MassivelyOp placed GW2 at #6 for 2017!

Massively Op! That great site entirely dedicated to a kind of game that has been dying for years now! A site which, by the way, is the second version of a site that died a while back! It has placed Guild Wars 2 in the sixth position in their massively important list of six healthiest MMORPGs in 2017! Shenanigans followed!

Seriously, though, Massively made a list of the healthiest MMORPGs in 2017, based on guesswork, subscription numbers, guesswork, frequency and size of updates, guesswork, developer communication, and guesswork. Here's the list. And here is the reddit discussion in which I saw the link.

I think it's interesting in how it shows the state of the MMORPG industry; the list is almost a perfect copy of the one from 2016, and even they admit they were stretching it a bit by placing The Old Republic in 10th.

Neverwinter at #7I miss u so much neverwinter ;-;

So you're flinging kitten at them for placing gw2 in a spot you don't agreed? Or is that just a joke?

@Leo G.4501 said:So you're flinging kitten at them for placing gw2 in a spot you don't agreed?

I'm laughing at them for dedicating themselves exclusively to a genre of gaming that is borderline insignificant these days (at least in this part of the world).

As far as GW2's spot on the list, it sounds fair to me. The game is very active, but WoW and FFXIV are big successes, and I the others above GW2 don't appear to be much different from GW2 anyway.

If the devs had improved the systems this game launched with, which, by the way, still resulted in the most successful MMO release ever, instead of forcing out content under a bunch of incomplete systems, and creating new systems that have added little to the game and its playerbase, this game would be deserving of the top spot. It had the potential to be number one, it should have been number one.

But instead, it's done nothing but decline for years. And who would expect any different after five years of no improvements on the incomplete systems that brought people to the game in the first place, just shoving out content like a factory no matter what broken system its built on, and flat out betraying half the design principles responsible for that highly successful release to pump out new systems nobody that matters asked for. I debate if GW2 deserves a spot anywhere in the top 10 at this point, or even the top 25, even little MMOs like Dragosnest or niche titles like The Secret World feel more homogeneous than GW2.

And some of these games are just flat out made by inferior designers, scratching itches of addiction and purposefully unfair play, poor art, worse writing, and second rate gameplay, and are all in all worse games. But in spite of that, those games feel completed and solid, they fulfill the intent of their design. Their devs haven't spent five years babying their pride, refusing to make desperately needed changes to gameplay because it would mean admitting they were wrong and putting in some work on something that isn't "new and shiny" and interesting to work on.

FFXIV had one of the absolute WORST launches in MMO history for a AAA title, compared to GW2s best launch ever, and yet it's destroying us and has been for years, because after that failed launch they basically rebuilt the whole bloody game without hesitation, and they didn't stop until it felt whole. We can't even get the GW2 devs to make a single major system change, they have a lame excuse for not doing everything but new content and new systems, even though that new content is bringing no one back to the game.

This game needs core system changes and to turn back to its roots, there is no expansion or living world season or "new shinies" that are going to bring people back.

I take that list with a grain of salt anyway...GW2 should be higher, and Massivley are like most game journos these days very biased.

Anyway.....GW2 will always be number one with me and it's not so much the game.....it is how Arenanet fosters community, this is the least toxic most welcoming community in gaming today period, other devs like Zenimax....they could care less about toxicity.

Number 6 is not a good spot.

@TheSlothArmada.6709 said:Neverwinter at #7I miss u so much neverwinter ;-;

i started to play again my sun elf :| the class design there is sooooooooooo GOOD!! it's D&D all said.

FFXIV: ARR is a unique case--an outlier--in that the base game was pretty much scrapped for how bad it was. When Yoshi p was called to fix FFXIV he basically killed the game and restarted development for it. After completing this, the new FFXIV: ARR relaunched and was met with surprising, positive results that pulled players in.

Back to the topic, the list is kind of ridiculous, to be honest.

It places TESO above GW2, which is simply laughable. I don't think any of us truly know how many people play that game--it's all guessing at this point. Critical reception for the game was underwhelming for both the base and xpac, will that really drive player count up?

The article is oblivious to the fact that Q4 2017 should be even higher than Q3 2017 due to the sort of lag effect from players joining the xpac (people buying the xpac during Q4), the whole expensive mounts stuff, etc.

Plus we have a ton of F2P players, which may or may not help the sales increase.

It also doesn't acknowledge that we have a new Living World episode (season) that has attracted some players back.

Overall, it's a potentially biased list that cites WoW for being "the one MMO that always does a flawless job at everything" so of course it puts it at #1, and then you also have BDO and RS above GW2 which is silly. RS's evolution of combat system is causing the population to go down in favor of old school Runescape which is causing an unnecessary divide--definitely an unhealthy one...

@Abelisk.4527, why is silly BDO above gw2???

Problem with BDO is actually theres to much content and much to do in game, lots of mechanics...gw2 is a pretty but empty botle compared with it.Combat in BDO is very action based,«, there 2 things i dont like there wich is the quest system is a bit boring and the alot of the mobs are just static... and way to stacked, but this is something that theres yet a decent mmo to inovate it.In terms of content... its huge, and kinda does better than gw2, just to start gw2 guilds are nothign less that chat rooms, on BDO guild' drive the game areas, u even have guilds dedicated for merchant type of players.The character creating menu is a beast itself! LOL

And it was a decent leap from older sandbox mmo's.

Not surprised about top 3. WoW gonna WoW, FF14 is a "streamlined" and FF'd version of WoW with a singleplayer level of story and ESO just being a solid game. Did not expect to see elite on the list tho. It is an MMO but I would not call it an RPG.

Never heard of them, but I do know from the comment on the site that if GW2 was 5 last year and now 6 this year which you would think it would've went up after the expansion is bad.Bad if taking that site's word for it means anything.

Well, the main question is 6 out of what though? How many MMOs are relevant still?

Surprised Star trek online is on there, and no Eve for example, Guild wars 2 should probably be number 4?

@Aeolus.3615 said:@Abelisk.4527, why is silly BDO above gw2???

Problem with BDO is actually theres to much content and much to do in game, lots of mechanics...gw2 is a pretty but empty botle compared with it.Combat in BDO is very action based,«, there 2 things i dont like there wich is the quest system is a bit boring and the alot of the mobs are just static... and way to stacked, but this is something that theres yet a decent mmo to inovate it.In terms of content... its huge, and kinda does better than gw2, just to start gw2 guilds are nothign less that chat rooms, on BDO guild' drive the game areas, u even have guilds dedicated for merchant type of players.The character creating menu is a beast itself! LOL

And it was a decent leap from older sandbox mmo's.

Just due its action combat bdo deserves to be higher ranked than gw2Somehow BDO´s combat has tainted my view on other mmo´s combat.I just begin to hate tab-targeting and mandatory hot-bars.

You guys are being misled. The article ranks the health of MMOs, not the content.

Neverwinter is interesting as well being mouse click left mouse is the AA, right mouse for some defense of boon stuff, and shift+mouse click to active parry, that feels like a mesmer interrup from gw1... but used for defense.

Btw on BDO one thing that we did on a castle war, put the melee with shield on a roman turtle formation, with line of 5 swaping positions to keep defending those on CD, while caster were suporting from backline, and other classes were trying to pick solo players who tried to disrupt the turtle formation, was fun until it lasted lol..

@Abelisk.4527 said:You guys are being misled. The article ranks the health of MMOs, not the content.

Ehehe so true, wich is interesting as well, cause on nerverwinter ic alot of players old and new, STO sometimes is epty xD but that is cause i am playign a romulan probably :\, pvp on sto is broken and inexistent .

@"Erasculio.2914" said:Massively Op! That great site entirely dedicated to a kind of game that has been dying for years now! A site which, by the way, is the second version of a site that died a while back! It has placed Guild Wars 2 in the sixth position in their massively important list of six healthiest MMORPGs in 2017! Shenanigans followed!

Seriously, though, Massively made a list of the healthiest MMORPGs in 2017, based on guesswork, subscription numbers, guesswork, frequency and size of updates, guesswork, developer communication, and guesswork. Here's the list. And here is the reddit discussion in which I saw the link.

I think it's interesting in how it shows the state of the MMORPG industry; the list is almost a perfect copy of the one from 2016, and even they admit they were stretching it a bit by placing The Old Republic in 10th.

I don't think with 11 mio players at the lunch you can call it dying (https://www.pcgamesn.com/Guild-Wars-2/Guild-Wars-2-Path-Of-Fire-Release-Infographic)

I heard wow had a little more then 10 mio with the lunch of the last expansion.

@"Conncept.7638" said:If the devs had improved the systems this game launched with, which, by the way, still resulted in the most successful MMO release ever, instead of forcing out content under a bunch of incomplete systems, and creating new systems that have added little to the game and its playerbase, this game would be deserving of the top spot. It had the potential to be number one, it should have been number one.

But instead, it's done nothing but decline for years. And who would expect any different after five years of no improvements on the incomplete systems that brought people to the game in the first place, just shoving out content like a factory no matter what broken system its built on, and flat out betraying half the design principles responsible for that highly successful release to pump out new systems nobody that matters asked for. I debate if GW2 deserves a spot anywhere in the top 10 at this point, or even the top 25, even little MMOs like Dragosnest or niche titles like The Secret World feel more homogeneous than GW2.

And some of these games are just flat out made by inferior designers, scratching itches of addiction and purposefully unfair play, poor art, worse writing, and second rate gameplay, and are all in all worse games. But in spite of that, those games feel completed and solid, they fulfill the intent of their design. Their devs haven't spent five years babying their pride, refusing to make desperately needed changes to gameplay because it would mean admitting they were wrong and putting in some work on something that isn't "new and shiny" and interesting to work on.

FFXIV had one of the absolute WORST launches in MMO history for a AAA title, compared to GW2s best launch ever, and yet it's destroying us and has been for years, because after that failed launch they basically rebuilt the whole bloody game without hesitation, and they didn't stop until it felt whole. We can't even get the GW2 devs to make a single major system change, they have a lame excuse for not doing everything but new content and new systems, even though that new content is bringing no one back to the game.

This game needs core system changes and to turn back to its roots, there is no expansion or living world season or "new shinies" that are going to bring people back.

That's your personal opinion, which is fine, but I'm not really even sure you know what you're talking about. A lot of people have come back for PoF and are staying for LWS4, just look in the Players helping Players or pay attention to in-game chat. Will it get back to what it was at launch, no, as some of those people just joined the bandwagon and are the ones that jump from shiny new MMO to shiny new MMO, whether it's shiny or not.

Exactly what incomplete systems are you talking about? What wasn't in the game at launch that was mentioned before release, other than things they told us didn't make it in? If you're going to make a statement like that then back it up or no one is going to care what you say other than it being your opinion. As for adding more content and new systems all the time, that's what almost all MMO's do, otherwise they will die a slow death...you have to keep innovating and adding or the game dies...at the rate this one is going it will still be around in 5 years.

Besides, that list from Massively OP is really just an opinion piece and they usually state as much, without reading it though it wouldn't surprise me if they decided not to mention that part this time.

@Conncept.7638, final fantasy was remaded, i was on the closed betas and that thing was super broken and very very awfull, theyr only solution was send it back to the lab that was the reason for the slowed down acceptance, another recent game that had a a awfull start was the lineage that now is being re-remaded by ncsoft they had to drop the gw2 engine (it bites me why they went with it at first...) to a unreal4 engine and remaking the game mechanics.

Top 2 mmos being the Sub based ones makes you Thonk... Also no, swap gw2 with bdo and bdo with eso.

@Aeolus.3615 said:@Abelisk.4527, why is silly BDO above gw2???

Problem with BDO is actually theres to much content and much to do in game, lots of mechanics...gw2 is a pretty but empty botle compared with it.Combat in BDO is very action based,«, there 2 things i dont like there wich is the quest system is a bit boring and the alot of the mobs are just static... and way to stacked, but this is something that theres yet a decent mmo to inovate it.In terms of content... its huge, and kinda does better than gw2, just to start gw2 guilds are nothign less that chat rooms, on BDO guild' drive the game areas, u even have guilds dedicated for merchant type of players.The character creating menu is a beast itself! LOL

And it was a decent leap from older sandbox mmo's.

You mean lots of grind. Grind isnt content thats 2 diff things.

@zealex.9410 said:Top 2 mmos being the Sub based ones makes you Thonk... Also no, swap gw2 with bdo and bdo with eso.

??? Contrary to popular belief, there's nothing inherently wrong with sub-based MMOs, even though many (including myself, mind you) obviously prefer the GW2 way. When I had played WoW and had fun, I didn't mind paying subs, of course. Likewise, the reason I quit WoW wasn't due to the subs.

@Mahou.3924 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Top 2 mmos being the Sub based ones makes you Thonk... Also no, swap gw2 with bdo and bdo with eso.

Ik theres nothing wrong with sub fee. Even tho i like the consumer pro aproach of gw2 i understand every mmo that isnt sub based or has absurd prices in the cashshop is basically starving.

Heaththy mmo's?

Not surprised at the ranking, since recently a lot of players went out if their way to bring negative pr on gw2.

Even though Bdo's cash shop is more expensive, they don't have players emailing game journalists trying to tell the world how disgusting they are...