| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played | +/- % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 36.3 | 26,034 | -2.7 |
| 2 | 2 | Guild Wars 2 | 22.3 | 16,026 | +14.1 |
| 3 | 3 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 9.7 | 6,962 | -7.7 |
| 4 | 7 | Tera | 5.9 | 4,266 | +73.9 |
| 5 | 4 | Aion | 4.9 | 3,536 | -16.9 |
| 6 | 5 | Eve Online | 4.9 | 3,533 | +9.8 |
| 7 | 6 | Planetside 2 | 3.3 | 2,387 | -15.0 |
| 8 | 8 | Lord of the Rings Online | 3.1 | 2,228 | -4.8 |
| 9 | 9 | Metin 2 | 2.7 | 1,922 | -7.0 |
| 10 | 10 | The War Z | 2.6 | 1,877 | -8.8 |
| 11 | 12 | Star Trek Online | 2.1 | 1,524 | +11.2 |
| 12 | 11 | APB: Reloaded | 2.1 | 1,505 | -7.7 |
The Xfire community saw a slight bounce back from last week's drop in interest of playing MMORPG's, with player's increasing their playtime by 1.2%. Games leading the rise were Tera (+73.9%), Guild Wars 2 (+14.1%) and Star Trek Online (+11.2%) while the games seeing the biggest loss of interest were Aion (-16.9%) and Planetside 2 (-15.0%).
The Tera Wave - Today Tera launches its free-to-play version TERA: Rising. Tera's march to free-to-play reminds me of Aion's progress last year except that the NCSoft game started at a much higher place. I expect to see a lot of the free-to-play games on the list continue to fall next week as players leave their games to finally check Tera out. Guild Wars 2 is bucking the trend on the strength of their update last Monday that introduced the living story and a revamp to the dynamic leveling system. Can they continue?
Left In The Dust? - While other free-to-play games are falling to Tera, what is causing the decline in Planetside 2's popularity? Is it the prevalence of aimbots? Is SOE having bug issues? If so, then perhaps CCP's MMOFPS DUST 514 is luring some gamers away from the PC to their consoles. Of course, DUST 514 is a PS3 exclusive so not all players have the option to switch. On the other hand, perhaps the DUST 514 open beta, which began 22 January, will not hold players and we will see the numbers trickle back up over the coming weeks.
One Year Of The Digital Dozen - Today marks the end of the first year of The Digital Dozen. For those interested, this is what the first chart looked like...
Starting 7 February 2012 I've presented the list every week, even managing to do so while in Iceland for CCP's Fanfest. I'd like to thank everyone who's given me encouragement during the past year and I hope to continue writing this column for a long time to come.
| Rank | Game | Score | Hours Played |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | World of Warcraft | 49.8 | 88,221 |
| 2 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 25.2 | 44,717 |
| 3 | Guild Wars | 4.0 | 7,078 |
| 4 | Star Trek Online | 3.2 | 5,757 |
| 5 | Aion | 3.0 | 5,338 |
| 6 | Eve Online | 2.7 | 4,771 |
| 7 | Maple Story | 2.6 | 4,540 |
| 8 | Lord of the Rings Online | 2.5 | 4,465 |
| 9 | Need For Speed World | 2.0 | 3,559 |
| 10 | APB: Reloaded | 1.7 | 2,995 |
| 11 | Metin 2 | 1.7 | 2,955 |
| 12 | Rift | 1.6 | 2,806 |
Starting 7 February 2012 I've presented the list every week, even managing to do so while in Iceland for CCP's Fanfest. I'd like to thank everyone who's given me encouragement during the past year and I hope to continue writing this column for a long time to come.
"what is causing the decline in Planetside 2's popularity?"
ReplyDeleteit the latest patch they released, its a game breaker...
to play the game ATM is like watching a slideshow and there is nothing ppl can do unless they are running exceedingly over powered computers due to the game trying 2 render EVERYTHING that the player is looking at even if they can't see it...
i cant play the game its horrid.. and nothing i can do will fix it, expect it to drop until its fixed
The worst part is that you can't turn down the settings either, because if you do, the entire game becomes so blurry you can't see anything 50 meters ahead of you. It's like there's this heavy anti-aliasing that can't be turned off.
DeleteI would love to play Dust instead of PS2, but fuck buying a console for it.
ReplyDeleteStop being hardheads and bring the game to the PC where it belongs, CCP.
Putting DUST 514 on the PC would be one of the dumbest things CCP could do. Forget about the business aspect of wanting to expand the player base instead of just cannibalizing Eve to populate DUST. Planetside 2 has a horrible problem with aimbots. The same would happen in a PC version of DUST. And do Eve players really want sov determined by who has the best aimbot?
DeleteBesides what Noizy pointed out, from what I've seen so far the game looks much like any other generic below average FPS.
DeleteI love this list and I don't use X-Fire or play most of these games :D
ReplyDeleteThanks, and keep up the good work :)
ReplyDelete