The Digital Dozen: 30 April 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 28 April 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	41.5	21,965	-2.4
2	2	Guild Wars 2	18.0	9,545	-6.2
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	11.6	6,158	-13.1
4	4	Tera	5.5	2,929	-9.1
5	6	Eve Online	4.9	2,618	+18.2
6	5	Aion	4.8	2,555	-1.6
7	7	Lord of the Rings Online	3.0	1,585	-9.3
8	8	Planetside 2	2.8	1,475	-2.1
9	9	APB: Reloaded	2.1	1,104	-14.1
10	11	Need For Speed World	2.0	1,046	-2.1
11	--	Age of Wushu	1.9	1,016	+14.9
12	10	Runescape	1.8	973	-22.5

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 52,969

The time the Xfire community spends playing the most popular MMORPGs on Sundays declined for a third straight week.  Sunday's 4.9% drop was led by Runescape (-22.5%), APB: Reloaded (-14.1%) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (-13.1%).  In the face of the decline, two games managed strong gains: Eve Online (+18.2%) and Age of Wushu (+14.9%).

A Changing of the Guard?  For the first time in the 65 week history of The Digital Dozen Metin 2 failed to make the list.  The eastern fantasy MMORPG was supplanted by the eastern martial arts MMORPG Age of Wushu.  While Metin 2 looked a lot like Dark Age of Camelot in concept with its 3 faction PvP, Age of Wushu has been favorably described as a fantasy version of Eve Online.  Age of Wushu recently launched and instead of making a big splash and then descending quickly, will the game gradually build in popularity based on word of mouth?  Time will tell.

Jagex' War On Bots - Runescape's developer Jagex has waged a war on bots for quite a while now.  This war has now reached the Old School servers that fueled Runescape's popularity and rise on The Digital Dozen and may explain the game's drop in popularity over the past few weeks.  Over the two weeks leading up to last weekend, Jagex had banned over 21,000 accounts.

Pumping Up The Base - One day after the end of CCP's annual Fanfest celebration in Iceland Eve Online saw an 18.2% increase spent playing internet spaceships.  With some of the news coming out of Reykjavik I think many players decided they needed to take some action as the summer expansion will have far-ranging effects on the economy.