Math, Mythics and Microtransactions: The War Era Case Stats
Does Premium Boost Case Stats? A 7,030-Case Investigation
For as long as I can remember, War Era players have debated one question:
Does premium secretly boost case drops?
Every time someone pulls a Mythic, chat is filled with theories. Every time a Premium player gets lucky, somebody starts connecting dots that may or may not exist. Naturally, after hearing the same arguments for months, I decided to stop guessing and start collecting data.
The Data
Together with five other players, I tracked a total of 7,030 case openings across six accounts.
Cases opened per player:
The six players were:
https://app.warera.io/user/691df65233063ef3c6f28ec9 (2,812)
https://app.warera.io/user/695d33d4c617ea3c92aed6ed (1,952)
https://app.warera.io/user/6968cbca54773abe55981d67 (1,515)
https://app.warera.io/user/69b47eaf2820922eeec42dab (505) - "Snow"
https://app.warera.io/user/69f102dbc2b8b24a9fc01150 (140)
https://app.warera.io/user/6a0442e19683831f144517a3 (106)
Out of those six players, only https://app.warera.io/user/691df65233063ef3c6f28ec9 had Premium active over the entire course of the investigation.
Using screenshots provided by each player, I drew up graphs that showed the drop rate for each player per gear rarity received. I then put an ‘Expected’ bar to show how each player compared to the published drop rates.
Let’s take a quick look at what I managed to uncover.
Common Gear Drop Rates
Based off the above case openings per player, the below graph shows how much common gear drops were received:
In the above graph, we can see that the premium user https://app.warera.io/user/691df65233063ef3c6f28ec9 has no advantage over the others, it is actually https://app.warera.io/user/69f102dbc2b8b24a9fc01150 who has suspiciously less common gear drops than the rest.
Across thousands of openings, most players landed surprisingly close to the official probabilities. Common, Uncommon, Rare and Epic drops all behaved largely as expected. Some players were slightly above average, others slightly below, but nothing suggested that Premium was dramatically altering the overall distribution.
In fact, if Premium were secretly boosting all drop rates, we'd expect to see obvious differences across every rarity tier. Instead, the Premium account looked remarkably normal.
Rare Gear Drop Rates
The below graph shows how much rare gear drops were received for each player:
The rare gear gave us an unexpected surprise, the player https://app.warera.io/user/69f102dbc2b8b24a9fc01150 had much higher chances than the rest, showing us why his common gear drop rate was so much lower. https://app.warera.io/user/6a0442e19683831f144517a3 (Monkey) also received more rare gear drops, due to the low case openings by these two players though, I can’t make any real judgement calls.
https://app.warera.io/user/6968cbca54773abe55981d67 who knows all about business, has managed to pull a decent lead ahead of the others who have opened higher cases than the rest.
At this point, I was starting to believe that Premium had no effect on drop rates, but a little part of me was still unconvinced, hoping that I could prove something through these stats, so I kept investigating.
The Legendary Question (Legendary Gear Drop Rates)
Things became more interesting when Legendary drops entered the picture.
Based on War Era's published rates, Legendary items should be exceptionally rare. Yet several players exceeded expectations.
The funny part? The highest Legendary drop rate in the entire dataset didn't belong to the Premium account. It belonged to me, who opened most cases while not having Premium.
https://app.warera.io/user/69b47eaf2820922eeec42dab (Snow), another non-premium player, had received exactly no legendary drops. You can pay your respects below.
At this point, the evidence was pointing toward a fairly boring conclusion: Premium doesn't appear to affect case outcomes in any meaningful way.
However, I then looked at the Mythics.
The Part Where Conspiracy Theories Begin
Let's take a look at the drop rate of Mythic gear between the six players:
Take your time to enjoy the graph above. Out of all 7,030 recorded openings, only two Mythic items were obtained. Both of them came from the Premium account, https://app.warera.io/user/691df65233063ef3c6f28ec9. Well, well, well.
But, before anyone starts preparing pitchforks and lighting their torches, it's important to remember that Mythics are incredibly rare. Small sample sizes create weird results all the time. Statistically speaking, lucky streaks can happen. But let's be honest, if you were trying to create the perfect conspiracy theory, this would be a pretty good start.
The Premium account opened roughly 40% of all recorded cases and received 100% of the Mythic drops. Does that prove Premium boosts case odds? Sadly, no.
Does it guarantee that players will continue arguing about it in chat for the foreseeable future? Hopefully.
Conclusion
After 7,030 recorded case openings, I found no convincing evidence that paying for premium increases drop rates. Common gear through to epic gear drops closely followed published probabilities, and even legendary gear drops were distributed across both premium and non-premium accounts.
That said, the Mythic results are suspicious enough to keep the debate alive.
Will I start opening cases with Premium active "just in case"? Probably not.
...unless another Mythic drops for https://app.warera.io/user/691df65233063ef3c6f28ec9
Thank you for reading,
https://app.warera.io/user/695d33d4c617ea3c92aed6ed
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I know many people will be disappointed with my conclusion, but I just enjoyed collecting the data for this and I enjoyed putting the article together. I hope you all enjoyed the read. I will continue to observe the drop rates, so please let me know if anyone would be keen for updated statistics in the future. Also let me know if you can think of any other points to include while I investigate the case openings further. Thanks for your time everyone.