MassivelyOP’s 2022 Awards: MMO Expansion of the Year

December 27, 2022 11:00 AM

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

Today’s award is for the MMO Expansion of the Year, which was awarded to Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker last year. Every major update and expansion to an MMORPG was eligible for this award, as long as it launched in this calendar year. 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 MMO Expansion of 2022 is…

GUILD WARS 2’S END OF DRAGONS

Andy McAdams: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons.

Brianna Royce: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons. EOD was a long time coming and late to boot, but it was worth it, even with the initially borky endgame. The zones and storytelling in this expansion are really at the absolute top of the genre right now. I’m stoked to see where we’re going next. Easy winner here.

Carlo Lacsina: World of Warcraft Dragonflight.

Chris Neal: Final Fantasy XIV 6.2, Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons. I haven’t played End of Dragons yet, but my excitement for it is palpable, and that in turn is helped along by some glowing words from opinions I trust and commenters in our community. I can’t wait to experience it myself, especially since it has earned the award by so many accounts.

Colin Henry: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons. It’s been a rough past few years for Guild Wars 2, but End of Dragons changed all of that. It has a nice new selection of elite specs, it finally, in my opinion, nailed what endgame content should look like in Guild Wars 2, and, most of all, it had one of the game’s best stories. It wasn’t a perfect year. The Dragon’s End meta was far too difficult at launch for open world content, and ArenaNet was far too slow to address those concerns. While we technically haven’t been in a content drought all year, given that we’ve had five remastered Living World Season 1 episodes added, there also hasn’t been any new content added to the game since February. Still, even with one out of four meta events being poorly designed, End of Dragons was a fantastic expansion, and the not-really-content-drought isn’t really the expansion’s fault.

Eliot Lefebvre: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons. Was there ever any competition? I didn’t think there would be when it seemed unlikely we’d get a World of Warcraft expansion this year, and while that one is personally more interesting to me, it is not Expansion of the Year material by any stretch of the imagination. (And I wrote five thousand words about it, so you know I know what I’m talking about!) End of Dragons is, and it’s a much-needed return to form for the game.

Justin Olivetti: WoW Dragonflight, LOTRO Before the Shadow. – Listen, I don’t care for dragons, but even so, I found Dragonflight to be incredibly engaging with a better foundation and blueprint for WoW’s future. I wouldn’t have ever pegged Blizzard as releasing a sleeper hit, but I am starting to suspect that’s what we have here. Likewise, SSG really downplayed Before the Shadow as a “mini-expansion,” but I think that’s being too humble for this ambitious release. Two huge zones, a new endgame system, a new skirmish, tons of missions, and lots of quality-of-life game features made this an instant winner.

MJ Guthrie: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons. I am not even that big of a GW2 fan (the thing that enticed me to play was mounts!), but I really enjoyed End of Dragons! The entire feel of the expansion just hit right. It had a great atmosphere with beautiful visuals, introduced boating, fishing, and jadebots, and it had a compelling story that I enjoyed following filled with interesting characters. It is the best GW2 content I have played, and the only expansion from anywhere that I played all the way through this year — or for a few the last few years for that matter. The only ugh for me is that end battle that I have not been able to successfully complete yet. I mean, it is nice for about half the fight, then it by the second half of this prolonged multi-dragon fight it is just repetitive and old and annoying. That should have been trimmed.

Sam Kash: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons.

Tyler Edwards: Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons. I haven’t played End of Dragons myself, but those who have seem pretty over the moon about it. By all reports it fully deserves the title of best expansion of the year.

Guild Wars 2’s End of Dragons took our award for MMO Expansion of the Year. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What was the best MMO expansion or major update of 2022?

Guild Wars 2 End of Dragons (34%, 171 Votes)
World of Warcraft Dragonflight (21%, 105 Votes)
Final Fantasy XIV 6.2 Buried Memory (9%, 43 Votes)
LOTRO Before the Shadow (11%, 54 Votes)
WoW Classic Wrath of the Lich King (3%, 16 Votes)
Lost Ark Rage with the Machinist (0%, 0 Votes)
New World Brimstone Sands (4%, 21 Votes)
Elder Scrolls Online High Isle (4%, 19 Votes)
SWTOR Legacy of the Sith (1%, 4 Votes)
Neverwinter Dragonbone Vale (0%, 2 Votes)
No Man’s Sky Outlaws (2%, 8 Votes)
Black Desert Mountain of Eternal Winter (1%, 3 Votes)
RuneScape Legacy of Zamorak (1%, 4 Votes)
ArcheAge Great Prairie of the West (0%, 1 Votes)
Destiny 2 The Witch Queen (1%, 5 Votes)
Star Trek Online Stormfall (1%, 4 Votes)
Albion Online Into the Fray (0%, 1 Votes)
EVE Uprising (1%, 3 Votes)
DDO Isle of Dread (1%, 3 Votes)
SOLO Firestone Legacy (0%, 0 Votes)
EverQuest II Renewal of Ro (1%, 6 Votes)
Warframe Angels of the Zariman (1%, 6 Votes)
EverQuest Night of Shadows (1%, 4 Votes)
Blade and Soul Symphony of Destruction (0%, 1 Votes)
PlanetSide 2 Arsenal (0%, 0 Votes)
PSO2 Frozen Resolution (0%, 1 Votes)
Zenith Celestial Throne (0%, 0 Votes)
Genshin Impact Sumeru (1%, 6 Votes)
Trove Sunrise (0%, 0 Votes)
Mortal Online 2 Necromancy patch (0%, 0 Votes)
Dual Universe Athena (0%, 0 Votes)
Allods Online 13.0 Gates of the Worlds (0%, 0 Votes)
Elite Update 14 (0%, 1 Votes)
War Thunder Age of Drones (0%, 0 Votes)
Wizard101 spring update (0%, 2 Votes)
Something else - tell us in the comments! (1%, 3 Votes)

Total Voters: 435

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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.