A decade is a long time. It’s kind of weird that we don’t think much about games or shows or whatever hitting the decade mark. It feels relatively automatic for something relatively successful, but 10 years doesn’t just happen. It’s the sort of thing that you get reminded of, and then you’re like, “Oh, no, that… that can’t be a decade, that was just in… oh.” And then you sort of stare into the middle distance for the while.
At any rate, I’m thinking about decade marks today because I did just take part in our decade-anniversary stream the other day, but this year isn’t just our lengthy anniversary. There is other stuff that happened back in 2015 and I want to look back at that today. So what else gets to celebrate a decade since its release in 2025? What other events can we look back to in anger, in joy, or just in “wow, that sure did happen, huh?”
1. Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
It’s really weird to think about it now – like, to the “I don’t believe you” level – but back in 2015 Final Fantasy XIV was not an industry behemoth but rather an actual risky prospect. Heck, it felt that way to me even as I was playing it, so the fact that the game got its first expansion and it was really good felt pretty gigantic. It’s still looked back on with fondness today, and between adding the remarkably flavorful city of Ishgard, three long-awaited new jobs, and refining many elements of the game’s overall gameplay that have remained in place over the past decade? Yeah. It’s a high-water mark.
2. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Meanwhile, Guild Wars 2 also got its first expansion, and that one aged… well, badly before people finally finding it pretty all right once you have the mounts that let you skip 90% of the traversal after the fact. The maps for this expansion were not well-loved on release and quickly became less loved, but the story beats at least landed, and overall the expansion it contributed to a solid feeling for the game moving forward. Maybe it’s not a slam dunk of a first expansion, but it was one of two big ones this year that showed what some of the new industry powerhouses would be for the next decade.
3. Trove
In my defense, I didn’t think Trove was newer than this but older; it feels like something that’s just been there for ages. It’s not my bag, but it does exactly what it sets out to do with a consistent panache and no real pretense at being anything other than what it is. If you want a consistent story or world or something, go play another game. If you want some cotton candy, play Trove. It is good at that. That’s not an insult.
4. Warframe’s TennoCon
This one is on my mind for obvious reasons as I have finally not just gotten “back” to Warframe but have wound up diving into it with gusto, and I’m kind of sad that I will not be attending the 10th annual convention for the game, but I also can’t argue that I deserve to be there because I am a late arrival. It’s a fantastic game that just keeps getting better, and I’m glad this celebration has gone on so long.
5. PAX South
This, meanwhile, is a convention that no longer exists. The PAX conventions have been going for some time now, but PAX South was an attempt to run three separate conventions in a given year that finally showed there were diminishing returns to this particular convention. However, the opening of a third one actually showed how the idea of live events was morphing from being a press junket into being much more of a time for companies to just sell directly to customers, which also ties into…
6. E3 struggling
I shed no tears for E3, but 2015 was very clearly the point when the convention started to struggle a lot for what are… well, understandable reasons. If most of the people who are interested in this are fundamentally interested in being marketed to, why not just spend your money on a big stand at a convention with public attendance instead of a press junket? I don’t have to like it to understand it, and E3 trying to become More Like PAX did no one any favors. This was really the year when the wheels started coming off.
7. Crowfall’s successful Kickstarter
We were not the only project getting crowdfunding in 2015! No, really, we weren’t! Please don’t ask how the others went. You all know the Crowfall story by now, but it’s worth noting that this is where the story started and for a while it really looked like this one was going to work. No fooling, there’s lots of stuff we collectively liked about this game, but clearly the rest of the world didn’t… and I cannot say they were wrong.
8. Star Wars: The Old Republic: Knights of the Fallen Empire
This one might seem like a weird pull, but I think it’s really important to remember that the entire Star Wars franchise was in a very different place in 2015 than it is now in 2025 – or even than it would be in 2016. Remember, at the time Star Wars: The Old Republic released this expansion, we were all still waiting for the next film to be released to see what Star Wars was even going to be in the future. I don’t think this expansion totally works for a variety of reasons, but I do respect that it was the writers swinging big and trying to do something very different than what had previously existed in SWTOR’s storytelling. Alas, it didn’t totally work, and I feel like it was kind of a last gasp for really hitting a hot iron for the game.
9. The Repopulation’s custody battle
Yes, I know, this is not a happy story by any metric. But it started here, in 2015, when The Repopulation – an at-the-time kind of promising little indie sandbox – was suddenly locked into a tug-of-war between the actual developers and the owners of the engine who had failed to find traction elsewhere. The net result was just demise all around, it wasn’t a good fight or even one that produced a winner, just a whole lot of people losing. Alas.
10. John Smedley leaves Daybreak
What was once Sony Online Entertainment went through a lot of upheaval at this time. First it got spun out into Daybreak, in no small part due to Smedley’s actions to keep it preserved as a distinct entity, and then Smedley himself departed a few months later. And this was just the beginning of the tumult that also involved anticipated projects getting cancelled before anyone even played them, so much bluffing about the state of the company finances and ownership, partnerships, acquisitions, and just endless back-and-forth drama. It’s still ongoing to this day, too; we almost always have some Daybreak drama going on within any given three-month stretch. So cheers for that, Daybreak! Even after a decade you’re still providing grist for our mill.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
