The graph’s y-axis is the percentage decline in page views at El’s Extreme Anglin’ from the 7 days before each event, to the first 7 days of the event. Pageviews are a good proxy for overall angler interest. El generates hundreds of thousands of page views each week, so even small changes are significant. The x-axis orders events by date, from January 2008. The axis isn’t scaled correctly to show time, but holidays are fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. Events are shown by green dots, with a shortened date (month and year) and the name of the event.

The data is expressed as a percentage of the previous week, because while interest in fishing “waxes and wains” from year-to-year, changes week-to-week are normally minor.

All the events included last at least 7 days. Where one holiday runs concurrently with another event (for example, the “Lunar Festival” and “Love is in the Air” often clash), only the first event in the sequence is included. Interest in fishing also changes dramatically in the month new content is added, so events that clash with major fishing patches have been excluded (Noblegarden 2008 with patch 2.4, Hallow’s End 2008 with patch 3.0.2, and Noblegarden/Children’s Week 2009 with patch 3.1). Winter Veil is also excluded: The period leading to Christmas is particularly unusual – first students stop studying and have a lot of time to play, and then many players stop playing to spend time with family. This causes large changes in activity from week-to-week, which makes it hard to isolate Winter Veil in the data.

Only 12 separate sets of data can be compared. There is one out-lier – Midsummer 2008 – perhaps the early stages of Wrath of the Lich King testing may have caused a small traffic spike in the week before? The pattern shown on the graph is not certain. But I’m growing confident that events are increasingly impacting on fishing activity.

But why?

Explaining the Trend

Fishing is a solo activity that doesn’t change from week to week. So if a player becomes busy because they are involved in special holiday activities, fishing is likely to be one of the easiest thing not to do: It can “wait till next week”. It does not break any group commitments, such as raiding dungeons as a party of players.

Yet that doesn’t explain why holiday events appear to be having an ever-greater impact.

I expected to find a dramatic shift following the introduction of achievements, towards the end of 2008. These added new incentives for players to complete holiday activities. Yet the trend continues for 2 years, achievements or not.

Holiday events are sometimes improved, but the pace of improvements is very slow. They could not explain the trend because the majority of holidays have not been changed in the last 2 years. Similarly, fishing has undergone changes over the last 2 years, especially around the middle of the period shown on the graph. But none of those changes explain the event-decline trend seen.

A possibility is that players are simply becoming more focused on whatever “is new”. That pattern is apparent in “the Warcraft media” (primarily news websites), which increasingly obsess over the slightest change, often months before the change is playable. Part of a collective “addiction to previewing the future“.

Perhaps holidays are becoming more popular because a broader range of players are finding them appealing?

Appeal of Holidays

Holiday activities tend to be fairly easy to complete. There are some exceptions, but generally these events are accessible to a broad range of players, which is not true for all WoW’s activities. It would be easy to conclude that these events have become more popular over time, because of a general “dumbing down” in the average level of player skill.

Perhaps the average amount of time players play World of Warcraft is declining? Players would now be busier people than players in past, so to complete event activities they have to commit a higher proportion of their playtime, so are more likely to not go fishing.

Holidays tend to fairly social events. From sitting around a Romantic Picnic Basket, to sharing food, or placing “bunny-ears” on passing gnomes (to make them look even cuter). So perhaps the trend reflects greater social activity within the game?

The themes of holiday events mirror physical world festivals. From the Chinese New Year (“Lunar Festival”) through to Christmas (“Winter Veil”). So perhaps the trend reflects a greater desire for a connection back to the physical world? Diluting immersion in the virtual.

Advertising networks are keen for adverts to be displayed “above the fold” – in the area of the screen first visible when the page loads. However, if the page is content-rich, the best locations are not at the top of the page: In the past, I have run advertising using 2 skyscrappers, one on top of the other. As the reader scrolls down the page, the second advert eventually becomes visible. The best return (from affiliate advertising) was from the bottom advert, not the top. The reason is simple: Reading down the page, the lower advert tends to be next to the important text being read. In contrast, the upper advert tends to sit next to the list of page contents, so is often skipped over.

Instead of stacking adverts, why not just move the advert down the page as the reader scrolls?

The webpage needs an “elevator shaft” down the left margin. For example, apply the CSS “margin-left: 175px” to the division (“div” block) containing the page’s content, to create the elevator shaft. More complex designs may require more work. It is important that the elevator shaft runs close to edge of the text, to continually catch the eye of the reader.

Simply applying a “position: fixed” to style the division containing the advert, would always show the advert in the top-left corner, hanging down the elevator shaft. Unfortunately, the top part of the page normally contains a title block, so the elevator shaft should not travel the full height of the page. Older browsers (notably Internet Explorer 6) do not support “position: fixed”, but we still need to make sure the advert “fails gracefully”, by displaying in a sensible position.

My solution’s code is below.

The Code

The division containing the advert has the following CSS:

position: absolute;
top: 200px;
left: 0px;

The “top” value of 200px is the initial gap between the top of the page and the top of the advert, allowing space for titles. The “left” value shouldn’t be required, but keeps Internet Explorer 6 happy. This is the initial position of the advert. If the script below cannot run (Javascript disabled, or older browser), the advert will default to a normal static position on the page, stuck at the top of the elevator shaft.

Javascript can be placed in the HTML header, or loaded from a separate .js file:

var elevator_id=”addiv”, elevator_top=200, browser_can_elevate=true;

The first line of the Javascript sets 3 variables:

1. elevator_id is the id of the division containg the advert.
2. elevator_top is the initial gap between the top of the page and the top of the advert – the same as the 200px in the CSS above.
3. browser_can_elevate is a check to determine whether the script can move the advert or not. The next block of script sets this “false” for Internet Explorer 6 and below (which cannot handle position:fixed). This code could be expanded to consider other browsers.

if (/MSIE (\d+\.\d+);/.test(navigator.userAgent)){
if (Number(RegExp.$1)<=6) { browser_can_elevate=false; }
}

window.onscroll=function(){
if(document.getElementById(elevator_id) && browser_can_elevate) {
if ((window.pageYOffset || document.documentElement.scrollTop || document.body.scrollTop)>elevator_top) {
document.getElementById(elevator_id).style.position=’fixed’;
document.getElementById(elevator_id).style.top=’0px’;
} else {
document.getElementById(elevator_id).style.position=’absolute’;
document.getElementById(elevator_id).style.top=elevator_top+’px’;
}
}
}

Now, when the user scrolls the page:

1. Check that the division exists on the page, and that the browser can change the position.
2. If the current scroll position is below the initial gap between the top of the page and the top of the advert, change the position to fixed and top to 0: Pin the advert to the top-left corner.
3. If the scroll position is above the initial gap, revert to the initial styles: absolute position, 200px from the top.

Why change between absolute and fixed? Adding the scroll height to an absolute position would work. However, on some browsers (such as Firefox and Opera) window.onscroll updates slower than normal page rendering, so the adverts move with jerks. Elements with a fixed position move with the rest of the page, smoothly. On some browsers, the advert can still appear to jump slightly when moving across the transition (between absolute and fixed), but this does not happen continually, and most readers will not see it.

There are 2 limitations, that can be addressed with extra code, if required:

• Jerky Internet Explorer 6 support could be provided, by adding the scroll height to an absolute position. Only 1% of El’s readers currently use Internet Explorer 6, so I am prepared to let them default to a static position.
• If the browser window height is smaller than the height of the advert, the bottom of the advert will never be visible. The script could be improved to set browser_can_elevate to false if innerHeight or clientHeight is less than the advert height. This would allow users to scroll the full height of the advert. But again, the actual proportion of users El sees with such small screens is tiny, so I am prepared to risk hiding part of the advert.

The code can be seen in action on most El’s Extreme Anglin’ pages.