The best MMOs in 2023 - PCGamer
The best MMOs in 2023 - PCGamer
The best MMOs, whether you love massive raids, solo quests, or ruling a corporation
This article was either written in parts by AI or the author is in such a hurry they didn't have the time for even basic proofreading. In the first paragraph of the WoW part, they mention Shadowlands being the latest expansion (along with some hilariously false statements about it "bringing the game back to it's glory early years" despite it being an absolute flop) only to mention Dragonflight in the very next one, even linking a review from their own site!
There are more errors. Eve Online is 20 years old, not 18. He even lists 2003 as the release year. And Palia has been playable for a couple of months now, so it could have included far more information than that.
Whatever AI they used to write parts of this article must be trained on 2 years old data, where Shadowlands was the most recent expansion and where the 2003 release date of EVE would make it 18 years old, at least that's my hypothesis. The part about Palia is likely just lazy journalism, where the author didn't even do a basic search to check if the game actually came out, I mean they didn't even take the time to correct these incredibly obvious mistakes!
I came here expecting to find something new... find out about 8 of the games are a decade old or more. I wish they could make another list of top 5 in the past 5 years, or are there really not even that many being released these days? I feel like I've seen some really cool looking ones every year but never hear of them again.
MMOs are definitely on the decline at this point. They are too big and expensive to make, and companies think GaaS setups are more lucrative.
Which seems ironic right? You'd think the type of game best suited for a "games as a service" style would be MMOs.
GaaS took all the profitable pieces of the MMO model, and left the entire genre a desiccated husk populated with zombie games that refuse to die from the 90s, 00s, and 10s. Other than a couple Asian market games (because that market is a lot more accepting of extreme monetization in MMO), Lost Ark, and New World, I literally cannot think of a single MMO released in the 2020s that wasn't just a kickstarter scam, and even those are less common now.
I don't know. As a fan of the genre there seems to be renewed interest from some very grass roots developers. I would have agreed with your take in 2020, but in 2023 we have announcements of:
- the Riot MMO
- Ashes of Creation
- The Ghost studios MMO
These are all still in development, some still in the very early stages. But I would say there appears to be renewed interest in the genre by developers. These projects are major investments by industry veterans. There is more hope for a major new game.now than there has been in the last decade.
Cool to see Secret World Legends get a nod. I did a solo run of the story content a couple years back, really liked it.
Does it take a lot of time to experience the story in a satisfying way? I only played a little of the intro years ago and recall like the game but not the combat. I'm really tempted to revisit for its setting though just to go through it, but not if it moves at a crawl.
It's definitely a significant time investment; to see all the story currently in the game, I'd compare it time-wise to your average JRPG.
There are so few mmos worth mentioning these days you could barely make a top 10
Ashes of Creation? The game is not even released...
It's the upcoming section...
on an article called "The best MMOs in 2023" ...
Huh Palia looks interesting. Gotta keep it on the radar.