Also, the bit about as SWG became more popular, the developers vision changed is ridiculous misinformation for 2 reasons:
1. SWG never grew in popularity, its peak was in its first few months.
2. Who says the developers vision changed? What the programmers were asked to do changed, and nobody knows where that order came from. Even so, many of the key aspects of the game didn't change much (social elements, crafting, sandbox world). It is a shame what they did to the class system though.
I agree Shadowbane had significant technical issues that ultimately doomed the game. That said...
No other game since has pulled people into its world like Shadowbane did. Due to the free form nature and real building aspects, politics meant something...your alliances meant something....your guild meant something. If you fought, there was a chance you would lose it all and this made battles meaningful. And the lore was great.
I agree with others, that war is the dodgy one on that list. Ceratainly not the first 'wow clone' as someone has said, but it was being hailed as wow 2.0 at time of release. Still was suprising it closed rather than go f2p, so it at least deserves consideration from that standpoint.
Good list, and agree with swg at No.1. Even if it was more an mmo that didn't deserve to be killed of.
"Despite all of that though, Star Wars: Galaxies has always been regarded as one of the greatest achievements in MMO history, something to aspire to once again."
This sort of statement gets me. You're speaking as if representing a large core of the gaming community yet utter bold faced nonsense.
I beta'd and played Star Wars Galaxies and while it did get a lot of attention for the IP , it was never considered this masterpiece so many drum it up to be. If you remember, EQ had been the last big thing and there wasn't a lot of other MMOs to choose from. People who went out and bought at release were mostly turned off by the lack of quests and themepark elements (I recall PC Gamer giving it some horrendously low score claiming there wasn't much to do), the bugs galore, steep system requirements as well as numerous other things. "EQ in space" was a common phrase tossed around. SWG wasn't even around long when WoW launched and we all know what happened after.
I do remember playing and having fun. But I think most was due to it being a Star Wars MMO, not a great MMO. Yes, the cafting and housing was amazing, but the gaming could not attract the subs the suits wanted.
I played SWG then went to EQ2 (and later back to SWG on many occassions). EQ2 at the time was much more popular. I remember a guy telling me "Star Wars sucked. Next MMO to look out for is Vanguard. Same creator as EQ." And thus the cycle carries on. I wonder what the next "masterpiece" will be?
TL:DR SWG, while fun, was not considered a masterpiece at its time. Neither was the Phantom Menace.
All the griefers killed Shadowbane. SWG is widely regarded as having the best crafting of any MMO to date, and no game company since has a clue why, or even has attempted to duplicate it. Maybe some day they'll figure it out.
It's so simple. Remake a SWG-type sandbox with a modern gui and graffix and you'll never go out of business! What's wrong with these meathead developers?
Originally posted by ste2000 WAR deserved to die as it was the first MMO that gave the start to this WoW clone craze that is plaguing the indudtry.
It's PvE was very obviously a WoW rip off, and no one at Mythic actually wanted it in there in that way (it was forced in by EA), but most of the game was its own design.
The first true WoW clone was LotRO, which had nothing of its own to bring to the table....
...other than Monster Play added way later, and was taken from the blue prints of Middle Earth Online, playable instruments also a feature rescued from Middle Earth Online with support for writing and collecting music sheets, character moods not unique to LotRO, one of the most extensive animation sets ever created for an MMO source? also, graphics aren't innovation and doesn't stop something from being a clone., and the traits and deeds system also not unique. You may not like these features and they may not be important to you, personally, but to deny they are there would be silly.
I followed LotRO from 2004 when it was called Middle Earth Online, a sandbox MMO in development by Turbine, in Providence Rhode Island.
I was there in alpha, when they fired half their team, hit the game with an NGE, got rid of almost all the sandbox features, and changed the name to LotRO. From that point on, it was all about linear solo centric quest grinding through instances, just like WoW. They implemented the same kind of dungeons, GUI, raiding, leveling systems, class systems, as WoW.
Do not try to tell me they didn't intentionally make it a WoW clone. The only redeeming portions of that game left when it launced were remnants from MEO.
SWG haters are losing their mind in this thread. The topic of the thread is 5 MMOs that did not deserve to die. If you disagree, fine. No game will ever appeal to 100% of the gaming population. There will always be detractors. Throwing a tantrum isn't going to change anyone's mind who is of the opinion that SWG is the number one game in that regard. Relax.
Im well aware of the disastrous history of that game as well as vanguard. The point of my post was to highlight the very basic concept that amazing successfull games that everyone who plays love to death neither bleed subs immediately after release nor require drastic changes like nge much less close their doors. If swg was such a great game as released, it would have grown through word of mouth not bled. Had it posted WoW like numbers or even 1/10 their numbers it would not have shut down,period. Games that shut down do so for a reason and that reason is never being they are so great and universally loved that they make too much money.
Game quality is absolutely subjective just like movies,books,music,comedy,etc. You and every other swg fan that think it is the bestest game ever are entitiled to your opinion but not your own facts. The fact remains, you are in the minority and vocal though you may be, you are still the minority.
You do realize that the only game that hasn't bled large amounts of subs immediately after release in recent years has been WoW itself. And that's only because WoW was the game that changed the MMO market from being a group of a few hundred thousand players, to one of 10s of millions.
Every game since has bled subs after the initial launch. Including WoW itself (albeit much more slowly). It has little-nothing to do with how the games are designed. It's a biproduct of one, and only one reality. We have far more games to play now, than we ever have in the past. People hop games a lot more now, because they are a lot more games to play. Before WoW, you had one, maybe 2 MMOs to stick w/. There were only a few high profile MMOs released every couple years. You also had a lot fewer games doing online multiplayer.
Now? Not only do we have more MMOs on the market, but we also have nearly every game offering some form of online multiplayer.
I agree with most all of these, sadly I wish I could add vanguard to these, but just like SWG, a bugged mess from day one. There is a very, very vocal minority here that will scream SWG was the MMO of all MMO's, but in my opinion it's just the loud kid screaming in the corner. SWG was a mess from day one to the end, everyone's fault, Lucas Arts mainly, SOE giving up there artistic integrity and whiney players screaming on the forums.
It's an insult to every game on this list to claim SWG #1 on this list. Then again, I guess we all have our own opinion, but now you are all punished with mine.
You are so jaded in "your opinion" that one "very" wouldn't do, you had to add a second. If you were really interested in being accurate you would have said the vocal majority "everywhere." The vocal minority are the ones sharing your opinion.
delusional nonsense like most things concerning swg. I hate to break it to you all but the most bestest games ever made and reknowned by all they touch dont bleed subs within months or even a few years of release. Amazing games that everyone thinks is the best thing since sliced bread and are happy to pay whatever sub fee required dont makes drastic changes to keep people from leaving. If swg was even 1/10 the game you claim at release there wouldnt have been a nge and the game would still be going strong. Just because you and a very,very vocal miniority think it was the best game ever made and were willing to overlook its many flaws doesnt make it true for any other than yourselves. The same can be said for the very,very vocal minority that claim vanguard to be the bestest game evah.
I'm sorry but if you don't know what your talking about you really shouldn't post. If you knew the history of the game you would realize how misinformed your post is. Even in this thread one of the game designers posted a link to what happen to SWG let alone other post by people that knew what happen.
As for what game is best that is a opinion and to many SWG was the best. If you don't agree with that so be it that is your opinion.
The point of my post was to highlight the very basic concept that amazing successfull games that everyone who plays love to death neither bleed subs immediately after release nor require drastic changes like nge much less close their doors.
SWG didn't start to lose subs until early 2004 with the Holocron patch. It's not like the subs dropped a ton they lost around 25k from the 300k peak give or take a few k. The huge sub drop was the NGE about a year and a half after launch. You also forget that back in 2003 300k subs was a lot. Not until late 2004 with the launch of Wow did the mmo industry take off.
Good article and I agree, all of those games died well before their time.
As much as I was a fan of CoH and lament its demise, I returned to DCUO a few months ago to give it a third try - checking out the new powersets. I was surprised to find myself enjoying it possibly even more than I used to CoH. It's combat is sufficiently different from the norm to take some getting used to but quite engaging once you do.
SOE's customer service might be a bit hit and miss but the game itself is no mere consolation prize to CoH.
The first true WoW clone was LotRO, which had nothing of its own to bring to the table....
I followed LotRO from 2004 when it was called Middle Earth Online, a sandbox MMO in development by Turbine, in Providence Rhode Island.
...
Do not try to tell me they didn't intentionally make it a WoW clone. The only redeeming portions of that game left when it launced were remnants from MEO.
I agree with you on LOTRO being a WOW clone. I also followed it from its earlier, much more interesting incarnation to what was ultimately released. Very similar story to SWTOR. Both started as something unique and changed direction sharply to mimic WOW. Insanity...
The fact that the mother of fantasy IPs with some recently massively successful movies did so badly following that design should have communicated clearly to the industry that WOW's success could not be cloned. And it certainly wasn't a dreadful game. It just wasn't new enough to make an impact.
The first true WoW clone was LotRO, which had nothing of its own to bring to the table....
I followed LotRO from 2004 when it was called Middle Earth Online, a sandbox MMO in development by Turbine, in Providence Rhode Island.
...
Do not try to tell me they didn't intentionally make it a WoW clone. The only redeeming portions of that game left when it launced were remnants from MEO.
I agree with you on LOTRO being a WOW clone. I also followed it from its earlier, much more interesting incarnation to what was ultimately released. Very similar story to SWTOR. Both started as something unique and changed direction sharply to mimic WOW. Insanity...
The fact that the mother of fantasy IPs with some recently massively successful movies did so badly following that design should have communicated clearly to the industry that WOW's success could not be cloned. And it certainly wasn't a dreadful game. It just wasn't new enough to make an impact.
They arrived to late for the themepark party. By the time they launched Wow already had their first expansion and had hit their stride. Other than hard core fans of Tolkien most were to hooked on Wow to look at another game let alone one that played like it.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
Oooo, I got a warning for shattering the "Galaxies was the best MMO ever made" myth. Looks like people still don't like facts around here things haven't changed much in 10 years.
If you like a game that's fine and dandy, but let's be honest enough to admit the truth about it. Earth and Beyond was my favorite MMO of all-time. I can still manage to admit that in reality it wasn't a good game. It had many things that I think should have become standard within the genre such as the leveling system which had three distinct leveling categories exploration, trade, and combat. The crafting system and loot system worked together and the best loot in the game came from raiding for loot, giving that item to a crafter, having them destroy it for a chance to learn the pattern and then rebuilding that item with items from the same item and creating versions that were more powerful than a natural drop. The community was on par with Galaxies in that people would go out of their way to help and teach new players. When you play a smaller game every new player gained makes your game better. You were inspired to help others because you would eventually benefit from that new person on the server in some way. We had to work together in order to get by and the game was better for it. We couldn't really grow though beyond a niche because the game had problems and this brings me to the brutally honest part.
The flaws of Earth and Beyond were absolutely massive. The game lacked any real PVP. It had one single "PvP ball game" arena that nobody took part in because it was worthless, unbalanced, and buggy. The lack of PVP was due to the fact that we were all on the same side but I think that was mostly to do with the fact that Westwood had to rush the game out because EA was demanding something to compete with EQ that was similar to EQ yet different enough(lol-space) to trick people into thinking it wasn't a clone. This issue also was magnified because the game sets up perfectly for a 3 faction war because of the lore within it. So you've got this huge universe, 3 great races with compelling lore that have reason to despise each other, an evolving storyline that updated far more frequently than most MMO's (I miss you Credith) but what besides time could have botched the entire 3 faction war that the story should have evolved into and created a living world? Class balance and design were the real culprits here. We were initially supposed to have 3 classes per faction, but due to time restraints they forced the game to launch with only 2 per and interesting combinations at that. The game was a classic trinity, but only 1 class from 1 single faction was capable of tanking, only 1 class from one single faction was a proper healer, 2 were considered buffers from 2 different factions, 1 was ranged DPS, and the other was stealthy close-range DPS. I didn't really know what they were thinking, but it was obvious whatever it was was wrong. It all appeared to be for lack of a better word incomplete as even if the 3 cut classes were added to the game you'd only ever have 1 tank that came from a single faction. The only real healer at launch would have been a floating barge of death in PVP because it had massive range, the ability to repair your ship and recharge shields along with the solid weapons systems. Basically we had a game where the story demanded inter-faction war and competition, but lacked the tools to provide that. So PVP out the window, compelling faction war thrown out, everybody love everybody all the time becomes the motto, PVE and questing had to carry the day.
Quests were used to a greater extent than EQ and we were all thankful for that. We had a whole bunch of low-level quests that built on the lore, got you involved in the universe, took you to strange and exciting locations for around the first 30-40 levels and then they almost all dried up. The quests were few and far between and many us began reciting the mantra of "Neverquest in Space". We got saddled with this horrible "job system" similar to the Galaxies system in the start where you'd pick a job up and it would give you a generic mission to go kill X in sector Y for combat XP. They had them for each of the leveling categories and they were all just as boring and generic. It wouldn't have been an issue had we not been spoiled by a super cool and interesting storyline quest system they started us on and then just dumped with the occasional cool quest here and there for a hull upgrade or a skill discovery. Compared to the starting quests these jobs were just insulting and completely boring. The other options for leveling weren't much better, sadly. You could get in a party and grind mobs just like EQ for hours on end for your combat xp, exploration was leveled up by giving tours to lowbies around the galaxy(actually not that bad because it did help the new players to stick around), or filling your cargo hold with a ton of shit at one port and flying across the universe for trade XP. The trade routes were a nightmare as just one way was 45 minutes of warping and gating. All in all leveling in E&B was a bitch just like it was in EQ. XP penalties, classes that sucked solo, classes that were imba solo, etc. I wont even touch on the raiding aspect because it was a tad less tedious than EQ and not really epic and by this point if people are still reading they are probably ready for me to get to the point of my rant.
I loved that game, I loved the community, I loved the story, I loved the setting, I loved my class, but the game was not finished, it was super buggy, it was terribly balanced, and I can admit that it was not a good game. Despite my love for it I can look objectively at it and realize that even though I hate EA with every fiber of my being for shutting it down it was not a very good game. It had a small and declining population, and they made the right choice financially to do it. They went about it the wrong way and they totally botched something that had a ton of potential, but it was a bad game none the less. Because I am not blinded by my love for the game and nostalgia I can sit here and give you an honest opinion. This is how you avoid the fanboy mentality.
TLDR: You can love a game and still be honest about it's quality. Most people on these boards don't seem capable of that though.
Comments
EQOA should be on the list.
As much as I love EQ2, EQOA was a much better use of Norrath. Excellent game world, great AA system. Retained a lot of what made EQ great.
Just stuck on a console 2 generations old.
Also, the bit about as SWG became more popular, the developers vision changed is ridiculous misinformation for 2 reasons:
1. SWG never grew in popularity, its peak was in its first few months.
2. Who says the developers vision changed? What the programmers were asked to do changed, and nobody knows where that order came from. Even so, many of the key aspects of the game didn't change much (social elements, crafting, sandbox world). It is a shame what they did to the class system though.
I agree Shadowbane had significant technical issues that ultimately doomed the game. That said...
No other game since has pulled people into its world like Shadowbane did. Due to the free form nature and real building aspects, politics meant something...your alliances meant something....your guild meant something. If you fought, there was a chance you would lose it all and this made battles meaningful. And the lore was great.
The list is irrelevant unless it includes The Chronicles of Spellborn.
Youcan also add Wildstar to the list
And while you are at it, what about a list of 5 mmos that deserve to die?
1. WoW
2. Rift (just kidding... it's long dead already)
3. ESO (yes, even though it's barely an mmo)
4. any Funcom MMO
5. SWTOR
Star Wars Galaxies was the greatest game I ever played.
fishermage.blogspot.com
I agree with others, that war is the dodgy one on that list. Ceratainly not the first 'wow clone' as someone has said, but it was being hailed as wow 2.0 at time of release. Still was suprising it closed rather than go f2p, so it at least deserves consideration from that standpoint.
Good list, and agree with swg at No.1. Even if it was more an mmo that didn't deserve to be killed of.
"Despite all of that though, Star Wars: Galaxies has always been regarded as one of the greatest achievements in MMO history, something to aspire to once again."
This sort of statement gets me. You're speaking as if representing a large core of the gaming community yet utter bold faced nonsense.
I beta'd and played Star Wars Galaxies and while it did get a lot of attention for the IP , it was never considered this masterpiece so many drum it up to be. If you remember, EQ had been the last big thing and there wasn't a lot of other MMOs to choose from. People who went out and bought at release were mostly turned off by the lack of quests and themepark elements (I recall PC Gamer giving it some horrendously low score claiming there wasn't much to do), the bugs galore, steep system requirements as well as numerous other things. "EQ in space" was a common phrase tossed around. SWG wasn't even around long when WoW launched and we all know what happened after.
I do remember playing and having fun. But I think most was due to it being a Star Wars MMO, not a great MMO. Yes, the cafting and housing was amazing, but the gaming could not attract the subs the suits wanted.
I played SWG then went to EQ2 (and later back to SWG on many occassions). EQ2 at the time was much more popular. I remember a guy telling me "Star Wars sucked. Next MMO to look out for is Vanguard. Same creator as EQ." And thus the cycle carries on. I wonder what the next "masterpiece" will be?
TL:DR SWG, while fun, was not considered a masterpiece at its time. Neither was the Phantom Menace.
WAR was definitely not a WoW clone. Rift, yes...SWTOR, yes and many others for sure but WAR, just no.
I miss WAR
EARTH AND BEYOND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tabula Rasa too...
I followed LotRO from 2004 when it was called Middle Earth Online, a sandbox MMO in development by Turbine, in Providence Rhode Island.
I was there in alpha, when they fired half their team, hit the game with an NGE, got rid of almost all the sandbox features, and changed the name to LotRO. From that point on, it was all about linear solo centric quest grinding through instances, just like WoW. They implemented the same kind of dungeons, GUI, raiding, leveling systems, class systems, as WoW.
Do not try to tell me they didn't intentionally make it a WoW clone. The only redeeming portions of that game left when it launced were remnants from MEO.
SWG haters are losing their mind in this thread. The topic of the thread is 5 MMOs that did not deserve to die. If you disagree, fine. No game will ever appeal to 100% of the gaming population. There will always be detractors. Throwing a tantrum isn't going to change anyone's mind who is of the opinion that SWG is the number one game in that regard. Relax.
You do realize that the only game that hasn't bled large amounts of subs immediately after release in recent years has been WoW itself. And that's only because WoW was the game that changed the MMO market from being a group of a few hundred thousand players, to one of 10s of millions.
Every game since has bled subs after the initial launch. Including WoW itself (albeit much more slowly). It has little-nothing to do with how the games are designed. It's a biproduct of one, and only one reality. We have far more games to play now, than we ever have in the past. People hop games a lot more now, because they are a lot more games to play. Before WoW, you had one, maybe 2 MMOs to stick w/. There were only a few high profile MMOs released every couple years. You also had a lot fewer games doing online multiplayer.
Now? Not only do we have more MMOs on the market, but we also have nearly every game offering some form of online multiplayer.
SWG didn't start to lose subs until early 2004 with the Holocron patch. It's not like the subs dropped a ton they lost around 25k from the 300k peak give or take a few k. The huge sub drop was the NGE about a year and a half after launch. You also forget that back in 2003 300k subs was a lot. Not until late 2004 with the launch of Wow did the mmo industry take off.
Good article and I agree, all of those games died well before their time.
As much as I was a fan of CoH and lament its demise, I returned to DCUO a few months ago to give it a third try - checking out the new powersets. I was surprised to find myself enjoying it possibly even more than I used to CoH. It's combat is sufficiently different from the norm to take some getting used to but quite engaging once you do.
SOE's customer service might be a bit hit and miss but the game itself is no mere consolation prize to CoH.
I agree with you on LOTRO being a WOW clone. I also followed it from its earlier, much more interesting incarnation to what was ultimately released. Very similar story to SWTOR. Both started as something unique and changed direction sharply to mimic WOW. Insanity...
The fact that the mother of fantasy IPs with some recently massively successful movies did so badly following that design should have communicated clearly to the industry that WOW's success could not be cloned. And it certainly wasn't a dreadful game. It just wasn't new enough to make an impact.They arrived to late for the themepark party. By the time they launched Wow already had their first expansion and had hit their stride. Other than hard core fans of Tolkien most were to hooked on Wow to look at another game let alone one that played like it.
Looks like a good list to me.
I especially miss CoH. =/
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
I miss Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes.
Another I miss that barely made it out of the gate and I believe deserves mention is Earth & Beyond.
Oooo, I got a warning for shattering the "Galaxies was the best MMO ever made" myth. Looks like people still don't like facts around here things haven't changed much in 10 years.
If you like a game that's fine and dandy, but let's be honest enough to admit the truth about it. Earth and Beyond was my favorite MMO of all-time. I can still manage to admit that in reality it wasn't a good game. It had many things that I think should have become standard within the genre such as the leveling system which had three distinct leveling categories exploration, trade, and combat. The crafting system and loot system worked together and the best loot in the game came from raiding for loot, giving that item to a crafter, having them destroy it for a chance to learn the pattern and then rebuilding that item with items from the same item and creating versions that were more powerful than a natural drop. The community was on par with Galaxies in that people would go out of their way to help and teach new players. When you play a smaller game every new player gained makes your game better. You were inspired to help others because you would eventually benefit from that new person on the server in some way. We had to work together in order to get by and the game was better for it. We couldn't really grow though beyond a niche because the game had problems and this brings me to the brutally honest part.
The flaws of Earth and Beyond were absolutely massive. The game lacked any real PVP. It had one single "PvP ball game" arena that nobody took part in because it was worthless, unbalanced, and buggy. The lack of PVP was due to the fact that we were all on the same side but I think that was mostly to do with the fact that Westwood had to rush the game out because EA was demanding something to compete with EQ that was similar to EQ yet different enough(lol-space) to trick people into thinking it wasn't a clone. This issue also was magnified because the game sets up perfectly for a 3 faction war because of the lore within it. So you've got this huge universe, 3 great races with compelling lore that have reason to despise each other, an evolving storyline that updated far more frequently than most MMO's (I miss you Credith) but what besides time could have botched the entire 3 faction war that the story should have evolved into and created a living world? Class balance and design were the real culprits here. We were initially supposed to have 3 classes per faction, but due to time restraints they forced the game to launch with only 2 per and interesting combinations at that. The game was a classic trinity, but only 1 class from 1 single faction was capable of tanking, only 1 class from one single faction was a proper healer, 2 were considered buffers from 2 different factions, 1 was ranged DPS, and the other was stealthy close-range DPS. I didn't really know what they were thinking, but it was obvious whatever it was was wrong. It all appeared to be for lack of a better word incomplete as even if the 3 cut classes were added to the game you'd only ever have 1 tank that came from a single faction. The only real healer at launch would have been a floating barge of death in PVP because it had massive range, the ability to repair your ship and recharge shields along with the solid weapons systems. Basically we had a game where the story demanded inter-faction war and competition, but lacked the tools to provide that. So PVP out the window, compelling faction war thrown out, everybody love everybody all the time becomes the motto, PVE and questing had to carry the day.
Quests were used to a greater extent than EQ and we were all thankful for that. We had a whole bunch of low-level quests that built on the lore, got you involved in the universe, took you to strange and exciting locations for around the first 30-40 levels and then they almost all dried up. The quests were few and far between and many us began reciting the mantra of "Neverquest in Space". We got saddled with this horrible "job system" similar to the Galaxies system in the start where you'd pick a job up and it would give you a generic mission to go kill X in sector Y for combat XP. They had them for each of the leveling categories and they were all just as boring and generic. It wouldn't have been an issue had we not been spoiled by a super cool and interesting storyline quest system they started us on and then just dumped with the occasional cool quest here and there for a hull upgrade or a skill discovery. Compared to the starting quests these jobs were just insulting and completely boring. The other options for leveling weren't much better, sadly. You could get in a party and grind mobs just like EQ for hours on end for your combat xp, exploration was leveled up by giving tours to lowbies around the galaxy(actually not that bad because it did help the new players to stick around), or filling your cargo hold with a ton of shit at one port and flying across the universe for trade XP. The trade routes were a nightmare as just one way was 45 minutes of warping and gating. All in all leveling in E&B was a bitch just like it was in EQ. XP penalties, classes that sucked solo, classes that were imba solo, etc. I wont even touch on the raiding aspect because it was a tad less tedious than EQ and not really epic and by this point if people are still reading they are probably ready for me to get to the point of my rant.
I loved that game, I loved the community, I loved the story, I loved the setting, I loved my class, but the game was not finished, it was super buggy, it was terribly balanced, and I can admit that it was not a good game. Despite my love for it I can look objectively at it and realize that even though I hate EA with every fiber of my being for shutting it down it was not a very good game. It had a small and declining population, and they made the right choice financially to do it. They went about it the wrong way and they totally botched something that had a ton of potential, but it was a bad game none the less. Because I am not blinded by my love for the game and nostalgia I can sit here and give you an honest opinion. This is how you avoid the fanboy mentality.
TLDR: You can love a game and still be honest about it's quality. Most people on these boards don't seem capable of that though.