Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Economy, Wrath of the Lich King

GameCyte has gone by the Nielsen ratings for 2008, and they’re basically saying precisely what we’ve heard with other sites like GamerDNA: that WoW commanded PC playtime that year. On a list with such oldies on it as The Sims, CounterStrike, and even Blizzard’s own Diablo II, World of Warcraft sits at the top of the charts with an average of 671 minutes (about 11 hours) played per week. that tells us two things: one, lots of folks are playing World of Warcraft a lot. And two, PCs need some better games.

There is an interesting trend in these numbers, particularly when you compare them with last year. Last year, Nielsen claimed about 17 hours a week of playtime for WoW players, so playtime that year is actually down overall (and while we don’t see month to month numbers, GameCyte says it was before the Wrath release, which makes sense). certain, you could say that with dailies and the easier instances, players just don’t have to play the game as much, but really, that seems to reflect the bigger trend: that WoW is leveling out.

There are probably years left in that game — as we said on the podcast last week, the only real way public will stop playing WoW is when Blizzard finally turns the servers off. But all the numbers we’ve seen definitely point to a slowing down point among the game’s subscribers. Lots of citizens (11.5 milion) are still playing World of Warcraft a lot. But not as much as they used to.

[via WorldofWar]

Nielsen says WoW still tops the list originally presented on WoW Insider on Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Original post by Mike Schramm