2013 is on its way out the door, and I figured why not jump on the train and talk about some of the year’s notable MMOs? Those of you who have read my previous year roundups know that I’m not a huge fan of “best of” awards, and rather than assume that any developers would put much stock into my opinion, I decided to go ahead with pointing out some of this year’s highlights. This is not an awards show.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I dropped Planetside 2 like a sack of hammers barely a month after the game launched. I loved the original Planetside and Planetside 2 is quickly becoming the game that wasn’t possible on a technical level back in 2003 when Planetside launched. There are a few disagreements over how Sony monetized the game and how it is a massive shooter rather than an RPG, but I feel that the team has done a lot in listening to player feedback since launch, especially with the addition of the lattice system. I just couldn’t play it, the game wasn’t optimized properly and would not run on my system on the lowest settings.
I talk a lot about how easy it is for a game to lose players simply because it falls out of their habitual cycle, and that is exactly what happened to me. Eventually I uninstalled Planetside 2 to make space and haven’t come back to it until this month. Let me just say that the difference is day and night in performance, if you quit for similar reasons. Planetside 2 is a very fun game, especially now that the lattice system has congregated players and given the game some organization and flow. I managed to boost up my video settings and get into a massive battle without a single hitch in the frame rate. If I had such an award, I would give Planetside 2 the Most Improved for 2013. But I don’t have such an award, so ignore that statement.
Path of Exile offers the entire game for free in the least offensive, yet still commercially viable, method possible. Everything in the cash shop is cosmetic, minus character and bank slots, and you can’t pay to progress because there is no method available. No grinding for Turbine points to technically play for free, no dealing with timers or lockouts unless you pay a fee, no experience boosts, no nothing. It’s incredible, and not at all surprising, that Path of Exile is regularly targeted by the same group of entitled children who travel from game to game and demand that everything that the game has to offer be given to them for free and attacks any attempt by game developers to, gasp, make money. My only gripe with Path of Exile’s cash shop was that it didn’t offer much for players who wanted to spend five or ten dollars here and there.
So I award Path of Exile as the most free game of 2013, or I would if I’d been handing out awards.
RuneScape! Every time I think Jagex can’t surprise me, they do. RuneScape 3 launched in July and has thrown the game into an entirely new direction. A brand new customizable UI, new graphics, a more powerful engine, world events, and more. The first world event was a massive grind fest, but the latest has players battling each other all over the world for the glory of their god. The world entering a new age where gods walk amongst men, war could break out at any time, and the scars of their battles are left on the land forever. Seasonal high scores, bot busting technology, a second new skill coming early next year, and yet maintaining the same schedule of (mostly) weekly updates.
Of course, not everything worked out. The HTML5 client was developed with the expectation that browser developers would be increasing their performance along a specific schedule. The stars did not align, and RuneScape’s HTML5 client is still stuck in limbo alongside the original client release of Planetside 2. In response, Jagex is working on a dedicated client for HTML5 rather than relying on browser support.
In this hypothetical award ceremony, I would give RuneScape 3 Best Upgrade of 2013.
Final Fantasy had what few other MMOs get: A second chance, one that should solidify Square Enix as a company that has a side that actually gives a damn about their games, FFXIII notwithstanding. By any other company, FFXIV would have been dumped as the commercial disaster it was and forgotten in the big cementary of failed MMOs. Square Enix not only instated new leadership, they wasted little expense in getting the game back up and revitalized in a relatively short period of time. And what was the result? A Realm Reborn has been a major success.
I hope that Square Enix never forgets the opportunity they’ve been given, it doesn’t come around much. With that in mind, FFXIV: A Realm Reborn is the Best Revival of 2013, which does not exist because this isn’t an awards show.
We knew Electronic Arts wasn’t willing to spend the money to convert Warhammer Online to free to play, and there was no way that the publisher would willingly shut down a game that they had spent so much to develop and promote. If EA wasn’t going to give up the ghost on their own terms, the question simply became how long until the license expired and would Games Workshop be careless enough to renew given the abysmal performance of Wrath of Heroes and the fact that Age of Reckoning was in maintenance mode with just a couple of servers remaining. The answer is 2013 and no, respectively.
Warhammer Online’s shuttering was the exhale after a very long time of holding its breath.
Those of you who read MMO Fallout will know that I don’t have pet peeves, I have major psychotic hatreds. And I find it interesting that Arenanet set up this whole advertising campaign centered around players pledging their allegiance to the game and to no longer suffer through horrible grind. The introduction of bi-weekly living content updates brought out what I believe to be the worst kind of grind in an MMO, the temporary kind. You have two weeks to get the achievements and then your opportunity has passed, forever. I don’t hate the living world in Guild Wars 2, but I’d like to participate in the events for the enjoyment of the event itself, not to run down a list of chores every two weeks.
I have no award for this because this isn’t an award show.
Had Defiance been released as an open world shooter with DLC, I think it wouldn’t have been received as the large-scale Borderlands that it essentially is. As a general video game, Defiance is severely underrated with its base content and the numerous improvements that Trion has made over the months. As an MMO, however, Defiance deserves its low score thanks to a small world and a lack of stuff to do other than shoot things. If that doesn’t make sense, just think about how ice cream can be a fantastic dessert while still making for a poor laundry detergent.
With that, I would nominate Defiance the MMO that shouldn’t have been sold as an MMO.
MMO Fallout 