Welcome back to Massively Overpowered’s formal end-of-the-year awards!
Today’s award is for the Most Improved MMO, which was awarded to World of Warcraft Retail last year. All live MMOs, regardless of release date, were eligible for this award, provided they made the improvements they’re being praised for this 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 Most Improved MMO of 2024Â is…
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
Andy McAdams:Â New World
Brianna Royce: World of Warcraft. This is the easy answer for most improved this year, whether Blizzard chooses to take it as a backhanded compliment or not. The game was in a deep, deep hole, and Blizzard has been steadily digging out for the last two years and making an effort to actually listen to MMO gamers. Even when it lost millions of players, it was still big – but it hadn’t been a big player innovatively in a long time as at best it followed the pack rather than the other way around. Now, even I am taking it seriously as a possible main character in our genre again. More of this, please.
Chris Neal:Â World of Warcraft. I’ve got no personal horse in this race, but following the opinions and impressions of those I trust and look up to makes it clear that The War Within has done a lot to lift up WoW back up from its self-inflicted wounds. It might not be standing tall in my mind, but it is definitely rising up from a kneel, and that’s not nothing for the behemoth of our genre.
Eliot Lefebvre:Â World of Warcraft. Unlike Bree, I am entirely intending this to be a backhanded compliment. Remember, all you need to do in order to be notably better is to get notably worse for a while! It is good that the expansion is genuinely in a better place than the game has been for the past several years, though. And hey, with the whole housing thing on the horizon, the team does look to be continuing on the path.
Justin Olivetti: World of Warcraft, No Man’s Sky. When we look back to the extreme lows of Shadowlands a few years back, it’s amazing how much better retail WoW is in 2024. It’s now a more agile title that’s investing in evergreen content, has a multi-year plan in place, is experimenting with various projects, and took the foundation of the last expansion and made it so much better with The War Within. And as for No Man’s Sky, this grand comeback story refuses to quit with huge content drop after huge content drop. This year alone, the game added multi-platform cross-saves, several new expeditions, space station upgrades, and, oh yeah, a huge universe refresh. Why aren’t we all playing this again?
Tyler Edwards:Â World of Warcraft is probably the correct answer here, but I think Guild Wars 2 also deserves a nod. Janthir Wilds seems to have received a warmer reception than Secrets of the Obscure did.
World of Warcraft took our award for Most Improved MMO of 2024. What’s your pick?
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