With our awards season for 2025 finally done, our team wanted to take a moment to reflect on them – and get out some Opinions. See, we changed how we presented our awards this past year. Instead of dragging everyone through the laborious process of writing an opinion for each award, we chose to present one opinion from the team as penned by one of our experts on the winner. But that means we also didn’t get to cheerlead for some of the more obscure games and runners-up that we wanted to celebrate.
So we’re doing that today in Massively Overthinking. I’m asking our writers to shout out some of the games that deserved to win awards in 2025 – but didn’t. Which games earned a nod in a specific award category, even if they don’t take home the crown?
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna.bsky.social, blog): I don’t really have any dramatic complaints about the winners this year. I have said before that I don’t even begrudge Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet for cleaning up. The fact that other games didn’t go ham on 2025 is no reason to punish GW2 for showing up or lessen its wins.
But there are a few MMOs I knew wouldn’t win but still deserved some accolades. Throne & Liberty really deserved more love for its wildly cool housing system added in 2025, but there was no way it was going to stand out in a year when World of Warcraft finally added player housing (it would’ve won any other year, which breaks my heart). Several MMORPGs did neat things with crafting in 2025 too, like Dune and Pax Dei. And I just don’t think Ship of Heroes had remotely the worst business model of the year. A tiny indie game with a moderately high price tag just doesn’t seem like a crime worse than taking a billion bucks in crowdfunding without launching or trying to fleece the MMORPG genre with crypto trash. It’s still very unsettling to me that people gleefully piled on that tiny blip of a game with two whole players but won’t put up a fight against genuine threats like gacha, quadruple dipping, gambleboxes, and so on.
On a more positive note, I’m still glowing over how many new MMORPG classes we had to pick from in the best new class poll! Sure, the Ratmancer was always going to be the one everyone picked first, but lookit how many others we got!
Carlo Lacsina (@UltraMudkipEX, YouTube, Twitch): To be honest, I’m pretty content with everything. Maybe one day the rest of the world will share my enthusiasm for the untitled Runeterra MMO.
Chris Neal (@wolfyseyes.bsky.social, blog): My personal award for Not-So-Massively Game of the Year would have immediately gone to Skate. And look, I recognize that I’m literally the only one on this site on both sides of its coin who cares about this game, but damn is it just a whole entire fun vibe. It’s more like a soft launch than an “early access” title, but it presses so many buttons for me even after the initial honeymoon glow from my early impressions has well since passed.
I’m otherwise pretty pleased with our choices overall, even if I will say that Guild Wars winning so much was not what I’d call the ideal outcome, but that’s less a fault of the game or of ArenaNet and more an illustration of our winner for Important Trend: The golden oldies kept on a-rockin’.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I’m generally fine with most of the winners here. Not to back pat or anything, but I think that MOP did a good job doling out awards while painting a picture of the industry as it stands right now. I loved that we had so many great options for “Best Surprise” and “Not-So-Massively Game of the Year.” If I had to disagree with one award, it’s our MMORPG of the Year. Guild Wars 2 is a fine game that pushed out a decent expansion with a nice array of specs this year, but World of Warcraft easily trounced it with the quality and quantity of output this year. WoW had two major content updates with maps, several medium-sized updates with events and features, and a housing system (with another pair of huge maps) that is shaping up to be the best in the genre. And that’s not counting all that Blizzard did with the Classic branch!
Sam Kash (@samkash@mastodon.social): Considering Throne & Liberty won GOTY last year, it’s probably not a great sign that it was all but absent this year. Perhaps I’ll find out more of why that’s the case this year, or at least that’s my plan!
For biggest surprise, I may have liked to see Ashes of Creation get the W. That’s what I would’ve voted for had GW1 Reforged not dropped in out of nowhere. That was kind of unfair. It seems like Ashes being widely available on Steam should’ve given it quite the bump, but even for me that’s just not as crazy as Reforged.
Now, for either most anticipated or maybe indie I might have liked Anvil Empires to win. That’s the Foxhole studio’s new medieval game that’s on the horizon. I think when it does come out, it’s going to really go gangbusters.
Tyler Edwards (blog): I think Overwatch 2 deserves some love in the NSM category. The devs launched a hugely ambitious new feature in Stadium, which made the game so welcoming it’s become the first competitive shooter I’ve ever played. There’s a strong sentiment even among many longtime OW1 vets that the game has never been better, to the point the top complaint these days is “the new characters are too hot” (yes, really). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a playerbase so bereft of genuine problems to complain about.
I also wish New World could have gotten some more positive recognition — probably most improved, maybe best expansion or studio. Nighthaven was an incredible turnaround after how bleak the previous year or so had been. It got overshadowed by the maintenance mode announcement a few weeks later, but Nighthaven really deserves to be recognized for the excellent update it was.
On the more negative side of things, as undeniably bone-headed as Ship of Heroes’ original business model was, I still don’t think it’s on the same level as some of the real bad actors in the space, like perennial favourite Star Citizen.
Every week, join the Massively OP staff for Massively Overthinking column, a multi-writer roundtable in which we discuss the MMO industry topics du jour – and then invite you to join the fray in the comments. Overthinking it is literally the whole point. Your turn!