Second Favorites of Guild Wars Players

All right, last time we looked at games that enormous amounts of WoW players ALSO play. One of my first thoughts when I beheld the list was “Oooh, big shock, Counterstrike is on the list. Whoopty doo. Half the universe has played Counterstrike, I’m not impressed that 41% of WoW players have tried it.  I was equally not shocked to see Oblivion on the list. Golly gosh, you mean people into RPGs have also purchased one of the biggest single player RPGs mankind has ever known? Call the hospital, I’m on my way with a heart attack. Those proportions should hold true in general across the fantasy game playing population… right?

Well, I was wrong.

I’m using Guild Wars as an example – some of our earliest outreach work was done through a tournament for GW players, and so this population represents a significant number of members at GamerDNA. And in order to compare apples to apples, I’ll give you the numbers for the same games that sat atop the WoW players’ non-MMO, non-comes-with-MSOffice games:

Counterstrike – 45%

Battlefield 2 – 39%

COD4 – 28%

Oblivion – 30%

(The other numbers were 41/35/26/26.)

So, let’s apply the same reasoning we did last time. First of all, Guild Wars players are more likely to have played other games, across the board. Anecdotally, industry types have had the feeling that WoW brought a lot of gaming virgins to the market, as opposed to people who proudly call themselves gamers. These numbers prove there’s some truth to that, but at the same time, it’s not a dramatic jump.

Next, it looks like GW players have the same basic needs as WoW players when it comes to alternate gaming needs. That blows away at least one major gaming chestnut, that GW players are in it for the ability to find a quick match and enjoy some team versus team slaughter. It may be true – but they still seek out games like Battlefield as an alternative. The obvious conclusion is that it’s not just gameplay, it’s setting, and these numbers prove it.

As I look at both lists, the most interesting thing is how similar they are. For example, the top five games are the same. But even more interesting to me are the differences:

- 53% of GamerDNA members who play WoW have tried Guild Wars… but 67% of Guild Wars players have tried WoW. Considering that MMO players usually try new MMOs, I’m really startled to see that 33% of GW players haven’t even tried. I wonder how this number would compare to MMO players in general? IS Guild Wars an aberration in terms of the type of player it attracts? Hrm. That’s a great idea for another week…

- Spider Solitaire is 10th on the Guild Wars list, with 30% of GW players having played that game recently. Among WoW players, that number is 22% and in 19th place. There is no other title that both A) appears on both lists, but B) is separated by as many places in the list. Most of the other titles are within two places of each other on each ranked list – meaning that if a title is #8 on one list, it’s between 6 and 10th on the other. Except Spider Solitaire, sitting nine places apart. That’s just weird. But there is one exception that’s even weirder:

- 20% of GW players have tried Silkroad Online… and that title didn’t even crack the list of “popular also-played” titles for WoW fans. Is it the look? The style? The concept? I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to draw an intelligent conclusion here. Please, put me out of my misery and suggest one!