The Digital Dozen: 15 April 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 13 April 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	36.5	4,779	-39.2
2	2	Guild Wars 2	15.0	1,967	-40.1
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	12.6	1,651	-10.8
4	4	Elder Scrolls Online	7.1	929	-47.8
5	5	Final Fantasy XIV	6.2	810	-41.9
6	6	EVE Online	4.9	642	-28.8
7	7	Aion	3.9	506	-40.3
8	8	Tera	3.4	439	-40.2
9	11	RIFT	3.1	410	-5.1
10	10	Neverwinter	2.4	319	-35.4
11	12	Planetside 2	2.4	316	-18.8
12	9	Runescape	2.4	314	-38.7

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 13,082

Normally I would begin this post with a comparison of Sunday with the weekend before.  But something happened with Xfire not recording hours, with a decline of 36.1% in hours recorded over the previous Sunday.  Because the problem apparently affected most games equally, I recorded the Digital Dozen scores and hopefully when the problem is resolved the score will make sense.

Everyone Loves Huttball - One reason that Star Wars: The Old Republic did not see a drastic decline in hours played was the release of Game Update 2.7: Invasion.  Bioware is doing a variation on Guild Wars 2's Living Story, with Invasion beginning a new epic storyline arc with the introduction of two major characters and two new flashpoints.  The storyline will have two more releases spaced throughout the rest of the year.  Also among the new features are new Huttball and Galactic Starfighter maps.

Mounts - RIFT is another game that did very well on Sunday.  The only event that stood out for over the weekend was Budgie week.  Players are able to get mounts and partake in racing events.

Azeroth Choppers - Since I really can't do a comprehensive post today, I thought I'd include the mention of a cool little project that Blizzard is doing.  On Thursday, an 8-part web series will begin called Azeroth Choppers.  A famous motorcycle designer will oversee the building of two motorcycles, with the most popular one becoming an in-game mount.  The last episode will probably come out sometime in early June.  I'll finish this post with the introductory video.