Updated 8/10: A (warlock) friend of mine, Trouble who now plays as Troubadour, incorrectly identified the paladin trend line as being the warlock one. Post has been updated. Thanks to you who (nicely) pointed it out. This update was slow because I didn’t actually spend more than 30 minutes at my computer since this original post and just now. I did have an awesome weekend though, yes!

I found this linked from a thread on the damage dealing forums today, and it’s a fascinating bit of data.

First off, what is it?

This display shows the average player activity per class per week for all horde players on all servers. It only shows the averages from entries from within ‘prime time’ which is considered here between the hours of 6PM and 11PM GAME TIME. The hours are based on the IN GAME time, not EARTH time. Data is collected using the latest version of the CensusPlus UI Mod. Source is Weekly Realm Activity – WarcraftRealms.com.

Slightly inaccurate since it’s not “from Blizzard”, but the large volume of data helps smooth over inaccuracies: even if some servers are under-represented, you’re still seeing the trends over all of them.

Probably the most interesting point to me is that playtime is a lot more concentrated in a handful of classes than it was pre-Wrath: yes, DK’s obviously garner a lot of interest, but there’s a lot of paladin playtime and even druids are noticable “above the pack.” Hunters are high, but I’d bet a lot of money that it’s just the influence of them being the farm class of choice for goldsellers.

Previously-popular classes like rogues and mages are now down at, or below, the level of historically-underplayed classes like priests and shaman, and outside of the few outliers at the top, the rest of the classes are very concentrated.

This could indicate either good ‘fun’ balancing or bad, depending on your point of view . It might also reflect the maturing of a playerbase, with more people having more alts, and/or people more willing to jump to “flavor of the month” classes (retadins I’m looking at you.)

Some additional points I saw:

• Paladin popularity rose sharply at the start of October, probably people getting ready to switch mains since their jump is higher than any other class, or something about farming efficiency
• A predictably-high number of DK’s, the top class by population for a long time
• Paladin however actually pass DK’s in popularity around much and have maintained their lead consistently, growing it very slightly month to month
• Rogues drop off substantially in representation when warlocks start to rise, bottoming out as the least-popular class in February. They were previously the second-highest class, this may represent their popularity as alts/farm characters during the 3.0 period prior to Wrath’s actual launch
• Rogues experience a higher-than-normal upswing around March to April, a bigger climb than other classes
• Mages drop off substantially in representation when warlocks start to rise, not having as precipitous a drop-off as rogues, but accelerating faster than rogues and never having a ‘pick up’ period. They now tie rogues for the least-represented, when they were pretty solidly middle of the pack at Wrath launch.
• Priests have gained in popularity a bit, previously being at the bottom, but now clustered with shaman, warrior, and paladin
• Hunters were high in the 3.0 period as well and have remained high, although pre-Wrath they got passed by warlocks and have lagged behind them and DK’s since January they still retain a very high population.
• Druids have seen an upswing in playtime since April/May while other classes have seen a slight downturn