Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What is the most horribly managed MMOG ever?
Thinman
Member Posts: 461
This question just occurred to me.. In the history of MMOGs, which was the most horribly managed, in your opinion?
From my own experience I'd say SWG.. no real creative direction, it just sort of wandered from one idea to the next until it was left a mangled mess.. Went from what could have been the biggest MMOG for its time to a terrible mess.
What, in your opinion, is the worst managed MMOG?
_______________________________________________________________________
Looking forward (cautiously) to: Age of Conan, Dark Solstice, Armada Online.
Will soon try: Guild Wars
Overall: Amazed and bewhildered at the current sad state of the artform of gaming.
Comments
based on my personal experience, its definitely Everquest 2.
I know a lot of folks will disagree with me, understandable. Its very popular. They may also have seen worse managed games than this.
what IS being managed well are their marketing techniques and how they continuosly sap their clients of money periodically for content that should have been in place last year this time.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
I'd have to put my vote with Star Wars: Galaxies as well. I played it from release and finally cancelled just after the "New Game Enhancements" went live. There were infinite possiblities to be had with the original part of the game, but the potential was sapped to try and make a few quick bucks, and then scrambling not to lose accounts when they completely changed the game, not once, but twice.
It's interesting that the first 2 votes are both Sony Online Entertainment products.
Mourning
I would have to say SWG but I dont blame SOE I blame Lucas Tards
I'm going with The Matrix Online.
It started with a great idea, and ended up with a tedious and repetative gameplay that kept you bored for hours.
---------------------------------------------------
| www.40ksource.net - 40k MMO fansite
SWG
2 combat over hauls.
I vote for Shadowbane. It had the potential to be the greatest thing ever. And it was still fun for a while. But bugs never got fixed, servers were horrible, exploits weren't fixed, and my biggest complaint....
One patch a month...tops. And each patch had like, maybe a fix to 10 bugs or so. Bugs that most other companies would fix in 3 days, Shadowbane took 6 months to iron out. I think they had 2 programmers and a monkey working on that game, and whatever the programmers screwed up, the monkey had to fix.
A Work in Progress.
Add Me
A tie between Mourning and Horizons. Artifact Entertainment "lead" the way with the Allen/Bowman fiasco, relasing Horizons a year too early, then abusing the bankruptcy law - AE --> TulgAE. Limited Horizons Entertainment "topped it" with Mourning's pre-order "offer" (vanilla wrapped CD-ROM), forum wipe, pay to play beta, closing the game, now Age of Mourning.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
.... PROBABLY Spacecowboy..
But I must be guessing a bunch of stuff.
----------------------
Give me lights give me action. With a touch of a button!
Well out of all the game I've played SWG was the worst run. I think earth and beyond should make the list too. There was no reason to cancle that game, I'm sure it had a following large enough to make money.
I go with mourning myself
But a note here for SWG for losing sight of their product.I mean first they listen to one part of the community and drove the other part away.Then 2 years later when all that were left was the jedi community they piss on them to attract back the crowd they originally pssied off.
Now thats just plain stupid!
Mourning.
Now with 57.3% more flames!
Mourning, Legend of Mir etc... very poor management.
SWG and EQ2 were managed professionally, they just messed up creatively.
In terms of released and actually "managed" games (excluding mourning) I'd have to say Shadowbane.
I still get stuck every couple of seconds in the floor or on an object... the game keeps losing population every year, and gradually dies.
Yet it has the greatest concept of all released MMORPG's out there... somehow they managed to fail. That's bad managing.
SWG - for sure. You could argue other games also, but SWG is the biggest turd in the mismanagement toilet.
RuneScape.
You report players.-They do nothing.
You report bugs-They do nothing.
You report autominers-nada happens to them.
You report jerks-No result.
You ask them a question-Automated reply.
"The one who begins with nothing, gains everything slowly."
ya know, scratch what I said about EQ2. I forgot (for some reason) that whole Horizons turd. I played that for quite some time, I even beta tested it at a very early phase. what a complete let down
ya horizons has my vote
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a robot foot stomping on a human face -- forever."
My votes:
1) Ultima Online: AFTER the game was sold off by Origin, the new company turned the best open PvP game ever into a carebear joke. There is no going back to the way it used to be, Dread Lords vs. Blue wars, murderers & thieves running rampant, chaos vs. order, etc. all gone, those were the glory days of MMORPG PvP, before little kids with too much free time infested MMORPG's.
2) Lineage 2: The people running the game (NCSoft) were based in Korea and basically had no presence in North America despite running North American servers.. and they also had a much larger Korean verison of L2 going at the same time, so the Koreans got all the attention, they never fixed anything or listened to anybody on the NA servers.. the NA version basically became a source of income for gold farmers, a total cesspool, and NCsoft didn't give a damn, so they have earned my anger.
3) SWG gets honorable mention because of the "NGE" total revamp they did recently, never seen a company misread their player base quite like that, with the exception of UO being ruined the way it was from Trammel/Feluca onward.
SWG, and the worst part is they're not even done driving it into the ground yet.
Shadowbane so many exploits & bugs and there seemed to be little or no sign of change.
Althought I completely agree that the game overhauling ruined it, i would contend that SWG wasnt horribly managed as far as the game side goes. The server down time was minimal, and the updates and new content constantly being added, and the devs, altho stupid for changing the game over and over, did respond quickly to messages sent in via their report 'whatever' feature. On several occasions i was directly contacted by Devs to help solve issues. And the devs also took place in regular game play sometimes for fun. i feel that these factors as well as some others takes SWG out of the running for worst managed game. SOE just needs to figure out that 15,000 children complaining doesnt = your whole player base hating the game.
My vote for worst management is anything NCSoft puts out...they are terrible for that....