So, for those of you who aren’t familiar with RuneScape, it’s a MMORPG, or in the company’s parlance, “an evolving world of remarkable depth and flexibility.”  Think of it as World of Warcraft for a younger set.  And, judging from LeeAnn Prescott’s latest numbers, it’s evolving into a very big world.  “RuneScape is by far the #1 site,” she wrote, “with 44% of visits to the category.”

RuneScape’s closest competitors owned the bragging rights on growth; “[w]hen comparing the weeks ending 4/29/06 and 4/28/07,” Prescott continued, “the market share of visits to Webkinz was up 1141%, Club Penquin up 545%, and Stardoll up 275%.”  In terms of overall market share, however, those sites fell far behind, with just 14.08%, 10.57%, and 5.89%, respectively.

Which leads us back to the Nielsen//NetRatings info – taken together, the reports seem to indicate that that kids pick up on things quickly and possess a long attention span.  (And lest any adult RuneScape players feel insulted, I should note once again that Hitwise was measuring virtual worlds for children and teens.)

According to Nielsen//NetRatings, then, “Games brands account for four of the top seven sites by average time per visitor – RuneScape, Electronic Arts, King.com and Adventure Quest.”  This qualifies these sites as “sticky,” and so, while that’s not the nicest-sounding term, RuneScape (and its players) should be glad that it applies.

It’s probably instructive to consider what Compete means by ‘attention’ before we look at it more closely:

Attention fuses engagement (measured by time) and traffic (measured by unique visitors) into a single, more complete picture of a web site’s value.

By the numbers, Attention is the total time spent on a site as a percentage of the total time spent online by all U.S. Internet users. Along with other enhancements disclosed by Compete, Attention Rank became part of what they report for a website.

As an example of the potential for existing metrics to miss out on a website and its value, Compete cited the site for online adventure game RuneScape. Compete’s measurement found runescape.com only ranked 436th in unique visitors, yet rated 15th in attention.

"If we relied solely on traditional metrics we would overlook the real value and prominence of Runescape," Compete’s TJ Mahony said in the blog post.

The top six sites by page view rank were similarly ranked by attention. MySpace led the way, followed respectively by Yahoo, eBay, MSN, Google, and AOL. EA-owned Pogo.com, an online game site, merited 7th place in attention despits being 152nd in unique visitors and 10th in page views.

"Where we spend our time is where we find the most value," Mahony wrote.

Other new features announced by Compete today include daily data, embeddable graphs, and popularity by visits. A new feature called Velocity allows visitors to compare the relative growth of one site to another, in terms of visitor attention.