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Interest in World of Warcraft has reached a fevered pitch (again) thanks to the all new expansion Cataclysm. Not only is it pulling in past WoW players and garnering mounds of awards, but also is the fastest selling PC game of all time with 3.3 million copies sold in the 1st day. With WoW being an MMORPG, we were curious to see if playtime behavior was any different than other recent big game launches which have been of the FPS variety on console.
Not surprisingly, the hardcore WoW players are clocking in the major of all hours played. The top 11% of all players generated +50% of all the playtime hours. In fact, the top player for World of Warcraft on Raptr clocked in 149 hours in one week. That’s a little over 6 days straight!
On the flipside, overall playtime averages for WoW were nearly identical to other top FPS games on console. For WoW, the average total playtime on the 1st day of release was 6.23 hours, which is comparable with such game series as Call of Duty and Halo. The average game session length is 2.1 hours, which is also comparable. How is that possible?
Digging into the data we see that the reason these averages are so closely aligned is because while there may be avid gamers out there who are regularly clocking in +30 hours a week (which we seen to be about 1/3 of the overall audience), there are also a significant number of gamers that play less than 5 hours a week. Even in a massively addictive and deeply enthralling game like WoW, it is also filled a good chunk of leisure gamers who will get the expansion pack on day one, but only play a few hours here and there. There appears to be a distinct yin yang balance between avid gamers and leisure gamers in just about any game, which results in playtime averages that hover around the same range.
Other interesting stats:
* World of Warcraft playtime has grown 5 times since the summer of 2010 as one time fans flocked back to the game to drive up overall playtime to record highs.
* World of Warcraft time played per day has grown 1.5 times since the summer of 2010.
* World of Warcraft playtime per week has grown to 20 hours – almost double of what it was in the summer of 2010.
* World of Warcraft stole the most playtime hours from StarCraft 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and League of Legends.
source
Not surprisingly, the hardcore WoW players are clocking in the major of all hours played. The top 11% of all players generated +50% of all the playtime hours. In fact, the top player for World of Warcraft on Raptr clocked in 149 hours in one week. That’s a little over 6 days straight!
On the flipside, overall playtime averages for WoW were nearly identical to other top FPS games on console. For WoW, the average total playtime on the 1st day of release was 6.23 hours, which is comparable with such game series as Call of Duty and Halo. The average game session length is 2.1 hours, which is also comparable. How is that possible?
Digging into the data we see that the reason these averages are so closely aligned is because while there may be avid gamers out there who are regularly clocking in +30 hours a week (which we seen to be about 1/3 of the overall audience), there are also a significant number of gamers that play less than 5 hours a week. Even in a massively addictive and deeply enthralling game like WoW, it is also filled a good chunk of leisure gamers who will get the expansion pack on day one, but only play a few hours here and there. There appears to be a distinct yin yang balance between avid gamers and leisure gamers in just about any game, which results in playtime averages that hover around the same range.
Other interesting stats:
* World of Warcraft playtime has grown 5 times since the summer of 2010 as one time fans flocked back to the game to drive up overall playtime to record highs.
* World of Warcraft time played per day has grown 1.5 times since the summer of 2010.
* World of Warcraft playtime per week has grown to 20 hours – almost double of what it was in the summer of 2010.
* World of Warcraft stole the most playtime hours from StarCraft 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and League of Legends.
source