GMs will poll the online population sometimes, and post the results. The data you're asking about comes from those posts.

The website is likely not updated.. here's information from our last snapshot, which I believe was taken during the auction at GuildFest 2015. We had somewhere around 525 characters logged in.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ucLQE2gqIhlpQDk5W-1qBHkMT3bH3KI0-TRNeeuLsDk/edit?usp=sharing

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NaOH+HI

>Kaldar Bard 0.19%

But Kaldaran bards are awesome!

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Don't forget to vote:

http://www.topmudsites.com/vote-DragonRealms.html

Cool stats, but I think there's a small error in the table. Total for barbs is only 86%, 91% for traders, 106% for WMs, and 111% for necros.

Lord grant me an Edit Post button...

There's also a discrepancy between the %s and counts for guilds and the counts for each race on the Simple Data tab. It must take some time for the system to collect this info.

~Kashik

Kashik, amazing presentation of data.

Here's an observation. Racial data seems far more skewed than Guild data. Sure, some Guilds are more popular than others, but Racial picks are a lot more uneven. Lots of Humans, Elves, and Elotheans, very rare for others.

The large number of Elothean and Gnome Moon Mages, and smaller number of Elven and Human Moon Mages despite how common they are, makes me believe that a lot of people are focusing on the mental attributes edge when they roll characters.

Elvish Ranges is a fantasy trope, so that makes sense.

Had a chance to look at the data a bit more ...

If you expected everything to be totally random, with 11 Guilds you'd "expect" around 9% for each. Although that's not true, it only ranges from a high of 13% for Warrior Mages and Moon Mages, 12% for Thieves and Rangers, down to 4% for Bards and Traders.

But if you look at Races, where with 11 different Races, there's a lot bigger range. Humans up at 26%, Elves 21%, and then Rakash down at 3%.

You could then take the known percentages for the different Races and Guilds and plot out an expected distribution of character types for a hypothetical world in which Race and Guild choice isn't correlated. We know that's not this world, but it offers a baseline.

What you find (don't know how to format this in a pretty way for display, so just describing it):

Humans are MUCH more likely to be Warrior Mages than any other Guild, and much less likely to be Moon Mages. On Moon Mages, the point is that there are so many Humans and Moon Mages you'd think they'd be one of the most common combinations, but they aren't.

Elves are MUCH more likely to be Rangers, less likely to be Moon Mages, Paladins, or Barbarians. Bards, Thieves, and Empaths more common.

Elotheans are MUCH more likely to be Moon Mages, just generally less likely to be anything else across the board except for Empaths and Traders.

For the other Races, the skew isn't as big in most cases, but some interesting observations.

Dwarves don't cluster too much, only mildly toward Empaths, Clerics, Paladins, and Traders. An odd combination. Little less common in Rangers and Thieves.

Halflings slightly skew to Thieves, Rangers, and Necromancers. Rather survival heavy, didn't expect that.

S'Kra Mur lean slightly to Thieves, not much else of note.

Gnomes are HEAVILY titled to the Moon Mages.

Gor'Togs are the same for Barbarians, and a little bit skewed to Paladins too. Away from Empath, Thief, Moon Mage, and Warrior Mage.

Slight lean of Kaldar to Paladins and Barbarians, away from Empath and Moon Mage.

Prydean are rather balanced overall, just slightly more Empaths and Thieves than expected, little fewer Paladins.

Finally, Rakash. Given that they are already the smallest race, they are rather balanced (showing up very little in all Guilds) with no real trend.

What's interesting is that I've been tracking this Guild-Race data for a long time, whenever it's made available, and I've noticed that a few of the big trends here were true 10, 15 years ago. Elvish Rangers, Human Warrior Mages, Elothean Moon Mages, etc. are common tropes. There's been some ebb and flow (Gnome Moon Mages seems like a relatively more recent trend), but things generally seem the same. Just looking at my old notes, a few things that stand out are fewer Dwarven Clerics, more Elvish Empaths, and, oddly, more Gor'Tog Bards. But that's potentially because this is just a snapshot of the game, and for some of these categories all it takes is two players of a type to be logged in versus zero for big apparent changes. But it is interesting when you have, say, two Gor'Tog Bards at once!

I love this thread for reasons.

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NaOH+HI

::swoon:: stats and data analysis

Nikpack

>>One thing I found interesting is the preponderance of Elves and Humans and the relatively lower numbers of Elotheans and Gnomes. 28 gnome and 55 elotheans vs 111 elves and 136 humans. This might reflect the more RP-oriented nature of DR, since it seems like min-maxers would be drawn more toward mental stats than reflex/agility/charisma and uh... nothing.

I have another thread over in the general discussion on races folder, and it was a question of RP versus balancing pro's and con's. The idea isn't that people are consciously drawn to picking Humans and Elves as basic tropes, but just when they start thinking about the pro's and con's (DR has a strong brain vs. brawn challenge with attributes) they just go with the "basic" options of Humans and Elves.

Elotheans seem to benefit more than Gnomes because they occupy that happy RP spot of "Half-Elves" but also the solid mental stats for folks that pick that, which seems to be primarily Moon Mages. Everyone else may be thinking "Yeah, the mental stats is nice, but my Guild is semi-Combat, and I don't want the downsides."

Or maybe something like that.

>> Elotheans aren't Half-Elves, I feel obligated to clarify. Half-Elves are not a thing in DR's setting.

That comes from a single source, which has been in the game since nearly the beginning, claiming that Elotheans are the result of prolonged cross-breeding between Humans and Elves. I can't remember where it was that this information came from, and I'm not trying to claim it as authoritative; as I recall it was actually intentional disinformation, but it was in-game lore all the same. Just shedding some light (hopefully) on where this notion comes from.

Also, there are half-elves, they just aren't distinct in any way from humans or elves; they strongly tend toward one race, to the point that they wouldn't really be called "half-elves," they're more like humans or elves with a parent of the opposite species. I've always regarded it as sort of like Spock. Looks and acts almost exactly like all other members of his race, but has a human mother.

I

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Kneebiter Zhunee just arrived.
R>
Zhunee glances around the room and says, "Someone pull my finger."
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Kneebiter Zhunee runs west.

>> That comes from a single source, which has been in the game since nearly the beginning, claiming that Elotheans are the result of prolonged cross-breeding between Humans and Elves. I can't remember where it was that this information came from, and I'm not trying to claim it as authoritative; as I recall it was actually intentional disinformation, but it was in-game lore all the same. Just shedding some light (hopefully) on where this notion comes from.

You are right, this exists and was Dragon Priest propaganda. There are also, I'm aware, multiple references to half-elves or halfbreeds in the oldest lore in the game, particularly where Lanival is concerned, though most of this was written in The Before Times before that kind of thing was hammered down and the canon was well-established. References to halfbreeds can easily be interpreted now as references to the parentage of the person, or a reference to their cultural upbringing, or an invective, or other such things.

I just wanted to clarify for a (seemingly?) new player that Elotheans being Half-Elves is not really the case, unless your character is buying into the Dragon Priest thing for some reason.

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

>>Elotheans aren't Half-Elves, I feel obligated to clarify. Half-Elves are not a thing in DR's setting.

Duh, but you don't think that part of their popularity comes from the fact that they are the most "human/elf-like" of the other races? Kaldar maybe, but their stats are so warped against mentals ... Combine their similarity to fantasy tropes with the mental stats, clearly understandable why Elotheans are popular.

I thought the appeal of Elotheans was that weird quasi-east Asian culture thing they have going on.

>>Lanival & halfbreeds

Just following this up.. Lanival was a Human. There was one book that mistakenly referred to him as an Elf, and that was corrected some time in 2014.

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NaOH+HI

>> Just following this up.. Lanival was a Human. There was one book that mistakenly referred to him as an Elf, and that was corrected some time in 2014.

I actually assumed he was an Elf that identified as Human for various reasons, which raised interesting questions about personal identity. I was literally just having this discussion with someone so it's good to know for sure.

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Thayet
Follow @thayelf on Twitter for absolutely nothing of any value whatsoever!

>>Kaldar maybe, but their stats are so warped against mentals

My guess is that the unpopularity of Kaldar is mainly due to their Cha bonus (without a lot of other bonuses).

>>Kaldar is the supreme race. Long live the Longstalks.

+1

- Navesi

>>I'd say +1 cost to intelligence and +1 cost to wisdom is hardly "so warped against mentals."

Meh, you can say I was being drammatic, but they are in the bottom half of races. Depending on how you work out the impacts, Elotheans, Gnomes, and Dwarves are at the top, Humans in the middle, Elves and Halflings a little below that. Gor'Tog are in the bottom, Prydaen above them. How you sort out S'Kra Mur and KKaldar versus Rakash is up in the air, I haven't updated my understanding of the impacts enough. My sense is Rakash come out worse. But that's six races clearly better, only two clearly worse. Tied for seventh, at best, out of 11?

>>My guess is that the unpopularity of Kaldar is mainly due to their Cha bonus (without a lot of other bonuses).

I'm surprised there aren't more Kaldar Bards. Tons of Elvish Bards, I guess a hit to Discipline is ok for a Lore/Magic Guild, but the Kaldar matchup is too much.

On a related note, when I was looking at mental attributes, I noticed that Humans, despite being the "average" race, wind up as only the fourth race out of eleven. Elotheans and Gnomes are the nerds, Dwarves with the Discipline bonus may have a slight edge, but then Humans are above everyone else.

You go to Strength and Stamina, more physical qualities, and Humans are bumped down to sixth out of 11. Gor'Togs, Rakash, Kaldar, S'Kra Mur, and Dwarves are running around as endurance runners and body builders.

It just makes me think that if you had perfectly even distributions, an "average" Human, 100 IQ, might say "gee, what's with all these slow dumb people." But they'll recognize they are sub-par physically.

But everything isn't equal. The difference between even distribution and the actual distribution of players on mental stats isn't that difference. The "nerd club" is 20% of players from this survey, would be 27% or so in an even distribution. For the jocks, they are 26% of actual players, but 45% if evenly distributed. So in this game world, humans end up feeling like their "average" physical form puts them well above everyone else.

Of course this all means nothing because people probably train their attributes differently ...

Not many people play the Kaldar race, because not everyone can handle being so ruggedly handsome and covered in bulging muscles. A body like Arnold with a Denzel face.

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"Brace yourselves, Squanto is going to bleh blah fart fart bleh.." -the player of the character formerly known as Pureblade