MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Biggest MMO Disappointment

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

Today’s award is for the Biggest MMO Disappointment, which was awarded to Digital Extremes abandoning Wayfinder last year. Disappointments can be games, launches, patches, trends, stories, sunsets, all manner of topics in the MMORPG genre and orbiting sub-genres. 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 Biggest MMO Disappointment of 2024 is…

THE DEATH OF BLUE PROTOCOL

​​Andrew Ross: Palia’s problematic year

Brianna Royce: Blue Protocol, MMORPGs downshifting, all the layoffs. Blue Protocol had my attention; I was looking forward to a new MMO out of Japan, especially one with cozy-game vibes. I’m deeply annoyed that it’s been canceled and that Bamco is just ignoring the western playerbase as it licenses the game to Tencent for a Chinese mobile game. (And don’t worry – we’ll get back to the layoffs in a later award.)

Chris Neal: Blue Protocol RIP, Tarisland brings maximum temport energy. The more we learned of BP and watched Bandai Namco flounder, the more this seemed like an inevitable outcome, but it still sucks that what might have been a fun anime-styled MMORPG never got to see the light of day in our corner of the globe. I would have liked to have slaked my curiosity.

Eliot Lefebvre: Blue Protocol canceled. I don’t know if this is why we can’t have nice things, but I certainly can’t.

Justin Olivetti: Blue Protocol is canceled. Why can’t we ever have nice things? While we saw this coming, it was still crushing to see the studio give up on this once-promising sci-fi MMO. Seriously, it could’ve been the MMO of the year this year, but instead we dug a shallow grave, tossed it in, and moved on.

MJ Guthrie: Too much focus on solo play in MMORPGs

Sam Kash: Blue Protocol is DOA

The death of Blue Protocol took our award for Biggest MMO Disappointment. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What was the biggest disappointment in the MMO world in 2024?

  • Blue Protocol global is canceled (13%, 84 Votes)
  • Mass layoffs across the industry (20%, 128 Votes)
  • Tarisland brings maximum temport energy (1%, 8 Votes)
  • Palia had a messy year and was dodgy about its beta status (3%, 19 Votes)
  • Too much focus on solo play in MMORPGs (6%, 38 Votes)
  • Cryptic is basically hollowed out as everyone is laid off (7%, 42 Votes)
  • New World tries to pretend it's not an MMO in its Aeternum marketing (6%, 36 Votes)
  • There aren't enough major MMORPGs in the pipeline (8%, 53 Votes)
  • EVE Frontier is a blockchain crypto game (3%, 22 Votes)
  • WoW tried to sell a pay-to-win dino mount for 90 bucks (6%, 39 Votes)
  • Zenith, Temtem went into maintenace mode and in favor of new side games (0%, 2 Votes)
  • Legends of Aria revives as Classic but goes nowhere (0%, 3 Votes)
  • Final Stand Ragnarok launches to crickets (0%, 2 Votes)
  • Wagadu Chronicles sunsets without completing backer rewards (2%, 12 Votes)
  • WoW abused headstart FOMO with War Within's preorders (3%, 19 Votes)
  • Embers Adrift got screwed over by its payment processor (2%, 14 Votes)
  • Palia was bought out and saved by Daybreak ArcheAge sunsets in the west and Korea too (0%, 2 Votes)
  • ArcheAge 3 pivots to be less of an MMORPG (2%, 13 Votes)
  • Blizzard cancels BlizzCon in WoW's 20th anniversary year (2%, 10 Votes)
  • Elder Scrolls Online cancels NA 2025 anniversary meetup (1%, 8 Votes)
  • EG7 and Daybreak sold PlanetSide and moved PS2 to a subsidiary (0%, 0 Votes)
  • Crowfall buyer pivots to crypto (2%, 12 Votes)
  • Microsoft required FFXIV players to sub to Xbox Game Pass to play on Xbox (2%, 12 Votes)
  • Daybreak charged $1500 for in-person Fippyfest tickets (1%, 8 Votes)
  • The Riot MMO got delayed and sent back to the drawing board post-layoffs (3%, 20 Votes)
  • Ubisoft killed The Crew 1 to force people to play its other games (1%, 4 Votes)
  • NCsoft Korea is obfuscating Throne and Liberty in its financials (1%, 4 Votes)
  • Sony completely botched Concord (2%, 10 Votes)
  • Blizzard canceled Odyssey (1%, 9 Votes)
  • Something else (tell us in the comments!) (1%, 5 Votes)

Total Voters: 415

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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 disappointments nominated plus a few others we thought should be included.
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