The Digital Dozen: 25 March 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 23 March 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	44.9	9,575	-5.2
2	2	Guild Wars 2	14.1	2,999	-6.8
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	10.0	2,141	-24.1
4	5	EVE Online	5.7	1,224	+5.2
5	4	Final Fantasy XIV	5.2	1,105	-15.9
6	8	Aion	4.0	845	1.8
7	7	Tera	3.6	760	-15.1
8	10	Runescape	2.9	617	+15.5
9	9	Neverwinter	2.7	568	-5.8
10	11	RIFT	2.6	554	+4.1
11	12	Planetside 2	2.2	469	-6.4
12	--	Lord of the Rings Online	2.2	466	+1.1

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 21,323

A week after many companies provided special offers to counter the effects of the Elder Scrolls Online beta, the number of hours Xfire members spent playing MMORPGs fell back down to earth.  On Sunday, the Xfire community spent 9.2% less time playing MMORPGs than the week before.  The game experiencing the biggest decline was Star Wars: The Old Republic with a drop of 679 hours.  Runescape led the few games with increases in playtime with a gain of 83 hours.  With the absence of an Elder Scrolls Online beta weekend, Lord of the Rings Online managed to reenter The Digital Dozen after a one week absence.

Rolling Out The Content - The 8th place showing for Runescape on Sunday was the game's highest ranking in 2014.  Jagex is on a roll as they plan content patches every week in March.  The patches appear limited to subscribers, thus offering another incentive for players to purchase bonds, a PLEX-like object that allows players to buy 14 days of playtime for in-game gold.  In addition to the high ranking, Sunday's 617 hours was the highest total for the game in 6 weeks.

Crash Landing - Was Bioware too concerned with Elder Scrolls Online that it forgot about the Wildstar beta held this past weekend?  Possibly not.  While Xfire members fled to play other games when not offered the incentive to play other games, Star Wars: The Old Republic's 2141 hours played on Sunday is still higher than the total played two weeks ago.