Fan plays Cataclysm 149 hours a week

By Fred Dutton Published 17 December, 2010

Average playtime up, says WOW stat-crunch.

One free time-rich gamer poured a staggering 149 hours into MMO expansion World of Warcraft: Cataclysm in its first week on release, according to numbers out today.

Figures released by social networking client Raptr show that its top user played for an average of 21 hours a day.

The stats also revealed that more than 50 per cent of all playtime on Cataclysm was logged by the top 11 per cent of players while the average total playtime on the first day of release was 6.23 hours. The average game session length is now 2.1 hours.

Even though Blizzard seems to be ramping up development on a brand new MMO, it seems that the seven-year-old Warcraft franchise is more popular than ever. The stats revealed that time played per day has grown 1.5 times for the MMO since the summer of 2010 while playtime per week has grown to 20 hours – almost doubling year-on-year.

Cataclysm, which launched on 7th December, is the fastest-selling PC game of all time, shifting 3.3 million copies in just 24 hours.

Picture of Fred.

About Fred Dutton

Fred Dutton is Eurogamer's US news editor, based in Washington DC.

Read more articles from Fred by visiting the Fred Dutton archive page.

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Comments (31) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • dbranchevans #1 1 year ago

    Cue the daily mail kicking off that people are addicted... little bit hard to defend though with someone putting in twenty one hours a day, someone find him a girlfriend!

  • OnlyMe #2 1 year ago

    Get a life... IN GAME!!!

  • MrFlump #3 1 year ago

    This is a bit sensationalist. I can be logged in for 21 hours a day if i so choose but only play for an hour. Was he actually playing and how much of this time was AFK?

  • thesonglessbird #4 1 year ago

    @MrFlump - 11 hours gaming, 5 hours masturbating, 5 hours watching Star Trek.

  • butler` #5 1 year ago

    It's the Scandis. Not much day light up there y'know.

  • Zeburdee #6 1 year ago

    > "5 hours masturbating, 5 hours watching Star Trek"

    Those are probably concurrent though.

  • CaLeDee #7 1 year ago

    Probably a lot of idle time just..

  • Bravestinsane #8 1 year ago

    Though you were on our side Eurogamer?

    Now your just giving BBC panorama editors something to get excited over.

  • ken8mac #9 1 year ago

    Probably an achievement whore. In the 1st days of the expansion there are a lot of unique achievements available to only one character per realm. This person probably got their boy/girlfriend and some mates to help with the grind and get those exclusive achievements. 'bragging rights ' and all that!!

  • FooAtari #10 1 year ago

    Like there isn't that kind of things going in other games. The speed people were leveling up in black-ops when it came out must have meant some gamers were putting in some serious hours.

    Funny how everyone sims to ignore the part that says

    "The average game session length is now 2.1 hours"

    Pretty normal I'd say.
    Edited by FooAtari at 18/12/10 @ 00:57

  • INSOMANiAC #11 1 year ago

    It'll be my tax paying for the lazy twat to sit there playing that shit all day. Excellent.

  • butler` #12 1 year ago

    aint no one on blops putting those hours in fooatari

    they some mmo hours

  • butler` #13 1 year ago

    INSOMANiAC mate steady on, dailymail is that way ->

  • davisorle #14 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 15:13:13 09-05-2012

  • anomagnus #15 1 year ago

    people in my guild went nuts. When i logged in on the tuesday after work, on release day, people were already 85. they just handt slept since the midnight launch. Even at my height of progression raiding, i couldn't have managed that, and that was playing 25 hours per week or more.

  • Silvergun-Blue #16 1 year ago

    The worst thing is that he'll be proud of it.

    I remember reading a thread with Call of Duty players bragging about how long they spent playing in a day. One guy proudly proclaimed that he regularly spent so long playing that his nose would start bleeding.

  • Dr.Mott #17 1 year ago

    My God, this could mean the end of the World... of Warcraft.

  • Mkwone #18 1 year ago

    I'm sorry but if you're playing for 21 hours a day you are addicted to the game. Get that person some help.

  • Centrifugal #19 1 year ago

    I-is that even possible?

    *Does the maths, realises that only leaves 19 hours a week for other activities, including sleeping)

    :o

  • Phishfood #20 1 year ago

    That's less than 3 hours of sleep each day!

    Perhaps the guy left the game running while sleeping?
    Edited by Phishfood at 18/12/10 @ 15:54

  • FooAtari #21 1 year ago

    @butler
    aint no one on blops putting those hours in fooatari

    No of course there is isn't...

    Anyway he could have easily been logged in but not actually playing all the time. Queues to log into some realms where huge, like a couple of hours. I wouldn't playing someone for staying logged in once they got in.

    Just pisses me off than everyone jumps up down in a threads like this related to WoW, when they are plenty of people that spend similar hours playing other games for ridiculous amounts of time. Maybe they play different games, but it's still sittin' on your ass playing games all day.

  • stevetuck #22 1 year ago

    How about that Life MMO? i have been logged years a game time in that and im still only level 24 :(

  • MaxiSleep #23 1 year ago

    How about that Life MMO? i have been logged years a game time in that and im still only level 24 :(

    One you hit the level cap the end game content is limited to just 2 instances

  • Blazewamp #24 1 year ago

    fan is a bit of a light word there i think

  • ISmoke #25 1 year ago

    Wow. He must really have nothing better to do.

  • deadduckz #26 1 year ago

    thats nothing to what EVE online can take

  • dirtyvu #27 1 year ago

    now that is a true hardcore gamer!

  • kangarootoo #28 1 year ago

    That is less than 3 hours per day away from the game. I smell a rat of some sort. Either more than one person was playing that account, or some sort of bot was driving things, or their character logged in but doing nothing significant. A person can't sustain that level of attention for a whole week.



    "thats nothing to what EVE online can take "

    Well it can only take as many hours as there are in a day, and this was pretty close.

  • kangarootoo #29 1 year ago

    "Just pisses me off than everyone jumps up down in a threads like this related to WoW"

    Um. It is kind of related to WoW.

  • Marshall2008 #30 1 year ago

    Probably account sharing.

    Also, hardly think they need to be rich either, work shy more like, if only they put that much effort into their real life they could get a job and support themselves.

  • mr2ange #31 1 year ago

    You cant turn your back on the world! (of warcraft)

    Seriously, who in their right mind would do that? pretty fucking sad if you ask me.