| Rank | Prev Week | Game | Score | Hours Played | +/- % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | World of Warcraft | 47.1 | 6,732 | +2.1 |
| 2 | 2 | Guild Wars 2 | 12.8 | 1,835 | +6.1 |
| 3 | 3 | Star Wars: The Old Republic | 11.0 | 1,572 | +3.0 |
| 4 | 5 | EVE Online | 5.3 | 761 | +17.1 |
| 5 | 4 | Final Fantasy XIV | 4.9 | 700 | -11.6 |
| 6 | 6 | Aion | 3.7 | 535 | -9.9 |
| 7 | 7 | Tera | 3.5 | 502 | -1.0 |
| 8 | 8 | Runescape | 3.4 | 488 | +5.6 |
| 9 | 9 | Lord of the Rings Online | 2.6 | 376 | +2.4 |
| 10 | 10 | Neverwinter | 1.9 | 277 | -6.4 |
| 11 | 11 | Planetside 2 | 1.8 | 263 | 0.0 |
| 12 | -- | ArcheAge | 1.7 | 249 | -- |
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 14,290
With Xfire working two weeks in a row, the data collected looks normal again. On Sunday, the Xfire community spent 1.9% more hours playing its favorite MMORPGs than the week before. In raw numbers, World of Warcraft (+138 hours) saw the biggest spike in time played while Final Fantasy XIV (-92 hours) experienced the biggest drop-off.
The New Sandbox - The eagerly anticipated ArcheAge, published by Trion in the west, made its first appearance on The Digital Dozen Sunday. The head start period began on 12 September and the game launches for all players at 10 AM PDT today.
ArcheAge is a free-to-play, open world sandbox that has both PvE and PvP areas, although the world PvP works a little differently than other games. And yes, according to the game's FAQ, scamming is allowed.
Offer Expired - Sunday was the first weekend after the close of Final Fantasy XIV's end of summer event, the Moonfire Faire. As usually occurs in such a situation, players don't log in at the rate they did during the event.
eSports Fans - EVE Online provided another example Sunday of how the shrinking Xfire community is becoming less valuable as a source to determine if an event occurred in a game. CCP makes the number of players logged on available to the public and I can say that no big jump in the concurrent users occurred Sunday, but Xfire is showing a 17.1% increase in time played. Remember, when using the Xfire numbers, the data shows what is occurring in the Xfire community and not in the gaming community at large. As the community shrinks, the differences grow. The only explanation is that the Xfire community is more into eSports than the general EVE player base. Last weekend was the first following the end of Alliance Tournament XII. Perhaps people were too busy watching EVE to play the game.
One thing I've wondered by the way, is the scoring balanced out for Final Fantasy XIV at all? I mainly play it on the PS3 and now the PS4 for example, so while it's a good indicators for PC only games (where you can assume that the number of players playing with xfire will be representative of the numbers overall), with FF14 you've got 2 other markets of players with no option of using xfire.
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