Raptr, a popular game tracking and IM application, has released some new playtime stats for World of WarCraft: Cataclysm.
Not surprisingly, the top 11% of hardcore WoW fans are driving the majority of overall playtime (+50% of the total playtime). In fact, the top player for WoW on Raptr clocked in 149 hours in one week. That’s a little over 6 days straight gaming.
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 top-tier game series including Call of Duty and Halo. The average game session length is 2.1 hours, which is also comparable.
This is an interesting correlation considering how different these types of games are.
Digging into the data, Raptr believes 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 is 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 an addictive and enthralling game like WoW, a good chunk of leisure gamers will only play a few hours here and there, even if they received the expansion pack on day one. There appears to be a distinct balance between avid gamers and leisure games in just about any game genre, which results in playtime averages that hover around the same range.
Other interesting stats:
• World of Warcraft playtime has grown 5 times since the northern hemisphere summer of 2010, as previous subscribers 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 northern hemisphere summer of 2010.
• World of Warcraft playtime per week has grown to 20 hours – almost double that of northern hemisphere summer of 2010 playtime.
• World of Warcraft stole the most playtime hours from StarCraft 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, and League of Legends.
Raptr is also giving away a 1-year subscription to World of Warcraft for “liking” its Raptr FaceBook page. An extra entry for the contest can also be earned by “liking” the new Raptr World of Warcraft: Calaclysm report.
Discuss WoW player habits on the MyGaming forum.
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