It's practically the top of the yr, a time for merriment, camaraderie, and cynical analysis of all of the MMO triumphs and tragedies that 2013 offered us. Immediately, Massively's employees honors the better of the very best (and the worst of the worst) for the 12 months 2013. Every writer was permitted a vote in each class with an something-goes nomination process. No MMO, firm, or headline was off the table, as lengthy as it met the factors. 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? Can SOE repeat its win for greatest studio? Which MMO is most prone to flop subsequent yr? And just what constituted the largest MMO screw-up of the final 12 months? Take pleasure in our picks for the most effective MMOs, expansions, studios, stories, and innovations of 2013... and our most-anticipated for 2014 and past. Finest New MMO of 2013: Ultimate Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Runners-up: Tie between Neverwinter and Defiance Jasmine: Ultimate Fantasy XIV, hands down. This recreation managed to realize one thing I believed was inconceivable: Sq.-Enix took a recreation that I considered the worst MMO I've ever played and turned it into something that keeps me logging in every chance I get. Eliot: If you had asked me two weeks ago, I'd have stated Closing Fantasy XIV with out reservation. Now do not get me wrong; every little thing good about the original model is delivered to the forefront, and every part destructive has either been eliminated or minimized. However the 2.1 replace and the housing fiasco have driven home the concept we're not out of the woods and that we're simply taking a look at an period of daring new errors. If these issues get fixed, then I've excessive hopes for the long run; if not, it'll be a shocking instance of a gorgeous turnaround followed by a shameful crash. Best Expansion or Replace of 2013: Guild Wars 2's Tremendous Journey Box Runners-up: Tie between EVE Online's Odyssey, EVE Online's Rubicon, and Star Trek On-line's Legacy of Romulus Richie: Guild Wars 2's Tremendous Adventure Field patch stands out in such a profound manner because many players thought it was nothing greater than an April Fools' Joke. The official web site was updated with superb photographs from an 8-bit world accompanied by a hilarious, cheesy, '80s-style business. After i logged into the game and realized that SAB was really in the game, my jaw hit my desk. There were three full ranges of this 8-bit world complete with secrets, puzzles, boss battles, authentic music rating, and custom sound results -- a full platforming journey game neatly tucked inside of my MMO. Brendan: I've written a good bit on why I like this yr's Odyssey and Rubicon expansions, however Rubicon's private deployable structures push it just over the sting. The Cell Depot has made long-time period exploration a very possible profession by allowing tech 3 ships to refit anyplace in deep space, and Ghost Sites have added some further reward for those scouring deep space. The change to warp acceleration has also mounted the disparity between small and large ships and enabled actual hit-and-run fashion warfare again. Finest Non-Traditional MMO or Pseudo-MMO of 2013: Path of Exile Different nominees: Hearthstone, Dota 2, Cube World, Defiance, MUSH Matt: Path of Exile will get my vote for this one. The oldsters at Grinding Gear Games have taken the time-honored action-RPG system popularized by Diablo and twisted it up into an expertise that feels each recent and familiar. Eschewing conventional lessons and development in favor of an nearly inconceivably large skill tree and permitting players to customise their capacity loadouts by way of interchangeable gems are just two of the unique spins Path of Exile brings to the table, and with its number of leagues and competitions, there's one thing right here for the whole casual-hardcore spectrum. Justin: Hearthstone. If nearly everybody's in beta, does it rely? I say it counts. Blizzard's bought a cash cow hit on its fingers, and the mix of World of Warcraft and Magic-lite is simply impressed. Plus, it's fairly fun. Most Underrated MMO of 2013: Neverwinter Runner-up: Defiance Larry: Neverwinter launched with a wide viewers and the hopes of being a full-fledged Dungeons and Dragons MMO. But alas, that's not what Cryptic had in mind for the sport, and gamers did not admire Neverwinter for what it was: a fun recreation that you spend a few minutes to a couple of hours enjoying to unwind from the day by day stress. After i revisited the game, I used to be actually surprised at how much fun I had. I do not should stress about rotations or builds or the standard MMO worries. I merely log in, pound by way of a few dungeons, then carry on with my day. Tina: I believe a lot of people boxed Neverwinter underneath the extra of the same class with out giving it a chance. The normal charm is up to date properly via the 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons freshness. Jef: Defiance is not setting the world on hearth or anything, however I enjoyed my time in it, and that i keep it put in in case I need some sci-fi shooter action with questing and a purpose. Most Anticipated for 2014 and Past: EverQuest Subsequent Runner-up: WildStar Different 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 wanting ahead to essentially the most is EverQuest Subsequent. MINECRAFT SERVERS am an absolute sucker for sandboxes, and the concept of a fantasy sandbox with a voxel-based and completely destructible world has me completely excited! The huge financial success of Minecraft has impressed a deluge of voxel-based mostly video games in recent years, however no recreation has yet executed the feature justice. EQ Subsequent promises to be as far from those blocky worlds as potential while retaining a lot of the same sandbox gameplay. Bree: The day I discovered Star Wars Galaxies was closing, Smed reassured a teary-eyed me that SOE was engaged on an even bigger and higher sandbox. That sandbox turned out to be EverQuest Subsequent. I'm banking on SOE's capacity to parlay all the things it learned from SWG -- particularly the errors -- into EQN. There are different good sandboxes on the horizon, absolutely, however nothing as prone to thrive as Subsequent. Justin: Innovative sandboxes or huge fanbase followings apart, I am rooting for Carbine to drag off a wacky sci-fi themepark in WildStar. I virtually hope it does not launch tremendous-massive so that it may well grow from word-of-mouth as a substitute of developer hype. Richie: I am looking ahead to WildStar. Ever since I give up World of Warcraft, a part of me has missed having a couple of nights each week as scheduled hangouts with my buddies. I am itching to raid once more, and it seems as if WildStar could have the most effective endgame options of the 2014 MMO crop. Most More likely to Flop in 2014: The Elder Scrolls Online Runner-up: Dust 514 Anatoli: Flop is a extremely loaded time period in relation to MMO. I do not think ESO will make much of a splash. I doubt it's going to fail as a recreation or as a enterprise, but I predict that lots of people will decide that it did when it would not set the whole world on fire. Bree: I feel ESO will launch simply high quality and collect plenty of box and sub fees initially, but long-term, it is in bother. MMORPG fans are sick of story-driven single-participant themepark MMOs, console fans might be mystified by subs and a three-manner PvP endgame, and Elder Scrolls fans will wander back to the lore and mods of their solo sandboxes. I am actually not sure for whom the sport is meant, and that i say that as a TES fanatic. Matthew: I am probably not a fan of The Elder Scrolls sequence, so possibly I am biased, but I can't see the online model having the success of the single-participant installments. MJ: If I were compelled to hazard a guess, I might say ESO. It feels as if there's a dark shadow of can't meet expectations hanging over it. Best Studio in 2013: Sony On-line Entertainment Runner-up: Trion Worlds Honorable Point out: Tiny Speck Beau: SOE continues to churn out video games, but the studio does so on its own terms. Find it irresistible or hate it, you cannot deny that SOE has completed many, many issues which have changed the course of MMOs. Mike: SOE seems like the studio that has the very best hold on what the market desires. It retains releasing participating new content material for its current properties, and EverQuest Next looks like the primary fantasy MMO to really strive something new since Ultima Online. SOE also has a solid popularity for making large promises and failing to deliver, however I would say it had an excellent 12 months. No query all eyes are on EQN in the approaching years. Toli: Glitch's shutdown final year was downright tragic, but Tiny Speck has made every effort to maintain the spirit and community alive, going so far as to release the sport's assets into the public domain only recently. That's preposterous, and that i imply that in the best possible manner. Largest Story of 2013: The reveal of EverQuest Subsequent and Landmark Runners-up: Tie between Star Citizen's Kickstarter success and Last Fantasy XIV's relaunch MJ: EverQuest Subsequent Landmark grabs this one as a result of the sport came actually out of nowhere! There was not a single whisper, trace, leak or anything to suggest there was a second sport on SOE's horizon. On this trade, that's simply unheard of. Tina: EverQuest Next. Everyone just went nuts, and for good cause! Matthew: EverQuest Subsequent. Because the announcement, it seems as if the entire future of the trade is colored by comparisons to our new savior. I'm not going to disagree. I'll exit on a limb so far as to say I suspect Blizzard went back to the drawing board on Titan due to EQN. Jef: Star Citizen. You might not want to play it, and also you could also be bored with the Chris Roberts hero-worship, but you cannot deny the affect that it is had and continues to have on the way in which games are made. Largest Disappointment of 2013: Dust 514 Other nominees: Defiance, Warhammer's sunset, the Kickstarter craze, Age of Wushu, Neverwinter, uninspired MMO design, traditional subscription fashions, no EverQuest Next at SOE Dwell, the gloom and doom surrounding World of Darkness, and Guild Wars 2's dwelling story. Jef: Dust 514. I might be beating a useless horse here, however console-only plus identical-old-shooter-gameplay equals meh. And CCP hyping the crap out of the EVE On-line connection wasn't notably wise since there really isn't one. Mike: This could also be a cop-out, however I'm pinning this on the complete MMO genre. The yr was ruled by countless re-treads of acquainted fantasy worlds and lots of uninspired work from developers that should really know better (Trion, I'm looking at you). With the line between MMO and non-MMO getting blurrier by the minute, MMO developers must get their acts collectively if they're hoping to stay competitive. And so they need stop asking for handouts by way of Kickstarter. Eliot: Kickstarter. We have had quite a lot of funding drives for games, some profitable, some not, with almost each single one of them promising the same fundamental gameplay philosophies, none of which has been backed up by actual completed MMOs. A minimum of a kind of studios has gone again to the properly and asked for more money from Kickstarter backers, and I don't imagine it will be the first. It's not a pattern I am happy to see, and one which I've already written about at length. There's some nice stuff on Kickstarter, however this year's glut was unpleasant. Largest Blunder of 2013: Subscription models for Elder Scrolls On-line and WildStar Other nominees: Console MMOs, All the pieces ESO does, LucasArts' closure, Blizzard's lore sexism, Star Wars: The Old Republic's area 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 talk more about this award and the rationale behind it in December twenty sixth's Ask Massively.] Eliot: WildStar's business mannequin at the least seems to be taken from a e-book written by someone with the vaguest knowledge of business traits, but ESO's appears to have been designed with the assumption that every different game that went free-to-play after launch (also called just about every sport that has launched throughout the past four years) was a worse sport than ESO will likely be. Can we please cease pretending you could launch with a subscription now? Mike: I feel, in the long run, placing a subscription fee on The Elder Scrolls On-line will turn into a fairly unhealthy idea. Bethesda will make piles of cash before it is forced to shift to free-to-play, however I'm undecided what the value will be in terms of loyalty to the model. If followers really feel burned or taken benefit of, the Elder Scrolls franchise will endure. A subscription fee essentially says, You'll stop World of Warcraft/EVE Online/Ultimate Fantasy XIV for this, and that is exceptionally daring from a studio that's by no means made an MMO. Tina: I truthfully do not see how CCP can keep its commitment to complete World of Darkness while continually chopping the workforce. We have to see some strong leads to 2014 to show otherwise. Biggest Innovation or Pattern of 2013: The return of sandbox gameplay Runner-up: Defiance's transmedia synergy Different nominees: Oculus Rift, Guild Wars 2's cadence, streaming video games, blurring style traces, actiony MMOs, voxels, and Warhammer's sunset. Toli: I like that tendencies are swinging back towards a wide range of gameplay features this yr. Voxels! Sandboxy things! I flip round and all of a sudden MMOs are launching with housing again! Holy smokes! Matt: I am joyful to see more studios tapping into the sandbox market. From heavy-hitters like EverQuest Next and Star Citizen to much less-hyped titles like Pathfinder Online, the sandbox style is gaining lots of traction. Larry: Defiance was a disappointment as a sport, 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 other games need to repeat this mannequin exactly, but I do assume that tie-ins, crossovers, and multi-media launches add value to a product. And that i also consider that exterior-the-field considering must be encouraged in MMOs, even if it does finally flop. Justin: Oculus Rift: May VR come back to be an precise future for MMOs? It is a risk, and what teases we're seeing this 12 months have whet my want to attempt it out for real. Shawn: Closing Warhammer Online. I imply, the sport was kinda enjoyable at first, however can we stop with that actual system now? Thanks. (I am already putting my vote in for 2015's Biggest Development to be the tip of voxel-primarily based online video games.) Most Improved in 2013: Ultimate Fantasy XIV Runners-up: Tie between Star Wars: The Outdated Republic and RuneScape three Jasmine: Ultimate Fantasy XIV. It improved so much from 1.0 to 2.0 that it plays like an almost entirely different recreation. I don't assume you will get rather more improved than that. Beau: RuneScape three introduced a lot to the older recreation that it really is a distinct game. It is always been dynamic and felt like a living world, however this relaunch made it that a lot better. Those are our picks. Howsabout yours?
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