The Digital Dozen: 26 February 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 10 February 2013.  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	35.7	22,442	-5.2
2	2	Guild Wars 2	18.4	11,590	-13.1
3	4	Tera	10.3	6,460	+0.4
4	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	10.2	6,436	-7.3
5	5	Aion	5.2	3,274	-11.5
6	6	Eve Online	5.1	3,196	+4.1
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	3.2	2,036	-3.7
8	9	Planetside 2	2.8	1,755	-14.3
9	8	The War Z	2.7	1,721	-17.8
10	10	Metin 2	2.5	1,546	-16.6
11	11	APB: Reloaded	1.9	1,194	-16.5
12	12	Star Trek Online	1.9	1,171	-3.3

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 62,821

 

The Xfire community once again saw its interest in playing MMORPGs dwindle, with the number of hours spent playing the 12 most popular games declining by 7.5%.  Ten of the twelve games saw a drop in playtime, led in percentage terms by The War Z (-17.8%), Metin 2 (-16.6%) and APB: Reloaded (-16.5%).  The two games that saw an increase in playtime were Eve Online (+4.1%) and Tera (+0.4%).

Change is Bad?  I didn't like the changes to the Xfire site 3 weeks ago and I possibly was not alone.  Over the past 3 weeks the number of hours played has declined 12%.

Four of a Kind:  For the first time in the history of the Digital Dozen four games, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars 2, Tera and Star Wars: The Old Republic, have double-digit scores.  Does this represent weakness in the perennial heavyweight WoW or are we seeing new games launched over the past 15 months making their mark on the genre?

More Servers:  The increasing rank of Tera on the list isn't a fluke event just occurring within the Xfire community.  On 12 February En Masse added 2 PvE and 1 PvP server as well as limit character creation on the four most popular servers.