Last week, when the Massively staff was debating internally which MMO company deserved our best MMO studio of 2015 award, I argued that overseas studios like Square-Enix have a much easier time impressing playerbases here in the West than home-grown studios. Square in particular has the benefit of being literally far away, delaying update info for the English-speaking audience, skimping on press releases, and occasionally sending a much-beloved Naoki Yoshida out onstage to make people fall in love with Final Fantasy again (it works, too). But Blizzard, ArenaNet, Daybreak, Trion? They’re expected to man a dozen different forms of forums and social media, show up on Twitch, and coddle Reddit day in and day out, and so even their minor screw-ups are utterly public.
I’m not saying Square has never screwed up (hi, Final Fantasy XIV 2010) or that it doesn’t deserve the award (it does, particularly for its classy handling of Final Fantasy XI’s maintenance mode), but there are a lot of other great studios out there that work their communities too. So which MMO studio maintains the best community presence?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
