MeinMMO editor Alexander Leitsch loves MMORPGs and usually tries every new game on the market. However, in 2021 he faced the problem of hardly being able to decide between the many titles. This is partly due to the good further development of old games, but also to new releases.
What is my problem? In recent years, there has been little movement in the MMORPG market. This especially gave me time to farm old games in 2019 and 2020:
- In my favorite game Guild Wars 2, I have pushed my playtime to over 8,000 hours.
- Through WoW Classic, I rediscovered my love for long leveling phases.
- With the release of Greymoor, I really buried myself deep into ESO.
- In the meantime, I had new experiences in Black Desert, Retail-WoW, and ArcheAge.
However, in recent weeks, it has repeatedly happened that my playtime is not enough to do justice to all the MMORPGs I am currently really looking forward to.
I know that this is an absolute luxury problem. But after the long MMORPG drought since 2016, I would have never thought that I would ever have this problem.
New World consumes a lot of time, Bless Unleashed is a pleasant surprise
What is currently occupying me the most? I spent almost all of my last 100 hours in MMORPGs in New World. I used that time to create guides, explore the world, level up, and of course to chop down trees and mine ores.
Because, like my colleague Mark Sellner, I find the soundscape and gathering in New World simply great:
My highlights in New World are – besides the great sound – especially the combat system and the wars over fortresses. Currently, New World has me completely captivated and is a lot of fun.
In the meantime, I have recently farmed the Halloween event in Guild Wars 2 and am trying to complete the daily quests there, started the latest season in Black Desert, and completed the prologue for the new DLC Deadlands in ESO.
But my to-do list is much, much longer.
What else do I want to do? Actually, I had already planned to start WoW Classic again in mid-June and really enjoy the new expansion Burning Crusade. I missed the original release in 2007 and even had a guild that wanted to raid with me this year.
But personal reasons, as well as the release of Swords of Legends Online, PSO2 New Genesis, and Crowfall, have thrown a small wrench into my plans. Even though all three games have not been very successful so far, I wanted to at least try each one to see how much potential there is.
Additionally, I actually want to invest more time in Bless Unleashed. This MMORPG is my positive surprise of 2021, as I found it completely uninteresting beforehand, but the combat system and the huge world bosses completely convinced me. Since the release of New World, Bless Unleashed has been completely neglected by me.
Also in my backlog are the new features in Neverwinter and Blade & Soul. Both made major revisions in 2021 that I want to check out for myself, but I have not gotten around to it and probably won’t for a while.
Because Elyon is already launching this Sunday, the next MMORPG that I will definitely try out to also be able to provide an assessment here.
In addition, at the end of 2020, I started a Let’s Play of Final Fantasy XIV to finally dive deeper into this MMORPG. But this project is currently completely on hold.
Many expansions, revisions, and new games enrich MMORPGs
What is the reason that there is so much to do right now? 2021 was a really good year from the perspective of MMORPG fans and still holds some highlights:
- A total of 6 new MMORPGs have already been released in 2021, including New World and Bless Unleashed
- WoW Classic received the new expansion Burning Crusade
- Neverwinter has revamped the entire leveling phase
- DC Universe Online is now better for Free2Play players
- Blade & Soul has released the major engine update
- ESO has released the new expansion Blackwood and several DLCs
- With Elyon, another new MMORPG will be released in October
- Final Fantasy XIV will bring out the new expansion Endwalker in November
- Corepunk, which resembles a mix of LoL and WoW, will start its beta in December
- There were also several alpha and beta tests, such as for Ashes of Creation or for Mortal Online 2, where I constantly died.
So anyone who, like me, loves MMORPGs was well served this year.
The losers of 2021: Due to the many different innovations that 2021 brought for MMORPG fans, in my opinion, two games fell by the wayside that had significantly more potential:
- Swords of Legends Online was not a groundbreaking game, but it would have definitely become an MMORPG in which I would have immersed myself deeply in the years 2019 and 2020. The dungeons and raids make a good impression.
- Crowfall actually wanted to build a hardcore PvP community. However, the release version was rather weak and garnered little attention. Also, for PvP fans, there are better alternatives with Albion Online, Mortal Online 2, New World, and even Elyon, at least in my opinion.
A third loser of 2021 could also be considered Retail-WoW. Many dissatisfied players migrated to Final Fantasy XIV in 2021. The content drought and some design decisions were not well received.
How will it continue in 2022? Looking at 2022 now, my problems with time allocation won’t shrink anytime soon:
- In February, the new Guild Wars 2 expansion End of Dragons is coming out, which is an absolute must for me. I will spend dozens of hours on it.
- The release of Lost Ark is also planned for early 2022, an MMORPG from Korea that is already eagerly awaited in the West.
- Project TL, an expensive MMORPG from Korea, as well as Corepunk could also celebrate their release in 2022.
- There will definitely be another expansion for ESO.
How did you experience the year 2021? Did you also have the problem of not being able to decide between the games? Or were you rather disappointed with all the innovations? Feel free to write it in the comments.
