Quick comparison of “Hours Played” from XFire for some MMOs, and a ballpark estimate of subscriber activity, given a baseline of five million active WoW players in North America and Europe:
| Game | Xfire Hours | Rank | Est. Players |
|---|---|---|---|
| Word of Warcraft | 406572 | 1 | 5000000 |
| Guild Wars | 30393 | 7 | 373771 |
| Maple Story | 12146 | 19 | 149370 |
| EVE Online | 11746 | 20 | 144451 |
| Age of Conan | 9690 | 28 | 119167 |
| Lord of the Rings Online | 8525 | 29 | 104839 |
| Lineage II | 6973 | 33 | 85753 |
| Star Wars Galaxies | 4545 | 45 | 55894 |
| Second Life | 4224 | 48 | 51946 |
| Final Fantasy XI | 3827 | 55 | 47064 |
| City of Heroes | 2551 | 78 | 31372 |
| EverQuest II | 2372 | 87 | 29170 |
| Pirates of the Caribbean Online | 1551 | 108 | 19074 |
| Tabula Rasa | 1356 | 116 | 16676 |
| Warhammer Online | 1270 | 121 | 15618 |
| Ultima Online | 971 | 140 | 11941 |
| Anarchy Online | 881 | 149 | 10834 |
| EverQuest | 729 | 161 | 8965 |
| Dungeons and Dragons Online | 694 | 167 | 8534 |
| Dark Age of Camelot | 645 | 176 | 7932 |
| Saga of Ryzom | 580 | 187 | 7132 |
| Vanguard | 562 | 190 | 6911 |
| City of Villains | 428 | 215 | 5263 |
| Pirates of the Burning Sea | 395 | 227 | 4857 |
| The Matrix Online | 335 | 240 | 4119 |
| Planetside | 313 | 246 | 3849 |
| Dungeon Runners | 233 | 275 | 2865 |
| Asheron’s Call | 187 | 301 | 2299 |
Saga of Ryzom higher up than City of Villians? That’s surprising. A pleasant surprise as I enjoy them both 😀
You are missing LOTRO : 8525 hours , Rank 29, 104839 Est. Players…would put in 6th place…..
Commentary:
These figures are based entirely off of XFire’s reported statistics of MMOs people played while running the XFire application in the background. There is no direct correlation between XFire statistics and the actual time people spend playing. The second biggest assumption, after the one that XFire adoption is more or less the same among all MMOs, is that there is a correlation between active subscriptions and number of hours played.
Given those assumptions, there’s interesting stuff to be gleaned. SOE’s most popular game is EQ2? Actually, Star Wars Galaxies comes out on top of the list of SOE games. Pirates of the Caribbean Online is more popular than heavily-hyped Pirates of the Burning Sea (though I believe PotCO is cheaper to play). Even in beta, Warhammer Online is way ahead of many popular pay-to-play MMOs. Indestructible space MMO EVE Online is holding its own ahead of Age of Conan, which recently claimed 400,000 active subscriptions. Either EVE Online is more popular than we’ve been led to believe, or AoC, while doing well, is not doing as well as they say.
If XFire is any judge, the de facto list of popular games could use a good jostle. For instance, Lineage 2 is the fourth most popular pay-to-play MMO on the list. How come we hardly ever read about it? MMO news sites, take note.
We have to note that the majority of titles in XFires list relate to some form of “competitive” game. GW, WoW, CoD4, etc…most are FPS or other PvP styled game.
The less PvP or should I say less “enjoyable” PvP games seem to be lower on the list.
Also, I would love to see an overall age bracket with those games as well. Never going to happen, but it would be fascinating.
I have noticed that AoC has evened out for now, so it is holding some players attentions (and I still wish it had more in the later levels, as the Tortage experience has really ruined any other game for me right now, and I still think about it and playing it)
Of course, you want to know my favorite part of your post? You TOTALLY forgot LOTRO…hahaha, Freudian slip or what?
I just want to thank you. I think EVERYONE forgets that game eventually…
I realized I’d forgotten LotRO before anyone else noticed it, but I’m at work now and can’t view the XFire site from here 🙂 Thankfully, IEArmand came through with the figures and it has its rightful place on the list now.
@Teppo — Since CoH now allows people to play either side, CoV’s figures should probably be added into CoH’s. But that’s up to XFire.
You may forget LOTRO…but it would be the 4th pay to play on the list and as was pointed out about Lineage 2 it is rarely mentioned on MMO sites. Love or hate the game….it has one of the best implemented Achievements systems (some “other” games are trying to shoe horn in) and is one of the best story driven MMO’s around….
This list does show that many MMO sites merely dabble in a chosen few…not necessarily where the players are…
I also noticed other missing entries. I know this is more about the “Big Guns”, but these other titles need mention here.
Cabal Online which has a higher and consistent play rate than a lot of other games which would put it ahead of Maple Story, EvE or LOTRO and AoC. It has been rated in the top 10 most of the time in the list. (#9 yesterday)
Silkroad Online (#13)
Rappelz (#20)
This also points out something else that is interesting to me.
I notice a lot of Free to Play model games with cash shops also have a higher rate of play time than most monthly titles.
So many people say they hate this model of payment systems…
Yet, I see merit to this model when we look at XFire.
TCoS has been picked up by Acclaim and will be a FTP title at first, will have PvP, and could possibly go the route of Cash Shop (even though other sources state a monthly)
I will be interested to see where it ends up on this list.
As to WAR, I think it will consistently perform in the top 10 for a LONG time thanks to the RvR.
Should be interesting to watch.
Yeah, it wasn’t an exhaustive list by any means. I mostly was trying to draw comparisons with the games which are featured heavily on MMO news sites, compared to their actual playtimes as measured by XFire, and the surprises in the game ordering. XFire.com is definitely the place to go for the full list 🙂
And you’re absolutely right, XFire is very much weighted toward PC-based PvP games. But it can’t be entirely that — how else to explain Second Life’s amazingly high showing?
Wait…you don’t PWN celebrities in SL?
What have YOU been missing…lol
Also, I dare you to get your EPIX in Microsoft Solitaire…I have!!!
But, note it is #48, with all previous games being FPS, PvP based or MMO’s.
Not 100% “Competitive”…but, I guess 98% is close?
hehe
I’ll out myself as loving LOTRO and playing it a lot. But then, I’m a Tolkien fan from way back. The game is full of little easter eggs for the Tolkien lovers like me. I started playing about 3 months ago.
You can look up the CoX numbers based on NCsofts annual report. I don’t have on with me at work, but its something like 110k.
On the whole, I think this xfire list is just fodder for pissing matches to ‘prove’ that their mmo is ‘better’
@Isanox
I would disagree. No company or player really uses the Xfire data to say “My MMO is awesome” (except for lately, where it has become the doom of AoC due to how quickly the numbers fell)
What is DOES show is a trend. It helps us know why some games get better numbers. And you can see cult followings (like EvE, Silkroad, GW) based on their listings.
It was never meant to be an end all be all of MMO subscription tracking, etc.
It can show how often someone likes to play certain games. And in that respect numbers are quite telling..
The only problem with Xfire, is that …. plenty of people who actually play the games listed, don’t use this program. In EQII for example (where I spend most of my time) four people I know use Xfire — three of them only started using it two weeks or so ago. That’s four years worth of playing that hasn’t been tracked. When talking to a few other people, some had heard of the program, but because they play one game exclusively, they have no need for it, and don’t use it. An even bigger handful of people had never heard of it before.
The number game is fun to use when watching how many people *used* to play a game vs. how many people are currently playing (since it keeps track weekly of those statistics) but when it comes to how many people play a game vs. another game? Unless everyone in each game is using Xfire, it’s just a guess. Maybe there’s good reasons people who play *insert random game here* use Xfire vs. people who play *insert other game here* who don’t use it. /shrugs.
In any case. I love it not because of the tracking other game vs. other game capabilities – but simply because I’m nosy and like to see what everyone (that I know) is playing.
@Isonax
I totally agree. The correlation between X-fire users and the relative number of MMO subbers is going to be quite noisy. To use it to compare MMOs in any sort of detailed way is message board flame-war tomfoolery.
I will say that even given that, the popularity of Maplestory among X-fire users is surprising. Maybe it’s the lack of voice chat? Or maybe it means that a lot of younger folks move around between FTP games a lot and use X-fire to hook up with eachother.
@Stargrace: Xfire stats isn’t a comprehensive picture by any stretch, but it certainly shows a piece of the pie and as Openedge said, trends within that pie slice. So, it is still a useful tool, but not the end-all, be-all of number-crunching facts and statistics.
Statistics for idiots by idiots.
The amount of wrong numbers vastly exceeds any correct (or near correct ones).
Estimated number of Finns in the world by estimating the number of Finns in Kandahar = 200. What you say? but Finns dont travel that much to Kandahar! Nonsense.. any fool knows Kandahar is an excellent metric for various human populations.
lol 🙂 I’ve been pwned….
@zeek
But, I LOVE Kandahar
Yummy Kandahar
I think the Finns go there for Elk mostly. All 200….
Tasty!
Why am I not in that list?
Go away. You’re dead!
For AoC, the performance should explain the need to shut up X-Fire while playing 😉
only about 10,0000 players in Everques tthat should tell you the numbers are screwed right there . WOW is primarily asian p[layers . Its fort hose that love anime type things and a lot of gold farmers that are employed playing WOW . Not really a hard core Raiding game like EQ.