One of my favorite things to do every year is drill down the top articles on the site for our readers. But in 2018, we didn’t run this post because we had incomplete data and I thought it’d be confusing. This year, we have incomplete data again (we’re missing parts of March and May), but it’s a much more complete batch and worthy of presentation!
As always, I am not talking about the most controversial, the most fun, the most important, or the most commented-on stories; I mean the single articles that actually brought in the most measurable pageviews. The most “popular” aren’t always the ones we expect, since a well-timed link from a major website or social media platform can drive some really random posts with next to no comments into the stratosphere. Just remember that lists like these favor posts made earlier in the year by default!
Blizzard bribes female employees to track their sex, pregnancy, and moods
Perfect Ten: The MMOs with the best value going into 2019
Blizzard on World of Warcraft class pruning: ‘We’ve gone too far’
‘Secret’ City of Heroes emulator operators address SCORE leak drama, rebut personal info database rumor
RuneScape studio Jagex has been sold, again, this time valued at $530M
Guild Wars 2 studio ArenaNet chased the 2016 Gaile Gray account hacker all the way to Germany – and lost
RuneScape dev Jagex is up for sale by its struggling Chinese owners after posting record high year
Veteran MMORPG developer Brad McQuaid has passed away
Rumor: Supposed expansion leak claims World of Warcraft is heading toward an Age of Darkness
An EVE Online corporation has been hit with a GDPR request from an ex-member
Massively OP’s guide to Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers’ unlocks and progress
Guild Wars 2 community clashes over Icebrood Saga announcement disappointment
A stunning reveal! Witness footage of the Dragon Ball Z MMORPG from closed beta!
Diablo III goes on a killstreak with Season 19, now live
First impressions: Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is beautiful, horrifying, and a crowning achievement
Anthem players get excited for Cataclysm precursor event that turns out to be a bug
The Elder Scrolls Online introduces new cash shop pet that increases your inventory and raises some eyebrows
EVE North 2019: A huge battle once broke out in EVE Online, but not a single player was involved
Elder Scrolls Online players run extensive tests to highlight character race disparities
A lawsuit against Jagex for muting a player is thrown out in five days
Shall we break it down a little bit? It’s no surprise to me that the Blizzard Ovia expose, City of Heroes drama, WoW rumors, FFXIV Shadowbringers previews, and Guild Wars 2 hacker piece are all up there – same for the EVE Online dramas and Elder Scrolls Online eyebrow-raisers. The Brad McQuaid obituary is also an unfortunate entry (I really don’t enjoy being “first” to get to a piece like that such that we’re being cited all over). But then we’ve also got some really random pieces, like the Diablo III season piece, the Dragon Ball Z piece, and the Anthem bug. And it’s bizarre that Jagex – not RuneScape, but Jagex specifically – has three entries here, right?
What’s most interesting to me is what’s not on here – like the Blizzard Hong Kong fiasco, Star Citizen, and WoW Classic. Part of this is because big “narrative” stories like those get spread over many pieces rather than one that’s circulated independently, which is the case for a lot of the outliers in our top 20. This is why we don’t really let “most clicks” and “most comments” dictate our coverage, but hey, these lists are still fun to flip through!
Stay tuned, as we’ve got our most-popular-by-comments list coming up in the next week too!
