Mianii of the Ursin realm is collecting data in a forum thread on the average ages of players. She has organized the information by class, and what she has found so far is pretty interesting. Each person that posts in the thread includes their class and age and she adds it into her calculations (eww math). Currently the average age of paladins polled is 22.88, while the average age of rogues polled is 16.24. Weirdly enough, mages average at 34.74, so yay for me being ahead of the curve for once.

Now before we start making conclusions based on these numbers, we have to realize she is polling forum posters, and that is a very small segment of the player population. I would love to be able to get access to this data from Blizzard, since I am sure they are storing demographics somewhere. If we had an accurate idea of the ages of the players then we could start forming generalizations about age, attitude, and class mechanics and behavior.

I fully realize that on average only 300 people voted per class, and being we are a player population 8 million strong it is quite far fetched for us to label the many based on the few. That being said, looking at those polled on the forum thread, we might be able to generalize about that segment of the population, without getting too outlandish of course.

For example, the average forum poster who plays a shaman is around 24 years old, a few years out of college, just entering the work force. In that stage of life a hybrid class might attract them, since they are still trying out different roles as they attempt to find their place in society. Whereas the average age of a forum poster who plays a rogue is 16. Our teenage years are when we prefer velocity and excitement, when we have the most energy and like to play characters that exemplify that illustrate that energy within us.

It would be easy to overanalyze data like this, but I am fascinated by the concept and so out of respect of the light-hearted nature of the post, I won't go overboard. I wonder, if we were to poll our readers, would the data be different? What would that then say about WoW Insider readership versus the forum poster population?

Tags: age, ages, demographics, warcraft demographics, WarcraftDemographics, wow demographics, WowDemographics

Filed under: Classes, Analysis / Opinion, Virtual selves