The Digital Dozen: 25 August 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 24 August 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	43.2	6,796	-1.6
2	2	Guild Wars 2	14.1	2,223	+2.8
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	12.2	1,925	+50.6
4	4	Final Fantasy XIV	6.0	939	+10.1
5	5	EVE Online	4.9	776	+10.2
6	7	Aion	4.2	661	+12.2
7	6	Tera	3.6	561	-16.5
8	8	Runescape	3.5	546	+5.8
9	11	Lord of the Rings Online	2.4	371	+11.1
10	9	Neverwinter	2.2	353	-10.4
11	10	Wildstar	2.0	308	-14.4
12	12	Elder Scrolls Online	1.7	273	-9.6

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 15,732

With the summer almost over and school about to start, the Xfire community headed back to their keyboards.  On Sunday, Xfire members spent 4.4% more time logged into their 12 favorite MMORPGs than the week before.  The game that drove the surge was Star Wars: The Old Republic (+647 hours) while World of Warcraft (-113 hours) and Tera (-111 hours) saw the biggest drops in interest).

Player Housing Is Popular - Star Wars: The Old Republic launched its Galactic Strongholds expansion for subscribers last Tuesday.  Not only did Bioware introduce player housing, but guild housing both on planets and in massive ships.  In addition, the Conquest system was introduced to give players in guilds an extra incentive to log in and participate in group activities.

New Content and Old Players - Patch 2.35 for Final Fantasy XIV launched on 18 August offering new beast quests, colored plumage for chocobo companions among the highlights.  Square Enix also began an event Friday to welcome players back to FFXIV.  Players who unsubbed are eligible to log back into the game for free until 1 September.

Not All Patches Are Created Equal - One game that didn't benefit from a patch Sunday was Tera.   Despite adding in the "Blast from the Past" system so max level players can run older dungeons with lower level players, many Xfire players switched from Tera to other games.