League of Legends overthrows World of Warcraft as most played PC game

We've always referred to League of Legends as a "growing" PC game, but it now appears as if it has outgrown all of its competitors. Over the past few years the popular MOBA game, developed by the good men and women at Riot Games, has climbed the eSports ladder raising awareness in the competitive gaming scene.

With increasing, unprecedented prize pools and record smashing viewership records displaying a growth in the popularity of competitive gaming, recent data provided by DFC Intelligence suggests that League of Legends is expanding beyond that scene and on to all PC gamers. Xfire data shows that League of Legends is now the most played PC game in North America and Europe. In Asia, League of Legends is already on the rise in Korea where it's already beating out StarCraft 2 as the most popular game. It's clear, ladies and gentlemen, that League of Legends is here to stay.

According to the list prepared by extrapolating from actual usage data from more than 21 million Xfire members, League of Legends logged nearly 1.3 billion hours of gameplay, making it the most played PC title over the past year in North America and Europe. World of Warcraft saw a decline in usage, due to lower subscriber numbers, but still managed to register more than 600 million hours of gameplay (not including Asia). It's not the numbers it used to post, but it's still impressive.

“The fact that online games such League of Legends eclipsed more than a billion hours of online game time in a year is simply incredible and a testament to the fundamental shift currently sweeping through the games industry. By comparison, Bungie recently announced that the Halo franchise surpassed two billion hours of online play, but that’s over a period of seven years.” said CEO of DFC Intelligence David Cole.

Diablo 3, another Blizzard title released this year, also posted impressive numbers and could surpass World of Warcraft in usage over the next year, Cole added. If not for it's mid-May release, it could've attained higher usage numbers.

“Diablo 3 was not released until mid-May, but in just 45 days, usage of the game has equaled 172 million hours," Cole said. Usage of course declines after launch, but it is still doing quite well and may surpass World of Warcraft in usage over the next year”.

A full list of hours logged from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012 can be seen below

• League of Legends – 1,292,502,456
• World of Warcraft – 622,378,909
• Minecraft – 371,635,651
• Heroes of Newerth – 184,520,156
• Diablo III – 172,907,605
• Battlefield 3 – 171,852,550
• MapleStory – 165,503,651
• Starcraft II – 163,980,293
• World of Tanks – 145,702,931
• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 – 126,754,082

League of Legends released on October 27, 2009. Riot Games just released its 100th champion and currently has their eyes set on the 101st: Zyra, Rise of the Thorns, who was teased today.