And your 2014 Grindies are...
Best Graphics (TIE!)
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: With beautiful landscapes, wonderfully varied gear to play dress up in, and tons of intricately designed monsters, it's no wonder FFXIV was one of our two winners.
- Elder Scrolls Online
- Wildstar
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Guild Wars 2: Despite releasing nearly three years ago, GW2 continues to impress by showing the staying power of its unique, painterly style.
- Planetside 2
Best Story
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: A long-running plot throughout the leveling experience that continues with each content patch has captivated players and brought a real Final Fantasy feel to the MMO genre.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- The Secret World (RUNNER-UP!)
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Guild Wars 2
- Wildstar
- World of Warcraft
Best Music
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Final Fantasy has a clear advantage with a long legacy of beloved music, and XIV does not fail to live up to that aural tradition by offering a mix of old new tunes and classic remixes.
- World of Warcraft
- Wildstar
- Lord of the Rings Online (RUNNER-UP)
Best Combat
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
- The Secret World
- Guild Wars 2
- TERA: More engaging real-time combat is becoming a thing over the traditional target/hotkey style, and TERA is among the first MMOs to really do it justice.
- Planetside 2
- Destiny
- Dark Age of Camelot
- Wildstar
Best Crafting
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: With professions being classes unto themselves, and the act of crafting being akin to a form of puzzle combat, XIV offers an incredibly deep experience that few MMOs can rival.
- Wildstar
- Archeage (RUNNER UP!)
Achievement in Real Estate Award
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
- Wildstar: In spite all of its failings, nobody will find much fault with Carbine's take on housing. Easy access to housing, a ton of freedom in item placement, and a ton of doo-dads to place made housing almost a game of its own.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- World of Warcraft (RUNNER UP!)
The Vlad Award for Dungeon Design
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: From haunted mansions to small encounters with primals, XIV offered a lot of variety and tightly designed places for dungeon crawlers to get their fix.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Wildstar
The Mountain Dew Award in PvP (TIE!)
- Guild Wars 2: Many consider GW2's predecessor to be among the best PvP MMOs out there, so it's little shock that GW2 continues that tradition of player on player smashing.
- Wildstar
- Archeage: Skewing towards a more traditional style of MMO where the world was harsh and uncaring, Archeage definitely fostered players looking for that old-school dog-eat-dog fantasy world.
Best Content Patch
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Maintaining a steady schedule of a patch every 3-4 months, XIV offers a ridiculous amount of content on a regular basis, with new dungeons, quests, and other distractions.
- The Secret World
- Guild Wars 2 (RUNNER UP!)
Best Expansion
- World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor: One of the strongest expansions in WoW's history, with the introduction of housing, a more open and story-based leveling experience, and tons of quality of life improvements. It's no surprise that nobody could even think of another expansion to even rival Blizzard's strong entry.
Best Newcomer
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: While XIV came out in 2010, ARR is still quite young, and is purpose one of the few stories of an MMO successfully rebounding from a complete failure of a launch. For many players, ARR was more or less a wholly new MMO to explore.
- Archeage (RUNNER UO)
- Wildstar
The APB Award in Abject Failure
- Wildstar: Despite showing promise with enthusiastic devs, amazing housing, and a wonderful aesthetic, Wildstar was plagued with bugs, an endgame hostile to casual players, and a general lack of stuff to do at endgame. Future patches just made things worse, forcing Carbine to renege on their promise of aggressive, frequent patching. It's no terribly shocking that Wildstar was the lone nominee for biggest dud.
Most Improved
- Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn: Even ignoring the obvious 2013 revamp, XIV continues to improve thanks to a steady release schedule of content patches. The XIV today is a significantly different, and better, game than the XIV of a year ago, and not all MMOs can say that.
- World of Warcraft
The Karl Marx F2P Award (TIE!
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Archeage: Launching as a free game is becoming more common, and not just cheap games to bilk kids of money. Archeage launched as a strong free title thanks to letting players have fun without requiring a huge initial investment.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: It's hard to deny the quality of TOR's economy, considering that the move to F2P has successfully prevented the game from becoming a huge flop.
The Robert Kotick "F2P" Award
- Star Wars: The Old Republic: ...on the other hand, many of you though TOR was a huge rip-off. The game was definitely panned when it first went to F2P for how poorly it treated free players by imposing a large number of restrictions on gameplay mechanics.
- Neverwinter
MMO of the Year 2014
Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn
Is there any surprise? While other games might have higher highs, XIV delivered on thing in 2014, and that was never letting up on the content pipeline. Not content just releasing regular MMO content like dungeons and raids, XIV released a whole new class last year in a regular content patch. All this while providing an excellent take on the WoW-style MMOs people expect these days. Final Fantasy 14 doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, but instead combine beautiful imagery, music, and story to create a world people want to inhabit. And then they keep building up that world so people never want it. And Square-Enix isn't letting up: the game has an expansion in just a few months, and there's even a content patch being released as I type this. The year 2014 was a very good for FFXIV, and 2015 looks to be even stronger.
- Lord of the Rings Online
- Guild Wars 2 (RUNNER UP!)
- Archeage