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Winner: Star Wars: The Old Republic (writeup by Michael Zenke)

If called this you did, strong in the Force are you.

Actually, you probably didn't need to be a Jedi prognosticator to see this coming. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a game that MMO nerds have been awaiting for years. Re-uniting the Star Wars IP with MMO gameplay in a new format, reviving the very popular Knights of the Old Republic setting, SWTOR was a sure-fired win with the Massively staff long before the announcement.

That said, we've been pretty well blown away by every scrap of information BioWare has released to date. The focus on storytelling in the game, the companion concept, the idea of meshing character class and progression experience so closely together ... they all sound like elements we've been waiting for in MMOs for years. We're particularly excited about the idea a branching storyline that allows us to make real decisions in a persistent universe. Even the illusion of decision is so often denied us in MMOs, the tantalizing hope the SWTOR developers hold out is tempting indeed.

And, of course, there's gobs more to like just in what they've already talked about. "Choreographed" combat, a crafting system that actually lets you have fun, the feeling of being an epic hero from level 1 ... it's like a group of forum users got together and made a 'best of' list, then turned it into a design doc.

With the release of the game so far off, at this point we're just hopeful the finished product somewhat resembles the promised feature set. With the boys at BioWare behind the development and industry veterans like Gordon Walton at the helm, we're more hopeful about The Old Republic than almost any other game on the horizon. It's definitely the game we're most looking forward to in 2008, and is likely to keep this spot well into next year.

Gallery: Star Wars: The Old Republic Concept Art

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Winner: World of Warcraft (writeup by Michael Zenke)

There's a reason this game has so many players. It's as simple as that: World of Warcraft is the best fantasy MMO on the marketplace. It's probably the best AAA MMO period.

We don't talk about World of Warcraft as much as the MMO genre might dictate on Massively because WoW Insider does such an amazing job with its coverage, but that game literally touches everything we do here. It's impossible to talk about the popularity of MMOs without mentioning the game. It's inconcievable to consider the size of the US market without it. We've asked ourselves on several occasions: without Blizzard's behemoth would there even be a need for a site like Massively.com?

Regardless, Blizzard has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt this year that WoW's preiminence is well-deserved. Say what you will about Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King is a tour-de-force in modern gaming. It's the most polished, exciting expansion to a massively multiplayer game we've ever experienced and the storytelling chops they show in the Death Knight starting area are simply amazing. We've played a lot of games here at Massively. We've ground hundreds of levels, invested thousands and thousands of hours in this genre ... but one game has captured our attention more than any other this year.

For that, more than anything else, World of Warcraft is worth saluting. Here's hoping that some of the amazing changes we've seen in Lich King trickle down through the rest of the game. Here's hoping that Blizzard does their best to top this already amazing content with newer, better releases. And here's hoping someday some designers muster the gumption to pull the community's attention from our favorite game of 2008.

Gallery: World of Warcraft: WOTLK

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Winner: The shutdown of Tabula Rasa (writeup by Shawn Schuster)

This year's Biggest Surprise goes to the news that Tabula Rasa is closing for good in February of 2009. Some might think this was no surprise at all, considering the exodus of players over the past year, and the recent news of Richard Garriott leaving NCsoft to pursue other interests. We chose it because of the vivid community still surrounding it, with the actual finality of a closure a surprise to us all.

What makes this an even larger surprise is the fact that the September closure rumors were quickly denied by NCsoft themselves. Recent reports of several new and exciting game features, plus the announcement that players would have a chance to return to Earth in the game made us firmly believe that TR was making a strong comeback. In game, we started to see more players running around in the world, more players in chat and full groups again. The PlanetTR weekly events were filling up like they did in the old days, and we were optimistic.

For whatever reason it was too little, too late for NCsoft. The publisher is not in the market of losing money, and we understand that. Yet if we see another closure of an NCsoft title any time soon, it certainly won't be on our Biggest Surprise list.

Gallery: Remembering Tabula Rasa through screenshots

Tabula Rasa and NCsoft Devs, we salute youRuuuuun!A Thrax HybridEx-Community Coordinator Critters in game at a FNFOne of the earliest Friday Night Fight events in Alia Das

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Winner: City of Heroes (writeup by Krystalle Voecks)

Our pick for Most Improvements in an MMO for 2008 goes to NCsoft's City of Heroes & City of Villains. While only Issue 12 and Issue 13 came out this year, both were fairly hefty in terms of giving players new options on their beloved game. In Issue 12 "The Midnight Hour" we saw Powerset Proliferation; Villain Epic Archetypes; the addition of the Midnight Squad, introducing the Roman Cimeroran maps; the Hollows overhaul; and even some smaller and greatly needed things like the ability to convert three Inspirations to one of a more useful type and more character slots. Issue 13 "Power and Responsibility" added in Day Jobs for offline character progression; multiple builds for solo and group play; Pain Dominance and Shields as new powersets; Leveling Pact; SuperGroup base re-pricing, saving millions of Prestige across the board; and Merit rewards along with lots of other good stuff.

In short, it's been an awesome year for the Heroes and Villains of Paragon City, and with Issue 14 Architect planned for next year, it looks like 2009 is on track to rock, too. Hats off - and capes on - for the City of Heroes & City of Villains developers!

Gallery: City of Heroes Core Gallery

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Winner: Wrath of the Lich King for World of Warcraft (writeup by Kyle Horner)

When Blizzard released their first expansion to World of Warcraft, they made some improvements while at the same time making plenty of new mistakes. With Wrath of the Lich King, Blizzard has leapt beyond the original game's vision to introduce substantial new improvements to the title.

So many quests in the new expansion involve both epic lore and quest mechanics that it's easy to forgive the rehashing classic MMO gameplay. Be prepared to literally stand on the shoulders of giants while battling your foes in ways unseen in any MMO experience to date.

Zone design is part and parcel with enjoyable questing, which is why the Northrend quests are some of the most fun yet in the game. The pacing is much better this time around, and a lot of the new zones feel either fresh and new or evoke themes running through the entirety of the Warcraft saga. Dragonblight is in many was as much of a wasteland as Desolace or the Barrens - but Blizzard figured out how to make the whole area packed to the brim with interesting content and locales.

As the icing on the cake we now have Death Knights, a triumph of Blizzard's improvements to the game since their first set of MMO classes. Not only does this first hero class feel entirely heroic, the starting zone and quests associated with the class recapture for some the emotion and wonder of playing World of Warcraft for the first time. Once you'd stepped into those dark shoes, it was impossible to stop until the ride was over and you were back in Outland.

Wrath is a cut above the rest this year. It's a huge improvement over The Burning Crusade, and has done much to change player perceptions of what a WoW expansion could be. If you've been hoping for a WoW 2, the closest thing you'll find to that for a long time is Wrath of the Lich King.

Gallery: World of Warcraft: WOTLK

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Winner: Warhammer Online (writeup by William Dobson)

The hype-o-meter was off the charts just prior to Warhammer Online's release this year, and when the game finally did come out, gamers found it to be a refreshing change of pace at the same time as being a heck of a lot of fun. Unlike so many other MMOs out there, WAR allows you to get into the meat of the game right from level one if you so choose.

And what is that meat? Player versus Player combat, or Realm versus Realm (RvR) in this case. With the option to join a queue for an instanced scenario battle from anywhere in the game, and open RvR battlefields located in every tier, bloodshed is always just a short step away. The distinction between PvP and RvR is made extremely clear in WAR.

Class balance is not based on 1v1 battles, but rather, group-versus-group combat. The underlying goal of all the factional warfare is to siege keeps and capture territories, which is intended to require the co-operation of larger groups of players, and is reminiscent of Mythic's older and much-loved MMO Dark Age of Camelot. The ultimate glory in WAR is to have the chance to pillage the opposing realm's capital city, loot their dungeons and kill their king - sounds exciting just reading about it, right?

Even if you look past the RvR aspect of the game, WAR still brings a lot to the table: Public Quests, which give players a new way of coming together to accomplish PvE goals; the production values and the way the world of Warhammer is brought to life; the Tome of Knowledge, which provides little incentives to achieve things in all areas of the game, and offers detailed lore.

Troubled, perhaps. Flawed, for sure. But with a team dedicated to improvements and a fantastic new spin on the fantasy standard, everything comes together amazingly well in Warhammer Online. It's no wonder at all that it is our favorite new game of 2008.

Gallery: Warhammer Online: Concept Art

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Massively doesn't hand out awards. We're not the Oscars, we're not the Emmys. What we are, though, is a bunch of opinionated MMO bloggers. Like it or hate it, 2008 was an enormous year for our favorite genre of games. We took a poll among the staff of the site, taking stock of an entire year in gaming. What follows are our picks for the best, the most surprising, the games that we just can't wait to play.

Join us in celebrating an amazing year in massively multiplayer games, and make sure to let us know what you think in the comments!

MassivelyMassively's picks for the best of 2008 originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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