The Digital Dozen: 12 August 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 12 August 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	59.2	54,996
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.3	7,693
3	3	Aion	5.1	4,711
4	5	Eve Online	4.8	4,432
5	6	Metin 2	3.9	3,605
6	8	APB: Reloaded	3.2	2,955
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	3.2	2,952
8	4	The Secret World	3.1	2,852
9	11	Maple Story	2.7	2,485
10	9	Guild Wars	2.4	2,276
11	12	Need For Speed World	2.3	2,148
12	10	Star Trek Online	2.0	1,827

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 128,495  

The number of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community stayed stable again this Sunday, only increasing by .4% over the previous week.  Big percentage gains by Maple Story (+18.7%), Eve Online (+14.4%) and APB: Reloaded were offset by a huge decline in play of The Secret World (-38.6%).

In The Shadow - Following Funcom's one-month celebration in The Secret World two weekends ago, the number of hours played declined by 38.6% this past Sunday.  Since 8 July, the amount of hours played has fallen by 52.5%.  I can't help but wonder if Star Wars: The Old Republic's announcement of going free-to-play has set expectations that The Secret World will soon go free-to-play as well.

Funcom came out with an investor release discussing their financial expectations for the game.  One player with a financial background came out with his own analysis of how the game is doing.  We will find out more with Funcom's next scheduled release of information on 28 August.

Carebears In Space -  Eve Online saw a 14.4% increase in hours played following the release of the Inferno 1.2 patch.  While Eve has a reputation as a cutthroat player vs. player game, Inferno patch 1.2 featured a revamp of the game's mining barges.  Will a patch aimed at carebears retain more long term interest than one aimed at combat?