Runescape Addict or Bot Users

Recently I came across some interesting information about runescape and how long the average player spent on the site. The information was on web metrics studies and it showed runescape players generally spent 6 hours 32 minutes on the actual runescape web site.

The next closest site in terms of time spent online was Electronic Arts Online - with visitors spending on average of 3 hours 7 minutes on the site.

In essence, runescape players spent twice as long on the runescape site as people visiting any other monitored site. It leads to the question is runescape highly addictive? Or has the figures been distorted by bot users?

Runescape can easily become an addiction and players spending large amounts of time ingame would not be too uncommon, although 6 hours 32 minutes does seem excessive. There are plenty of runescape addicts that would account for some of this time, the average player may not spend quite as long on the site. Consequently, some other factors would need to be looked at.

In this case, I believe that the monitoring figures may reflect the time spent on the site by bot users or runescape macro users. Generally the macro would be set to run for long periods of time, 16-24 hours a day would not be uncommon. This would ensure that the average time spent on the site would increase.

Combining the addictive nature of runescape and the bot abuse that provides a never ending battle for Jagex to contend with, the overall time spent on runescape site by actual players is distorted to some degree. The actual degree of distortion would be hard to account for without knowing how the data was initially compiled and to what extent runescape is infested by macro or bot users.