Recently, the editorial staff here at MMORPG.com sat down to talk about the best of 2006. Today, we present you with our MMORPG.com 2006 Editorial Awards.

Before the dawn of 2007, we brought you our MMORPG.com Reader's Choice Awards, where our members got to vote on the games that they felt stood out in the year 2006. Today, MMORPG.com's editorial team gets a crack at giving out some awards.

While our categories are slightly different from those available in the Reader's Choice Awards, the MMORPG.com 2006 Editorial Awards shine the light on four different categories:

The categories are:

• Biggest News Story
• Expansion of the Year
• Most Anticipated
• Best Game

Come see who took home the prizes this year by clicking here.

Is anyone on the Internet *really* interested in these Editorial Awards, let alone the one by Mmorpg.com?  I mean, we all love threads like "Name the 5 best games of your life" but that's because it allows us to talk about our own loved games at length and discuss likes and dislikes. Editorial Awards are like 1 guy talking about his own "Best games evah!" but nobody can join in.

What? Because they forgot to mention Vanguard?

In my oppinion MMORPG.com staff really hitted it dead on. The awards were justified and well deserved.

Although I would put CCP&White wolf merge as no1 news. Just because it was so unexpected

Originally posted by Treesong

Is anyone on the Internet *really* interested in these Editorial Awards, let alone the one by Mmorpg.com?  I mean, we all love threads like "Name the 5 best games of your life" but that's because it allows us to talk about our own loved games at length and discuss likes and dislikes. Editorial Awards are like 1 guy talking about his own "Best games evah!" but nobody can join in.

 

That is why they have the Reader's Choice Awards, which they did in December. But if you go look at them, you will see that is was more of a popularity contest than it was an actual award contest. I prefer the Editorial Awards, because they are more objective and are not subject to thousands of drooling fans skewing the vote. So I guess that means yes someone on the internet actually is interested in hearing the editor's view on which game's desired recognition last year.

Originally posted by Treesong

Is anyone on the Internet *really* interested in these Editorial Awards, let alone the one by Mmorpg.com?  I mean, we all love threads like "Name the 5 best games of your life" but that's because it allows us to talk about our own loved games at length and discuss likes and dislikes. Editorial Awards are like 1 guy talking about his own "Best games evah!" but nobody can join in.

Amazingly, you could've joined in the discussion of their choices and your own choices right there--instead, you decided to bash.

I did not check on the awards since I am not interested in them. And since there was no category listed for "Biggest disappointment in the genre yet" I am not surprised that Vanguard was not mentioned.

Originally posted by Rattrap
What? Because they forgot to mention Vanguard?

In my oppinion MMORPG.com staff really hitted it dead on. The awards were justified and well deserved.

Although I would put CCP&White wolf merge as no1 news. Just because it was so unexpected

I think the awards were dead-on. 
The EA Mythic story generated the most controversial attention, from "bye bye Mythic" to "hello money." 

WAR is easily the most anticipated game, and has won the award on other sites as well. 

I can see that Guild Wars got it's reward.  I personally think it should have considering it's opposition. 

EQ2's expansion EoF definitely should have won best expansion because of the renewed hope it gave people in EQ2 as a good game.

Good choices all around.

You kidding me? They didn't even mention Vanguard for Most anticipated? comon, have they even looked at their own forums, the VG forums are hopping like frogs...screw Warhammer, who needs another WoW just made by different people? lame...

I think Vanguard could have taken an award if there was a catagory for most contriversial MMO. The Beta sure has stirred up alot of discussion for both possitive and negitive perspectives. It couls have also taken or had a draw for first if there was a catagory for MMO most hated. The game for that they may have had to tie with would be WoW. Even though they have 8 million subscribers there is also a vary vocal bunch who dislike what has given it such huge market appeal.

There truely no way to please everyone. Not even in Awards, editorial or otherwise.

This year, Guild Wars has managed to distinguish itself by releasing not one, but two stand-alone follow-ups to their popular MMORPG

http://www.guildwars.com/support/faq/prophecies-faq.php

Scroll down or do a page search for the letters mmorpg.

/wave

~Mysk, who's apparently being anal today, but seriously...

Guildwars isn't an mmorpg let alone a game.

Originally posted by Rattrap
What? Because they forgot to mention Vanguard?

In my oppinion MMORPG.com staff really hitted it dead on. The awards were justified and well deserved.

Although I would put CCP&White wolf merge as no1 news. Just because it was so unexpected

No matter where I go in these forums you always have something to say bad about Vanguard.  It's so far past old it's not even funny.  Think for the first time in my years here on mmorpg I'm going to try out the ignore button on you.  I'm just that freaking sick and tired of seeing poop froth from your mouth about Vanguard.

Overall I think it was pretty dead on wish they'd have gone a bit further with it and had a few more awards as well like most innovative, most likely to be canceled, most disappointing, least hyped, least underestimated, and so on. Frankly who wouldn't have guessed Warhammer as most anticipated or EA Mythic as the biggest news story? I don't know completely what to expect from game of the year or expansion of the year, but the awards are certainly justified and in no way a shocking. Guild Wars did have a big year after all and ranked high on the charts all year long with some spikes of course around each of the not one but two expansions it released during the year which are more like standalone games in themselves, but along the lines of those oh so infamous legos where you can mix and match them at will. From the sounds of the EQ2 expansion winning it's category that doesn't seem shocking either given what they mentioned about it. I think guild wars could have taken a notable mention in that category as well since they released 2 expansions during the year that helped fuel that game along in general pretty much all year long.

Originally posted by roadwarriors
Guildwars isn't an mmorpg let alone a game.

QFE

And why Vanguard isnt mentioned? It's just eq1 with better graphics.

 

This is just sad... As if it wasn't bad enough Guild Wars is on mmorpg.com in the first place...

The saddest is the editorial about burning crusade. The makers of mmorpg.com are obviously on Sony's pay roll.

Oh I know it's horrible that guild wars is on here I mean how dare a massively multiplayer online role playing game being on a mmorpg.com quit whining it's still a mmorpg it's got pve, pvp, questing, crafting, missions, and storyline so explain to me how that isn't a mmorpg?

On top of that it's got  some of the best cut scenes in a mmorpg I've played to date a lot of companies skipped them all together which was almost ways a standard part of any good rpg.

It's not as massively multiplayer as it could be at times especially in the case of pve, but it's multiplayer enough in pvp is concerned. On top of that it's a easy mmorpg game to leave off on and jump back into at a later point in time when you feel like because you don't have to any hassle to deal with that you might with the other mmo's like  resubscribing and the fees associated with it plus long patches to wait for since it's all streamed in GW.

Sure the game is basically entirely instanced, but who cares the main areas in like almost every new mmo is instanced as well and for good reason it cuts down significantly with lag plus it prevents a lot of problems associated with pve that EQ was notorious for like trying to find a camp having your camp stolen from you or getting to a camp spawn only to find it allready camped by another group or person.

Say what you will about Guild Wars, but they got a lot of things right. It's only main pitfall is it's not massively multiplayer enough for a lot of players especially if they're more into pve. That pitfall aside it's a great game and in a lot of ways the game play itself feels like it's got more rpg traits and aspects to it than most others. I know there's some kinda cheesy things associated with doing the missions like rushed through certain missions from a person sprinting from the start to finish, but you can't do it with every mission and that's always been a feature in about 95% of rpg's that convienant little run away feature that we all abused to a point to get to that next town.

I don't get why people complain about it as if it's a horrible game and downcredit it as not being a mmorpg. It somewhat leads me to be inclined that a lot of the people complaining and saying it sucks or it's not a mmorpg never even played it themselves to begin with. I don't care if they've seen other people play it or not either because playing a game and watching one aren't the same thing at all.

If you really think GW isn't a mmorpg because of the instancing them I guess other games with instancing aren't either and neither are the ones with zones or classes for that matter because UO and Meridian 59 were the mmorpg pioneers and were both persistent worlds and skill based, but that's obviously absurd now isn't it? Get over yourself it's a mmorpg well made and popular regardless of how you feel about it.

I know you never said anything to do with those points in particular, but if id asked how you thought GW wasn't a mmorpg you probably would have mentioned those things to try and discredit the game so I'm merely beating you to the punch by explaining how it is a game and how it is justified as game of the year. If you'd been watching the game rankings during the year you'd realize Guild Wars and each of it's expansions have been at the top of the ranking list at one point or another, but I guess it's still bad to you and not a mmorpg even though clearly plenty of other people would agree it is.

I enjoyed reading the awards. I agree with another poster about more categories though. Then I read the comments. It is funny how some come to bash and admit that they don't care about the awards. This is the same type of person that I have avoided in real life even if the person was a friend of my friends. If you don't care go somewhere else. If you feel that an award was not the right one then talk about it.

I have to say I am still worried about EAMythic. I am glad to see Guild Wars up there. I am really looking forward to seeing Warhammer even though people for some reason keep thinking that a company over 30 years old using their artwork is copying  a 16 year old companys' game. I have to say that DAoC is still my favorite game and that Warhammer is my most anticipated. I love Vanguard and am very much awed by it. It is so much fun and so unlike any other game I have played. Still Warhammer is my most anticipated mainly because I know about the minatures and RPG.

Why because they didn't sugar coat burning crusade and praise it just because world of warcraft has the biggest subscriber base?

Everything they stated in there editorial about it was true you can't deny it's got tons of faction grinding plenty of the same old repeated questing patterns from the first time around and  quite time consuming if you really stop to look at it just the leveling process from 60 to 70 is equivilent to leveling from 1-50 so it's almost like leveling all over again. I wouldn't be surprized if the epic mounts are also now knowticably harder to get than they were in the beta as well to slow progress down even further again. That's how they game business's tend to work nerf things if they feel are "too easy" or "too powerful" rather than working on and providing more content like they should be doing   , but naw it's all about revenue for them keep paying for the same content longer so they don't have to hire more game designers and can pocket more of the money for themselves. I think mmorpg's are getting to the point where if you want a quality team that cares about it's player base your gonna need to go with a indy/underground dev team kinda like in the music industry. I think that's a big part of the appeal of Darkfall you know if or when it's finally released it's by a team of game designers that care about it being successful and succeeding because they're such a small group you know they're taking a big risk trying what they're doing to begin with. It's kinda sink or swim for them which can only be good or horrible for the players only time will tell for sure.

I'm anticipating warhammer as well and am also a little sketched because of the EA involvement even though they claim they're letting mythic really have control over what they do with it you know it's gotta only be true to a certain point I'm sure they'll have they're say as well and what they say will go the majority of the time if they feel strongly about it. Also you gotta keep in mind just because it's somewhat of a franchise in way means it'll turn out good I was excited when I heard star wars, dungeons and dragons, lord of the rings, and others look how they turned out in the sum of things compared to the heavy weight mmorpg's like WoW, EQ, UO, DAOC, EVE, Guild Wars, Ect... I suppose star wars did ok and lord of the rings isn't out at this point, but it's not looking all that exciting either even though graphically it looks like a bit of a beast. Warhammer could just as easily be a bit of a dud well not dud, but overall large disappointment like dungeons and dragons was for a lot of people and like shadowbane was for the hardcore pvp crowd.