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[Column] General: The 5 Worst MMO Launches
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
MMO launches are one of the trickiest things in the world for a developer and publisher to orchestrate. In the case of single player games, the experience can be perfectly balanced and simulated in a controlled environment. For standard multiplayer games, you can easily cap the number of players involved and know how it’s going to turn out in a live scenario. A Massively Multiplayer Game on the other hand, is something else entirely.
Read more of David Jagneaux's The List: The 5 Worst MMO Launches.
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Comments
how did Dark and Light escape this list ?
site review
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/58/view/reviews/load/43/page/1
<p blue"="">Value - 2The game in its current state is broken, full of bugs and does not have half of what was promised. You can play it though, so buying it is not entirely without use.
EQ2 fan sites
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Before ESO I had never heard of a game sometimes deleting most of your regular files and folders when you went to uninstall reinstall it.
SWG did have a bad launch but you were able to play UE servers while NA was down.
Gotta agree with AA and the land grab problems.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
SWG was pretty bad.
ESO was NOT that bad a launch. It had issues, but it was far for the god awful mess like some games. I actually don't think I ever had a queue in ESO.
In reality, though, I doubt there are many people who have enough context to judge a release of an MMO. Shoot, I've been playing MMORPGs for over 10 years now and I can probably only, really, speak about a dozen (or bakers dozen) launches that I can remember. MMORPGs are usually something that you play for a longer term. More recently that's changing, but even still, there's not much context there. I remember once how my son was frustrated because it was going to take 15 minutes to download his 4GB game. Then I thought back to downloading Windows 2000 on 56k modem, and it taking me like a week with all the disconnects and BS to get it. Kinda wanted to punch him in the throat.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Are we all neglectful of Tabula Rasa too? The game was an incomplete mess with the Auction system added very much post-launch. Their much touted Mech suits didn't make it in until like, the last patch before shutdown. The instances were buggy, PvP was screwed up, Medics and their guns were the best damage in the game -set that up for a moment, MEDICS were best DAMAGE dealers-, the game was grindy and had many level gaps between quests, many of the LOGOS were completely pointless in obtaining (emphasizing the incomplete nature of the game).
Oh, and the Lead Developer spent much of the launch of the game preparing to go up into space, which he did within the first 6 months post-launch all the while basically ignoring the game itself. Parent company had to fire his ass -although they lied about it and made it look like he quit, thus causing them a big legal headache- and shut down the game. Overall I'd say Tabula Rasa was one super-hyped up buggy mess never properly "launched into the stars" as other MMOs do, instead exploding shortly after ignition.
No AA region launch that was 2 years after initial launch?
Also why WoW always make these lists when it was launched when MMO gaming was a relative new idea with new and untried technology?
in comparison to other launches, i dont think WOW deserves to be on this list
age is no excuse
Anarchy Online launched 3 years before WOW and deserves to be on the list
EQ2 fan sites
I agree with Vanguard, the game was virtually unplayable at launch.
I'm surprised Age of Conan didnt make the list
If someone is talking in general chat in a language you dont understand, chances are they're not talking to you. So chill out and stop bitching about it!
You're funny. Are you a WoW-fan who thinks that it was the 1st MMORPG? Okay, let's list 'em...
Anarchy Online: 2001
Asheron's Call: 1999
Asheron's Call 2: 2002
City of Heroes: 2004
Dark Age of Camelot: 2001
EVE Online: 2003
FFXI: 2002
Guild Wars: 2005
You know what, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massively_multiplayer_online_role-playing_games
There are roughly 2 dozen + MMOs that launched before or the same year as WoW. Yet WoW still had a worse launch experience than all of them. So....sorry, but fandom won't save that fact.
I wouldn't go back into the beginning of the mmo era anymore for such a list. Those were different times, companies were still unexperienced with the whole genre, games like VSoH, AO and WoW from OPs list.
A game like AA definately should be on that list. Launch was a desaster. This is even more nonexcusable as it was the third launch of this game already. If you don't learn how to manage an MMO launch the third time you probably never will.
where is ESO?
btw
APB is epic game i wish they care more for ban hackers and make better anit-hack but is to laite
WoW's launch was just lag ridden. They weren't prepared for the massive amount of players that purchased the game. Lag spikes causing you to get stuck looting a mob that lasted for 30 minutes and such.
I played Vanguard at launch and I never saw what others did. My play experience was positive for the most part. By the end of the first week I had a level 30+ Paladin. Although, I did hear plenty of horror stories from friends that I had intended to play with at launch that only showed up for a bit. My biggest problem in Vanguard was taking about 30 seconds to zone between chunks of land in the open world.
SWG's Launch was bad, but when the servers went down on launch day, I didn't think much of it and just played EQ until the servers came back online the next day :P
Anarchy online was a mess and their launch actually got me to walk away from the game, was my first time for that actually.
I would have to agree with many of the others in this thread, Dark and Light was the single worst MMO launch I have seen, it was bad, really bad. Archeage needs to be on this list as well.
WoW the worst? No when WoW came out it was the best launch the genre had to that date.
Stupid article.
Great picks, though never played APB. Was there for WoW and AO launches. I remember in AO after you got out of that little starting area (killing L33ts) and wandered out into the city, it was a frame-by-frame experience.
Played a little Vanguard beta, but realized the 'hard core' direction wasn't for me, and was a bit sad about it. I really liked their version of hobbits and that diplomacy system, as a well as a rich crafting experience. So, missed out on the actual launch there.
Ironically, while I agree to some extent with the shape of FFXIV at launch, it wasn't to me so much about the concept and the systems so much as polish. I do 'not' like the new version, and did not stick around to play it. I don't like jobs. I don't like being forced into armor. I don't like a lot of the 'group only' mentality they wove into the story. And I didn't like the dumbed down character graphics for consoles. The rest of the polish was nice, including the world itself, but it would have been nice to have kept many of the original systems around. Oh well. Military Industrial Complex won out on that one. If you weren't in the "Jesus brought us the Constitution down from Mt. Rushmore riding his raptor" crew, you were SOL.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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It wasn't the worst in the article either. But to say that it wasn't bad, is just wrong.
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I would say every game on their list had a far greater disaster rating than TESO and ArcheAge.
That's how bad they were.
Perhaps Final Fantasy wasn't so bad just a badly designed game.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
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Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo