our-best-mmo-gaming-content-of-2022

Feast your eyes on this banquet of MMO gaming goodness.

The results are in, the people have been surveyed, and the gnomes in the basement have finished their calculations. Standing before you, we have our greatest MMO gaming articles, interviews, guest posts, reviews, and more from 2022.

Let the MMO gaming banquet begin!

Unreal Engine 5's Effects on MMO Gaming

We don't always dive into great technical depth at MMO Games, but when we do, we dive deep. Readers seemed to appreciate our analysis of what UE5 will mean for our favourite gaming genre, and we're very excited to see more of it come to fruition.

The Ludicrous Genius of Lost Ark

While it's now haemorrhaging players, Lost Ark was the talk of the town in early 2022. And while much more serious journalism dissected the mechanics and studied the socio-cultural impact of its western release, we decided instead to sit back and just talk about how wonderfully mad it is -- from giant chickens to sci-fi-fantasy-romantic-subplots.

Our Game Artist Competition & Game Artist Showcases

This time last year, we gathered over $1000 of gamer goodies and gave them away to the winners of our first game artist competition. Inspired by that competition, we decided to give a new aspiring artist an opportunity to showcase their work and their creative process every month. We saw artists of every style and medium, from digital illustration to polymer clay -- and they were nearly always a hit with our readers.

Below is the work of one of those spectacular artists, Chris Binns. You can get a taste of all our artists' work in this showcase round-up.

"Death, Mutiny & Weekly Releases" -- The Adventure Quest 3D Story by Artix

There are two types of people in the MMO gaming industry: those who know Artix and those who don't. But once you come across his own unique brand of witty, self-critical and hyper-aware commentary, there's simply no going back. He produced a fantastic guest post for us on the storied history of his iconic Adventure Quest games and their "unfaltering" development journeys.

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews

Our reviews are reliably some of our best-received content. And we've been lucky enough to review a great selection of massively multiplayer online games, as well as a few less-massively multiplayer ones like V Rising.

We made sure to cover all of the biggest MMO expansions of the year -- like Ollie's review of FFXIV Endwalker, Marc's review of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, Charlie's review of Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons, and Alex's reviews of New World Brimstone Sands and BDO Eternal Winter.

We also loved getting stuck into reviewing the year's new MMO releases, like Lost Ark, Mist Legacy, and Tower of Fantasy. And we even reviewed some older titles like Sea of Thieves to see if they're still worth playing today (Spoiler: They arrrrgghhh!).

Interviews, Interviews, Interviews

If you can name an MMO, we've interviewed their team at one point or another. And this year was no exception, we interviewed: the Creative Director of Amazon Games' New World, CEO of the hardcore MMORPG Mortal Online 2, Game Director of Mist Legacy, Producer of the now-closed anthropomorphic MMO Crowfall, the CEO and Co-founder behind Fractured Online's Dynamight Studio, CEO and Head of Game Design for Pearl Abyss's Black Desert Online, the hard-to-reach Creative Director of Pantheon, and the Studio Head of Bless Unleashed.

And that's not to mention our less conventional interviews like this interview with a freshly crowned esports champion which took place 40 thousand foot above ground. Or indeed our...

EVE Online Interviews

We're not even going to hide it anymore, journalistic integrity be damned, we love the folks at CCP Games. That's a good part of the reason why we continue to interview the directors, managers, and developers on a monthly basis. While some interviews end up being more popular than others -- each of them are packed with sci-fi nerd-outs, insider secrets, hints to the future, great stories, easter eggs, and philosophising on the nature of EVE itself.

Stories of EVE

The operatic player-driven nature of EVE Online stimulates the creation of stories like no other game ever made. From fiction to non-fiction and everything in between, EVE Online has had many volumes written about its 20-year history. Stories of betrayal, conquest, fortune and misfortune are never far from Capsuleers. So, this year, we took it upon ourselves to start collecting the best of these EVE tales by talking with stalwarts of the EVE Online scene. From superstar YouTubers to CCP Legends, we've regularly been publishing these gripping true stories of EVE Online. You can read some of the best, here.

10 Crazy MMO Facts

Who doesn't love a curveball fact? From the unofficial World of Warcraft theme park in China to a whole nation of RuneScape players to an MMORPG going back to the 80s. Find out the story behind these wild MMO facts and more.

A Complete History of the Warcraft Games

Talking about going back to the 80s, Warcraft very almost makes it. Back in 1994, long before Warcraft had a 'world', we were introduced Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. In our Warcraft timeline, we ran through each and every Warcraft universe game and expansion, including their key plots and player reception.

An Audience with the Space Pope

In what was our most discussed and shared piece of content of the year, our interview with EVE Online's Space Pope was widely praised. We decided we wanted to understand the man beneath the robes -- the NASA scientist who moonlights as a sassy space zealot. If you're just going to read one piece of content from us, make it this!

Feelgood Fridays

We firmly believe that too many gaming websites, critics, and journalists make a name for themselves by concentrating on the negative. And, let's face it, we've all had a difficult few years. So that's why we're determined to continue our weekly Feelgood Fridays segment wherein we share the good news gaming topics that make us happy: accessibility, diversity, representation, and inclusion.

World of Warcraft Wednesdays

We write about World of Warcraft every single week without fail. In fact, even though it went on a short hiatus, WoW Wednesdays is one of MMOGames.com's longest running traditions. While we use it to cover World of Warcraft's spinoffs, updates, and awesomeness, we've also been using it to follow the ongoing dramas at Activision Blizzard including the litany of scandals and the record-breaking Microsoft acquisition.

Crafty Creations

This monthly segment about amazing player-made in-game creations can be hit and miss. We just published January's edition on a classic World of Warcraft dungeon painstakingly recreated in Minecraft -- and seemingly no one batted and eyelid. And yet some of last year's Crafty Creations like this Valheim "Christmas miracle" were huge. Check out our annual Crafty Creations roundup and decide for yourself which you rate highest.

Indie Spotlight

Another monthly segment is our Indie Spotlight, which for two years now we've been shining on deserving independent studios who have embarked on the terrifying albeit admirable quest of trying to make their own MMORPGs.

And hey, they say imitation is flattery...so we know we're doing something right 😉

Bazgrim's Latest "Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen" Guest Post

Following on from 2021's epic "Pantheon Series" we invited one of our most popular guest writers (YouTuber and MMO specialist Bazgrim) back to publish another guest post on his specialty topic: Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. In it, he takes the brave step of defending crowdfunded MMOs (well, some of them) and argues that even though many of them have let down their fans, that there is still hope for a remarkable MMORPG in Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen. We wholeheartedly agree.

The MMO Games Awards 2022

They were less than a month ago so we won't dwell for too long on our MMO Games Awards, but this year's award-giving was the most popular it's ever been. Our social media posts exploded as we gave out awards for the Best MMO Studio, Best Upcoming Indie MMO, Best New MMORPG, Best MMO Expansion, and Best MMO Fans.

Naturally, there's a whole load of fabulous content we couldn't include here, from gamer guides to giveaways. By all means go exploring through our Reviews, Interviews, and Specials pages to see what tickles you. But before doing that, don't forget to bookmark MMOGames so you don't miss out in 2023.