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Player behavior and traffic characterization for MMORPGs: a survey

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Abstract

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are one of the most exciting and most rapidly expanding genres of online games. This survey presents state-of-the-art and current research efforts in measuring, characterizing, and modeling the player behavior and the network traffic, as well as the relationships between them. We also tabulate the measurement, modeling and analysis results regarding network traffic and player behavior found in literature, with key information regarding each dataset. Finally, we list currently confirmed claims and open research questions in the area of MMORPGs.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the research project 036-0362027-1639 “Content Delivery and Mobility of Users and Services in New Generation Networks”, by the Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Zagreb, Croatia. Also, the research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement no. 285939 (ACROSS). We also sincerely thank anonymous reviewers for detailed and extensive reviews which greatly helped to improve the paper.

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  1. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, Unska 3, 10000, Zagreb, Croatia

    Mirko Suznjevic & Maja Matijasevic

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  1. Mirko Suznjevic
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Correspondence to Mirko Suznjevic.

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Suznjevic, M., Matijasevic, M. Player behavior and traffic characterization for MMORPGs: a survey. Multimedia Systems 19, 199–220 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-012-0270-4

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