Ill have to disagree with that... mmorpg have one luxury that console game do not in that they can change their approach and rectify issues with their game... SWG is a perfect example of of this.. overnight they completely changed the game. MMORPGs can oveturn a poor launch al thought he first thing they have to do is get past the initial perceptions no matter how outdated those perceptions are.
What has changed though is that word of mouth no longer is enough to sustain a game in this swelling industry.. Marketing and working with industry media outlets is essential..
The example of SWG was to demonstrate how dratically different a mmorpg can make itself from one day to next .. this is not an endorsement of their changes nor am i saying what they did was bad or good. SWG supporters and haters alike will both have to agree that the game owent through some major changes in short time frame.
Vanguard will be the biggest failure. AC2 is the current record holder.
I'm going to be laughing at this comment a year from now. Where do you people come from anyway. Vanguard is all of 4 months old, LoTR is all of what a couple of weeks and you guys are calling them failures! LMAO! To funny!Think what you fail to see is how fast and precise the mmo market has become. It will only grow bigger and in it;'s wake it leaves behind games that just aren't A grade. There is absolutely no room for potential. Society in the 21st century doesn't wait for things to happen, they want it now, if your game can't supply the "now," the hurd will bury it and move to the next thing . The market is going to be booming with more and more pc/console intermingling which will bring that much more revenue to the genre and with that revenue you can bet , no game developer will ever ,never ever do what Sigil and Sony did.
If AC 2 was released a few year later, it will be booming right now, that is a game just released to soon when the market wasn't as huge as it is going to be in the now.
LOL! AC2 was doomed to fail no matter when it was released. Why? It is simple - Turbine out and out lied about the miracle patch that would go live at launch. They kept saying, what you see in these last days of beta is not the game you'll be playing at launch. Guess what...the game was no different after it went live then it was in the last phase of beta. Then came all the other huge lies and the "hang on folks this next patch is going to nock you socks off!" BS. They couldn't even get their chat servers running right for 6 months for Christ sakes. Top that off with the lousy log in servers going up and down - up and down in about the 4th month and it would have mattered wehn that game was launched it was toast. So many features promised and only 2 delivered in a 2 year period - mounts and guild housing.
You know the only thing that is a shame to see go away was the race you could play in that game the Tumeroks. OMG the artist and designers that worked on that put some serious love into that race you could play in that game and it is a shame that all their hard work was destroyed due to other parts in Turbines company for totally not listening to their player base. So if there is one thing Sigil can learn from what happend with AC2 - give the players some of the things they are requesting. Stay focused and on path. But whatever you do, don't neglect your players. Without players you ahve no game. I seriously doubt Sigil or SOE wish to see Vanguard be the next AC2.
I'm a little late into the topic, but I have to disagree with the original poster's list. Many of those MMOs were NOT "failures" but, rather, mismanaged to tears by their corporate suits. Pre-CU/Pre-NGE SWG, for example, was a WONDERFUL MMO...deep crafting, social professions that actually added to the gameplay...things that no other MMO has matched. The communities built around actual player cities were marvelous. The game had the best community feeling to it of the many I've played before and since. OK, so I'm an SWG refugee big-time (I had 5 accounts), but I also disagree with others on the list.
Horizons, for example, was another excellent game, very charming and with some more unique ideas like the "controlled-unlimited" multi-classing. Another good crafting game too. I think a lot of people downplay Horizons because it had no PvP at all. We were all on the same side. OK, maybe most folks can't really count a game as being "good" if there's no PvP, but I'm not one of them. And Horizons too had a great community. Not quite as good player housing/cities, but still organized enclaves with the housing zones, in an attempt not to clutter up the countryside a la UO. And the world crafting projects to bring new resource producers into play was a great idea.
Auto Assault is another with which I heartily disagree. This is a very good game, unique in concept, very fast paced (one I actually use a joystick to play as it's the best control method for me), and one of the first to try out a quest-for-XP system rather than a grind-monster system. LotRO has taken that route as well, notice, as well as the "we're all on the same side" concept.
Failed MMOs are the ones we don't really know about much at all. Those ones on the MMORPG games list where you look at one screen shot and say "Thank you, but I'll pass", even if it's free. MAINSTREAM, big money MMO failures are probably things like AC2, The Sims Online and NGE-SWG. It also depends a lot on what you look for in an MMO. Are you strictly talking about free-ganking...er...open PvP/full-looting style games? Do you prefer more twitch-style...er FPS...combat or the push-button...er RPG... style of play? Is a tight, friendly community appealing, or do you want lots of enemies to fight and little interaction? Grind or Quest for XP? Do graphics matter or who cares what it looks like? (For example, I tried Hero Online and 9Dragons for a little mindless martial-arts grinding. I preferred 9Dragons mainly because I found the graphics much more appealing.) Lots of different ingredients go into making one person's failure another's success.
But enough of the past and rehashing the failures. Hopefully, makers of the next generation of MMOs will have learned some of the lessons threads like this one are trying to emphasize and we'll not see those same mistakes again. We'll just have to live through a whole new generation of mistakes, though.
-- Xix "I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"
I have to agree that some of the games listed I dont consider a failure. Horizons was a really good game in certain areas and had promise. I dont play it now but I always have it at the back of my mind to maybe try it again someday. Likewise I really enjoyed AutoAssault, but I only have so much time and so many dollars, so something has to give.
Mostly I stop playing games because I dont have any friends playing, or because their player base gets too low. A low player base can really hurt a game, especially in my time zone (Australia).
Perhaps the poll should have been "games that showed promise but never lived up to it", or "games that let me down" (although I am sure SWG would win that). Or perhaps "games that promised and never delivered".
So you wouldn't give Turbine the benefit that maybe the hardware available at that time period was no good enough to run the game, and instead of Turbine saying that, they tried to maximize as well as optimize as much as they could to try and make their game better ? Does only Sigil aloud to have the "hardware can't handle it" excuse ?
I stand by at saying, AC2 would be way better in the "now" then when it was released.
Vangaud is just flat out bad game design, you can't say with a straight face that it is grade A design , you just can't do it. With AC2 you can say it was great game design , but technically challenged, and because Turbine went through the trials and errors of development, Turbines Lord Of the Rings Online is that much better.
Vanguard SOH, worse then E.T. for the Atari 2600 .
SWG. They had a decent game with some major bugs in the first month of release. One of the major bugs: random teleporting on a planet when you logged off.
This wasn't a rocky start as most mmos have some major bug at release but SWG was ruined by CU and NGE, the player database overall left and the developers probably haven't learned from their mistakes. You don't majorally change the gameplay mid-game.
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".
Agreed. This list is filled with far too recent games.
Plus, "failure" needs to be qualified. What are you, the OP, talking about when you say failure? Is it subscription numbers? Is it longevity?
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
Comments
What has changed though is that word of mouth no longer is enough to sustain a game in this swelling industry.. Marketing and working with industry media outlets is essential..
The example of SWG was to demonstrate how dratically different a mmorpg can make itself from one day to next .. this is not an endorsement of their changes nor am i saying what they did was bad or good. SWG supporters and haters alike will both have to agree that the game owent through some major changes in short time frame.
If AC 2 was released a few year later, it will be booming right now, that is a game just released to soon when the market wasn't as huge as it is going to be in the now.
LOL! AC2 was doomed to fail no matter when it was released. Why? It is simple - Turbine out and out lied about the miracle patch that would go live at launch. They kept saying, what you see in these last days of beta is not the game you'll be playing at launch. Guess what...the game was no different after it went live then it was in the last phase of beta. Then came all the other huge lies and the "hang on folks this next patch is going to nock you socks off!" BS. They couldn't even get their chat servers running right for 6 months for Christ sakes. Top that off with the lousy log in servers going up and down - up and down in about the 4th month and it would have mattered wehn that game was launched it was toast. So many features promised and only 2 delivered in a 2 year period - mounts and guild housing.
You know the only thing that is a shame to see go away was the race you could play in that game the Tumeroks. OMG the artist and designers that worked on that put some serious love into that race you could play in that game and it is a shame that all their hard work was destroyed due to other parts in Turbines company for totally not listening to their player base. So if there is one thing Sigil can learn from what happend with AC2 - give the players some of the things they are requesting. Stay focused and on path. But whatever you do, don't neglect your players. Without players you ahve no game. I seriously doubt Sigil or SOE wish to see Vanguard be the next AC2.
I'm a little late into the topic, but I have to disagree with the original poster's list. Many of those MMOs were NOT "failures" but, rather, mismanaged to tears by their corporate suits. Pre-CU/Pre-NGE SWG, for example, was a WONDERFUL MMO...deep crafting, social professions that actually added to the gameplay...things that no other MMO has matched. The communities built around actual player cities were marvelous. The game had the best community feeling to it of the many I've played before and since. OK, so I'm an SWG refugee big-time (I had 5 accounts), but I also disagree with others on the list.
Horizons, for example, was another excellent game, very charming and with some more unique ideas like the "controlled-unlimited" multi-classing. Another good crafting game too. I think a lot of people downplay Horizons because it had no PvP at all. We were all on the same side. OK, maybe most folks can't really count a game as being "good" if there's no PvP, but I'm not one of them. And Horizons too had a great community. Not quite as good player housing/cities, but still organized enclaves with the housing zones, in an attempt not to clutter up the countryside a la UO. And the world crafting projects to bring new resource producers into play was a great idea.
Auto Assault is another with which I heartily disagree. This is a very good game, unique in concept, very fast paced (one I actually use a joystick to play as it's the best control method for me), and one of the first to try out a quest-for-XP system rather than a grind-monster system. LotRO has taken that route as well, notice, as well as the "we're all on the same side" concept.
Failed MMOs are the ones we don't really know about much at all. Those ones on the MMORPG games list where you look at one screen shot and say "Thank you, but I'll pass", even if it's free. MAINSTREAM, big money MMO failures are probably things like AC2, The Sims Online and NGE-SWG. It also depends a lot on what you look for in an MMO. Are you strictly talking about free-ganking...er...open PvP/full-looting style games? Do you prefer more twitch-style...er FPS...combat or the push-button...er RPG... style of play? Is a tight, friendly community appealing, or do you want lots of enemies to fight and little interaction? Grind or Quest for XP? Do graphics matter or who cares what it looks like? (For example, I tried Hero Online and 9Dragons for a little mindless martial-arts grinding. I preferred 9Dragons mainly because I found the graphics much more appealing.) Lots of different ingredients go into making one person's failure another's success.
But enough of the past and rehashing the failures. Hopefully, makers of the next generation of MMOs will have learned some of the lessons threads like this one are trying to emphasize and we'll not see those same mistakes again. We'll just have to live through a whole new generation of mistakes, though.
-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"
I have to agree that some of the games listed I dont consider a failure. Horizons was a really good game in certain areas and had promise. I dont play it now but I always have it at the back of my mind to maybe try it again someday. Likewise I really enjoyed AutoAssault, but I only have so much time and so many dollars, so something has to give.
Mostly I stop playing games because I dont have any friends playing, or because their player base gets too low. A low player base can really hurt a game, especially in my time zone (Australia).
Perhaps the poll should have been "games that showed promise but never lived up to it", or "games that let me down" (although I am sure SWG would win that). Or perhaps "games that promised and never delivered".
I stand by at saying, AC2 would be way better in the "now" then when it was released.
Vangaud is just flat out bad game design, you can't say with a straight face that it is grade A design , you just can't do it. With AC2 you can say it was great game design , but technically challenged, and because Turbine went through the trials and errors of development, Turbines Lord Of the Rings Online is that much better.
Vanguard SOH, worse then E.T. for the Atari 2600 .
Sony Online Entertainment Steals Customers Money
SWG.
They had a decent game with some major bugs in the first month of release. One of the major bugs: random teleporting on a planet when you logged off.
This wasn't a rocky start as most mmos have some major bug at release but SWG was ruined by CU and NGE, the player database overall left and the developers probably haven't learned from their mistakes. You don't majorally change the gameplay mid-game.
Agreed. This list is filled with far too recent games.
Plus, "failure" needs to be qualified. What are you, the OP, talking about when you say failure? Is it subscription numbers? Is it longevity?
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.