Predicting unexpected influxes of players in EVE online

  • Roman Garnett
  • , Thomas Gärtner
  • , Timothy Ellersiek
  • , Eyjólfur Gudmondsson
  • , Pétur Óskarsson

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) taking place in a large galaxy consisting of about 7 500 star systems. In comparison to many other online role-playing games, the users interact in the same instance of a persistent player-driven universe. Given the number of simultaneous pilots online at the same time - a number which at times reaches up to more than 50 000 concurrent accounts logged on to the same server - the EVE Online universe can present atypically difficult load-balancing challenges when the users decide to operate in a coordinated fashion, for example, to launch an attack on a particular system. We will present an scalable, automated statistical method for predicting such unexpected user gatherings by considering the evolving shortestpath distances from each user to each system. Here we present a case study analyzing nearly 300 million user movements in the EVE Online universe from over 700 thousand user accounts over a period of three months. We demonstrate an ability to predict sudden spikes in user presence (corresponding to actual events) before they happen, suggesting our techniques could be useful for automated load-balancing in such massive online games.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationIEEE Conference on Computatonal Intelligence and Games, CIG
PublisherIEEE Computer Society
ISBN (Electronic)9781479935468
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 21 2014
Event2014 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2014 - Dortmund, Germany
Duration: Aug 26 2014Aug 29 2014

Publication series

NameIEEE Conference on Computatonal Intelligence and Games, CIG
ISSN (Print)2325-4270
ISSN (Electronic)2325-4289

Conference

Conference2014 IEEE Conference on Computational Intelligence and Games, CIG 2014
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityDortmund
Period08/26/1408/29/14

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Predicting unexpected influxes of players in EVE online'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this