The Digital Dozen: 11 February 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 2 February 2014.  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	44.6	12,143	-8.9
2	2	Guild Wars 2	13.8	3,747	-4.5
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.8	2,385	-20.9
4	4	Final Fantasy XIV	5.6	1,515	-13.7
5	5	EVE Online	5.0	1,369	-9.8
6	7	Aion	4.5	1,222	+8.9
7	6	Tera	4.4	1,187	-4.4
8	8	Neverwinter	3.3	896	+8.3
9	11	RIFT	2.9	798	+20.4
10	9	Planetside 2	2.6	718	+2.0
11	12	Runescape	2.4	641	+12.7
12	10	Lord of the Rings Online	2.3	626	+2.3

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 27,247

On Sunday the Xfire community turned away from MMORPGs, with the amount of time spent playing its favorite games in the genre declined by 7.3%.  RIFT's leading 135 hour gain was dwarfed by big declines in the time spent playing World of Warcraft (-1,192 hours) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (-631 hours).  For the first time in 2014, no game dropped out of the Digital Dozen on Sunday.

What Happened? - The 7.3% decline in time was the largest since the 8.4% decline that occurred on 6 October.  Back then, I attributed the decline to the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online.  Last week saw the opening of the Winter Olympics in Sochi as well as the launch of the EverQuest Next Landmark alpha.  In addition, the Elder Scrolls Online beta picked up steam, with Xfire tracking participants for the first time this weekend.  Sunday saw Xfire members spend 285 hours in the ESO beta.

RIFT Happens - The most successful game at bucking the negative trend was RIFT.  Not only did Trion hold a 50% XP weekend for all subscribers, but they also gave away Frosty Budgie mounts to race winners.  Expect RIFT to continue to surge as patch 2.6 is scheduled to launch tomorrow.

Crash And Burn - Star Wars: The Old Republic witnessed a 20.9% reduction in the amount of time the Xfire community spent playing the Bioware offering.  That is surprising considering that the Galactic Starfighter expansion launched to all free-to-play players on 4 February.  Perhaps most SW:TOR players in the Xfire community are subscribers or preferred players.  But not really a good sign.