It is very very tough, but I do think it is doable. I have no evidence to support it, though. I remember Age of Conan becoming a brilliant game after everyone had left, but Funcom could never recover it. If AoC had been in it´s 2010 state when it launced, I strongly believe it would have "killed WoW" tm.
But Black Desert Online is doing a lot of things right, and there seems to be a surge of new players and returning players atm. ESO too had a very mediocre start, but seems to be doing relatively well now. Hell, even SWTOR is still attracting new players.
But launch is vital, no doubt. Very few ppl gives a game a second try, and new players dont like old games.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I always go back and checkout a game I thought I could like if they just made the right changes. WildStar I've been back three times already. But usually the changes they do make were not the ones I'm looking for. ESO I don't like some of things they do to get people to sub but do like the game well enough to check out some of their new content from time to time. If they were more generous with their ones and zeros I would play more and they would actually get more money out of me, as I don't mind spending if I'm enjoying myself.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I didn't play at "launch" but from all the things I heard about, i think WoW counts as having a pretty terrible launch.
I did play it at launch and the only thing terrible was miscalculating its popularity.
Frustrating at times, but I played the heck out of it.
I played at launch and the only problem I had was trying to log in and create an account. I kept timing out, probably because the login/account server was being hammered by half the planet.
Once I got in I had no issues at all. No bugs, no crashes, no lag. Every time I see these posts about WoW having a bad launch I have to boggle. You think WoW had a bad launch, you been smoking too much crack.
Anarchy Onlne had a bad launch, wost in the history of gaming. Conan wasn't too great either.
A bad launch can kill a game but if the devs can hang on and fix things then they can recover to a degree. I'm not sure if such a game will ever reach it's full potential though. First impressions really do count.
WoW doesnt belong in this discussion. WoW's issues were purely technical, not gameplay related. WoW was loved from the start.
Vanguard had deeper issues than just the technical ones.
Well, Anarchy was in the same boat as WoW, really. The big difference between them is how massive the issue was. WoW was consistently playable from launch day. AO was basically untouchable for a good couple weeks, iirc.
AO got hurt big time by absolutely obliterating their launch window.
WoW's issues were very minor. Some servers had it worse than others, but the game was up and playable every single day, as I recall. The only issue on the server we were on was some latency. There was definitely steady latency for those early days, but it was still perfectly playable.
I think technical issues are, generally, fairly easily forgiven, if you have a fun game. A buggy, unfinished mess of a game, like Vanguard, is far harder to save.
I should note that bad customer service and account problems are a separate issue from technical ones. Horrible CS/tech support/account problems can really drive people away in a hurry.
The only issue I had in WoW early on besides queues was the loot lag. I would stop looting mobs if possible because I would be stuck looting for anywhere up to 15 minutes lol. I was having so much fun though, that I didn't care.
AO, heh they had tons of problems, but they also had billing issues too. People being double billed, or billed after being canceled, for months after cancellation too. They recovered though, at least I thought so, because it was a good game, but also there were only a few other options at the time.
I think after WoW, people were less likely to put up with poor launches because of the alternatives out there, but after a while when the new games were just poor rehashed facsimilies, then people started giving poorer launches more leeway and second chances in hopes of something good to play.
It relaunched though so it isn't really the same thing.
Interestingly they didn't end the storyline though. They incorporated 1.0 into 2.0 A Realm Reborn and just continued on with the story. So if you played before 2.0, your character could continue its adventure into 2.0 as the story continued forward.
It relaunched though so it isn't really the same thing.
But it is still possible, one game that did is Eve Online. It took a lot of work and long time but it became one of the larger games eventually. Anarchy Online never got as large but it did recover pretty well after the worst launch in MMO history.
So, you can admit the launch sucked, make the game free and relaunch it fixed up or you can spend a lot of hard work and slowly win ground.
Both are lousy alternatives to launching in good shape though, it is far cheaper and better to do it right from the start then to put millions into fixing things up.
Also, FFXIV would certainly have more subs if it launched in great shape from the beginning, they did minimize the damage but their name got still hurt somewhat.
So don't launch until the game is ready, while you save money at this moment you will be losing that money fast and most games never recover from a bad launch.
Sure It relaunched, a lot of games "relaunch" under the guise of F2P transitions. Just because it relaunched doesn't mean the catastrophic failure that it was disappeared. No other company except maybe Blizzard would have or even could have salvaged that game.
SE was extremely humble about the entire situation, a stance we almost never see from developers. They took a tarnished name, a disastrous game and turned it on its head. This was 100% a comeback story and a massive one at that. FFXIV should have died as one of if not the worst releases Square has put out.
Between FF XIII's poor reception and FF XIV's failed initial launch, SE was definitely in troubled waters. The fact that they were so humble and did right by the legacy players shows the commitment they had to the title. FFXIV ARR is probably one of the most amazing stories of recovery in the gaming world.
It relaunched though so it isn't really the same thing.
But it is still possible, one game that did is Eve Online. It took a lot of work and long time but it became one of the larger games eventually. Anarchy Online never got as large but it did recover pretty well after the worst launch in MMO history.
So, you can admit the launch sucked, make the game free and relaunch it fixed up or you can spend a lot of hard work and slowly win ground.
Both are lousy alternatives to launching in good shape though, it is far cheaper and better to do it right from the start then to put millions into fixing things up.
Also, FFXIV would certainly have more subs if it launched in great shape from the beginning, they did minimize the damage but their name got still hurt somewhat.
So don't launch until the game is ready, while you save money at this moment you will be losing that money fast and most games never recover from a bad launch.
Sure It relaunched, a lot of games "relaunch" under the guise of F2P transitions. Just because it relaunched doesn't mean the catastrophic failure that it was disappeared. No other company except maybe Blizzard would have or even could have salvaged that game.
SE was extremely humble about the entire situation, a stance we almost never see from developers. They took a tarnished name, a disastrous game and turned it on its head. This was 100% a comeback story and a massive one at that. FFXIV should have died as one of if not the worst releases Square has put out.
In this case they redid huge parts of the game, they did not just change the payment model. And I agree, it was very professionally handled.
That said, they should not have put themselves in the situation from the beginning. They did turn failure into a success and the how really should be something other devs should ponder if they get into a similar situation but SE really is better then their first release and someone should have pulled the plug in the first beta and reworked the game before releasing it, I don't doubt that even as great as they handled things they still lost a lot on the first crappy launch.
The need to salvage a failing project can usually be avoided, that is what betas are for. It certainly is costly to remake a game in beta but nowhere near as expensive as relaunching it after it already launched. That might be impossible for small companies with tight budget but for large competent companies like Square Enix it should have been a no brainer.
Nope. Things can get fixed and made better, and perhaps the MMO will find it a niche audience to keep it going, but you really only ever get one shot at launch. WAR, Age of Conan, WildStar (which I would argue has a pretty healthy, if not still niche playerbase keeping it going), etc. etc. Once you launch, and end up failing to maintain a large playerbase, that's usually it, people move on.
FFXIV is pretty much the only MMO I know of that did a complete 180, and that took them shutting down the game, and completing redoing everything.
Comparing launches and how well different games recovered can be tricky. Early MMOs didn't have as much competition as newer ones, so if you had to put up with server crashes or long delays for the first few weeks, what else were you going to do? Now, players can jump to another game and, once hooked, would be less likely to come back.
That's actually the biggest part for me. Games that I tried and disliked during beta or at launch, like Wildstar and ESO, have apparently changed since then, but I have not returned to try them out. This is not because I am holding a grudge, or that I assume I wouldn't like them now, but because I am busy playing other games. I only have so much time, after all. I have always assumed that this is a big challenge for games recovering from a poor launch.
The need to salvage a failing project can usually be avoided, that is what betas are for. It certainly is costly to remake a game in beta but nowhere near as expensive as relaunching it after it already launched. That might be impossible for small companies with tight budget but for large competent companies like Square Enix it should have been a no brainer.
I would really like to know what happened with Age of Conan. I was told that whole features were cut from that game right before launch. In fact I remember looking at my instruction booklet (ha! those were the days) and it still had those features in it! I remember thinking, how did they not know that they weren't going to have these things ready for the game before putting it in the booklet?
I would love to see a wellmade Conan MMO, but it would have to have douzens of races and classes and it would require a very large world, too. A large world full of powerful villains and monsters that you would often have to avoid, especially at lowlevel. A large world that actually feels like Conans world, harsh and unforgiving. Thinking about it, maybe even with permadeath, at least until you're of higher level and can afford something like an automatic resurrection contract with a temple.
Graphics on the other hand wouldnt bother me much.
AoC of course was the exact opposite. It was some sort of fps as a MMO, with top of the line graphics, but a very small game world and the unimagineable richness of full three races and I forgot how many classes exactly but not many of them either and many classes could only be picked by one race at all, and none of them by all races. And you could play Conan - Cimmerian was a playable race ! Conan himself of course never meets any of his people in his stories, so that alone was a major offense and showed off how little the game developers cared about the character.
I guess it depends on what the reason for the bad launch was.
For most MMOs, bad launches tend to mean buggy games and server issues which leads to a lot of negativity. That is relatively easy to recover from - if the underlying game was fun enough, you can win back a lot of players by focusing on fixing a lot of those bugs within the first 6 months. WoW is probably the best example here - the underlying game was very fun and exciting for a lot of people, so once they'd focused on the bugs it quickly gained a great reputation.
For some MMOs, bad launches are associated more with the general low quality of the game combined with the payment method. Its not that anything is particularly wrong or broken, its just that the community doesn't think it is worth what you're charging. Lowering the price, going B2P or F2P will usually stabilise the game. SW:TOR is probably the best example here - nothing was particularly wrong, it just wasn't really an MMO in the traditional sense, more like KOTOR3 with some multiplayer. Going F2P stopped the mass exodus, but Bioware never managed to do anything to increase the playerbase.
Finally, some MMOs just have such fundamental problems that it is nearly impossible to recover. The core gameplay just isn't fun and so most people quit, never to return. This is what happened with Wildstar - it's not that it was particularly bad in any given area, its just there were too many features that the community didn't like and so even once they fixed the bugs and went F2P, it still didn't recover. The only way to recover from this is to go back to the drawing board and do something truely drastic - just like FFXIV.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Actually from WoW players in Vanguard I've got told that Vanguard at release was more stable than WoW in many respects. Including that Vanguard never was down for days without explanation, something that apparently was common in the early days of WoW.
And judging by Vanguard - no, that kind of recovery doesnt happen, ever.
WOW on my European server wasn't down for days and wasn't bad at all. Vanguard was buggy but I still manage to play it. I was pushing sli 8800 gtx them days.
As for your question, ffxiv would have something to say about that.
I don't understand why people keep mentioning swtor. Swtor sold more than 2 million copies during the first month and the game got very positive reviews. The game did have a sharp decline in subscriptions beyond the three months mark but it wasn't because of a bad launch, it had to do with the game not having the longevity needed for the P2P model.
Iselin: And the next person who says "but it's a business, they need to make money" can just go fuck yourself.
I don't understand why people keep mentioning swtor. Swtor sold more than 2 million copies during the first month and the game got very positive reviews. The game did have a sharp decline in subscriptions beyond the three months mark but it wasn't because of a bad launch, it had to do with the game not having the longevity needed for the P2P model.
It got good professional reviews but terrible user reviews, word of mouth was don't touch it. It sold 2million copies in the first month but dropped to below 500k somewhere between 3 and 6 months in (EA said their break even point was 500k subscribers). Also, despite selling 2 million copies, it peaked at 1.7 million active accounts during the launch month, dropping to 1.3million once the free month ended (according to the EA financial reports).
Now, of course retention is always an issue and a large dropoff is expected in any MMO. The dropoff on SW:TOR was quite steep but nothing overly special. The only reason so many people list it as a bad launch / failure at launch is because it completely failed the expectations game and it failed financially. It was the biggest budget MMO ever, but within 6 months it was set to make a loss unless something dramatic was done.
So, whilst the game wasn't broken (apart from Ilum), the game was heading for failure due to general low quality / lack of fun combined with the payment model. Bioware made some fundamentally bad design decisions that they never recovered from, they just managed to stabilise their finances by going F2P.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I didn't play at "launch" but from all the things I heard about, i think WoW counts as having a pretty terrible launch.
I did play it at launch and the only thing terrible was miscalculating its popularity.
Frustrating at times, but I played the heck out of it.
right??
it's a long time ago but i really don't remember the launch as rough at all.
i remember waiting queue's but i think i never crashed...
i was on EU server though
Most of the early complaints were around the loot lag issue, which likely was only a problem for the U.S. release in Nov 2004.
EU launch was later (remember when Devs did that frequently?) on Feb 2005 when likely this was resolved.
Queues and server stability remained a problem for quite a while. My server Kel Thuzad struggled until they did a hardware upgrade on it a year or so in.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
It depends I would say, if it is launchrelated like getting flooded to fast and servers not being able to keep up, sure, but if the game itself has immense issues, not delivering on promises or plainly going against them, just not giving a flying f... and neglecting the game, no it won't.
One could argue the PC release was early access with the "real" launch on the console combined with the conversion to B2P propelling the game to its present day success.
That's only part of the equation. Releasing on additional platforms, and changing revenue models might raise initial interest in it, but they won't carry it if the game isn't enjoyable enough to people.
No matter the revenue model, the platform, the IP, whether it's old-school or "modern" in style, etc... if the game isn't enjoyable to people and doesn't keep them engaged, none of that is going to matter.
To that end, they've been improving the game by leaps and bounds. ZeniMax, too, listened to their players and realized decisions they'd made early on (world split by faction, in particular) were not very good. They responded with One Tamriel, which was a huge improvement. They've added Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Justice System, and so on. ESO is a massive MMO, with tons of content. It has an extremely active population now, and with Vvardenfell being added, it's going to get even larger.
If they didn't manage to pull off what they have, a change of revenue models and adding additional platform support wouldn't have saved it.
I'd say that qualifies it as a successfully "turned-around" MMORPG.
Comments
WoW was loved from the start.
Vanguard had deeper issues than just the technical ones.
But Black Desert Online is doing a lot of things right, and there seems to be a surge of new players and returning players atm. ESO too had a very mediocre start, but seems to be doing relatively well now. Hell, even SWTOR is still attracting new players.
But launch is vital, no doubt. Very few ppl gives a game a second try, and new players dont like old games.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Frustrating at times, but I played the heck out of it.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Once I got in I had no issues at all. No bugs, no crashes, no lag. Every time I see these posts about WoW having a bad launch I have to boggle. You think WoW had a bad launch, you been smoking too much crack.
Anarchy Onlne had a bad launch, wost in the history of gaming. Conan wasn't too great either.
A bad launch can kill a game but if the devs can hang on and fix things then they can recover to a degree. I'm not sure if such a game will ever reach it's full potential though. First impressions really do count.
WoW was consistently playable from launch day. AO was basically untouchable for a good couple weeks, iirc.
AO got hurt big time by absolutely obliterating their launch window.
WoW's issues were very minor. Some servers had it worse than others, but the game was up and playable every single day, as I recall. The only issue on the server we were on was some latency. There was definitely steady latency for those early days, but it was still perfectly playable.
I think technical issues are, generally, fairly easily forgiven, if you have a fun game. A buggy, unfinished mess of a game, like Vanguard, is far harder to save.
I should note that bad customer service and account problems are a separate issue from technical ones. Horrible CS/tech support/account problems can really drive people away in a hurry.
AO, heh they had tons of problems, but they also had billing issues too. People being double billed, or billed after being canceled, for months after cancellation too. They recovered though, at least I thought so, because it was a good game, but also there were only a few other options at the time.
I think after WoW, people were less likely to put up with poor launches because of the alternatives out there, but after a while when the new games were just poor rehashed facsimilies, then people started giving poorer launches more leeway and second chances in hopes of something good to play.
That said, they should not have put themselves in the situation from the beginning. They did turn failure into a success and the how really should be something other devs should ponder if they get into a similar situation but SE really is better then their first release and someone should have pulled the plug in the first beta and reworked the game before releasing it, I don't doubt that even as great as they handled things they still lost a lot on the first crappy launch.
The need to salvage a failing project can usually be avoided, that is what betas are for. It certainly is costly to remake a game in beta but nowhere near as expensive as relaunching it after it already launched. That might be impossible for small companies with tight budget but for large competent companies like Square Enix it should have been a no brainer.
FFXIV is pretty much the only MMO I know of that did a complete 180, and that took them shutting down the game, and completing redoing everything.
That's actually the biggest part for me. Games that I tried and disliked during beta or at launch, like Wildstar and ESO, have apparently changed since then, but I have not returned to try them out. This is not because I am holding a grudge, or that I assume I wouldn't like them now, but because I am busy playing other games. I only have so much time, after all. I have always assumed that this is a big challenge for games recovering from a poor launch.
I would love to see a wellmade Conan MMO, but it would have to have douzens of races and classes and it would require a very large world, too. A large world full of powerful villains and monsters that you would often have to avoid, especially at lowlevel. A large world that actually feels like Conans world, harsh and unforgiving. Thinking about it, maybe even with permadeath, at least until you're of higher level and can afford something like an automatic resurrection contract with a temple.
Graphics on the other hand wouldnt bother me much.
AoC of course was the exact opposite. It was some sort of fps as a MMO, with top of the line graphics, but a very small game world and the unimagineable richness of full three races and I forgot how many classes exactly but not many of them either and many classes could only be picked by one race at all, and none of them by all races. And you could play Conan - Cimmerian was a playable race ! Conan himself of course never meets any of his people in his stories, so that alone was a major offense and showed off how little the game developers cared about the character.
For most MMOs, bad launches tend to mean buggy games and server issues which leads to a lot of negativity. That is relatively easy to recover from - if the underlying game was fun enough, you can win back a lot of players by focusing on fixing a lot of those bugs within the first 6 months. WoW is probably the best example here - the underlying game was very fun and exciting for a lot of people, so once they'd focused on the bugs it quickly gained a great reputation.
For some MMOs, bad launches are associated more with the general low quality of the game combined with the payment method. Its not that anything is particularly wrong or broken, its just that the community doesn't think it is worth what you're charging. Lowering the price, going B2P or F2P will usually stabilise the game. SW:TOR is probably the best example here - nothing was particularly wrong, it just wasn't really an MMO in the traditional sense, more like KOTOR3 with some multiplayer. Going F2P stopped the mass exodus, but Bioware never managed to do anything to increase the playerbase.
Finally, some MMOs just have such fundamental problems that it is nearly impossible to recover. The core gameplay just isn't fun and so most people quit, never to return. This is what happened with Wildstar - it's not that it was particularly bad in any given area, its just there were too many features that the community didn't like and so even once they fixed the bugs and went F2P, it still didn't recover. The only way to recover from this is to go back to the drawing board and do something truely drastic - just like FFXIV.
WOW on my European server wasn't down for days and wasn't bad at all. Vanguard was buggy but I still manage to play it. I was pushing sli 8800 gtx them days.
As for your question, ffxiv would have something to say about that.
opinions, right
it's a long time ago but i really don't remember the launch as rough at all.
i remember waiting queue's but i think i never crashed...
i was on EU server though
Now, of course retention is always an issue and a large dropoff is expected in any MMO. The dropoff on SW:TOR was quite steep but nothing overly special. The only reason so many people list it as a bad launch / failure at launch is because it completely failed the expectations game and it failed financially. It was the biggest budget MMO ever, but within 6 months it was set to make a loss unless something dramatic was done.
So, whilst the game wasn't broken (apart from Ilum), the game was heading for failure due to general low quality / lack of fun combined with the payment model. Bioware made some fundamentally bad design decisions that they never recovered from, they just managed to stabilise their finances by going F2P.
EU launch was later (remember when Devs did that frequently?) on Feb 2005 when likely this was resolved.
Queues and server stability remained a problem for quite a while. My server Kel Thuzad struggled until they did a hardware upgrade on it a year or so in.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
No matter the revenue model, the platform, the IP, whether it's old-school or "modern" in style, etc... if the game isn't enjoyable to people and doesn't keep them engaged, none of that is going to matter.
To that end, they've been improving the game by leaps and bounds. ZeniMax, too, listened to their players and realized decisions they'd made early on (world split by faction, in particular) were not very good. They responded with One Tamriel, which was a huge improvement. They've added Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Justice System, and so on. ESO is a massive MMO, with tons of content. It has an extremely active population now, and with Vvardenfell being added, it's going to get even larger.
If they didn't manage to pull off what they have, a change of revenue models and adding additional platform support wouldn't have saved it.
I'd say that qualifies it as a successfully "turned-around" MMORPG.