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The First Annual Grindies: Winners in OP!
Sterica
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
And your 2014 Grindies are...
Best Graphics (TIE!)
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: With beautiful landscapes, wonderfully varied gear to play dress up in, and tons of intricately designed monsters, it's no wonder FFXIV was one of our two winners.
- Elder Scrolls Online
- Wildstar
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Guild Wars 2: Despite releasing nearly three years ago, GW2 continues to impress by showing the staying power of its unique, painterly style.
- Planetside 2
Best Story
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: A long-running plot throughout the leveling experience that continues with each content patch has captivated players and brought a real Final Fantasy feel to the MMO genre.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- The Secret World (RUNNER-UP!)
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Guild Wars 2
- Wildstar
- World of Warcraft
Best Music
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy has a clear advantage with a long legacy of beloved music, and XIV does not fail to live up to that aural tradition by offering a mix of old new tunes and classic remixes.
- World of Warcraft
- Wildstar
- Lord of the Rings Online (RUNNER-UP)
Best Combat
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
- The Secret World
- Guild Wars 2
- TERA: More engaging real-time combat is becoming a thing over the traditional target/hotkey style, and TERA is among the first MMOs to really do it justice.
- Planetside 2
- Destiny
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Wildstar
Best Crafting
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: With professions being classes unto themselves, and the act of crafting being akin to a form of puzzle combat, XIV offers an incredibly deep experience that few MMOs can rival.
- Wildstar
- Archeage (RUNNER UP!)
Achievement in Real Estate Award
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
- Wildstar: In spite all of its failings, nobody will find much fault with Carbine's take on housing. Easy access to housing, a ton of freedom in item placement, and a ton of doo-dads to place made housing almost a game of its own.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- World of Warcraft (RUNNER UP!)
The Vlad Award for Dungeon Design
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: From haunted mansions to small encounters with primals, XIV offered a lot of variety and tightly designed places for dungeon crawlers to get their fix.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Wildstar
The Mountain Dew Award in PvP (TIE!)
- Guild Wars 2: Many consider GW2's predecessor to be among the best PvP MMOs out there, so it's little shock that GW2 continues that tradition of player on player smashing.
- Wildstar
- Archeage: Skewing towards a more traditional style of MMO where the world was harsh and uncaring, Archeage definitely fostered players looking for that old-school dog-eat-dog fantasy world.
Best Content Patch
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Maintaining a steady schedule of a patch every 3-4 months, XIV offers a ridiculous amount of content on a regular basis, with new dungeons, quests, and other distractions.
- The Secret World
- Guild Wars 2 (RUNNER UP!)
Best Expansion
- World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor: One of the strongest expansions in WoW's history, with the introduction of housing, a more open and story-based leveling experience, and tons of quality of life improvements. It's no surprise that nobody could even think of another expansion to even rival Blizzard's strong entry.
Best Newcomer
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: While XIV came out in 2010, ARR is still quite young, and is purpose one of the few stories of an MMO successfully rebounding from a complete failure of a launch. For many players, ARR was more or less a wholly new MMO to explore.
- Archeage (RUNNER UO)
- Wildstar
The APB Award in Abject Failure
- Wildstar: Despite showing promise with enthusiastic devs, amazing housing, and a wonderful aesthetic, Wildstar was plagued with bugs, an endgame hostile to casual players, and a general lack of stuff to do at endgame. Future patches just made things worse, forcing Carbine to renege on their promise of aggressive, frequent patching. It's no terribly shocking that Wildstar was the lone nominee for biggest dud.
Most Improved
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Even ignoring the obvious 2013 revamp, XIV continues to improve thanks to a steady release schedule of content patches. The XIV today is a significantly different, and better, game than the XIV of a year ago, and not all MMOs can say that.
- World of Warcraft
The Karl Marx F2P Award (TIE!
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Archeage: Launching as a free game is becoming more common, and not just cheap games to bilk kids of money. Archeage launched as a strong free title thanks to letting players have fun without requiring a huge initial investment.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: It's hard to deny the quality of TOR's economy, considering that the move to F2P has successfully prevented the game from becoming a huge flop.
The Robert Kotick "F2P" Award
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: ...on the other hand, many of you though TOR was a huge rip-off. The game was definitely panned when it first went to F2P for how poorly it treated free players by imposing a large number of restrictions on gameplay mechanics.
- Neverwinter
MMO of the Year 2014
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
Is there any surprise? While other games might have higher highs, XIV delivered on thing in 2014, and that was never letting up on the content pipeline. Not content just releasing regular MMO content like dungeons and raids, XIV released a whole new class last year in a regular content patch. All this while providing an excellent take on the WoW-style MMOs people expect these days. Final Fantasy 14 doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but instead combine beautiful imagery, music, and story to create a world people want to inhabit. And then they keep building up that world so people never want it. And Square-Enix isn't letting up: the game has an expansion in just a few months, and there's even a content patch being released as I type this. The year 2014 was a very good for FFXIV, and 2015 looks to be even stronger.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Guild Wars 2 (RUNNER UP!)
- Archeage
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The game is stupidly pretty in a lot of places and the armor design is fantastic in my opinion. It also has proper models for almost every equipment slot except belts.
Best Content Patch - FF14.
Each major content patch has continued the main story, added new single boss battles, three new end game dungeons with unique armor sets and alternates between adding new sections of the hardcore raid and the new casual raid. The devs have also added in more crafting recipes and gathering nodes to keep the crafters and gatherers hooked. They also tend to add neat things such as gardening for housing, weapon upgrade steps and even weddings in the mini patches between major content patches.
They're also released on a pretty consistent schedule and try not to let existing content drag on too long.
Best story - FF14
It's JRPG and Final Fantasy as heeeeeeell in the story, but it embraces it and likes to lampoon it on several occasions.
Even the side story quests such as the Hildebrand story have a lot of heart and charm put into them.
MMO of the year - FF14
I'm always trying to get my friends to try it out. Beneath the anime exterior of catgirls, it is a labor of love with a dev team that seems to be trying really hard to continue supporting their product to keep it a solid and fun game.
In order from best: FFXIV:ARR, Elder Scrolls Online, Wildstar. FFXIV:ARR combines beautiful environments with a stylized realism for characters that creates a cohesive world with stunning visuals It also scales fairly well on lower setups as it was designed to run on PS3, PS4, and PC. Elder Scrolls has the environments but falls short in terms of character design (seriously they need to abandon their wooden character design already), and Wildstar manages to creates both good character design and beautiful scenery but relies a bit too much on the cartoony style which ends up making the whole thing a bit less cohesive. All three are a visual treat however.
Best Story
FFXIV:ARR. This one may have a bit of contention, but in terms of having the player be actually engaged in the story and feel like their character is instrumental in affecting the world I think FFXIV:ARR nails it. The story isn't a literary masterpiece but it's fun, well written, engaging,has surprising depth and is designed in such a fashion as to allow for branching stories and years of plot. On top of that even the trivial side quests and side stories are well written and fun and it's the first MMO in a long while (since ToR) to actually make me care about the lore and story and what was going on. The NPC characters are interesting and the plot is moving and makes you care about what it going on in the world of Eorzea.
Best Combat
Not many are going to agree with me on this one but FFXIV:ARR has very solid combat. It's not flashy, ground breaking, or new, and it starts off incredibly slow at first, but once you get a fair amount of your skills and you get into the more complicated fights it really opens up. It's very easy to grasp but is also designed well enough that it can be a bit tricky to master and there is a good feeling of reward when you finally full master a class and can get the most out of it. Even after playing a particular class for months there are still little tricks and tips I find to get a little extra something out of it which reveals a lot of depth in the system compared to the more standard fare. The 2.5 GCD may turn people off initially but once the machine gets working you can see how much it benefits from the slower GCD and more meaningful abilities.
I would have given this to Wildstar but as innovative as the combat seemed at first it ended up falling flat because it really didn't change much about the MMO game and ended up forcing the player to stay far more engaged that you otherwise would need to, even on the most trivial of enemies. TERA is still the only MMO to really nail a style of comabt that was fun, engaging, and thrilling but the little mooks still fell in droves. It was only the massive enemies that really needed you to fully engage and I think that's where Wildstar faltered. It's just not fun after hours of dodging and moving to have to keep doing that on the most trivial of enemies. On top of that the visual clutter was irritating.
Best Crafting
FFXIV:ARR by a god damned landslide. No other MMO even comes close to the level of depth and breadth of crafting in this game. We're talking a full "combat" style system for crafting included complete skill sets, cross class abilities and various crafting parameters stated out by level and gear. From it's more basic form to the highest level of crafting it's beautifully designed and surprisingly fun/challenging to engage in resulting in a very rewarding experience. It's basically a complete game in it's own right. I think Vanguard maybe had a similar system but having not played the game, and it coming out years ago (and only really hearing negative things) I think FFXIV:ARR takes the cake in 2014 in regards to crafting with no contest.
Achievement in Real Estate Award
Wildstar by far, with FFXIV:ARR as a second. Wildstar (despite it's other failings) really knocked it out of the park with it's housing system making it fun, interactive, and rewarding. It turned what is typically a pure vanity affair into a useful tool with in game and social benefits. The level of customization is unmatched and the design overall is masterfully done. FFXIV:ARR pales in comparison to Wildtar but still offers a fun vanity setup with minimal utility.
The Vlad Award for Dungeon Design
FFXIV:ARR again, The Dungeon design in this game is very intelligently done, the early dungeons are simple and as you progress they slowly get more and more complex adding in staple MMO mechanics at a regular pace to initiate newer players to the MMO genre in a natural manner. The Raid designs are challenging and rewarding and while they lack the complexity of older MMOs just yet each new Raid has been a step up from the last. On top of that the system in place to lower the difficulty of older raid content to make it more accessible to the larger playerbase is also well designed. Additionally Square Enix has adding multiple incentives into the game to have players revisit old dungeons and do old dungeons on a daily basis which keeps the queue times fairly low (in MMO standards). I haven't ever seen an MMO reuse old dungeons to the degree that FFXIV:ARR does and it makes levelling a new class far less of a chore than it would be otherwise.
Best Content Patch
FFXIV:ARR hands down. Every 3 months they add at LEAST a set of 3 high quality dungeons, a new Raid, a New Primal fights, more Main story, Side quests, Side Story, new Crafting, new Vanity and sometimes new game mechanics. Every 3 flippin months. This is UNHEARD of in the MMO genre and they've keep it up solid for a whole year now. Not only do they win on Quantity but the content is of a very high quality as well often including new songs, voiceovers, and a wealth of visuals.
Best Expansion
World of Warcraft Warlords of Draenor by far. I don't even play WoW anymore but the feedback from this expansion has been almost overwhelmingly positive I can't think of another expansion this year that could even come close.
Best Newcomer
FFXIV:ARR released at the end of 2013 and on the PS4 in 2014 so I would say it's still a newcomer and is by far the best. It also was released in China this year and possibly Korea I think?
The APB Award in Abject Failure
Wildstar sadly take this award in my opinion. It was by far the most hyped and most promising MMO of the year but some key design decisions had it hemorrhaging subscribers in the first few months after release. IT did player housing wonderfully but failed to provide content for the casual player, deciding instead to focus almost entirely on the "hardcore" player which ultimately lead to it's downfall.
Most Improved
FFXIV:ARR by far. Although it launched late in 2013 it's constantly improved by leaps and bounds at the developers listen to player concerns and intelligently address them (not just blindly changing things) to improve the game. This has led to a very stable game that keeps getting better and better with a level of class balance I have yet to see in another MMO. If something they've implemented doesn't work they don't try to force it, they reevaluate how it was implemented and in some cases completely redo it (Case in point the Class/Job system has some serious flaws, and it seems new Jobs are simply not going to have a Class requirement)
MMO of the Year 2014
FFXIV:ARR by far. There has not been an MMO in recent memory that has even come close. It offers a fun experience from the most casual to the most hardcore, it offers content at a pace never before seen in the genre, it's designed by people with a passion for the game (literally hired more based on their passion than experience) and has managed to go from being one of the worst MMOs ever created to one of the best in an development move never before seen in the genre. They literally pulled the shitty game, apologized and recreated it almost from the ground up into something that no one ever thought they possibly could.
I know it seems like I'm throwing FFXIV:ARR in pretty much every category, but considering it's the first MMO is YEARS to hold my attention for longer than 30 days I think it deserves it. It's doing pretty much everything right and has restored my hope for an MMO that I can play for years to come (Something I haven't done since WoW
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Best Newcomer would be better off going to Archeage for the simple fact of it being that scrappy Korean port over that's trying to be a sandbox and is new in the NA/EU markets. Mildly entertaining from a casual farming perspective and great if you love brutally murdering people and being a pirate.
Abject failure belongs squarely in Wildstar's court, regardless of whether or not it's trucking along still or going to change and get better anytime soon; it fell drastically short of many expectations, even mild ones, right out of the gate and is paying the price for it now and might not live to see another Grindy come and go.
Maybe give EvE an honourable mention for staying in the news and continuing to give us a reason to keep up with Mittens and company and their boyish pranks and never ever play the game.
Now I'm sad again.
Best graphics: lord of the rings online (dated, but still some of the most well done set pieces.)
Most improved and best expansion: wow
Real estate: wildstar, lotro
Mountain dew: Guild Wars 2
APB award: wildstar
Best content patch: the secret world
Marx: lotro
Robert kotick: star wars tor
Mmo of the year: lotro, gw2
Edit: Best combat: TSW
Best Graphics: Guild Wars 2: So so pretty.
Best Expansion: WoW. I don't even play WoW and I can see it has the best expansion out.
Real estate: Wildstar. It was the best part of the game and if they had just released the housing part and charged for bits it would have been a hit.
PvP: Guild Wars 2.
Dungeon Award: LOTRO. Seriously those are some very lore rich well made experiences.
Newcomer: Archage. At least it's trying to be different.
APB Award: Wildstar.
Marx: I think LOTRO still takes this but it's model is starting to show age. I could see something unseating this pretty soon.
Kotick: Neverwinter. Hey, we made the auction house be tied into real money backed currency you can either grind insane amounts for or you can just buy outright. That won't cause inflation or anything, right?
MMO of the year: Guild Wars 2. Am I playing it right now? no. Do I keep coming back because it has a solid foundation that is a great game? Yes. I never seem to be able to write off GW2. I always come back to it and have fun when I do.
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- I decided to nominate both of these for this particular category as they each embody part of the category description.
Best Story: Secret World / SWTOR
- For different reasons. Secret World is awash with lore-driven story telling and everything from to the art design to environmental design in-game adds to it. SWTOR is nominated because, well, it's Star Wars done right. (End game experience notwithstanding, :razz:)
Expansion of the Year: World of Warcraft
- I have tried to get into this game with each new expansion that comes out to see if it appeals to me. And I've gotta say that, with the new expansion, I'm finally hooked (for now).
FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
Edit: I also edited my original post to give TSW best combat. Originally I didn't see the connection, but I wanted to nominates TSW for something for it skill system, and I guess combat is where that'd go.
Guild Wars 2. They really stepped up their Living Story for season 2, and the Season 2 story had a lot of amazing moments (both "Oh sweet!" and "Oh shit!" with a healthy dose of "hahahahahahaha" thrown in as well.).
Best Combat
Also Guild Wars 2. I tried Wildstar, which didn't deliver on its combat promise. I went back to WoW, which despite improving in other areas, hasn't done anything to improve their combat. And don't get me started on Landmark. Guild Wars 2 combat is the most satisfying, interesting, and fun of any MMO I've ever played.
Achievement in Real Estate Award
Landmark, no question. It's like Minecraft, but prettier and more sophisticated. You can build anything and have it look amazing. Wildstar's housing fell flat after awhile, and as much as I love the WoW Garrison it's incredibly generic with almost no customization. If you want to build a house to live in, you can't beat Landmark with a stick.
Best Content Patch
Guild Wars 2. They deliver all their content through free patches, and there were some truly outstanding ones over course of the year.
Best Expansion
WoW: Warlords of Draenor. I can't imagine anything competing with this, they knocked it out of the park. I swore I'd never go back and I did. I'm still there. I can't seem to stop. It's just so much better.
The APB Award in Abject Failure
Wildstar. I don't think I even need to explain this one; if you played it then you know.
Most Improved
WoW. I can't even believe how much better the game is now compared to when I quit. It's still not perfect by any stretch, but they've gone a LONG way to resolving the issues that made me leave in the first place.
MMO of the Year 2014
I wish I could nominate Guild Wars 2, but I really can't right now for reasons that anyone who follows the GW2 thread will understand. And I would never, ever suggest that anyone play WoW, because that would be totally immoral. I hope to someday nominate Landmark for this, but it's not at all ready yet. So, I nominate: flapping your wings.
Best Combat
I pick TERA. Animation based combat systems are where it's at. It's a shame that when it first came out it was too Korean for its own good for all that implies.
"...only mights and maybes."
Yup Secret World's Story is awesome but as much as I enjoyed it I couldn't tell you what it was about, it didn't really stick with me (it was awesome when I played it though)
What I like about FFXIV:ARR is that I actually care about the story, The factions involved, the major plot points, the lore, all of it. The characters themselves are interesting and have life. Secret World told an awesome story, but FFXIV feels like a living breathing world that you interact with.
Both are top notch though. The only reason I didn't mention TSW though is because I didn't know the state of the game or if it was still played much in 2014. So I wasn't sure if it counted as a "2014 MMO"
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I'll echo @Kylindra's nominations, except the WoW nominations since I haven't played at all this year, and add:
Best Crafting: Landmark
Because the game is built around crafting, which not a lot of MMOs have been very bold to do over the past few years.
Best MMO: Guild Wars 2
Because after 2 years, it's still the MMO that has my full attention. Even with the awesomeness that is the FF14 revival, or the finally released WoW expansion, or the incredible stuff that Trion keeps putting out there, or the promise that Wildstar showed at least at launch, all I can find myself thinking of is how playing one of those is going to cut into my Guild Wars 2 time. I still have that copy of Pandaria with 2 months of free subscription time waiting for when I'm done with Guild Wars 2. At this point, I wonder if I'll ever get there.
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Is it still missing large pieces of content? From my understanding they just added monsters into the game recently. In my experience when you are still adding major game mechanics to a game it's not "released" or "live" yet. Not that it really matters as there is no stipulation that the game must actually be "live" for this thread but I was more just curious.
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It's not a finished game by any means. It is in Closed Beta. But I've been playing it for a year now (since Alpha) and I had to pick it for the housing category because that is the one thing you can definitely do in the game, no question.
It really depends what a game is primarily about, or its core features. The core features of landmark have nothing to do with combat, or story, or anything like that. Its a multiplayer sandbox with player controlled literal sandbox zones what the player can do whatever they want as long as they have the resources and creativity to do it, thats the core of the game. Officially it isnt released and in closed beta, but when has that stopped anyone
Well to be fair in this case it stops a lot of people. The only way to play the game is by "Pre-ordering" it via the Founder Packages, or applying to join the Closed Beta (according to their current FAQ, not sure if this has changed). On top of that there is a scheduled wipe at the end of Closed beta in preparation for Open beta (where the contention about the game being "released" typically would start)
With respect what you listed may be the core of the game to you, but for myself at least (and I doubt i'm alone in this) the addition of the combat and monsters to fight is the meat of the game I am waiting on. As it stands right now they've added I think 5 or so monsters so I'm still waiting for the game to get further along in the development before I jump back in. This isn't just a landmark thing either, I was the same in Minecraft. Building and stuff was great but I found exploring the world and fighting off enemies while building structures and stuff to be far more entertaining. Especially in underground caverns.
You are correct in that a lot of game kind of sit on the "beta" phase for a long time doing very minor additions/tweaks to a game that is by all accounts finished, but from what I've seen with Landmark this is very much not the case.
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That's not quite true any more.
Landmark is indeed the tool with which they are building Everquest Next, but it is also a tool they are providing to the community to turn into its own game. In the end, Landmark will be a community-made MMO, while EQN will be an SOE-made MMO. Right now we have only the beginnings of that--we have the building tools, and the start of the prop interaction stuff, and also the pvp stuff. But it's already very much its own thing, which is why they stopped calling it Everquest Next Landmark, and started just calling it Landmark--it's not an Everquest game any more, it's a game that you make your own game in.
The Landmark community is already helping to build EQN, while also helping to build Landmark--they've had design competitions for making stuff to go into EQN, and ones for making stuff to go into Landmark. There are things made by players that are already part of Landmark--not just on claims, but stuff that's part of the world forever. It's kind of neat.
What I did play of it in Alpha though did give me the impression that great things are on the horizon for both it and the full game later on.
It looked great (wonderful art design), had really fun combat, challenging dungeons with really inventive encounters, some great ideas in PVP, some great ideas in crafting, amazing housing, was generally speaking a stellar newcomer
and also an abject failure because it came so close in so many areas but was bogged down by a series of poor decisions (the PVP ranking/gear system) or underdeveloped ideas (crafting is very refreshing until it's not) that lurked right behind all the amazing stuff about it. When I was into it I was super into it, and when the magic faded it did so as quickly as I've ever experienced.
Elder Scrolls Online: Despite it's end game flaws, this game did a lot of things right and exceeded my (admittedly very low) expectations. It also looked the part of an elder scrolls game and had really good visuals for this space.
(Honerable mention Destiny which was actually the best looking MMO that no one wants to call an MMO this year)
Best Story
Final Fantasy 14: The story missions in this game were very well crafted, with great cut scenes and tons of Final Fantasy fan service.
Best Combat
Planetside 2: This was probably my easiest category. As I get older watch-the-timer combat gets tired for me, and Planetside does a lot here
(Honorable mention Destiny which actually has the best MMO that no one wants to call an MMO combat this year)
Best Crafting
Final Fantasy 14: The crafting in this game is in-fucking-sane. Crafting is given a very central place in the game, even having it's own roster of fleshed out classes.
Achievement in Real Estate Award
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor: This may be contraversial, as the customization is not up to par with something like FF14 or WildStar, but the meaning of the housing, and how it's interwoven in to your character story makes it head and shoulders the best housing of the year.
The Vlad Award for Dungeon Design
Final Fantasy 14: Haukke Manor: I love this place. This dungeon is sublime. It's fun, the atmosphere is amazing, it's not huge, but uses some nice loop-back tricks to make it feel larger than it is. The bosses progress in difficulty, and the final boss requires you to actually execute some basic coordination. This is a master class in dungeon crafting.
The Mountain Dew Award in PvP
ArcheAge: PvP with meaning is always the best PvP, and ArcheAge scratched that itch for me.
Best Content Patch
Final Fantasy 14: Patch 2.4: Yoshi-San continued to knock it out of the park with this patch. New class, more artifact weapon quests, more raids, more, more, more.
Best Expansion
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor: Can anything else even possibly win this category? Not just because WoD is great (which it is), but because there weren't a ton of memorable expansions this year.
Best Newcomer
ArcheAge: Gotta love the scrappy Korean newcomer to the space actually carving out a niche.
The APB Award in Abject Failure
WildStar: Not even close. Do I need to say more?
Most Improved
Final Fantasy 14: This isn't even a contest. After the travesty that was 1.0, no other game could possibly win this.
The Karl Marx F2P Award
ArcheAge: Great F2P game with good PvP and a decent F2P model.
MMO of the Year 2014
Final Fantasy 14: This is far and away the most impressive MMO this year. It's the only MMO out there right now putting up any sort of fight to WoW's dominance, even if it's still a pretty weak fight. It's also the only MMO since WoW that caught me hard enough to advance deep in to the end game. To top if off it's had a phoenix like rebirth from being a total hot shitpile, orchestrated by the man that many have now tabbed to save Square as a whole.
Planetside 2 and Archeage both tied for best graphics in my opinion.
Best Story
WoW wins this for a majority of the expansion. Though it doesn't have the best story throughout WoD, the introduction quests were awesome.
Best Combat
Although its archaic, Dark age of camelot has a solid combat system that is balanced and fun at the same time.
Best Crafting
Archeage has some of the best crafting, allowing players to own land to help their crafting, and allows them to craft anywhere from gear, to actual songs from midi format.
Achievement in Real Estate Award
WoW's garrison won this award if you don't count the needless separate alt garrison leveling.
The Mountain Dew Award in PvP
Archeage wins this for having a really good PVP system.
Best Expansion
Warlords of Draenor definitely won this award for the sheer content.
Best Newcomer
Archeage wins this.
The APB Award in Abject Failure
Wildstar was fantastic during the beta because of the great content. Wish I could say the same about the rest of the game.
Most Improved
A realm reborn did a 180 on Final Fantasy XIV. Never has there been such an undertaking, redoing an entire MMO and making it fun.
The Karl Marx F2P Award
I believe SWTOR earns this award, at least up until the mid 20s.
The Robert Kotick "F2P" Award
Probably SWTOR again after the mid 20s, which if I'm not mistaken, needed you to buy a sub to gain actual gear from the dungeon.
MMO of the Year 2014
Archeage brought in a completely different, wild west of MMOs. Being F2P didnt hinder the game, and many people are having a blast without spending money.
"...only mights and maybes."
FFXIV would win because of the Good King Mog song alone simply because the Lore team leader Koji Fox sang the damned thing and it's glorious.
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I mean it's really not even fair, they added a version of Battle on the Bridge into the game (For an actual Battle on a Bridge) and there are so many other musical references to older FF games that really it's just not fair. (They are even talking of adding in Terra's theme as BGM for the Magitek Mount, I may never use a different mount again if they do)
I mean seriously just go listen to any FFXIV:ARR song, hell there are THREE soundtracks to the game out right now with hundreds of songs. It's absurd.
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