The Digital Dozen: 30 July 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 28 July 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	40.6	15,600	+2.3
2	2	Guild Wars 2	18.7	7,194	+5.7
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	10.0	3,835	+10.1
4	4	EVE Online	5.4	2,078	-3.4
5	5	Aion	4.1	1,570	-15.0
6	6	Neverwinter	4.1	1,560	+11.0
7	7	Tera	3.7	1,414	+4.7
8	8	RIFT	3.4	1,314	+2.2
9	11	APB: Reloaded	2.7	1,046	+23.4
10	12	Metin 2	2.5	959	+16.8
11	--	Maple Story	2.5	942	+36.1
12	10	Lord of the Rings Online	2.4	928	+8.3

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 38,440

Sunday saw the Xfire community take a greater interest in MMORPGs, with the first increase in the amount of time spent playing the most popular games in 5 weeks.  The 3.8% increase was led in percentage terms by Maple Story (+36.1%), APB:Reloaded (+23.4%) and Metin 2 (+16.8%).  The only game to suffer a large decline was Aion (-15%).

Return of the Gree - Star Wars: The Old Republic saw a 10.1% increase in playtime by the Xfire community Sunday as Bioware brought back the Gree.  From 23 July to 6 August the ancient Gree starship returns to Ilum bringing a new speeder for players to earn.

Arresting the slide - Perfect World stopped the slide that Neverwinter was making down the list with a weekend of added boxes that could drop while adventuring in the game.  The promotion ran from Friday to Monday and saw Xfire members play the game 11% more on Sunday than the week before.

The Two Week Pulse - Guild Wars 2 continued its roller coaster ride, this time upwards, with the release of Cutthroat Politics on the 23rd.  Players presumably get to vote on the future storyline of the Living World, with the choices between war hero Ellen Kiel and Black Lion trader Evon Gnashblade.  Just to make the contest interesting, players can perform tasks to get more than one vote.  We'll see if such an incentive can break the recent string of down ticks on week's without a content patch.