MassivelyOP’s 2022 Awards: Best MMO Housing

December 25, 2022 11:00 AM

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

Today’s award is for the Best MMO Housing, which was awarded to The Elder Scrolls Online last year. MMORPGs eligible for this award may have launched in any year and still offer player housing; nominees should be judged based on the quality and depth of that feature and that feature alone in 2022 itself. Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end!

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 Housing of 2022 is…

STAR WARS GALAXIES LEGENDS

Andy McAdams: New World for lack of anything else? I’m not super impressed with it as it goes, but when the options are that or voting for EverQuest II as I have every year prior, might as well change it up

Brianna Royce: SWG Legends. I chose to revise eligibility for this award this year on purpose to include rogue servers because we let rogue servers into other awards already and because I was tired of having to vote for inferior choices and pin this ribbon on games we all knew damn well weren’t the best, year after year. This has become a huge problem because modern AAA MMOs are just not taking housing gameplay seriously. But SWG Legends most definitely did take it seriously this year; not only did it finish out the Bespin apartments system it began last year (yes, non-instanced high-rise apartments in Cloud City), but it also added a brand-new farming and ranching system with the associated farm and ranch buildings – all new reasons to have and use housing in the game, if you needed more beyond vendors and storage and crafting. And all of this is being done in a free-to-play rogue server run by volunteers! For shame, AAA MMOs. My runner-up would also be a rogue server this year: City of Heroes Homecoming, whose supergroup base system has been expanded so much it’s basically unrecognizable. People are doing amazingly creative work with that system now.

Colin Henry: I’ve never played Star Wars Galaxies, but one look at the list of things that this team, an unpaid team of volunteers, I might add, has put together for its ranching update puts the housing systems of every live MMO I can think of to shame. I am continually impressed with this team, and I just wish I had time in my life to add one more MMO to my roster.

Chris Neal: SWG Legends. Farming! Ranching! Spice manufacturing operations! SWG Legends definitely has it all. Also, MJ and I got to tour player-built toilets and seedy hangout bars, and while that’s probably more a credit to the playerbase, that also means the tools they were given are robust and meritorious.

Eliot Lefebvre: So this award annoyed me this year. I’m not down with allowing a rogue server onto the award list, but without that… what are my options? One of the Big Five still doesn’t have housing in it with the response being whinging and hand-wringing and protestations of “oh, that looks so hard.” And that rogue server did actually focus on housing in a way that a lot of games could and simply don’t. So I’m cranky. I don’t like letting rogue servers win this, and I like it even less when that’s the only way that anyone deserves an award. Let’s revisit this next year and do better, industry.

Justin Olivetti: Final Fantasy XIV. I’ll shout out FFXIV’s player islands for this year’s award. It’s not pure player housing, but it’s got a lot of those elements and gave a lot of joy to the community (maybe as a consolation prize for not being able to afford or snag a house?).

MJ Guthrie: SWG Legends. Star Wars Galaxies Legends is live, so it totally counts, right? I’m sorry/not sorry for all the games that keep coming after because no one can still hold a candle to this one! Not only is there so much freedom and creativity, but the housing is actually a part of gameplay. You have player cities on a macro level , and on an individual one you have shops, teleportation hubs, and romance ranches! Don’t believe me? Watch the expose on Backseat Streaming. Seriously, they have added ranching to housing; how can that not get an award?

Tyler Edwards: New World, if only because it’s what I’m playing right now. The housing in that game does feel a bit neglected by the devs, but decorating is fun and easy, and I actually have practical benefits to owning houses and reasons to visit them on the regular, which is more than I can say for a lot of player housing I’ve seen in this genre.

SWG Legends took our award for Best MMO Housing. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: Which MMO offered the best player housing in 2022?

SWG Legends (10%, 43 Votes)
New World (8%, 33 Votes)
EverQuest II (9%, 40 Votes)
Elder Scrolls Online (19%, 82 Votes)
City of Heroes Homecoming (4%, 17 Votes)
LOTRO (9%, 41 Votes)
Lost Ark (3%, 13 Votes)
SWTOR (3%, 14 Votes)
Final Fantasy XIV (7%, 30 Votes)
RIFT (4%, 17 Votes)
Black Desert (3%, 12 Votes)
Albion Online (1%, 6 Votes)
Ultima Online (3%, 15 Votes)
ArcheAge (1%, 6 Votes)
DC Universe Online (1%, 4 Votes)
Aion (0%, 1 Votes)
Shroud of the Avatar (1%, 3 Votes)
Villagers and Heroes (0%, 0 Votes)
Fallout 76 (3%, 11 Votes)
Wurm Online (2%, 10 Votes)
No Man's Sky (2%, 10 Votes)
Trove (0%, 2 Votes)
Something else (tell us in the comments!) (7%, 30 Votes)

Total Voters: 355

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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 commentary from writers so that you can see our thought process. 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 MMOs nominated plus a few others we thought should be included.