According to the group, residents of Azeroth and Outland averaged 17 hours of play per week -- 12 hours more than the nearest competition, players of The Sims. So when my family and friends suggest that I'm crazy for playing WoW more than 15 hours a week, I can point to this and say, "Well, if I'm crazy, then so are at least 4.5 million other people!" Yeah, kind of a lame defense, I know.
17 hours seems like a good estimate to me because it falls smack dab in the middle between your casual players (who probably play up to 10 hours a week) and your hardcore types (who probably play 30+ hours per week).
[Via Massively]
Subscribe
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-13-2007 @ 6:52PM
Baluki said...
1. World of Warcraft
2. The Sims
3. RuneScape
4. Halo: Combat Evolved
5. Halo 2
6. Counter-Strike
7. The Sims 2
8. Madden NFL 07
9. Grand Theft Auto
10. Counter-Strike: Source
Once again that list seems completely inaccurate. Are there really more people playing CS than the updated CS:S? More people playing Halo than Halo 2? Where's Halo 3? More playing The Sims than its sequel? And RuneScape as #3? Are you kidding me?
This list is just absurd. If the Nielsen ratings system for TV is as poor as the one for games, it's no wonder that there's so much horrible crap on the tube these days.
Reply
12-13-2007 @ 6:54PM
Baluki said...
Whoops. Ignore what I said about Halo 3. My mind was elsewhere. Somehow I didn't process the fact that Halo 3 isn't on PCs yet.
12-14-2007 @ 12:29PM
s3bishmonk said...
You seemed shock that more poeple are playing the older versions of the games but not everyone can afford cutting edge computers. So I would not think that list is "completely inaccurate"
12-27-2007 @ 9:43PM
Michael said...
Actually CS is WAY more popular than CS:S . . . apparently some of the changes didn't go over very well with the population.
Also, Steam stats agree: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=stats&cc=US
CS is played three times more than CS:S
12-13-2007 @ 7:44PM
jon said...
CS is much better than CS:S, a lot of the competitive CS tournaments are still using CS as opposed to CS:S so that doesn't really surprise me
Reply
12-13-2007 @ 11:37PM
Mirina said...
Good lord...I'm classified as a hardcore player....
I really do need to cut back on my playing (which is more than 35 hours a week)...
At least I can now point to this article when people give me crap about WoW, lol.
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 10:16AM
Mike said...
If 17 hours is the average, then your claim that at least 4.5 million people play as much as you do is not necessarily accurate. If 17 hours was the median, then your claim would be necessarily true.
Given a base of 9.3 million (as of 11/15/07), 4.3 million players @ 24 hours a week and 5 million players @ 14 hours a week would generate an even higher average play time (19.2 hours/week), but still would not support your claim that at least 4.5 million people play as much as you.
Learn2Math! :)
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 10:40AM
Dipstick said...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/default.stm
Congratulations, you were officially quoted on the BBC News website!
You're now a media expert on WoW :P
(BBC accessed 15:39 GMT 14/12/07)
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 11:13AM
Sedair said...
ROFL I saw this list like 2 days ago when it was released in house. I work for Nielsen :D
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 1:03PM
Felix said...
It's not a surprise to me either the CS is played more, people play that way more than CS:S, Halo the first one is played way more than the 2nd. But what i can't really process is Runescape. Who plays that still
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 1:03PM
Samuel Axon said...
RuneScape is enormously, hugely, ridiculously popular with preteens.
12-14-2007 @ 1:15PM
DeMay99 said...
shocking
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 1:36PM
Richard said...
Hey, if millions of other people use crack cocaine, then it's ok for me! ;-).
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 6:20PM
David said...
Alas, FFXI doesn't make the list again. With much deeper story lines and more social gameplay, average playtime would easily rival WoW's 17 hours.
Reply
12-14-2007 @ 10:44PM
giveaphuk said...
I play WOW for approx 15hrs/wk, but don't watch Television, so i don't see what the problem is. @ least I am interacting with an environment, rather than passively watching the TV.
Reply
12-15-2007 @ 6:08AM
Largefather said...
Excellent comment! Just recently i've questioned why i pay for my TV licence, for when i only watch MOTD. Loving WoW at the moment and easily fall into this 'average' bracket!
LargeFather {Ghostlands}
12-15-2007 @ 9:09PM
John M said...
This is completely ridicules. If you head over to www.xfire.com (which is an essential gamers tool) you can see that most of these games are not even on this list, admitidly some of them cannot be measured but even still. CSS is played far more than the original CS this is obvious from the amount of servers available for both. Most of the games on this list are not really new which need a high powered machine for so its not unreasonable for people to be able to play them.
Reply
12-16-2007 @ 9:41AM
seaman said...
Actually go to www.gamespy.com, check bottom right, it shows you how many people are playing how many FPS games (not rpgs like Warcraft)
CS 1.6 is still vastly more popular than CS:Source, I know this I have played both for a long time.
Quake3 is a lot more popular than Quake4.
People don't automatically just "switch" to new games when they came out, I mean Quake1 which came out over 10 years ago recently had a league in which 63ish clans entered in 6 divisions.
12-17-2007 @ 8:17AM
Jon said...
If you check the official stats at www.steampowered.com ou can see the following;
Game Current
Players Current
Servers Player Minutes
/ Month
Counter-Strike 259,139 129,563 9.074 billion
Counter-Strike: Source 41,015 44,427 2.472 billion
Counter-Strike Condition Zero 23,281 18,673 991.217 million
Original CS is currently being play by 5x the amount of players that CS:S is and racks up 9+ billion minutes a month compared to 2.4 billion for CS:S.
Reply