Last week, we posted a rundown of the most popular MMORPG articles of 2017, calculated strictly by the number of pageviews they got. Today, we’re going to take a look at the most popular articles of 2017 as measured by comments, which provides an entirely different overview of the year and the genre.
This list is a little wonky as we couldn’t keep a lot of our January comments when we were booted off Livefyre. (Some of the old comments were restored, but others were simply lost because Livefyre wasn’t properly saving them back. Long story.) So technically, we lost a month. Still, I think we have a pretty good picture of what people really truly want to talk about (which isn’t always the same thing you like to click on!).
I think you’ll see the pattern immediately: People really want to talk about Star Citizen. Even innocuous Star Citizen articles started deep discussions and fiery flamewars – though this year, with 3.0 delayed and dragging on for so long, there were plenty of controversies to talk about too. It was easily the most dominant in terms of comments, and that fascinates me because Star Citizen was absolutely dwarfed by quite a lot of other MMOs in terms of hits.
Socio-political stories also factored in toward the beginning of the year as video game studios and conventions found themselves dramatically affected by new government policies that hampered travel and hiring. Likewise, RuneScape’s LGBTQ pride kerfuffle and discussion about in-game slavery and toxicity floated to the top.
NCsoft’s move to add City of Heroes characters to Master X Master was unpopular, but our explainer piece on the drama traveled far and wide.
The Secret World may have been a small and underrated MMO prior to 2017, but its conversion to less-of-an-MMORPG Secret World Legends was a major ongoing story throughout the year, contributing to lots of hits and comments alike.
It won’t surprise you that World of Warcraft’s classic servers have become a big story since the fall too, pushing those comment threads toward the top even late in the year.
Marvel Heroes’ cancellation, Guild Wars 2’s Path of Fire, and virtual reality also made it into the top block of conversations. And finally: money. Y’all love to talk about money. We argued over lockboxes, dev unions, the cost of making MMOs, Ashes of Creation’s Kickstarter, and crowdfunding in general. But mostly? Lockboxes.
Here’s to an equally chatty 2018!