The Digital Dozen: 5 March 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 3 March 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	35.6	23,739	+5.8
2	2	Guild Wars 2	19.6	13,060	+12.7
3	3	Tera	9.5	6,301	-2.5
4	4	Star Wars: The Old Republic	9.3	6,183	-3.9
5	5	Aion	4.8	3,176	-3.0
6	6	Eve Online	4.5	3,027	-5.3
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	2.8	1,889	-7.2
8	8	Planetside 2	2.8	1,879	+7.1
9	--	RuneScape	2.6	1,766	+62.6
10	10	Metin 2	2.6	1,750	+13.2
11	9	The War Z	2.2	1,450	-15.7
12	12	Star Trek Online	1.9	1,251	+6.8

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 66,643

 

Interest in the most popular games in the Xfire community rose 6.1% last week on the strength of more interest in the games at the top of The Digital Dozen.  In percentage terms, the games showing the largest gains in interest were RuneScape (+62.6%), Metin 2 (+13.2%) and Guild Wars 2 (+12.7%).  The game seeing the biggest decline in interest was The War Z (-15.7%).

 

 

Fool me once.  The War Z saw a big spike in interest when it originally appeared on Steam in December but Valve quickly pulled the game for deceptive advertising.  Last week The War Z reappeared on Steam but the Xfire community turned its back on the game.  I guess not all publicity is good after all.

 

Blast from the past.  RuneScape made its initial appearance on the list this week based on the strength of the launch of old school servers.  The servers are using the 2007 rules set and apparently are popular.  Is today's player ready for more challenging games, at least compared to some of the new title's today?

 

Patches at the top.  Last week saw the introduction of World of Warcraft's Patch 5.2 on the public test realm and Guild Wars 2's Frost and Flame: The Gathering Storm on the live servers helping to account for this week's overall gains.  Expect another gain next week as Patch 5.2 is scheduled to go live today.

End of a streak.  APB: Reloaded was one of the original games on The Digital Dozen and for the first time in 57 weeks did not qualify for listing.  The game owned and published by K2 Network is not dead as the Xfire community only played 1.8% less than the week before.  Other games, like Tera and RuneScape just launched with new/old content and leapfrogged ahead.  While The War Z's decline could allow the game to sneak back into the top 12, I expect Defiance, which launches next month, to potentially keep APB: Reloaded from re-entering The Digital Dozen.