WEll I have to agree SWG by far is the worst example of lets screw your player base, followed by tabula rasa.
Now putting eq2 in there, when we still got tons of folks who play it, and were releasing an xpac in just a few days I dont know how you clasify that as fail.
Can't believe there are still people advocating EQ's style of PvE. Seriously? To those people: If this article didn't make you realize that you have no life, nothing ever will. SEVENTY. TWO. HOURS. Good article.
But you have to keep in mind that there were two sides to EQ. The early part of the game, the first forty levels or so, were amazingly fun back in the first two or three years when there were still lots of people around at those levels to group with. The insanely un-fun parts were mostly confined to the high levels and that's why the game didn't go into decline untill the majority of the playerbase was reaching those levels and burning out on that crap.
Even then a lot of people, like myself, replayed the fun parts by starting alts untill the low/mid level population was too thin. But you can only do that so many times before you burn out on playing through the same stuff over and over and eventually there were no servers left with a good lower level population anyway.
But as the game evolved the high end game turned into something entirely different. It was all about raid, raid, raiding. Join a raiding guild or hit a brick wall. Have an in-game boss (guild master) treat you like his bitch and put up with it or you're out and right back up against that wall again. It was no longer about logging in and out when you felt like it; it was about showing up for raids when you're told to and putting in your required time. It was about sitting around for hours of <hurry up and wait> crap. It was about DKPs or the other systems guilds experimented with. It wasn't about fun and adventure anymore. My God, I don't think the insanity of EQ raiding can be exagerated. Oh, the horror!
Not to take away from your experience, but from my WoW experience with end-game (I haven't played end-game since before BC), I'm not sure WoW was (is?) better. Back with the 40-man raids, I burned out trying to keep up with the raiding schedule and my guild wasn't even hard-core. Not sure how much better it's become these days.
I point this out to ask why WoW hasn't suffered the same fate? Could it be different demographics?
WEll I have to agree SWG by far is the worst example of lets screw your player base, followed by tabula rasa. Now putting eq2 in there, when we still got tons of folks who play it, and were releasing an xpac in just a few days I dont know how you clasify that as fail.
EQ2 closed somewhere around half of its servers in its first year of production. It may not have been total failure, but it was a pretty big failure none the less.
Scott is spot on accurate about EQ2 having problems and flaming out. The overall mmo population was exploding in size while eq2 was dieing.
If you really look at the period Scott is talking about you will see just how much of the design concepts soe had to change with EQ2 in that 1st year. Combat revamp, quest revamp, tradeskill revamp, solo/group content revamp (several times), shared death, class archtype system revamped, failed faction war revamp, access quests, etc etc. EQ2 was a conceptual mess at release and even though it survived (as several games on the list have) the problems have held back the games potential, thus "flame out".
I wonder, how many people agree with me when I say: The new SWG is better.
Probably about 3 . I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
I think the point for a lot of the people throwing fits over the SWG NGE (Yes, I was one.) was not the quality of the resulting game, but the fact that the game we'd tested, pre-ordered the CE for, purchased, and faithfully subscribed to no longer existed. It would be like telling everyone playing EQ, "Hey, guys, we're shutting you down, but we'll transfer your subscriptions to World of Warcraft." My "class" didn't even exist after the changes.
In other news... loved the article. I've played most of these and think the points are spot on. It was a nice bit of nostalgia, too.
I wonder, how many people agree with me when I say: The new SWG is better.
Probably about 3 . I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
3 sounds about right. :-) I actually looked at the design document (diagram?) for the CU and it made a lot of sense. They were trying to more clearly define the roles of the different combat classes which needed doing and, as you pointed out Luxumaru, fixing and tuning that update would have made the game better but, lets face it, SOE was always more intersted in trying to add content that fix bugs.
To fix the end-game, I always thought they should have introduced a couple more uber classes that could take on the Jedi... Mandalorian Bounty Hunters & Dathomir Witches could have been good. Give them the same crazy Jedi grind and they could have made for interesting user creatable end-game content.
Before the NGE, I always saw WoW as a MMO trainer for SWG. I figured that when people got tired of WoW leading them around by the nose, the would migrate to the more free-form game that SWG offered. Clearly, I know nothing.
3 that would admit it. Maybe 4. Actually, without SOE ever releasing hard numbers, most conservative extrapolations are around 2 to 10 times as many people hate it than like it. That's just going strictly by what kind of numbers there were guessed to be then vs. what kind there are guessed to be now.
gaidin6 - Unless you were privy to inside information, the design document you most likely saw (if it's the same one put up by GreenMarine the January before CU was released, please correct me if I'm wrong) was for something then and retroactively referred to as the CURB, or the Combat Update and Re-Balance. The CU (Combat "Upgrade") turned out to be something totally different that was in closed development while we were all gabbing on the forums about the CURB, and what was eventually released and promised to be made better. Seven months later, we had the NGE. And oh, how I WISH you would have been right in your WoW analysis.
Good article, Scott. In the MUDs I played in the before-times, there were typically 8 to 24 hour respawn times for boss MOBs that would just frustrate the piss out of everyone, especially since subsequent respawns after the MOB was first killed after server reset would often not produce any loot whatsoever, but I had no idea there was ever anything as heinous as what you describe in EQ and UO. As a final thought, I, for one, am proud of my angry spittle-flecked hatred of those who not only completely screwed up the game/world simulation known as Star Wars Galaxies, but refused to put it back, fix it, or give us any link to it. I continue to carry my angry spittle-flecked hatred for the company responsible, the parent company of the company responsible, those who played the old game and continue to play the new and somehow think it's better, and really anyone involved with the whole mess in any way that doesn't share my angry spittle-flecked hatred. In fact, the whole experience has just turned me into a bitter old cuss, unable to trust any MMO company and unwilling to settle for less than I had. So really, thanks to LucasArts and SOE, there's $15 less per month in this multi-billion-dollar industry than there otherwise would be. Oh plus the initial cost of the game(s) of course. Meh.
No really....part of the time reading it, I laughed, mostly because that's the best way to lick old wounds. Part of the time I WANTED to cry, but really just seethed with hostility and rage, because....you know....it's a defense mechanism for what really deep down....is immeasurable emotional hurt.
I'm just sayin'.....did you really have to be QUITE so spot on with the recounting of these tales of woe?
I wonder, how many people agree with me when I say: The new SWG is better.
Probably about 3 . I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
3 sounds about right. :-) I actually looked at the design document (diagram?) for the CU and it made a lot of sense. They were trying to more clearly define the roles of the different combat classes which needed doing and, as you pointed out Luxumaru, fixing and tuning that update would have made the game better but, lets face it, SOE was always more intersted in trying to add content that fix bugs.
To fix the end-game, I always thought they should have introduced a couple more uber classes that could take on the Jedi... Mandalorian Bounty Hunters & Dathomir Witches could have been good. Give them the same crazy Jedi grind and they could have made for interesting user creatable end-game content.
Before the NGE, I always saw WoW as a MMO trainer for SWG. I figured that when people got tired of WoW leading them around by the nose, the would migrate to the more free-form game that SWG offered. Clearly, I know nothing.
3 that would admit it. Maybe 4. Actually, without SOE ever releasing hard numbers, most conservative extrapolations are around 2 to 10 times as many people hate it than like it. That's just going strictly by what kind of numbers there were guessed to be then vs. what kind there are guessed to be now.
gaidin6 - Unless you were privy to inside information, the design document you most likely saw (if it's the same one put up by GreenMarine the January before CU was released, please correct me if I'm wrong) was for something then and retroactively referred to as the CURB, or the Combat Update and Re-Balance. The CU (Combat "Upgrade") turned out to be something totally different that was in closed development while we were all gabbing on the forums about the CURB, and what was eventually released and promised to be made better. Seven months later, we had the NGE. And oh, how I WISH you would have been right in your WoW analysis.
Good article, Scott. In the MUDs I played in the before-times, there were typically 8 to 24 hour respawn times for boss MOBs that would just frustrate the piss out of everyone, especially since subsequent respawns after the MOB was first killed after server reset would often not produce any loot whatsoever, but I had no idea there was ever anything as heinous as what you describe in EQ and UO. As a final thought, I, for one, am proud of my angry spittle-flecked hatred of those who not only completely screwed up the game/world simulation known as Star Wars Galaxies, but refused to put it back, fix it, or give us any link to it. I continue to carry my angry spittle-flecked hatred for the company responsible, the parent company of the company responsible, those who played the old game and continue to play the new and somehow think it's better, and really anyone involved with the whole mess in any way that doesn't share my angry spittle-flecked hatred. In fact, the whole experience has just turned me into a bitter old cuss, unable to trust any MMO company and unwilling to settle for less than I had. So really, thanks to LucasArts and SOE, there's $15 less per month in this multi-billion-dollar industry than there otherwise would be. Oh plus the initial cost of the game(s) of course. Meh.
YOur not the only one what SOE did to me and the wife, made me very untrusting of any MMO out there. I see the same mistakes happning with Turbine I try to warn folks as I already been there once, nobody wants to listen. I took a look at STO in no way would I even give them my cash. I still play one SOE game, I had to finally realize that it was not entire SOE's fault that the NGE happened they were marching to what Lucas arts wanted and that was to take the game to a console version. Otherwise why the need to compleetly nerf it down. So yes the entire experiance makes me very leary of any MMO and makes me very over grouchy when I see new stuff or changes that even remotely look like were going to get an NGE again.
Well to be perfectly fair...Asheron's Call 2 chat wasn't down for a straight two months. Just down for hours at a time on a near-daily basis for about two months. I remember, I was there....and I found TeamSpeak because of it.
The more honest answer as to why AC2 failed would be...Microsoft. Look up Eric Heimburg's blog. He was lead designer for AC2. He spelled out just how Microsoft completely screwed Turbine in terms of AC2.
I really wanted to get into Tabula Rasa because I'm a longtime fan of the Ultima series; having played Ultima I-III on an old C-64 where I remember editing my characters stats with a hex editor... ahh, the good old days.
I just couldn't get into the game. Nothing about it grabbed me. I tried but... yich.
As for UO and Everquest, the games that started it all, yeah they did make a few mistakes - but it was to be expected. Both games were nothing short of ground-breaking. When World of Warcraft eventually came out as "The One MMO to Rule them All" nearly every other game had to make changes to keep subscribers that simply enhanced the enjoyability of the game - for example, the "grind" people complain about in Aion. NCSoft seems to be scrambling with double-xp weekends and constant changes to the system to give Western players used to rapid advancement more of what they want. Why are they doing this? Simply put, they're catering to the mass market consumer which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ticking off the minority to please the majority is usually good business sense unless you want to cater to a niche market and leave it at that.
EQ2 is one of the best mmo's to play right now. The game had a few ups and downs early on just like every single mmo ever released. However right now it's a great game full of players from all over the world. Putting it in this "article" shows the lack of knowledge Jennings has. You say EQ2 failed then failed compared to what? WOW? Then every game pre and post WOW is a failure. Nothing he said was new regarding any of the games he listed.
EQ2 is one of the best mmo's to play right now. The game had a few ups and downs early on just like every single mmo ever released. However right now it's a great game full of players from all over the world. Putting it in this "article" shows the lack of knowledge Jennings has. You say EQ2 failed then failed compared to what? WOW? Then every game pre and post WOW is a failure. Nothing he said was new regarding any of the games he listed. /yawn
This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
wow, a story by staff i can agree with all points on.
i will concede that it is much easier to write a story about the spectacular failures of mmos than it is to write about success [still waiting for one (success)]
cant wait for part 2. there are many others i would add to this list, but for once, all your choices would make my list as well. (never got suckered by auto assault so ill take your word for it) .......unlike that crap story about the 5 best games which was a joke.
but seriously, a previous poster said it best about opening up old wounds. i think i cried a little bit reading the swg part.
EQ2 is one of the best mmo's to play right now. The game had a few ups and downs early on just like every single mmo ever released. However right now it's a great game full of players from all over the world. Putting it in this "article" shows the lack of knowledge Jennings has. You say EQ2 failed then failed compared to what? WOW? Then every game pre and post WOW is a failure. Nothing he said was new regarding any of the games he listed. /yawn
This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
Great article and spot on. But you missed The Matrix Online, what a mess that turned out to be. I would like to be a fly on the wall is the meeting in someones office after one of these debacles. Namely the SWG:NGE one. Whooo hooo! LOL!
I never really got to play EQ all that much maybe a few months but what I read sounds awesome. These ultra rare items are what is missing in modern MMO's. Now days everyone and their mom has the same awesome gear and its like oh wow you have the same thing as me. It really doesn't make you stand out anymore, your just another average Joe in the crowd. I understand that some people don't have time for all that jazz but for the people that do and want to get that legendary item I say let them have a choice to get it.. And if people bitch that its to hard tell them to nut up or shut up.
I also liked how in FFXI you could unlock different classes, while it wasn't as rare as those items sound it was nice for someone to say, "Wow cool you have Summoner and all the Avatars, man that is a hell of an accomplishment." Unlike WoW oh cool your a Death Knight yeah I have one of those to and so does my sister.
DAoC held around 250k subs from launch until around 11 months after TOA came out. It wasn't until 2 months before catacombs that the populations began to fall, slowly at first, then once the expansion came out, very rapidly. People can claim TOA killed the game, but the fact remains that they had over 90% of the numbers they had at launch over a year after the that expansion came out. What killed that game, finally, was Mythic catering to the loud mouthed minority who demanded their own server. The classic server pulled around 15-20% of the subs from the main servers. While that number is high, the 80-85% of the population base that said no thanks is the real story. If this expansion was so horrible, why would 80+ % of the population continue to play it when another place without it existed? The real problem there was that 20% was definitely a problem for the others left behind. I played that game from launch until '07 and the people left behind felt like the ship was sinking and it was. Morale was the problem just before the Catacombs expansion. The game had almost as many subs when Catacombs came out as the did when they launched but people had a serious blow to their morale and when the over powered classes of catacombs came out it was the straw that broke the camel's backs.
In that game, the best population indicators I saw over time were the numbers of people in the battlegrounds and RVR. I didn't see a noticable drop until the first 50's from catacombs started roaming the lands. People were leaving the game in a trickle at that point but a few months after that it became very obvious that people were leaving in droves. Yes, I understand that the loudest mouthed people that left were those that hated TOA so from an outsider's point of view, that was THE reason. But the sub numbers betray every word that comes out of their mouths. The FACT that the classic servers were empty when the final merge happened is just one more indicator that the true fans of the game, the ones that played TOA servers, the ones that still to this day keep the game alive, always outnumbered the ones who didn't like TOA.
To anyone that claims that TOA killed the game, in a way I guess they are right in that the people that didn't have it in them to spend two weeks to get the same gear as anyone else yelled just loud enough that Mythic thought they were the majority and ruined the game because of it. Google DAoC;s sub numbers for yourself and see that more people quit when they caved to the TOA haters than actually left to play on the classic servers.
But as the game evolved the high end game turned into something entirely different. It was all about raid, raid, raiding. Join a raiding guild or hit a brick wall. Have an in-game boss (guild master) treat you like his bitch and put up with it or you're out and right back up against that wall again. It was no longer about logging in and out when you felt like it; it was about showing up for raids when you're told to and putting in your required time. It was about sitting around for hours of <hurry up and wait> crap. It was about DKPs or the other systems guilds experimented with. It wasn't about fun and adventure anymore. My God, I don't think the insanity of EQ raiding can be exagerated. Oh, the horror!
Not to take away from your experience, but from my WoW experience with end-game (I haven't played end-game since before BC), I'm not sure WoW was (is?) better. Back with the 40-man raids, I burned out trying to keep up with the raiding schedule and my guild wasn't even hard-core. Not sure how much better it's become these days.
I point this out to ask why WoW hasn't suffered the same fate? Could it be different demographics?
WoW was definetly there as well before the first expansion. The raid gear grind was an utter soul crusher and it burned out a lot of good players. Burning Crusade cut down on the raid sizes and Wrath of the Lich King flipped the gear equation where gearing up is not that hard and can be done very casually. Raids are much shorter and the gar distribution much smoother with emblems and armor tokens. Although raiding is still the primary activity for endgame progression, it is way more accessible and does not require a strict raiding schedule unless you going for the hardmodes and the big achievements.
Comments
Here, as we see it, is the problem.
Next week: we attempt to establish we can do better!
WEll I have to agree SWG by far is the worst example of lets screw your player base, followed by tabula rasa.
Now putting eq2 in there, when we still got tons of folks who play it, and were releasing an xpac in just a few days I dont know how you clasify that as fail.
Great article. Guessing that first link in the UO section was supposed to go to a UO horror story, not the EQ 72-hour horror story?
But you have to keep in mind that there were two sides to EQ. The early part of the game, the first forty levels or so, were amazingly fun back in the first two or three years when there were still lots of people around at those levels to group with. The insanely un-fun parts were mostly confined to the high levels and that's why the game didn't go into decline untill the majority of the playerbase was reaching those levels and burning out on that crap.
Even then a lot of people, like myself, replayed the fun parts by starting alts untill the low/mid level population was too thin. But you can only do that so many times before you burn out on playing through the same stuff over and over and eventually there were no servers left with a good lower level population anyway.
Not to take away from your experience, but from my WoW experience with end-game (I haven't played end-game since before BC), I'm not sure WoW was (is?) better. Back with the 40-man raids, I burned out trying to keep up with the raiding schedule and my guild wasn't even hard-core. Not sure how much better it's become these days.
I point this out to ask why WoW hasn't suffered the same fate? Could it be different demographics?
-=[ Gaidin ]=-
EQ2 closed somewhere around half of its servers in its first year of production. It may not have been total failure, but it was a pretty big failure none the less.
Scott is spot on accurate about EQ2 having problems and flaming out. The overall mmo population was exploding in size while eq2 was dieing.
If you really look at the period Scott is talking about you will see just how much of the design concepts soe had to change with EQ2 in that 1st year. Combat revamp, quest revamp, tradeskill revamp, solo/group content revamp (several times), shared death, class archtype system revamped, failed faction war revamp, access quests, etc etc. EQ2 was a conceptual mess at release and even though it survived (as several games on the list have) the problems have held back the games potential, thus "flame out".
@OP
Excellent post and well played humor.
Thank you for mentioning the horrid epic weapon quest mechanics in everquest. There goes 10 grand in therapy.
Still have great times in those first few games though.
Probably about 3
. I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
I think the point for a lot of the people throwing fits over the SWG NGE (Yes, I was one.) was not the quality of the resulting game, but the fact that the game we'd tested, pre-ordered the CE for, purchased, and faithfully subscribed to no longer existed. It would be like telling everyone playing EQ, "Hey, guys, we're shutting you down, but we'll transfer your subscriptions to World of Warcraft." My "class" didn't even exist after the changes.
In other news... loved the article. I've played most of these and think the points are spot on. It was a nice bit of nostalgia, too.
Probably about 3
. I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
3 sounds about right. :-) I actually looked at the design document (diagram?) for the CU and it made a lot of sense. They were trying to more clearly define the roles of the different combat classes which needed doing and, as you pointed out Luxumaru, fixing and tuning that update would have made the game better but, lets face it, SOE was always more intersted in trying to add content that fix bugs.
To fix the end-game, I always thought they should have introduced a couple more uber classes that could take on the Jedi... Mandalorian Bounty Hunters & Dathomir Witches could have been good. Give them the same crazy Jedi grind and they could have made for interesting user creatable end-game content.
Before the NGE, I always saw WoW as a MMO trainer for SWG. I figured that when people got tired of WoW leading them around by the nose, the would migrate to the more free-form game that SWG offered. Clearly, I know nothing.
3 that would admit it. Maybe 4.
Actually, without SOE ever releasing hard numbers, most conservative extrapolations are around 2 to 10 times as many people hate it than like it. That's just going strictly by what kind of numbers there were guessed to be then vs. what kind there are guessed to be now.
gaidin6 - Unless you were privy to inside information, the design document you most likely saw (if it's the same one put up by GreenMarine the January before CU was released, please correct me if I'm wrong) was for something then and retroactively referred to as the CURB, or the Combat Update and Re-Balance. The CU (Combat "Upgrade") turned out to be something totally different that was in closed development while we were all gabbing on the forums about the CURB, and what was eventually released and promised to be made better. Seven months later, we had the NGE. And oh, how I WISH you would have been right in your WoW analysis.
Good article, Scott. In the MUDs I played in the before-times, there were typically 8 to 24 hour respawn times for boss MOBs that would just frustrate the piss out of everyone, especially since subsequent respawns after the MOB was first killed after server reset would often not produce any loot whatsoever, but I had no idea there was ever anything as heinous as what you describe in EQ and UO. As a final thought, I, for one, am proud of my angry spittle-flecked hatred of those who not only completely screwed up the game/world simulation known as Star Wars Galaxies, but refused to put it back, fix it, or give us any link to it. I continue to carry my angry spittle-flecked hatred for the company responsible, the parent company of the company responsible, those who played the old game and continue to play the new and somehow think it's better, and really anyone involved with the whole mess in any way that doesn't share my angry spittle-flecked hatred. In fact, the whole experience has just turned me into a bitter old cuss, unable to trust any MMO company and unwilling to settle for less than I had. So really, thanks to LucasArts and SOE, there's $15 less per month in this multi-billion-dollar industry than there otherwise would be. Oh plus the initial cost of the game(s) of course. Meh.
There's a sucker born every minute. - P.T. Barnum
This article makes baby Jesus cry.
It also kills kittens each time anyone reads it.
I'm not making any of this up.
No really....part of the time reading it, I laughed, mostly because that's the best way to lick old wounds. Part of the time I WANTED to cry, but really just seethed with hostility and rage, because....you know....it's a defense mechanism for what really deep down....is immeasurable emotional hurt.
I'm just sayin'.....did you really have to be QUITE so spot on with the recounting of these tales of woe?
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
Probably about 3
. I'd agree with you that the CU had the potential to make the game better, though, had they worked on fixing the bugs it created instead of scrapping it for the crappy NGE.
3 sounds about right. :-) I actually looked at the design document (diagram?) for the CU and it made a lot of sense. They were trying to more clearly define the roles of the different combat classes which needed doing and, as you pointed out Luxumaru, fixing and tuning that update would have made the game better but, lets face it, SOE was always more intersted in trying to add content that fix bugs.
To fix the end-game, I always thought they should have introduced a couple more uber classes that could take on the Jedi... Mandalorian Bounty Hunters & Dathomir Witches could have been good. Give them the same crazy Jedi grind and they could have made for interesting user creatable end-game content.
Before the NGE, I always saw WoW as a MMO trainer for SWG. I figured that when people got tired of WoW leading them around by the nose, the would migrate to the more free-form game that SWG offered. Clearly, I know nothing.
3 that would admit it. Maybe 4.
Actually, without SOE ever releasing hard numbers, most conservative extrapolations are around 2 to 10 times as many people hate it than like it. That's just going strictly by what kind of numbers there were guessed to be then vs. what kind there are guessed to be now.
gaidin6 - Unless you were privy to inside information, the design document you most likely saw (if it's the same one put up by GreenMarine the January before CU was released, please correct me if I'm wrong) was for something then and retroactively referred to as the CURB, or the Combat Update and Re-Balance. The CU (Combat "Upgrade") turned out to be something totally different that was in closed development while we were all gabbing on the forums about the CURB, and what was eventually released and promised to be made better. Seven months later, we had the NGE. And oh, how I WISH you would have been right in your WoW analysis.
Good article, Scott. In the MUDs I played in the before-times, there were typically 8 to 24 hour respawn times for boss MOBs that would just frustrate the piss out of everyone, especially since subsequent respawns after the MOB was first killed after server reset would often not produce any loot whatsoever, but I had no idea there was ever anything as heinous as what you describe in EQ and UO. As a final thought, I, for one, am proud of my angry spittle-flecked hatred of those who not only completely screwed up the game/world simulation known as Star Wars Galaxies, but refused to put it back, fix it, or give us any link to it. I continue to carry my angry spittle-flecked hatred for the company responsible, the parent company of the company responsible, those who played the old game and continue to play the new and somehow think it's better, and really anyone involved with the whole mess in any way that doesn't share my angry spittle-flecked hatred. In fact, the whole experience has just turned me into a bitter old cuss, unable to trust any MMO company and unwilling to settle for less than I had. So really, thanks to LucasArts and SOE, there's $15 less per month in this multi-billion-dollar industry than there otherwise would be. Oh plus the initial cost of the game(s) of course. Meh.
YOur not the only one what SOE did to me and the wife, made me very untrusting of any MMO out there. I see the same mistakes happning with Turbine I try to warn folks as I already been there once, nobody wants to listen. I took a look at STO in no way would I even give them my cash. I still play one SOE game, I had to finally realize that it was not entire SOE's fault that the NGE happened they were marching to what Lucas arts wanted and that was to take the game to a console version. Otherwise why the need to compleetly nerf it down. So yes the entire experiance makes me very leary of any MMO and makes me very over grouchy when I see new stuff or changes that even remotely look like were going to get an NGE again.
this article will upset allot of ppl
BestSigEver :P
Well to be perfectly fair...Asheron's Call 2 chat wasn't down for a straight two months. Just down for hours at a time on a near-daily basis for about two months. I remember, I was there....and I found TeamSpeak because of it.
The more honest answer as to why AC2 failed would be...Microsoft. Look up Eric Heimburg's blog. He was lead designer for AC2. He spelled out just how Microsoft completely screwed Turbine in terms of AC2.
Great article ... although at times painful to read for the obvious reason.
Eagerly awaiting the next instalment on " How To Fix All Of This Mess"
geez i don't think i would put EQ2 down as a failure. but i guess now if you don't have WoW-like Sub numbers ... you're a failure.
the Evil Raider that outgears you and makes you cry for welfare epics on the forums.
I really wanted to get into Tabula Rasa because I'm a longtime fan of the Ultima series; having played Ultima I-III on an old C-64 where I remember editing my characters stats with a hex editor... ahh, the good old days.
I just couldn't get into the game. Nothing about it grabbed me. I tried but... yich.
As for UO and Everquest, the games that started it all, yeah they did make a few mistakes - but it was to be expected. Both games were nothing short of ground-breaking. When World of Warcraft eventually came out as "The One MMO to Rule them All" nearly every other game had to make changes to keep subscribers that simply enhanced the enjoyability of the game - for example, the "grind" people complain about in Aion. NCSoft seems to be scrambling with double-xp weekends and constant changes to the system to give Western players used to rapid advancement more of what they want. Why are they doing this? Simply put, they're catering to the mass market consumer which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ticking off the minority to please the majority is usually good business sense unless you want to cater to a niche market and leave it at that.
EQ2 is one of the best mmo's to play right now. The game had a few ups and downs early on just like every single mmo ever released. However right now it's a great game full of players from all over the world. Putting it in this "article" shows the lack of knowledge Jennings has. You say EQ2 failed then failed compared to what? WOW? Then every game pre and post WOW is a failure. Nothing he said was new regarding any of the games he listed.
/yawn
This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
wow, a story by staff i can agree with all points on.
i will concede that it is much easier to write a story about the spectacular failures of mmos than it is to write about success [still waiting for one (success)]
cant wait for part 2. there are many others i would add to this list, but for once, all your choices would make my list as well. (never got suckered by auto assault so ill take your word for it) .......unlike that crap story about the 5 best games which was a joke.
but seriously, a previous poster said it best about opening up old wounds. i think i cried a little bit reading the swg part.
This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
Do you know what an opinion piece is?
lol didnt know about the everquest being on news thing -that was b4 i was into mmos-
cant wait 4 the next article
Great article and spot on. But you missed The Matrix Online, what a mess that turned out to be. I would like to be a fly on the wall is the meeting in someones office after one of these debacles. Namely the SWG:NGE one. Whooo hooo! LOL!
I never really got to play EQ all that much maybe a few months but what I read sounds awesome. These ultra rare items are what is missing in modern MMO's. Now days everyone and their mom has the same awesome gear and its like oh wow you have the same thing as me. It really doesn't make you stand out anymore, your just another average Joe in the crowd. I understand that some people don't have time for all that jazz but for the people that do and want to get that legendary item I say let them have a choice to get it.. And if people bitch that its to hard tell them to nut up or shut up.
I also liked how in FFXI you could unlock different classes, while it wasn't as rare as those items sound it was nice for someone to say, "Wow cool you have Summoner and all the Avatars, man that is a hell of an accomplishment." Unlike WoW oh cool your a Death Knight yeah I have one of those to and so does my sister.
DAoC held around 250k subs from launch until around 11 months after TOA came out. It wasn't until 2 months before catacombs that the populations began to fall, slowly at first, then once the expansion came out, very rapidly. People can claim TOA killed the game, but the fact remains that they had over 90% of the numbers they had at launch over a year after the that expansion came out. What killed that game, finally, was Mythic catering to the loud mouthed minority who demanded their own server. The classic server pulled around 15-20% of the subs from the main servers. While that number is high, the 80-85% of the population base that said no thanks is the real story. If this expansion was so horrible, why would 80+ % of the population continue to play it when another place without it existed? The real problem there was that 20% was definitely a problem for the others left behind. I played that game from launch until '07 and the people left behind felt like the ship was sinking and it was. Morale was the problem just before the Catacombs expansion. The game had almost as many subs when Catacombs came out as the did when they launched but people had a serious blow to their morale and when the over powered classes of catacombs came out it was the straw that broke the camel's backs.
In that game, the best population indicators I saw over time were the numbers of people in the battlegrounds and RVR. I didn't see a noticable drop until the first 50's from catacombs started roaming the lands. People were leaving the game in a trickle at that point but a few months after that it became very obvious that people were leaving in droves. Yes, I understand that the loudest mouthed people that left were those that hated TOA so from an outsider's point of view, that was THE reason. But the sub numbers betray every word that comes out of their mouths. The FACT that the classic servers were empty when the final merge happened is just one more indicator that the true fans of the game, the ones that played TOA servers, the ones that still to this day keep the game alive, always outnumbered the ones who didn't like TOA.
To anyone that claims that TOA killed the game, in a way I guess they are right in that the people that didn't have it in them to spend two weeks to get the same gear as anyone else yelled just loud enough that Mythic thought they were the majority and ruined the game because of it. Google DAoC;s sub numbers for yourself and see that more people quit when they caved to the TOA haters than actually left to play on the classic servers.
Not to take away from your experience, but from my WoW experience with end-game (I haven't played end-game since before BC), I'm not sure WoW was (is?) better. Back with the 40-man raids, I burned out trying to keep up with the raiding schedule and my guild wasn't even hard-core. Not sure how much better it's become these days.
I point this out to ask why WoW hasn't suffered the same fate? Could it be different demographics?
WoW was definetly there as well before the first expansion. The raid gear grind was an utter soul crusher and it burned out a lot of good players. Burning Crusade cut down on the raid sizes and Wrath of the Lich King flipped the gear equation where gearing up is not that hard and can be done very casually. Raids are much shorter and the gar distribution much smoother with emblems and armor tokens. Although raiding is still the primary activity for endgame progression, it is way more accessible and does not require a strict raiding schedule unless you going for the hardmodes and the big achievements.
Great article. One of the best I have ever read on this website. Brought back good memories and some sad ones..
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.