Massivelys Better Of 2022 Awards

From Clash of Crypto Currencies
Jump to: navigation, search

It's almost the top of the 12 months, a time for merriment, camaraderie, and cynical analysis of all of the MMO triumphs and tragedies that 2013 provided us.



In the present day, Massively's employees honors the best of the perfect (and the worst of the worst) for the yr 2013. Each author was permitted a vote in every category with an something-goes nomination course of. No MMO, firm, or headline was off the desk, as long as it met the standards. Can WildStar make it to a few years in a row at the highest of our "most anticipated" pile, or did its delay dampen our enthusiasm? Can SOE repeat its win for best studio? Which MMO is most prone to flop next year? And just what constituted the most important MMO screw-up of the final 12 months?



Get pleasure from our picks for the very best MMOs, expansions, studios, tales, and improvements of 2013... and our most-anticipated for 2014 and past.



Best New MMO of 2013: Ultimate Fantasy XIV: A Realm RebornRunners-up: Tie between Neverwinter and Defiance



Jasmine: Final Fantasy XIV, palms down. This sport managed to achieve something I thought was unattainable: Sq.-Enix took a recreation that I thought of the worst MMO I've ever performed and turned it into one thing that retains me logging in each probability I get.



Eliot: When you had requested me two weeks ago, I'd have mentioned Ultimate Fantasy XIV without reservation. Now don't get me fallacious; everything good about the unique model is brought to the forefront, and every little thing destructive has both been removed or minimized. However the 2.1 update and the housing fiasco have pushed home the concept we're not out of the woods and that we're just taking a look at an era of daring new mistakes. If these issues get mounted, then I have high hopes for the future; if not, it's going to be a shocking example of a beautiful turnaround followed by a shameful crash.



Best Growth or Update of 2013: Guild Wars 2's Super Journey FieldRunners-up: Tie between EVE On-line's Odyssey, EVE Online's Rubicon, and Star Trek On-line'sLegacy of Romulus



Richie: Guild Wars 2's Super Adventure Field patch stands out in such a profound means because many players thought it was nothing more than an April Fools' Joke. The official webpage was updated with amazing images from an 8-bit world accompanied by a hilarious, cheesy, '80s-fashion business. After i logged into the sport and realized that SAB was really in the sport, my jaw hit my desk. There have been three full ranges of this 8-bit world full with secrets, puzzles, boss battles, unique music score, and custom sound results -- a full platforming adventure sport neatly tucked inside of my MMO.



Brendan: I've written a fair bit on why I really like this year's Odyssey and Rubicon expansions, but Rubicon's personal deployable buildings push it simply over the edge. The Cell Depot has made lengthy-term exploration a really possible career by permitting tech 3 ships to refit wherever in deep space, and Ghost Websites have added some additional reward for those scouring deep space. The change to warp acceleration has additionally fastened the disparity between small and enormous ships and enabled real hit-and-run fashion warfare again.



Best Non-Conventional MMO or Pseudo-MMO of 2013: Path of ExileDifferent nominees: Hearthstone, Dota 2, Cube World, Defiance, MUSH



Matt: Path of Exile gets my vote for this one. The folks at Grinding Gear Games have taken the time-honored action-RPG formula popularized by Diablo and twisted it up into an experience that feels each contemporary and acquainted. Eschewing traditional classes and development in favor of an virtually inconceivably big talent tree and permitting gamers to customize their capacity loadouts through interchangeable gems are just two of the unique spins Path of Exile brings to the desk, and with its number of leagues and competitions, there's one thing here for the whole informal-hardcore spectrum.



Justin: Hearthstone. If nearly everyone's in beta, does it rely? I say it counts. Blizzard's obtained a money cow hit on its fingers, and the mixture of World of Warcraft and Magic-lite is solely inspired. Plus, it is fairly fun.



Most Underrated MMO of 2013: NeverwinterRunner-up: Defiance



Larry: Neverwinter launched with a large audience and the hopes of being a full-fledged Dungeons and Dragons MMO. But alas, that's not what Cryptic had in mind for the game, and avid gamers did not recognize Neverwinter for what it was: a enjoyable sport that you simply spend a few minutes to a couple of hours enjoying to unwind from the every day stress. After i revisited the sport, I used to be truly stunned at how a lot fun I had. I do not have to stress about rotations or builds or the usual MMO worries. I simply log in, pound through a couple of dungeons, then carry on with my day.



Tina: I feel a lot of people boxed Neverwinter under the "more of the identical" class without giving it an opportunity. The normal charm is up to date nicely by the 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons freshness.



Jef: Defiance is not setting the world on fire or something, however I enjoyed my time in it, and i keep it put in in case I need some sci-fi shooter motion with questing and a goal.



Most Anticipated for 2014 and Past: EverQuest NextRunner-up: WildStarOther nominees: EverQuest Subsequent Landmark, ArcheAge, Future, Pathfinder On-line, TUG, The Elder Scrolls Online



Brendan: There are some great MMOs on the horizon, but the one I am looking ahead to the most is EverQuest Next. I am an absolute sucker for sandboxes, and the concept of a fantasy sandbox with a voxel-based and utterly destructible world has me absolutely excited! The large financial success of Minecraft has inspired a deluge of voxel-based mostly video games lately, but no recreation has but finished the feature justice. EQ Next guarantees to be as far from those blocky worlds as doable whereas retaining a lot of the identical sandbox gameplay.



Bree: The day I realized Star Wars Galaxies was closing, Smed reassured a teary-eyed me that SOE was working on a fair larger and better sandbox. That sandbox turned out to be EverQuest Subsequent. I'm banking on SOE's capability to parlay everything it learned from SWG -- particularly the mistakes -- into EQN. There are different good sandboxes on the horizon, completely, however nothing as likely to thrive as Next.



Justin: Modern sandboxes or huge fanbase followings apart, I am rooting for Carbine to pull off a wacky sci-fi themepark in WildStar. I virtually hope it does not launch super-large so that it could grow from word-of-mouth as an alternative of developer hype.



Richie: I'm wanting ahead to WildStar. Chit Chat Chit Chat Ever since I quit World of Warcraft, a part of me has missed having a couple of nights each week as scheduled hangouts with my buddies. I'm itching to raid again, and it seems to be as if WildStar will have the most effective endgame options of the 2014 MMO crop.



Most More likely to "Flop" in 2014: The Elder Scrolls OnlineRunner-up: Mud 514



Anatoli: "Flop" is a very loaded time period on the subject of MMO. I don't think ESO will make a lot of a splash. I doubt it'll fail as a sport or as a enterprise, however I predict that lots of people will decide that it did when it doesn't set the whole world on hearth.



Bree: I think ESO will launch just fine and gather quite a lot of box and sub fees initially, however long-term, it's in hassle. MMORPG fans are sick of story-pushed single-player themepark MMOs, console fans can be mystified by subs and a three-means PvP endgame, and Elder Scrolls fans will wander back to the lore and mods of their solo sandboxes. I'm truly not sure for whom the game is intended, and that i say that as a TES fanatic.



Matthew: I'm not likely a fan of The Elder Scrolls sequence, so maybe I'm biased, but I can't see the net version having the success of the only-participant installments.



MJ: If I had been forced to hazard a guess, I would say ESO. It feels as if there is a darkish shadow of "can't meet expectations" hanging over it.



Best Studio in 2013: Sony On-line LeisureRunner-up: Trion WorldsHonorable Mention: Tiny Speck



Beau: SOE continues to churn out video games, but the studio does so on its own phrases. Find it irresistible or hate it, you can't deny that SOE has achieved many, many issues which have changed the course of MMOs.



Mike: SOE seems like the studio that has the best hold on what the market wants. It retains releasing engaging new content for its current properties, and EverQuest Next appears to be like like the primary fantasy MMO to really try anything new since Ultima Online. SOE additionally has a solid status for making huge guarantees and failing to deliver, but I would say it had a very good year. No query all eyes are on EQN in the approaching years.



Toli: Glitch's shutdown last 12 months was downright tragic, but Tiny Speck has made each effort to keep the spirit and community alive, going so far as to launch the game's property into the public domain only in the near past. Chit Chat Chit Chat That's preposterous, and that i imply that in the absolute best manner.



Greatest Story of 2013: The reveal of EverQuest Subsequent and LandmarkRunners-up: Tie between Star Citizen's Kickstarter success and Ultimate Fantasy XIV's relaunch



MJ: EverQuest Subsequent Landmark grabs this one as a result of the sport got here literally out of nowhere! There was not a single whisper, hint, leak or anything to suggest there was a second game on SOE's horizon. On this industry, that is simply unheard of.



Tina: EverQuest Next. Everybody just went nuts, and for good reason!



Matthew: EverQuest Next. For the reason that announcement, it seems as if the whole future of the trade is coloured by comparisons to our new savior. I am not going to disagree. I will exit on a limb so far as to say I believe Blizzard went again to the drawing board on Titan due to EQN.



Jef: Star Citizen. Chances are you'll not wish to play it, and you could also be tired of the Chris Roberts hero-worship, however you cannot deny the influence that it is had and continues to have on the best way games are made.



Biggest Disappointment of 2013: Mud 514Different nominees: Defiance, Warhammer's sunset, the Kickstarter craze, Age of Wushu, Neverwinter, uninspired MMO design, conventional subscription fashions, no EverQuest Next at SOE Reside, the gloom and doom surrounding World of Darkness, and Guild Wars 2's residing story.



Jef: Dust 514. I is likely to be beating a useless horse right here, however console-solely plus same-old-shooter-gameplay equals meh. And CCP hyping the crap out of the EVE On-line connection wasn't notably sensible since there really is not one.



Mike: This may be a cop-out, but I'm pinning this on the entire MMO style. The yr was dominated by countless re-treads of acquainted fantasy worlds and a whole lot of uninspired work from developers that should really know better (Trion, I am taking a look at you). With the line between MMO and non-MMO getting blurrier by the minute, MMO developers must get their acts collectively in the event that they're hoping to remain competitive. And so they want cease asking for handouts by way of Kickstarter.



Eliot: Kickstarter. We've had plenty of funding drives for games, some profitable, some not, with nearly each single one in every of them promising the identical primary gameplay philosophies, none of which has been backed up by actual completed MMOs. At least a type of studios has gone again to the properly and requested for more money from Kickstarter backers, and I don't think about will probably be the first. It isn't a pattern I am completely satisfied to see, and one which I've already written about at size. There's some great stuff on Kickstarter, but this year's glut was unpleasant.



Greatest Blunder of 2013: Subscription models for Elder Scrolls Online and WildStarOther nominees: Console MMOs, All the things ESO does, LucasArts' closure, Blizzard's lore sexism, Star Wars: The Previous Republic's space combat, FFXIV's launch woes, CCP's World of Darkness layoffs, Guild Wars 2's horrifying PR campaigns, and Diablo III's public sale house fiasco.



[Replace: We speak extra about this award and the rationale behind it in December 26th's Ask Massively.]



Eliot: WildStar's enterprise mannequin at the least appears to be taken from a e-book written by somebody with the vaguest knowledge of trade traits, but ESO's appears to have been designed with the assumption that every other game that went free-to-play after launch (also called "pretty much every sport that has launched throughout the previous four years") was a worse recreation than ESO will likely be. Can we please cease pretending that you would be able to launch with a subscription now?



Mike: I believe, in the long term, putting a subscription payment on The Elder Scrolls Online will develop into a fairly dangerous idea. Bethesda will make piles of money before it's forced to shift to free-to-play, however I am unsure what the price will probably be in terms of loyalty to the brand. If fans really feel burned or taken advantage of, the Elder Scrolls franchise will undergo. A subscription fee essentially says, "You may give up World of Warcraft/EVE On-line/Remaining Fantasy XIV for this," and that's exceptionally daring from a studio that's never made an MMO.



Tina: I truthfully don't see how CCP can keep its dedication to complete World of Darkness while regularly cutting the crew. We need to see some solid results in 2014 to prove otherwise.



Largest Innovation or Development of 2013: The return of sandbox gameplayRunner-up: Defiance's transmedia synergyOther nominees: Oculus Rift, Guild Wars 2's cadence, streaming video games, blurring genre lines, actiony MMOs, voxels, and Warhammer's sunset.



Toli: I like that traits are swinging again toward quite a lot of gameplay options this 12 months. Voxels! Sandboxy things! I flip around and instantly MMOs are launching with housing once more! Holy smokes!



Matt: I am comfortable to see extra studios tapping into the sandbox market. From heavy-hitters like EverQuest Next and Star Citizen to less-hyped titles like Pathfinder On-line, the sandbox genre is gaining lots of traction.



Larry: Defiance was a disappointment as a sport, however as a product it broke the mold. I really loved the tie-in launch of a tv sequence with an MMO. I don't suppose different games need to repeat this model exactly, but I do assume that tie-ins, crossovers, and multi-media launches add value to a product. And i also believe that exterior-the-field pondering must be inspired in MMOs, even when it does ultimately flop.



Justin: Oculus Rift: Could VR come again to be an precise future for MMOs? It is a possibility, and what teases we're seeing this yr have whet my desire to try it out for real.



Shawn: Closing Warhammer Online. I mean, the game was kinda fun at first, however can we stop with that precise components now? Thanks. (I am already putting my vote in for 2015's Greatest Trend to be "the top of voxel-based mostly online games.")



Most Improved in 2013: Closing Fantasy XIVRunners-up: Tie between Star Wars: The Previous Republic and RuneScape 3



Jasmine: Final Fantasy XIV. It improved so much from 1.0 to 2.Zero that it performs like an virtually totally different recreation. I don't suppose you can get way more improved than that.



Beau: RuneScape 3 brought so much to the older game that it really is a different sport. It's at all times been dynamic and felt like a residing world, however this relaunch made it that a lot better.



These are our picks. Howsabout yours?