RPGDot 2003 Awards: Best RPG/RPG-Strategy Expansion
The RPGDot Team, 2004-01-15

The last couple of weeks you could vote for the best RPGs and MMORPGs that have been released in 2003. Not us but you the player decide who receives the RPGDot 2003 Awards in the various categories. We thank all those who entered their votes and helped us in making it possible to select the best games of 2003.

Best RPG/RPG-Strategy Expansion
Most good games get an expansion, unfortunately some bad games get them too. But here we have only room for the best as chosen by our visitors.

The winner: Morrowind: Bloodmoon
Morrowind: Bloodmoon wasn't an expansion that was made to milk the cow once more. You felt that it was created by people who loved to play Morrowind, and they did their best to add more to an already excellent game. You felt that they actually thought about what they wanted to do. It wasn't just more of the same, but had nice twists and things you didn't expect. It's a pity that Bethesda isn't planning to do another, third expansion (at least they don't encourage us to think they will). Hopefully they are concentrating on a new Elder Scrolls game, and rumors have it that they are. However, the community is still developing fan made addons for Morrowind, and given the quality of some of those, they would deserve an "inofficial expansion of the year" award as well.

(Rendelius)

Runner Up: Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne
The thing with great games is that they are bound to get an expansion sooner or later. The Frozen Throne is one of those that manage to live up to the original, promoting the game play, but keeping the magic that attracted the gamers in the first place. The expansion brings a good campaign, that could be better in my opinion, but still fair. And, the most important thing is that it sets the balance between the races to a much higher level, bringing just about enough innovations to one already good system.

(HWFanatic)

Second Runner Up: Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide
Hmph. I don't agree with Shadows being placed third. Bloodmoon bored me to tears and despite its RPG element I don't think Warcraft 3 is truly a CRPG. Oh well. By all measures Shadows of Undrentide was a great expansion. People wanted a more interesting story than the original campaign (I still like the original campaign story. at least): So it came to pass. People wanted prestige classes and new feats: Let it be done. New tricks, traps, puzzles and a hoarde of new scripting options: By your command. Henchmen control: Yes (although a certain half-orc sorcerer is still far too trigger happy for my health). Pity that the new henchman controls couldn't be used in the original campaign ... but if that's my second biggest complaint (my biggest was that the final chapter was a rushed hackfest) then it's done a great job in my book.

(EverythingXen)

The Numbers
To make it complete we now give you the top 8 as voted by our visitors:

And 18,1 % of those who participated were unable to select one of the games.

We, the RPGDot team also voted to create our own top 4:

We have a match this time. Our four are the same as those of the voters.

Note that percentages are rounded to the nearest number.

Overview of all awards on RPGDot
 Best Sound
 Best Graphics
 Best Atmosphere
 Biggest Surprise
 Biggest Disappointment
 Most Anticipated
 Dream Game
 Best RPG/RPG-Strategy Expansion
 Best Non-RPG
 Best RPG-Strategy
 Best RPG

Overview of all awards on MMORPGDot
 Best Sound
 Best Graphics
 Best Atmosphere
 Biggest Surprise
 Biggest Disappointment
 Most Anticipated
 Best Expansion
 Best MMORPG