The Digital Dozen: 15 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 13 May 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	53.8	61,225
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	11.2	12,733
3	3	Tera	7.0	7,982
4	4	Aion	7.0	7,968
5	5	Eve Online	4.3	4,878
6	8	Metin 2	3.1	3,553
7	9	APB: Reloaded	3.0	3,368
8	7	Lord of the Rings Online	2.8	3,186
9	6	Guild Wars	2.5	2,801
10	10	Need For Speed World	1.9	2,105
11	NR	Maple Story	1.8	2,014
12	11	Star Trek Online	1.5	1,934

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:153,446 
The number of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community decreased by 4.3% compared to the previous Sunday.  This difference is entirely accounted for in the decrease in hours played by the top for games in The Digital Dozen: World of Warcraft (-4.3%), Star Wars: The Old Republic (-18%), Tear (-11.7%) and Aion (-4.8%).  Maple Story vaulted back into the list with an impressive 29% gain in hours played powered by the celebrations surrounding the 7-year anniversary of the game.  Congratulations to Nexon.


The Shadow of Diablo 3:  With the launch of Diablo 3 today I expect to see a large decrease in the number of hours played in MMORPGs next week.  With the over 1 million people who signed up for the World of Warcraft annual pass who receive Diablo 3 for free, that is 10% of the WoW player base who have already indicated they will play Diablo 3.  Can we expect to see a 10% decrease in hours played in WoW next week?

The Hulkageddon Effect - Week 2:  I received a pleasant surprise when I downloaded the average daily numbers for Eve Online's Tranquility server from Eve Offline last night.  The numbers were up-to-date.  Up until now there had been a one-week lag before the numbers appeared. 

The start point for the comparison between the Xfire data and the actual average daily number of players online was 29 April.  6 May saw both the Xfire and actual numbers increase, although the Xfire numbers only increased 0.9% while the average number of players logged in increased by 2.6%.  This past weekend, the trends in the Xfire and Eve Offline numbers disagreed for the first time since 8 April when Xfire experienced a technical problem.  The Xfire numbers when up 3.2% while the average number of players online decreased by 3.1%.

What does that say about the Xfire community?  Are they a bunch of gankers participating in Hulkageddon V with reckless abandon?  That very well could be.  I'll be interested to see the numbers next week.