Massively OP’s 2019 Awards: Best MMO Crafting

December 22, 2019 11:00 AM

Massively Overpowered’s end-of-the-year 2019 awards continue today with our award for Best MMO Crafting, which was awarded to Final Fantasy XIV last year. Once again, we’ve opted to include pre-2019 MMOs, as long as they were actively maintained in this calendar year (and are legally operated). Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end!

And the MassivelyOP staff pick for the Best MMO Crafting of 2019 is…

FINAL FANTASY XIV & EVERQUEST II

Andy McAdams: I went with both EQ2 and FFXIV for crafting. Side note – it seems sad that I nominated a game originally released in 2004 for a “Best in” category in 2019 – and it actually won! That’s more an indictment of the current gaming market than anything especially profound that EQ2 did. Anyway, these are the only two games that actually have crafting as more than a stapled-on system, just there to check a checkbox kind of thing.

Brendan Drain: Still EverQuest II! I’d love a new MMO to come out with as strong a focus on creativity and crafting as it has on combat, but nothing this year has really taken over from EverQuest II for me.

Brianna Royce: I admit I’m in a weird spot on this award, as I’m very particular about my crafting – so particular that I am literally playing a rogue server for a dead game to get my crafting fix. However, since that game’s not remotely eligible, I’d say EverQuest II is the next best thing – and for good reason, since it came from a lot of the same minds. Nod to Lord of the Rings Online, too, for consistently making me want to go back to it to do nothing but craft. Eliot has also tried to convince me in the past that FFXIV has crafting comparable to SWG’s, and I have no reason to doubt him. I’d really like to nominate Guild Wars 2 here as well since the gathering and crafting mechanics are incredible, but the vast majority of the crafting production in the game is pointless because of the economy, so I just can’t do it. I’d even be happy seeing EVE Online win this since its crafting actually matters to the game.

Chris Neal: FFXIV. I hate this game’s crafting, but I give this my vote purely because every other MMORPG’s crafting is objectively worse. Devs, please, make crafting awesome again. Please? Pretty please?

Colin Henry: FFXIV, EQ2.

Eliot Lefebvre: Final Fantasy XIV makes crafting a huge portion of the game, added a big chunk of crafting content to the game this year, and actually had major debates about letting people jump in on crafting due to the popularity of that crafting content. I’d say that I’m sorry for not voting for something else where the crafting is “press a button and watch a bar go up,” but I’m not sorry at all.

MJ Guthrie: For me, it is still EQ2. Unless SWG or Vanguard come back!

Tyler Edwards: ESO feels like the clear winner to me. There’s a lot more depth to its crafting than you usually see, and it’s actually a viable path to top tier endgame equipment. Virtually everything all of my characters wear is stuff I crafted myself.

Final Fantasy XIV and EverQuest II won our award for Best MMO Crafting of 2019. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: Which living MMO offered the best crafting in 2019?

Final Fantasy XIV (25%, 138 Votes)
EverQuest II (12%, 67 Votes)
EVE Online (5%, 29 Votes)
LOTRO (4%, 22 Votes)
Black Desert (3%, 15 Votes)
ArcheAge (2%, 13 Votes)
RuneScape (1%, 8 Votes)
Elder Scrolls Online (13%, 71 Votes)
Guild Wars 2 (4%, 23 Votes)
World of Warcraft (2%, 11 Votes)
Wurm Online (4%, 24 Votes)
SWTOR (1%, 6 Votes)
Shroud of the Avatar (1%, 6 Votes)
Project Gorgon (2%, 9 Votes)
Ultima Online (2%, 9 Votes)
Path of Exile (2%, 9 Votes)
A dead game beats all these! You know the one. (14%, 75 Votes)
Something else (tell us in the comments!) (2%, 13 Votes)

Total Voters: 474

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How does MassivelyOP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together over the course of a few weeks to nominate and 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.

How does MassivelyOP populate this poll?

Poll options include all games nominated plus other games we thought should and would be in the running.