The Digital Dozen: 9 October 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 7 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	50.2	60,201	-11.1
2	2	Guild Wars 2	29.7	35,611	-12.7
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	3.7	4,428	-12.5
4	4	Aion	3.0	3,656	-10.8
5	5	Eve Online	2.8	3,351	-2.7
6	6	Metin 2	2.5	3,047	-3.6
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	1.9	2,230	+0.8
8	8	APB: Reloaded	1.6	1,860	-8.0
9	--	Planetside 2 (Beta)	1.3	1,606	--
10	9	Need For Speed World	1.2	1,494	-3.9
11	10	Star Trek Online	1.0	1,306	-5.6
12	11	Vindictus	1.0	1,198	-5.5

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 144,735  

The Xfire community sent 10.2% less time playing MMORPGs on Sunday than the week before.  The decline ran across the board with 11 of the 12 games seeing less playtime.  The only game that defied the trend was Lord of the Rings Online which saw a 0.8% gain in time played.

A technical glitch? I don't really have any proof to back this assertion up, but I think Xfire possibly had a glitch in its storing of data.  While the dip in Guild Wars 2 follows a trend and the drop for SW:TOR could indicate player dissatisfaction with patch 1.4, I find it a little hard to believe an 11% drop so soon for Mists of Pandaria.  Combine that with the fact that Eve Online experienced a 2.7% decline while seeing peak concurrent users rise by over 7% compared to the Sunday before and something may have happened.

Another beta.  In good news for Sony Online Entertainment Planetside 2 landed in the beta even though the game is still in closed beta.  The game is still unpolished with areas still unfinished but players are anxious to play.  For those interested in the game SOE President John Smedley is very active on Twitter responding to people.  His Twitter account is @j_smedley.

Sci-fi's gains.  With Planetside 2's debut science fiction games now hold four of the spots on The Digital Dozen.  PS2 may slip down again but its performance this early in the beta process indicates that the game will have a place on the list when it finally goes live.  With four sci-fi games and two driving games, the list shows that MMOs today are about more than elves and dwarves.