Xfire Stats Show WoW, Free MMO Usage Rising

Online gaming community service Xfire has released the latest in its monthly statistics reports, showing not only a marked increase in World of Warcraft play, but also the Western releases of a number of Korean free-to-play MMOs like Maple Story. As part of its services, Xfire has begun releasing full monthly statistics of the habits of its community members, this time summarizing "over 92,000 man-years of game play data." As would be expected, the latest statistical release covering the past ten months of World of Warcraft play shows an appreciable spike in February of this year, coinciding with the release of the game's Burning Crusade expansion. Xfire counts 430,000 man-hours spent per day for the month, and also notes an increase of over eleven man-years per month since the statistics were first gathered. Interestingly, Xfire has also found that Korean free-to-play MMO titles are also gaining a very strong foothold across North America and Europe, with games like Silkroad Online, War Rock, MapleStory, Fly for Fun and KAL-Online accounting for three of the top twenty games, as well as four of the top ten MMOs, in March of 2007. "Given that over 95% of Xfire users are from North America or Europe, the continued success of these games illustrates the viability of the micro-transaction business model in these markets," the Xfire statement reads.