The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players
of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 20 September 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 | 43.5 | 15,875 | +7.8 |
| 2 | 2 | Guild Wars 2 | 16.5 | 6,017 | +11.9 |
| 3 | 3 | Final Fantasy XIV | 10.3 | 3,768 | -2.7 |
| 4 | 4 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 9.5 | 3,457 | +3.6 |
| 5 | 5 | EVE Online | 4.4 | 1,619 | +2.1 |
| 6 | 6 | Tera | 3.4 | 1,224 | +3.9 |
| 7 | 7 | Lord of the Rings Online | 2.5 | 1,117 | +30.8 |
| 8 | 8 | RIFT | 2.3 | 847 | +2.7 |
| 9 | 9 | Planetside 2 | 1.8 | 667 | -2.1 |
| 10 | -- | Infestation: Survivor Stories | 1.7 | 637 | +76.0 |
| 11 | 10 | Neverwinter | 1.7 | 631 | +2.9 |
| 12 | 11 | Aion | 1.7 | 610 | +2.9 |
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 36,469
Sunday saw the end of a four week slide in the Xfire community's interest in MMORPGs. In a week that saw a 6.8% increase in the time spent playing the 12 most popular games, only 2 games experienced a decline in interest. In addition to big increases in the top two games, World of Warcraft (1,148 hours) and Guild Wars 2 (641 hours), two other games experienced big increases in percentage terms, Infestation: Survivor Stories (+76%) and Lord of the Rings Online (+30.8%).
The Game That Won't Die - Fittingly, Infestation: Survivor Stories is a game about killing zombies. Why? The game formerly known as The War Z has experienced horrible Steam launches, account and system hacks as well as losing a copyright infringement suit but has managed to make it into the Digital Dozen one more time. I wasn't able to figure out what caused the big jump in interest, but I do see that that game is back on Steam. Does being on Steam negate a Metacritic score of 20? Looks like the answer to that question is yes.
Boosting Interest - Turbine decided to ramp up interest in the next Lord of the Rings Online expansion, Helm's Deep, by granting an XP boost. Not for a weekend, but for a full month. That's right, starting on 18 October all the way to launch on 17 November, players will receive a 100% XP boost to help get them to the level cap. Looks like a lot of players are returning to take advantage of the offer.
Celebrating Halloween - Is the increased interest in both World of Warcraft (+7.8%) and Guild Wars 2 (+11.9%) related to Halloween? Of course! On 15 October ArenaNet launched the Blood and Madness event in GW2 while Blizzard launched Hallow's End three days later. GW2 received and extra boost as ArenaNet held a one-day only 40% off sale on Sunday.
IMHO, the changes GW2 made to wvw (last friday) had more effect than the halloween event. All wvw maps are full, with long queues. I too can note that your data show that GW2 events were losing force mantaining players, so be open to possibility was not the halloween event the cause for the GW2 players surge.
ReplyDeletePeople use xfire? I had no idea. I uninstalled it after more than a year of finding no one I played online with who used it.
ReplyDeleteNone of my friends use Xfire anymore either. Pretty much defunct due to Steam Friends. But I still keep it installed and logged in just to track the hours I spend in my games, since 2006. Interesting to look at the tens of thousands of hours spread out.
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