The Digital Dozen: 11 December 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 9 December 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	38.7	28,770	-14.4
2	2	Guild Wars 2	18.2	13,540	-11.5
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	10.9	8,070	-15.7
4	4	Planetside 2	7.6	5,684	-6.6
5	6	Eve Online	5.1	3,815	+25.8
6	5	Aion	4.3	3,232	-1.2
7	9	The War Z (Alpha)	3.4	2,494	+25.9
8	7	Lord of the Rings Online	2.8	2,116	-13.2
9	11	Maple Story	2.4	1,802	+57.2
10	8	Metin 2	2.3	1,716	-15.9
11	10	APB: Reloaded	2.3	1,700	+8.7
12	--	Star Trek Online	1.9	1,375	+29.2

  Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 94,950  

In a week that saw wild swings in game popularity the Xfire community spent 8.2% fewer hours playing MMORPGs than the previous Sunday.  The games experiencing the largest gains percentage-wise were Maple Story (57.2%), Star Trek Online (29.2%) and The War Z (25.9%).  The games experiencing the largest declines were Need For Speed World (-21.4%), Metin 2 (-15.9%) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (-15.7%).

Software Upgrade - Often we see players rush into a game because of an expansion or an in-game event.  Maple Story went one better as the game launched a Windows 8 compatible version on 5 December.  The version is compatible with both the 32 and 64 bit versions.

Culture In Space - Eve Online's 25.8% gain in play last week was not just due to the Retribution expansion that launched on 4 December.  The Museum of Modern Art of New York has chosen Eve Online as one of 14 titles to display in a video game exhibit.  As part of that effort CCP put out a call for players to record video of interesting game play on Sunday.  Eve players responded with PCU on Sunday exceeding 54,000 players.  Expect lower numbers next weekend.