MMORPG.com Reader's Choice Awards: Best Overall 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 Overall 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 Overall Game, 5212 votes were cast. In the interest of fairness, the editorial nominees consisted of each and every released game on our current Game List.

The voting turned out another win for the Lord of the Rings Online team over at Turbine, even if it did turn out to be a little bit closer than their previous two wins. With 13% of the vote, Turbine once again edged out Blizzard’s World of Warcraft for the right to call themselves MMORPG.com Reader’s Choice Award winners.

Normally, we would show you the specific results of all of the nominees. In the case of this, our final category of the year, every released game on our list was available for voting, and we have decided to show results for only nominees who garnered at least 1% of the vote.

• Lord of the Rings Online 13%
• World of Warcraft - 11%
• EVE Online - 9%
• Warhammer Online - 8%
• Atlantica Online - 7%
• Age of Conan - 3%
• EverQuest II - 3%
• Ragnarok Online 3%
• Vanguard: Saga of Heoes - 3%
• Regnum - 3%
• EverQuest - 2%
• Guild Wars - 2%
• Requiem: Bloody mare - 1%
• ROSE Online - 1%
• City of Heroes - 1%
• Ryzom - 1%
• Dark Age of Camelot - 1%
• Final Fantasy XI - 1%
• Ultima Online - 1%
• Lineage 2 - 1%

This win marks the third award being taken home by Turbine in this year’s Reader’s Choice Awards, adding Best Overall game to the Best Expansion and Favorite MMO studio awards handed out previously.

This award caps an impressive year for the Massachusetts-based MMO company and its Lord of the Rings Online team, with the release of the game’s award-winning first expansion, numerous free updates, the opening of a new studio and more, the future seems bright for both the game and the company that created it.

Editorial Commentary

I can honestly say that when we selected our list of nominees for the awards this year, I had no idea that Turbine would come out the big winner, taking home three of the seven awards. That isn’t to say that they weren’t well deserved, but I thought that with the hubbub, both positive and negative, surrounding the launches of last year’s two most anticipated games, along with the launch of another Blizzard WoW expansion, Turbine and its game based on the rich world of J.R.R. Tolkien might have left the spotlight. I’m pleased to see that I was wrong.

Originally, I thought that World of Warcraft would take home the award as it has in years past, especially given the strength of its own expansion, and ever-growing fan base. I’ll admit that I underestimated the strength and voice of LotRO’s loyal fan base which has been quietly building since the game’s launch back in April of 2007.

Congratulations again go out to Turbine and all of this year’s MMORPG.com Reader’s Choice Awards. I want to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone who participated in the voting process. Sure, we could have picked our own list of winners and given out Editorial Awards, but in the end, it’s always the players that know best.