As for worst launch ever, I would have to say 'Horizons' though. I have played several games at launch, but never one that didn't even have 2/3 of the features advertised on the box. Add in the fact that their billing department were 'accidentally' double and triple billing their customers subscription fees (later to find out it was to pad the numbers so they could sell the game) and continuing to bill customers after they quit the game make this the worst launch IMO.
I was waiting for someone to mention that. As that was one of the few I didn't play I didn't think it was my place to bring it up.
I have to go to what I would call the gold standard of MMO game launches in Lord of the Rings Online. LOTRO had to have been one of the best if not the best launches I have ever been a part of (and been a part of many). ANY game that fails to live up to that LOTRO's launch can not be called good.
I agree with this. LotRO and DAoC were the only good MMO launches I can think of. Granted, LotRO got their by gutting most of their game and axing almost all the unique features from alpha and turning into a WoW clone, but that's another issue...
On that I have to disagree. Turbine took the game over from another (Sierra as I recall) and the "features" were never fleshed out in that game to a point where they were even doable. As to the "WoW clone", I would also have to say that is not true as LOTRO was much more true to the LOTR lore of which WoW is not really a part of except in the legacy that LOTR is to all fantasy role playing games. If anything, WoW is a poor LOTR (the books not the game) clone.
You're wrong on that. Turbine got the writes to develop a Middle Earth MMO after Sierra lost it...in 1999. Then Turbine developed their own MMO called Middle Earth Online, marketed it as a sandbox game for years and years, showed it off, demoed it, made promises to innovative features, then they changed the name of the game in alpha (I was there) and gutted the interesting features.
Not to say your memory is wrong but you might be remembering things slightly incorrectly. Sierra lost the contract 1999 and it was given not to Turbine but instead an 8 year deal was made to Vivendi Games the parent company of Sierra. Turbine was brought in the to picture in 2003 and bought out Vivendi’s interest in the property making Turbine the only developer in 2005 where the name was changed to LOTRO. Where you are right they basically scraped part of it as you say but it was 6 years after your claiming it happened.
Anarchy Online is a very fun game to this day - I had to say that to let all of you know that is just the truth.
But by far AO had the worst launch in history. I was in beta - and beta was actually quite good. It felt fairly polished and well-presented for its time. But on that first day, I remember the ONLY way to remove enough lag to allow you to even move one step was to turn off visibility of ALL other players. It sort of worked, but was still bad.
It was actually the horizons launch that convinced me never to buy an MMO until has been out for at least a month.
What a waste that game was. It's one thing to have have sever instability or to just not have it up on your release date. Glitches and game breaking bugs are of course horrible, but they are fixable. Horizons was all of those things plus one worse. It seemed that the developers didn't plan for anyone to make it much past level 10 in the first week of game play, because they hadn't added any content beyond the starter areas.
This list is almost laughable when you include games like Aion and World of Warcraft, both of whom experienced problems because they were a success. Complaints about Aion's grind has nothing to do with whether or not it was a successful launch.
Where is Vanguard? Of all the mmorpgs to have ever been released, I can't possibly think of a game that had a worse launch than Vanguard. A game from the original developers of EQ that was hyped to the moon for years which was released as a bug ridden mess that could only be ran by nasa computers, causing the company to close its doors days later. For that matter, where is APB?
Biggest issue I had with SWG launch day was creating my account. I went from IE to Firefox which solved that problem and then had no problem logging in on the Eclipse server. But yeah the game was buggy for months afterwards. The BioEng class was hopelessy broken so I ended up choosing Medic. The Jedi/hologram grind was a serious disapointment and a poor way to implement the jedi class.The data base was extrtremely unstable and when I lost a millon credits of crafted items and my house vendor then the CS told me to suck it up I quit and never looked back.
Only issue I had with WoW was server ques. The game and graphics did me in though, they give me a real life skull pop of a headache, no kidding. 20 days after launch I logged off and to this day have never went back.
My personal worst experiance was Ages of Conan. Game ran great for me the first week, then suddenly one morning the game started crashing at launch. Customer support was non existent. A bunch of us with the same issue had a 100+ page thread on the tech forums. The Funcom devs just ignored it. In desperation my last week of the 30 days I did a roll over format of my hard drive which worked, but when I logged in most of my guild had called it quits by then over bugs and performance issues. I think played one more day then said to heck with it and went back to Lotro.
I actually played AION at launch and many months afterwords.. I hit end game but gave up frustrated after failing miragent legging (one of the poor eastern-based mechanics that were mentioned.) The game played fine for me.. But i know others had problems.. It was amazing at launch, i don't think i've ever seen that many people running around in a MMORPG and i thought the fun would continue forever.. But the game just wasn't properly developed as good in the later levels and most gave up instead of grinding elite mobs all day like i did to hit 50 lol.
Currently Playing: Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
This just makes me sick. Its so obvious writers on hear don;'t even try these games. They just listen to the hype and dislikes from the posters here. Putting AIOn on this list was just retarded. Yes there were lines to log on. But they weren;t that bad. Maybe an hour wait for teh first day or so, but that was it. Aion was one of the smoothest western launches ever.
And I am by no means a Aion fanboy. I played it at launch and for a few months after and it I hate it. I have no plans on ever playing that pos again.
This is honestly not important. When you think about it when your making an MMO do you really expect to be over populated of course not you may think so but developers dont so i dont understand the point of this article if its a good game then who cares if the servers are down for a few days or theres some glitches
Granted, LotRO got their by gutting most of their game and axing almost all the unique features from alpha and turning into a WoW clone, but that's another issue...
A common trait among MMO gamers is to mistake developer wishlists and alpha-level planning (in this case, Sierra's plans for MEO)
Thanks for proving you didn't read anything. MEO had nothing to do with Sierra beyond 1999. It was all Turbine. It was Turbine hosting conventions, showing off MEO and what it could do, telling us when we could buy it, what features it would have, letting us play it, even some of us (myself included) getting to alpha it. Then they gutted it and turned it into a WoW clone called LotRO. All Turbine, nothing to do with Sierra.
Quite obvious this article was written purely for hits.
Having WoW and Aion on the list is very puzzling.
I played WoW at launch and the lag problems were cleared up on my server after 4 days.
Also, yeah Aion was down for like the first day but it was mostly smooth after that. Really no reason to have it on the list.
To not have Anarchy Online as #1 means it is quite clear the author did not actually play these MMOs at launch. AO was unplayable for months. Be it from game crippling bugs or servers being down.
But putting WoW at #1 will get the WoW haters in here.
Aion? Really?! That's 100% bullshit Mr. Murphy, and I'm calling you out on it. I played through beta and at launch, and I NEVER got stuck in a queue. I even peaked at almost 40 hours in-game a week, and never had to wait to get in.
Granted, LotRO got their by gutting most of their game and axing almost all the unique features from alpha and turning into a WoW clone, but that's another issue...
A common trait among MMO gamers is to mistake developer wishlists and alpha-level planning (in this case, Sierra's plans for MEO)
Thanks for proving you didn't read anything. MEO had nothing to do with Sierra beyond 1999. It was all Turbine. It was Turbine hosting conventions, showing off MEO and what it could do, telling us when we could buy it, what features it would have, letting us play it, even some of us (myself included) getting to alpha it. Then they gutted it and turned it into a WoW clone called LotRO. All Turbine, nothing to do with Sierra.
Wrong oh. Turbine did not take over from Sierra until 2005. See this (right here from mmorpg.com):
Bottom line....Turbine did not get envolved until 2003. The coding for LOTRO was all Turbine's at that time and not Sierra's. The only thing Turbine was allowed access to was the artwork.
The launch had absolutely no problems and there wasn't even any lag issues, must less server crashes or anything.
I'm not a huge fanboy, but I am fair and it's just silly to have it listed.
Aion and Champions were both horrible disasters on launch day and even the entire week+ of launch. Servers down constantly and incredible lag. Though, Champions wasn't launched '10, it was such a disaster that I'll never forget it. LOL.
I think #1 and #2 should be Vanguard and Shadowbane in no particular order. They were both games I looked forward to a lot but left because of... well y'know
The launch had absolutely no problems and there wasn't even any lag issues, must less server crashes or anything.
I'm not a huge fanboy, but I am fair and it's just silly to have it listed.
Aion and Champions were both horrible disasters on launch day and even the entire week+ of launch. Servers down constantly and incredible lag. Though, Champions wasn't launched '10, it was such a disaster that I'll never forget it. LOL.
Um lets see, yep your right Cataclysm should not be on the list and …. Its not. This was about launches not just launches in 2010 some of the games listed launched long before 2010.
Aions main problem was that they sold too many accounts (boxes and digital) for their infrastructure to deal with.
In effect, they knowingly sold a service they couldnt provide, by continuing selling once they had reached their capacity, which imo should actually be considered fraud.
they knew exactly the amount of boxes they had put out, and they knew exactly the number of digital copies they were selling, yet they continued to sell them when they KNEW they couldnt accomadate the users. This is just plain theft.
If I sell 100 cans saying they have beans in them, I better have the beans to fill 'em.
Does no one remember Dark & Light? First they stole thousands of dollars from people's credit cards by charging the client fee and monthly fee dozens of of times over and over on each card. Second the servers were so horrible hardly anyone could play. Third they got sued by a french company for stealing the entire client from them and were shut down.
For reasons I can't fathom, www.darkandlight.com is still working and people are still posting on the forums.
Personally I played beta on 2 of the 5 and paid hard earned money for the pre-orders on 3 of the 5. All of them were exactly as dismal as the article explains and then some. To date, all of them still blow - except for WoW which I addictively played for many years until I realized the grind for epics would never ever end.
I still look at Aion and AoC sitting on the shelf and fantasize about what awesome games they could of been. Today, waiting for the next beta test of Rift and launch, a game more polished than all of them put together. Sadly I have tried to find that "new" feel in LoTR, DnD, DAOC, Vanguard, RoM, Atlantica, Perfect World, Vindictus, SWG, and some I cannot even remember or care to forget. It truly is a sad state of affairs for anyone searching for something exciting and fresh.
I disagree with Aion being on this list... There were queues but it was never that bad...never had more then 15 mins of waiting time during launch
I had to wait for 3 hours+ to log on to Aion. I even called my wife before i left the office to log in, went home, had dinner watched tv and after 3 hours I finnaly dared to look at the comuter screen.
It took about a month, after that no more waiting to log on
'Ha!' to all those defending WoW like they were insulted personally. I remember all the horrific lag and server downtime when WoW first launched. When the huge lag spikes hit, the servers were down, or the game was just simply unplayable, I just played another game... no big deal... but it was just plain awful. 10 minutes... 15 minutes to loot. I remember my early guild even came up with a holiday attached to the terrible servers: Shiddylag! Shiddylag doesn't just come once per year... it came many, many, many, many times.
Your memory has had a major lapse. Never had a problem looting, sure servers went down at times, but it was nothing like your post. I just get really tired of such disinformation. Probably were not even around for the launch!
Try the EQ2 launch it was laughable compared to Wow. Half the computers could not even run the game.
EQ2 was playable at launch no major problems for those that had anticipated and upgrade their graphics cards but much did not upgrade their computers thinking that would have the same standards graphics standards as eq1. iF EQ2 had a problem at launch was the several instance of the zone the newbbie island on my server was like 20+ instances of it and most server were full very quick. It was like the entire EQ1 community jump to the new version of EQ to try it out...
I dont know why Vanguard was not made part of the list as at launch time no computer could really run vanguard at top notch speed with all options on. I try running Vangaurd with all options on after I upgrade my computer and graphics to enjoy the beauty of the game for about 5 seconds before my computer just died on me. I dont know if computers with today technology can run vanguard with all options on with the addition of x64bit and new OS and video card may be is possible to run it at top options now days but back then with no x64 nor core or I processor Vanguard was just a pc worse pc killer even before launch.
Aion launch was pretty smooth what kill it was the tons of obnotious gold sellers that were on every freaking channel you could not get away even on the last least populated channel.
Comments
I was waiting for someone to mention that. As that was one of the few I didn't play I didn't think it was my place to bring it up.
Not to say your memory is wrong but you might be remembering things slightly incorrectly. Sierra lost the contract 1999 and it was given not to Turbine but instead an 8 year deal was made to Vivendi Games the parent company of Sierra. Turbine was brought in the to picture in 2003 and bought out Vivendi’s interest in the property making Turbine the only developer in 2005 where the name was changed to LOTRO. Where you are right they basically scraped part of it as you say but it was 6 years after your claiming it happened.
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/03/23/westwood_game_maker_to_tap_middle_earths_riches/
Anarchy Online is a very fun game to this day - I had to say that to let all of you know that is just the truth.
But by far AO had the worst launch in history. I was in beta - and beta was actually quite good. It felt fairly polished and well-presented for its time. But on that first day, I remember the ONLY way to remove enough lag to allow you to even move one step was to turn off visibility of ALL other players. It sort of worked, but was still bad.
*shiver*
AO should be #1 on this list.
insanex
It was actually the horizons launch that convinced me never to buy an MMO until has been out for at least a month.
What a waste that game was. It's one thing to have have sever instability or to just not have it up on your release date. Glitches and game breaking bugs are of course horrible, but they are fixable. Horizons was all of those things plus one worse. It seemed that the developers didn't plan for anyone to make it much past level 10 in the first week of game play, because they hadn't added any content beyond the starter areas.
This list is almost laughable when you include games like Aion and World of Warcraft, both of whom experienced problems because they were a success. Complaints about Aion's grind has nothing to do with whether or not it was a successful launch.
Where is Vanguard? Of all the mmorpgs to have ever been released, I can't possibly think of a game that had a worse launch than Vanguard. A game from the original developers of EQ that was hyped to the moon for years which was released as a bug ridden mess that could only be ran by nasa computers, causing the company to close its doors days later. For that matter, where is APB?
Two comments:
Biggest issue I had with SWG launch day was creating my account. I went from IE to Firefox which solved that problem and then had no problem logging in on the Eclipse server. But yeah the game was buggy for months afterwards. The BioEng class was hopelessy broken so I ended up choosing Medic. The Jedi/hologram grind was a serious disapointment and a poor way to implement the jedi class.The data base was extrtremely unstable and when I lost a millon credits of crafted items and my house vendor then the CS told me to suck it up I quit and never looked back.
Only issue I had with WoW was server ques. The game and graphics did me in though, they give me a real life skull pop of a headache, no kidding. 20 days after launch I logged off and to this day have never went back.
My personal worst experiance was Ages of Conan. Game ran great for me the first week, then suddenly one morning the game started crashing at launch. Customer support was non existent. A bunch of us with the same issue had a 100+ page thread on the tech forums. The Funcom devs just ignored it. In desperation my last week of the 30 days I did a roll over format of my hard drive which worked, but when I logged in most of my guild had called it quits by then over bugs and performance issues. I think played one more day then said to heck with it and went back to Lotro.
I miss DAoC
I actually played AION at launch and many months afterwords.. I hit end game but gave up frustrated after failing miragent legging (one of the poor eastern-based mechanics that were mentioned.) The game played fine for me.. But i know others had problems.. It was amazing at launch, i don't think i've ever seen that many people running around in a MMORPG and i thought the fun would continue forever.. But the game just wasn't properly developed as good in the later levels and most gave up instead of grinding elite mobs all day like i did to hit 50 lol.
Currently Playing:
Rift + Starcraft II + Gears Of War 3 Beta
This just makes me sick. Its so obvious writers on hear don;'t even try these games. They just listen to the hype and dislikes from the posters here. Putting AIOn on this list was just retarded. Yes there were lines to log on. But they weren;t that bad. Maybe an hour wait for teh first day or so, but that was it. Aion was one of the smoothest western launches ever.
And I am by no means a Aion fanboy. I played it at launch and for a few months after and it I hate it. I have no plans on ever playing that pos again.
This is honestly not important. When you think about it when your making an MMO do you really expect to be over populated of course not you may think so but developers dont so i dont understand the point of this article if its a good game then who cares if the servers are down for a few days or theres some glitches
Thanks for proving you didn't read anything. MEO had nothing to do with Sierra beyond 1999. It was all Turbine. It was Turbine hosting conventions, showing off MEO and what it could do, telling us when we could buy it, what features it would have, letting us play it, even some of us (myself included) getting to alpha it. Then they gutted it and turned it into a WoW clone called LotRO. All Turbine, nothing to do with Sierra.
Quite obvious this article was written purely for hits.
Having WoW and Aion on the list is very puzzling.
I played WoW at launch and the lag problems were cleared up on my server after 4 days.
Also, yeah Aion was down for like the first day but it was mostly smooth after that. Really no reason to have it on the list.
To not have Anarchy Online as #1 means it is quite clear the author did not actually play these MMOs at launch. AO was unplayable for months. Be it from game crippling bugs or servers being down.
But putting WoW at #1 will get the WoW haters in here.
Aion? Really?! That's 100% bullshit Mr. Murphy, and I'm calling you out on it. I played through beta and at launch, and I NEVER got stuck in a queue. I even peaked at almost 40 hours in-game a week, and never had to wait to get in.
Try harder next time.
Wrong oh. Turbine did not take over from Sierra until 2005. See this (right here from mmorpg.com):
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/loadNews/2817
I also suggest you read this:
http://tinysubversions.com/2007/06/a-history-of-meo/
And one more that contradicts your "timeline":
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Middle-earth_Online
Bottom line....Turbine did not get envolved until 2003. The coding for LOTRO was all Turbine's at that time and not Sierra's. The only thing Turbine was allowed access to was the artwork.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Cataclysm SHOULD NOT be on the list.
The launch had absolutely no problems and there wasn't even any lag issues, must less server crashes or anything.
I'm not a huge fanboy, but I am fair and it's just silly to have it listed.
Aion and Champions were both horrible disasters on launch day and even the entire week+ of launch. Servers down constantly and incredible lag. Though, Champions wasn't launched '10, it was such a disaster that I'll never forget it. LOL.
I think #1 and #2 should be Vanguard and Shadowbane in no particular order. They were both games I looked forward to a lot but left because of... well y'know
Um lets see, yep your right Cataclysm should not be on the list and …. Its not. This was about launches not just launches in 2010 some of the games listed launched long before 2010.
Aions main problem was that they sold too many accounts (boxes and digital) for their infrastructure to deal with.
In effect, they knowingly sold a service they couldnt provide, by continuing selling once they had reached their capacity, which imo should actually be considered fraud.
they knew exactly the amount of boxes they had put out, and they knew exactly the number of digital copies they were selling, yet they continued to sell them when they KNEW they couldnt accomadate the users. This is just plain theft.
If I sell 100 cans saying they have beans in them, I better have the beans to fill 'em.
Fail. Author seriously failed with some games on list.
I agree it, should be #1!!
Momo sucks, I have proof.
Does no one remember Dark & Light? First they stole thousands of dollars from people's credit cards by charging the client fee and monthly fee dozens of of times over and over on each card. Second the servers were so horrible hardly anyone could play. Third they got sued by a french company for stealing the entire client from them and were shut down.
For reasons I can't fathom, www.darkandlight.com is still working and people are still posting on the forums.
Sorry Bill, but you blew this one. The only one on that list that should be on the list is AO.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. - Douglas Adams
AoC have is bad lauch... and will have a worst end ... soon
Personally I played beta on 2 of the 5 and paid hard earned money for the pre-orders on 3 of the 5. All of them were exactly as dismal as the article explains and then some. To date, all of them still blow - except for WoW which I addictively played for many years until I realized the grind for epics would never ever end.
I still look at Aion and AoC sitting on the shelf and fantasize about what awesome games they could of been. Today, waiting for the next beta test of Rift and launch, a game more polished than all of them put together. Sadly I have tried to find that "new" feel in LoTR, DnD, DAOC, Vanguard, RoM, Atlantica, Perfect World, Vindictus, SWG, and some I cannot even remember or care to forget. It truly is a sad state of affairs for anyone searching for something exciting and fresh.
If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand.
I had to wait for 3 hours+ to log on to Aion. I even called my wife before i left the office to log in, went home, had dinner watched tv and after 3 hours I finnaly dared to look at the comuter screen.
It took about a month, after that no more waiting to log on
EQ2 was playable at launch no major problems for those that had anticipated and upgrade their graphics cards but much did not upgrade their computers thinking that would have the same standards graphics standards as eq1. iF EQ2 had a problem at launch was the several instance of the zone the newbbie island on my server was like 20+ instances of it and most server were full very quick. It was like the entire EQ1 community jump to the new version of EQ to try it out...
I dont know why Vanguard was not made part of the list as at launch time no computer could really run vanguard at top notch speed with all options on. I try running Vangaurd with all options on after I upgrade my computer and graphics to enjoy the beauty of the game for about 5 seconds before my computer just died on me. I dont know if computers with today technology can run vanguard with all options on with the addition of x64bit and new OS and video card may be is possible to run it at top options now days but back then with no x64 nor core or I processor Vanguard was just a pc worse pc killer even before launch.
Aion launch was pretty smooth what kill it was the tons of obnotious gold sellers that were on every freaking channel you could not get away even on the last least populated channel.