Massively OP’s 2018 Awards: Best MMO Event of 2018

December 25, 2018 12:00 PM

Massively Overpowered’s end-of-the-year 2018 awards continue today with our award for Best MMO Event, which is sort of a new category for us this year. Previously, we’d doled out awards for best holiday event – those went to Lord of the Rings Online last year and The Secret World the year before – but we wanted to expand the category beyond just holiday events this year to allow more nominations across the whole spectrum of the genre. After all, MMOs aren’t just about mega-updates; plenty of online games revolve around dynamic events, competitive tournaments, and social celebrations, both studio- and player-induced.

The Massively OP staff pick for the Best MMO Event of 2018 is…

Elite Dangerous’s Engima Expedition

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): It’s funny: When Eliot first proposed Elite Dangerous for this award, my first instinct was oh hell no; the most recent event we covered, for example, was basically about how Frontier totally botched the Gnosis storyline, and in past years we’ve seen more than one storyline wrecked by griefers. But then we dug the Enigma Expedition piece out of our archives from last January, and my mind was changed. It’s literally a story of how the Elite community saved one of Frontier’s poorly conceived events from griefers who were literally there trying to disrupt the final voyage of a player dying of cancer. So really, it’s the Elite playerbase that should get this award. Good show, folks.

Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes, blog): Elite Dangerous. Watching the Thargoid menace evolve in Elite: Dangerous over the course of 2017 was fascinating, so I definitely wanted to see what sort of stories would be told this year. Events like the escapades of the Fuel Rats or the folks providing a bulwark against griefers for a dying CMDR’s final voyage certainly stand out in my mind. Runner-up: EVE Online’s CSM Politicking. This story right here? This is the kind of stuff that usually acts as the force that shoves me away from ever wanting to get into EVE again… especially since watching from the outside is infinitely safer from a mental standpoint.

Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): My perception of the best events is a bit skewed, because it’s more about how fun they are to read about rather than how fun they are to play. So I tend to argue in favor of Elite: Dangerous; there was a lot going on in the game this year, and while some of it has been argued to be the result of Frontier not being very good at managing events, it sure was neat to see on display.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): Star Trek Online smartly appealed to both Deep Space Nine and Discovery fans with two story arcs. I’ll also toss in LOTRO’s progression server if it fits this category.

MJ Guthrie (@MJ_Guthrie, blog): I have to give best event(s) to Elder Scrolls Online for its prelude to DLC and expansion events. This is prelude done so right everything else is put to serious shame. It isn’t one single event, but both the Summerset and Murkmire prelude events had enough content to feel like a full DLC compared to other games. In fact, I’d done one lackluster expansion prelude event feeling like that’s just how it is, then went and did ESO’s and was blown away. It felt like there was more in the prelude to an expansion than the other game’s expansion had! For runners up, I’d go for a tie with Hi-Rez’s winter expo back in January (sorry, not the November one) and Digital Extreme’s TennoCon. Why? Because I think fan expos are fantastic, and these were a great mix of fan fun and dev interaction. (I felt I could only add ones I attended — other games had some that could have been great, too, I just can’t say for myself.)

How does Massively OP choose the winner?

Our team gathers together over the course of a few days to discuss candidates and ideally settle on a consensus winner. We don’t have a hard vote, but we do include written commentary from every writer who submitted it on time so that you can see where some of us differed, what our secondary picks were, and why we personally nominated what we did (or didn’t). 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.

Elite Dangerous’ Enigma Expedition won our award for Best MMO Event of 2018. What’s your pick?

Reader poll: Which MMO offered the best event in 2018?

Elite Dangerous' Enigma Expedition (9%, 29 Votes)
EVE Online CSM politicking and multiple wars (3%, 10 Votes)
Star Trek Online Deep Space Nine and Discovery story arcs (2%, 8 Votes)
WoW's Battle For Azeroth pre-launch storyline (5%, 18 Votes)
Guild Wars 2 season 4, rollerbeetle racing, Festival of the Four Winds (12%, 42 Votes)
Lord of the Rings Online's Weatherstock (8%, 26 Votes)
Black Desert's Celebrating Millions events (1%, 5 Votes)
Elder Scrolls Online's free house and free mount events this past fall (42%, 140 Votes)
EverQuest II’s Against the Elements (0%, 1 Votes)
Chronicles of Elyria’s Searing Plague (0%, 1 Votes)
Warframe's Operation Plague Star resurrection (2%, 6 Votes)
Nothing (13%, 44 Votes)
Something else (tell us in the comments!) (2%, 7 Votes)