Raptr: MMOs? None Were Released in 2011

Raptr, the game play tracking and social network tool thing that seems a lot like Xfire… because it was created by the same people who made Xfire… where was I going with this…

Oh, yeah.

Raptr announced their Most Played Games for 2011, restricted to games launched in 2011, despite the fact that we still have 23 days to go here.  Maybe nothing else important is launching this year.

What?  Star Wars: The Old Republic is launching this year?

Well, too late and too bad!

In fact, of the categories Raptr chose to acknowledge, MMOs barely make the cut.

The categories are:

And while you might think “Open-World Game” would include MMOs, that is actually just single player open world games like Batman: Arkham City or L.A. Noire.

No, the only mention of MMOs is in the final category, the one about Paid-to-F2P conversions.  That covers MMOs, because it seems if you ran some sort of crime or crime fighting MMO… Champions Online, DC Universe Online, City of Heroes, All Points Bulletin, or… well, it doesn’t quite fit but I’ll make it fit… Global Agenda… then apparently 2011 was your year to go Free to Play.

So, from one angle I suppose congratulations are in order.  Raptr managed to do a “Most Played” list that squeezed in MMOs from such an angle that they avoided mentioning any fantasy MMOs… like Rift maybe… along with Star Wars: The Old Republic.

Was it really that bad of a year for MMOs?  I know my 2011 MMO Outlook ended up on the sad end of things, but were there really so few launches?

Was the slide to F2P really the big event for 2011?

6 thoughts on “Raptr: MMOs? None Were Released in 2011”

  1. saucelah

    In their defense, even though I’m sure people will play the crap out of it after launch, there’s not much time left in the year for it to show up near the top.

    On another note, LA Noire was the worst open world game Rockstar had ever done. It’s fine, if you treat it as a linear action game, but there’s few reasons to actually wander the world outside of the missions, and it’s kind of creepy that no matter where you go, everyone in LA is talking about you. Oh well, it’s still better than True Crime was.

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  2. Wilhelm Arcturus Post author

    I know, the SWTOR cut is just pedantry on my part, but I work in an industry where attention to details is prized. And this post was more meant to use Raptr as weather vane for the MMO market than taking Raptr to task.

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  3. Warsyde

    Well, to be fair, I think the list of “Most Played MMORPG launched in 2011” would be pretty short. There was Rift and DCUO, World of Tanks if you want to get technical, and . . . umm . . . a bunch of F2P asian import crap?

    I’m sure there must have been some smaller releases in there as well (Gods & Heroes for example) but nothing big enough to really register on a “most played” list. It would have been fairly meaningless.

    So yeah, I guess the short answer is it really was that sad of a year for MMORPGs.

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  4. bhagpuss

    Eden Eternal, Dragon Nest, Aerrevan, A Mythical Land and, of course, Rift. All interesting and enjoyable MMOs that launched this year. There were, obviously, many more, but really how many do you need?

    I firmly believe that hardly anyone who plays MMOs uses either XFire or Raptr. Almost no-one I have ever met and chatted to in an MMO would have a clue what they are or want to use them if they did.

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  5. Armagon

    I find the limitation to “released 2011” already very silly. Surely there were lots of well-played RTS games in 1999 and no one still played StarCraft, right?

    Anyway, Raptr looked pretty cool and I think I signed up in the first week, but haven’t ever looked back since…

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  6. Wilhelm Arcturus Post author

    @Bhagpuss – If I were Trion, I would be a little bit torqued about there being no MMO category, since they would have likely been the winner. Instead there was just the “crime fighting goes free to play” chart tacked on. ouch.

    As for who uses Raptr or Xfire, WoW used to be a big presence in “hours played” back when Xfire used to issue a monthly report.

    I started using Xfire back when I was playing shooters a lot, because it allowed you to join your friends directly on the server on which they were playing. That was huge.

    I have gone back and forth with Xfire ever since. I started using it again just to track play time, but it would never track EVE Online and had problems with EQ2.

    I picked up Raptr about a year ago, again to track time. It still misses some games, but only once in a while, and it lets me see what game some of my friends are playing. Usually that amounts to, “Oh, Potshot is playing Rift, I should log in.” But sometimes that is enough.

    @Armagon – Yeah, it seems silly to JUST do 2011 releases. I get that they want to highlight new games, because that is what will interest people (and get ad revenue), but they could have easily done this years releases and all releases.

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