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[Column] General: My Year in Review
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
As 2013 winds to a close, we often take a few moments to review the events of the preceding days. Matt Miller takes a look back at his 2013. See how his year fared and then leave us thoughts on your year in the comments.
2013 could quite possibly be seen as the Year of Kickstarter. I backed the second Pathfinder Kickstarter, the Shroud of the Avatar game, as well as the Hex: Shards of Fate MMOTCG. Of these, I got into the Hex alpha and see some real potential there for a new breed of MMO. The rules of Hex are just similar enough to Magic: The Gathering that anyone familiar with that game will feel right at home with Hex, but they will also see how being completely digital expands what they can do with the cards and the game. Have a card that has a side effect of reshuffling your deck every turn? In a physical card game that would be such a pain to play with, but in Hex, that’s just par for the course. I can’t wait to see how the game progresses in 2014, especially seeing the PvE side of things. I know several people who are jazzed about the idea of CCG raiding in Hex, and I know I am too.
Read more Matt Miller: My Year in Review.
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Comments
I don't think I really had a "favorite game" or was caught up in any hype train. I tried hard to avoid that just of how disappointing everything's been. But I think 2013 for me was a year where there was a TON of HORRIBLE corporate decisions made. Case and point, City of Heroes being shut down. While I wasn't always online there, I loved going back to playing my Arachnos Spider person (can't remember the actual name now) every once in a while.
I've been going back and forth on a few MMO's but haven't really settled in on anything, finding myself hitting back to the single-player games. I almost did buy into the X-Rebirth hype but I weathered that storm and held off buying it until I read the reviews from the big names and small names as well. Glad I did save my money on that.
MMO wise, 2013 was another bunch of the same tripe.
The only thing I was looking forward to was the EQN Reveal at SOE Live, and that left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. After all the ridiculous hype that this site actively participated in, including giving EQN "Best of Show" *cough* at E3 for vaporware..it's been a pile of meh for me.
Thats why I turned back to singleplayer games..
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan Poe
2013 was a shitty year for PC gaming in general, not just MMOs. Nothing really spectacular out the whole year, with all end-of-year releases pushed back to 2014 one by one.
The "year of the Kickstarter" sounds about right. We will start seeing the fruits of that next year. Let's hope for the best.
"Did your favorite game end up being one you hadn’t even heard of in 2012, or were you caught up in the hype-train of a AAA title?"
I play a lot of games (proudly hopping since the '80s
), but if there are games I'd call favourite, those would be LotRO, AoC, TSW and STO - without any order, all four at once. So nope, no new one among them, and I didn't jump on the hype-train either. But, how did those games end up for me?
Let's start with the most related one. I can't say it's because of you or just a coincidence (since I have no data on it obviously
), but for STO it was definitely a great year, starting with last December. Upgraded Winter Wonderland, 3rd Anniversary with Denise Crosby, LoR with additional klingon 1-20 (big thx for that), then the Sphere... I still don't like that the Arc is lurking there like the sword of Damocles, but the game itself is in better shape than ever.
edit: damn, I missed Risa, maybe the best event in STO's history... great place, nicely tied to Picard's shore leave, very funny and insightful conversations during jetpack races
STO has a great community.
AoC got a nice boost with the f2p revamp, had some cool events and preparing for the single server tech and the crafting revamp. The population is more than healthy, I think FC is on the right track with the game.
TSW went b2p a year ago, which move I didn't welcome (nicely put), so maybe with TSW had I my most grim expectations. Luckily I was wrong, the b2p switch turned to be a good move on the long run, the Issues were amazing, but I must admit the scenarios in the latest Issue are too grindy for my taste. Still, augments are a nice addition to the system.
And for LotRO... last year RoR, now HD, totally botched classes, over-easified gameplay... but it's still LotRO
awesome community, world, lore... I can be mad at Turbine (and I am since they stole our servers from Codies) but I can't be mad at the game, no matter how hard Turbine try to wreck it.
As a summary, it was a great mmo year for me I guess. Beyond the four above I found a new "backup line" game in Neverwinter, I dabbled with many others, revisited old ones (Rift and Vanguard). I hope 2014 will be even better.
Happy holidays to you and the whole STO team! keep up the good work
I thought STO was now run by an Asian group,not Cryptic?Idk if the author is employed by Cryptic,then he is not going to tel lthe truth,that STO game was a really weak effort,i would not go back to any developer that cheap on designing a game,you would have no guarantee future because their games will fail.
2013 most definitely was the year of the kickstarter or how i like to put it...FREE money handouts.There should be ONLY one way to run this type of business,YOUR effort and investors,FREE handouts are not investments,they are just handing money over to people who are more than likely VERY well off and don't need it.
2013 had one amazing release,the re-release of FFXIV,a giant game,lots of money put into it,definitely not short of effort when compared to the hundreds of cheap effort games out there.There are literally thousands of game studios,so kind of sad to see one re-release as the only viable product out there in 2013,really sad.
The problem is far too many of these small budget Indie games and kickstarter games,nobody is going to produce a triple A game like that.We need some of the bigger developers to move into the MMORPG genre,like Epic games ,Hasbro has millions,start spending some of it and Microsoft had a great Ip in the AOE series,they could have continued to grow that into something great but quit ,i guess out of greed,not big enough profits.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
what I learned is when the next gen. x-bone and play station launches,
they keep mmo games from launching so that they can be played on these devises.
so between 5-7 years from now we are going to have a year again that has nothing to play like 2013.
looks like to me I may be wrong.
Not that great year for MMO's, but lot's of new ones coming next year.
I am happy that you are back with Cryptic, but sad that Cryptic is owned by PW. Enjoyed Neverwinter, but the item shop literally killed the game as it does with any PW game. Whoever sets item shop prices at PW needs to be banned from all games forever! I refuse to fund any PW game until they fix their nightmare item shop pricing.
That is also what killed Mechwarrior for me. Don't mind funding a game, but the item shop prices for the mechs, especially for a game that is not released yet, are absurd.
As to STO, when I had to aim my ship to fire lasers it was an automatic delete off the hard drive. That is NOT how a space ship does combat in Star Trek. Whoever came up with that design needs a brain replacement.
Maybe we saw different shows... the setting is the very same, forward and aft torpedo launchers, phaser banks, heck in the manuals there are even sample combat maneuvers for different situations with movement vectors and stuff.
Eeer... at least that's what trekkies used to say. With tech manuals. Those weird folks. I mean, who would read hundreds of pages about structure and procedures of fictional starships, right?
(I have only 4 anyways.)
And you don't need to aim with the ship, especially not for lasers. Ok, torpedoes have a narrow arc, but beyond that it's enough if you keep the target in range.
edit: yep, Neverwinter's prices are hilarious, and there was even a price drop a few updates ago... but still too high in some places.
Great year for me because of Marvel Heroes Online. Whatever your opinion of the game (and I know a lot of people dismiss it) the Developers are absolutely stellar in terms of their engagement, enthusiasm and responsiveness. This in turn leads to an (in general) mature and sensible Forum community which proves that if you treat your community well they will respond.
Of course I do love the game too and its development in the 6 months since launch has been fantastic.