| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played | +/- % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 45.1 | 13,668 | -9.0 |
| 2 | 2 | Guild Wars 2 | 12.7 | 3,856 | -7.6 |
| 3 | 3 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 8.7 | 2,640 | -8.8 |
| 4 | 4 | Final Fantasy XIV | 7.1 | 2,142 | +21.6 |
| 5 | 6 | Aion | 4.9 | 1,472 | +5.6 |
| 6 | 5 | EVE Online | 3.8 | 1,149 | -25.7 |
| 7 | 8 | Tera | 3.4 | 1,035 | 0.0 |
| 8 | -- | Planetside 2 | 3.4 | 1,016 | +72.5 |
| 9 | 7 | Neverwinter | 3.3 | 998 | -11.1 |
| 10 | 9 | Lord of the Rings Online | 3.1 | 936 | -0.4 |
| 11 | 11 | Maple Story | 2.4 | 728 | -7.5 |
| 12 | 10 | RIFT | 2.3 | 686 | -15.9 |
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 30,326
On the last Sunday before Christmas, the Xfire community did some last minute shopping as the number of hours it spent playing the most popular MMORPGs declined by 5.5% over the previous week. The game with the biggest drop in playtime was World of Warcraft with 1357 fewer hours played than the week before. The games bucking the negative trend were Planetside 2 (+427 hours), Final Fantasy XIV (+380 hours) and Aion (+78 hours).
Optimized Result - Planetside 2 stormed back onto the Digital Dozen after a one-week absence Sunday. The 72.5% increase in playtime was based on another optimization patch released last week. Or possibly the chance to shoot snowmen.
Another Patch: Last week Square Enix released patch 2.1 for Final Fantasy XIV. Despite an extended downtime of 24 hours to deploy the patch and a housing system panned as too expensive, the Xfire community spent 21.6% more time playing the game compared to the week before.
Leaving Jita: EVE Online suffered the largest percentage decline of any game on the list in time played on Sunday. But this isn't new territory for CCP's flagship game. Last year on the Sunday before Christmas, EVE Online suffered a 14.3% decline in time played, which was the second largest decline that week. Do EVE players just wait until the last minute to do their Christmas shopping?
Player base age.
ReplyDeleteOver half of my corporation is off with family or herding children. Publicly celebrated days off tend not to give adults free personal time. Eve has always functioned on somewhat of a reverse of normal games high and lows. Busy during the winter, slow in the summer, slow on holidays, etc.