Massively OP’s 2021 Awards: Best MMO Rogue Server

December 11, 2021 11:00 AM

Welcome back to Massively Overpowered’s formal end-of-the-year awards!

Today’s award is for the Best MMO Rogue Server of 2021, which is actually one of our new awards this year; readers will recall that we’ve tested this award informally before, and its popularity has nudged us to give it a try in our official batch.

Since it’s a new award, let me explain it a bit. We use the term “rogue server” to describe private servers that aren’t necessarily approved by the original company that ran the game and aren’t necessarily emulators. As a rule, MOP does not cover rogue servers or private servers for MMOs that still exist and are still being developed by their parent companies, so this award, like our coverage, will be limited to player-run servers for dead MMOs and studio-approved player-run servers. (For example, we do not include pservers for World of Warcraft or Ultima Online.)

And the MassivelyOP staff pick for the Best MMO Rogue Server of 2021 is…

CITY OF HEROES: HOMECOMING

Andy McAdams: City of Heroes Homecoming. No real competition here. Hopefully the Wildstar server will get in a more complete state by this time next year, and this can be a real decision for me.

Brianna Royce: SWG Legends had my vote this year. Any other year, I would’ve voted for City of Heroes Homecoming, so it’s not like I don’t think it’s worthy; it is worthy. I love it and that’s why I play it. But SWG Legends added a massive expansion this year and the planet Bespin, all from a volunteer team. That deserves the award in my book.

Carlo Lacsina: WildStar Nexus Forever. I’ve been following this server since September 2020. At the time, they had the map, but none of the combat had been added yet. Now, they have combat again. There’s a lot of people who want this game back, and this project is an absolutely great thing in terms of game preservation. I’d love to see this project continue to grow and maybe even add more as time goes by.

Chris Neal: City of Heroes Homecoming. It might not update very often, but the updates that land to Homecoming are interesting and intriguing and make me fire it back up every time without fail. I will give a runner-up nod to SWG Legends, however – a classic MMORPG that I finally got to appreciate and recommend everyone at least try one time if they can, especially considering how eager to help the community seems to be.

Colin Henry: SWG Legends. I’m impressed that players keep rogue servers running at all, but when one adds a whole new expansion? That’s something special. So my nomination goes to Star Wars Galaxies Legends and its new Bespin content.

Eliot Lefebvre: City of Heroes Homecoming. It sure is a homecoming, all right.

Justin Olivetti: City of Heroes Homecoming and Star Wars Galaxies Legends both deeply impressed me by putting out professional-grade releases this year, so I’m exalting both.

Tyler Edwards: City of Heroes Homecoming.

City of Heroes: Homecoming took our award for Best MMO Rogue Server. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What was the best MMO rogue server in 2021?

City of Heroes Homecoming (57%, 929 Votes)
SWG Legends (8%, 136 Votes)
WildStar Nexus Forever (5%, 78 Votes)
Warhammer Return of Reckoning (14%, 224 Votes)
Asheron's Call's emus (1%, 24 Votes)
Vanguard Emu (1%, 22 Votes)
Free Realms Sunrise (1%, 11 Votes)
PlanetSide 1 PSForever (0%, 3 Votes)
Earth and Beyond emu (1%, 11 Votes)
EQOA Return Home (1%, 10 Votes)
Sims Online FreeSO (0%, 3 Votes)
Earth Eternal Anubian War (0%, 1 Votes)
Infantry Online Free Infantry (0%, 1 Votes)
Toontown Rewritten (1%, 16 Votes)
Spellborn Reborn (3%, 51 Votes)
AOEO Project Celeste (0%, 5 Votes)
SWGemu (1%, 17 Votes)
SWG Empire in Flames (0%, 1 Votes)
SWG Restoration III (0%, 7 Votes)
A different SWG server (0%, 3 Votes)
A different City of Heroes server (4%, 67 Votes)

Total Voters: 1,504

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How does MassivelyOP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together to nominate and discuss candidates and hopefully 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 nominated rogue servers for abandoned MMOs and studio-approved player-run servers, plus others we thought should and would be in the running.