Here's what I posted in the discussion thread for
Mod MMG on Myths and Misconceptions.
Quote:
It's good to have some "facts and figures" to show how the game is doing. However, I feel this news post doesn't actually tell me much of anything about Runescape's player community. And here's why.
Anyone who has taken a statistics class (which I have) should know one thing: you shouldn't/can't trust statistics. People should always ask themselves "What is a statistic trying to make me believe?"
I'm not saying MMG is fudging any numbers when making this post. However, he does leave things intentionally vague or undefined. At the very beginning, we are given a portrait of the "average player." However, MMG leaves out critical details. Namely, a definition of player and how many players there are. Are we talking about every account that currently exists? Are we talking about people who play on a daily, weekly, monthly, regular, occasional, or rare basis? These are just two out of numerous questions that could be asked in trying to figure out what kind of player he is talking about. Without an understanding of what the average player is or how many there are, we really can't learn much of anything about Runescape's player base.
Many people on this thread are confused about the quote "And despite rumours that everyone in RuneScape is very rich, the truth is only 1% of players have over 1 Billion GP in total wealth." Why? Because we have no idea how many players MMG is talking about. Even people trying to clarify for wondering people what MMG is saying have no idea what the number of players he is referencing actually is.
Until we can have a clear definition of what MMG means by a "player" and the exact number of said players, I personally won't have learned anything from this post or be satisfied by this "attempt" to answer the questions asked by others.
Bottom line: percentages and averages don't tell us anything if you don't know the actual numbers they are using. I have a big problem on that part of the post alone.
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