The Digital Dozen: 4 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	45.4	13,335	+2.0
2	2	Guild Wars 2	13.4	3,925	-7.5
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	10.3	3,016	-0.2
4	4	Final Fantasy XIV	6.0	1,755	-1.4
5	5	EVE Online	5.2	1,518	+21.7
6	6	Tera	4.2	1,242	+8.2
7	7	Aion	3.8	1,122	+12.2
8	8	Neverwinter	2.8	827	-2.9
9	11	Planetside 2	2.4	704	+6.8
10	9	Lord of the Rings Online	2.4	703	-5.6
11	10	RIFT	2.3	663	-5.7
12	--	Runescape	1.9	569	+28.7

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 29,379

After 3 weeks of declining interest, the Xfire community increased the amount of time it spent playing the most popular MMORPGs on Sunday.  The 1.5% increase was led by EVE Online (+271 hours) while the game seeing the biggest drop in playtime was Guild Wars 2 (-320 hours).  Maple Story fell off the list while Runescape edged back on after a two-week absence.

Addition By Destruction - EVE Online is experiencing a surge in popularity due to the recent battle in B-R5RB that captured the media's attention for the destruction of a massive amount of ships valued at $300,000 worth of game time.  The Xfire community's 21.7% spike reflected the fact that so many new players logged in Sunday that CCP had to put a new player system onto its own node. This is usually only done for popular systems like the trade hubs of Jita and Amarr or any system that players notify CCP will hold a major fleet fight.

The Cycle Resumes - Guild Wars 2 saw a 7.5% decline in playtime as ArenaNet began its bi-weekly content releases again.  Sunday was the end of the cycle, with the next patch launching today.  So expect a jump in playtime next week.

About Landmark - The launch of the EverQuest Next Landmark Alpha occurred on 31 January.  Unlike some of the betas we've seen in the past, SOE looks like they are going to try to keep the servers up 24/7.  Try, because from all reports this alpha is a true alpha, complete with frequent server reboots.  If Landmark is popular enough, I will include the game in the list.  However, Xfire did not record any hours for the game on Sunday.