The Digital Dozen: 25 February 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 23 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	44.1	12,027	-3.2
2	2	Guild Wars 2	15.8	4,308	+12.5
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.8	2,395	-14.7
4	4	EVE Online	5.6	1,516	-0.6
5	5	Final Fantasy XIV	5.3	1,436	-3.2
6	6	Tera	4.1	1,111	+8.2
7	7	Aion	3.8	1,033	+8.7
8	8	Neverwinter	2.9	803	+0.3
9	10	Planetside 2	2.8	751	+18.3
10	9	RIFT	2.5	695	+5.3
11	--	Runescape	2.5	669	+40.0
12	11	Lord of the Rings Online	2.0	559	-6.2

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 27,303

For the second week in a row, the number of hours the Xfire community spent playing its 12 most popular MMORPGs increased Sunday.  The 0.2% increase was led by Guild Wars 2 (+480 hours) while Star Wars: The Old Republic led all decliners (-414 hours).  Runescape re-entered the list after a one week abscence, replacing CABAL Online.

A Technical Glitch? - The rise and fall of the hours the Xfire community spent playing Star Wars: The Old Republic has left me scratching my head.  I don't understand how the game saw such big swings over the past two weeks.  I could understand if the game experienced a big drop last week and then a big gain Sunday.  But the reverse happened.  The net effect is that over the past 2 weeks, SW:TOR playtime increased by a total of 10 hours.

Escaping Lion's Arch - EVE Online is not the only game in which death and destruction can draw in players.  On 18 February Scarlet Briar launched a massive attack on the main city of Lion's Arch.  Game companies don't usually destroy their main player hubs, but ArenaNet is doing so.  How can players resist participating, or at least rubbernecking, at such an event?