In the MMO trends for February, ArcheAge has lost its position as the number two MMORPG behind WoW, with Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV passing by.
Every month, Ratpr determines how many hours users of their PC program have spent in virtual worlds. These trends indicate how each game is performing. Please note that these are not “absolute player numbers,” but only a trend, an approximation. Why we don’t use official numbers, you can read in this article. We still consider the Raptr numbers to be the most reliable trend barometer.
No news at the top
The push from World of Warcraft is over for now. In January, it had over 10% of all play shares among Raptr users, but now it’s down to 8%. The initial momentum for World of Warcraft is gone, and even the Blackrock Foundry and the WoW Patch 6.1. couldn’t change that. League of Legends is still the lone leader in the top position.
ArcheAge falls, Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV rise
Since September, the Free2Play MMO ArcheAge has consistently held second place among MMORPGs. However, a steady downward trend was evident. Now the more solid Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV have overtaken the sandpark MMO.
ArcheAge should always be viewed with caution in this statistic: it rewards players who are logged into the game with higher labor points, which are needed for crafting. Recently, the AFK timer was removed. Players can now simply stay logged in overnight. For Free2Play players, this is still a reliable way to obtain labor points. Paying players, however, will not need this anymore, they will receive full labor points even offline: It remains exciting whether ArcheAge can continue to play a part in the concert of major time killers.
The rise of Final Fantasy XIV is attributed by the creators of the Ratpr blog, among other things, to a Free-Login weekend at the end of February. This continued as a Free-Login week in March. The Gold Saucer patch also plays a role. It brought only trivial content to the joy of the fans. However, this will change at the end of March with the next patch, which will bring more content, but will not arrive until the 31st.
The rise of Guild Wars 2 is likely due to promotions and significant discounts. This accompanied ArenaNet’s announcement of the Heart of Thorns expansion.
Overall, the future looks bright for both MMOs. The Final Fantasy XIV expansion Heavensward already has a release date and we should also see the GW2 expansion this year.
Heroes of the Storm new on board
It is quite rare to observe a game breaking into the top 20. This month, thanks to the ongoing beta, Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm has succeeded. The MOBA climbs directly to 12th place. This means that Blizzard now, as we predicted last month, has 4 games in the top 20. This happened much faster than expected.
Hearthstone (9) is struggling, but reinforcements are already announced in the form of a new adventure. Diablo 3 maintains its position thanks to the new season in the top group (5).
Other MMOs that we follow on our site and which are found in the top 20 have maintained their positions, lost slightly, or improved slightly. Among them are Smite (6) and the military MMOs World of Tanks (10) and War Thunder (17). The Free2Play classic Star Wars: The Old Republic (15) remains stable. Warframe jumps from 19 to 16. In this area, even small adjustments can lead to gaining several positions.
For April, one can be curious whether the Buy2Play transition of The Elder Scrolls Online will noticeable make an appearance in the list. The chances seem quite good. TESO was already out of the Top 20 since July last year. A month later WildStar actually lost its spot in the spotlight.
We discuss the status quo of 5 major MMORPGs in this article: Where do the 5 subscription MMORPGs WoW, TESO, WildStar, GW2 and FF XIV stand at the beginning of 2015?
