| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 48.6 | 54,286 |
| 2 | NR | Guild Wars 2 (Beta) | 18.4 | 20,603 |
| 3 | 2 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 7.2 | 8,041 |
| 4 | 3 | The Secret World | 4.5 | 5,016 |
| 5 | 4 | Aion | 4.3 | 4,821 |
| 6 | 5 | Eve Online | 3.6 | 4,053 |
| 7 | 6 | Metin 2 | 3.1 | 3,488 |
| 8 | 7 | Lord of the Rings Online | 2.7 | 2,730 |
| 9 | 9 | APB: Reloaded | 2.0 | 2,251 |
| 10 | 10 | Tera | 1.9 | 2,164 |
| 11 | 8 | Maple Story | 1.9 | 2,147 |
| 12 | 11 | Star Trek Online | 1.9 | 2,079 |
The Xfire community saw the amount of time spent playing MMORPGs increase for a fifth consecutive week, increasing by 7.7% over the previous Sunday. The increase was powered by the final Guild Wars 2 beta weekend as all other games saw their playtime decrease. The game suffering the smallest decrease percentage-wise was World of Warcraft (-1.5%) while four games, Maple Story (-21.5%), The Secret World (-20.6%), Lord of the Rings Online (-19.8%) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (-19.7%) all saw declines around 20%.
The WoW Killer? With a strong final beta performance Sunday, Guild Wars 2 is in position to threaten World of Warcraft's years-long hold of the top stop of the Xfire MMORPG chart. The Sunday numbers actually understate interest in GW2 as the Xfire community spent 26,152 hours in the beta on Saturday. If the ArenaNet offering comes close to duplicating EA/Bioware's 2 million box sales of SW:TOR then Guild Wars 2 will top the charts by a wide margin.
A Tale Of Two Games: Of the four games that suffered a 20% drop-off in time played, two of them were subscription games. The Secret World only released 3 weeks ago and is nearing the point where those playing since launch have to decide whether to pay their first sub fee. Is GW2 enticing enough to lure players away? The second game is SW:TOR. The Bioware game apparently lost all the players it gained with the launch of the free trial that allows players to play a character up to level 15. Was this past Sunday an indication that players are just hanging around playing SW:TOR for free until GW2 launches? We'll know the answers to those questions in a few weeks.
No point talking about WoW killer until a game actually comes top. If GW2 can't get first place when WoW is late-expansion, content played to death, summer doldrums, virtually in aestivation mode and GW2 is new, free and fresh then it's not killed WoW.
ReplyDeleteEven if GW2 comes out, does well for a month then most players go back to WoW it's not a WoW killer.
Talk to us about WoW killers if GW2 is top 3 months after it comes out.