Darth Hater

Once a week the Senior Editor at Darth Hater locks all of the interns into a closet. They’re provided a laptop, as much caffeine as their frail bodies can handle and access to a treasure trove of survey data collected monthly from our readership. Their assignment: uncover insightful correlations between the players of Star Wars: The Old Republic and their gaming habits. The interns are reminded of this task every 42 seconds via mild shock treatments and left to their work. For the third straight week, we're pleased to report all interns have emerged largely unharmed. More importantly, their analysis has revealed a number of interesting differences in the dynamics between men’s and women’s approach to the game. For the results of Crowd Control's first ever Battle of the Sexes, read on.

Last week Darth Hater announced our new recurring column Crowd Control, a statistical analysis of Star Wars: The Old Republic and its players. By making use of a monthly poll of our readership we’ll be tracking and evaluating basic choices like class and race preferences but also some less obvious tendencies, such as whether or not a given player considers himself a “dog person” (whatever that means). More than two thousand of you have taken part in our two minute survey over these first couple of days, and for that we would like to express our sincerest gratitude. Our team of Esh-kha slaves astromech droids have never toiled endlessly whirled and beeped with such unfettered glee at the prospect of all the data scrutinization ahead of them.

This week we'll be taking a look at player habits as they relate to "ganking" behavior. If you haven’t taken this month's survey, you still can. We’ll continue compiling and updating the results until our next poll is ready in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, hit the jump for some preliminary analysis of our Week One results.

Followers of Star Wars: The Old Republic may have heard of a little thing called “story.” Billed as the fourth pillar of this massively multiplayer role-playing adventure, it arguably sets the game apart from all other would-be competitors. We know the histories of our allies and adversaries, of Revan and Malgus, of Satele Shan, and we love them. But here at DarthHater we’re now turning our attention to a new story: yours.

Crowd Control is a new column aimed at understanding the human decisions behind the character interactions of SW:TOR. Through a series of online surveys, held monthly, Crowd Control will delve into the nuances of what exactly makes players tick. Yes, we’ll answer the simple questions like “What percentage of players prefer the Republic over the Empire,” or “What is the general distribution between classes,”, but we’ll be exploring more interesting directions as well. By crunching the poll numbers, analyzing trends and exploring correlations we’ll aim to provide a clearer picture of the player base, their motivations, and quirks. Here’s a sample of some questions we’ll be investigating for upcoming installments of Crowd Control:

- Are women more likely to make Light side choices?
- Are younger players more likely to prefer PvP over PvE?
- Does class choice impact satisfaction with the game?

Of course, given the flexible format of the series we can’t restrain ourselves from exploring less conventional avenues as well. Readers of Crowd Control will glean insight into these and other inquiries:

- Are PvPers more likely to be “dog people”?
- Are city dwellers more likely than their rural counterparts to gank their fellow players?
- Do vegetarians choose a particular race or class more often than others?

To answer these questions Crowd Control will employ a brief monthly survey after which our team of DarthHater astromech droids will analyze the data in search of the most interesting trends and correlations. Subsequent installments each month will offer color commentary on the insights provided for your reading pleasure.

Please read on below the jump to take our two-minute survey, and let us know in the comments if you have ideas for future polls or analysis. Also note that any information you choose to share will not be used for any purposes outside of the scope of Crowd Control. If for any reason you prefer not to answer a particular question, just leave it blank. Thanks for participating, this project would not be possible without your support!