League of Legends Topples World of Warcraft as Most Played PC Game

[Carnagath]

Even though I despise Blizzard, you got to admire that they got three games in that list, despite their lackluster gameplay and absolutely atrocious storywriting.

,

I don't think that's true. All Blizzard games have great gameplay, some just great and others stellar. I'd say SC2 is stellar in that regard. WoW is still awesome even though the difficulty level has gone way down over the years. D3 is amazing up until Inferno, when people remember that it's 2012 and they can't be arsed to just grind for months like they did back in 2002, but I'm confident that after several patches and an expansion it will become a total blast with tons of things to do. As for story... yeah, not thrilled by their latest releases, but SC1 and WC3 have beyond doubt the best stories of any RTS out there, I hope they manage to repeat that.

 

[Denamic]

what are the numbers for TF2?

Less than Counter-Strike.

I wonder what will happen when DotA 2 gets out of 'beta', as it will also be free to play.
And having played both a fair bit, I think DotA 2 is just better than LoL in practically every way.
The feel of the gameplay in DotA is just better.
And I just don't like not being able to deny creeps in LoL.
And the stupid strong towers in LoL makes the early game so damn passive.

 

[Fearzone]

I bet solitaire has them all beat.

A little surprised Runequest wasn't there since it always has a way of generating big numbers.

Anyway if it is free to play, it is hard to imagine it being a fair comparison.

Still congrats to LoL which is free to play AND good, and is a good model for free to play going into the future.

 

[cornmancer]

My favorite part of this is that Maplestory is in the top 10. Totally not compelled to go download that again...

 

[shintakie10]

Doesn't really surprise me.

Edit: I didn't even talk about how douchey the high level players of LoL are compared to any other game on this list. Even CoD players are more civil to each other than LoL players.

Figured I'd chime in and note levels in LoL don't really matter too much. They're more of an enforced learning period. ELO is what matters, and high ELO players tend to be a lot more civil and have a lot less trolls.

High ranking* players. For example, I'd say LiquidRet is a high level (high ranking) player in Starcraft 2.
Everyone that I know who plays LoL tells me how douchey the higher ranked players are. One friend of mine got disconnected from his game and when he went to rejoin, he wasn't able to play for 30 minutes because of some temporary ban on him because they reported him for dropping (or something along those lines).

I forget what thread I saw on these boards that supported my claim of LoL player doucheyness.

Uhh yea before you go spouting out that the high ranking players of league are all assholes you might want to look into it before someone like me comes along and points out that you're spouting bs.
If you leave a ranked game (even disconnecting)and the game ends you are temporarily suspended by the game. Your friend must have been gone a while because the game ended, and the system marked him as a "Leaver". It's there so people don't go around trolling others by joining games and screwing over their teammates from the ranking. And it is there as a punishment for rage quitters. It had absolutely nothing to do with anyone reporting him.

Second there are douchebags in every high level game, are you seriously saying the starcraft 2 high players are all angels? Hell you mentioned one notorious dick in your original post, IdrA

Even then while there are some jerks in LoL ranked, Riot actually does care what it's big streamers say, hell there have been cases where a high ranked streamer has trolled someone in game / said something foul during a strea and Riot went and suspended them for it.

Thats funny that you think that IdrA is a dick at all times. I've heard him cast, seen him around other pros, and even heard other pros talk about him, and he seems like a really nice guy. IdrA has the real personality/gaming personality nailed down. He may seem like a massive dick, but he's really not.
Destiny on the other hand, is a dick and troll at all times. From streaming to casting to being around other pros, he's just a douche. Funny, but douchey.

And no, I am not saying that all high level players are angels in any game, I'm just saying that LoL has a very high frequency of them. Maybe not at the top of the totem pole (the guys that go to tournaments and such), but the guys that you see in the high ranked matches.

Idra is perfectly fine as a person as long as he isn't in a tournament. Stick him in a match and he's a whiney, childish brat that will rage quit over the stupidiest shit. I once saw him rage quit after an opponent did a very standard reaper harass. Killed 3 drones. Idra rage quit right after. This was a actual tournament too, not a random stream game.

 

[theultimateend]

LoL is free and WoW is 15 a month. honestly whats surprising about this?

And WoW has been in a slow decline since BC that accelerated with the release of Cata.

I thought their numbers peaked during Wrath?

Or are we talking "I didn't like it after BC!" kind of decline?

I don't know what happened to Blizzards storytellers, from 1996 to 2003 they telled sure pretty liched stories with a few plotholes, but atleast you could enjoy them, Blizzard today writes probably the worst stories I've ever experienced.

Don't wanna turn this thread offtopic though, so that's it for me.

I wish I had your experiences in that regard.

If I could wash Prometheus from my mind I'd be a happy man.

 

[MonkeyPunch]

Xfire? I remember trying it out for a few minutes before un-installing it, back in 2005.
Is it still just a glorified chat service?

I'm surprised there are still people using it as all multiplayer games tend to have built in systems and if they don't, or are poor usually the game is on a content delivery system such as Steam which also provides chat and stats.

Xfire still seems dubious to me.

 

[Terramax]

Anyone else suprised that CoD is so low on the list?

Nope, it's just one of the dozens in the series still online (presumably?). Many are probably still playing older titles online. If WoW and LoL released completely different games every year, I reckon a single game would end up lower on the list.

 

[Charli]

Wow, impressive.

It is also quite surprising to me that MapleStory is the 7th most played game. Wow.

Ugh doesn't shock me... I remember playing it. So many hooting asshats and very few nice people, it's like the 4chan of the MMO world. And I don't say that lightly.
And the username policies, made my little shriveled grammar nazi gnome shudder, let loose a single tear and just fully die.

But for all it's terrible community it is a solid game underneath all the Premium items and Crappy 'unlock this and then pay this to get this!'. The gameplay for a 2D Platformer MMO kept me entertained enough to deal with abuse that came with it for a long while.
Oh and the Music... Maple Story's Music is catchy, beautiful and as memorable as it comes for a free to play game. That might hook some audiophiles like me.


Anyway, if you couldn't tell Escapist, I think you're better than sensationalist news and no amount of Ad-payment from the LoL developers was worth misconstruing these numbers based on a very outdated game-addition.

We get it, LoL is popular. I quite like it too (Think DoTA2 is a bit better but hey preferences.) but I don't think for one second they've toppled WoW's colossal bulging backside of wasted man-hours.

 

[RobfromtheGulag]

To add to this exciting news, it has been revealed that the LOL community is even more toxic than WoW's was!


I fear for whichever game takes the throne next...

 

[ASnogarD]

To be honest , lots of players playing lots of hours doesnt mean jack... its popular because its free and has good marketing but is it good ?

I like it, but find it hard to fire up these days because its a mess community wise, it on par with the DotA crowd troll and ragewise... if not more so.
You can find some seriously sick psychotic dregs of humanity lurking in that game...at all levels.

Anonimous + Internet + Team dependant game = Asshats multiplied by morons squared by elitist jerks and added to lacklustre control over player behaviour by the now Chinese owned developer ( who are never short on a sale or 10 though, so sorry you got trolled 20 out 25 games have a new Teemo skin for only 25 dolla )

...aargh , see even I am raging at just the description of a game, but it is so very fun when you get a good match,

I want to play DOTA2 , but its like LoL community plus learning the game equals horrible experiences.
Example -
DOTA2 pro : Noob , learn to play
ME: I am you moron, thats why I am in the new player level, what are YOU doing here ?
DOTA2 pro : Report Noob for unskilled play.
ME: Yeah, report a new player, playing at new player skill level for being a new player.. yeah sounds about right.

If you are going to try LoL / Hon / Smite / DOTA2 or any of these types...be prepare, and get a really thick skin buff, burning out your eyes helps too.

 

[The Lugz]

well, in fairness you have allot of hardcore diablo and starcraft fans detracting from wow's epic player-base
in overall accounts blizzard is still top

however, it's hard to beat free
and that's what the competition is so it was bound to happen eventually

i'm supprised

i had a long post planned, but it was recorded by xfire?
official figures please?

 

[A. Smith]

"These statistics apply only to North American and European Xfire members"

Aaaaaand theres your problem. you are counting a minority of players. Do you honestly believe that LoL, as famous as it is, has played more hours than WoW? WoW is a game played over periods of DAYS. LoL is a "get in play a few rounds get out" game.

I dunno, i dont trust these numbers very much.

Read the Forbes article... the numbers were extrapolated from Xfire data. Granted, that means you have to consider xfire a representative sample of gamers, but I don't think that if it's biased it would be biased against LoL. If anything, WoW players who would tend to play days of the game are probably just as likely to be on xfire as hardcore LoL players.

Also, Xfire is still alive (and apparently going well)? I thought it died years ago!

 

[Valdus]

How many of these are alt accounts or smurf accounts? Probably a lot. One thing that infuriated me enough to leave was almost constantly fighting someone in ranked who I shouldn't because they decided to make a smurf account. Not to mention the number of people who openly admit to getting ban's (even temporary ones) and making an alt account to play so they don't have to worry about bans as much.

 

[Iosifavich]

People still use Xfire? I haven't used that since like 2006. I know my WoW hours aren't clocked, and I had about over a years worth of play time.

This came up about a year ago, the statistics are laughable because it only hours monitored by players using Xfire and have it running while playing said games. There is also a further problem with the Players that are using the 64bit WoW client as it doesn't report statistics at all to Xfire. Some website call Xfire the biggest online gaming comunity and the reality is that its far from it. They were passed in overall size by team back in 2009, in fact i personally have 2 Xfire accounts that i haven't used since 2008

The reality of the matter is that the stats are just crap... Xfire has 21,925,912 registered users accounts (Not Active users), Steam has almost double that at 40,000,000 accounts. Maybe if the pulled the statics from several sources this article might be worth something. As it stands right now this article is a "Look at the LoL it is better then WoW!, well not really but we wanted to give some free press to one of our subsidiaries" sorry to trick you all.

Cite:
Steam Accounts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_%28software%29 or http://gamingbolt.com/valve-releases-pr-steam-userbase-doubles-in-2011-big-picture-mode-coming-soon
Xfire Accounts - http://beta.xfire.com/

 

[TheGuy(wantstobe)]

snip

US+EU only. Xfire only. It's about as useful in determining what has been claimed of it as throwing darts at a board. Click-bait article Escapist, you could do so much better.

 

[EvilMaggot]

What the... 1.3 bn. in 6 months?! That wouldn't really mean much to me but when you see that it's double of the entire life time of WoW... that's mind boggling. How do people even find enough time to play that much?

No no no, these are just numbers from the last year. WoW has a LOT more hours played than that. Probably 10 times more, if not even higher. It's in a down period and has been since January/February, so it's not all that surprising to see it being played less.

Oh yeah.. go back to the time where Burning Crusade/Wotlk/Cataclysm was released... skyrocket number of players xD