2022 marks the fifth year in a row we’ve done this roundup, but the Daily Grind has been a recurring mini-column here on MassivelyOP – and Original Flavor Massively – for a whole lot longer than that. I suspect the original creators thought it would be a fluffy, easy post that would kill time while the news crew whirred to action every morning, but it’s become something of an icebreaker to start the day and get everyone talking. Of course, my favorite is when someone shows up in the Daily Grind to declare its existence means a slow news day, which is never the case (both because we write our Daily Grinds days and sometimes weeks in advance and because we always have more news than we have time and space and people to write, hence the introduction of The Mop Up years back!).
The very first Daily Grind on Old Massively was penned on November 3rd, 2007, which means that our staff has written around 5535 Daily Grinds to date (I don’t think we’ve missed any, but I can’t bet my life on that). Either way, we do try not to repeat topics too often, so it mystifies me that we’ve all found that many things to talk about when it comes to MMOs.
Let’s carry on the tradition: I’ve pulled out what I think are the biggest or weirdest or best Daily Grinds of the year, one from each month!
January: What do you think the end looks like for the ongoing Blizzard saga?
This wasn’t the most-commented-on Daily Grind of January, but I think it’s the most interesting to look back on. In January, we were only half a year into the Activision-Blizzard debacle. We didn’t know about Dragonflight at all. We had no idea how Overwatch 2 and Diablo Immortal would land. We didn’t know the half of the unionbusting the company would pull. We didn’t know about the pullout from China. We didn’t know how badly the financials would look for most of the year. So it’s certainly fascinating to retread what our readerbase foresaw way back when.
February: Do you still want to play an EverQuest III?
More of you do than don’t, but pretty much everyone harbors some skepticism about Daybreak’s will and ability to pull it off, which is fair.
March: Is Lost Ark an MMO, MMORPG, or neither?
The topic of whether Lost Ark is an MMORPG or an MMO or something entirely different kept coming up all year as the game carved out a permanent home in Steam’s top 10 list and Amazon pushed out patch after patch. Whether our discussion resolved the debate is another story.
April: Do you try more MMOs since free-to-play became the dominant model?
Overall, our readers say yes. But many of you also said you don’t stay in most of them. Quantity ain’t always quality.
May: Are you sick of crypto and NFT crap in MMOs?
You most definitely are, and you did not hesitate to say so very loudly and forcefully!
June: Does it ever make sense for an MMO to restrict certain classes to specific races?
Our readers generally don’t like gender-locking, and race-locking and class-locking seem to be almost as loathed, unless there’s some incredibly compelling lore reason to do it.
July: Are you a gamer or an MMO gamer?
You might expect readers of an MMORPG blog to sound off as MMO stalwarts, but it was a pretty even split. A solid half of our readers are into far more than MMOs!
August: Do you leave MMO global chat on or turn it off?
You turn it off. You turn it off as soon as you can. It was pretty resounding. We probably didn’t even need to ask this question!
September: What’s the MMO grudge you’ve held on to the longest?
We got 86 comments on this Daily Grind – y’all carry a lot of grudges, apparently! Everything from SWTOR and Landmark to the NGE and City of Heroes. Some of you listed a lot more than one, too!
October: Should MMO studios ditch forums for an official Discord server?
Absolutely not. Core MMORPG players loathe this. Journalists loathe this too! The word “detest” was deployed. Don’t do it, studios!
November: Are there MMOs you hope to see falter and fail specifically?
If you thought our readers would take the high road here, you were dead wrong. We definitely have our fair share of petty curses, but to be fair, some of those games deserve it.
December: How many MMOs did you actively play in 2022?
What’s most interesting to me here isn’t which MMOs you folks play; it’s how wide the numerical spread is. Several of you play one MMO – just one MMO, consistently and happily. But we had some folks who played as many as a dozen MMORPGs in 2022, and not just dabbling but more like sequentially. That’s a lot of MMOs! Here’s to many more in 2023!
