The Digital Dozen: 24 April 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 22 April 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	55.9	74,254
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	16.2	21,595
3	3	Aion	7.4	9,812
4	4	Eve Online	3.7	4,876
5	8	APB:Reloaded	3.0	4,044
6	5	Lord Of The Rings Online	2.8	3,692
7	7	Metin 2	2.5	3,258
8	6	Guild Wars	2.2	2,898
9	11	Need For Speed World	1.9	2,463
10	10	Rift	1.7	2,263
11	9	Star Trek Online	1.4	1,903
12	12	Maple Story	1.4	1,864

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:175,127 

Time to drive:  In a week that saw a drop of 8% in overall MMORPG hours played by Xfire members, two games in the Digital Dozen saw double-digit gains.  APB:Reloaded saw a 40.4% jump based on the release of version 1.7 plus the give-a-way of a 3-day premium code to make up for the server issues upon launch.  Need For Speed World saw an 11.4% increase in time played following the release of the 2010 BMW M6 Coupé plus a 30% off sale in the cash shop.

Luster fades quickly: Two games that experienced gains on the 15th, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Aion, saw those gains evaporate Sunday.  Despite players trying to get that free month of play and another free weekend for new players, the Bioware offering saw almost all its gains from patch 1.2 disappear as its hours dropped 13.7%.  Aion did see the gains from the Ascension launch disappear plus more as the game saw a drop of 15.1% in hours played.

Beta Madness:  With all the games that will come out this spring and summer, open betas are all around.  This weekend saw two open beta weekends of significance, Tera and Diablo III.  Tera managed to pull 1,585 hours on Sunday, indicating that it may debut on the Digital Dozen on the first Sunday of May.  The other beta, Diablo III, attracted 38,581 hours and probably contributed to the 9.5% decline in the hours played in World of Warcraft Sunday.