Every week for the last few years, we’ve expanded on our “Daily Grind” theme with a Leaderboard poll. I’ve had a blast taking over Leaderboard; Daily Grinds always get lovely qualitative answers, but numbers! tallies! bar graphs! Polls are a quantitative sort of magic that we don’t often get from our other articles — at least when they aren’t being brigaded.
Let’s take a look back at our best MMO polls of 2016!
10. Is Pokemon Go an MMORPG?
If there’s one thing I can count on with our audience, it’s that you guys know exactly what you consider an MMORPG, and any deviation is met with pitchforks. Of course, almost no one agrees with anyone else on the definition, but that’s what makes it fun. Maybe that’s why I was surprised that so many of you voted that Pokemon Go is an MMORPG or at least an MMO — 58% of you — while only 31% said no way.
9. What was World of Warcraft’s best era?
Wrath of the Lich King — by a lot. It’s not even close. Mind you, this poll was conducted in August, before Legion launched, but 57% of you voted Wrath in your top three, followed by The Burning Crusade and Vanilla. A similar poll a few months later ranked Legion much higher, though Wrath still has it beat. Expect a rehash in a few more months!
In other WoW polls this year, a majority of you don’t believe WoW will ever be ported to console, almost half of you prepped to play Legion, you’re all over the map in terms of how many subs you think WoW had post-Legion and which Legion map is best, and the restoration of old classes and specs is the number one thing you’d want out of hypothetical pristine/vanilla servers.
8. Where did all the City of Heroes players go?
Turns out these ex-pats scattered to the winds to the big three superhero MMORPGs and a number of other AAA games in roughly equal numbers. But a solid third of respondents said no game had ever quite measured up or scratched the itch. I hear ya.
7. Did you sub to EVE Online for World War Bee?
In what became a surprisingly well-attended poll, the vast majority of you said you had never played EVE Online, weren’t returning for the big player war, or didn’t care one way or another, proving the old adage that EVE is much more fun to read about than play.
6. What’s your opinion of Blade & Soul?
A week into the launch of NCsoft’s new action MMORPG at the top of the year, almost a quarter of you said you still loved the game, with 31% on the fence and 13% having already quit — all consistent with the earlier article polling players about their launch plans.
5. Will you give Guild Wars 2 another chance?
Similarly, this poll queried our audience on plans to return to Guild Wars 2 for April’s massive quality-of-life patch. Over a third of those responding said they weren’t enticed. One-tenth voted for Cantha!
4. MMO RvR vs. FFA PvP?
In a poll one commenter dubbed “Acronyms: The headline,” our readers voted on a relatively simple question: Do they prefer realm-vs.-realm PvP or free-for-all, open PvP? This one wasn’t close either: Three voters chose RvR for every one FFA fan. That’s good news for games like Camelot Unchained — and bad for most of other indie sandboxes en route.
3. Does Black Desert’s cash shop tick you off?
During Black Desert’s beta earlier this year, players in the west got their first glimpse of the kind of cash shop the game was going to inflict upon on them. A quarter of our readers were turned off by the pricing, but 36% planned to play anyway — more than the percentage who told us they’d already preordered. By the time Kakao added an optional sub over the summer, 52% of you jaded folks had finally agreed the game was pay-to-win. Hindsight and all that.
2. How old are you?
There’s no twist: A poll of our Sunday afternoon readers suggests that they are distributed neatly across the general video game audience’s age spread, centering on the mid-30s age bracket. You’re no spring chickens; spring chickens are probably playing MOBAs and doing their homework. Meanwhile, almost 60% of our audience prefers RPGs when not playing in massive worlds, and more of you quit MMORPGs over business model shenanigans than any other reason.
1. What was the most overrated MMORPG this year?
As I type this, it’s more or less a tie, with a quarter of you going for World of Warcraft and a quarter of you picking Black Desert. Hipsters!
