The Digital Dozen: 13 August 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 11 August 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	40.0	15,223	+0.3
2	2	Guild Wars 2	20.3	7,725	+12.5
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	10.1	3,826	+6.5
4	4	EVE Online	6.0	2,298	+1.3
5	5	Aion	5.5	2,081	+4.8
6	6	Tera	3.2	1,231	+2.1
7	7	Neverwinter	2.9	1,115	-5.4
8	8	Planetside 2	2.9	1,087	+3.8
9	T11	Lord of the Rings Online	2.6	1,002	+16.2
10	9	RIFT	2.4	915	-12.3
11	--	APB: Reloaded	2.2	827	+12.2
12	--	Firefall	1.8	701	+2.5

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 38,031

With the end of summer just a few weeks away, the Xfire community's interest in MMORPG's is picking up.  For the second time in three weeks the amount of time spent playing the 12 most popular of the games increased; this Sunday by 2.7%.  The surge was led in percentage terms by Lord of the Rings Online (+16.2%), Guild Wars 2 (+12.5%), and APB: Reloaded (+12.2%).  The two games with the biggest drops in interest, Runescape (-35.9%) and Metin 2 (-22.2%) fell out of the top 12.

Party Time - Last week saw the introduction of the Queen's Jubilee to Guild Wars 2.  The lastest installation of ArenaNet's every other week content patch led to Xfire members spending the most time playing the game since 9 June.

Titans of Industry - Star Wars The Old Republic witnessed a 6.5% gain in play time Sunday following the launch of its 2.3 patch called Titans of Industry.  The new story arc and two new level 55 flashpoints brought back players, although not with the same success as Guild Wars 2's Queen's Jubliee.  Sunday's increase did not offset the previous week's decline.

Boredom Setting In? - I can't help but wonder if all the new shiny content from all the other games are leading to a drain on RIFT players.  The last content patch, Summerfest, launched on 25 July and is an iteration on previous summer events.  Apparently the news that Scott Hartsman returning to Trion as its new CEO did not excite players.