MMORPG.com Game Of The Year Awards 2023

mmorpg.com:

So 2023 has been a wild year in the games industry. We've seen multiple MMORPG expansions drop — and not from the genre's heaviest hitters, while the industry itself has had a banner year in the RPG genre alone. Games like Final Fantasy XVI, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and, of course, Baldur's Gate 3 dominated people's playtime this year.

On the MMO front, we saw New World drop its first paid expansion, which not only added some excellent new story content but also helped to make the MMO feel like this was how the MMO should have launched two years prior. Black Desert Online also saw a major expansion update, The Land of the Morning Light which showed the developer was willing to take risks and completely shake up its long-running formula, eschewing its traditional monster grind zones for more story-focused content and epic boss fights.

The Elder Scrolls Online brought players back to Morrowind, and even back to Apocrypha to consort with Hermaeus Mora himself in its excellent Necrom expansion earlier this year. And while World of Warcraft is gearing up for what looks to be a stellar 2024, 2023 wasn't without its hits, with WoW Classic's Hardcore mode and Season of Discovery landing well with players.

However, 2023 also saw some of the worst aspects of the games industry as a business. Record layoffs in the games world — and indeed the tech sector overall — saw studios choose shareholder profits over people, with over 7000 developers laid off, many right before the holidays. While we can celebrate the amazing work these developers did to create the games we all love and enjoy, we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge that this has been a bad year for the people who make the games, especially as so much