The Digital Dozen: 10 July 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 8 July 2012.  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	55.3	53,220
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.7	8,402
3	5	The Secret World	6.2	6,002
4	3	Aion	5.4	5,174
5	4	Eve Online	4.8	4,639
6	7	Metin 2	3.9	3,723
7	8	Lord of the Rings Online	3.5	3,411
8	10	APB: Reloaded	2.8	2,733
9	6	Tera	2.8	2,682
10	11	Maple Story	2.5	2,410
11	12	Need For Speed World	2.0	1,957
12	9	Guild Wars	1.9	1,832

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 132,288 

Once again the Xfire community increased their time spent playing MMORPGs on Sunday, posting a 1.5% summertime increase in hours played.  The big gainers were led by The Secret World (+51.7%), Metin 2 (+18.7%) and Maple Story (+10.6%).  The big losers were Guild Wars (-37%) and Tera (-22.5%).

Third time's a charm:  After the disastrous launches of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan, Funcom finally appears to have a decent launch of an MMORPG with The Secret World.  As expected TSW jumped ahead of both Aion and Eve Online but failed to post Tera-like numbers and jump ahead of Star Wars: The Old Republic.  Whether because of Funcom's reputation or the upcoming release of Guild Wars 2 next month many players indicate they are waiting a month or two before giving TSW a try.  This trend may work out in TSW's favor as the Funcom offering may avoid the rapid decline in playtime suffered by recent titles like SWTOR and Tera.

 

Another game, another decline:   Nine weeks after the full launch of Tera, the game shows the pattern in the Xfire numbers observers have come to expect of MMORPGs.  

 

 

In the nine weeks since the launch weekend, Tera has experienced a 70.3% decline in the number of hours played by the Xfire community.  This decline corresponds closely with the 62.7% decline suffered by Star Wars: The Old Republic from 1 January to 4 March.  Will Tera manage to stabilize its numbers?  If Tera continues to mirror SWTOR's performance, the release of Guild Wars 2 could actually knock Tera out of the Digital Dozen.

The Digital Dozen: 29 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 27 May 2012.  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	52.9	44,900
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	9.7	8,214
3	4	Aion	7.8	6,611
4	5	Eve Online	5.6	4,756
5	3	Tera	5.3	4,500
6	7	Metin 2	3.7	3,152
7	8	APB: Reloaded	3.5	3,009
8	6	Lord of the Rings Online	3.4	2,855
9	9	Guild Wars	2.5	2,123
10	10	Need For Speed World	2.0	1,709
11	12	Maple Story	1.9	1,573
12	11	Star Trek Online	1.7	1,479

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:120,053 

Overall, the Xfire gaming community spent 5.9% fewer hours playing MMORPGs than it did the week before.  The week's big gainers in terms of hours played were Eve Online (+19.6%) and Aion (+15.3%).  The week's big losers were Tera (-33.9%), Star Trek Online (-23.4%) and Star Wars: The Old Republic (-18.3%).

Setting The Universe On Fire:  CCP's Eve Online led the Digital Dozen with a 19.6% gain in the number of hours played based on the strength of the launch of Inferno, the game's 17th free expansion.  While CCP faces player discontent over the new unified inventory feature, players still showed an interest in the game, with the actual server numbers from Eve Offline showing an average concurrent user increase of 3.6% over the previous Sunday.  Will Eve suffer from a post-expansion drop-off next week or will the end of Hulkageddon V yesterday combined with damage control efforts on the unified inventory keep the numbers high?

The Free Month Is Over, Part 1:   The game that saw the largest drop in interest on Sunday was Blue Hole Studio's Tera.  Launched on 1 May, Sunday was the last day those who purchased the game at launch would get to play before playing a subscription fee.  Apparently players who had already made their decision to not renew also stopped playing.  The biggest beneficiary of this trend appears to be the free-to-play Korean import Aion.

The Free Month Is Over, Part 2:  The failure cascade for Star Wars: The Old Republic continues after a week that saw layoffs at Bioware's Austin studio, the home for SW:TOR's development and customer relations staff.  For the first time, the Xfire community failed to play SW:TOR for at least 10,000 hours on a Sunday and the game recorded its first Digital Dozen score of under 10.0.  The near-term future looks grim as this was the first Sunday after the expiration of the free 30 days of game time that was granted to all accounts containing either a level 50 character or having a legacy level of 6.  I believe that the granting of the free game time was an effort to make the subscription numbers look good for the end of year conference call and that players will stop playing in greater numbers over the course of June.

The Digital Dozen: 8 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 6 May 2012.  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	52.6	63,959
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	12.8	15,519
3	9	Tera	7.4	9,039
4	3	Aion	6.9	8,367
5	5	Eve Online	3.9	4,728
6	10	Guild Wars	3.4	4,172
7	6	Lord Of The Rings Online	2.9	3,539
8	7	Metin 2	2.8	3,418
9	8	APB: Reloaded	2.6	3,197
10	11	Need For Speed World	2.0	2,379
11	12	Star Trek Online	1.4	1,729
12	NR	Vindictus	1.3	1,612

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:160,298 

MMOPRGs saw a decrease of 10.4% in the number of hours played by the Xfire community over the previous week.  

Tera Launches:  Tera's full launch was 1 May and the game quickly rose to the #3 spot on The Digital Dozen.  The biggest losers seem to be World of Warcraft as WoW tourists visited a new game and RIFT, which dropped off the list two weeks ago and will struggle to regain a spot.

EA announces new SW:TOR subscription number:  On the EA Q4 2012 earnings call yesterday the game publisher announced that subscriptions for Star Wars: The Old Republic had fallen to 1.3 million at the end of April from 1.7 million at the end of January.

SW:TOR lost 23% of its subscribers during this time

While the number of subscriptions declined by approximately 23%, the hours played by Xfire members declined by 61% over the same period.  As I speculated 3 weeks ago, I think part of the discrepancy between the two figures is that EA was doing things like giving out 30 days of free game time to people likely to unsubscribe at the end of April in order to keep the subscription numbers as high as possible.

For last week, SW:TOR saw the number of hours play decline another 10.7% over the previous week.

The Hulkageddon Effect:  This week is the first week I have both the Xfire data and Eve Offline data for the Eve Online player-run event Hulkageddon V.  During this event players try to destroy as many mining ships as possible.  Of course, the players who fly those mining ships don't like that.  One theory is that miners will sit out the event and not even log into the game.  In that case we should see a big decrease in both the number of hours played by Xfire members and the actual average number of players logged into Eve as posted on Eve Offline.  I now have numbers for 29 April, the first day of Hulkageddon V.  Now begins the test.  How well does Xfire reflect concurrency trends in Eve Online?

Xfire vs Reality

 

The graph shows the available data from 1 April to 6 May.  At the beginning of April the Xfire numbers to not track well with the actual average number of players online because of the technical glitch that added 1 hour to every player on 8 April.  But by the end of the month the Xfire numbers started tracking closer to reality.  In fact, for the first day of Hulkageddon V, the numbers tracked a lot closer than I thought they would.  Comparing 22 April to 29 April, the number of hours played by Xfire members declined 3.9% while the average number of players actually logged into Eve declined by 3.3%.  If the trend continues, the average number of players online on Sunday should have stayed steady or increased slightly as the Xfire numbers increase by almost 1% this past week.

The Digital Dozen: 1 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 29 April 2012.  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	56.1	75,149
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	13.0	17,374
3	3	Aion	6.8	9,061
4	NR	Guild Wars 2 (Beta)	5.4	7,269
5	4	Eve Online	3.5	4,684
6	6	Lord Of The Rings Online	2.8	3,774
7	7	Metin 2	2.7	3,622
8	5	APB: Reloaded	2.6	3,453
9	NR	Tera	2.4	3,277
10	8	Guild Wars	1.7	2,315
11	9	Need For Speed World	1.5	2,043
12	11	Star Trek: Online	1.5	2,009

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:178,926 

New Kids On The Block:  Sunday saw the number of hours Xfire members play MMORPGs by 2% over the previous week.  Much of that increase is due to two games that make their debuts in The Digital Dozen this week, Guild Wars 2 and Tera.  Guild Wars 2 debuts at #4 with its first beta weekend.  This bodes well for the ArenaNet offering as Guild Wars still came in at #10 even with many of its players participating in the beta.  Tera makes its debut at #9 during its early access weekend for those who pre-ordered the game.  The official release is today.

The two games that dropped out of The Digital Dozen to make way for GW2 and Tera were Rift and Maple Story.

The Hulkageddon Effect:  What happens in a game when thousands of players start attacking other players who have no interest in fighting?  That is what is occurring now in Eve Online with the player-run Hulkageddon V event.  From 29 April to 29 May gankers will roam New Eden looking for unwary miners.  No place is safe, including the normally safer areas of high security space.

So how will that impact the amount of people actually playing Eve?  Sunday's numbers showed a 3.9% decrease in hours played in a week that saw an overall increase of 2%.

Starting next week I'll compare the hours played by the Xfire community vs the numbers provided by Eve Offline to see if there is a correlation.  The daily average numbers on Eve Offline are delayed by 7 days so I'll start making graphs next week.

The Digital Dozen: 24 April 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 22 April 2012.  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	55.9	74,254
2	2	Star Wars: The Old Republic	16.2	21,595
3	3	Aion	7.4	9,812
4	4	Eve Online	3.7	4,876
5	8	APB:Reloaded	3.0	4,044
6	5	Lord Of The Rings Online	2.8	3,692
7	7	Metin 2	2.5	3,258
8	6	Guild Wars	2.2	2,898
9	11	Need For Speed World	1.9	2,463
10	10	Rift	1.7	2,263
11	9	Star Trek Online	1.4	1,903
12	12	Maple Story	1.4	1,864

 Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:175,127 

Time to drive:  In a week that saw a drop of 8% in overall MMORPG hours played by Xfire members, two games in the Digital Dozen saw double-digit gains.  APB:Reloaded saw a 40.4% jump based on the release of version 1.7 plus the give-a-way of a 3-day premium code to make up for the server issues upon launch.  Need For Speed World saw an 11.4% increase in time played following the release of the 2010 BMW M6 Coupé plus a 30% off sale in the cash shop.

Luster fades quickly: Two games that experienced gains on the 15th, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Aion, saw those gains evaporate Sunday.  Despite players trying to get that free month of play and another free weekend for new players, the Bioware offering saw almost all its gains from patch 1.2 disappear as its hours dropped 13.7%.  Aion did see the gains from the Ascension launch disappear plus more as the game saw a drop of 15.1% in hours played.

Beta Madness:  With all the games that will come out this spring and summer, open betas are all around.  This weekend saw two open beta weekends of significance, Tera and Diablo III.  Tera managed to pull 1,585 hours on Sunday, indicating that it may debut on the Digital Dozen on the first Sunday of May.  The other beta, Diablo III, attracted 38,581 hours and probably contributed to the 9.5% decline in the hours played in World of Warcraft Sunday.