MassivelyOP’s 2022 Awards: MMORPG of the Year

December 29, 2022 11:00 AM

Welcome back to Massively Overpowered’s formal end-of-the-year awards!

Today’s award is for the MMORPG of the Year, which was awarded jointly to Final Fantasy XIV and New World last year. Longtime readers will recall that way back in 2014, our staff was so disillusioned with the new MMOs launching that we withheld this award and picked “nothing” as our winner. In subsequent years, we decided to open this award (and many of our others) up to all live MMOs, regardless of launch year, and that’s a tradition we’ve stuck to ever since, giving older MMOs a chance to compete with the new. Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end – and congratulations to all of this year’s nominees and winners!

And the MassivelyOP staff pick for the Best MMORPG of 2022 is…

LOST ARK

Andy McAdams: Nothing.

Brianna Royce: Lost Ark, Guild Wars 2. The long wait for Lost Ark was long enough to make me lose my taste for it, and personally I’d rather be in Guild Wars 2 any day of the week, but there’s no way to deny that Lost Ark was a huge hit for our genre this year – launched big, stayed big, brought a lot of eyeballs to the MMORPG industry and even to MOP. Easy GOTY pick for once.

Carlo Lacsina: Lost Ark.

Chris Neal: Lost Ark. I can appreciate how this choice might raise a few eyebrows, but honestly this was probably one of the more solid and stronger MMOs to come out this year, and while I have since fallen off of the boat and found myself left well in its wake, it has achieved an audience and held strong ever since its release. So that is worthy of merit, if you ask me.

Colin Henry: Lost Ark. It’s hard to deny the splash that Lost Ark made this year! Such a big splash, in fact, that it woke up a lot of non-MMO gamers to the fact that MMOs are still around and still draw in big crowds. And unlike last year’s New World release, it has retained a lot of those players, almost never leaving the top 5 most played games on Steam.

Eliot Lefebvre: Nothing. No, this isn’t like that year when we memorably awarded nothing the award; I am personally not voting for anything this year. Final Fantasy XIV won last year and continuing a year-long victory lap from Endwalker made me happy, but it’s not of-the-year material. Guild Wars 2 is the expansion winner, and I don’t like voting for the same game for both (as noted last year, when it did happen). The other members of the Big Five either didn’t do much or didn’t deserve the winner’s circle. And Lost Ark looks and feels to me like a not-hideously-buggy version of New World last year, something everyone is insisting is a bigger deal than it actually is, and this time the shine has come off the player counts instead of having launch inflation. So I’ll abstain, in no small part because disagreeing with the winner this time does not mean I actually have a suitable competitor.

Justin Olivetti: Lost Ark. We’d been waiting for this gorgeous title since Ye Olde Massively days, and when it finally, finally came, it didn’t disappoint! Amazon bet on this MMOARPG as a surefire hit, and hit it did, sporting strong reviews and high concurrency for most of the year. Perfect? Nope, but certainly the strongest new release of the year and a great addition to the MMORPG genre.

MJ Guthrie: Lost Ark. I don’t have any particular strong feelings, but I can get behind Lost Ark for this. Although I haven’t played personally since the closed technical beta, it launched well (when does that even happen anymore?) and has had an impact on the genre. So GG Lost Ark.

Tyler Edwards: Lost Ark. Lost Ark feels like the clear choice here. It had a big launch, and has remained consistently popular since. It’s had no major screw-ups or controversies, just minor hiccups. I haven’t played in months and may not be back, but I got 100+ hours of solid entertainment out of it (barely scratching the surface of its vast content in that time), and it’s unquestionably a very solid and polished game.

Lost Ark took our award for MMORPG of the Year. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What was the best MMORPG of 2022 - our genre's GOTY?

Lost Ark (8%, 68 Votes)
Guild Wars 2 (21%, 180 Votes)
World of Warcraft (10%, 86 Votes)
Final Fantasy XIV (20%, 169 Votes)
Elder Scrolls Online (6%, 48 Votes)
Black Desert (3%, 24 Votes)
New World (7%, 60 Votes)
Neverwinter (0%, 2 Votes)
DC Universe Online (0%, 3 Votes)
LOTRO (10%, 82 Votes)
EVE Online (2%, 16 Votes)
RuneScape (1%, 8 Votes)
Star Trek Online (0%, 4 Votes)
Embers Adrift (0%, 1 Votes)
Albion Online (1%, 10 Votes)
SWTOR (2%, 17 Votes)
Blade and Soul (0%, 1 Votes)
PlanetSide 2 (0%, 1 Votes)
ArcheAge (0%, 0 Votes)
Swords of Legends Online (0%, 2 Votes)
Phantasy Star Online 2 (1%, 5 Votes)
Mortal Online 2 (0%, 4 Votes)
Dual Universe (0%, 0 Votes)
Zenith (0%, 0 Votes)
Temtem (0%, 2 Votes)
Broken Ranks (0%, 1 Votes)
Chimeraland (0%, 1 Votes)
Tower of Fantasy (1%, 6 Votes)
EverQuest II (1%, 8 Votes)
No Man's Sky (1%, 7 Votes)
Something else - tell us in the comments! (3%, 22 Votes)

Total Voters: 730

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How does MassivelyOP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together to nominate and discuss candidates and hopefully settle on a consensus winner. We don’t have a hard vote, but we do include commentary from writers so that you can see our thought process. The site’s award goes to the staff selection, but we’ll include both it and the community’s top nomination in our debrief in January.

How does MassivelyOP populate this poll?

Poll options include all MMOs nominated plus a few others we thought should be included.