The Digital Dozen: 12 February 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 12 February 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.

Rank	Prev Week	Game	Score	Hours Played
1	1	World of Warcraft	52.7	92,988
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	23.8	41,991
3	4	Star Trek Online	3.2	5,679
4	6	Eve Online	3.0	5,322
5	5	Aion	2.9	5,164
6	8	Lord of the Rings Online	2.6	4,642
7	3	Guild Wars	2.2	3,923
8	11	Metin 2	2.2	3,814
9	9	Need For Speed World	2.0	3,609
10	7	Maple Story	1.8	3,213
11	10	APB: Reloaded	1.8	3,173
12	12	Rift	1.7	2,806

Internet Spaceships Is Serious Business!  For the first time I can remember, the top 3 games not named World of Warcraft are all science-fiction MMORPGs.  Star Wars: The Old Republic is still riding high in the #2 spot based on its very successful launch, Star Trek Online gained new life and soared to #3 after its move to free-to-play on 17 January, and Eve Online is recovering from last year's debacle called Incarna.  If Star Trek Online can maintain its popularity and Eve regains the steady growth it had been famous for over its first 8 years, perhaps we will see more sci-fi MMORPGs in the near future.

Is LucasArts screwing over another MMO?  While listening to The Instance #263 Sunday Turpster pointed out that the EA marketing team is strangely quiet lately.  Has anyone else noticed all the advertising for the 3D version of The Phantom Menace?  Turpster has and thinks that LucasArts had a hand in EA's inactivity.  Looking for evidence, I looked at the script from the EA Q3 Conference Call and noticed that EA planned on increasing their advertising buys during Q4 (p7).  But if they plan on spending more, where is the spending?  I would have thought that the Super Bowl would have been the perfect opportunity to publicize the game, but the only thing Star Wars I saw were adds for The Phantom Menace.

According to the numbers from Xfire, the number of hours played has decreased 40% since 15 January, the last Sunday before the first players who bought the game at launch needed to choose to pay money to subscribe.  This trend is making SW:TOR look bad.  Would the decline be less if EA was more active with its marketing efforts?  Or, for conspiracy theorists, would the decline be less if LucasArts hadn't muzzled EA?  Hey, a lot of people remember Star Wars: Galaxies and the NGE.  LucasArts didn't cover itself in glory back then.  Is history repeating itself?

Looking Ahead to 2012 And Back At 2011

Happy New Year!  I usually prefer to look ahead to the new year but I made some predictions for 2011 and I should look at how well I did before moving on to looking at 2012.  So here is a look back to see just how insightful I really was.

New Games:  I made predictions about two games, Star Wars: The Old Republic and RIFT.  I almost predicted that SW:TOR would launch in 2012 but chickened out and stated that SW:TOR would launch in December 2011.  I got that prediction right.  RIFT is a little different story.  I got the Q1 launch date correct but not the number of subscribers.  Even though Trion has never released numbers, the MMO page on Xfire on 1 January indicated that RIFT players spent half the time in-game as Eve Online players.  Since I predicted a subscription base of 300-400 thousand for RIFT, I will consider that a missed prediction.

Existing Games:  This category is why I should never make predictions.  I only made predictions about three games: Eve Online, EverQuest 2 and Star Wars: Galaxies.  First, Eve.  Looking back one would never know that is the game I play the most.  I wrote that Incarna would lead to a new peak concurrent user record over 67,000 users.  Eve did set a PCU record of 63,170 but not during June or July.  The disaster that was Incarna also helped to ensure that the number of subscribers fell below the 380-400 thousand I predicted at year end.

For EverQuest 2, my predictions didn't work too well either.  Because SOE doesn't release numbers, I'm not sure if the players who proclaimed they were moving to RIFT came back.  I did predict rumors of a second round of server merges but I think SOE just finished the first round of mergers less than two weeks ago.  And of course, my prediction that the free-to-play service for EQ2 would remain separate from the subscription servers failed when EQ2 went F2P on 6 December.

Finally, my predictions about Star Wars: Galaxies.  Sure, they all came true, but that is because LucasArts pulled the plug on the IP so no work was done.

Eve Multi-media:  I have to say that Incarna really hurt the creative community surrounding Eve Online.  Because Incarna basically was a Minmatar closet instead of actual walking in stations with the never released establishments that I thought would lead to a lot of machinima being produced.  I did predict that there would be 10 Eve-related podcasts and I could claim that.  Looking at the Eve Pod Pack page, I count nine podcasts I consider to be active, ten if I count Voices from the Void which seems to be in indefinite hiatus.

What's Ahead For 2012?  I won't have any predictions for 2012 but I will tell some of the stories I expect will dominate the MMO news.

1.  Star Wars: The Old Republic.  The game is going to dominate the MMO coverage for at least the first half of 2012 and possibly all year.  I think everyone is going to play.  I've even broken down and started playing the game.  The question hanging over the game and the genre is will the game maintain player interest throughout the year.

2.  DUST 514.  If SW:TOR is newsworthy because of the sheer amount of money spent on developing the game, then DUST 514 will be a major story because of the innovation (or folly) of the attempt to merge a PC MMORPG and a console first person shooter (MMOFPS?) into one virtual world.  I keep hearing and reading gamers complain about a lack of imagination in games as all developers try to imitate World of Warcraft.  One thing about the Viking spaceship developers in Iceland is that they are stretching the boundaries of game design.

3.  New Game Announcements.  I expect that this year gamers will find out more details about three eagerly awaited projects: Blizzard's Titan, SOE's EverQuest Next, and 38 Studios' Copernicus.  None of these MMORPGs will debut in 2012 but the companies will tease us with enough news to make us believe these will be the games that will dominate 2013, although I believe 2014 is more realistic.

4.  Real Life Politics.  I expect that the real world will inject itself into our games in 2012.  I'm not sure exactly how yet, but between a lot of governments needing money, the U.S. presidential election in November and whatever is really happening in China, gamers will have the real world chase them into their virtual world safe havens.

That's it for now.  As I wrote above, I'm not good at the whole prediction business so expect to see a lot of things occur that I failed to see.

SOE: About That Station Cash

With all SOE games and web sites down since 2 May and SOE giving out 30 days free play time plus one day for every day out the outage, SOE is in serious financial trouble, especially if the Bloomberg report about the PSN network target date of return of 31 May is true.

So what might help SOE's bottom line (and save some games) once all the security problems are solved?  The much maligned Station Cash.  That's right.  With SOE potentially giving out 2 months of game play for free and gamers probably leery of buying new games from a company that suffered such a serious security breach, I see Station Cash as the primary revenue stream for SOE for a significant period of time.  That is good for Free Realms and EQ2 Extended which already rely on Station Cash sales, but what about other games?  EverQuest and EverQuest 2 already have the Station Cash shops in game so maybe they can ride out the economic storm if a large number of players don't come back.

As for Vanguard and Star Wars: Galaxies, games without a cash shop?  This may be the end, particularly for SW:G.  After this fiasco, can anyone doubt that players will flock to SWTOR?  If the original release date (Q2 2011) for SWTOR had been met, I would say that SW:G is dead now.

I remember back when Station Cash was introduced players complaining that it would ruin EQ2.  Wouldn't it be ironic if Station Cash actually helps keep EQ2 from closing its doors in the aftermath of the security breach?

SOE Was Also Hacked

Everyone by now has probably heard of the hacking of Sony's PlayStation Network.  Now, we find out what many feared is true: the SOE customer database was also hacked.

SAN FRANCISCO [AFP] — Sony on Monday reported that cyber assaults on its online videogame network were broader than first thought, with intruders getting away with credit and debit card data.

Hackers breached Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) network as well as PlayStation Network and Qriocity streaming music service, according to the Japanese consumer electronics giant.

"We had previously believed that Sony Online Entertainment customer data had not been obtained in the cyber-attacks on the company," the company said in an online update.
"But, on May 1st we concluded that SOE account information may have been stolen and we are notifying you as soon as possible."

Engineers and security consultants investigating the PlayStation Network breach discovered evidence that information was stolen from 24.6 million SOE accounts and from an outdated database containing people's financial data.

About 12,700 credit or debit card numbers, along with expiration dates, belonging to people outside the United States may have been stolen along with 10,700 direct debit records of customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands, and Spain, according to Sony.

"We will be notifying each of these customers promptly," the Japanese consumer electronics giant promised.

EQ2 Wire reports that EverQuest 2 is down and has a round-up of the news.  The worst part is that SOE assured customers on April 22nd that the Playstation Network hack did not involve the SOE databases.  But according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, Sony has been under cyber attack for 6 weeks and has now drawn the attention of Congress.  At this point, Sony has stated it will answer written questions but will not send representatives to appear at congressional hearings on the matter.

Some people talk about not trusting SOE becase of the Star Wars: Galaxies NGE so many years ago.  I think this is a heck of a lot more serious.  And on a personal note, even with the recent forum problems, I'm feeling a lot safer with CCP than I am with some of the other companies.  I think I'm fortunate in that I gave up playing EverQuest 2 over 18 months ago and decided that SW:G was not for me.  While SOE does have a credit card on file for me, it expired 6 months ago.  Lucky me.

Update:  EQ2 Wire is now conducting a poll asking when people believe EverQuest 2 will come back online. 

Downloaded Star Wars: Galaxies

I don't know what this says about RIFT, but yesterday I downloaded the 14-day trial for Star Wars: Galaxies.  I may be crazy, so is this just proof that I should take "may be" out of the statement?  I'm not so sure.

I've been playing RIFT, and while Trion created a nice game, I played similar DIKU-style push button combat games, between WoW and EQ2, for over 4 years.  And after realizing that Eve University was created before WoW was published, I figured that maybe I needed to look at some of the older games for some avatar combat.  Besides, with The Old Republic due out in the near future, Star Wars: Galaxies may be in its final months and I'd be kicking myself if I never gave the game a try.

I do advise that anyone who wants to try SW:G first try the free trial just to make sure it runs on your system.  I have doubts it will run with my ATI 4800 series video card (and yes, the drivers are up to date) but it runs okay on my computer with an NVIDIA 7950 GT card.

I've only played a couple of hours so far but the combat is different.  I actually have to target with my mouse and fire, not just click on a mob and mash buttons on the action bar.  It is a little bit twitch-based combat, which is something I'm not really good at, but I'm looking for something different. 

Each character profession is also supposed to have a different storyline.  For my first character, I chose a spy.  I've already run into one mission that was a bit difficult until I realized exactly how stealth works.  After that, I had to do something a bit unexpected, but running out of a successful mission followed by a hail of gunfire was pretty cool.

I don't know if I'm really going to play much, but I haven't played RIFT in about 2 weeks now and I want to get some avatar game play in.  CCP just did too good a job with the Future Vision video and now I want more.  Maybe I just need to stick to science fiction from now on.