X-Fire Game: Brought to you by the letters F-A-I-L

At least if you were to read all the commentary around the web about Event 2.0 in Rift.

This weekend took a bit of a dive for our beleaguered new game, as their special world event entered phase 2. This went to phase 3 and ended faster than a sitcom episode... yet no one was laughing. Disgruntled players abound across the blogosphere (NSFW posting)(Thats it?)(Queuetastic) and forums. Guess it really did depend on if you were there though, or queued to hell (I was in, and enjoyed it...but, it was short).

How much did this event affect numbers, and how did the weekend go overall for our other MMO's? Lets find out...

(KEY: Click the logos to understand what X-Fire or Raptr is. ↓ Means the game had a loss; ↑ and the game is in green text, means it had more players. Thank you.)

1. Rift - 3982 ( 4317 ↓ )
2. EvE Online - 2017 ( 2087 ↑ )
3. Lord of the Rings Online - 1892 ( 2042 ↑ )
4. Aion -1878 ( 1961 ↑ )
5. Dungeons & Dragons Online - 326 ( 358 ↓ )
6. Star Trek Online - 287 ( 324 ↑ )
7. Age of Conan - 245 ( 274 ↓ )
8. Champions Online - ?? ( 245 ↓ )
9. Final Fantasy XIV - 131 ( 122 ↑ )
10. Warhammer Online - 130 ( 163 ↓ )
11. DC Universe - 41 ( 52 ↓ )

Looking at the chart, you get to see something I have seen before. A mass exodus of X-Fire players. Thats right, when we see loss across the board like this, we pretty much have people uninstalling X-Fire, and moving on. Now, sometimes this can also mean a change in season, like right now is Spring Break...thus less players.

Makes it hard to do our charts.

But, we can garner some things from how big the loss is. Rift DID have a big chunk taken out, but with so many players, this again is still not unexpected. The fact it was an event weekend with free trials though tells us that the normal playerbase IS shrinking. Again, expected (as I discussed in my article about decline). Until we see next week, we cannot comment on this...for now. Just know that Rift STILL has the largest population of players behind WoW, quite easily.

Looking at our normal top 5, we see no major drops for these games, so this mainly is a readjustment for the X-Fire playerbase. Again, it could take weeks or even a month before we see this rectify or stay down.

Champions Online must have updated the client again, as it was broken (this happened when it went free to play) and NO time or player pops are being noted.

Our big winner this week? FFXIV, who had a new patch over the past few days. Next week should tell us how Squeenix is doing and if the patch is fixing this mess of an MMO.

So, how do we know this big loss of numbers isn't all the MMO's sucking? Well, I usually will look at World of Warcraft and see how much loss we see there.

World of Warcraft X-Fire chart April 17th - players   32,882 (34,755 ↓)

Thats pretty big. And if it continues, well, we know X-Fire is in decline, and not our MMO's.

****

1. Rift -  2705 ( 3176 ↓ ) players
2. EvE Online - 967 ( 1006 ↓ ) 
3. Lord of the Rings Online - 751 ( 780 ↓ )
4. Aion - 457 ( 496 ↓ )
5. Champions Online - 225 ( 261 ↓ )
6. DC Universe - 179 ( 214 ↓ )
7. Dungeons & Dragons Online - 159 ( 140 ↑ )
8. Final Fantasy XIV - 152 ( 122 ↑ )
9. Star Trek Online - 101 ( 102 ↓ )
10. Age of Conan - 94 ( 83 ↑ )
11. Warhammer Online - 84 ( 71 ↑ )

Interesting. Another drop across the board. Spring Break in full swing?

The top 5 all had minor drops, except for Rift. The day after for The Event was kind of like the TV show of the same name (NBC Mondays, 9pm...but, don't look for it very long...cancellation is imminent). Dropping like a rock. Will continue to watch this and see if it stabilizes.

Surprises abound here though. DDO, Final Fantasy, AoC and WAR...all noted super failures, all having a rise on these charts. How odd. Again, as noted in my previous article on decline in the MMO market; players have such a wide choice now, that as long as these games continue to have audiences, they will stay open.

****
An interesting week. Several factors including loss of playerbase for the time tracking clients, Spring Break for schools...all equal lowered play times.

Rift really took a beating this week, and that is disappointing. The playerbase really has become jaded in regards to new MMO's thanks to so many years of flopped launches. No new game is given a chance. Of course Rift has a few strikes against it...familiar gameplay for those who are invested in the big momma MMO, security issues that is a product of a new tech savvy environment, and then shooting yourself in the foot with giving trials to players during a huge event.

I am unsure if it will recover. It will most likely be relegated to being another contender for the top 3 spot, and stabilize eventually.

For now, the X-Fire game is headed to the beach with numbers like these....time to go ogle some bikini clads until school is back in session.

Cheers