MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Best MMO Trend

December 17, 2024 11:00 AM

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

Today’s award is for the Best MMO Trend, which was awarded to the silver lining of MMO delays last year. This award is meant to highlight a pervasive trend that we can identify and actually appreciate seeing in the industry. 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 Trend of 2024 is…

THE MMORPG EXPANSION RESURGENCE

Andrew Ross: Unionization

Andy McAdams: More flexible playstyles becoming available in MMOs

Brianna Royce: The resurgence of MMORPG expansions, specifically annual ones. It really hit me this past summer that this might be the first year ever that every single major MMORPG released an expansion – in fact, the top five MMORPGs launched their expansions in the same three-month span. But it wasn’t just the big MMOs; even a long list of classic MMOs, from the EverQuests and EVE Online to LOTRO, got major expansions that never shied away from the word expansion. This genre is an expensive place to develop new games right now; it just makes sense that developers are doubling down on existing games with loyal playerbases. It’s a big win.

Carlo Lacsina: The MMO annual expansion resurgence

Chris Neal: Unionization, the year of expansions. Janthir Wilds. The War Within. Dawntrail. The Outer Brood. Scars of Destruction. Gold Road. Sure, maybe the planets aligned just right to make this happen in 2024, but I sure as hell ain’t complaining! It’s fun to see our genre’s stalwarts continue to expand!

Justin Olivetti: This was definitely the Year of MMO Expansions, which was a welcome trend indeed! Almost every major and many minor titles got either a full expansion or a big ol’ content update at some point this year, and none of us were complaining at the wealth of options here.

MJ Guthrie: The year of expansions. Seeing so many games (even ones I have zero interest in!) have meaty content updates and expansions this year after what felt like a long dearth where only a smattering of content would trickle in feels like the best trend to me.

Sam Kash: Games keep launching

Tyler Edwards: Solo-friendly endgame content. Delves are a great addition to WoW, and while New World may have screwed the pooch on rewards for soul trials, that’s a fixable problem, and the content itself is fun.

The MMO expansion resurgence took our award for Best MMO Trend of 2024. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What was the best MMO trend of 2024?

The MMO expansion resurgence (14%, 50 Votes)
Science shows most gamers are playing older games (10%, 37 Votes)
WoW is adopting more and more content from other MMOs (4%, 15 Votes)
A bunch of MMOs got or are getting housing and other cozy content (7%, 26 Votes)
Multiplayer games are adding offline modes as a hedge against sunset (6%, 23 Votes)
Games preservation efforts are continuing to ramp up (8%, 29 Votes)
A bunch of teams newly unionized in 2024 (17%, 64 Votes)
The push for solo-friendly endgame content and flexible playstyles in MMOs (18%, 66 Votes)
Crypto and blockchain MMOs continue to spark derision (5%, 17 Votes)
The rise of cozy MMOs and MMO-adjacent games (4%, 16 Votes)
The ongoing mainstreaming of rogue servers (6%, 23 Votes)
Something else - tell us in the comments! (0%, 0 Votes)

Total Voters: 239

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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. Reader poll options include all trends nominated plus a few others we thought should be included.