The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players
of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 12 May 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 | 35.0 | 19,362 | -4.9 |
| 2 | 2 | Guild Wars 2 | 16.6 | 9,170 | +2.8 |
| 3 | -- | Neverwinter | 14.3 | 7,907 | -- |
| 4 | 3 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 10.1 | 5,572 | +0.0 |
| 5 | 4 | EVE Online | 4.7 | 2,592 | -11.3 |
| 6 | 5 | Tera | 4.4 | 2,418 | -5.2 |
| 7 | 6 | Aion | 4.3 | 2,356 | +7.5 |
| 8 | 7 | Planetside 2 | 2.6 | 1,424 | -15.3 |
| 9 | 8 | Lord of the Rings Online | 2.4 | 1,315 | -9.0 |
| 10 | 11 | Ragnarok Online 2 | 2.2 | 1,203 | +24.7 |
| 11 | -- | Need For Speed World | 1.8 | 1,016 | +28.8 |
| 12 | -- | Metin 2 | 1.7 | 950 | +17.3 |
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 55,285
Volatility was the word of the day Sunday as the Xfire community spent 14.7% more time playing the twelve most popular MMORPGs compared to the previous week. Three games, Maple Story (-30.5%), APB: Reloaded (-22.4%) and Runescape (-11.0%) experienced large declines and dropped off the list. The games making the list this week were the newly released Neverwinter and two returning games, Need For Speed World (+28.8%) and Metin 2 (+17.3).
Overlooked - With all the press surrounding new games like Neverwinter and Elder Scrolls Online, Ragnarok Online 2 snuck up on me unobserved. The sequel to the original game created by GRAVITY that debuted in North America in June 2003, Ragnarok Online 2 should have appeared on The Digital Dozen list last week and that post was updated with the correct information yesterday.
RO2 may have legs although with some of the big name games still due to make appearances this year I expect RO2 to remain in the bottom half of the list. Still, the games current position at the top of Steam's Free To Play list should help.
D&D Revisited - Perfect World released Neverwinter, its new game based on the D&D Forgotten Realms campaign setting last week. The launch was a success with the game debuting at #3 on The Digital Dozen. The question now is will a F2P model at launch along with a more popular setting lead to more success than Turbine's Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Birthday Hangovers - Two games that celebrated birthdays, CCP's EVE Online and Nexon's Maple Story, experienced big declines last week. EVE Online, after setting a new PCU record the previous week, saw a decline of 11.3%. Maple Story experienced an even bigger decline on the second weekend of its month-long 8th anniversary celebration at 30.5%. The unusual part of the story is that Saturday was the actual 8th anniversary of the game. I guess a party really can't last for a month.
My humble opinions:
ReplyDeleteNeverwinter - the new shinny factor will soon end, as happens to all games launched, but with Neverwinter that will be faster, because there is really nothing that the game brings. After I played it I agree with Nils: "The core of Neverwinter (combat) is not D&D at all and the MMO part is an inferior single player game" (http://nilsmmoblog.blogspot.com.br/2013/05/neverwinter.html#more)
I don't think anyone should be blamed for forgetting about RO2 after the years it spent in development hell... I am afraid it won't remain in the bottom half of the list or the list at all, although I guess we'll see whether the WoE patch helps. However the Korean version is only getting it now, more than a year after the launch.
ReplyDeleteThe link you posted is for SE Asia version (primarily for MY, SG, TH and VN although EU and America were not blocked), I think more people would be interested in the iRO (North American) version at http://www.playragnarok2.com/
Thanks for the link. I've updated the one I originally used.
Delete