Time for another annual tradition here on Massively OP: the counting of the polls! Yes, we run a bunch of polls in our irregular Leaderboard column every year, but how many of you vote and then never go back to see how it turned out? That’s what we’re gonna do right here right now for some of our most interesting polls of 2019. Let’s crunch some numbers and put the community in context!
Where do you stand on the “secret” City of Heroes emulator?
This was surely our biggest poll of the year, and our voters made their voices heard, especially once it was made clear that the server admins were watching the results. Forty percent of our readers wanted the admins to release the code, while a quarter wanted the existing secret server opened up for everyone. You all know how the story ended up because almost half of you started playing as soon as you could!
What type of WoW Classic player are you?
We aped Wilhelm’s awesome poll to ask our community about their gaming habits. Nearly a third of you admitted to being a nostalgia tourist who just wanted to check out WoW Classic and didn’t care too much about the authenticity of it all. The next biggest group, with 11% of the vote, said nothing could get them into WoW Classic. Ouch!
Does Guild Wars 2 need another expansion?
Almost all of you think that the game needs another expansion, though a sizable portion said they want expansion-level content and don’t care how it’s packaged, while a smaller chunk would prefer Guild Wars 3. Almost no one voted against the idea. MMO players like content, who knew?
Do you think Bethsoft is going to take Fallout 76 free-to-play?
This poll is from early January, long before anyone had any inkling that Bethsoft would unleash the horrors of Fallout First on the gaming world. The winning category? “Don’t care,” which maybe makes sense given how alienating the game was even at that early date. Quite a few more of you thought it would happen than didn’t, though.
Did you go back to SWTOR for Onslaught?
A surprising number of you did! A quarter of our readers said they were already playing SWTOR, while nearly that many said they’d at least go back to give it a looksee.
What’s the greatest MMO soundtrack of all time?
We used this poll to determine which 10 soundtracks to feature in our Jukebox Heroes column. WildStar absolutely ran away with the community vote, with smaller nods to World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV.
Which Daybreak MMO is the most vulnerable in 2019?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. You all voted wrong! The “winner” of this poll was “all of the above,” though fortunately for Daybreak it’s still breathing. EverQuest 3 and DC Universe Online also got bizarre nods. But of course, it was Z1 Battle Royale, Player Studio, and the PlanetSide franchise that have struggled the most this year.
Where do you stand on the Epic Games Store (and proposed boycott)?
I had actually forgotten this even happened, so maybe you did too. Following multiple games abandoning Steam in favor of a way better publishing deal on the Epic Games Store, Reddit blew up over a proposed boycott. A fifth of you voted in favor of letting the market sort it out, while slightly under a fifth of you noted your disapproval of service exclusivity deals. Only 11% of you supported a boycott.
How important is character gender selection to your MMO play?
It’s pretty dang important, according to you: A clear majority of voters want the full complement of genders in their MMOs, with a solid 26% of voters adding that games with gender-locked classes suck.
Are you concerned about the health of the games market right now?
The vote has no clear winner, as our readers were pretty split on whether they were very, mildly, or not concerned. Interestingly, 17% of you were eager to note you hadn’t actually put your own personal investments in the games sector, which is probably the wise move no matter what.
