If you have ever been interested in looking at the social community of an MMORPG, then perhaps you should look into going to the University of Minnesota in the future. A computer scientist at the University of Minnesota, along with colleagues from across the country, have been studying massive amounts of data retrieved from the online video game Everquest 2 and applying them to traditional social science research.

With three years of data in hand, the team has theorized that this new online venue requires so much sustained involvement by so many people that social behavioral dynamics can be researched effectively and efficiently without having to go out and collect the data during a census. According to the article, there are 300,000 people who play Everquest 2 for 26 hours, on average, a week. That’s a lot of data to sift through and certainly enough to constitute a social community.

They have presented their findings at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also known as the AAAS, during a 90-minute lecture entitled "Analyzing Virtual Worlds: Next Step in the Evolution of Social Science Research.” Their findings suggested that we are not only at a time where people are having to reevaluate their understanding of behavioral and social science but of the ways in which they study communities at large.

Everquest 2 may only be the beginning. There are much larger and more integrated MMORPGs out there that could, in the future, provide more evidence for these scientists to model and theorize about.