Massively OP’s PAX East 2017 awards and best-in-show reader vote

En Masse’s Kritika Online stole the show as a bit of a sleeper hit, surprising our attendee with its polished and fun PvE dungeon content demo. “It is, in every way, a microcosm of what dungeon experiences can be,” he wrote.

Frostkeep Studios was top-secret before PAX East, making survival sandbox Rend a totally new reveal for the convention. While it’s not a traditional MMORPG, it has some persistent elements and the factional PvP that MMO players might like, with plenty in common with PvP-oriented MMOs like Crowfall — but also plenty to set it apart from survival games like Conan Exiles, too, as we explored in a piece earlier this week. Oh yeah, and it’s pretty!

We struggled over how (and whether) to dish out awards to a few of the major MMORPGs with big content coming this year, given their not-really-commensurate-with-the-hype-or-quality showings at the con. However, we’re ultimately pinning the Best Expansion pin on Final Fantasy XIV’s Stormblood for its expansion panel deep-dive and a typically spectacular interview from Naoki Yoshida.

Morrowind has been dubbed a “chapter” rather than an “expansion,” and we’ve noted that we were underwhelmed by the specific battleground content we saw, but it’s hard to deny that The Elder Scrolls Online’s Morrowind is the most anticipated MMORPG we saw at the con. Your clicks on our follow-up deep-dive on the impact of PvP suggest the same.

In the world of MMORPGs, it’s not uncommon for games to start out as MMORPGs and scale back to much smaller games. Legends of Aria — formerly known as Shards Online — is doing just the opposite by expanding its world and scope beyond small shards into one big and truly massive official world. That earns it the indie crown for the show.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been a true surprise, since we’ve been tracking rumors on the subject for over a year, but TERA’s formal console announcement was indeed a head-turner. We didn’t see it coming this soon, anyway!

The demo of Kickstarter-funded Chronicles of Elyria at PAX was beautiful if relatively limited. But if the game is developed and embellished as promised — and more importantly, if griefplay is adequately discouraged as promised — the game has tremendous potential to be the next big thing. It’s just got a long way to go!

Trion brought Trove on console to PAX just a few days ahead of its official launch, which means the demo on display has already been time-tested by open beta players, to say nothing of the millions of players who’ve been trundling around the sandbox on PC. That surely helped makes it the best console experience for MMORPG players at the con.

Dauntless isn’t a traditional MMORPG, but it’s got the pedigree thanks to devs from BioWare, Riot Games, and Blizzard, as well as the online multiplayer combat and the cash shop. Hardcore “massive” fans should probably take a peek at the trailer because the gameplay might scratch your itch anyway.