popularity (most to least):

1. Human (17%)
2. Night Elf (16%)
3. Blood Elf (15%)
4. Undead (11%)
5. Tauren (9%)
6. Draenei (9%
7. Orc (7%)
8. Gnome (6%)
9. Dwarf (6%)
10. Troll (5%)

1. Hunter (16%)
2. Warrior (13%)
3. Rogue (12%)
4. Mage (12%)
5. Paladin (11%)
6. Warlock (11%)
7. Druid (10%)
8. Priest (9%)
9. Shaman (8%)

Now, just correlating the two lists that would make the most popular race/class combinations Night Elf Hunter (Alliance) or Blood Elf Hunter (Horde). The most unpopular would be Troll Shaman (Horde) or Dwarf Priest (Alliance). What’s interesting though is that if you drill down you find that not to be the case. In fact, Shamans make up some 20% of all the Trolls surveyed - some 60,000 characters. In fact, Warrior is the least popular Troll class by a wide margin, at only 21,000 characters.

What I find fascinating here is how much the most popular races and classes throw the whole rest of the chart out of whack. There are *so many* people playing Humans, Night Elves, and Blood Elves that they completely change the dynamic of the chart. Warrior, for example, is the least popular class for almost every race … except humans. If you’re a Warrior, statistically speaking the chart says odds are really good that you’re playing a human. At a full 1/6th of the sample population, human racial trends skew the entire rest of the sample. Between the three most popular races you’ve got almost half the entire population. So ‘overall’ lack of popularity for the Shaman class is no surprise - the three most popular races can’t even play that class.

I think the reasons the most popular races are as they are should be pretty self explanatory: people like being people or hawt. Elves are always the most popular non-human race, something confirmed by SOE in its Station Exchange white paper. Beyond that, these three races have a lot going for them class-wise. Nelfs are the only Alliance race that can roll Druid, while Belfs are the only Paladin-ing Horde class. Some 30% of all Belfs are Paladins.

Beyond the pretties we’ve got the Undead, which are basically saggy humans. Before the Belfs they were the ‘prettiest’ Horde race, so no surprise at their popularity. The popularity of the Draenei is surprising in some ways, but not unpleasantly so. I’d venture that they’re probably my favorite race in the game right now. The surprise at the Draenei’s popularity falls away immediately, though, if you click through to their class breakdown: almost 50% of all blue-skinned characters are Shamans. As the only race in the Alliance able to make a Shaman, it makes a lot of sense.

Moving on down the list we’ve got the Tauren, who (I suspect) enjoy a similar class-related popularity boost to the Draenei. As the only Horde race able to roll Druid, the moo cows are your go-to bovines for bear/cat/boomkin love. The stats bear that out, with some half of all the population being Druids.

The final four least popular races are jumbled all together in a muddle. Orcs, as the nominal faction leader for the Horde, win out simply by virtue of their fierce demeanor. Class choices bear this out, as the Hunter and Warrior classes are the most popular choices for this race. Dwarves are generally hunters and Gnomes are split pretty evenly between Mages and Warlocks. I think these three races, and their relative unpopularity, are really interesting. In fact, I’d say it argues completely against something I’ve always enjoyed about the least popular race in the game …

The Troll, at just 5% of all characters surveyed, is far and away the least popular race. The class results are fairly typical for a generalist class: lots of hunters and very few warriors. Shamans are relatively popular, as they are with every race that class is available. To tie back to something I mentioned above: Shaman is actually a very popular class - within the races it’s available. The races that can be Shamans, though, are generally as popular as the big three.

To continue my thought, I’ve always enjoyed the Troll’s flexibility. The troll has five class options to choose from. None are exclusives, but all four of the archetypal classes are here. You’d think you’d see a lot of trolls filling utility rolls in parties. Instead, they’re a very unpopular race. Why is that?

My conclusion after looking long and hard at these charts is that players pick their race first most of the time. Only if a player comes into a game knowing he’s going to play a specific class does he re-prioritize. For example, players wanting to play a Druid are given two race options: Tauren or Night Elf. Paladin fans have but one option on the Horde side, as to Shaman players on the Alliance.

You’re saying to yourself “Duh, Zenke, I could have told you that.” And you’re right, those are really obvious conclusions. So what about the next step? What does this tell us about general trends for WoW, and MMOs in general?

World of Warcraft:

• If Blizzard were ever to expand class choices, there are a few obvious choices. Human Druids or Hunters would be incredibly popular. If any other races are to become Shamans on the Alliance side, the Gnomes or Dwarves could use some love.
• I’m not sure how it would be possible for Blizz to make Blood Elves any more popular; they’re just not missing any classes right now. If you were to drop the Paladin class on another Horde race I’d have to go with the Trolls. They need the love.
• Generally speaking the least played races deserve some love. If I were to combine this line of thinking with my love for revamping old content, I’d say the Gnomes and Trolls deserve their own starting area. The Orc and Dwarf starting areas could use a bit of a brush-up, just to bring the quality level closer to the high bar set for the Draenei and Blood Elves.

The Genre

• Datamining is fun. A looong time ago Blizzard put out stats like this for the whole game, with gender added into the mix. (Poor female trollish priests.) Having a dynamic site up that showed off this data would not only be fascinating, but I think would be really valuable to academic folks. I know SOE has the tools for this - show us your data, gents!
• Act on your data, and when you do it let the players in on it. Though I know people do it all the time, arguing with numbers isn’t very helpful. “We saw that very few people were playing this race/class combination, so we decided to give people an incentive to do so.”
• Give people a reason to do the unpopular thing. “Unpopular” doesn’t mean bad. I love the trolls - they’ve got awesome mounts and by far the best /dance. But they’re - I guess - ugly compared to a lot of the other races. So give people a reason to embrace the ugly. Non-stat special items, cool non-combat racial powers … people don’t make characters based on stastics, they make them based on gut feelings. Your gut having a good reaction to an idea or addition for a race should tell you something.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this ‘thinking out loud with stats’ exercise. Hope it wasn’t too boring - I could do this stuff all day.