The Digital Dozen: 6 November 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 4 November 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	46.2	42,173	-3.6
2	2	Guild Wars 2	24.6	22,442	-21.1
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	5.4	4,938	+10.9
4	9	The War Z (Alpha)	3.9	3,599	+142.9
5	5	Aion	3.8	3,491	+3.7
6	7	Eve Online	3.3	3,002	+4.5
7	4	Metin 2	3.1	2,805	-16.7
8	6	Lord of the Rings Online	3.0	2,723	-12.4
9	8	APB: Reloaded	2.2	2,032	-5.6
10	10	Planetside 2 (Beta)	1.7	1,583	+12.8
11	--	Maple Story	1.5	1,403	+14.7
12	11	Need For Speed World	1.3	1,179	-13.6

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 121,186  

The rate of decline in the time the Xfire community spends playing MMORPGs slowed Sunday with the time only dropping 3.6%.  The games with the biggest percentage gains were The War Z (+142.9%), Maple Story (+14.7%) and Planetside 2 (+12.8%).  The games experiencing the biggest declines were Vindictus (-22.1%), Guild Wars 2 (-21.2%) and Metin 2 (-16.7%).

Server Stability - This week two of the three games that gained the most play time percentage-wise were not officially released.  The War Z, which opened in alpha on 16 October to laggy servers due to massive interest by zombie hunters, expanded its server capacity and the players poured in.  From following Sony Online Entertainment CEO John Smedley's Twitter account, Planetside 2 is working on a lot of issues and the San Diego studio fixed a lot of bugs last week.

Bargin Buying - This week once again shows that the Xfire community loves a bargain.  Maple Story returned to The Digital Dozen after a six week absence as players learned last Tuesday that Wizet was taking away the ability to create six classes on 13 November combined with special pets available in the cash shop in honor of the U.S. presidential election.  On the downside, Metin 2 lost significant time played due to the expiration of an offer.  After rising to its highest ranking of #4 last week, Metin 2 fell three spots even though the cash shop promotion that began 26 October runs through tomorrow.  The declines following a promotion sometimes come after players have already taken advantage of a deal and doesn't wait until the offer actually expires.

Event Aftermath - Another trend is that following in-game events interest in a game tends to decline.  Two games that held in-game events on 28 October saw the Xfire community spend over 20% less time playing those games on Sunday.  Vindictus fell out of The Digital Dozen after a nine-week run with a 22.1% decline following the celebration of the Nexon game's second anniversary 27-28 October.  The second game, Guild Wars 2, experienced a 21.2% decline with the end of its Halloween event.