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How many times does an MMO Dev company screw you over before you quit?
Gravez
Member Posts: 249
How many times does an MMO Dev company screw you over before you quit?
Just curious how anyone else thinks.
quit playing NWN on AOL when it was shut down.
quit EQ when Shadows of Luclin was released because everything seemed broken/incomplete. ( think this is when SOE was in control)
quit SWG 2-3 times because nothing worked right and I was tired of having to work around problems. Swore off any SOE game after this.
quit COV/COH 2-3 times out of repetative missions
quit WOW out of boredom and the fact they made my pvp gear obsolete that I spent hours grinding for, notice I don't say worked for it. quit WOW 3-4 times.
quit AOC because it was as broken as SWG and I didn't want to deal with it.
Comments
I'd stop thinking about companies and concentrate on individual games if I were you. Sometimes the companies make a great game that you like and some times fail to meet the expectations. For example,
Think of how Funcom came up with two games that were both original and innovative at the time, but yet still plagued with problems. Although the new project TSW can also be plagued with similar problems, it can also be a surprise hit.
On the other hand, think of Mythic and the sweet spot they were with DAoC. Everybody was expecting an equally good or better game with Warhammer, but they failed to deliver.
Bottom line, the company itself doesn't matter. All it matters is the end result, aka the game.
I disagree. There's a high correlation between how well a company manages one game and how well is manages any others under its umbrella. So I advise the opposite.
I don't want to comment too much on the DaoC/Warhammer situation as I didn't play either, but I was playing UO at the time as it was caught up in the same whirlwind as Mythic was merging into EA. As a customer, it felt to me like there there was total chaos in management at the time.
My attitude is that if I feel that a publisher has mismanaged one game to the point where I quit, there's no point in picking up another game from the same company expecting it to turn out better.
One time.
I normally do not held grudge against particular mmo company, usually I just quit the game I dislike and that is it...There is one exception thou - Age of Conan and Funcom.
"Never in the history of gaming so many lies were told about the game by so few to so many".
The game at launch had like 10% of features listed on the box and their website and whatever was there was broken: many high level skills did not work, mounted combat was nonexistent, crafting was broken to the degree that EVERYONE in my guild had to ask GM for help in unstucking its progress...city building was broken, sieges were not implemented, itemization was terrible - everyone within a class wore the same brownish armor, no matter lvl 40 or 80..., due to instancing one could barely experience other players around and finding your friends scattered through different layers was a pain in the butt, veteran points promised at launch were introduced like what? 3 years after release? I also remember doing a raid with some badd-ass dragon boss...that droped totally nothing
I could keep going with this list for a long time, but the point is, that in case of AoC I not only felt dissapointed by the game: I felt genuinely cheated.
Especially, that when Funcom moderators were deleting majority of the complaining posts on their forum, the head of this scaming bunch of wanna-bee developers - Gaute Godager keep braging on the net how great game their produced, how revolutionary and fun to play it is... Seriously, the only positive thing I associate with Funcom is the information about this clown resigning...
I usually try every major mmo title that comes out, but in case of Funcom their game will have to be a real marvel that makes all my guildmates to migrate there bevore I even consider buying it.
Three times... then i leave.
As an example.
I played rift.
1. The removal of real expert dailies, reduction of all epic drops + the gutting of the dufficulty in all 5 mans.
2. The reduction in planarite gained through rifts and all world content, the destruction of artifacting due to killing 90% of the spawn locations, reduction of faction gains on mob kills and daily rep quest rewards.
3. Removal of armor set item drops from bosses for this pathetic plaque type system in Raids. Basically requiring any guild that doesnt have all cotent on farm to wait months for any peice of raid set gear...
The nerfs of both difficulty, artifact spawns and pve progression (dailies, drops, planarite and raid set tokens) had me uninstalling in haste.
Again my answer is three.
Playing: Nothing
Looking forward to: Nothing
NGE qualifies as the company "screwing people over".
"boring missions" does not. At least not for me. Nor does releasing a game that has bugs. All games have bugs - that's the nature of MMOs. Unless the development company purposely misrepresents a significat issue or undermines significant work by the playerbase, i don't consider it as being "screwed over".
NGE, launch of Dark & Light and Vanguard were pretty much the only examples of companies "screwing people over" on a mass scale. Vanguard is arguable because while the lead designer was blatantly lying through his teeth about the game and ended up firing the staff and all kinds of nasty shit, it was still quite obvious to a lot of people what was going on.
NGE was a pure con job. They pre-sold thousands of people an expansion, then announced AFTER the presales that they were completing revamping the game and refused to give refunds. Screwed over? For sure.
Dark & Light took people's money and did not deliver an even remotely functioning game with even 1/10th of promised features. Screwed over? Definitely.
At the end, the answer to the question depends on what the company is doing to balance things out. NGE screwed people over like nothing, but EQ2 is still the best themepark game on the market, so i keep playing it.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Anyone can mess up and I don't think bugs as being screwed, that is something they made on purpose, like the NGE 10 days after the last expansion, anyone who paid full price for that was totally screwed.
If I feel screwed that is it for that game, I might be forgiving or not for another game but I won't come back.
And while I sometimes come back to games I enjoy I never said I would quit a game because I felt screwed and didn't do it, and I never got nack to that game either.
As I see it won't I screw the company by cheating, buying gold or similar things but I expect the same curtesy from them as well. It is kinda a pact and that goes both ways.
I would tend to agree with this. While there is a correlation as others have said between how a company does one game to the next, the issue is not that cut and dried. In larger companies there can be several teams or even seperate studios doing games, so the actual people who "screwed" you on one game may never touch the next. Was the "screwing" done by the devs, or a larger parent company, or because of demands of the publisher?
Like so many other things, MMO's today are corporate big business, so there as lots of folks with ample opportunity to "screw" you.
My favorite mmo ever is Asheron's Call, played it for several years, gone back a couple times for extended periods. When I was younger I played D&D. So when I saw Turbine doing a D&D mmo I was psyched. I hated D&D online, twice. I thought it was terrible at launch, and when it went f2p I thought (and still feel) I haven't seen a f2p model handled as poorly as it has been.
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
~Omar Khayyam
The best game community to ask would be the Darkfall playerbase, seeing as im one of them i would say 2 years+ of lies and being screwed.
Even then i still play caus ei cant stand tab targetted pvp.
to answer the OP, in my case it seems to be twice at least
I was also one of those AoC release victims , and yet here I am, rooting for TSW....
From my history of games -- it takes approximately three times before I leave a game that I enjoy otherwise.
I mean If you look at Rift -- I started as a Paladin/Champ/Beast when the champ skills were not 2 handed only as a light tank that could do a decent amount of dps. When they nerfed that into not working, I adjusted and went Paladin/Warlord/Beast and played an actual tank and was doing pretty well up until the 1st big TTT etc nerf. I groused again and rolled with the punches and tightened up the build and got my final build to where I could accomplish most of what I could do before the 1st nerf with exactlingly set up equipment and build -- then the second big nerf came making paladins utterly worthless and I left the game. If they had done the HUGE nerf all at once I might have re-rolled instead.
I have had other earlier games go for the triple affront in which case I have left.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Cloudsol/
They supply a game. If you like it then play. If not, then quit.
The company isn't "screwing over" anybody. They're just maintaining a game. They make good decisions and bad and EACH of those decision is gonna have an equal number of players on either side applauding and rage-quitting.
Do you think that NO players LIKED SWG's NGE? Guess what. Some did.
Seventeen. Seriously though, if I think a game company is treating me unfairly, as a paying customer, why would I continue to play? I can keep in touch with the friends I've made through e-mail or a different game. There are no games out there that are better at everything else than all the others, in my opinion.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
often the main issue is that game maker put so much effort on graphic they re broke when time come to actually put content in!
soon tho game maker wont have to,i hear a company is creating a tool that will convert augmented reality photage to cartoon style or anime style graphic in real time.so graphic will just be a mather of scanning whatever you want etc will take a lot less time
want a car chase in ny ,you ll be in a car with a augmented reality look a like tool that will then be converted to whatever you want be it bugsbunny graphic or l.a. noire
SoE basically either kills games (SWG, Vanguard, MxO, Agency), or just screws over their players by adding cashops to P2P games, EQ, EQ2 and milks their players for all they're worth.
A company is a very good indication if you're going to get screwed over or not.
Vanguard and MxO were not developed pre-release by SOE. Agency unfortunately was being made at a time when SOE decided to change tracks and SWG.. well they messed up there.
Why does this matter, SoE let those games die, not the original developers.
Like someone already said, I dont worry about companies I just play individual games regardless of who's operating it.
Few games that I play interest me so little that a change to a single feature would stop me from playing it. Now if it's a major revamp or change in direction, that's another thing and would cause me to rethink my playing. It's not really about "how many times" for me, its more about "is this game still fun?".
MMO companies don't screw me over anymore because i don't buy their games. I like so few on here actually practice what i preach.
Every interview and game play session of every mmo today. i have seen 100 times before in past games. no one is bringing anything to the table. no one.
They want that fast money. that box sale and that 15 after that free month. its all i see with every game release.
Buying games out doesn't translate into supporting. There's plenty companies who buy out struggling companies and end up kiling them. That is basically what SoE does.
Vanguard was going to mean competition for EQ and EQ2, so they bought it and basically killed it by not supporting it.
Depends on the definition. A given MMO pub/dev can make many mistakes or decisions I don't like and its not necessarily a problem. If they 'screw' me over, I'm gone. So the answer is, one.
By the way -- I treat guilds the same way.
If I have put enough time and effort and adventured enough with the people to decide that yes, a specific guild is one I am willing to be a part of (in many games I never guild) -- it generally takes Three affronts before I drop guild.
One specific example of a "third strike" that I remember was:
I was told specifically to enter a portal on asking if I should or shouldn't back in everquest 1 by one of the higher members of the guild but not the top 4 (say he was in the top 10 but not specifically the GM or other 3 top top people) out of 120 guild members. Well, the thing ended with me being docked 25 DKP for entering the portal (if they didnt want it it should have been the person who told me to enter who got docked) which amounted to the amount of about 5 evenings of raiding. And the GM wouldnt back off that decision. Over that they lost one of only 3 people who were playing shaman at the time who were being severely over-worked and under-appreciated harming the guild quite a bit as well as someone who had a 100% raid attendance over a 3 month period (see over-worked)
One. And I apply this to every aspect of my life. You are gonna screw me over once. There is no possible way you will have any remote chance of doing it twice.