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Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Digital Dozen: 28 July 2014

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 27 July 2014.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.


RankPrev WeekGameScoreHours Played+/- %
11World of Warcraft41.06,332-22.0
22Guild Wars 213.72,112-16.8
33Star Wars: The Old Republic10.31,593-1.7
45Wildstar5.2809-24.5
54Final Fantasy XIV5.2801-35.1
66EVE Online5.0771-3.0
77Tera5.0767-3.0
88Aion4.5692-11.4
99Runescape3.4531-19.2
1010Lord of the Rings Online3.0465-9.2
1112Elder Scrolls Online1.9293-9.6
12--Neverwinter1.8 279-12.3
 
Total Digital Dozen Hours: 15,445

Sunday saw a dramatic drop in the amount of time the Xfire community spent playing MMORPGs.  The 18% decrease in the amount of hours logged into the most popular games was lead by World of Warcraft (-1784 hours) with no game seeing an increase in playtime on Sunday.  RIFT fell off the list, replaced by Neverwinter.

Falling Back Down To Earth - Last weekend WoW surprised me with a 25.3% increase in time played by Xfire members.  Apparently, Blizzard sent out invitations to unsubscribed players to come back and try the game out again.  The offer expired and Sunday saw the number of hours fall 22% this week.  That drop accounted for over half the overall decrease on Sunday.

Technical Difficulties, Part 1 - I do have to wonder if Xfire experienced some technical difficulties that prevented hours from registering on Sunday.  Exibit A: Tera.  The game held an event over the weekend in which players received a 20% XP boost from killing mobs, an increase in the number of quests that players could do in a day, and a stamina increase.  Yet the number of hours played decreased by 3%.  Very strange, considering part of the event was allowing players to do more content.

Technical Difficulties, Part 2 - Exibit B: EVE Online.  With the release of the Crius patch last Tuesday, EVE should have seen an increase in the number of hours played.  Indeed, the maximum peak concurrent user mark was up over 10% Sunday compared to the weekend before.  Yet the number of hours played also decreased by 3%.  I know that Xfire does not always faithfully record an increase or decrease every time the actual PCU increases or decreases, but combined with the facts that not only should Tera's hours have increased but no game saw an increase in hours makes me suspicious.  We'll have to watch what the results are next week.

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