Massively OP’s 2018 Awards: MMO with the Stormiest Future

December 22, 2018 11:00 AM

Massively Overpowered’s end-of-the-year 2018 awards continue today with our award for the MMO with the Stormiest Future, the equivalent of which was awarded to Star Citizen last year. In previous years, this award was usually called “Most Likely to Flop,” but we’ve decided to change the name this year; “flop” was already a softening of “fail,” but even then it seemed too harsh, as well as ambiguous, hence the switch. This category can encompass fringe MMOs as well as unlaunched games and represents a game we’re worried about for one reason or another: Maybe we think it’ll sunset or struggle or simply fail live up to insane hype. And we don’t actually want anything to have a stormy future!

The Massively OP staff pick for the MMO with the Stormiest Future in 2019 or Beyond is…

Chronicles of Elyria

Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): We know it’s Star Citizen. It just can’t live up to the hype. For a little variety, though, Chronicles of Elyria. The recent plague outbreak event was nice in theory, but it was so confusing. The “vote for the map!” push was hard to get excited over, and like SC, they’re selling items for a game that doesn’t exist yet. Man, I really want the game to be good, but there’s no way it can live up to the Kickstarter ideals spelled out.

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Chronicles of Elyria – with caveats! The award always feels like a crappy thing to give out, but I feel like it’s a necessary counterpart to “Most Anticipated.” This is gonna be the first time in a long time that Star Citizen didn’t get my pick here, but that’s because this year it’s really come around into a state that inspires real hope. Taking a look at the field of incoming games, I find Elyria is the one I’m most worried about: It seems well behind games that started development around the same time, and this year’s layoffs have me chewing my lip. Let that I’m wrong.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): I’m willing to give most developing games the benefit of the doubt – I still feel like crowdfunded titles are one of the more intriguing parts of this genre – but I am hard-pressed to think of a developing game that spends more time talking about almost nothing than Chronicles of Elyria. I’m flipping through the game’s news updates on its website now and absolutely nothing grabs. Runner-Up: Saga of Lucimia. OK, guys. OK. We get it. The ol’ days were a thing and tabletop gaming has some more immersive things than modern MMORPGs do. But please, how about you show and not tell like someone at a bully pulpit with the most obnoxious bullhorn possible.

Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): Star Citizen is just going to keep asking for money without delivering anything more than teases of the game. But you know, I’m as tired of saying that this can’t live up to the hype as you probably are of reading it. So let’s give the nod to Chronicles of Elyria, which just… yeah, I honestly don’t see this coming out well. Heck, I don’t see this coming out, period.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): Wild West Online’s weird offspring. This game is DOA and needs to be put down like a lame horse. And after reading up on public alpha reports, I don’t think that Legends of Aria is going to do any better than Shroud of Avatar or Albion Online.

Matt Daniel (@Matt_DanielMVOP): Elyria. As much as I want this game to succeed, I can’t help but feel that it’s too ambitious for its own good.

How does Massively OP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together over the course of a few days to discuss candidates and ideally settle on a consensus winner. We don’t have a hard vote, but we do include written commentary from every writer who submitted it on time so that you can see where some of us differed, what our secondary picks were, and why we personally nominated what we did (or didn’t). 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.

Chronicles of Elyria took our award for Stormiest Future. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: Which MMORPG has the stormiest future of as we head into 2019?