Tuesday, September 29, 2009

MBTI: 640 Responses

I finally got around to tallying up the responses that have come in since the time of my last analysis. For an overview of the survey and what it's about, you can check my initial post here (and take the survey if you'd like), and you can check out some of the results and thoughts on them here (223 responses), here (Nertok's), and here (Elnia's).

I added the question of gender somewhat late, so it doesn't have as much data, so I won't be looking at that too closely in this analysis. I'll leave it for another time :)

Raw Numbers:

The top chart is the number of personalities that people responded with. Below it is a chart of the world population average.


As you can see, adding another 400 responses to the survey has left the IN crowd--a minority overall in world population--heavily represented within WoW (at least among those who would be following blogs and feel the urge to submit their data :) ). Elnia explained why in his response, MBTI and WoW, at the Pink Pigtail Inn: "That this activity (WoW) takes place in an imagined space is part of what we mean by intuition (N). That this activity takes place in a space of limited extroverted interaction is part of what is meant by introversion (I)." As he predicted, INTJs are now the most-represented personality type in this 640-response study (INTPs were in the 223 response study), in spite of a relatively low population in the world.


Raid Roles and Class: Numerical

Below is the breakdown of responses in terms of preferred raid role and favorite classes. Some players do, of course, enjoy multiple raid roles. I'd like to look more in-depth later at which personalities were more likely to enjoy multiple raid roles, per person, rather than only one role; it will likely match those who have hybrids among the most popular classes, but that's just my guess :)


Raid Roles and Class: Percentage

The same data as above, but averaged out into percentages per personality type. It would seem that ESTPs, though a minority in the study, really like to tank as warriors and druids! ES's overall seemed to shy away from magical dps classes.



Guild Roles and Play Style

For this, I wanted to look at percentages rather than raw numbers.

C/C = Casual Schedule, Casual Play
C/H = Casual Schedule, Hardcore Play
H/C = Hardcore Schedule, Casual Play
H/H = Hardcore Schedule, Hardcore Play




Play Style:
The vast majority of respondents play on a casual schedule, attending raids only 3 nights or less each week. Of course, they may use other nights for pugs, alts, 5-man runs, pvp, and all the other non-raidly things that can be done. The ESFP percentages (heavy H/C) I take with a grain of salt, as they were overall under-represented as a population in WoW, but perhaps that is just their way: valueing time spent with friends in a casual atmosphere of a raid.

Contrary to Elnia's expectations, however, a large number of the ENFJs claim that they are hardcore players: the percentages don't look very different from the INTJs. I'd like to break the schedule and raiding style down further in a future post, and see how time (limiting other activities) and social aspects of each personality may play into raiding style and time commitment.

Guild Roles:
As my direction on the survey asked for those that a person was drawn to, whether voluntarily or not, I am a bit wary of how to proceed with this data. Some people are good at roles, though they'd rather not have to do them; others are pushed into them and do poorly at them, because no one else would step up. Other people *think* they may do a good job at a role, and carry it out, but it may or may not truly be the case. As such, I'd like to eventually look at the correlation between roles, personalities, and raiding style.

For now, suffice to say that each personality type has its own leaders, and has times where their particular personality helped to put out/deal with a drama-fire. We can look into these roles more closely below, however, in the next section...


Further Breakdown on Guild Roles:



GMs:
Dominated by Intuitive (big-picture/inventive), Thinker (objective, rational decision making), Judger (schedules, rules) types of players. While there are certainly other personalities who have lead a guild, they may have felt far less comfortable with it: Feelers tend to take more diplomatic routes, trying to keep harmony in the guild, which may result in more casual raiding styles; Perceivers would likely rely heavily on their officer core to make decisions for them, and be more spontaneous and flexible with their guild.

Raid Leaders:
Similar situation as with GMs, though they do not necessarily have to enforce guild policy, so the break between Judgers and Perceivers (and their relative adaptability/organization) is mostly even.

Class Leaders:
These seem to come from all types relatively evenly, across the board.

Bloggers:
Slightly dominated by Intuitive Judgers (organized yet inventive). Just as there are different kinds of blogs, so too there are different personalities of bloggers!

Web Admins:
More of the Judger variety, perhaps due to their ability to finish projects and organizational skills. Perceivers are more likely to get distracted midway through, or spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do something new and exciting that isn't necessarily conventional and thus is time-consuming (like building an entire design from scratch and learning css and php along the way... *coughs*).

Nannies!
As I mentioned earlier, all of the personalities seem to have times where their particular personality helped to put out or deal with a drama-fire. The intuitives (looking at the big-picture and relying on instinct rather than past experiences) have a slightly larger showing, but not by any ridiculous amount.

Recruitment:
This role tends to be taken on mostly by guild masters and raid leaders, since they should be the ones who know what they want and need and to progress. As such, the same personality types of Thinkers and Judgers tends to dominate, though Sensors (detail-oriented people) are not as left out as they are in the GM/Rl roles. Sensors are a reasonable help for guild recruitment, as they will carefully inspect gear, enchants, specs, and trial-run capabilities.


Further Breakdown on Class:



The class types have fairly evened out in terms of extro/intro, and sense/intuition: INs tend to dominate across the board. The most obvious differences between classes comes down to Judgers (conventional, decisive) vs Perceivers (adaptable) .

The largest split comes down to two casters: Warlocks seem to be preferred more by Judgers and Mages seem to be preferred more by Perceivers. Since I've never had as much interest in playing a magical DPS myself, I'm curious what causes this split. What do you think?

9 comments:

ignorantblis said...

I am a judger, and cannot stand playing a mage, the farthest I have ever gotten was getting one to 40 and then forgetting about him after BC came out. And that was mostly because I played him as fire specialization and felt kind of lock-ish.

Im going to take a purely speculative stab in the dark and suggest it could possibly have to do with the summons/portals they use to provide transportation for others, what kinds of nourishment each can provide (one can make food and water for out of combat snacking, the other can give the soulstone or health stone for instant uses), and the control one allows over the elements vs the control the other has over a variety of demons.

Alaron said...

Kae,
I'm absolutely fascinated by this. I've recently discovered M-B myself, and am amazed at what you're getting. (Of course, since I'm an INTJ as well, obviously data like this is going to be very interesting to me.)

Kae said...

Pallies are also heavily Judgers themselves... heheheee.

So, mages send people all over the globe; warlocks summon them. Mages provide out-of-combat food, locks let them eat in-combat. Mages have mirror images and light blue pets; locks have demons and darkness. Mages eat mana-crystals, warlocks cut themselves. Both rain fire and destruction from the sky.

I never got my lock nor my mage past 30 :)

Anonymous said...

I think it might be more strongly tied to the old school "perception" ( I use that term loosely) that lock were more survivable and that mages were "glass cannons"- since judgers congregate towards a more traditional, safer route- where percievers may congregate more strongly to more of a gamble of survivability- sure as a mage you could do more damage quicker back in the day but as an affliction or demo lock I NEVER die

Mortiseraph said...

Being an INFJ, thus the largest minority, I find it interesting to compare these results with the classes I enjoy playing. Having four 80's and a miriad of 40-50's the two I enjoy playing the most are my Fury warrior and Pally. Warrior doesnt seem to weigh in any particular direction but the pally certainly does! Very interesting study here and I thank you for taking the time to compile this information! Facinating stuff

Anonymous said...

Kae. I'm trying to read your chart above on play style. But in the chart you have pink and orange but the labels have pink twice. Or maybe it's my monitor. Are the pink the c/c?

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Ok. I think the c/c is orange.

In an event, I just wanted to make clear than my comment regarding the ENFJ in my post was that I did not think they would be likely to keep a hardcore *schedule*.

I'm not sure what personality type would have the most hardcore *play*. My initial reaction is that this aspect is not something the MBTI would predict very well; but I need to think about it more.

Alas said...

Very interesting post! Combines two things that fascinate me and has it very nicely organized!

I'm an INTJ and adore my mage above all others - which I guess makes me a little odd. I did find it very interesting that the DK class had so little representation for INTJ's. I loathe trying to play mine, so that made me giggle some.

I hadn't thought much about how my type fed into my roles as a co-GM, blogger or raid leader though (I have a lot of hats). I'll probably be doing so now.

Wish I had found this several months ago when it was a new post. :)