opinion

The other day I stumbled upon this: The Great MMO Face Off of 2014, by MMORPG.com

Up until then I didn’t even know there was a MMORPG.com. I’m going to have to check out that site more thoroughly when I have time.

Anyways, I thought, “Oh, this is neat” and looked at the list. I was pleasantly surprised to see both LOTRO and DDO on there. LOTRO, as you probably know, is one of my favorite games and also a great example of stunning graphics and great story writing, founded on J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth Trilogy. DDO is Dungeons & Dragons online, a digital variant of Gary Gygax’s ever-popular, genre-creating Dungeons & Dragons Pencil & Paper tabletop game series. Both games are ran by Turbine.

What is most surprising about this is that this is Round 3 of a bracket-style elimination, by popular vote. This means there was originally 16 ‘Newbie’ and 16 ‘Veteran’ games, and each week(starting December 2nd) members of MMORPG.com would vote for their favorite between the two. After 12 games have been eliminated, Turbine still has 2 contenders in the Veteran category. Although I don’t agree with every change Turbine makes(nor do a fair bit of their members at times), you can’t deny it is pretty impressive to have two of your games in the top 4 Veteran list.

After looking at this face off, I decided to look at the past two weeks and see what other games were in there but didn’t make the cut.

Week 1 started with:

Newbies
Destiny vs FireFall
The Elder Scrolls Online vs Wildstar
Defiance vs Planetside 2
ArcheAge vs DarkFall Unholy Wars
Rift vs Star Wars The Old Republic
FFXIV: A Realm Reborn vs GuildWars 2
Marvel Heroes 2015 vs Trove
D&D NeverWinter vs The Secret World

Veterans
Asheron’s Call vs Runescape
EverQuest 2 vs World of WarCraft
Aion Ascension vs The Lord of The Rings Online
Dark Age of Camelot vs EverQuest
Eve Online vs Ultima Online
Champions Online vs Lineage
Dungeons & Dragons Online vs Star Trek Online
Age of Conan vs GuildWars

That’s a pretty impressive line up. Interestingly, the Developers of 71% of these games have developed one or more of the other games in this line up.
NCSOFT – 5
Sony Online – 4
Trion Worlds – 4
Electronic Arts – 4
Turbine – 3
Mythic – 2
Funcom – 2
ArenaNet – 2
Cryptic – 2

Week 2 started with:

Newbies
Destiny vs The Elder Scrolls Online
ArcheAge vs Planetside 2
GuildWars 2 vs Star Wars The Old Republic
Marvel Heroes vs The Secret World

Veterans
Runescape vs World of WarCraft
EverQuest vs The Lord of The Rings Online
Eve Online vs Lineage
Dungeons & Dragons Online vs GuildWars

In Week 2 things started getting real. Still, though, 68% of the games had a cousin in the fight. With 16 competitors gone, the amount of secondary games from the same developer decreased only 3%, meaning games whose developer has built other games are more likely to continue. More specifically, those games are liked by players more often, mostlikely due to the experience the game developer gets from having multiple successful games.
NCSOFT – 3
Sony Online – 3
Electronic Arts – 2
Turbine – 2
ArenaNet – 2

Week 3 started with:

Newbies
The Elder Scrolls Online vs Planetside 2
GuildWars 2 vs The Secret World

Veterans
The Lord of The Rings Online vs World of WarCraft
Dungeons & Dragons Online vs Eve Online

By the third week, which is currently in progress, we have started seeing some pretty fierce competition. Only 25% of these games are cousins, and those are Turbine’s LOTRO and DDO.
LOTRO is holding onto a tight lead over the giant WoW with 55:45%. A surprising turn with WoW being such a huge name in the industry.
Eve Online, not too surprisingly, is holding onto a slightly slimmer lead over DDO with 54:46%. DDO’s playstyle is unlike most and the game settings of the two are drastically different, with DDO being a medieval setting whereas Eve is futuristic Sci-fi. Not really a fair comparison.

Unfortunately Runescape didn’t make it through Week 2. I was concerned when I didn’t see it on the first page and was hoping it had just gotten missed entirely instead of defeated, alas, that is not the case. It did beat Asheron’s Call in Round 1 but only by 3%. Round 2 wasn’t really fair for Runescape as it was pitted against WoW, who steamrolled it with a vote of 25:75%. I would’ve liked to see Runescape reach Round 3, which it might’ve if it had gone up against DDO instead, thus pitting WoW and GW against each other. But alas, that was not to be.

Thoughts

As I wrote this and thought about this ‘Vote for the Greatest MMORPG’ I came to this conclusion: The Greatest MMORPG is your favorite. Yep, it’s that simple.

For me this would be Lord of The Rings Online, even though I have played Runescape for more than twice the time I’ve played LOTRO. I love the graphics, audio, story, and characters of LOTRO. In the comparison of my opinion, Runescape and all other MMORPGs just pale. But that is not likely how you feel.
You see, we can debate endlessly on which features of this game make it superior to that and why such and such is worse or better than so and so. We can even try to use graphs or factual comparisons, but that doesn’t change the fact that our classification of things is still based on our human preferences.

While it won’t likely make any of the top polls, I still enjoy playing Diablo, yes, the first version. I still, and always will, think of it as one of the greatest RPGs. The graphics aren’t top of the line (though their item sprites have quality equaled by none to this day that I’ve seen), the sound is medicore, the gameplay is slow but consistent, and the story is very indepth. It’s a favorite, a classic in my mind.

What about you? What are some of your Greatest Games?