There's no denying Sim City was a bad launch, but to compare it alongside some of these games which were unplayable or near-unplayable for weeks on end makes Sim City seem like smooth sailing.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The game launch is unstable. This could mean things like servers are constantly down, there is extreme (unplayable) lag in game, players are unable to play who purchased the game for a number of reason, queue times are ridiculous, or the client crashes and has performance issues. I personally expect things like lag and server downtime within the first 24 hours, but if it persists beyond that something is seriously wrong.
The game is released as a buggy mess and was clearly rushed out. It was in a clear Alpha state. Many promised features of the game aren't functioning. Major aspects of the game not working or not working properly.
The game underperforms in sales, and thus would be a considered a bad launch by the developers and investors.
The first point is the most common, but fortunately most MMOs or multiplayer games in general nowadays (though we still have laughably bad launches in this aspect like SimCity) are having much more stable better overall launches.
The second point happens often, but not so severely that I usually consider games (personally) bad launches. Again, I think this is improving as the MMO industry matures, you see a lot more games launching when they are ready.
The final point is probably one that can apply to lots of games, but generally not one someone in MMORPG.com forums will use to describe a bad launch. This is more from the developer's standpoint.
A bad launch for the developers is when the players find it unacceptable
and demand their money back or avoid buying at all.
This never happens.
Sadly you are right, and that is why things will never change, people are now paying full price for Alpha games. They pay $300 for founders editions of beta games. They buy lifetime subscriptions for games that go free 2 play after a year and they do it all over again at the next hype.
A bad launch for a rival developer is when half or more of their QA team takes two weeks off when the game launches.
Well it seems in todays market of mmos. It seems after WoW's launch, that anything that follows in it's wake is automatically a bad launch. I just wanted to know, before I commit myself to starting a career in game developing.
Just a heads up, if you are planning on going that route as a career. Get ready for A LOT of double-standards from your fans. Also, don't focus on an MMO as one of your first projects. MMOs are a hellova lot more complicated than most people give them credit for. There's a reason so many MMOs fail, they are NOT easy to make, and even less easy to make well.
That said, realistically, a bad launch is basically a game that is unplayable for some reason or another. Either you have way too much server downtime / players can't login to your game, or you have some mechanic that makes the game very difficult to play for the average gamer (usually in the form of gated content), or the game is so poorly optomized it either crashes / lags / glitches / bugs severely.
However, most people don't see things from a realistic point of view. A lot of gamers will say 'game X' had a bad launch because they didn't like the game, or say 'game Y' had a great launch because it was their favorite. Unfortunately the majority of the gamer community doesn't seem to have matured enough to be content with games they don't like thriving. There's also not many hopeful signs that this trend is turning around anytime soon.
man sry to say but most ppl dont play wow as it was back to 2004. they play it in its current form and yes as it is now its a measure to compare other mmo's with.
i dont care if a game needs 1 year or an expansion to get fixed or whatever. i m paying it now. i spent 50-60$ to buy it and if its a sub one, i give 15$ / month. so yes, i need the game to be rdy from start, else they can let me play it free until they make it sub worth.
When AO launched it was deemed appalling. I am not sure the word failure was used, because in those days MMO's could not fail, thats not a typo, thats how it was.
With so few MMO's around and its unique SF setting the devs just got to work fixing it. About a year later they had turned it around and made a great game.
In todays market do you think AO would have survived even a week? If MMO's are not perfect at launch they burn up on entry. Like much in life what has happened is a two edged sword. We have games now that are relatively perfect at launch, but we also have a focus on launch and not end game or any other aspect of MMO's.
so the mistake is from the gamers side and not from the devs.
why should we rush to buy a new game? why not wait a couple of months first and then decide to buy it or not? i think all the hype, the game sites etc, makes us a bit blinds, a bit anxious and over hyped.
if we all just showed a bit patience when a new mmo launches, the least we would have saved is a lot money
A bad launch is when the mmo is bugged badly, graphic's glitches and the servers spend more time being patched and down than actually running. From memory there hasnt been a bad launch for years.
I also think that they finally have the timing right for most games to release it. at least for most it is a finished product and ready to go. a few might have remained in development a little longer to improve the game but generally they run at launch. What you dont want is what happened with WoW, AOC etc at the start, and have bugged games.
Comments
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
3 possibilities here in my opinion:
Just a heads up, if you are planning on going that route as a career. Get ready for A LOT of double-standards from your fans. Also, don't focus on an MMO as one of your first projects. MMOs are a hellova lot more complicated than most people give them credit for. There's a reason so many MMOs fail, they are NOT easy to make, and even less easy to make well.
That said, realistically, a bad launch is basically a game that is unplayable for some reason or another. Either you have way too much server downtime / players can't login to your game, or you have some mechanic that makes the game very difficult to play for the average gamer (usually in the form of gated content), or the game is so poorly optomized it either crashes / lags / glitches / bugs severely.
However, most people don't see things from a realistic point of view. A lot of gamers will say 'game X' had a bad launch because they didn't like the game, or say 'game Y' had a great launch because it was their favorite. Unfortunately the majority of the gamer community doesn't seem to have matured enough to be content with games they don't like thriving. There's also not many hopeful signs that this trend is turning around anytime soon.
man sry to say but most ppl dont play wow as it was back to 2004. they play it in its current form and yes as it is now its a measure to compare other mmo's with.
i dont care if a game needs 1 year or an expansion to get fixed or whatever. i m paying it now. i spent 50-60$ to buy it and if its a sub one, i give 15$ / month. so yes, i need the game to be rdy from start, else they can let me play it free until they make it sub worth.
When AO launched it was deemed appalling. I am not sure the word failure was used, because in those days MMO's could not fail, thats not a typo, thats how it was.
With so few MMO's around and its unique SF setting the devs just got to work fixing it. About a year later they had turned it around and made a great game.
In todays market do you think AO would have survived even a week? If MMO's are not perfect at launch they burn up on entry. Like much in life what has happened is a two edged sword. We have games now that are relatively perfect at launch, but we also have a focus on launch and not end game or any other aspect of MMO's.
so the mistake is from the gamers side and not from the devs.
why should we rush to buy a new game? why not wait a couple of months first and then decide to buy it or not? i think all the hype, the game sites etc, makes us a bit blinds, a bit anxious and over hyped.
if we all just showed a bit patience when a new mmo launches, the least we would have saved is a lot money
A bad launch is when the mmo is bugged badly, graphic's glitches and the servers spend more time being patched and down than actually running. From memory there hasnt been a bad launch for years.
I also think that they finally have the timing right for most games to release it. at least for most it is a finished product and ready to go. a few might have remained in development a little longer to improve the game but generally they run at launch. What you dont want is what happened with WoW, AOC etc at the start, and have bugged games.