The Digital Dozen: 2 September 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 31 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	48.3	4,103	-39.6
2	2	Guild Wars 2	13.6	1,159	-47.9
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	9.5	804	-58.2
4	5	EVE Online	4.9	414	-46.6
5	6	Aion	4.7	398	-39.8
6	4	Final Fantasy XIV	4.2	359	-61.8
7	7	Tera	4.0	340	-39.4
8	8	Runescape	2.9	244	-55.3
9	9	Lord of the Rings Online	2.7	231	-37.7
10	10	Neverwinter	1.8	151	-57.2
11	--	Need For Speed World	1.7	148	-31.2
12	--	Metin 2	1.7	146	+31.5

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 8,497

On Sunday, Xfire recorded 46% fewer hours spent playing MMORPGs by its users than the week before.  Obviously, something went wrong.

Extended Downtime - Looking at Xfire, the service did not collect any data on 28-30 August, with only partial data on the 27th and Sunday.  Of the twelve games on the list, only Metin 2 recorded an increase in playtime.  Given that the average Xfire member only spent 3.5 hours logged in, that represents a real increase in players.  Then again, Xfire only recorded 40 people playing the game Sunday.

An Anomaly? - I've watched over the past few months as both Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar have slipped down the list.  But is this a blip caused by Xfire's problems or the end of the line for the two games unless they go free-to-play?  Next week should prove interesting.

Housekeeping Note - I've updated the spreadsheet containing all of the Xfire data I've collected over the past 2+ years with this summer's data.  Enjoy!