I'm going to have to call BS on SOE:

(From the original source)
"Mixing in the demographic information produced a few surprises. Gender turned out to be a negative influence on interactions: even after their low numbers were taken into account, female players avoided interacting with each other. Time zones had some influence; players in the same time zone were 1.25 times more likely to partner than players even one time zone apart.

But distance had a much larger effect; players within 10 kilometers of each other were five times more likely to interact. Contractor concluded that, for the typical player, the game simply offered a way of continuing their real-world social interactions in a virtual setting."

If all Personally Identifiable Information was "scrubbed" as they say, then where are the researchers quoted in the article getting the location information from? SOE has a history of messing up and using some smooth PR moves and typically some vague wording to calm everyone down after the fact. There is no reason to believe wholeheartedly what they say.

Oh, and Mr. Angry...I highly doubt any of this was meant to benefit the customers. The researchers mentioned their experience in analyzing customer churn...so basically SOE is looking at ways to keep customers around.