Nonsurprise: WoW was most played PC game of Q3
by Samuel Axon 
Dec 13th 2007 at 6:00PM
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]
Filed under: News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Baluki Dec 13th 2007 6:52PM
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.
Baluki Dec 13th 2007 6:54PM
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.
s3bishmonk Dec 14th 2007 12:29PM
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"
Michael Dec 27th 2007 9:43PM
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
jon Dec 13th 2007 7:44PM
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
Mirina Dec 13th 2007 11:37PM
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.
Richard Dec 14th 2007 1:36PM
Hey, if millions of other people use crack cocaine, then it's ok for me! ;-).
Mike Dec 14th 2007 10:16AM
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! :)
Dipstick Dec 14th 2007 10:40AM
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)
Sedair Dec 14th 2007 11:13AM
ROFL I saw this list like 2 days ago when it was released in house. I work for Nielsen :D
Felix Dec 14th 2007 1:03PM
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
Samuel Axon Dec 14th 2007 1:03PM
RuneScape is enormously, hugely, ridiculously popular with preteens.
DeMay99 Dec 14th 2007 1:15PM
shocking
David Dec 14th 2007 6:20PM
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.
giveaphuk Dec 14th 2007 10:44PM
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.
Largefather Dec 15th 2007 6:08AM
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}
John M Dec 15th 2007 9:09PM
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.
seaman Dec 16th 2007 9:41AM
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.
Jon Dec 17th 2007 8:17AM
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.