MBTI: 730 Playstyle Breakdown

This is a followup to yesterday's 640-response analysis. There are now 730 in the data pool (it keeps growing, too, which is awesome! I will continue to add the new data to future charts.)

Breakdown on Playstyle:

Playstyle is a mix of schedule (Casual vs Hardcore in time raiding) and strictness (the more traditional casual vs hardcore). Non-raiders (those who focus on questing and just run instances or pvp or roleplay for fun) and the Hardcore PvPers were also included as options.

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



Non-raiders:
Slightly fewer extroverts are seen among the traditional non-raiders than among any of the other choices. It would seem that most of the non-raider extroverts instead choose to spend their time as "hardcore PvP!"

Playtime:
There are slightly more Sensors than Intuitives who put lots of time into raiding each week: sensors work at a steady pace using instructions and guides, while intuitives tend to work in bursts of energy. I suspect that the higher number of casual-schedule intuitives allows these players to spend time outside of raiding to figure out how to overcome something before returning to it in an instance. However, it is noticeable that sensors are just as likely to be non-raiders as they are to raid 4+ nights a week; sensors just seem to be in fewer numbers when it comes to raiding only a couple nights each week, likely again due to wanting to work on their projects (be it raiding or otherwise) at a steady pace. The other personality traits don't seem to have much impact on whether a person raids 3 nights or 6 nights a week!

Strictness:
There are noticeable, though small, bumps in the charts regarding Casual vs Hardcore raiders. Casual raiding is preferred a bit more by extroverts (and the socialization that would entail), sensors (steady pace, follow others' instructions, literal), feelers (emotional, keeping the peace and harmony by not being mean to that rogue who keeps dpsing from the front of the mob), and perceivers (dislike rules, get bored with repitition).

Those who have higher expectations of skill among their fellow raiders tend to be the introverts, intuitives (rely on instinct, like to figure things out, theoretical), thinkers (rational arguements, analytical), and judgers (organized, prompt to raids, decisive): the popular INTJ embodies this. Of course, not all INTJs are hardcore in their expectations of play skill, but most of them are.

Hardcore PvP:
There were relatively few of these in the overall survey (15 total out of 730), but among them, they were heavily EN's, and many of them also Feelers (more personal and emotional) rather than Thinkers (rational, achievement-driven). These hardcore pvpers tend to act before they think, and rely on reflex, creativity, and instinct to guide them. Knowing that each of their enemies and allies is controlled by another person is likely a strong source of why there are so many extroverts in this field.

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?

MBTI Results: Nertok's Analysis

Nertok/Arael has been helping pass the survey on beyond my blog in places like the wowhead forums, and he's compiled his data with mine and made up some more charts :) He had an extra question on his survey asking about favorite race, and I will say that was interesting to look at in comparison to the personalities!!

You can check out his results here: http://feralnertok.blogspot.com

Thanks again for the help, Nertok :D

Personality: 223 responses+

Edit: I have tallied up through about 3pm EST Sept. 29, 2009, with 640 responses. You can see that analysis here.


These are the results of 223 responses. We are still getting more in, of course :)

You can see some of the raw data here and here. It required manual tallying the data, since I couldn't figure out how to get Excel or google docs to tally it for me.

When looking at this data, you must remember that those who responded (voluntarily) found this chart via either my blog, a person who reads this blog, or the forum posts Arael made on wowhead and mmo-champion.

Update of the first charts I had posted:

As you can see, most of the responses were introverts (I's) and druids :) What do you think this mass of introverts means, particularly in comparison to the large chunk of extroverts (E's) found among the ENFJ's? Something to ponder.

Raw results vs World Pop Statistics:


This I found also interesting, and helps highlight the difference in introverts vs extroverts that responded (granted, 223 is a small pool to look at). Most notable is the difference in large numbers of:

ENFJ INFP INTJ INTP

...and in the relatively small numbers of:

ENFP ESTJ ESFP ESFJ ISFJ

What do you think causes it? Something else to ponder on. Factors include:

• Those who play WoW
• Those who found this survey
• Those who decided to answer the survey
  

Guild "Jobs"/Roles compared to class, broken up by MBTI types:

(click to enlarge)

Most who answered the survey and put down a role said that they were class leaders or role leaders, either voluntarily or found themselves locked into such a position.

For a quick breakdown and synopsis of what each type E/I, S/N, T/F, J/P is like, check out http://www.personalitytype.com/career_quiz

Guild Masters: these tended to be the Intuitive types rather than sensors ("big picture" types, inventive, looking to the future), Thinkers rather than Feelers (rational, don't take things personally), and those who Judge rather than Perceive (can make decisions, schedule-driven, rule-driven). This makes sense to me. I/E didn't factor in as much. What I would like to look into more is who among these GMs were the "casuals" vs the hardcores, and how raid style plays into the GM's personality.

Raid Leaders: it surprises me the number of Introverts that claim to be raid leaders; again, something to perhaps look into raid style for more conclusion, and is probably also affected by the sheer number of I's vs E's in this data pool. Again, Thinkers are favored over Feelers (objective, direct, able to see flaws without bias for feelings), and Intuition over Sensing (creativity, like to figure things out, big picture).

Class/Role leaders: these are pretty even across the board, and it seems personality has little impact on players serving in this role. Thinkers seem to be favored a bit over Feelers (honest, direct, able to see flaws without the bias of feelings), though Feelers themselves make a good standing in this role as they tend to be very diplomatic, and often serve the role as a go-between for the other officers/RL/GM and the raid members.

Bloggers: the vast majority are intuitive introverts (IN types). It seems ironic, doesn't it, that a bunch of shy people are sharing themselves and their ideas through a blog? I am amused by this, and understanding of it, being an INFP myself :) Are these types more drawn to blogging than others? What sorts of blogs (guides, theorycraft, funny stories, accomplishments) does one type more often have over another? This may be answered somewhat by raid style.

Web Admins: your IT people. Not too surprised that this is dominated by introverts! They are also predominately judgers rather than perceivers: they are serious and can concentrate on things like code. Judgers also tend to be the ones who can more easily make decisions for themselves, and who are most focused on *finishing* a project over just *starting* one... /whistles innocently*

Nannies: these are the people who find themselves dealing with the guild drama. They've cropped up in every personality, meaning that most of those who answered the survey often find themselves pulled into such roles, regardless of their personality.

Recruitment officers: not all guilds have this role fall on the GM, so I broke it out out of curiousity. One noticeable bump is that most are Thinkers rather than Feelers, following the same logic as with leading a guild or a raid: objective thinking, seeing flaws without bias, and aren't as likely to be bent into recruiting someone into raids that is only there because they talk pretty or because they're so-and-so's younger brother, even though he stands in void zones.


~So, what are your thoughts? I'll certainly be throwing up more charts and detailed comparisons over time, but even this alone is plenty for a mind to chew on!~

Personality & Warcraft: 24hr's Results

24 hours after posting my survey, I have gotten 55 responses. Not enough yet for a really in-depth study, but an interesting starting point :)

I wanted to share the breakdown thus far of classes, roles, and personality MBTI's.

One key thing to keep in mind is that those responding to my survey are, for the vast majority, followers of my PvE Druid blog who had time to reply on a Friday when Blizzcon is in full swing. Thus, mostly druids who are interested in reading whatever rambles out of my mouth and don't think I'm completely insane, and were probably bored at work :)

If you'd like to help push this study along, post or link this survey:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDZyQVNmNXdJdFd1V1VNd28xZ1gzaGc6MA..

...to your guild forums, strat forums, etc. Get those of your buddies/guildies who don't normally read blogs or forums to pop on and take the time to fill it out. If nothing else, a guild discussion sharing your personality MBTI's can be fun and insightful!

Personality and Warcraft

Recently I've been looking back at the Myers-Briggs personality profiles for various reasons, and it made me wonder: does personality have any correlation to preferred class and raid role?

I found a few forum threads that wondered along these same lines, but they didn't usually go into much depth on analysis. For example, the Personality of the Druid thread just picked the most popular result, without taking into consideration the relative proportion of personality types in the overall general population. This sort of logic leads to conclusions such as "INFPs don't play WoW much," when they're estimated to be only about 1% of the total population to begin with.

I'm really interested to know what the breakdown among WoW players is, and not just what is the most common result among a class. Are certain personalities more likely to be tanks or healers? Enjoy a certain class? PvP over PvE? Be raid leaders, guild leaders, officers? Be bloggers?


Take the Personality Quiz:

If you are unsure of your type, I highly recommend you take multiple tests so that you can get a more accurate assessment. If you take two tests and get different results, try some others, and read through the descriptions to decide which best reflects you.

• HumanMetrics,
  
• CareerTest,
• Personality Test Center,
  
• QuizStop,
• Personality Page
  
• Personality Type

Be honest with yourself when taking those quizzes; it's the only way you can get an accurate result. Answer according to how would you WOULD react to the proposed situations, not how you think you're "supposed" to: there are no right or wrong answers, except with how truthful you are about yourself.

MBTI Descriptions:
Once you've taken one or a few, I recommend LifeExplore's descriptions, as they combine the descriptions used on multiple websites, in-depth. The Personality Page also has good descriptions. These descriptions can give you interesting insight into yourself, relationships, and career choices.


My Survey:

After you've figured out your MBTI through the above linked quizzes and descriptions, take this survey to help me collect class/role/personality data:

You can also access the survey through this link.





Results:

I will share the survey's results as I get enough data in. For now, I will keep my own MBTI a secret, though I am curious what others may guess of me :)

Number Surveyed as of 9:15pm EST: 44, representing 11 out of the 16 personality types. When I reach 50, I'll do a preliminary run-down of roles vs personality types.

A few interesting notes:

• The vast majority have all been introverts.
  
• 5 have noted that they're bloggers, themselves.
• Half of the respondents have been IN types (Introverted, Intuitive), which ironically are among the minority in general population studies.
• Part of me is wondering how much a person's personality will play into even finding/responding to this survey, and at what time :) Those responding on a Friday afternoon vs those in the evening, compared to the typical 8-5 work day? Hehee.

If you'd like to help, please link this post or the survey to your guilds/buddies, as more data will make more meaningful results!