4) Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
I fully believe that Final Fantasy XIV will go down in history as one of, if not the, most impressive and interesting redemption stories in the history of MMOs or games in general. It’s not every day that a game truly implodes on release, achieves almost universal hatred from the fan base, and then manages to relaunch and successfully rewrite history.
Now with Heavensward, Square was able to boil down the core elements of what made A Realm Reborn so successful and utilize that as the foundation for the expansion, while also adding tons of awesome stuff on top of it. The story is much better, you can gain flying mounts, old areas have been revamped and overhauled, and the game as a whole is essentially universally better. Take something already quite good and make it even better? Yes please.
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3) Star Wars: The Old Republic: Knights of The Fallen Empire
I’ve always felt like Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the most soloable MMOs on the market and it looks like EA is finally embracing that even more. While it’s surely not going to completely break the game and change it down to the core *cough*NGE*cough* but it looks like a big expansion that’s bringing out more of what already makes the game great and unique.
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It seems like a lot of developers get really caught up in making sure their games are “MMO enough” by pushing a gratuitous amounts of boring group content. In that regard, it’s kind of nice to see an MMO embrace its strongest aspect: storytelling from a mostly single player perspective. Also, whoever is making those CG intro sequences for this game is incredibly talented. I kind of want to see a full animated film made by that studio or group of people – Bioware and EA should totally get on that.
2) Wildstar
Before you angrily scroll down to the comments to rant about why including a “failed subscription game” is stupid, let me explain. First of all, we all knew this was coming. I mean, come on, the game already promoted buying game time with in-game currency from its launch and the housing system alone is just begging for microtransaction support.
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We’re including Wildstar here because not only is it a solid game that competes in the same subgenre of raid-focused MMOs like World of Warcraft, but because it’s just damn fun to play. You’d be hard pressed to find a recently released MMO of the same quality and now that it’s moving to a free-to-play model, even more people can play it. Until they prove me wrong, I consider that a win-win.
1) The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited
Alright so, know what I said about Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward earlier? A lot of that applies here as well. The big difference, to The Elder Scrolls Online’s credit, is that most people wrote ESO off before it even came out. “An Elder Scrolls MMO?” fans of the series said in disgust. “It’s not even being made by Bethesda Game Studios! Who are Zenimax? This is going to suck! I just want TESVI!” Okay well, I do still just want TESVI, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have an MMO and eat a singleplayer cake too.
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Since its troubled launch as a pay-to-play subscription game back on PC last year, ESO has achieved one of the other best redemption stories of all-time for MMOs. Things were bad back then, but they’re all just a memory now. They’ve done a great job of revamping the game and now that the console version is out in the wild, the full vision of what the game was supposed to be is finally realized.
Conclusion
The year is just over halfway over, so there’s a lot of time left. Some of these games may not be included on our year-end list. A lot of new games will probably make their way onto the list by that time. Just like always, the MMO genre is always changing, faster than any other genre no doubt, and more great things are hopefully yet to come. What do you think are some of the best MMOs of 2015 so far?
