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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

The Digital Dozen: 15 May 2012

The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 13 May 2012.  For more details about the methodology, click here.  Historical data can be found here.


Rank Prev Week Game ScoreHours Played
11World of Warcraft 53.8 61,225
22Star Wars: The Old Republic11.212,733
33Tera7.07,982
44Aion7.07,968
55Eve Online4.34,878
68Metin 23.13,553
79APB: Reloaded3.03,368
87Lord of the Rings Online2.83,186
96Guild Wars2.52,801
1010Need For Speed World1.92,105
11NRMaple Story1.82,014
1211Star Trek Online1.51,934
 
Total MMORPG hours played Sunday:153,446
 

The number of hours spent playing MMORPGs by the Xfire community decreased by 4.3% compared to the previous Sunday.  This difference is entirely accounted for in the decrease in hours played by the top for games in The Digital Dozen: World of Warcraft (-4.3%), Star Wars: The Old Republic (-18%), Tear (-11.7%) and Aion (-4.8%).  Maple Story vaulted back into the list with an impressive 29% gain in hours played powered by the celebrations surrounding the 7-year anniversary of the game.  Congratulations to Nexon.


The Shadow of Diablo 3:  With the launch of Diablo 3 today I expect to see a large decrease in the number of hours played in MMORPGs next week.  With the over 1 million people who signed up for the World of Warcraft annual pass who receive Diablo 3 for free, that is 10% of the WoW player base who have already indicated they will play Diablo 3.  Can we expect to see a 10% decrease in hours played in WoW next week?

The Hulkageddon Effect - Week 2:  I received a pleasant surprise when I downloaded the average daily numbers for Eve Online's Tranquility server from Eve Offline last night.  The numbers were up-to-date.  Up until now there had been a one-week lag before the numbers appeared. 


The start point for the comparison between the Xfire data and the actual average daily number of players online was 29 April.  6 May saw both the Xfire and actual numbers increase, although the Xfire numbers only increased 0.9% while the average number of players logged in increased by 2.6%.  This past weekend, the trends in the Xfire and Eve Offline numbers disagreed for the first time since 8 April when Xfire experienced a technical problem.  The Xfire numbers when up 3.2% while the average number of players online decreased by 3.1%.

What does that say about the Xfire community?  Are they a bunch of gankers participating in Hulkageddon V with reckless abandon?  That very well could be.  I'll be interested to see the numbers next week.

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