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ArcheAge jumps into Raptr's 10 most-played games in September
ArcheAge is seeing its debut month popularity reflected in Raptr's own tracking, as the digital service saw the MMO rise 25 spots as it transitioned from beta to launch. "Based on current trends, ArcheAge has a good chance of remaining in the top 10 in October," the company predicted. Other MMOs in Raptr's top 20 include World of Warcraft holding strong at #2 as well as Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, Warframe, and Star Wars: The Old Republic vying for spots #12 through #15.
Carjackings overthrow duty as GTA5 takes top spot on Xbox Live
Grand Theft Auto 5 has beaten Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for the title of most-played game on Xbox 360, according to a recent blog post by Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson. Note that this doesn't necessarily mean more people are playing GTA Online, the multiplayer component of GTA 5, as Major Nelson's data tracks how many unique users are signed onto Xbox Live while playing a game, regardless of whether or not they're using online features. Not everyone has moved onto the newest of the new though, as the top ten list also includes GTA 4, as well as Modern Warfare 3 and the original Black Ops. Meanwhile, Minecraft is still holding onto third, surrounded by guns, criminals and sports.
RIFT tops Raptr's May most-played list
Is RIFT taking the charts by storm? At first glance when it comes to Raptr's most-played PC and Xbox 360 titles in May, it would appear so. However, just as with everything else associated with statistics, it's important to know the full story before jumping to conclusions. RIFT jumped up 13 spots to garner a 7.76% share of player hours in May, topping even League of Legends and World of Warcraft. This was largely thanks to a reward campaign that quadrupled the number of players from March. The company notes that Neverwinter was also a "big mover" in the month among Raptr players, netting 11th place.
Are You a Rare: Reader requests edition
WoW Insider posted recently about rare race-class combinations, and received several reader requests for further data manipulation, so like the Korune Spellweavers of Kun-Lai Summit, we have returned to RealmPop, and recommenced decanting their data into lists for your delectation. The top request, from several commenters, but also the Editor-in-Chief of WoW Insider, was to lose the monks. He, and several readers, commented that they were skewing the list thanks to their newness, and while the original list was interesting to me, thanks to how it highlighted the dominance of pandaren and human monks, I rather agree. So, first up, the top ten most underplayed class-race combinations, excluding monks, but including pandaren. I've also added male and female character stats, thanks to the requests of commenters. The run-down is after the break, but first, a few other observations that might pique your interest. Please do note, as before, that this is based on RealmPop's data, which, while good, is never going to be perfect! One thing I noticed on comparing the EU data and US data is the differing overall class numbers. Hunters are the most numerous on both sides of the Atlantic, followed by paladins, then druids. On the NA side, the rest went, in descending order, DK, warrior, mage, priest, rogue, warlock, shaman, monk; while on the EU side we have warrior, mage, DK, priest, rogue, shaman, warlock, monk. Now, the difference is not huge between these classes, so small variations could move the positions around, but both data sets noted a large drop-off for warlock and shaman, while the other classes hovered around similar numbers.
Are you a rare?
Inspired by a thread we found on the EU forums, which in turn is inspired by a thread on the US forums, WoW Insider began thinking about rare class-race combinations. It's interesting, really, in a world where you can be anything, how many people all choose to be the same thing. Doubtless, there are reasons behind it, more than just preference. Racial skills, for example, are likely a huge influence, but maybe others surface, as, with a little investigation, excluding Pandaren as they're very new, it seems that the three least popular races are also the ones that don't show off transmogs so well, and are perhaps less conventionally "pretty": gnomes, goblins and dwarves. We headed over to RealmPop to check out their statistics and see what was the most popular and what was the least. Of course, no resource is completely perfect, and a few sites exist, but alas, the other well-known resource, WarcraftRealms, was offline. Looking at the US statistics, the least popular race, including pandaren, but by a narrow margin is the dwarf. The EU stats tell a very similar story, with dwarves outpaced by everyone, even pandaren. Why is that? So, it makes sense that dwarves make up the race element of some of the rarest race-class combinations. Notably, however, although their total numbers are higher overall, the huge proportion of pandaren monks (64-65%) means that they're among the very rarest of combinations when playing anything but a monk. Hit the break for the top 15 underplayed class-race combinations! Or should that be the bottom 15?
World of Warcraft tops most played list of 2008
Nielsen Research has published its January through October numbers about the top 10 PC games and top 10 consoles by amount of time played. Once again World of Warcraft tops the charts. In fact, WoW has more time played than the other nine titles listed - combined.Coming in at position 6 is Runescape, the browser-based game that could. It had just slightly less share than The Sims 2. Numbers for only October are available on the Nielsen website and show a different makeup for numbers 2-10, with WoW still in first. We can only imagine what this data will look like for November 2008 with the added game time of those who bought Wrath of the Lich King.
COD4 continues XBL dominance; Halo 3 cowers
As seen before, the battle for the most-played game on Xbox Live seems to be slowly showing signs of finality. With COD4 holding the top spot for several weeks in a row now, we could be seeing the long term dethroning of the old master of the top played game of the service. Major Nelson released his list of most played games, as he does each week, and it seems that the collective 360 population has moved on from the older Halo formula, and onto the more gritty, "realistic" gameplay of COD4. Whether or not the release of the new Auto-Update for Halo 3 will lure players back and let the game regain the top-spot will just have to wait until next week.
WRUP: Season's greetings edition
Time once again to check in on What yoU aRe Playing in the world of MMOs lately. Last week, the Nielsen Company reported that World of Warcraft was the most-played PC game from April to November of this year, with the average user still playing a whopping 17 hours per week. Yowza.Is that you? Are you going to be playing WoW all weekend? Personally, I'm going to be busy doing a lot of holiday stuff (I'm making the trek back to my hometown of St. Louis, MO this weekend, and I haven't actually "started" doing my gift shopping yet), but I do have that pristine copy of Guild Wars that I picked up at Best Buy way back on Black Friday, so hopefully in between all the merry making this weekend I'll be able to break that out.And are any of you actually planning on getting an MMO as a gift? With the subscription fees and all, these games are really something that you buy for yourself, but I wouldn't have a problem with seeing a copy of Hellgate under the tree. What are you playing?
