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Are you guys serious?
Drahx
Member Posts: 84
Read this for a reality check.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/31/the-perfect-ten-worst-mmo-launches-of-all-time/
Even the "great all mighty" WoW made the list...
*ESO is still in the "Early Access/Final beta" phase and doing better than these*
1. Anarchy Online
I'm putting this at the top of the list because I knew if I didn't, you'd ignore whatever was here and scroll down to look for Funcom's maiden MMO.
Let's put it this way: Anything that could have gone wrong -- up to demonic possession and the apocalypse -- went wrong when Anarchy Online went live in 2001. Billing and account registration was a nightmare, the game was inaccessible to many, lag and latency was through the roof, and the MMO as a whole was pretty much unplayable. Yours truly was on the scene during that time, and I have to say that the slideshow that was Rubi-Ka did not impress me enough to stay. Years later, I wrote an articlesumming up the timeline of this launch, if you're so interested in revisiting the nightmare.
It's perhaps most damning that even now, in 2012, we still refer to AO's launch if we want to epitomize the worst way to roll a product out the door.
2. World of Warcraft
Time -- and raging worldwide success -- has a funny way of erasing the blemishes of one of the worst launches in the industry. Like many other titles on this list, the studio responsible simply underestimated the player demand for its product. In this case, the studio was Blizzard and the product was World of Warcraft.
Blizzard may have claimed ignorance, but the insane amount of interest in WoW's beta should've given the team a heads-up that a tsunami was incoming. Whether they should've seen it coming or not, WoWlaunched with far fewer servers than was needed, and huge chunks of subscribers could not log in or else faced lengthy queues. What's worse is that the problem persisted for weeks and months, resulting in a mea culpa by Blizzard's president and free game time given out to antsy players.
This isn't even to mention the game's several bugs, including the infamous "stuck in looting position" glitch that left characters crouched on the ground for several minutes at a time.
3. Vanguard
Vanguard's saga of launch is split between two sorry tales. The first is the story of its development process, which went from the heights of hubris and capital-V Vision to the depths of layoffs and financial woes. Passed along from publisher to publisher, Vanguard quickly became known as an industry albatross. With most of its developers fired in a parking lot one Monday afternoon, Vanguard lacked a core team to help bring it home -- and oh it showed.
SOE shoved the game out of the door without mercy before it was finished, and Vanguard's launch went down in history as an abomination unto mankind. Missing features, legions of bugs, and insanely high computer hardware demands repelled players away by the thousands. It also didn't help matters that the title was sandwiched between World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade's launch and Lord of the Rings Online's release.
4. All Points Bulletin
All Points Bulletin put out a hit on its own maker when it went to launch. You probably don't want to hear "buggy" again on this list, but the thesaurus isn't helping me out and buggy this was. Even worse, APBsuffered from nasty exploits that cut the legs out from under this PvP title and drove away potential new fans.
In short, it was so bad that within weeks, Realtime Worlds went belly-up for real. Strangely enough, the title itself was saved by GamersFirst, which swooped in and saved it from eternal death.
5. Final Fantasy XIV
You know it's bad when a studio doesn't want to take your money for a subscription game after the first month. But such was the odd case of Square-Enix and Final Fantasy XIV. Unlike some of the other bad MMO launches, FFXIV didn't show problems of excessive queues, billing issues (apart from a bizarre method of payment), or crashes. Instead, the game was quickly pronounced DOA by players and critics who were stunned by the lack of content, the copy-and-paste world, and the obtuse method of interacting with the game.
Facing the imminent collapse of a major entry in its tentpole franchise, Square-Enix replaced several members of the dev team and announced that it would not be charging subscriptions until the game was fixed. Well over a year later, the studio felt confident enough in its shored-up product to charge for it, although players are still waiting for FFXIV's version 2.0 release as a second attempt to do this right.
6. Star Wars Galaxies
While The Old Republic haters were on hand to point out any failing of SWTOR's release, the truth is thatBioWare fared far, far better than what happened to SOE's own Star Wars MMO in 2003. Star Wars Galaxies was the hot ticket of the year, and players jammed the tubes trying to get in on day one. Unfortunately, the game was riddled with bugs, the servers were often unresponsive, and many players simply could not log in due to an overwhelmed account center. Add on top of that the absence of the promised space combat aspect of the game and a major release date delay, and patience was tested on the highest levels of geekdom.
7. Age of Conan
Plenty of people were watching Age of Conan closely in the early days of 2008, wary of another "Failcom" launch. While the game got great initial press and hype, few realized that the studio had simply front-loaded the quality content to make a good impression. Shortly after launch, players who surpassed level 20 found themselves in a completely different game bereft of things to do and experience.
Blue screens of death were reported and PvP was a complete joke. "Incomplete" was one of the nicer labels thrown at the game in following its birth, and it was a while before life got better in Hyboria.
8. World War II Online
Most people forget about World War II Online (now Battleground Europe) when compiling "worst MMO launch" lists, probably because it is such a forgettable title. But I'd be remiss not to include it, because just about nothing of this game worked the way it should've when it opened its doors in 2001.
Players found themselves struggling with a bug-infested snoozefest of a war, as they crossed endless landscapes looking for even a single other player to fight. It got so bad that the developer made the game free-to-play for several months while hotfixing the title, but to good end; Playnet ultimately had to file for bankruptcy to stay afloat.
9. Allods Online
Here's probably one of the strangest titles on this list, if for nothing else than people were absolutely bananas about Allods Online in beta. It played smoothly, it had a World of Warcraft aesthetic that people liked, and it tickled people's fun centers. All that changed the moment it went into open beta (which for the purposes of this list was essentially the launch of the game) and gPotato revealed the horrendous cash shop. Players were being charged through the nose for basic items like bag space, and the game would levy an intense death penalty on you that could only be erased with real money or a very long wait.
It was amazing how quickly public sentiment turned against Allods, tarnishing the game's reputation for good. Allods became a cautionary tale of how a bad business model could taint an otherwise great game.
10. Aion
While life in Aion Town is chugging along quite nicely from what I hear, its launch day was a chaotic mess that rivaled the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios. Thousands of people attempted to go through the door at the same moment, and servers quickly went from "full" to "post-Thanksgiving dinner stuffed" to "please stop, guys, you're crushing our server guys to death!"
Queues of hours and hours were standard as it became obvious that NCsoft was unprepared to meet the demand placed on its infrastructure. The issue became so prominent that the Massively team rushed to get a queue survival guide out to the masses.
Comments
The problem with Launch is that it is a launch! Well, not even a Launch yet. You know what I mean.
People forget how bad other launches were. Sad, but true. IMO, its because the game is good and they just want to play.
Then theres the haters. You know what they say about them.
They either were not around for it or have forgotten Ultima Onlines disaster of a launch. Of course the 2 biggest bugfests far and away were Anarchy Online and Star Wars galaxies.
Only semi smooth MMO launch I was ever part of was LoTRO. GW2 would be in second place as the only issues I recall was the trading post was down for the first week and then the botting and gold seller issues both of which were pretty much solved by the end of the first month
oh and yes I am pissed about the downtime. I did not want to like this game but I am enjpying myself far more than I anticipated I would
I miss DAoC
WoW should not have been in that list..... why? because now every mmo developer is going to have a rough launch to try and get WOW numbers since Blizzard clearly showed you dont need a perfect launch to wear the crown for ages.
Haha, Same here!
I didn't play much in early beta. I only bought it Monday since I have been home with the flu, but I am definitely hooked on it now!
It really is hard to judge though. There were a couple of games similar to WOW where the problems were simply too much demand, especially on the login servers the first few days and weeks. (popularity)
But then there were a ton of games like AOC that launched basically broken and with bugs enough to make it unplayable for most (technical)
And then there are just games that are bad, either through gameplay or lack of content ( development).
Not to defend WOW, but one of the reasons the problems lasted for 6 months was because the popularity never dropped. Players had a hard time getting into the game, but once in, they knew the game was good enough to stay subscribed. For other types of launch problems, most players quit after the first month.
It only had the success it did because it is a "gateway MMO"
Weak and easy to get into but leads to harder stuff that requires more sacrifice and involvement :-P
Thanks for your OP and the rest, i was there for all of them and more, DAoC had alot of issues on release also.
There was the amazing SCAMMO Dark and Light, that release was actually worse than AO.
By far the closest thing to a flawless release for me was Guild Wars 2.
Until 4/2/14 ESO was right up there but eeek today was semi harsh.
Lolipops !
I was in WoW day 1, had no trouble logging in.
In ESO... Still trying to login during headstart without any luck at all.
Worst (head)start I have been introduced to in the 15 years I've played most MMOs.
well i havent seen that in other mmos post wow. The others are just weak and easy to get into but none of them leads to the rest of that sentence. lol And that is hurting mmos a lot. Getting the wrong things from other mmos instead of the right things.
There's a couple of problems with making a comparison like this.
For one, attempting to compare this launch with the worst launches of all time to make it seem better makes the launch actually appear terrible. I mean, where will this one lie after it is all over? 3rd worst launch of all time? 2 worst? 5th worst?
Which leads to the other strange things about the comparison. This isn't over yet. This is the 3rd day and a larger release is coming in 2 days. Maybe wait a bit and see what happens before deciding how bad these issues really are before trying to defend it by comparing it to the worst of all time.
WoW was a success for 2 reasons. They took a lot of the pain away from games like EQ1. Call it dumbing down if you want but trust me few people really enjoyed doing naked corpse runs across a hostile map.
The other thing they did was make the game playable on Dad's hand me down Dell or Compaq. You did not need a $3K gaming machine to get a playable FPS
Anyway I was there for the first 25 days or so of WoW. Long ques were about the worst thing I remember about their launch, did not care for the game or the community though so I never subscribed
I miss DAoC
I agree with you, in my case I was mad because i couldent play lol. And they told me nothing about what the real issues were.
8 hours down time and counting, random players getting access to your account, in game mail duping, xp exploits..you name it and they have that problem.
if OP was trying to make ESO look good then he failed because the rate at which this is going we can add ESo to the list too.
Seems to me if you are upset over the 8 hours of patching time must be that you are really enjoying the game and are pissed because you can't play right now. Otherwise you would not care if servers were up or not.
I miss DAoC
joystiq article made related commentary
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/04/02/massivelys-elder-scrolls-launch-diary-day-three-questing-st/
Let me start with ZeniMax's decision to reveal player account handles to everyone on said player's friend list. I wish I were joking here, but unfortunately the devs did fail IT Security 101, so if you've got a login handle that you'd just as soon keep private, well, don't join a guild and don't make friends!
I can't for the life of me understand the logic behind this decision unless ZeniMax is hoping for a rash of account hackings so it can start selling you USB security keys in a few weeks
EQ2 fan sites
Well the random players getting access is terrible, but if they fix it, and tell us they made the mistake then, even I will forgive them. Since their game is good. And by fix i mean make it so it doesnt happen again, and un ban every one that didnt do anything. Like me
Hmm, that sounds familiar. Which other MMO had this issue? TOR?
We're in the final stress test stages. They have a couple more days to sort out the big stuff before launch.
As far as the logging into other character stuff is concerned. In this
world of rumours and lies, I need to pull out the good old fashioned
"Screenshot or it didn't happen". I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just
saying that I haven't seen proof yet.
I never said i wasn't enjoying. That doesn't make everything else ok though especially random players getting access to your account. At this point my enjoyment is irrelevant to the bigger issue.
experiences varied depending on what server you played on
I played on Whisperwind , one of the most popular servers, and wetlands boat was dropping players in deep sea to their deaths constantly - beyond other network latency bugs like being stuck in crouch position
EQ2 fan sites
good catch. Sigil released Vanguard in January 2007, SOE bought Sigil out in May of that year
I miss DAoC