| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played | +/- % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 36.5 | 7,433 | -5.1 |
| 2 | 2 | Guild Wars 2 | 15.9 | 3,246 | -4.6 |
| 3 | 3 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 12.1 | 2,471 | +49.8 |
| 4 | 7 | Elder Scrolls Online | 8.5 | 1,725 | +114.0 |
| 5 | 4 | Final Fantasy XIV | 5.4 | 1,093 | -10.2 |
| 6 | 5 | Aion | 4.5 | 923 | +0.2 |
| 7 | 6 | EVE Online | 4.4 | 898 | +5.9 |
| 8 | 8 | Tera | 4.3 | 880 | +11.8 |
| 9 | 12 | Neverwinter | 2.6 | 533 | +28.7 |
| 10 | 9 | Runescape | 2.0 | 409 | -14.6 |
| 11 | -- | Wildstar | 2.0 | 401 | N/A |
| 12 | -- | Metin 2 | 1.8 | 376 | +8.0 |
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 20,388
The weekend saw a rise in the interest in the MMORPG genre in the Xfire community. The 6% increase in the amount of time spent playing the most popular games Sunday was led by Elder Scrolls Online (+919 hours) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (+822 hours). Games seeing the biggest declines in time played were World of Warcraft (-402 hours) and Guild Wars 2 (-155 hours). Lord of the Rings Online and RIFT fell off the list Sunday, replaced by Wildstar and Metin 2. Wildstar, a game still in beta, made its first appearance while Metin 2 made an appearance in The Digital Dozen for the first time since 13 October.
A Last Chance? - To say that Elder Scrolls Online has experienced a rocky launch is a bit of an understatement. Broken quests, poor phasing mechanics, numerous other bugs plus a huge infestation of bots and advertising from gold sellers saw the hours played by the Xfire community drop almost 55% between the Sunday after launch (6 April) to last week. So why such a big change? Are patches 1.0.6 and 1.0.7 just that great? Has naming and shaming RMTers on the forums and taking down private chat improved the atmosphere that much? Or is it the additional 5 days of game time that Zenimax offered to players? Since that added game time is coming right around the time that players first 30 days would expire, my guess is that gamers are coming back because ... free game time. The question is whether the game is fixed well enough to convince players to pay for a second month. We'll find out next week.
Star Wars Day - Non-Star Wars fans may not know, but Sunday was Star Wars Day (May the fourth be with us). To celebrate, Bioware held a double-XP weekend and gave out the new MT-4T Astromech Droid Mini-Pet to all the players of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Interest in the Xfire community jumped tremendously. The question is: will they stay there?
Wildstar's Debut - Xfire support for Wildstar began on Saturday. Carbine has held beta weekends for quite some time now and Sunday the game made its Digital Dozen debut at #11 with 401 hours played. That number is rather low, with the average time played by players was 2.4 hours. Just based on this number, a #3 showing behind only WoW and GW2 on the launch weekend is a realistic expectation.
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