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What actually clarifies a bad launch.
anjealous82
Member UncommonPosts: 123
I here the wors a lot, but particularlly. I hear these two phrases. This game is a WoW (World of Warcraft) clone. Or the this game had a bad launch. Let me ask this, did WoW have such a spectacular launch. Did it have end game content. What exactly is end game content for an mmo anyhow. From my stand point their isn't an end to an mmo. The game goes on until they shut it down. I think people just go in expecting way to much. I don't go in expecting anything. I guess thats my only problem. Their is one thing I expect that mmo have constantly failed to deliver on. Action and lots of it to be frank. I want to piledrive someone into the asphault and destroy the area depending on how unfocused my power is. I want make a character that starts out neutral and can go either way. I want to be able make my charcter from a mountain and not a slab of precut marble like The Secret World gives me Dozens of skill options with unlimited combination.
So what makes a game have a bad launch. I'd say the player from a skewed view. They can't just accept the game, without seeing World of Warcraft in it. But to be honest, isn't WoW itself a clone or am I wrong. Is'nt Darksiders a clone of Legend of Zelda and Prince of Persia. My point is, that their are some game that are clone of other games. So why can't we just enjoy that game without it being compared to previous games.
Comments
In recent years MMOs have launched MUCH smoother than WOW did.
Myself and many others were unable to play WOW for several days after launch. I had many install issues coupled with long queue times to enter the server.
I remember laughing a lot at this little graphic someone made back at launch. pretty much sums up what most of us did WOW's first week.
http://www.leagueofpirates.com/sirvival/queuedance.html
(still, launch problems and all, the game was obviously objectively a good game)
A bad launch...the servers spend more time down than up in the first week. Sure it's subjective but some mmos just start up and run with few problems and some are so bad you can't even play the first week. Somewhere in between there is the line.
End game content is content you need to be max lvl for. Raids, lvl restricted pvp ect are what most consider end game content. It's basicly what you do in a theampark once the ride is over.
and your last point...some people are just negative. They look for the bad in everything and never realize how poisonis that is to their fun.
Compared with the crippling technical issues of games like Anarchy Online, modern MMORPGs rarely have bad launches. AO was the worst of them, but certainly there was a period where most new MMORPGs had pretty shaky technical issues and even WOW had some.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I didn't play WoW until Burning Crusade came out. Plus it was another one or two years after launch of BC when I started playing WoW. I'm looking to getting into game developing myself. I just need to do five years of college. Which I dont want to waste my time on, but I guess I have no choice. Back on subject, I guess I missed out on the bad launches in the early years of mmos. That doesnt mean, I have played a bad mmo. To me they aren't bad just too stiff. I want to get in a mmo where I unleash a full ass whoopin on some peons and give the boss a high heel to nuts ration stomping. That mean fully doing away with traditional mmo. Make the ground work mechanics all about action, but make the supports rpg. Todays mmos feel the oppsite to me. Rpg ground mechanics with action as the support. DC universe would be a good example. I wish I had the money. I would buy out crytic and rework Champions while adding more comicbook content.
Having an eight-year-old launch quality is like eight-year-old graphics quality. Expectations have risen since then.
As for me, if I have the green light to log in, I expect to be able to log in.
I know that having half your customers trying to log in simultaneously is an impossible situation, I feel bad for the poor IT people racing around giving the hamsters CPR and I'm not going to rant and rage on the boards about it. But at the same time, if you hype a launch event beyond your ability to deliver, I don't have to be forgiving.
The two thing that make a bad launch for me:
1. The game is obviously incomplete (launched before it was finished)
2. You cant log in on the first day (Diablo 3 error 37) now having cruddy performance while in the game on the first day is fine by me seeing it just launched and all but not being able to log in there no excuse for.
On this site?
Well, you not liking the game basically. If you dont like the game, your typically sitting there looking for an excuse. Launch tends to bring about lots of reasons to leave a game, especially when you dont like it.
Reality is, a bad launch means significant downtime or the realization that the game is incomplete.
If the game is finished, and the servers stay on though it all, its a good launch.
Having poor performance the first day, not a bad launch. Well unless the game is really unpopular and only a few are playing.
When you get these mega hype launches, first day is going to have issues, theres no way to shake it. I give a mega launch 3 days of grace before i call it a rough launch. Wont call it a bad launch unless the servers are down a majority of the time.
In fact, if your the type who hates bad launches, its quite shocking to see so many people with a super high sensitivity to bad launches trying to log in the second the servers go live.
More than a few large launches i just logged in 3 days or a week later. All those issues go away with a few days of time. Truth is your not really even behind either since the areas are usually bottle necked and choked with players.
Bad Launch -- See Simcity(2013)
A bad launch for the players is when there is a higher than normally acceptable poor experience during launch.
This happens a lot.
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.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
One word: Earthrise
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise_(video_game)
This one had to be the worst in MMO history, from birth to abortion.
Anarchy Online begs to differ.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Can we please use the word certifies or qualifies instead of clarifies >.<
OK, that didn't really matter, but yeah, I got what you ment.
Anyway, I think the issue is that there already is great product out there and players measure their options against what's already available, not how well an MMO does in context of how good MMOs typically do when they launch.
WoW didn't come out in a golden age of MMOs, the market was very niche back than, dungeon crawlers were more popular at the time probably. If we really want to put it in perspective, how much did WoW have to go on when they came out?
None the less, new games come out and players who already have a generation of successful MMOs to compare to have higher standards. It's the same with games across the board. And while we'd all like to be optomists, we've seen what bad launches do to many MMOs, the burden of investment and lasting impressions cause games to fold before they can improve.
Without disputing whether it's fair, appropriate, or even rational, if the game isn't quickly acknowledged and making money rather quickly, it is probably a bad launch and will have problems...
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
I don't think you can brush a game as a badly made or launched game because it doesn't make money.
A bad launch has to mean that the game doesn't work right at launch. Not being able to download patches in a reasonable time, servers down, character creation screen down would be up front signs of a bad launch. In-game signs would be crashes to the desktop, unplayable lag, skills that don't work at all, zones that crash or aren't available, holes in the game that you fall through and become trapped.
I've seen all these things and they're what I consider to be bad launches.
A bad game is a bad game regardless of the launch. A bad launch might or might not be a good game eventually, but has problems that cause customers to quit without trying the game because of something unintentionally going wrong at the start.
Asdar
SWG's launch was worse. People logged in created characters started playing and then everything starting going missing, so they shut down all the servers wiped all the characters and relaunched 2 days later.
'Sandbox MMO' is a PTSD trigger word for anyone who has the experience to know that anonymous players invariably use a 'sandbox' in the same manner a housecat does.
When your head is stuck in the sand, your ass becomes the only recognizable part of you.
No game is more fun than the one you can't play, and no game is more boring than one which you've become familiar.
How to become a millionaire:
Start with a billion dollars and make an MMO.
I think when most people generally used the term "Bad Launch" is that the game wasn't developed long term enough and has less than three months of actual content. MMOs have been around for quite a while now and one thing developers seem to overlook is that several people will blast through the leveling portion of the game as quickly as possible. The truly hardcore players can clear all of a game's content within a month and be done with the game, while the developer is probably 2-3 months away after launch from introducing new content.
Game developers have to put in long term goals that people want to participate in to keep them playing, else they'll turn into basically every MMO released since Rift - a game people play for a couple months and hop to the next one ad infinitum.
I personally want a game that'll keep my attention for YEARS not MONTHs.
@asdar
Your probably more accurate, sometimes a launch can be bad enough to sink a game though, malfunctions that last too long can set the impression of the games quality before its even had a chance.
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, if they get angry, they'll be a mile away... and barefoot.
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.
Simple: Did something stand in the way of playing the game as it was designed to be played? Servers down? Can't register? Can't log in? Can't get your hands on the game? Lag unbearable? That's a bad launch.
A bad game is something entirely different.
Anarchy Online is not even close, lol
Anarchy Online has to go through WarZ in terms of badness before it can even be considered worst.
Plus AO was never aborted (it is still going).
WarZ
Constitutes is probably what he wanted.
i'll echo all the statements of downed servers and an obviously unfinished or rushed game state from above, and add the lack of content after your levelling process that seems to have tripped up a few games recently. If your goal is to retain a good percentage of players and you don't release with enough content to keep them going for at least a month, then you didn't launch well.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.