MassivelyOP’s 2024 Golden Yachties: Best MMO trolling

December 28, 2024 12:00 PM

MassivelyOP’s not-so-serious end-of-the-year awards continue today with our award for the Best MMO trolling. The Golden Yachties series is our run of fauxwards, named in honor of somebody we’ve long forgotten from Old Massively who insisted that surely we make so much money that we’re typing MMO blog posts from a gold-plated yacht. (Joke’s on you; it was always silver. Gold is too heavy.)

And the winner is…

Stars Reach’s sense of pride and accomplishment

During Stars Reach’s testing this fall, developers sneaked a trophy reward labeled “a sense of pride and accomplishment” into the inventories of players who managed to map the whole test world. The joke refers to the 2017 comment from an EA exec who told Reddit that its $80 microtransactions (in a B2P game) were there to “provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes” – a line ridiculed so broadly that it racked up a Guinness World Record for Reddit downvotes.

The troll works here because it’s less about trolling the player and more about trolling EA. I’m a fan.

I have two runners-up!

Diablo IV’s Vases of Hatred promo, whereby you could send evil floral arrangements to people
And Hellgate is back again. Yep.

Want to nominate another winner? Let us know in the comments, and don’t forget to check out our serious MMO awards while you’re at it, or skim through our past “winners”: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015.