I think Vanguard could still be better then LOTRO down the road. It may be a failure now, but Sony will keep it going and it will be worked on over the next year or two. If Sony takes over they may well make the game more casual wich will draw more people in.
I went with AC2 beacuse it's the only game on the list thats been closed right. I don't see why Lord of The Rings is on the list, sure it's not an ultra innovative game but theres nothing wrong with it either. It's very polished and has very few bugs, every other game on the list had lost of bugs and other problems ect when released apart from maybe Dungeons and Dragons but thats different.
Most call it a failure becauses its just a biliant carbon copy of wow, it plays and feels like WoW and whats worse the devs even admitted to ripping things off from WoW. The gameplay in LoTRo to sum it up sucks, its boring, repetive by lv 6 and their skill system is crap too. Bascally the game was a total letdown compared to the hype.
Most do not call it a failure infact it's the highest rated game at the moment on this site. It is only a few that call it a failure mainly because it doesn't have world pvp with player looting. It's the biggest selling MMO out at the moment and as someone else has said it is probably the most successful MMO since WoW.
Although those are valid arguments, I don't like LOTRO because I am forced to play a good guy in a world of good guys. Monster play is not enough for me. I have always played the "evil" races, and I refuse to become a hobbit, human, elf, or hobbit. Yuck.
BUT! I do not consider the game a failure. It is just not my cup o' tea.
I gues it's because im a long time Tolkien fan that it doesn't bother me that much, i agree that it would be better with another faction. However if you have read the books and know lore then you know that not all Dwarves, Elves and Men who were supposed to be the good guys were actually good. For example in The Silmarlion, Feanor the Elven leader of the Noldor slaughters an entire city of his own kin to achieve a goal. It just depends how you interperet your character, in WoW the Horde weren't actaully bad guys they ended up just being misunderstood. Ones good is anothers evil.
Yeah. I've heard many times that Alliance and Horde have their 'evil' traits. The problem is that LOTRO leaves out the 'ugly' races. I realize that lore intreprets these guys in such a way that would be nearly impossible to implement as a player race. I just like being a troll or orc. I am a human in real life!
EQ2 and AC2 need to be on the 'did not live up to franchise' list, and E&B was a failure? Sure they shut it down but from what I know, a lot of people who played it enjoyed it. I know I did. Just not enough people played.
This poll should be named the biggest failure in the last few years.
There have been bigger failures back before mmo was even in the vocabulary of the populus.
There are many games that worked hard to be on your list but you don't know about them.
Well like i said before mmorpgs have only been big since UO an EQ so ones that didn't have hype and wern't popular to start with wont make it. Even if they were failures noone really cares about them and considering the genre really started in the late 90's i don't see anyother failures. Also while i don't know much about some games i have played the all and i do know the news and and everything about them like how they failed.
Also some games are not considered failures like LOTRO and maybe DnL shoulda been there instead when i originally thought. However LOTRO just doesn't live upto the franchise and even though it has the sales that doesn't make it a success IMO. DnL however i was going to put on there but i just thought it was a small indie type game and never had a good budget + i think everyone who knew something could see it wasn't going to be any good.
If you're trying to make a worthwhilr poll you might do well to say what criteria you are usuing to classify a failure, just because YOU feel that LOTRO is a failure because it doesn't live up to what you call a franchise is asinine. The game may or may not be a success but just because you have a personal agenda to fill doesn't it should be on the list. A game should at the very least have been out a year before it can even be eligable for your 'scientific' poll.
Just for the record for me Horizons is the biggest failure because the game showed so much potential but failed to deliver owing to performane issues and major rewrites.
BTW I'm not a big fan of LOTRO myself but if it was based exclusively on the Books it would be pretty boring very quickly, any good work be it MMO/Book/Movie that is based on pre-existing mythos should take its base and expand into new areas whilst retaining the feel of the original work and on that score LOTRO is not a failure.
Based on your criteria WoW should be classed as the biggest failer because it took a ripped of basis for itself (Warhammer) and delivered nothing new that was not already out there, and actually dumbed down the whole MMORPG Genre.
PS. if you are including Earth and Beyond in your list along with Dark and Light where is shadowbane pray tell ?
I went with AC2 beacuse it's the only game on the list thats been closed right. I don't see why Lord of The Rings is on the list, sure it's not an ultra innovative game but theres nothing wrong with it either. It's very polished and has very few bugs, every other game on the list had lost of bugs and other problems ect when released apart from maybe Dungeons and Dragons but thats different.
Most call it a failure becauses its just a biliant carbon copy of wow, it plays and feels like WoW and whats worse the devs even admitted to ripping things off from WoW. The gameplay in LoTRo to sum it up sucks, its boring, repetive by lv 6 and their skill system is crap too. Bascally the game was a total letdown compared to the hype.
Most do not call it a failure infact it's the highest rated game at the moment on this site. It is only a few that call it a failure mainly because it doesn't have world pvp with player looting. It's the biggest selling MMO out at the moment and as someone else has said it is probably the most successful MMO since WoW.
Although those are valid arguments, I don't like LOTRO because I am forced to play a good guy in a world of good guys. Monster play is not enough for me. I have always played the "evil" races, and I refuse to become a hobbit, human, elf, or hobbit. Yuck.
BUT! I do not consider the game a failure. It is just not my cup o' tea.
I gues it's because im a long time Tolkien fan that it doesn't bother me that much, i agree that it would be better with another faction. However if you have read the books and know lore then you know that not all Dwarves, Elves and Men who were supposed to be the good guys were actually good. For example in The Silmarlion, Feanor the Elven leader of the Noldor slaughters an entire city of his own kin to achieve a goal. It just depends how you interperet your character, in WoW the Horde weren't actaully bad guys they ended up just being misunderstood. Ones good is anothers evil.
Yeah. I've heard many times that Alliance and Horde have their 'evil' traits. The problem is that LOTRO leaves out the 'ugly' races. I realize that lore intreprets these guys in such a way that would be nearly impossible to implement as a player race. I just like being a troll or orc. I am a human in real life!I'm also a huge Warhammer fan, i got The Lord oF The Rings lifetime sub so thats my pve for the forseeable future. For RvR/PvP roll on WAR, Destruction races are awesome big ugly Orcs and viking like Chaos plus absolutely viscious Dark Elves.
I'll give you one thing. The ability to actually play the in-game musical instruments is awesome. Reading about that in PC Gamer had me looking up the game online. Total bonus points.
Theres lots of other letdowns but i do not consider them massively hyped:
Auto Assault
Dark and Light
Earth and Beyond
RFO
ArchLord
I can't beleive that you dont have SHADOWBANE on that list.... SHADOWBANE by Wolfpack Studios was/is the hands down worst MMORPG ever made.
As an aside (to add a possitive spin) one often missed gem of an MMORPG was NEOCRON 1 and 2. Sort of an alternative cyberpunk, road warrior post apocalypse type thing. Worth playing if your an addict like me who plays nearly every MMORPG that see's the light of day (and some that never do).
To fail the game would have to be shut down before its time, so AC2 and E&B would have to be at the top of the list. High profile, big budget and canceled. Vanguard and DDO could join that list=)
SWG not just because it lags to hell or the game play is total Crap or that the community is bad even the bad graphics can be allowed with in reason it just because it has nothing to do with what it's meant to be about.
tryed to play it 10 or so time and every time i quit with in 2 hours
To fail the game would have to be shut down before its time, so AC2 and E&B would have to be at the top of the list. High profile, big budget and canceled. Vanguard and DDO could join that list=)
But you don't cancel a commercial product based on whether it's good or not, you cancel it based on if it sells or not. E&B was shut down because it didn't sell, but it wasn't a failure of a game.
This is an impossible poll. Everyone has thier own unique tastes. You are asking more along the lines a question of do you agree??
There hasn't been a game yet that has lived up to the Hype of pre release. Better not or those wall street ad exec's better find new people.The main idea there is to hook the player. All the games listed have let me down. Some much faster than the others.
So for me personally the most massive failure would have to go to Wish. They failed to get past Go and didn't collect thier $$.
MMORPG history? lol. I love how people post on here with games that are very recent. You know MMOs have been around for over 10 years, right? Your list should say "Biggest Failure in the last 4 years".
Thats because there were no big failures before :S Mmorpgs are pretty new and apart from EQ and UO in the 90's everything else noone cared about tbh.......
Sorry, but the OP is very incorrect. The poster named WaterVsAnch hit the nail on the head. To say biggest failures in mmorpg history one needs to cover from 1996 up until present time. To go even further, what IS the definition of failure? A mmorpg that has not lived up to its potiential, but has re-couped all its investment money and is turning a TRUE PROFIT .... is it a failure or a success???
And there have been huge failures. The very first one, and most FAMOUS one was:
- Dawn. Made by Glitchless entertainment. (Yes, that was the actual name of the dev company LOL!). It was the first mmorpg to pump up players expectations then let them go crashing down into the ground. This was around the year 1998-2001 when it was creating a buzz.
- ULTIMA 2! Enough said. It's fanbase was already in place. A solid 300k players. It was based on THE most successful computer game series in computer history. I personally blame gross missmanagement by the moneymen. This was around 2000-2002 when it's failure shook the computer gaming world, and the mmorpg world to a complete standstill.
- Anarchy Online. The first major mmorpg that was different from all other mmorpgs ever made. It was sci-fi themed, and punk themed. The problem is... during its first year of release, the game was 90% unplayable. The players even told the game DEVs what the problem was in the programming. This was between 2001 - 2002.
- Then came a hailstorm of vaporware, vaporware, vaporware, vaporware! This was between 2003 to around 2006. Mythica, and many, many more.
- During this time two major mmorpgs got shut down forever. One was a car racing one. The other was a space one, simular to EvE. I believe it came out before EvE. This was around 2004 but someone correct me if I'm wrong here. I can't even remember the names of these two major mmorpgs.
- AC2. Another major mmorpg that first got unofficially shut down a mear 6 months after release when over 90% of its players left!!! It finally got officially shut down a few years after release after lingering on lifesupport provided by the profits from AC1.
- MX0. It did sooo bad, that it got sold almost immediatly after release.
Now we get to present time. 2006 and 2007. It comes back to what is ones definition of failure?
1. Is it the buisness definition of failure? Meaning, the game got shut down. (AC2) The game never re-couped its investment money. (Mxo). The game lost ALL investment money and turned into vaporware (Mythica... a good solid 25 million dollars thrown in the dumpster.)
Going by this definition, then just about all the games listed by the OP are not failures. They have re-couped their investment money, or are on their way to doing so in 1-2 years which is normal for a bona fid hit mmorpg. SWG, or cSWG is thus a complete success. So are almost all the games listed by the OP of this thread.
2. Is it the gamer definition of failure? Meaning the game has sooo few new features, soo few changes from current games, that it's nothing new. Why should a gamer buy it? They've already played it!
Meaning, the game is a clone. Clones add nothing new, are a re-hash under a new name. Do not make sense to a gamer. Geee why buy a Dodge Colt when it is the exact clone of the Mitsubishi Mirage?!? The clone game litterally is a waste of store shelf space, internet space, every gamer's time and money. No matter how many Dodge Colts sell, it's technically a failure because there was never a need for it - since it's simply a clone of the Mitsubishi Mirage.
And yes, also meaning the game never lived up to its potiential. The best example being the current mmorpg SWG.
SB was the worst failure in mmorpg history? You must be a joke to think that, next time play the game. It revolutionized so many things you now see in all new/current mmorpgs. Saying SB is the worst mmorpg, is like saying UO was. Far from.
Ok you say "You must be joking ...next time play". I beta tested it, then I was stupid enough to buy it. I played for the free month (when the servers were actually (and oh so rarely) up) and then tossed it aside on the second month after I realized that 1) the server stability was the worst I had ever witnessed, and 2) I realized that ALL of the features that the dev's had promised to the player community during beta failed to be implemented.
I have beta tested lots of games and I realize that many games get pushed to release, but this was not the case with SB the team simply gave up on finishing and released due to a poor work ethic. They had always had poor communication skills when it came to working with their beta team, and that failure to listen to the beta team ultimately ruined their game. After all why beta test if you’re not going to listen to the team you recruit to test? I mean lets face it... people who paid for the game with a Visa credit card were able to get their money back from Visa by claiming that the product that they had purchased from Wolfpack Studios was not the product that was advertised by afore mentioned company (ie: fraud ~appologies and settlements made prior to any court dates or formal charges being laid (so far as I understand the history)~).
Next you say "It revolutionized so many things you now see in all new/current mmorpgs" ... Like what?
Lastly I agree that UO was great (if that is what your attempting to say).
As others have said Lord of the Rings Online shouldn't even be on this list. Even though I don't personally care for the game and think it's a WoW clone of the highest caliber it does have a huge following. Numbers don't lie and LotRO is a hit and will be around for a very long time to come.
As for the biggest failure......... DnL hands down. That game was so bad they would have to pay me to play it.
I say EQ2 because SOE used EQ1 to bankroll development of it. They put such a disproportionately larger amount of money into it compared to EQ1 and it still failed to match EQ1's success. Then they basically had to revamp the entire gameplay style to make it more "casual".
Without a doubt SWG. That game was built up so much, it was supposed to revolutionize the genre and bring in scores of new people (much like WoW succeeded in doing later on) but turned out to be nothing more than total garbage. Absolutely the worst blunder in MMO history.
SWG and Vanguard are pretty bad, but lets not forget EA, they deserve an honorable mention. The Sims Online had a big budget, I've seen it reported at 100 million total in an Associated Press article, but that was likely a typo and more likely supposed to be 10 million.
Ultima Online: had 250,000 subscribers at peak worldwide, with about 70,000 of those in Japan.[9] It was developed by Origin Systems but the studio was disbanded by Electronic Arts
As I was! Apparently Electronic Arts is responsible for the worst MMOG disaster ever, The SIMS Online, with over $100 million spent and hardly any subscribers:
"EA even tried its own version earlier this year with The Sims Online. It invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build the EA Online division and rolled out a virtual area for players to form Sims communities and socialize. The company prepared for as many as a million people to sign up. It didn't come close. Just under 10,000 are now subscribed, paying $9.99 a month." - Fortune, The Biggest Game in Town, By Peter Lewis, Tuesday, September 2, 2003
LoTR and Vanguard should not be on this list - not yet at least. It is to early to make a call on them. Anyone that votes for them as being failures "right now" is doing so because they have a axe to grind against them. As for my choices.
AC2 - it "did" fail. <<<< The only one that was big budget and was actually closed down.
Any other MMO that is out there and still making money is not a failure. Not in the true sense. However games that might fail in the future.
Horizons
DnL aka Realms of Torment or whatever name it is going by these days.
Shadowbane
and a myriad of others.
Just because a game is not to your liking or has low subscription rate doesn't mean it is a failure. Look at EVE, at one time it was struggling and slowy but surely it picked up more subscribers - back in the day it would have been considered a failure. Planetside despite its low pops these days has had a healthy life and is still kicking after 4 years. It is not a failure. Anarchy Online would be on this list 4 years ago easy - yet today it is doing pretty good. So don't discount LoTR or Vanguard just yet.
Comments
Most call it a failure becauses its just a biliant carbon copy of wow, it plays and feels like WoW and whats worse the devs even admitted to ripping things off from WoW. The gameplay in LoTRo to sum it up sucks, its boring, repetive by lv 6 and their skill system is crap too. Bascally the game was a total letdown compared to the hype.
Most do not call it a failure infact it's the highest rated game at the moment on this site. It is only a few that call it a failure mainly because it doesn't have world pvp with player looting. It's the biggest selling MMO out at the moment and as someone else has said it is probably the most successful MMO since WoW.Although those are valid arguments, I don't like LOTRO because I am forced to play a good guy in a world of good guys. Monster play is not enough for me. I have always played the "evil" races, and I refuse to become a hobbit, human, elf, or hobbit. Yuck.
BUT! I do not consider the game a failure. It is just not my cup o' tea.
I gues it's because im a long time Tolkien fan that it doesn't bother me that much, i agree that it would be better with another faction. However if you have read the books and know lore then you know that not all Dwarves, Elves and Men who were supposed to be the good guys were actually good. For example in The Silmarlion, Feanor the Elven leader of the Noldor slaughters an entire city of his own kin to achieve a goal. It just depends how you interperet your character, in WoW the Horde weren't actaully bad guys they ended up just being misunderstood. Ones good is anothers evil.
Yeah. I've heard many times that Alliance and Horde have their 'evil' traits. The problem is that LOTRO leaves out the 'ugly' races. I realize that lore intreprets these guys in such a way that would be nearly impossible to implement as a player race. I just like being a troll or orc. I am a human in real life!
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
Well like i said before mmorpgs have only been big since UO an EQ so ones that didn't have hype and wern't popular to start with wont make it. Even if they were failures noone really cares about them and considering the genre really started in the late 90's i don't see anyother failures. Also while i don't know much about some games i have played the all and i do know the news and and everything about them like how they failed.
Also some games are not considered failures like LOTRO and maybe DnL shoulda been there instead when i originally thought. However LOTRO just doesn't live upto the franchise and even though it has the sales that doesn't make it a success IMO. DnL however i was going to put on there but i just thought it was a small indie type game and never had a good budget + i think everyone who knew something could see it wasn't going to be any good.
If you're trying to make a worthwhilr poll you might do well to say what criteria you are usuing to classify a failure, just because YOU feel that LOTRO is a failure because it doesn't live up to what you call a franchise is asinine. The game may or may not be a success but just because you have a personal agenda to fill doesn't it should be on the list. A game should at the very least have been out a year before it can even be eligable for your 'scientific' poll.
Just for the record for me Horizons is the biggest failure because the game showed so much potential but failed to deliver owing to performane issues and major rewrites.
BTW I'm not a big fan of LOTRO myself but if it was based exclusively on the Books it would be pretty boring very quickly, any good work be it MMO/Book/Movie that is based on pre-existing mythos should take its base and expand into new areas whilst retaining the feel of the original work and on that score LOTRO is not a failure.
Based on your criteria WoW should be classed as the biggest failer because it took a ripped of basis for itself (Warhammer) and delivered nothing new that was not already out there, and actually dumbed down the whole MMORPG Genre.
PS. if you are including Earth and Beyond in your list along with Dark and Light where is shadowbane pray tell ?
Most call it a failure becauses its just a biliant carbon copy of wow, it plays and feels like WoW and whats worse the devs even admitted to ripping things off from WoW. The gameplay in LoTRo to sum it up sucks, its boring, repetive by lv 6 and their skill system is crap too. Bascally the game was a total letdown compared to the hype.
Most do not call it a failure infact it's the highest rated game at the moment on this site. It is only a few that call it a failure mainly because it doesn't have world pvp with player looting. It's the biggest selling MMO out at the moment and as someone else has said it is probably the most successful MMO since WoW.Although those are valid arguments, I don't like LOTRO because I am forced to play a good guy in a world of good guys. Monster play is not enough for me. I have always played the "evil" races, and I refuse to become a hobbit, human, elf, or hobbit. Yuck.
BUT! I do not consider the game a failure. It is just not my cup o' tea.
I gues it's because im a long time Tolkien fan that it doesn't bother me that much, i agree that it would be better with another faction. However if you have read the books and know lore then you know that not all Dwarves, Elves and Men who were supposed to be the good guys were actually good. For example in The Silmarlion, Feanor the Elven leader of the Noldor slaughters an entire city of his own kin to achieve a goal. It just depends how you interperet your character, in WoW the Horde weren't actaully bad guys they ended up just being misunderstood. Ones good is anothers evil.
Yeah. I've heard many times that Alliance and Horde have their 'evil' traits. The problem is that LOTRO leaves out the 'ugly' races. I realize that lore intreprets these guys in such a way that would be nearly impossible to implement as a player race. I just like being a troll or orc. I am a human in real life!I'm also a huge Warhammer fan, i got The Lord oF The Rings lifetime sub so thats my pve for the forseeable future. For RvR/PvP roll on WAR, Destruction races are awesome big ugly Orcs and viking like Chaos plus absolutely viscious Dark Elves.
I'll give you one thing. The ability to actually play the in-game musical instruments is awesome. Reading about that in PC Gamer had me looking up the game online. Total bonus points.
Doktar - 70 Troll Priest - Perenolde
I can't really use your list for my biggest let downs. Mine is something like this;
Shadowbane
Mourning
DnL
Horizons
The CU & NGE
DDO
Other lesser disappointments are;
- Shutting down E&B (great game...bad marketing)
- Release of Wow (was a injection of MTV & Nintendo pop culture to what was a more dedicated and mature side to pc gaming.)
I feel like my dog was raped.
- Any game from Korea
I can't beleive that you dont have SHADOWBANE on that list.... SHADOWBANE by Wolfpack Studios was/is the hands down worst MMORPG ever made.
As an aside (to add a possitive spin) one often missed gem of an MMORPG was NEOCRON 1 and 2. Sort of an alternative cyberpunk, road warrior post apocalypse type thing. Worth playing if your an addict like me who plays nearly every MMORPG that see's the light of day (and some that never do).
FINBAR
-------------------------------------------
tryed to play it 10 or so time and every time i quit with in 2 hours
Vanguard for me....a $30m mess of a game, especially after the hated and vitirol which has plagued it from both sides.
This is an impossible poll. Everyone has thier own unique tastes. You are asking more along the lines a question of do you agree??
There hasn't been a game yet that has lived up to the Hype of pre release. Better not or those wall street ad exec's better find new people.The main idea there is to hook the player. All the games listed have let me down. Some much faster than the others.
So for me personally the most massive failure would have to go to Wish. They failed to get past Go and didn't collect thier $$.
SB was the worst failure in mmorpg history?
You must be a joke to think that, next time play the game.
It revolutionized so many things you now see in all new/current mmorpgs.
Saying SB is the worst mmorpg, is like saying UO was. Far from.
Thats because there were no big failures before :S Mmorpgs are pretty new and apart from EQ and UO in the 90's everything else noone cared about tbh.......
Sorry, but the OP is very incorrect. The poster named WaterVsAnch hit the nail on the head. To say biggest failures in mmorpg history one needs to cover from 1996 up until present time. To go even further, what IS the definition of failure? A mmorpg that has not lived up to its potiential, but has re-couped all its investment money and is turning a TRUE PROFIT .... is it a failure or a success???
And there have been huge failures. The very first one, and most FAMOUS one was:
- Dawn. Made by Glitchless entertainment. (Yes, that was the actual name of the dev company LOL!). It was the first mmorpg to pump up players expectations then let them go crashing down into the ground. This was around the year 1998-2001 when it was creating a buzz.
- ULTIMA 2! Enough said. It's fanbase was already in place. A solid 300k players. It was based on THE most successful computer game series in computer history. I personally blame gross missmanagement by the moneymen. This was around 2000-2002 when it's failure shook the computer gaming world, and the mmorpg world to a complete standstill.
- Anarchy Online. The first major mmorpg that was different from all other mmorpgs ever made. It was sci-fi themed, and punk themed. The problem is... during its first year of release, the game was 90% unplayable. The players even told the game DEVs what the problem was in the programming. This was between 2001 - 2002.
- Then came a hailstorm of vaporware, vaporware, vaporware, vaporware! This was between 2003 to around 2006. Mythica, and many, many more.
- During this time two major mmorpgs got shut down forever. One was a car racing one. The other was a space one, simular to EvE. I believe it came out before EvE. This was around 2004 but someone correct me if I'm wrong here. I can't even remember the names of these two major mmorpgs.
- AC2. Another major mmorpg that first got unofficially shut down a mear 6 months after release when over 90% of its players left!!! It finally got officially shut down a few years after release after lingering on lifesupport provided by the profits from AC1.
- MX0. It did sooo bad, that it got sold almost immediatly after release.
- More vaporware, vaporware, vaporware.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Now we get to present time. 2006 and 2007. It comes back to what is ones definition of failure?
1. Is it the buisness definition of failure? Meaning, the game got shut down. (AC2) The game never re-couped its investment money. (Mxo). The game lost ALL investment money and turned into vaporware (Mythica... a good solid 25 million dollars thrown in the dumpster.)
Going by this definition, then just about all the games listed by the OP are not failures. They have re-couped their investment money, or are on their way to doing so in 1-2 years which is normal for a bona fid hit mmorpg. SWG, or cSWG is thus a complete success. So are almost all the games listed by the OP of this thread.
2. Is it the gamer definition of failure? Meaning the game has sooo few new features, soo few changes from current games, that it's nothing new. Why should a gamer buy it? They've already played it!
Meaning, the game is a clone. Clones add nothing new, are a re-hash under a new name. Do not make sense to a gamer. Geee why buy a Dodge Colt when it is the exact clone of the Mitsubishi Mirage?!? The clone game litterally is a waste of store shelf space, internet space, every gamer's time and money. No matter how many Dodge Colts sell, it's technically a failure because there was never a need for it - since it's simply a clone of the Mitsubishi Mirage.
And yes, also meaning the game never lived up to its potiential. The best example being the current mmorpg SWG.
Ok you say "You must be joking ...next time play". I beta tested it, then I was stupid enough to buy it. I played for the free month (when the servers were actually (and oh so rarely) up) and then tossed it aside on the second month after I realized that 1) the server stability was the worst I had ever witnessed, and 2) I realized that ALL of the features that the dev's had promised to the player community during beta failed to be implemented.
I have beta tested lots of games and I realize that many games get pushed to release, but this was not the case with SB the team simply gave up on finishing and released due to a poor work ethic. They had always had poor communication skills when it came to working with their beta team, and that failure to listen to the beta team ultimately ruined their game. After all why beta test if you’re not going to listen to the team you recruit to test? I mean lets face it... people who paid for the game with a Visa credit card were able to get their money back from Visa by claiming that the product that they had purchased from Wolfpack Studios was not the product that was advertised by afore mentioned company (ie: fraud ~appologies and settlements made prior to any court dates or formal charges being laid (so far as I understand the history)~).
Next you say "It revolutionized so many things you now see in all new/current mmorpgs" ... Like what?
Lastly I agree that UO was great (if that is what your attempting to say).
FINBAR
-------------------------------------------
The lessons from both SWG and VSoH: 1. Don't release garbage, and 2. Don't invest in 'Potential'.
Ico
Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones. It bones for thee.
the problem with the original topic was simply mixing letdowns with failures. Both should be seperate topics really.
As for the biggest failure......... DnL hands down. That game was so bad they would have to pay me to play it.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
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Vanguard in first place
SWG in second
EQ2 in third
I say EQ2 because SOE used EQ1 to bankroll development of it. They put such a disproportionately larger amount of money into it compared to EQ1 and it still failed to match EQ1's success. Then they basically had to revamp the entire gameplay style to make it more "casual".
My youtube MMO gaming channel
SWG and Vanguard are pretty bad, but lets not forget EA, they deserve an honorable mention. The Sims Online had a big budget, I've seen it reported at 100 million total in an Associated Press article, but that was likely a typo and more likely supposed to be 10 million.
EA for honorable mention (from wikipedia):
EA MMOG strategy
EA has cancelled a number of Massively multiplayer online games either before launch or shortly after release.
Cancellations:
Shutdowns:
Two MMOG published by Electronic Arts are still operating today:
As I was! Apparently Electronic Arts is responsible for the worst MMOG disaster ever, The SIMS Online, with over $100 million spent and hardly any subscribers:
"EA even tried its own version earlier this year with The Sims Online. It invested hundreds of millions of dollars to build the EA Online division and rolled out a virtual area for players to form Sims communities and socialize. The company prepared for as many as a million people to sign up. It didn't come close. Just under 10,000 are now subscribed, paying $9.99 a month." - Fortune, The Biggest Game in Town, By Peter Lewis, Tuesday, September 2, 2003
That's got to take the cake!
LoTR and Vanguard should not be on this list - not yet at least. It is to early to make a call on them. Anyone that votes for them as being failures "right now" is doing so because they have a axe to grind against them. As for my choices.
AC2 - it "did" fail. <<<< The only one that was big budget and was actually closed down.
Any other MMO that is out there and still making money is not a failure. Not in the true sense. However games that might fail in the future.
Horizons
DnL aka Realms of Torment or whatever name it is going by these days.
Shadowbane
and a myriad of others.
Just because a game is not to your liking or has low subscription rate doesn't mean it is a failure. Look at EVE, at one time it was struggling and slowy but surely it picked up more subscribers - back in the day it would have been considered a failure. Planetside despite its low pops these days has had a healthy life and is still kicking after 4 years. It is not a failure. Anarchy Online would be on this list 4 years ago easy - yet today it is doing pretty good. So don't discount LoTR or Vanguard just yet.