The online world is very different to our own, with new rules, new races, and new ways of living. There are, however, some similarities - take a look at our breakdown of the internet's biggest virtual worlds to find out how they measure up against real life.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, where humans, orcs, elves and a whole host of races must set aside their differences to fight against the world's monsters or battle to be the strongest and richest in the land. With over 7 million users it's the world's biggest MMORPG, holding the Guinness World Record for its huge population.
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Peak Subscriber Numbers
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At its peak (2011), World of Warcraft was bigger than the real world's fifth-largest city.
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Currency Conversion
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£1 in the real world is worth the equivalent of 1,429 Gold units in World of Warcraft.
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Wealth Distribution
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The wealth distribution is actually more equal in the Warcraft universe than it is in real life! The average player has 80,000 gold, equal to roughly $91.20.
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Gender Distribution
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World of Warcraft is predominantly male, with a gender divide which matches that of the equally male-dominated United States Military Academy at West Point.
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World
History
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On September 3rd 2005, the World of Warcraft developers released a new spell into the game called "Corrupted Blood", which temporarily drained health and affected any nearby players. The spell was only intended to be used in one high-level area, but an unfortunate glitch meant that the contagious affliction soon made its way across the map, killing off low-level players and causing a pandemic which emptied cities and drastically changed the style of gameplay as healthy players sought shelter from the plague. Eventually the developers fixed the glitch, and found an unexpected use for the accident, as scientists and government officials used the emergent player behaviour as a model for epidemic and anti-terrorism research.
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Information Storage
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World of Warcraft uses 1.3 petabytes (1.3 million GB) of storage to maintain the game. That's 2,760 500GB hard drives, and similar to the storage occupied by every photo on Facebook (1.5PB).
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Player
Distribution
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Map of realms (servers) representing player distribution in the digital world.
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EVE Online
EVE online isn't just a virtual world; it's a whole galaxy, complete with alien races, stargates and over 7,500 star systems. Players create and customise their own captain, start the game with a small spaceship and have the freedom to carve out their own path however they see fit - exploring, mining or pirating their way to fame and riches.
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Peak Subscriber Numbers
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EVE online may be small for a virtual galaxy, but it's larger than Scotland's capital city!
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Currency Conversion
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£1 in the real world is worth the equivalent of 50,822,466 ISK in EVE Online.
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Known Solar Systems
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We only know of 797 solar systems containing gravitationally-bound objects or planets (2013). In EVE Online, which is set in the year 23341, this number is an astronomical 7,699.
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Gender
Distribution
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While only ten per cent of our space explorers have been female, this is still a higher percentage than the number of women subscribed to EVE Online.
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World History
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Perhaps the most well-known event in EVE Online history is the now infamous Mirial assassination, which took place on April 18th 2005. Mirial, the CEO of one of the game's largest corporations, had just warped into the Haras solar system when her lieutenant broadcast a single codeword - "Nicole" - to multiple operatives of the infiltration and assassination group the Guiding Hands Social Club (GHSC). Within minutes every one of her company's office was raided, and her character was permanently destroyed. The operation took ten months to implement, and earned the GHSC a cool 20 billion ISK - much more than the 1 million ISK originally agreed, and with a real-world cash equivalent of just over £10,000, it's the same as the average contract killing in the UK.
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In-Game
Finances
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EVE Online's closed economy amounts to around $20million. The profit made by its developers is increasing, with enough to hire professional economists to manage the game's financial system.
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Peak Population Numbers
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Conventions are often cited as the biggest gatherings of science fiction fans, but upon combining the biggest years of some of the world's greatest fan gatherings, EVE Online still came out on top.
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Second Life
Second Life is seen as an online marketplace as well as a game, and many players have been able to earn serious cash thanks to the easy way in-game currency can be sold for real-world money. More casual players use the game to build, customise and create, developing a literal second life in which their character can live out the player's desires and fantasies - whether that's a mansion and a helipad or the romance of a lifetime!
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Peak Population Numbers
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The peak population of Second Life's bustling metropolis only just falls short of America's digital capital.
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Currency Conversion
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£1 in the real world is worth the equivalent of 410 Linden Dollars in Second Life.
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Embassy Distribution
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Second Life's embassies are used to promote tourism, provide visa advice and even host online "museums".
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User
Growth
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Between 2006 and 2011, global internet usage doubled in growth - in the same timeframe, Second Life saw a 4000% increase in users.
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World History
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In 2007, Second Life saw a huge financial incident which mirrored the bank crises we've seen in the real world since the start of the recession. When the developers announced that gambling in-game would be officially banned, thousands of users rushed to Ginko Financial, an in-game bank offering astronomical interest rates, to retrieve and sell the currency from their accounts. This caused a run on the bank which eventually resulted in a complete shut-down - wiping out around $750,000 (£457,736) in real world money. The incident has since been used by financial experts across the web as an example of what happens when banks fail to self-regulate.
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Language Distribution
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English is by far the most popular language in Second Life (SL) - in the real world (RL), the ten most popular languages have a much more even distribution.
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