2 others worth a mention are AC2 and Auto Assault. Microsoft really blew it with AC2 before it was turned back over to Turbine but by then it was pretty much over, sad days.
I agree AC2 should definitely make this list for releasing an expansion just before closing up shop.
SOE offered refunds for Trials of Obi-Wan for pushing the NGE in shortly after Trials was released. AFTER there was a major uproar.
I can't believe no one has mentioned Horizons. I worked for the company during launch and it was freaking horrible to be an employee at that point!
I'm surprised by this as well David Bowman was literally ran out of the Industry on a rail, but he has always gotten a pass in the media....even when he was hiding under his desk after the launch of Horizons news sites refused to call him out on it.
Mind Boggling
Bowman was a VERY smooth operator. He is the type that could be charming as hell, while slipping a dagger in to your back. Dave Allen(original developer of Horizons) learned that the hard way. Most of the news sites only ever saw his charming side. He was also a master of spin, self promotion and propaganda. If you track his history back, you will see that Horizons is far from the first game he managed to run in to the ground.
interesting bit about Dark and Light, is that the french company behind it screwed over and ripped a world system that wasnt theirs. The cause and effect was that this low blow and criminal behavior caused them to have to quickly change the code of the game, thus causing the entire product just to fail even more than it did before while at the same time dealing with the many lawsuits filed against them. They deserved it.
I have to admit that Dark and Light had my attention. I deeply wanted it to be a good game, but when SoG began, I began to see the writing on the wall. And I wept. But SOE is still the greatest company with regards to the utter disregard for the playerbase. And somehow, people continue to play their games. It is not only SWG, and I do not have any love for Science Fiction games, so I was not fortunate enough to enjoy that bit of evil. It is every game they have ever been in charge of. Vanguard had the potential to be a great game, I think, but they sadly did not have enough capital to complete their game. As a result, they had to let it go. SOE snatched it up like some leviathan taking beautiful things into its gaping maw, rending it into something unrecognizable and spitting it out, laughing at the terrified denizens of the world. I shudder at each announcement they give.
I think you should do a company-based thing like this. I am sure many people would be interested to read something about the five most hated game companies. Perhaps not even hate, but rather the most feared for their terrible decision making.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
I have to admit that Dark and Light had my attention. I deeply wanted it to be a good game, but when SoG began, I began to see the writing on the wall. And I wept. But SOE is still the greatest company with regards to the utter disregard for the playerbase. And somehow, people continue to play their games. It is not only SWG, and I do not have any love for Science Fiction games, so I was not fortunate enough to enjoy that bit of evil. It is every game they have ever been in charge of. Vanguard had the potential to be a great game, I think, but they sadly did not have enough capital to complete their game. As a result, they had to let it go. SOE snatched it up like some leviathan taking beautiful things into its gaping maw, rending it into something unrecognizable and spitting it out, laughing at the terrified denizens of the world. I shudder at each announcement they give. I think you should do a company-based thing like this. I am sure many people would be interested to read something about the five most hated game companies. Perhaps not even hate, but rather the most feared for their terrible decision making.
SoE got as screwed on Vanguard as the players. Brad sold SoE a sob story and they bought it.
LOL I havent played SOE online games since leaving EQ2 years back. I turn and look the other way to pretty much anything SOE is involved in these days. At least I can say they arn't getting money out of my pockets. :-)
I understand the point of this piece and agree with it. Darkfall should have definitely been on the list as it was followed for 8 years and mislead, and as some would say "lied" to their loyal fan-base with such a lack of content that was hyped that the only way to describe the uptake of this game is in the context of it being a "lawn-dart"; it did infuriate most as well.
For a more modern touch I could definitely see AoC on that list. Probably the worst out of the 'next gen' MMOs.
It had it all - Constant crashes, broken promises (DX10, functioning siege combat, etc on release) dodgy overbilling, Erling Ellingsen, the boards were rife with pissed off customers, half-assed product after Tortage and a ton of bugs and exploits like the infamous gem exploit. Have I missed anything?
Despite that it was still a functioning product and it had its moments. I guess the same can't be said of most of those on the list.
While Darkfall and Aoc (and Warhammer and others) had missing features that pissed off people post launch, they all did launch fairly successfully and are still running. They didn't intentionally scam people, just failed to live up to the (mostly user generated) hype surrounding their betas.
Wow, I've never even heard of three of the games, only SWG and DnL are known to me. And the only reason I'm in MMOs today is because of SWG - until that game, I had no interest in playing a MMO at all, and I still don't care to try most of them. I contend SWG should have been #1, but that's an old argument by now. All in all, nice article, kudos to the author.
Same here I had never heard of the other 3 and apparently that was a good thing. But given that I tried to preorder exactly 1 mmo and canceled the preorder before it was charged, it seems I would of been spared by them.
I think this article highlights that point better then any other. Do not preorder a game! You never know what the result will be.
Where is Dark Horizons Istaria on this list? The words "scam" and "crap" come to mind when I think of what happened towards the end.
Where is that Roman game, where they took all these pre-orders, and in the end the game look like a 6th grader made it on his Apple IIe? I can't even remeber the name it is so bad.
Hellscape wasn't a traditional MMO, but c'mon. That was bad.
Vaporware? Outright Lies? most mmos have them. I agree SWG belongs on the list, but also somewhere the above more so than some of what OP included.
That was a pretty good list and an amusing article, but I think I would have put SWG a little higher because some of those other games made people mad at the time, but the SWG mess is a fire that doesn't show any sign of going out, and every time SOE does... well, ANYTHING... it fans the flames all over again.
... This is where I draw the line: __________________.
i started testing a lot of games years ago, really liked beta testing but the crap that most of us saw the last years and stuff that never came out, a list iof five is not enough hehe
horizons i remember all to well, lots of promises no content
face of mankind ....
dark and light
there were a few others as well but forgot
now i remember again IRTH Online
"One day all will die, surely you but never I." Wheel of Time
I pre-ordered Mourning - it had so much promise... beautiful landscape, perma-death and lineage, open pvp, RTS elements for battle leaders, etc.
What arrived was a burned CD (although it did have a nice litscribed graphic on the front). The only time I ever managed to get into the game, my character couldn't move or turn, and all I could see was a speck of light in the middle of the screen. I can only assume I was in a tunnel.
I'm still sad thinking about how good that game could have been.
Nothing will ever beat Age of Conan in terms of infuriating me. If Funcom did the Blizzard thing and released it when it was ready, it could have actually competed with WoW.
wow was no where near ready when it launched constant crashes zone crashes instance crashes on and on not to mention the damn grind im sick of grinds in mmo's to me that is the one that sets me off more then anything its the devs way of being lazy and the 2nd thing is to compare every thing to wow , the thing they got right is the natrual desire of humans to have the best thigns , and since you need the best gear to be the best you will grind away to the point of over playing and ignoring things in RL.
and another thing about blizzard being a lazy game company is thier expan packs TBC wow insteed of new classes they gave us all the same classes yay how lame is that , when we heard TBC was comeing with two new classes i was like ahh snaps they need to give the horde a death knight ( my idea was like a pally but less heals more evil) but wh3en we heard its just they gave us two new races that one could be a pally (horde) and shaman (ally) alot of us where very pist off since now there was nothing that seperated us as factions cookie cutter classes god i hate those
then WotLK came out and every one that has a 55 got a DK ( yes i played one too) they where fun as hell yes they pwned pve was soloing 5 player quests with ease , but thats as far as i could go no raid evey one of them had more then enough dks in them, so went back to the mains and there it was again be this generic version of every other mage or shamman with either all ice or resto since even if you where good at dps no one wanted you unless you where exactly how they say you should be
that i blame on the fact you have no control over basic stats other then getting gear, and the lack of creativity in the class trees once they went to a aoe kill pattern ( like found in DaoC stacking nukes and every class just about had one just like wow has now) you have to be ice since flame strike does nothing compared to a blizzard's DoT and arcane explosion sucks due to a world cooldown timer you cant get it to pop off as fast as ice would either , so your forced intoa class or play style you may not like.
now i hear about a new expack for wow and they are giving goblins to horde and some other race that i dont care about for ally , goblins have been used in every warcraft RTS , and when my friends where talking about wow i was like sweet i want to be a goblin.. no thay dont have those in , but so many years later and they now have the idea to put it in , ya no thanks im done i quit wow im sick on the wash rinse repete expan packs.
another poster wrote about asherons call that was my first mmo and i guess i was spoiled by turbine with there live update team that gave us new and exciting stuff to do on a monthly basis , sure there was alot of lvls gain in that game but it never flet like a grind, it felt like iw as working to something sinc ei was able to say what ,where and how much points i want to put into my stats , also the ammount of repeteable quests with reasonable timers on it
another poster wrote warhammer should be up thier, i played that and enjoyed it what killed it for me was the player base , to many wanted a wow game and when they got thier and found it nothing like wow they left , so there was hardly anyone to play with , i belive the killer of that game is the SC's they are done very poorly as in they give more xp then open RVR which is what i wanted the first two tiers was almost a joke to go and rvr in , since everyone and thier mom was in scenarios.
while yes some of the keep RVR dynamics where a joke and messed up to the point of exploitation it was still more fun then running a raid and waiting for your .5dkp to come from some ones gear that they won for some reason no matter how many raids i was in nothing i ever needed droped untill 4 to 5 weeks has passesd since i did get something, the keep drops was a nice change i felt i had a better chance, but then i won a few bags and got the same damn item over n over no dev had the thought of putting in a code line thats say if you have x item then these x items are avail from bag.
i have played ungodly ammounts of mmo's from closed to open betas to retail and what ive seen is a trend a trend of lazy devs doing as little as they can to make that 15$ a month from each player and throwing in the good stuff as a after thought but then its only one or two good things you pay another 40 bucks for in a expan pack, with the times we are going thru and money is getting tighter for some families when will the bigger companys stop gougeing the player base for jokes of expan packs that really only add a few things where are the free updates anymore
i didnt have to pay more then 15 bucks till AC:DM came out but that gave a lot more things to do and wasnt that costly
side note yes i have poor ghrammer and typing so to late flamers i dissed myself , and to those that can over look those small errors i hope my statements ring true to you as they do me
2nd side note To any game maker or dev that may read this stop the damn grinds ( some grind is enevatable ) that make us go insane and give us grey hair , give us a world open to explore and the freedom to enhance our chars they way we want to and not the cookie cutter molds that are far to rampant in games today
While Darkfall and Aoc (and Warhammer and others) had missing features that pissed off people post launch, they all did launch fairly successfully and are still running. They didn't intentionally scam people, just failed to live up to the (mostly user generated) hype surrounding their betas.
As for Darkfall this would be #1 on my list. They 'invited' NA players to play on the EU server until NA server launched, and they stated that our purchase of the client allowed for one character per server. Shortly before the NA launch they renigged on that statement, announced that NA server would have a different client that we would have to shell out another $50 bucks for, and switched their wording to one character per client.
Darkfall DID scam us. I hope they go broke because of it.
Our spirit was here long before you
Long before us
And long will it be after your pride brings you to your end
I remember all of those games on the list. SWG wasn't so much as a scam as simply a move to market the game to as wide a playerbase as possible, probably made by some management type who has never played a game and didn't really give a crap about it anyway.
Mourning....ohhh, how I remember Mourning. How the boards were alight with the fanbois crying out that the game wasn't a scam and everything was going to be fine....but even they fell silent under the sheer weight of the BS that simply poured from the developers' mouths. And their forums pretty much banned anyone who said anything negative about the game.
Dark and Light was one of the most anticipated games to come out, but fell under its own weight. I remember looking forward to it, feeling regret I didn't do the 'Settlers' program, then relief when word escaped about how bad the game really was.
Never got involved with the other two, thankfully.
Nothing will ever beat Age of Conan in terms of infuriating me. If Funcom did the Blizzard thing and released it when it was ready, it could have actually competed with WoW.
wow was no where near ready when it launched constant crashes zone crashes instance crashes on and on not to mention the damn grind im sick of grinds in mmo's to me that is the one that sets me off more then anything its the devs way of being lazy and the 2nd thing is to compare every thing to wow , the thing they got right is the natrual desire of humans to have the best thigns , and since you need the best gear to be the best you will grind away to the point of over playing and ignoring things in RL.
and another thing about blizzard being a lazy game company is thier expan packs TBC wow insteed of new classes they gave us all the same classes yay how lame is that , when we heard TBC was comeing with two new classes i was like ahh snaps they need to give the horde a death knight ( my idea was like a pally but less heals more evil) but wh3en we heard its just they gave us two new races that one could be a pally (horde) and shaman (ally) alot of us where very pist off since now there was nothing that seperated us as factions cookie cutter classes god i hate those
then WotLK came out and every one that has a 55 got a DK ( yes i played one too) they where fun as hell yes they pwned pve was soloing 5 player quests with ease , but thats as far as i could go no raid evey one of them had more then enough dks in them, so went back to the mains and there it was again be this generic version of every other mage or shamman with either all ice or resto since even if you where good at dps no one wanted you unless you where exactly how they say you should be
that i blame on the fact you have no control over basic stats other then getting gear, and the lack of creativity in the class trees once they went to a aoe kill pattern ( like found in DaoC stacking nukes and every class just about had one just like wow has now) you have to be ice since flame strike does nothing compared to a blizzard's DoT and arcane explosion sucks due to a world cooldown timer you cant get it to pop off as fast as ice would either , so your forced intoa class or play style you may not like.
now i hear about a new expack for wow and they are giving goblins to horde and some other race that i dont care about for ally , goblins have been used in every warcraft RTS , and when my friends where talking about wow i was like sweet i want to be a goblin.. no thay dont have those in , but so many years later and they now have the idea to put it in , ya no thanks im done i quit wow im sick on the wash rinse repete expan packs.
another poster wrote about asherons call that was my first mmo and i guess i was spoiled by turbine with there live update team that gave us new and exciting stuff to do on a monthly basis , sure there was alot of lvls gain in that game but it never flet like a grind, it felt like iw as working to something sinc ei was able to say what ,where and how much points i want to put into my stats , also the ammount of repeteable quests with reasonable timers on it
another poster wrote warhammer should be up thier, i played that and enjoyed it what killed it for me was the player base , to many wanted a wow game and when they got thier and found it nothing like wow they left , so there was hardly anyone to play with , i belive the killer of that game is the SC's they are done very poorly as in they give more xp then open RVR which is what i wanted the first two tiers was almost a joke to go and rvr in , since everyone and thier mom was in scenarios.
while yes some of the keep RVR dynamics where a joke and messed up to the point of exploitation it was still more fun then running a raid and waiting for your .5dkp to come from some ones gear that they won for some reason no matter how many raids i was in nothing i ever needed droped untill 4 to 5 weeks has passesd since i did get something, the keep drops was a nice change i felt i had a better chance, but then i won a few bags and got the same damn item over n over no dev had the thought of putting in a code line thats say if you have x item then these x items are avail from bag.
i have played ungodly ammounts of mmo's from closed to open betas to retail and what ive seen is a trend a trend of lazy devs doing as little as they can to make that 15$ a month from each player and throwing in the good stuff as a after thought but then its only one or two good things you pay another 40 bucks for in a expan pack, with the times we are going thru and money is getting tighter for some families when will the bigger companys stop gougeing the player base for jokes of expan packs that really only add a few things where are the free updates anymore
i didnt have to pay more then 15 bucks till AC:DM came out but that gave a lot more things to do and wasnt that costly
side note yes i have poor ghrammer and typing so to late flamers i dissed myself , and to those that can over look those small errors i hope my statements ring true to you as they do me
2nd side note To any game maker or dev that may read this stop the damn grinds ( some grind is enevatable ) that make us go insane and give us grey hair , give us a world open to explore and the freedom to enhance our chars they way we want to and not the cookie cutter molds that are far to rampant in games today
I agree. It's like watching someone build a house out of brick. The grind is the mortar they put between the bricks, not the bricks themselves. If you try and build a house out of that sandy/muddy grime, you end up with a pile of crap.
Just what you end up with with a generic MMO that doesn't take the time/expense to actually end up with a structure at the end.
But, while I agree that grinding sucks (at least when it is so insanely prevailent that you don't feel you can do anything else) I also feel you need a good balance. The reason for this is a lot more complicated than just a simple "it makes the game better."
You see, I think MMO companies have run to a trend of painting themselves into a corner over the last two decades.
The cost of developing an MMO is atrociously high. The reasons for this are vast, but you can sum it up to "No one wants to play games with UO-graphics on their $3000 computer anymore." Gamers who use computers are by and large (justifiably) spoiled on the visual effects. Gamers will NOT buy games in large amounts if those games look like they were developed on a 10 year old graphics engine.
This means that a WHOLE team of people needs to be hired just to finish textures and lighting, concept art, world art, world design (Not even geometry and functionality, just the way it LOOKS) ON TOP of the physics engine, combat engine, exerience gain/level system, bug response for ALL of that... AND customer service to help keep customers. We demand the best, but the best ain't cheap =
The unfortunate thing here is that we demand the best, but often developers will use this logic to excuse a complete lack of quality in their games. Vanguard is a fantastic example of this very thing.
Then there is also the problem of hiring droves of alpha/beta testers. For an MMO, the bigger the world/more complex the gameplay, the more PEOPLE you need to test the game. Sure, Mr. Random Developer who is writing the code and/or creating the concept art for the game MIGHT be able to test the game himself from time to time, but the problem is that his job, full time, is creating content, not finding or fixing bugs. Not to mention, everyone plays the game differently. A straight-laced dev isn't nessisarily going to pick up on bugs/exploits that a hardcore min/max full time MMO player would. So that's more money down the drain simply to make sure the game works.
On top of that, there is no way to distribute MMOs without spending an ungodly amount of cash. This isn't even making the game at this point, it is simply getting it to the customer. Valve's STEAM is a great platform to get games to consumers, but the problem is they are NOT very appealing to new/garage developers because of the cost for putting your game on sale on STEAM often means that you need to sell a LOT of your game to see much cash for your work. And most programmers didn't become programmers to be starving artists, so yeah, money is a driving force.
Which brings me to my point. The brick and mortar is what you are aiming for as a game company. Something that makes sense, something that lasts, and something that ultimately will make you money. Every game company's main motivation is to make a product, sell it, and get money for it. The successful games are those that have a fair amount of grind AND a fair amount of innovation. Not TOO MUCH of either. Developers NEED the grind because without it, they end up having to code new content every month. This means that their company cannot focus on other things, such as pleasing investors, keeping money flowing INTO the company, and developing future titles/expansions. So generic grinds are a neccessity if the industry right now. The thing the industry needs is incentive to be innovative AND consistent, and tools to be able to be both without falling into the trap of constantly raising the price tag on their game development.
The goal is, of course, to end up with less of a pile of crap (grindfest) and more of an actual structure (a fun game). Getting there isn't going to be easy at this point.
And yeah, that was a long winded reply =P
[Begin Sarcasm]
Girls don't use the internet unless theres a webcam involved....its a physical impossibility.
They also don't play them thar vidya gaymes, mmorpg = most men online role play girls...even in ventrillo.
Eve would be on my list. Amazing depth with boring gameplay. Like an alzheimer patient, I play it for two week trial, enjoy it for 4 days, then realize it doesn't get any better. $#$@ me, I want my damn space sim. Anyway, DAoC and the Trials of Atlantis expansion angered a lot of people. Mythic introduced asinine overpowered abilities with really boring and difficult hoops to jump through to get them. Screw that noise. Never been burned too bad by an MMO. Here's to hoping CO doesn't turn out to be a flop. I actually enjoy it, but I don't see any of the problems in it that any of the other games have. The only huge $#@$% fest was about the RMT, which only the uninformed seem to be clamouring over now. It's aestetic crap. Even City Of Whatever has them, instead of letting you buy ingame credits using your cash, they let you buy a serial key with a mini expansion. 10 bucks for a little extra crap?
And no one complains about that? Funny how doing the same thing a lot of companies already do, but calling it the "wrong" word, pisses off the nest. Fun article.
Your "uniformed" is ironic.
I missed Mourning, aptly titled though. Good read.
Why? The troubles with several of its ownership. Locking entire access to forums, double billing and much more. The up and downs of the promises of the content. From what i have read, the new, well old, ownership is doing a better job, but as infuriating goes for a long time I would have placed it in this list.
Why? The troubles with several of its ownership. Locking entire access to forums, double billing and much more. The up and downs of the promises of the content. From what i have read, the new, well old, ownership is doing a better job, but as infuriating goes for a long time I would have placed it in this list.
I still get emails from them now and again...it's like being contacted by the dead, it's creepy.
Earth and Beyond's debt system worked as such... You die, and lose, for example... 5000 of your total 10,000xp that you had total towards your next level. To gain that xp back, you could either : A. Go kill/quest to regain xp or B. Simply log off and it would regenerate back the xp you lost over time.
This was an awesome concept for me... because back in the days of early Everquest, you could play for 5 hours grinding to get a few bars of xp, and lose it all with a failed pull, bad spawn, linkdead cleric... ect. You could actually DELEVEL if you lost enough XP, especially if your corpse was in a bad location, people ragequit before they could get your corpse, ect... Basically it allowed you to feel like you weren't being punished, but let you log off and take some time off without the obligation to grind so much.
I loved that about EQ. Sometimes is sucked, but it is the only PvE game that ever gave me that rush. Even after death lost most meaning like in other MMOs, I still got a bit of a rush when things took a bad turn. Of course that was then and this is now and I don't think I will ever have the time or the drive to go through all that again.
I Agree with ya all the way. They laid something on the line. So you really did have something to lose. Motor City Online we got to Race for our Money or Even Pink Slips. Motor City Online Was the biggest Rush of all.
Right, under normal circumstances that would be "thrilling". Again in the early days of EQ... it was rough, but it made for decent players (for the most part) and people who Knew Their Role. Seldom were there people playing their classes that were horrible beyond 15-20. Once people hit Crushbone/Unrest it was the make or break training session there for everyone. There was no soloing after that. So after spending 5 minutes to half an hour advertising your level and class, you get into a group. You find a place to camp spawns at. Everyone learns about other peoples classes and their roles. Healing and damage mitigation, mezzes and when not to break them, what OOM medding meant... ect. THOSE were good times... that was fun.
Now when you have all that down to a science, but you now spend up to 1 hour looking for a party at Solsek A/B or Upper/Lower Guk, and are competing with guilds camping specific spawns to grab their "phat lewt" items because there was NO SUCH THING as instanced zones... and if they didn't want anyone near them then they would "Train" a bunch of mobs to you and usually have their monk Feign Death at your feet with the entire zone looking at you. That got old... quick...
All I wanted to do was play a game, not feel like I was going to work everytime I saw"
"Pain and Suffering tries to strike you, but misses!"
"Loading, please wait..."
Now Ultima Online on release was "a rush". popped my MMO cherry. My first encounter with a griefing guild, and open PvP.
Shadowbane was a massive rush. Flaws yes, but as far as adrenaline factor I got to experience watching over my shoulder while leveling, making war with other guilds, being beaten down by other factions, and even betraying my own Guild Master and killing him because the coward wouldn't defend our town against impossible odds.
But I regress... the original point was E&B had the best XP debt system... period.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Shouldnt the Title of the Column/Thread be " Five Infuriating MMO COMPANIES"?
Its not really the Games that are infuriating, but the Companies that made them.
SoE tops my list as most infuriating game company, followed by Mythic, Funcom and Aventurine. Ill never again play a game created by those companies.
Should also follow this up with a Column "5 Most Hated Devs/Producers"
My List- John Smedley, David Bowman, Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs, Tasos Flambouras
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Comments
I agree AC2 should definitely make this list for releasing an expansion just before closing up shop.
SOE offered refunds for Trials of Obi-Wan for pushing the NGE in shortly after Trials was released. AFTER there was a major uproar.
I'm surprised by this as well David Bowman was literally ran out of the Industry on a rail, but he has always gotten a pass in the media....even when he was hiding under his desk after the launch of Horizons news sites refused to call him out on it.
Mind Boggling
Bowman was a VERY smooth operator. He is the type that could be charming as hell, while slipping a dagger in to your back. Dave Allen(original developer of Horizons) learned that the hard way. Most of the news sites only ever saw his charming side. He was also a master of spin, self promotion and propaganda. If you track his history back, you will see that Horizons is far from the first game he managed to run in to the ground.
interesting bit about Dark and Light, is that the french company behind it screwed over and ripped a world system that wasnt theirs. The cause and effect was that this low blow and criminal behavior caused them to have to quickly change the code of the game, thus causing the entire product just to fail even more than it did before while at the same time dealing with the many lawsuits filed against them. They deserved it.
Earth and Beyond
Fond memories.
I have to admit that Dark and Light had my attention. I deeply wanted it to be a good game, but when SoG began, I began to see the writing on the wall. And I wept. But SOE is still the greatest company with regards to the utter disregard for the playerbase. And somehow, people continue to play their games. It is not only SWG, and I do not have any love for Science Fiction games, so I was not fortunate enough to enjoy that bit of evil. It is every game they have ever been in charge of. Vanguard had the potential to be a great game, I think, but they sadly did not have enough capital to complete their game. As a result, they had to let it go. SOE snatched it up like some leviathan taking beautiful things into its gaping maw, rending it into something unrecognizable and spitting it out, laughing at the terrified denizens of the world. I shudder at each announcement they give.
I think you should do a company-based thing like this. I am sure many people would be interested to read something about the five most hated game companies. Perhaps not even hate, but rather the most feared for their terrible decision making.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
SoE got as screwed on Vanguard as the players. Brad sold SoE a sob story and they bought it.
LOL I havent played SOE online games since leaving EQ2 years back. I turn and look the other way to pretty much anything SOE is involved in these days. At least I can say they arn't getting money out of my pockets. :-)
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
I agree with SWG and D&L. They shouldve put Darkfall in there.
Played : WOW, LOTRO, COH/COV, EQ2, SWG, and WAR.
Playing EVE Online and AOC.
Wtg for SW:TOR and WOD
I understand the point of this piece and agree with it. Darkfall should have definitely been on the list as it was followed for 8 years and mislead, and as some would say "lied" to their loyal fan-base with such a lack of content that was hyped that the only way to describe the uptake of this game is in the context of it being a "lawn-dart"; it did infuriate most as well.
For a more modern touch I could definitely see AoC on that list. Probably the worst out of the 'next gen' MMOs.
It had it all - Constant crashes, broken promises (DX10, functioning siege combat, etc on release) dodgy overbilling, Erling Ellingsen, the boards were rife with pissed off customers, half-assed product after Tortage and a ton of bugs and exploits like the infamous gem exploit. Have I missed anything?
Despite that it was still a functioning product and it had its moments. I guess the same can't be said of most of those on the list.
O_o o_O
While Darkfall and Aoc (and Warhammer and others) had missing features that pissed off people post launch, they all did launch fairly successfully and are still running. They didn't intentionally scam people, just failed to live up to the (mostly user generated) hype surrounding their betas.
Same here I had never heard of the other 3 and apparently that was a good thing. But given that I tried to preorder exactly 1 mmo and canceled the preorder before it was charged, it seems I would of been spared by them.
I think this article highlights that point better then any other. Do not preorder a game! You never know what the result will be.
Where is Dark Horizons Istaria on this list? The words "scam" and "crap" come to mind when I think of what happened towards the end.
Where is that Roman game, where they took all these pre-orders, and in the end the game look like a 6th grader made it on his Apple IIe? I can't even remeber the name it is so bad.
Hellscape wasn't a traditional MMO, but c'mon. That was bad.
Vaporware? Outright Lies? most mmos have them. I agree SWG belongs on the list, but also somewhere the above more so than some of what OP included.
That was a pretty good list and an amusing article, but I think I would have put SWG a little higher because some of those other games made people mad at the time, but the SWG mess is a fire that doesn't show any sign of going out, and every time SOE does... well, ANYTHING... it fans the flames all over again.
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
i started testing a lot of games years ago, really liked beta testing but the crap that most of us saw the last years and stuff that never came out, a list iof five is not enough hehe
horizons i remember all to well, lots of promises no content
face of mankind ....
dark and light
there were a few others as well but forgot
now i remember again IRTH Online
"One day all will die, surely you but never I." Wheel of Time
I pre-ordered Mourning - it had so much promise... beautiful landscape, perma-death and lineage, open pvp, RTS elements for battle leaders, etc.
What arrived was a burned CD (although it did have a nice litscribed graphic on the front). The only time I ever managed to get into the game, my character couldn't move or turn, and all I could see was a speck of light in the middle of the screen. I can only assume I was in a tunnel.
I'm still sad thinking about how good that game could have been.
Oh, if anyone is interested, some company is still trying to sell Mourning's engine. http://www.abyssalengine.com/
wow was no where near ready when it launched constant crashes zone crashes instance crashes on and on not to mention the damn grind im sick of grinds in mmo's to me that is the one that sets me off more then anything its the devs way of being lazy and the 2nd thing is to compare every thing to wow , the thing they got right is the natrual desire of humans to have the best thigns , and since you need the best gear to be the best you will grind away to the point of over playing and ignoring things in RL.
and another thing about blizzard being a lazy game company is thier expan packs TBC wow insteed of new classes they gave us all the same classes yay how lame is that , when we heard TBC was comeing with two new classes i was like ahh snaps they need to give the horde a death knight ( my idea was like a pally but less heals more evil) but wh3en we heard its just they gave us two new races that one could be a pally (horde) and shaman (ally) alot of us where very pist off since now there was nothing that seperated us as factions cookie cutter classes god i hate those
then WotLK came out and every one that has a 55 got a DK ( yes i played one too) they where fun as hell yes they pwned pve was soloing 5 player quests with ease , but thats as far as i could go no raid evey one of them had more then enough dks in them, so went back to the mains and there it was again be this generic version of every other mage or shamman with either all ice or resto since even if you where good at dps no one wanted you unless you where exactly how they say you should be
that i blame on the fact you have no control over basic stats other then getting gear, and the lack of creativity in the class trees once they went to a aoe kill pattern ( like found in DaoC stacking nukes and every class just about had one just like wow has now) you have to be ice since flame strike does nothing compared to a blizzard's DoT and arcane explosion sucks due to a world cooldown timer you cant get it to pop off as fast as ice would either , so your forced intoa class or play style you may not like.
now i hear about a new expack for wow and they are giving goblins to horde and some other race that i dont care about for ally , goblins have been used in every warcraft RTS , and when my friends where talking about wow i was like sweet i want to be a goblin.. no thay dont have those in , but so many years later and they now have the idea to put it in , ya no thanks im done i quit wow im sick on the wash rinse repete expan packs.
another poster wrote about asherons call that was my first mmo and i guess i was spoiled by turbine with there live update team that gave us new and exciting stuff to do on a monthly basis , sure there was alot of lvls gain in that game but it never flet like a grind, it felt like iw as working to something sinc ei was able to say what ,where and how much points i want to put into my stats , also the ammount of repeteable quests with reasonable timers on it
another poster wrote warhammer should be up thier, i played that and enjoyed it what killed it for me was the player base , to many wanted a wow game and when they got thier and found it nothing like wow they left , so there was hardly anyone to play with , i belive the killer of that game is the SC's they are done very poorly as in they give more xp then open RVR which is what i wanted the first two tiers was almost a joke to go and rvr in , since everyone and thier mom was in scenarios.
while yes some of the keep RVR dynamics where a joke and messed up to the point of exploitation it was still more fun then running a raid and waiting for your .5dkp to come from some ones gear that they won for some reason no matter how many raids i was in nothing i ever needed droped untill 4 to 5 weeks has passesd since i did get something, the keep drops was a nice change i felt i had a better chance, but then i won a few bags and got the same damn item over n over no dev had the thought of putting in a code line thats say if you have x item then these x items are avail from bag.
i have played ungodly ammounts of mmo's from closed to open betas to retail and what ive seen is a trend a trend of lazy devs doing as little as they can to make that 15$ a month from each player and throwing in the good stuff as a after thought but then its only one or two good things you pay another 40 bucks for in a expan pack, with the times we are going thru and money is getting tighter for some families when will the bigger companys stop gougeing the player base for jokes of expan packs that really only add a few things where are the free updates anymore
i didnt have to pay more then 15 bucks till AC:DM came out but that gave a lot more things to do and wasnt that costly
side note yes i have poor ghrammer and typing so to late flamers i dissed myself , and to those that can over look those small errors i hope my statements ring true to you as they do me
2nd side note To any game maker or dev that may read this stop the damn grinds ( some grind is enevatable ) that make us go insane and give us grey hair , give us a world open to explore and the freedom to enhance our chars they way we want to and not the cookie cutter molds that are far to rampant in games today
As for Darkfall this would be #1 on my list. They 'invited' NA players to play on the EU server until NA server launched, and they stated that our purchase of the client allowed for one character per server. Shortly before the NA launch they renigged on that statement, announced that NA server would have a different client that we would have to shell out another $50 bucks for, and switched their wording to one character per client.
Darkfall DID scam us. I hope they go broke because of it.
Our spirit was here long before you
Long before us
And long will it be after your pride brings you to your end
I remember all of those games on the list. SWG wasn't so much as a scam as simply a move to market the game to as wide a playerbase as possible, probably made by some management type who has never played a game and didn't really give a crap about it anyway.
Mourning....ohhh, how I remember Mourning. How the boards were alight with the fanbois crying out that the game wasn't a scam and everything was going to be fine....but even they fell silent under the sheer weight of the BS that simply poured from the developers' mouths. And their forums pretty much banned anyone who said anything negative about the game.
Dark and Light was one of the most anticipated games to come out, but fell under its own weight. I remember looking forward to it, feeling regret I didn't do the 'Settlers' program, then relief when word escaped about how bad the game really was.
Never got involved with the other two, thankfully.
wow was no where near ready when it launched constant crashes zone crashes instance crashes on and on not to mention the damn grind im sick of grinds in mmo's to me that is the one that sets me off more then anything its the devs way of being lazy and the 2nd thing is to compare every thing to wow , the thing they got right is the natrual desire of humans to have the best thigns , and since you need the best gear to be the best you will grind away to the point of over playing and ignoring things in RL.
and another thing about blizzard being a lazy game company is thier expan packs TBC wow insteed of new classes they gave us all the same classes yay how lame is that , when we heard TBC was comeing with two new classes i was like ahh snaps they need to give the horde a death knight ( my idea was like a pally but less heals more evil) but wh3en we heard its just they gave us two new races that one could be a pally (horde) and shaman (ally) alot of us where very pist off since now there was nothing that seperated us as factions cookie cutter classes god i hate those
then WotLK came out and every one that has a 55 got a DK ( yes i played one too) they where fun as hell yes they pwned pve was soloing 5 player quests with ease , but thats as far as i could go no raid evey one of them had more then enough dks in them, so went back to the mains and there it was again be this generic version of every other mage or shamman with either all ice or resto since even if you where good at dps no one wanted you unless you where exactly how they say you should be
that i blame on the fact you have no control over basic stats other then getting gear, and the lack of creativity in the class trees once they went to a aoe kill pattern ( like found in DaoC stacking nukes and every class just about had one just like wow has now) you have to be ice since flame strike does nothing compared to a blizzard's DoT and arcane explosion sucks due to a world cooldown timer you cant get it to pop off as fast as ice would either , so your forced intoa class or play style you may not like.
now i hear about a new expack for wow and they are giving goblins to horde and some other race that i dont care about for ally , goblins have been used in every warcraft RTS , and when my friends where talking about wow i was like sweet i want to be a goblin.. no thay dont have those in , but so many years later and they now have the idea to put it in , ya no thanks im done i quit wow im sick on the wash rinse repete expan packs.
another poster wrote about asherons call that was my first mmo and i guess i was spoiled by turbine with there live update team that gave us new and exciting stuff to do on a monthly basis , sure there was alot of lvls gain in that game but it never flet like a grind, it felt like iw as working to something sinc ei was able to say what ,where and how much points i want to put into my stats , also the ammount of repeteable quests with reasonable timers on it
another poster wrote warhammer should be up thier, i played that and enjoyed it what killed it for me was the player base , to many wanted a wow game and when they got thier and found it nothing like wow they left , so there was hardly anyone to play with , i belive the killer of that game is the SC's they are done very poorly as in they give more xp then open RVR which is what i wanted the first two tiers was almost a joke to go and rvr in , since everyone and thier mom was in scenarios.
while yes some of the keep RVR dynamics where a joke and messed up to the point of exploitation it was still more fun then running a raid and waiting for your .5dkp to come from some ones gear that they won for some reason no matter how many raids i was in nothing i ever needed droped untill 4 to 5 weeks has passesd since i did get something, the keep drops was a nice change i felt i had a better chance, but then i won a few bags and got the same damn item over n over no dev had the thought of putting in a code line thats say if you have x item then these x items are avail from bag.
i have played ungodly ammounts of mmo's from closed to open betas to retail and what ive seen is a trend a trend of lazy devs doing as little as they can to make that 15$ a month from each player and throwing in the good stuff as a after thought but then its only one or two good things you pay another 40 bucks for in a expan pack, with the times we are going thru and money is getting tighter for some families when will the bigger companys stop gougeing the player base for jokes of expan packs that really only add a few things where are the free updates anymore
i didnt have to pay more then 15 bucks till AC:DM came out but that gave a lot more things to do and wasnt that costly
side note yes i have poor ghrammer and typing so to late flamers i dissed myself , and to those that can over look those small errors i hope my statements ring true to you as they do me
2nd side note To any game maker or dev that may read this stop the damn grinds ( some grind is enevatable ) that make us go insane and give us grey hair , give us a world open to explore and the freedom to enhance our chars they way we want to and not the cookie cutter molds that are far to rampant in games today
I agree. It's like watching someone build a house out of brick. The grind is the mortar they put between the bricks, not the bricks themselves. If you try and build a house out of that sandy/muddy grime, you end up with a pile of crap.
Just what you end up with with a generic MMO that doesn't take the time/expense to actually end up with a structure at the end.
But, while I agree that grinding sucks (at least when it is so insanely prevailent that you don't feel you can do anything else) I also feel you need a good balance. The reason for this is a lot more complicated than just a simple "it makes the game better."
You see, I think MMO companies have run to a trend of painting themselves into a corner over the last two decades.
The cost of developing an MMO is atrociously high. The reasons for this are vast, but you can sum it up to "No one wants to play games with UO-graphics on their $3000 computer anymore." Gamers who use computers are by and large (justifiably) spoiled on the visual effects. Gamers will NOT buy games in large amounts if those games look like they were developed on a 10 year old graphics engine.
This means that a WHOLE team of people needs to be hired just to finish textures and lighting, concept art, world art, world design (Not even geometry and functionality, just the way it LOOKS) ON TOP of the physics engine, combat engine, exerience gain/level system, bug response for ALL of that... AND customer service to help keep customers. We demand the best, but the best ain't cheap =
The unfortunate thing here is that we demand the best, but often developers will use this logic to excuse a complete lack of quality in their games. Vanguard is a fantastic example of this very thing.
Then there is also the problem of hiring droves of alpha/beta testers. For an MMO, the bigger the world/more complex the gameplay, the more PEOPLE you need to test the game. Sure, Mr. Random Developer who is writing the code and/or creating the concept art for the game MIGHT be able to test the game himself from time to time, but the problem is that his job, full time, is creating content, not finding or fixing bugs. Not to mention, everyone plays the game differently. A straight-laced dev isn't nessisarily going to pick up on bugs/exploits that a hardcore min/max full time MMO player would. So that's more money down the drain simply to make sure the game works.
On top of that, there is no way to distribute MMOs without spending an ungodly amount of cash. This isn't even making the game at this point, it is simply getting it to the customer. Valve's STEAM is a great platform to get games to consumers, but the problem is they are NOT very appealing to new/garage developers because of the cost for putting your game on sale on STEAM often means that you need to sell a LOT of your game to see much cash for your work. And most programmers didn't become programmers to be starving artists, so yeah, money is a driving force.
Which brings me to my point. The brick and mortar is what you are aiming for as a game company. Something that makes sense, something that lasts, and something that ultimately will make you money. Every game company's main motivation is to make a product, sell it, and get money for it. The successful games are those that have a fair amount of grind AND a fair amount of innovation. Not TOO MUCH of either. Developers NEED the grind because without it, they end up having to code new content every month. This means that their company cannot focus on other things, such as pleasing investors, keeping money flowing INTO the company, and developing future titles/expansions. So generic grinds are a neccessity if the industry right now. The thing the industry needs is incentive to be innovative AND consistent, and tools to be able to be both without falling into the trap of constantly raising the price tag on their game development.
The goal is, of course, to end up with less of a pile of crap (grindfest) and more of an actual structure (a fun game). Getting there isn't going to be easy at this point.
And yeah, that was a long winded reply =P
[Begin Sarcasm]
Girls don't use the internet unless theres a webcam involved....its a physical impossibility.
They also don't play them thar vidya gaymes, mmorpg = most men online role play girls...even in ventrillo.
-kyte317
Your "uniformed" is ironic.
I missed Mourning, aptly titled though. Good read.
I would have added Horizons to that list.
Why? The troubles with several of its ownership. Locking entire access to forums, double billing and much more. The up and downs of the promises of the content. From what i have read, the new, well old, ownership is doing a better job, but as infuriating goes for a long time I would have placed it in this list.
I still get emails from them now and again...it's like being contacted by the dead, it's creepy.
I loved that about EQ. Sometimes is sucked, but it is the only PvE game that ever gave me that rush. Even after death lost most meaning like in other MMOs, I still got a bit of a rush when things took a bad turn. Of course that was then and this is now and I don't think I will ever have the time or the drive to go through all that again.
I Agree with ya all the way. They laid something on the line. So you really did have something to lose. Motor City Online we got to Race for our Money or Even Pink Slips. Motor City Online Was the biggest Rush of all.
Right, under normal circumstances that would be "thrilling". Again in the early days of EQ... it was rough, but it made for decent players (for the most part) and people who Knew Their Role. Seldom were there people playing their classes that were horrible beyond 15-20. Once people hit Crushbone/Unrest it was the make or break training session there for everyone. There was no soloing after that. So after spending 5 minutes to half an hour advertising your level and class, you get into a group. You find a place to camp spawns at. Everyone learns about other peoples classes and their roles. Healing and damage mitigation, mezzes and when not to break them, what OOM medding meant... ect. THOSE were good times... that was fun.
Now when you have all that down to a science, but you now spend up to 1 hour looking for a party at Solsek A/B or Upper/Lower Guk, and are competing with guilds camping specific spawns to grab their "phat lewt" items because there was NO SUCH THING as instanced zones... and if they didn't want anyone near them then they would "Train" a bunch of mobs to you and usually have their monk Feign Death at your feet with the entire zone looking at you. That got old... quick...
All I wanted to do was play a game, not feel like I was going to work everytime I saw"
"Pain and Suffering tries to strike you, but misses!"
"Loading, please wait..."
Now Ultima Online on release was "a rush". popped my MMO cherry. My first encounter with a griefing guild, and open PvP.
Shadowbane was a massive rush. Flaws yes, but as far as adrenaline factor I got to experience watching over my shoulder while leveling, making war with other guilds, being beaten down by other factions, and even betraying my own Guild Master and killing him because the coward wouldn't defend our town against impossible odds.
But I regress... the original point was E&B had the best XP debt system... period.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Shouldnt the Title of the Column/Thread be " Five Infuriating MMO COMPANIES"?
Its not really the Games that are infuriating, but the Companies that made them.
SoE tops my list as most infuriating game company, followed by Mythic, Funcom and Aventurine. Ill never again play a game created by those companies.
Should also follow this up with a Column "5 Most Hated Devs/Producers"
My List- John Smedley, David Bowman, Brad McQuaid, Mark Jacobs, Tasos Flambouras
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)