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Our prime 100 video games of 2025 went stay earlier this week, and a wierd phenomenon has occurred. We have no goddamn MMOs on there. Just to verify I wasn’t seeing issues, I checked all 100 entries: Not a single one. No World of Warcrafts, no Final Fantasy 14s, no Guild Wars 2s, no Elder Scrolls: Onlines. Lots of RPGs, thoughts, simply not massively multiplayer ones. What provides?
Well, I’ve acquired a number of theories, and I’d wish to dig into them, however earlier than I do: I feel the MMO style is definitely in a fairly good place, proper now. It’s growing old, actually (we’ll get into that later) however you actually aren’t spoiled for good choices.
Theory 1: Well, Harvey, none of us have any goddamn free time
Here’s the thing. Our top 100 list is transparently a reflection of our staff’s personal tastes, and our ability to passionately advocate our favourites to each other. It’s not meant to be some objective rubric for which games you want to play, lab-grown and scientific. Read the list yourself and you’ll find us slap-fighting a little: It’s all part of the process.
To quote the list’s opening amble: “If you’re wondering why Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is back on the list for the first time in years, it’s because Josh made a fully animated powerpoint presentation that he delivered to the team while dressed up as a pirate.”
Which is important, because it turns out we’re all just very busy. That’s not to say we don’t play MMOs, mind. I’m currently subscribed to both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14, and dipping my toes into Guild Wars 2, who our own editor-in-chief Phil Savage is a huge fan of. Our online editor Fraser Brown loves a good MMO, and both Mollie Taylor and Andrea Shearon are just as catboy-brained as I am. Rory Norris likes ESO, but he’s in our basement writing guides.
Including myself, I have named six out of our 30+ members of staff.
See, the problem is that MMOs take dozens of hours every month just to keep up with, let alone the massive initial timesink you’ve gotta hit just to form a somewhat-solid critical opinion of them.
It’s just such a tough sell, and it’s even tougher if they’re already invested in a different game.”
When it came to giving our presentations for our personal nominations, I chose Nine Sols (I sadly did not wear a pirate hat like Josh did) because I knew that it’d be insane to walk up to 25 of my colleagues and go: “Hey, do you have 500 hours to experience one of the best JRPG stories ever told? It’s five JRPGs layered on top of each other. It’s so good, I promise. Wait where are you going? Come back!”
You, yourself, have probably had this experience if you’ve ever tried to evangelise for an MMO to your mates: It’s just such a tough sell, and it’s even tougher if they’re already invested in a different game.
Add in responsibilities, which for us also include staying broadly appraised of new releases, and you have a team that is not able to give every MMO the love and attention they deserve. Oh hey, speaking of newness…
Theory 2: It’s literally just a numbers game
All MMOs are old. I pointed this out recently in my ramble about bags for Terminally Online (our MMO column), but you’ll be hard-pressed to find a popular MMO with a solid fanbase that doesn’t have grey in its beard. Most of them are 10 years, some of them are 20 and, uh, just look at how modern efforts to make MMOs are going in this decade:
And that’s just off the top of my head. Basically, studios just aren’t making MMOs anymore—at least, not at the uptick they used to. Which is a problem because while the overall volume of games increases, the amount of MMOs that we’d recommend stays exactly the same.
That doesn’t entirely explain why FF14 dropped from #34 last year to #N/A this year, it’s definitely a contributing factor. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that MMOs are a dying breed or anything, but they’re definitely an aging population, and that’ll come into play.
Our top 100 can only ever fit 100 games, and we want to make sure we aren’t just peddling the same old classics that you’ve heard of time and time again. It’s why we’ve got a Freshness score. Oh, right, the scores.
Theory 3: A shock from the system
This one’s about to get a little esoteric, so bear with me: Each year, we like to have a tinker with our scoring system. This helps keep the list dynamic, but we’re also trying to hedge closer to our stated goal of telling you what the top 100 games to play right now are. As your tastes shift, we do our best to keep up with our stubby little legs.
This year’s scoring system was not kind to MMOs. In 2024, we had four measures of success: Quality, Importance, Hotness, and Playability. Hotness and Playability ones are the important’uns here—Hotness made up about 15% of a game’s overall score, while Playability contributed 10%.
Crucially, for Hotness, we were asked to consider: “How exciting is it? Its ability to retain a lively community that is excited and passionate about it.” Meanwhile, Playability was our measure of “How playable is it? Its accessibility to modern audiences, and a measure of how easy it is to get running on modern systems.”
While most MMOs didn’t do great when it comes to playability—they’re run on archaic systems and a lot of assumed knowledge—their Hotness scores weren’t all that bad. Final Fantasy 14 had a 8.30, World of Warcraft had a 7.36. Guild Wars 2 was the worst at a 5.75, but it made up for that with a solid 7 in playability.
This year, we swapped out Hotness and Playability for Freshness, which is described thus: “How unique is it? Its ability to stand out from other games.” This made up 20% of the top 100 score.
You are likely starting to see the problem.
MMOs aren’t just old—they also lay the groundwork for just about every live service game.”
As mentioned above, MMOs aren’t just old—they also lay the groundwork for just about every live service game we’ve been getting beaned over the head with these past few years. Sure, they change, but who among us will say that a tab-targeting MMO is unique? Do any of WoW’s competitors “stand out” when they’re objectively using a 20-year old template?
To confirm my suspicions, I dug into our off-screen scores for 2025, and surely enough—most MMOs struggled to beat a six in freshness. World of Warcraft was considerably hard-done by, with a 7.11 in quality, almost a 10 in importance (it’s World of Warcraft), and a whimpering five in freshness.
So there you have it. My scientific examination as to why we didn’t have any MMOs land on the top 100 this year: A combination of being busy gamers, obligated to keep up with the latest releases, our desire to feature new games on the list, and our heavier weighting on uniqueness did them in. Sorry, MMOs. It just wasn’t your year.
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