I would not plant apple trees if the world will be wiped: Analyzing hundreds of millions of behavioral records of players during an MMORPG beta test

In this work, we use player behavior during the closed beta test of the MMORPG ArcheAge as a proxy for an extreme situation: at the end of the closed beta test, all user data is deleted, and thus, the outcome (or penalty) of players' in-game behaviors in the last few days loses its meaning. We analyzed 270 million records of player behavior in the 4th closed beta test of ArcheAge. Our findings show that there are no apparent pandemic behavior changes, but some outliers were more likely to exhibit anti-social behavior (e.g., player killing). We also found that contrary to the reassuring adage that “Even if I knew the world would go to pieces tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree,” players abandoned character progression, showing a drastic decrease in quest completion, leveling, and ability changes at the end of the beta test.