Massivelys Best Of 2022 Awards

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It's nearly the top of the yr, a time for merriment, camaraderie, and cynical evaluation of all the MMO triumphs and tragedies that 2013 supplied us.



At present, Massively's staff honors the best of the perfect (and the worst of the worst) for the yr 2013. Each author was permitted a vote in each category with an anything-goes nomination course of. No MMO, company, or headline was off the table, as lengthy as it met the standards. Can WildStar make it to three years in a row at the top of our "most anticipated" pile, or did its delay dampen our enthusiasm? urbanislovar Can SOE repeat its win for best studio? Which MMO is most likely to flop subsequent year? And just what constituted the most important MMO screw-up of the final 12 months?



Get pleasure from our picks for one of the best MMOs, expansions, studios, stories, and innovations of 2013... and our most-anticipated for 2014 and past.



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



Jasmine: Closing Fantasy XIV, fingers down. This sport managed to realize something I assumed was unattainable: Square-Enix took a sport that I considered the worst MMO I've ever performed and turned it into something that retains me logging in every likelihood I get.



Eliot: If you had asked me two weeks ago, I would have said Final Fantasy XIV with out reservation. Now don't get me improper; all the things good about the unique version is delivered to the forefront, and everything unfavourable has either been removed or minimized. But the 2.1 update and the housing fiasco have driven home the concept that we're not out of the woods and that we're simply taking a look at an era of bold new errors. If these points get mounted, then I've excessive hopes for the future; if not, it'll be a shocking example of a gorgeous turnaround followed by a shameful crash.



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



Richie: Guild Wars 2's Super Journey Box patch stands out in such a profound means as a result of many gamers thought it was nothing greater than an April Fools' Joke. The official webpage was updated with amazing photos from an 8-bit world accompanied by a hilarious, cheesy, '80s-type commercial. When i logged into the sport and realized that SAB was really in the sport, my jaw hit my desk. There were three full levels of this 8-bit world full with secrets and techniques, puzzles, boss battles, authentic music rating, and custom sound results -- a full platforming adventure recreation neatly tucked inside of my MMO.



Brendan: I've written a good bit on why I really like this 12 months's Odyssey and Rubicon expansions, but Rubicon's personal deployable constructions push it simply over the sting. The Cell Depot has made long-time period exploration a very possible career by permitting tech three ships to refit anyplace in deep space, and Ghost Websites have added some extra reward for these scouring deep area. The change to warp acceleration has also mounted the disparity between small and large ships and enabled actual hit-and-run type warfare again.



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



Matt: Path of Exile will get my vote for this one. The oldsters at Grinding Gear Video games have taken the time-honored motion-RPG formulation popularized by Diablo and twisted it up into an experience that feels each fresh and acquainted. Eschewing traditional lessons and progression in favor of an almost inconceivably big ability tree and permitting players to customize their potential loadouts by means of interchangeable gems are simply two of the distinctive spins Path of Exile brings to the desk, and with its variety of leagues and competitions, there's something right here for the complete informal-hardcore spectrum.



Justin: Hearthstone. If just about everybody's in beta, does it rely? I say it counts. Blizzard's bought a cash cow hit on its fingers, and the combination of World of Warcraft and Magic-lite is solely impressed. Plus, it's pretty enjoyable.



Most Underrated MMO of 2013: NeverwinterRunner-up: Defiance



Larry: Neverwinter launched with a wide audience and the hopes of being a full-fledged Dungeons and Dragons MMO. But alas, that is not what Cryptic had in thoughts for the game, and gamers didn't respect Neverwinter for what it was: a fun game that you simply spend a couple of minutes to a few hours playing to unwind from the day by day stress. When i revisited the game, I used to be truly shocked at how much fun I had. I don't must stress about rotations or builds or the usual MMO worries. I simply log in, pound by a couple of dungeons, then carry on with my day.



Tina: I believe lots of people boxed Neverwinter underneath the "more of the identical" class with out giving it a chance. The standard 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, but I enjoyed my time in it, and i keep it put in in case I need some sci-fi shooter action with questing and a goal.



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



Brendan: There are some great MMOs on the horizon, but the one I'm trying forward to the most is EverQuest Next. I am an absolute sucker for sandboxes, and the thought of a fantasy sandbox with a voxel-primarily based and fully destructible world has me absolutely excited! The large financial success of Minecraft has inspired a deluge of voxel-primarily based video games in recent years, but no sport has yet performed the characteristic justice. EQ Next guarantees to be as removed from those blocky worlds as potential while retaining a lot of the same sandbox gameplay.



Bree: The day I learned Star Wars Galaxies was closing, Smed reassured a teary-eyed me that SOE was engaged on an even larger and higher sandbox. That sandbox turned out to be EverQuest Next. I'm banking on SOE's ability to parlay all the things it learned from SWG -- especially the errors -- into EQN. There are other good sandboxes on the horizon, completely, but nothing as more likely to thrive as Subsequent.



Justin: Revolutionary sandboxes or huge fanbase followings aside, I am rooting for Carbine to drag off a wacky sci-fi themepark in WildStar. I almost hope it does not launch super-large so that it may well grow from word-of-mouth instead of developer hype.



Richie: I'm wanting ahead to WildStar. Ever since I quit World of Warcraft, part of me has missed having a number of nights each week as scheduled hangouts with my buddies. I am itching to raid once more, and it looks as if WildStar can have the very best endgame features of the 2014 MMO crop.



Most Prone to "Flop" in 2014: The Elder Scrolls On-lineRunner-up: Mud 514



Anatoli: "Flop" is a really loaded time period relating to MMO. I do not suppose ESO will make much of a splash. I doubt it'll fail as a recreation or as a enterprise, however I predict that lots of people will decide that it did when it would not set the whole world on hearth.



Bree: I feel ESO will launch simply high-quality and gather a whole lot of box and sub charges initially, but long-term, it is in hassle. MMORPG followers are sick of story-pushed single-player themepark MMOs, console followers will be mystified by subs and a 3-means PvP endgame, and Elder Scrolls fans will wander back to the lore and mods of their solo sandboxes. I'm really not sure for whom the game is intended, and i say that as a TES fanatic.



Matthew: I'm not really a fan of The Elder Scrolls series, so perhaps I'm biased, but I can not see the online model having the success of the one-player installments.



MJ: If I were pressured to hazard a guess, I would say ESO. It feels as if there's a dark shadow of "cannot meet expectations" hanging over it.



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



Beau: SOE continues to churn out games, but the studio does so by itself terms. Like it or hate it, you can't deny that SOE has carried out many, many things which have modified the course of MMOs.



Mike: SOE appears like the studio that has one of the best hold on what the market desires. It keeps releasing engaging new content for its present properties, and EverQuest Subsequent seems to be like the first fantasy MMO to truly try something new since Ultima On-line. SOE also has a solid repute for making massive guarantees and failing to ship, however I would say it had an excellent year. No question all eyes are on EQN in the approaching years.



Toli: Glitch's shutdown final yr was downright tragic, however Tiny Speck has made every effort to maintain the spirit and group alive, going as far as to release the sport's assets into the public domain only in the near past. That is preposterous, and that i imply that in the absolute best method.



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



MJ: EverQuest Subsequent Landmark grabs this one because the game came literally out of nowhere! There was not a single whisper, trace, leak or anything to recommend there was a second game on SOE's horizon. In this business, that's simply unheard of.



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



Matthew: EverQuest Subsequent. Because the announcement, it appears as if the entire future of the industry is coloured by comparisons to our new savior. I am not going to disagree. I am going to exit on a limb as far as to say I believe Blizzard went again to the drawing board on Titan because of EQN.



Jef: Star Citizen. You might not wish to play it, and also you may be bored with the Chris Roberts hero-worship, however you cannot deny the impression that it's had and continues to have on the way games are made.



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



Jef: Mud 514. I is likely to be beating a useless horse right here, but console-only plus similar-old-shooter-gameplay equals meh. And CCP hyping the crap out of the EVE On-line connection wasn't notably sensible since there actually isn't one.



Mike: This may be a cop-out, however I'm pinning this on the complete MMO genre. The 12 months was ruled by countless re-treads of familiar fantasy worlds and plenty of uninspired work from builders that should really know higher (Trion, I am looking at you). With the line between MMO and non-MMO getting blurrier by the minute, MMO builders need to get their acts together in the event that they're hoping to stay aggressive. And so they want cease asking for handouts by way of Kickstarter.



Eliot: Kickstarter. We have had a whole lot of funding drives for games, some successful, some not, with practically every single one in all them promising the identical basic gameplay philosophies, none of which has been backed up by actual finished MMOs. Not less than a kind of studios has gone back to the nicely and requested for extra money from Kickstarter backers, and I do not think about it is going to be the first. It isn't a trend I'm happy to see, and one which I've already written about at length. There's some great stuff on Kickstarter, however this yr's glut was unpleasant.



Greatest Blunder of 2013: Subscription models for Elder Scrolls On-line and WildStarOther nominees: Console MMOs, Every thing ESO does, LucasArts' closure, Blizzard's lore sexism, Star Wars: The Previous Republic's house fight, 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.



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



Eliot: WildStar's business mannequin at the very least appears to be taken from a e-book written by somebody with the vaguest data of industry developments, however ESO's appears to have been designed with the assumption that every different sport that went free-to-play after launch (also known as "just about every recreation that has launched within the previous 4 years") was a worse game than ESO shall be. Can we please stop pretending that you could launch with a subscription now?



Mike: I believe, in the long term, putting a subscription payment on The Elder Scrolls On-line will develop into a reasonably dangerous concept. Bethesda will make piles of cash before it's compelled to shift to free-to-play, however I am undecided what the worth will likely be in terms of loyalty to the brand. If followers feel burned or taken advantage of, the Elder Scrolls franchise will endure. A subscription charge primarily 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 is by no means made an MMO.



Tina: I honestly do not see how CCP can keep its commitment to complete World of Darkness whereas continually chopping the team. We have to see some strong results in 2014 to prove otherwise.



Biggest Innovation or Pattern of 2013: The return of sandbox gameplayRunner-up: Defiance's transmedia synergyDifferent nominees: Oculus Rift, Guild Wars 2's cadence, streaming games, blurring style strains, actiony MMOs, voxels, and Warhammer's sunset.



Toli: I like that traits are swinging again toward a wide range of gameplay options this yr. Voxels! Sandboxy issues! I flip around and abruptly MMOs are launching with housing again! Holy smokes!



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



Larry: Defiance was a disappointment as a recreation, but as a product it broke the mold. I actually loved the tie-in launch of a television collection with an MMO. I don't assume different games want to repeat this model exactly, however I do suppose that tie-ins, crossovers, and multi-media launches add value to a product. And i also imagine that outdoors-the-field thinking must be inspired in MMOs, even if it does in the end flop.



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



Shawn: Closing Warhammer Online. I mean, the game was kinda fun at first, but can we stop with that precise method now? Thanks. (I am already placing my vote in for 2015's Greatest Development to be "the tip of voxel-based mostly on-line video games.")



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



Jasmine: Ultimate Fantasy XIV. It improved so much from 1.Zero to 2.0 that it performs like an virtually totally different recreation. I don't assume you may get far more improved than that.



Beau: RuneScape three introduced a lot to the older sport that it actually is a different game. It is all the time been dynamic and felt like a living world, but this relaunch made it that a lot better.



These are our picks. Howsabout yours?