Politician Archive

Citizen Survey Results

for the SWG Online Community of Aurora, Naboo – Flurry Server.

Citizen Survey Results for the SWG Online Community of Aurora, Naboo – Flurry Server. The metropolis of Aurora has taken the extra effort to perform a couple surveys of our citizens. We looked at who they are in real life, what they do both out of and in-game and at some of their experiences in-game. Two surveys have been conducted. The first survey had 21 questions and the second 28. After a significant number of responses were received the aggregated results were analyzed and a summary provided to the citizens of Aurora. Since the first survey our community has grown from 85 citizens to more than 110. There are references to date that is in graphs, unfortunatel the graphs cannot be inserted into this post. But you can see them in the PDF version located at www.rbectel.co.uk/html/swgaurora/downloads/surveyresults1.pdf

These surveys go a long ways towards helping us build a sustainable, diverse community of online gamers.

When we asked the citizens about their real lives, while the number of players over thirty years of age had remained stable, the number of players under twenty had increased by 13%. Graph# 1 and #2 show the difference between the first and second surveys. The actual number of players in the community increased, and these graphs show that while the ratio of players over thirty remained approximately the same, the players between twenty and thirty is now substantially less than 3 months ago. More than 80% of our community is male, and most of them (58%) are single. This has dropped considerably from the first survey where we had 66% of our population reporting themselves as single.

Since the first survey, the percentage of our community that has served or is actively serving in the Military had dropped from 40% to 25%. But the number of citizens reporting that they own their real life (RL) houses has increased from 36% to 50%.

The latest survey asked one other question about the players real life. Which vegetable to they prefer, Broccoli, Brussels Sprouts or Corn. Sixty-five percent of respondents reported that they preferred corn over the other two choices. I guess that Aurora is just not a veggie eating crowd. Only 26% preferred broccoli and 9% brussels sprouts.

When we asked the players about their in-game experiences, particularly where they played most, they showed a definite change from the first to the second survey. In the first survey, 64% reported that they played in and around Aurora. That compares with only 26% from the 2nd survey. Most of the players that adventure on the advanced planets can be found on Dantoinne or LoK. 28% play on Endor or Dathomir, and only 8% play on Yavin.

We next looked at who had gone to the Corvette, the Geo Labs, the Tusken Fort and the Deathwatch Bunker. From the first to the second survey, we found that many more people had undertaken adventures to these points of interest (POI). 28% more citizens have now gone to the Corvette than in the first survey.

Since the first survey the proportion of respondents reporting that they had been to the Geonosian Labs has increase to 42% from 40%. For the Tusken fort we found that 71% of our community has adventured at the fort. This has increased dramatically from the 44% in the first survey. Finally, we asked how many folks have gone to the new POI, the Deathwatch Bunker. Of those responding, 25% said they had gone on a hunt to this POI.

We also asked our community about their alignment. Over 92% of the respondent are Rebel aligned. This is a good thing, since the city supports the Rebel alliance. The remaining 8% reported themselves as Neutral to the GCW.

When asked about their choice of combat style, 42% reported that they used ranged combat methods. This compares with 68% from the first survey. The graph to the right shows the results for combat styles using melee or a combination of both.

One of the hardest challenges for a community like Aurora is to get the entire community engaged in large-scale hunts, raids or events. We decided to ask our community what was had the largest influence on their ability to join in any of our community events.

The results, which are in the graph to the right, show that many players simply didn’t get enough notice. Another large percentage (37%) couldn’t make the raid due to the late starting time. There were many comments where players indicated that limited time online also made it difficult to participate in long raids or hunts with the other members of this community.

We took some time to look at the economy in Aurora. There are a lot of very wealthy persons in Aurora.The chart to the left shows that over 44% of the community has more than 500,000 credits. Only 8% reported that they had less than 10000 credits at the time of the survey. 65% of respondent reported that they own more than one in-game house.

When asked about their reasons for shopping at a particular vendor, 68% of respondents said the quality of the items offered was the most important factor for choosing a particular vendor. The chart below shows the rest of the responses to this question.

One set of questions looked at how the citizens use two of the more prominent buildings in Aurora, the Hospital and Cantina. 68% of respondents said they didn’t use the city’s hospital to heal their wounds. Of those that didn’t use the hospital, 72% said they either healed themselves, are master doctors, or used meditate to heal their wounds. Only 16% get their wounds healed in the NPC cities. When asked if they used the Cantina, now that there were entertainers there on most evening, 52% of respondents reported using the cantina.

We also asked our community about ways that we could better communicate with them. Over 96% of the respondents indicated that they would like to receive a weekly “What’s Happening “ in-game email. Many of the citizens in this community utilize the online discussion groups provided by their individual player associations. There are also numerous persons that enjoy using the TeamSpeak software to chat with their friends online. For those that didn’t use TeamSpeak, 50% of them stated that technical difficulties were the largest problem for them.

As you can see, the community of Aurora has a broad community of players. We enjoy hunting in difficult areas, use a variety of combat styles and have accumulated a lot of wealth. The members of this community are mature players tending to be over 21 years of age and many are married home owners. Several of our members are active members of the military for their country. As this community grows we look forward to surveying them again and investigating how we have matured as a group of online players in StarWars Galaxies.

Hadrian Augustus
Mayor and Master Architect of Aurora
Naboo, Flurry Server