The Digital Dozen: 2013 Final Rankings

This week I look back on 2013 and the popularity of MMORPG's as played by the Xfire community.  One striking figure is 60.7%.  That is the drop in the time recorded by the Xfire community in playing the twelve most popular MMORPGs each week from 30 December 2012 to 22 December 2013.  I would argue that is a factor of the increase in competition for Xfire (see Steam and Raptr) as well as a weak year for MMORPGs in general.

Games have a tendency to see players drift away as they grow older.  2013 stood out as the year of the free-to-play conversion.  While the dropping of subscriptions helped the popularity of many games, I wonder how long that popularity will last. Will new games like Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar, and EverQuest Next Landmark produce a rise in the numbers in 2014?  Possibly.  But one thing I think we will see is a shake-up of the Digital Dozen.  One thing I do know is that gamers like new things to play.

The ranking for the year was calculated by taking the Digital Dozen score for each week and taking the average.  If a game was not among the top 12 games played for a week it received a score of 0.  The average score is listed after the name of the game.  Those looking for the normal weekly rankings for Sunday can find them at the bottom of the post.

Predictions For 2014

We are at the end of another year.  A time to look back and a time to look ahead.  When the subject is what I am doing in EVE Online my year doesn't coincide with the calendar.  But for everything else I pretty much stick to the calendar of this ball of dirt we call home.  Since this is the time for bloggers to make predictions about things that won't come true, I'll do my part and come up with some prognostications for the upcoming year.

The Subscription Model Is Not Dead Yet - I predict that both Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online will remain subscription games throughout 2014.  However, the possibility exists that sometime in November or December that ESO could announce a change to a free-to-play model will occur sometime in the first half of 2015.  If I had the courage of my convictions I'd make it a prediction, but I'll chicken out this time.  Well, at least about the announcement.

PLEX-Type Systems Mixed Reception - I think that the news about companies attempting to duplicate CCP's success with PLEX will be mixed in 2014.  I expect Jagex to come out and state that, despite some over-hyped news in 2013, that bonds have not had the desired results and that new systems are needed to deal with Runescape's bot and illicit RMT problem.  On the other hand, after a rocky start, Carbine will announce some success with its C.R.E.D.D. system.  The financial figures will speak for themselves and another AAA MMO in development will announce going to a sub plus PLEX system sometime in the last quarter of 2014.

For EVE Online players, I'll predict that the Jita price for PLEX will make 1 billion ISK worth $26.50.  That is 660 million ISK for a PLEX using in-game currency.

World of Warcraft Does Well, But... - Yes, when making a post about predictions about MMORPGs I do have to include World of Warcraft.  I think that WoW will experience a year that all other game companies would envy.  I think that we will see the new Warlords of Draenor expansion sell 2.4 million copies in the first week and the number of subscribers hit between 9 and 10 million.  Of course, these numbers will have critics exclaiming that WoW is dying and on its last legs.

The expansion will foster controversy with the new offerings in WoW's cash shop.  I don't know what the nature of the controversy will involve, but I expect a backlash from some of the veteran players stating that WoW has gone pay-to-win.

Also, I do expect WoW to suffer another major hacking attack in 2014.  Of course, given WoW's history, the brave prediction is to predict such a security breach would not occur.

Guild Wars 2 Expansion - ArenaNet was pretty firm in 2013 about not needing an expansion for Guild Wars 2.  I think they will stay true to that and not publish an expansion in 2014.  However, I do expect ArenaNet to announce this summer an expansion in the first half of 2015 to coincide with the end of 2014's Living Story.

CCP - I expect that 2014 will prove a bad year for the Icelandic game company.  The number of subscriptions for its flagship game EVE Online will decline for the first time in the game's history (assuming that the number of accounts did not decline in 2013).  CCP will continue to resist pressure to release a "Jesus feature" in 2014, waiting until 2015. 

DUST 514 will continue to limp along throughout 2014.  However, the game will not break the 7,000 concurrent user mark unless CCP stages some sort of marketing event at one of the trade shows like E3.  With a less than expected rush to play, I expect no conversion announcement from the PS3 to the PS4 and layoffs in the Shanghai office at the end of 2014.

The one bright spot is EVE: Valkyrie.  CCP will have the game ready to ship at the time that the Oculus Rift is ready to ship to the public.  The game will receive high marks from players, but the good news is offset by the low penetration of the Oculus Rift into the gaming market.  Also, don't expect the Oculus Rift to release before the fourth quarter.

Star Citizen -  I'm not sure the game actually qualifies as an MMORPG, but I have three predictions.  The first is that the game will reach the $65 million mark in funds gathered in 2014  I would name a higher number but I also predict a major story about the RMT scene surrounding the game will make its rounds amongst the mainstream gaming press and that will depress the donation numbers.  Finally, I predict that during 2014 that Chris Roberts will announce a launch date in the second half of 2015.

Biggest Surprise - I think EverQuest Next Landmark will break out as the big surprise game of 2014.  I know that Landmark is developed by SOE, but given that no one even conceived of the possibility of the game until August 2013 I would rate a successful year a surprise.  Given the popularity of Minecraft, Landmark will emerge as the building game with the best graphics.  I think that could make Landmark a very popular game indeed.

I will make more predictions tomorrow as part of the final Digital Dozen roundup for 2013.  I should add that I hope I am wrong about the negative predictions I made in this post.  I just have the feeling that the gaming industry will not see calm seas in 2014.

Take-A-Ways From Yesterday's Space Hangout

I watched most of Ali Aras' Space Hangout yesterday.  At the end the broadcast experienced some technical difficulties so I didn't watch the final 20 minutes.  Still, that occurred after CCP Dolan left the conversation so I don't think I missed CCP's side of things.  Here are some points I was left with.

The style needs changing.  I don't really think the CSM has that much to complain about with the delay.  That belief comes from Trebor's statement that the CSM does not want to censor itself so puts as much as possible into the minutes and then lets CCP cut out whatever is necessary.  That style means that the CSM takes longer to produce the rough draft of the minutes as well as ensures CCP needs to take longer to review the minutes.  I think the date quoted on the stream for when CSM finished the minutes was 4 November.  That's right, 66 days after the end of the summit.  At that point, publishing the minutes before the release of the expansion was impossible.  In my mind, the time sensitivity vanished at that point and the minutes are just a historical document.

But my point isn't just about the length of time the CSM took to produce the minutes.  Even if the CSM was perfect about not including NDA'd material, CCP can't trust that.  They need to thoroughly check themselves.  I have to wait until I actually read the minutes, but CCP Dolan's proposal of having a summary of what CCP presented followed by the positions taken by each of the CSM attendees (if differences existed) sounded like a needed improvement.

CCP Dolan is not superman.   I think the new guy bit off more than he could chew.  Actually, since CCP Dolan is new, I don't think he wanted to show weakness by saying he needed help when he took on the job.  The help he needed was in the form of a backup in case he got sick, which happened.  Also, stuff happened (Terms of Service, SOMERblink, etc) in which CCP Dolan wound up as CCP's point person.  I don't know if a backup would have gotten the minutes approved by the various teams any faster, but a reminder or two sent out couldn't have hurt.

Unclarity of purpose.  Perhaps I just misunderstood, but I think that CCP and the CSM have slightly different thoughts on the purpose of the minutes.  Then again, CCP Dolan desire that the dev blogs published before expansions should contain more information so that players don't need to reference the minutes is a good one.  Of course, if players don't need to reference the minutes, I doubt very many people will really take the time to read them.  But if the style of the minutes is changed so we don't see 100+ pages, perhaps more people will read them anyway.

Late Details On Space Hangout About CSM Minutes

I should have checked yesterday, but Ali Aras posted an update on the Space Hangout she will host on Google Plus today at 1900 EVE time.

"Folks may have noticed that the space hangout this week has been delayed. Why? I've been working on getting the CSM 8 minutes out, and scheduling with CCP Dolan to have him on.

"The CSM 8 summer minutes were delayed for a long, long time. That's frustrating for the CSM, for the community, and hurt people's confidence. CCP Dolan wants to overhaul the minutes as CCP has overhauled the voting system and stakeholder process (both successful). In this hangout, we'll be talking about the minutes process and what the minutes mean and do for the community, in order to make sure those functions are preserved and hopefully improve them.

"We'll be talking a bit about what went wrong this go 'round as well, but I want this to be a constructive conversation. Space will be a bit tight with CSM8s and CCP Dolan on as well; I'll initially leave the hangouts open as usual, but if it fills up, I'll have the Q&A system on for questions/comments and will bring people in from there. If you're just listening, this is a good one to watch on youtube or the G+ page instead of from inside the hangout."

If you go to her page you will see a Q&A button on the player.  I believe that is where people can post questions ahead of time.  Also, for the time conversion challenged, it looks like Google Plus will convert the time to your local time.

 

 

The Digital Dozen: 24 December 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 22 December 2013.  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	45.1	13,668	-9.0
2	2	Guild Wars 2	12.7	3,856	-7.6
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	8.7	2,640	-8.8
4	4	Final Fantasy XIV	7.1	2,142	+21.6
5	6	Aion	4.9	1,472	+5.6
6	5	EVE Online	3.8	1,149	-25.7
7	8	Tera	3.4	1,035	0.0
8	--	Planetside 2	3.4	1,016	+72.5
9	7	Neverwinter	3.3	998	-11.1
10	9	Lord of the Rings Online	3.1	936	-0.4
11	11	Maple Story	2.4	728	-7.5
12	10	RIFT	2.3	686	-15.9

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 30,326

 

On the last Sunday before Christmas, the Xfire community did some last minute shopping as the number of hours it spent playing the most popular MMORPGs declined by 5.5% over the previous week.  The game with the biggest drop in playtime was World of Warcraft with 1357 fewer hours played than the week before.  The games bucking the negative trend were Planetside 2 (+427 hours), Final Fantasy XIV (+380 hours) and Aion (+78 hours).

Optimized Result - Planetside 2 stormed back onto the Digital Dozen after a one-week absence Sunday.  The 72.5% increase in playtime was based on another optimization patch released last week.  Or possibly the chance to shoot snowmen.

Another Patch:  Last week Square Enix released patch 2.1 for Final Fantasy XIV.  Despite an extended downtime of 24 hours to deploy the patch and a housing system panned as too expensive, the Xfire community spent 21.6% more time playing the game compared to the week before.

Leaving Jita:  EVE Online suffered the largest percentage decline of any game on the list in time played on Sunday.  But this isn't new territory for CCP's flagship game.  Last year on the Sunday before Christmas, EVE Online suffered a 14.3% decline in time played, which was the second largest decline that week.  Do EVE players just wait until the last minute to do their Christmas shopping?

The War On Bots & Illicit RMT - 2013 In Review

To tell the truth, I did not expect to write a review post this year.  I was surprised at the amount of news on the subject that actually came out over the past 12 months.  Last year I just included "War on Bots" in the title and just put in illicit RMT as a side issue.  This year covering the illicit RMT trade makes up a good chunk of the the news in 2013.  Also, I started covering the secondary RMT market in other games.  In some ways that was in response to the sheer magnitude of what I saw.  But more importantly, the games industry is starting to look at what CCP is doing to combat the illicit RMT trade and copying elements of CCP's strategy.  In particular, the adoption of PLEX-like objects by Jagex into Runescape (Bonds) and Carbine into the upcoming sci-fi MMORPG Wildstar (C.R.E.D.D.) show how other game companies view CCP's PLEX strategy.

But what about the news from 2013?  The year started out with many ISK selling sites raising prices due to CCP's efforts in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Between 23 December 2012 and 13 January 2013 eight web sites increased their prices an average of 25.1% with six companies raises prices by 20.4% between 6 January and 13 January.

The news in January was not just about the efforts of Team Security.  When the CSM 7 Winter summit meetings were published, an initiative came to light to get better information on players.  In order to gather that information, CCP would need to link users across multiple accounts.  While that demographic information is useful for game designers creating content and tracking the economy, the information would also make it easier to track down botters and ISK sellers to ban more of their accounts when discovered.

In February New Eden saw the great EVE University market bot scandal.  A member of EVE University was detected using a market bot, received a 14-day ban, but did not have any ISK gained from the activity confiscated.  The player then donated 317 billion ISK to EVE University and apparently bio-massed the character and quit EVE.  EVE University then petitions the donation and CCP confiscates the ISK.  What made the story a scandal was a member of the Council of Stellar Management going public and questioning the integrity of Team Security.  Once facts about a ban usually held private were revealed the scandal slipped away.

Also in February an amusing incident occurred involving an ISK selling company and a web designer who left the debug option active.  The resulting errors that displayed for days when attempting to access one website showed the connections between 3 ISK selling sites.  The lesson is that those engaged in illicit RMT aren't above a little trickery to increase sales.

March was an eventful month that saw Team Security add checks for known botting software and other hacks.  The first target was an application called Red Guard.  Red Guard is designed to spoof CCP's digital fingerprinting software so if a botter is caught that Team Security does not ban all of the botter's accounts.  This actually resulted in a call by Red Guard users to restrict access to the public.  Six days later Red Guard went from freeware to a $25 application with an additional $25 for updates.

With Team Security adding software detection to its anti-bot algorithms the question then arose on whether the multi-boxing software ISBoxer was no longer allowed.  This became more likely as CCP had made a ninja edit to a page on the old forums that Lavish Software was using as part of its marketing efforts.  According to bot developers, CCP was only trying to detect two Inner Space extensions, DirectEVE and ISXEVE, and not anyone using Inner Space.  CCP also later announced that ISBoxer users would not receive bans as long as the software was only used for multi-boxing.

 

Partly as a result of Team Security's increased anti-botting measures activity on Tranquility dropped 8.2% from 21 February to 14 March.

The month ended with a change in the penalty for botting.  Instead of a three strikes policy, botters would receive a 30 day ban for a first offense and a permanent ban for the second offense.

In April, the news focused more on hacks affecting the client rather than directly against bots.  For the first time cache scraping was explicitly declared a violation of the EULA but that CCP would not enforce penalties against those engaging in the practice.  Also, 2350 players received a 30 day ban for using an autopilot warp to zero hack.  While the hack involved client modification the decision was made to only impose a 30 day ban because of the lack of enforcement in the past.

May and June were fairly quiet although two events did occur in June that I did not write about.  The first occurred on 2-3 June as EVE Online was the target of a DDoS attack.  Tranquility and associated websites were taken down as a precaution against hackers using the attack as cover for another type of attack.  Later in June Blizzard's Mobile Armory was hacked and hundreds, if not thousands, of accounts stripped of gold.  That the hackers were able to bypass Blizzard's vaunted authenticator system is a warning to CCP for when it opens up the CREST API to 3rd party developers.

Events remained quiet until the end of July when CCP Stillman and the official EVE Online Twitter account released a graphic demonstrating a drop in bot bans.  CCP Stillman attributed the drop in the changes to ice belts and null sec rats introduced in Odyssey.

The drop was not allowed to last as three days later CCP Stillman tweeted about CCP Peligro instituting a new ban wave.  The effort continued throughout August, with ISK selling sites showing the effects in late August as between 18-25 August 9 of the 12 ISK sellers on my watch list raised prices by an average of 17.9%. 

September was another busy month as companies besides CCP made headlines with their efforts against the illicit RMT trade.  Square Enix, the maker of Final Fantasy XIV, seized 367 billion gil, worth between $2.5 and $4.2 million, in a three-week operation in the second half of the month.  Jagex, the makers of Runescape, acknowledged that banning 1.1 million accounts in 2013 was not enough and instituted Bonds, a PLEX-type instrument.  While Jagex claimed Bonds have nearly eradicated gold farming, I'm withholding judgement until more data is available.

But September was also a significant month for ISK sellers as well.  The upwards trend of the price of ISK on the secondary market peaked on 22 September as the median price on my watch list exceeded that of the price obtainable from purchasing PLEX directly from CCP and selling the PLEX in Jita.  At that time, two major secondary market virtual currency sellers, IGE and MOGS, dropped out of the EVE Online ISK market.

The subsequent drop in the price of illicit ISK due to less companies fighting over the available supply was overshadowed by the SOMERblink RMT scandal.  The scandal began with DNSBlack going on the EVE Online forums and declaring his intent to RMT money, items, and characters legally.  While his scheme fizzled out, one enterprising capsuleer managed to become an affiliate of Shattered Crystal and set up shop on the EVE Online forums using the same process as SOMERblink to eventually RMT 188 billion ISK. 

The loophole involved using the EVE Time Code sellers agreement to override the EULA.  That allowed SOMERblink to give those who purchased game time codes from first Shattered Crystal, and later Markee Dragon, 200 million ISK for purchasing each ETC.  The exact amount of ISK laundered in that fashion is not known, but the real world value was $135,000 when SOMERblink was an affiliate of Shattered Crystal.  As a result of the uproar CCP's legal counsel Bill Winter sent all ETC sellers a letter announcing a closing of the loophole and giving the sellers until 7 November to make sure any player affiliate complied fully with the EULA in these matters.  SOMERblink then poured fuel onto the outrage of its critics and held a liquidation sale right up until the deadline.

On the secondary RMT market prices declined throughout October and November as additional companies stopped selling ISK.  The site Safe EVE ISK let its domain lapse in late October/early November.  And two other websites, In Game Delivery and IGXE, stopped selling ISK in mid-November.

Team Security did try to open up a new front on the War on Bots in November with efforts to silence the spambots in the trade hubs.  But the spambots did return and those spotted two weeks into the effort are still present and spamming.

December's main news came from an unexpected source: the latest document leaks from Edward Snowden concerned the efforts of U.S. and British intelligence to infiltrate and spy on Second Life and World of Warcraft.  Since virtual worlds could provide a way to launder money, I looked at a popular player auction site to look at the potential size of the secondary RMT market.

Just based on a one day snapshot the market for WoW gold is just so much larger than all other games combined.  Those wishing to hide any laundering activity could use the secondary WoW market to launder money without leaving much of a trace.  I should add that the size of the market is very volatile, as the amount of ISK for sale at the site jumped from 1.8 trillion ISK to 10.9 trillion ISK in the course of 24 hours this weekend.

In the end 2013 was a rather eventful year when the subject was botting and illicit RMT.  While I write rather extensively on the subject, I hope that next year sees a decrease in the amount of newsworthy activity.  I wouldn't mind writing less.  Honest.

The Minutes Are Coming?

For those interested in the CSM 8 Summer Summit minutes, your wait may finally come to an end next week.  I saw some interesting Tweets from CSM 8 member Ali Aras yesterday.

Just finished a meeting with @CCPDolan, he will be joining us for Space Hangout sometime Monday or Tuesday #tweetfleet #csm8
— Ellen McManis (@ali_of_space) December 19, 2013

And later...

@schertt @grrusso @Niden_GMVA @RipardTeg yeah, and I'm doing a thing with @CCPDolan at the beginning of the week, and minutes should be out
— Ellen McManis (@ali_of_space) December 19, 2013

@schertt @grrusso @Niden_GMVA @RipardTeg @CCPDolan C.
— Ellen McManis (@ali_of_space) December 19, 2013

As far as I know the time and date is still up in the air, but CCP Dolan has committed to attending.  For those who can't attend live, the Space Hangupsouts are posted on Ali's Google Plus page.  I'd suggest either visiting the Google Plus page or following @ali_of_space on Twitter for more information.  Oh, and perhaps on the Eve-O forums, but I think the social media is possibly more reliable.

Poking My Head Into Middle-Earth

Sometimes I read something and become inspired to do something.  Last week I read two posts by Wilhelm on The Ancient Gaming Noob about the new offer by Turbine to allow players to purchase a level 50 character in Lord of the Rings Online.  The first took a look at not only that offer but offers by Blizzard and SOE to sell near maximum level character in World of Warcraft and EverQuest 2 respectively.  The next was a response to a post by a blogger taking issue with people criticizing Turbine for offering to sell a level 50 character.  That got me to thinking that maybe I should play LotRO.  If you look at the latest Digital Dozen, I've played most of the games in the top 10.  But for some reason I've never visited the virtual Middle-Earth.

Over the weekend I finished my big Sisters of EVE loyalty point grind.  That's right, I now have 375,000 SoE loyalty points.  That's enough for two Astero, two Stratios, 4 Sisters probe launchers, 40 core probes and 40 combat probes.  Yes!  But I needed a break for a couple of days.  So for the past few days I've played LotRO.

First, let me say that I am not going to try to play the game without paying any money.  I went ahead and bought 600 Turbine points so I could get premium status.  That status is important as I get a third character slot, a raise in the money cap from 2 gold to 5 gold, and limited mail privileges.  The mail is important for transferring items among my characters for crafting.  I'm not sure if I will use the Turbine points for a fourth character slot (595 points) or on something else.

I have created three characters: an Elven Champion, Elven Minstrel, and Human Lore Master.  I fully intended to make my Minstrel my main character, but the other two classes played really nicely also.  I realize I'm only at levels 6 and 7, but they all feel good right now.  I made the Minstrel an Explorer though, so that is probably the class I'll play the most.  The Explorer is able to not only make light and medium armor but can also collect all the crafting materials in the game.  The reason for not creating a Hunter for that role is that the Minstrel is the main healing class and I want to play a healer.

I do want to complement Turbine on creating a game with such a nice beginning.  Based on the elves and humans having different starting areas I'm assuming all four races have their own starting areas.  After all, if the hobbits don't start in The Shire, then something is seriously wrong.  That's a feature that I hope all the upcoming games like EQ Landmark and Wildstar incorporate.

Also, I really appreciate the fact that the female characters are actually clothed.  When I play an MMORPG, I tend to create male characters when I plan on interacting with people a lot and female characters when I don't.  For example, in EVE Online, my female character is the CEO of my personal corp and the two combat characters that could join other corporations are both male.  Of course, I created a female wood elf in EQ2 as my main because I wanted to play a wood elf but the females just looked tougher (in my opinion) than the males.  The newer games I've played put the female characters in skimpy armor.  LotRO, as an older game, actually gives the characters useful looking armor.  At least so far.

I'll probably get serious into EVE again starting tomorrow or Saturday.  I have some vague plans on what I want to do next, which includes starting to sell things on the markets.  I also want to start exploring again, which I spent very little time doing while doing the SoE grind.  I actually miss the hacking mini-game.  But if everything continues going as well as it has the past couple of days I may have found a second game.  Well, at least until Wildstar comes out.

Another Blogger Writing About The CSM 8 Summer Minutes

I have to admit I don't really understand the way that the Council of Stellar Management works.  So perhaps the fact that the CSM 8 Summer Summit minutes are not out yet means the world is about to end.  Or maybe not.  But the way that some people are acting this is not only a crisis but a scandal of epic proportions.  Since I can't explain why the lack of minutes is important I thought I'd take a crack at figuring out why the minutes are still not released instead.

The Digital Dozen: 17 December 2013

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 15 December 2013.  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	46.8	15,025	+0.7
2	2	Guild Wars 2	13.0	4,174	+2.1
3	3	Star Wars: The Old Republic	9.0	2,896	-7.3
4	4	Final Fantasy XIV	5.5	1,762	-4.9
5	5	EVE Online	4.8	1,546	+0.5
6	6	Aion	4.3	1,394	-3.5
7	8	Neverwinter	3.5	1,123	+15.3
8	7	Tera	3.2	1,035	-13.2
9	9	Lord of the Rings Online	2.9	940	+0.2
10	10	RIFT	2.5	816	-10.5
11	12	Maple Story	2.5	787	+15.6
12	--	Infestation: Survival Stories	1.8	593	+11.3

 

Total Digital Dozen Hours: 32,021

Sunday saw a slight decrease in the amount of time the Xfire community spent playing its most popular MMORPGs.  The 0.9% decline was led by a 228 hour decline in the time spent playing Star Wars: The Old Republic while Neverwinter led the pack with a 149 hour gain in popularity.  Infestation: Survival Stories is making its first appearance in three weeks while Planetside 2 dropped off the list this week for the first time since July.

Pre-Patch Blues? - This week Planetside 2 fell out of the Digital Dozen for the first time in 20 weeks.  But I don't expect the absence to last longer than a week.  The second patch in Operation: Make Faster Game launches today.  The response to the first step of OMFG was positive, with the Xfire community spending 20.8% more time playing PS2 the first Sunday after the patch went live.

Rolling Along - Over the past few months the trend after a game has experienced an expansion or major patch, the Xfire community has played the game for a week and then the playtime falls.  But two games, Neverwinter and Maple Story, are bucking the trend.  Both experienced 15+% gains in playtime this week and have seen steadily increasing playtime since 24 November.  The only other game on the Digital Dozen that can make that claim is World of Warcraft, which has experienced increases in play in five of the six weeks since BlizzCon was held on 8-9 November.