2008 Reader's Choice Awards: Best New Game of 2008: Winner

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2009 is now upon us and we here at MMORPG.com would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year. As is our custom here, we want to kick off the year by announcing the winners of the 2008 Reader's Choice Awards. In each entry, we will give you the choice of the fans, as well along with a little bit of "editor's choice" commentary.

Before we announce the results of the voting for Best New Game of 2008, we want to take this opportunity to thank everyone for taking the time to vote. In the overall awards, more than 26,000 votes were cast.

In the voting for Best New Game, 4252 votes were cast. The editorial nominees were: Age of Conan, Atlantica Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea , Warhammer Online, and None of the Above.

Of all of our categories, this one presented us with the tightest race between two nominees. Mythic’s Warhammer Online and the ominous None of the Above category battled it out with WAR coming out on top with 33% of the vote. 3% more than None of the Above.

The voting broke down as such:

›	Age of Conan 13.0%
›	Atlantica Online 18.6%
›	None of the Above 30.4%
›	Pirates of the Burning Sea 4.8%
›	Warhammer Online 33.2%
(login to vote)

Warhammer Online launched on September 18th, 2008. The launch of last year’s first runner up in the most anticipated game category may have experienced a couple of push-backs, the removal of four of the game’s capital cities and careers, and a studio name change or two, but when the game finally hit shelves, players who had been anxiously waiting for the new RvR offering from Mythic Entertainment were not disappointed as the game came online with few, if any, glaring hitches.

Editorial Commentary

Congratulations go out to the team at Mythic Entertainment on capturing the Best New Game of 2008 award, coming out ahead of not only the competition, but also the dreaded “none of the above” category that could easily have carried the voting away.

Personally, I’m happy with the way that this award came out. For quite some time now, I’ve been reading on MMORPG.com forums and elsewhere that the quality of recently released games has been faltering, if not failing entirely. Popular demand was one of the main reasons that we included a None of the Above option to begin with.

Warhammer, with its chewy RvR core, provided a departure from the same old, same old that people have been complaining about. Sure, it’s not the sandbox experience that some players are looking for, but at least you have, from the moment you step into the game, a number of advancement options open to you that allow you to depart from simple quest grinding.

Where I come from, there’s a beer that advertises itself with the slogan: Those who like it, like it a lot. The problem with that slogan (and actually with the beer itself), is that there is an implied opposite. Those who like it like it a lot… those who don’t; don’t. The RvR core that makes this game so appealing to some players can have the opposite effect on others who might shy away from a PvP focused game.

Did Mythic launch a perfect game? No. As with any new MMO title, there are issues to be worked out, bugs to squash, and kinks to iron, but this year, MMORPG.com readers have voted and decided that it was the Best New Game of 2008 and because of its closest competition, the very least that you can say is that it’s literally better than nothing.