Top 5 Gaming Successes of 2009

5 Bright Spots of 2009

With the year winding down, we take a look back on 5 positive things that happened in the gaming industry during 2009. There certainly was no shortage of new games and events that made their way into the market, while we saw some big disappointments like Fallen Earth, there were also the success stories. Here are our top 5:

5. Torchlight

Torchlight was the year’s biggest sleeper success story, it's not quite an MMO yet, but the multi-player version is on the way. We proudly boast to be one of the very first MMO sites to report on the dungeon-based PC Game thanks to MMOFury writer, Taylor. I guess we can’t take all the credit there as it became very popular very quickly because of how well designed the game is, this shows how even an under-hyped and low priced title can become successful through word of mouth.

4. Blizzard’s Pet Shop

If you wonder how the heck this much hated item made the list, well it is simple. We don’t really care too much for Blizzard’s new approach to micro transactions, and think that their 50% temporary charity contribution was sleazy to say the list (should have been 100%). The reason is because for years great free to play games have been mocked by subscription MMO player’s that felt micro transactions meant a lower quality game. With the announcement of Blizzard’s Pet Shop, players no longer could justify using that methodology. We are not against subscription games, we play just about all of them with loyalty, we just know that there are some great games out there in the F2P market. Besides, its nice to see egg on the face of stuck-up gamers.

3. Dungeons and Dragons Online Goes Free to Play

We always loved DDO, but unfortunately it could just not compete with other subscription games, we are not happy that it joined the “Dark Side”, we are just happy that the game survived in a way more people can get to experience one of the best in depth MMOs.

2. Aion’s Launch Coordination

Say what you will about Aion, anyone that complained about the way NCsoft coordinated the commercial launch event is simply inexperienced at large scale launches. We agree that there could have been more specific information about the server pre-selection, but they did inform everyone, just not in baby talk like many players obviously needed. From a technical aspect the launch went nearly perfect, while the lines to get in a server got a bit crowded, this was a well calculated plan that allowed no major crashes and virtually zero high impact bugs. Of course it helped that the game had been online in Korea for about a year before the North American servers were switched on but the fact is that this was one of the most well thought out and executed launches of any large MMO.

1. PAX 09

This year’s PAX was a record breaker for the annual gaming event which catapulted it into major event status. With hands on previews of WoW’s Cataclysm, Aion, Dragon Nest, Star Wars: Old Republic and blockbuster console titles, there was plenty to entertain the more than 60,000 attendees of the sold out exhibition. Of course it did have its downside with the H1N1 virus taking its toll on a confirmed 100 visitors but I guess a little swine flu can’t ruin what was the biggest player targeted gaming event of the year.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry