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Tuesday, January 14, 2014

The Digital Dozen: 14 January 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 12 January 2014.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.

Rank Prev Week Game ScoreHours Played +/- %
11World of Warcraft 47.6 14,568+0.9
22Guild Wars 212.53,823-6.2
33Star Wars: The Old Republic8.92,740-4.6
44Final Fantasy XIV7.32,227-8.0
55EVE Online3.81,167-16.6
66Aion3.71,137-11.4
77Tera3.61,133-3.6
88Lord of the Rings Online3.2972-9.1
99Neverwinter3.1952+10.3
1011Planetside 22.4736-2.5
1110RIFT2.3701-13.1
1212Runescape1.6485-27.7
 
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 30,621

The Xfire community resumed its slow decline in playing MMORPGs on Sunday, with this week's decline in playing the 12 most popular games declining by 3.7%.  Ten of the twelve games lost ground, with Guild Wars 2 (-253 hours) and EVE Online (-233 hours) leading the way.  The two games that attracted more time played Sunday were World of Warcraft (+134 hours) and Neverwinter (+89 hours).

Server Merges and Hotfixes - On Thursday Blizzard connected six sets of World of Warcraft realms.  As far as I can tell, "connecting realms" is very close to actually merging the servers.   Combined with the deployment of hotfixes on Friday, was that enough to keep the overall player base interested.  I don't know, but the Xfire community actually spent slightly more time on Sunday playing WoW as compared to the week before.

Don't Blame Elder Scrolls - Despite conducting a beta test weekend, I highly doubt that Elder Scrolls Online is the cause of the across the board drop in playtime Sunday.  Usually when a beta has that type of effect, the game is visible in the Xfire rankings.  I didn't see that Sunday.




1 comment:

  1. I honestly believe, that the decline in MMORPGs activity due to a natural evolution of the internet. 10-12 years ago MMO's were an excellent way to make connections with other human beings. MMO's were before facebook, before blogs, before, tumblr, reddit, & steam. The Teen to Young Adult have dozens of more options to make connections that averaged gamer did not have even 7 years ago. Plus, there are soooooooooooooo many more choices now. This not only divides up the population per game but also leads to a "Lets try the newest shiny" play style.

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