The Digital Dozen: 16 October 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 14 October 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	50.9	55,396	-8.0
2	2	Guild Wars 2	27.3	29,700	-16.6
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	4.1	4,499	+1.6
4	4	Aion	3.1	3,375	-7.7
5	5	Eve Online	2.8	3,055	-8.8
6	6	Metin 2	2.6	2,822	-7.4
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	2.3	2,522	+13.1
8	8	APB: Reloaded	1.9	2,057	+10.6
9	10	Need For Speed World	1.4	1,572	+5.2
10	9	Planetside 2 (Beta)	1.3	1,466	-8.7
11	11	Star Trek Online	1.1	1,170	-10.4
12	12	Vindictus	1.1	1,159	-3.3

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 133,484  

Sunday saw the Xfire community spend 7.8% less time playing MMORPGs than the week before.   Percentage-wise the big gainers for the week were Lord of the Rings Online (+13.1%) and APB:Reloaded (+10.6%) while the game seeing the biggest decline was Guild Wars 2 (-16.6%).

Falling Faster Than Felix - For the fifth week in a row the time the Xfire community has spent playing Guild Wars 2 has declined by more than 12.5%.  Since 2 September the number of hours played has fallen by 68%.  Has anyone started asking if GW2 is dying?  I won't, but I am not willing to predict where the game will bottom out.

Prelude To Free-To-Play - I keep wondering when Star Wars: The Old Republic will finally reach bottom.  With Game Update 1.5 now on the public test server I think players will soon be able to at least begin playing for free soon.  I had heard that would occur in November but I could not find a link to confirm the date.  Despite its nearly year-long fall, SW:TOR is still the third ranked game and I wonder if the game will remain more popular than Aion, at least among Xfire members.