3. Star Wars: The Old Republic (PC)
We've all seen the recent news. SWTOR is going free to play. It's the latest in a seemingly endless line of MMOs to just get murdered by WoW. Of course, 900,000 active players isn't at all bad, but in a world where WoW clocks in at 10 million, it's hard to call SWTOR a victory for Bioware. Despite its lacking sales, though, SWTOR is arguably the best MMO ever launched. Compared to its predecessors (at launch) Old Republic offered hundreds of hours of more gameplay, better PvP, a much more interesting leveling experience, immersive stories, unique class stories, amazing cinematics, amazing group quests and dungeons. If this game had come out in the same year that WoW had been launched,it would have devastated Warcraft with extreme prejudice. I've always wanted to say that. Were I 19 years old again, I would gladly be failing out of college right now, because I would be too busy playing SWTOR all day, every day. Sadly, I'm not 19 anymore, and I simply don't have the time to play an MMO. However, if I did, I know which MMO I'd play. Sadly, what killed SWTOR was its own high expectations. Bioware thought they could compete with WoW, and set up their game to serve millions of players. Instead, the game's high cost and large number of servers left each server feeling empty. And, an empty feeling MMO is a dying MMO. And though WoW deserved and received critical acclaim, it's already looking at ways to recoup losses, because so few people are playing it.