MassivelyOP’s 2024 Awards: Best MMO Business Model

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

Today’s award is for the Best MMO Business Model, which was awarded to Final Fantasy XIV last year. The award is intended to recognize a live MMORPG of any age that has demonstrated an exemplary business model specifically in 2024, regardless of its past performance. 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 Business Model of 2024 is…

GUILD WARS 2

Andy McAdams: Guild Wars 2

Brianna Royce: Guild Wars 2. I feel very strongly about this one. I’m not opposed to subscription MMOs; I maintain a LOTRO sub, even. But $25 gets you a whole year of new content in Guild Wars 2, full stop, and because of the horizontal way the game is structured, the cash shop isn’t pay-to-win, either. It’s one of the rare few MMOs I’ll let my own kids play, and the business model is a large part of why.

Carlo Lacsina: Free-to-play MMOs that don’t suck. I feel like we’ve got enough examples of free-to-play MMOs that have hit a nice balance between profitability, keeping the whales happy, and allowing player growth for free-to-play players. It’s the most prevalent model at this point and even though it’s got its pitfalls, there are enough good examples of it to ensure folks aren’t tricked into buying into bad F2P models.

Chris Neal: Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV. Plushie mount skins. Need I say more? OK, I guess I should, like the fact that this game tends to mostly avoid the pitfalls of pay for power/convenience that other games do. It’s not actively villainous! Here, have a headpat.

Eliot Lefebvre: Final Fantasy XIV

Justin Olivetti: Guild Wars 2. This game is a very cheap buy-in, has a lot of free content updates, and offers new expansions for discount-level prices. And once you buy it, you’ve got it for as long as the servers are on. Score!

Tyler Edwards: Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, New World

Guild Wars 2 took our award for Best MMO Business Model. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: What MMO featured the best business model in 2024?

View Results

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