It's because guys like this makeing claims that these games are Failures that new games are so afraid to try anything new. There were only 2 games in his list that were Failures AA and SB the rest made a very good showing and some are still alive and kicking in this day of WOW and WOW wannabes. If you are so great and know everything about MMO's and what MMO fans want then why dont you make your own game?? OOO Right it would be a Failure in your own opinion.
Ehmm what? AC2 was shut down. Tabula Rasa was shut down. The rest in that list that is still running today, is struggling to stay afloat. With absolute minimum resources spend. Just to keep it running.
Plus, he didn't say that all the mentioned games shutted down. As Everquest 2 managed to recover with the Echoes of Faydwar expansion. Wich was one of the best and most expansive MMO expansions to date.
OP your obvious looked that up about AC2 but dont know jack shit what happen and why AC2 failed it have btw runned for 3 years. AC2 was a very good mmo and it surtenly not failed becouse of chat was disabled.
GET YOUR FACT'S straight dont spread false information around the net.
Very informative post Evasia. Why are you holding backs with the facts that Scott Jennings apparently has to get straight.
Instead of bashing the excellent article with zero information trash and wasting our time, do us a favor and give us some information.
So why did AC2 fail? Maybe a list of points would be nice.
Thanks.
That list could go on and on... But the high points. One, it wasn't AC1(with an improved graphics engine), that turned off a lot of the existing player base, who expected it to be. Next, there was the *endless* series of "issues" major and minor. Some are only to be expected at the launch of a new game. But breaking the entire chat system, the combat system, the guild system, missing items from inventory(data base system), just to name a few was a bit much. Not only that, but those issues played musical chairs for months and months and months. All the while Microsoft and Turbine engaged in finger pointing at each other.
It was finally too much. Just to add the cherry on the top of the cake, Turbine closed the game down, not that long after selling many of us the expansion. That left a very bitter taste in many peoples mouths to this very day.
It's because guys like this makeing claims that these games are Failures that new games are so afraid to try anything new. There were only 2 games in his list that were Failures AA and SB the rest made a very good showing and some are still alive and kicking in this day of WOW and WOW wannabes. If you are so great and know everything about MMO's and what MMO fans want then why dont you make your own game?? OOO Right it would be a Failure in your own opinion.
The list isn't about total and complete failures, but rather things there were failures to various different degrees. Even a successful game can do things that are a failure or represent a bad aspect of mmos.
Scott Jennings You may want to read up a bit before you go telling people to go make mmos.
In my opinion AC2 failed because they took everything that was great about AC and threw it straight out the window, instead choosing to go with; a more 'EQ' style system with classes and skill trees, invisible walls, linear game play... etc
It was still an enjoyable game, but it just wasn't 'as' good as the original. Server populations were never very high.
What really pissed me off about that game was the fact that they released an expansion weeks before shutting down. The bastards had to know they were that close to the toilet, they knew the expansion sales wouldn't be enough to save them, but they just had to squeze every last dime out of those of us who supported the game.
To me this is right up there with the NGE in 'fail factor'.
The real problem with eq2 wasn't so much to do with its early gameplay but that fact that the average 2004 era computer couldn'd handle the graphics. A lot of people who signed up for eq2 couldn't really play it because of super low FPS so of course the Subscriptions dropped off after the initial months. FPS is not a problem anymore as PC hardware has had time to catch up. Other than that eq2 was and still is one of the best games out there.
The early problems of eq2 were varied and many and all had a hand in the decline of the game and it never reaching its potential.
The performance was just one more problem on top of a pile of problems and it was the result of a specific choice soe made. Soe decided to make a game with beyond start of the arts graphics and then cut the legs out from under any pc that had a decent chance of running it by coding the game engine to ignore the graphics card and push everything on the processor.
If the game was coded properly, then an average 2004 era pc could have run the game.
Who in their right mind purposefully rushes to release a game they know will perform like crap and their plan to fix it is hope, yes hope, technology catches up to the games needs in the future. That is an epic level failure on the part of management.
It's because guys like this makeing claims that these games are Failures that new games are so afraid to try anything new. There were only 2 games in his list that were Failures AA and SB the rest made a very good showing and some are still alive and kicking in this day of WOW and WOW wannabes. If you are so great and know everything about MMO's and what MMO fans want then why dont you make your own game?? OOO Right it would be a Failure in your own opinion.
Ehmm what? AC2 was shut down. Tabula Rasa was shut down. The rest in that list that is still running today, is struggling to stay afloat. With absolute minimum resources spend. Just to keep it running.
Plus, he didn't say that all the mentioned games shutted down. As Everquest 2 managed to recover with the Echoes of Faydwar expansion. Wich was one of the best and most expansive MMO expansions to date.
Cheers
1st off I never said just 2 of the games shut down.
And were is it said that a game has to last forever to be a success??
Most of the games in his list were a success for what they were and filled a roll in the MMO world. Just because you or I do not like a game does not mean it was not a success. I hated Tabula Rasa but for its short lived life it had some die hard fans so for them the game was a success.
Now I am not saying just because a game had a few fans it is a success but lets look at a few of games in his list,
UO was a great success and even after Tram was released it still had alot of fans even in the age of 3D
SWG ( even tho I did not like it ) was a great success for scifi fans and yes NGE ( which was planed and approved by LA and was not all SOE's fault) did help kill alot of subs there were still a fair number of players that liked the game.
EQ still had a small following but was the BIG DOG til WoW came around.
Did things change in these games? YES
Were they for the best? well depends on who you ask
But change has to happen... and just because someone does not like a change does not mean the game is a Failure.
Assassin's like to do it in the dark and from behind.
EQ2 closed somewhere around half of its servers in its first year of production. It may not have been total failure, but it was a pretty big failure none the less. Scott is spot on accurate about EQ2 having problems and flaming out. The overall mmo population was exploding in size while eq2 was dieing. (1) A 5 year old game with expansions and support every year where servers are thriving ... yeah huge failure. again i chalk this idiocy up to "if it doesn't have WoW numbers its a failure." If you really look at the period Scott is talking about you will see just how much of the design concepts soe had to change with EQ2 in that 1st year. Combat revamp, quest revamp, tradeskill revamp, solo/group content revamp (several times), shared death, class archtype system revamped, failed faction war revamp, access quests, etc etc. EQ2 was a conceptual mess at release and even though it survived (as several games on the list have) the problems have held back the games potential, thus "flame out".
(2) Concepts are great on paper but sometimes don't work out for the community. Scott should know this as well as most gamers. most of those you named SOE tried to take out the nonsense and the tedium of the game.
Tradeskills - where you need 10 combines to make one item then 10 combines to make another item. do those two steps 5 or 6 more times for 8 items, then combine 3 of those items into another item, 3 items into another item and 2 into the last piece ... in order to FINALLY combine those into your final product.
oh add to the fact that some of the items you had to get from other tradeskills, so hopefully you had one, knew someone or there was an item on the broker or else your screwed.
yeah that shit needed to go.
solo/group content - people want to do shit on their own in this new breed of MMO gamer. why wouldn't EQ2 try to reach these gamers? they would be stupid not to.
Shared death - another stupid tedious concept ... ok guys how about this your group has to perform flawlessly or else EVERYONE gets punished!
Class archtype - yeah that figured out people don't want to wait till level 20 (almost half the levels .. as the level cap was 50) till they reached their endgame class.
access quests - another good concept on paper but stupid as an MMO gets older. oh you came into the game 2 years late? sorry your locked out of lavastorm, zek and everfrost .. because you couldn't find a group to get you through the access quests ... sorry!
(3) the only thing that holds back EQ2 is peoples hatred for SOE, if EQ2 had Bioware or Blizzard name on it even if it was the exact same game. people would be proclaiming it as the best MMO. there is so much to do for every niche of player.
@OP Excellent post and well played humor. Thank you for mentioning the horrid epic weapon quest mechanics in everquest. There goes 10 grand in therapy. Still have great times in those first few games though.
(1) This article talks about the release problems of eq2, not what it is doing today. A game can launch and have mechanics that are failures which needed to be removed or redesigned. It doesn't mean the game is closing down.
Keep in mind soe rushed eq2 to market unfinished just so they could compete with wow head to head. This isn't about having wow numbers, but at the same time closing servers within a year after release is a failure and the reason people were leaving was because of the condition of the game and its mechanics.
(2) The entire point of this article is about games the failures caused by certain aspects of a game. EQ2 at release was chock full of terrible designs. Soe really thought they hit a homerun with eq2 at release and were going to clobber wow.
(3) There are millions and millions of new players who have joined the mmo market over the last several years that have little to no exposure with soe. You are looking at the result of a companies actions on their playerbase and trying to make it the cause of their problems.
The only thing that is holding eq2 back is eq2.
so basically because eq2 chose to adapt and redesign based on its CUSTOMERS complaints its fail? give me a break. if anything that should show you the quality of SOE, that they aren't stubborn like some other game companies and will work with their community in order to make them happy.
as for hitting a homerun, they probably thought they were, they didn't realize how "casual" this market would become. lets face it when EQ2 came out, while it was not as "hardcore" as EQ1 .... it still had hardcore elements. forced interdependency, spirit shards, group exp loss and little to no solo content in most quest lines. they still thought that MMO players played this genre to work together ... until WoW came out and basically presented the Massive Single Player online RPG. then they had to restructure their game to adapt to the new MSPORPG genre.
as for 3, yet those millions and millions have the internet, know sites like this and others where SOE is proclaimed as the devil by the certified stupid and the SWG "vets" who can't get over what lucas arts forced SOE to do. so my point still stands if Blizzard or Bioware or even Verant had their named stamped on EQ2 it would be considered the best MMO out there.
because thats what it is, its the best MMO out there.
the Evil Raider that outgears you and makes you cry for welfare epics on the forums.
DAoC: Dark age of camelot actually gained quite a few subscriptions in the year following trials of atlantis. It was the catacombs expansion that during the first month boosted subs by a few thousand and then dropped them by over 50k by the same time the following year. I feel this was because of two primary reasons, the mass instancing that turned a massive multi-player game into a small online co-op game, and the introduction of a few insanely over powered classes which would go on to dominate in pvp for years to come. These classes included the warlock and vampiir which on occasion managed to kill full groups single handed.
Nope, what ruined DAoC was definatly Trials of Atlantis combined with New Frontiers, while New Frontiers was a noble project, it was too drastic, coupled with ToA was the demise of DAoC.
By the time Catacombs released, the damage had already been done. Seriously, if you think warlocks had anything to do with it you have no clue.
Now the actual drop in subs came right before Catacombs, because people were actually playing ToA and getting all the goodies, then they had the honeymoon period with NF, but then the bubble bursted and WoW released, it was a triple hit :
TOA + NF + WoW, and DAoC never recovered. If DAoC never had released ToA nor NF but instead small incremental updates not disturbing the balance between PvE and RvR and only tweaking old frontiers instead of totally remaking it, it would have been much more hardened to sustain WoW, and would have grown slowly like EVE did.
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site : http://mmodata.blogspot.be/ Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
DAoC and SWG, two of the biggest epic adventures, now ruined, and all what is left are the grand tales of times long gone.
/cry
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site : http://mmodata.blogspot.be/ Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
(1) so basically because eq2 chose to adapt and redesign based on its CUSTOMERS complaints its fail? give me a break. if anything that should show you the quality of SOE, that they aren't stubborn like some other game companies and will work with their community in order to make them happy.
(2) as for hitting a homerun, they probably thought they were, they didn't realize how "casual" this market would become. lets face it when EQ2 came out, while it was not as "hardcore" as EQ1 .... it still had hardcore elements. forced interdependency, spirit shards, group exp loss and little to no solo content in most quest lines. they still thought that MMO players played this genre to work together ... until WoW came out and basically presented the Massive Single Player online RPG. then they had to restructure their game to adapt to the new MSPORPG genre.
(3) as for 3, yet those millions and millions have the internet, know sites like this and others where SOE is proclaimed as the devil by the certified stupid and the SWG "vets" who can't get over what lucas arts forced SOE to do. so my point still stands if Blizzard or Bioware or even Verant had their named stamped on EQ2 it would be considered the best MMO out there. because thats what it is, its the best MMO out there.
(1) Seriously? Quality? That is like saying you bought a new car that didn't function well and most of the systems incomplete, but you are impressed by the quality of the company every time to take it to the repair shop.
Again you are looking at the effect and trying to make it the cause. People complained and left, because eq2 was loaded with failure at release. The redesigns were not something initiated by quality. They were in response to a lack of quality.
Also I think if you look at the history of changes in EQ2 you will find soe wasn't responding to what its players wanted, but what soe thought new potential players wanted. That is why you see so many soe customers complaining of the "wowification" of their game and similar claims. Again, this isn't a company known for listening to its players.
(2) This isn't about casual at all. EQ2 was a disjointed unfinished game that lacked direction and polish, because it was intentionally rushed to market to beat the competition by a few weeks. The result was that game crashed during a period when the mmo market was exploding. If 3 million people join the market and you have to close down servers, you are doing something wrong.
(3) Sites like this are just as full of people calling blizzard the devil and how horrible wow is, but that doesn't seem to stop wow from being successful.
Do you even understand why blizzard and bioware have great reputations? They make great games. If bioware or blizzard had their name on eq2 it wouldn't have released in the sad condition that it was and it would not have spent the next several years constantly changing design directions trying to find a market of players that would be interested in playing the game. Neither of those companies find it acceptable to push broken and unfinished products to the market. Soe has a long and ugly history of screwing things up and some of it intentionally.
Like I said already, great games sell themselves. Somehow I don't think such a masterpiece is being held back by a small handful of angry former customers.
Usually I stay out of all of this. I read the articles, reflect, and move on about my business. And as soon as I saw the title of the article, I knew the kind of responses that were going to be here. So from a business point of veiw, mad props to the author for opening up a can of worms that will boost the hell out of traffic here. Since I have finally opened my mouth for the first time in a gaming forum in many years, I will say a couple things I guess.
1) You forgot Matrix Online... Beautiful concept at first, everyone was really getting into it. But you couldn't run those live events forever. Used to have a blast in there, but once that decline started, it continued ever so rapidly. With something so promising, epically failing, so should have been on that list.
2) Auto Assault - imho the game was marketed very poorly. Myself and those who played, absolutley loved the game. A small known fact, but a group of players, after the game closed, got ahold of the source code, spent weeks going through and working out bugs, and then presented it back to NC Soft asking for nothing in return but they open it back up. They were handed a cease and desist order. It had players, dedicated ones, just not enough to suit the companies wallet I suppose. *shrugs*
3) EQ2 - Out of the gate, I agree it was an epic fail. They tried too hard and players got turned off because they missed the target on the "feel" of EQ1 that all the old players were trying to obtain. That feeling doesn't exist anymore, you burnt it up in EQ1 raids that you called in to work stating your grandmother was dead for the 5th time. But take a look at it from then to now. They've made the game fun to play again. I've been peeking in on it off and on for the past 6 years, and though I'm not thrilled about all of the changes, they have made a solid game, that can very well be enjoyed for a long period of time. It lacks the shallow and fisher price of WoW, there's alot of people who appreciate that. I just started plying it solidly again a couple months ago, and am very satisfied with the experience thus far.
4) Another one that we all got pumped up for and had our hearts broken on was Vanguard. How excited were we that a game that out of the gate was going to take 13 GB to install?!?! And that we knew we were going to have to throw the can on the workbench and upgrade the hell out of. And somehow, with all of that, they missed. Still haven't placed my finger on it, but they did... Still foolishly holding out hope for this one to do something...
5) Are you seriously EQ1's failure was mainly based on ninja-looters??? Pain in the ass, infuriating, etc... yes! But don't think it can really be considered a failure, much less an epic one, when it still has a decently strong player base. Those who still do play (I must admit, I personally haven't gone back in for more than an hour in years now though, but still talk to many who do play) love the game and still play it to everywhere from casual to hardcore levels. My issues with it are personal, but I wouldn't call it a failure.
6) I agree on many fronts regarding SWG. I was one of the few fans that liked the changes and saw the possibilities that it could have brought, including a lot of new players that could have made the game more enjoyable. But as stated, the fanbois lost their damn minds and made new players even afraid to try the game. Don't really think the companies messed the game up, they truthfully made it better. The bad apples destroyed this one.
Anyways...guess that's enough said after my few years of silence in the gaming world....flame on guys
It's because guys like this makeing claims that these games are Failures that new games are so afraid to try anything new. There were only 2 games in his list that were Failures AA and SB the rest made a very good showing and some are still alive and kicking in this day of WOW and WOW wannabes. If you are so great and know everything about MMO's and what MMO fans want then why dont you make your own game?? OOO Right it would be a Failure in your own opinion.
Ehmm what? AC2 was shut down. Tabula Rasa was shut down. The rest in that list that is still running today, is struggling to stay afloat. With absolute minimum resources spend. Just to keep it running.
Plus, he didn't say that all the mentioned games shutted down. As Everquest 2 managed to recover with the Echoes of Faydwar expansion. Wich was one of the best and most expansive MMO expansions to date.
Cheers
The fact that some of those games were shutdown isn't the point, the point is that the autor is classifiyng all the games in the list as failures when in fact some of them weren't.
The major problem resides in the player comunity that, lets face it, likes to be lead by the nose , kind of a donkey following the carrot hanging from the pole straped around its back , people only adere to two types of games, WoW type games, grind-grind-grind or Korean type games, grind grind grind grind, oh God more grind and in some pay for epic items type games.
Tabula Rasa for instance was a nice aproach to a new type of games, the point was immersing you in a frontline war and basicly making you fullfil quests, it took the weight out of the grind because quests ran smoother than most, and lets face it, it had more variety from escorts to holding bases, not much, BUT , infinitely better than, we have an infestation kill 100 fluffy bunnies to win 1000gold and pink sleepers of magic ( rinse and repeat ) type of quests and games.
Another point is that, a game is also sucessfull based on the quality of its player base, and lets face it, in general the player base is very very poor, ganking, smacking and so forth, most of you have surely seen it all. A game is only as good as its comunity and that is the problem with most games, not that the games itself are bad, but its a matter of taste, and most players despite not liking a game stick to it just to cause the most grief as they can until they eventually move on to the next game / get tire or are simply kicked.
Diversity, or the lack of it, you got a basilion fantasy porno type fairy fireball launching orc shaman undead games and for instance games like EvE are underpopulated, like SB or TB are down , and the others well. live on the diehards. Lets face it, the diversity isn't much, and when presented with options, people just randomly discard them. ( prays that Startrek Online turns out great )
And last but not least, bugs, i personally hate bugs, i play EvE, have played WAR and alot other games and to be honest what makes me leave its the bugs, EvE online so help me God if i won't leave it as soon as Startrek Online comes( at least i will wait to see if its as near as good as its being sold by the devs ) , i meen, EvE has the potential to be a great game and its bugged to hell and over, the only thing keeping CCP afloat with it its the playerbase that stuck with it for lack of better options or simply love for the game ( not that the comunity is all that great mind you but its a notch better than most ofthers ) .
I left WAR because of them, WAR was one of the most unbalanced games i ever saw in terms of bugs from the famous soldiers falling out of the sky to the new classes with aoe uberness that wrecked the chances for everyone wanting to roll other classes, lack of forums, then with forums lack of content in them, then GOA itself...
Conan now that i think of it, i played it also for about 3months and thats it, Conan was the kind of you get a ranger or a shaman, blast people from distance and thats it, everyone wants to be a w(h)inner, and well coupled with an impressive array of bugs and monstruous patches, not to mention the initial 30GB of Harddrive required plus almost top of the line computer... ( wich fortunately i have , but i am a drop amongst an ocean of players ),
Eve well, the last patch for Dominion is... well the very example of a bug domination, and a poor example of a dev team after some time, while at first they comunicated , now they seem to be in the clutches of the terrible beast of marketing teams and advisors, a really nasty pest that once it takes hold within a corporation... oh God.
So all this to say that the list on that article is biased and its the kind of example why a person should write from an observing and detached perspective sometimes, there are an infinite list of games that are still running and are a poor example of what we play today, and yet, surprise surprise, people do play them for the most undisclosed reasons, be that they're grief candy material to the latest fashion ( AION , oh God the grind.. .OH GOD ! how i "dislike" korean mmos ), or just lack of options.
(1) so basically because eq2 chose to adapt and redesign based on its CUSTOMERS complaints its fail? give me a break. if anything that should show you the quality of SOE, that they aren't stubborn like some other game companies and will work with their community in order to make them happy.
(2) as for hitting a homerun, they probably thought they were, they didn't realize how "casual" this market would become. lets face it when EQ2 came out, while it was not as "hardcore" as EQ1 .... it still had hardcore elements. forced interdependency, spirit shards, group exp loss and little to no solo content in most quest lines. they still thought that MMO players played this genre to work together ... until WoW came out and basically presented the Massive Single Player online RPG. then they had to restructure their game to adapt to the new MSPORPG genre.
(3) as for 3, yet those millions and millions have the internet, know sites like this and others where SOE is proclaimed as the devil by the certified stupid and the SWG "vets" who can't get over what lucas arts forced SOE to do. so my point still stands if Blizzard or Bioware or even Verant had their named stamped on EQ2 it would be considered the best MMO out there. because thats what it is, its the best MMO out there.
(1) Seriously? Quality? That is like saying you bought a new car that didn't function well and most of the systems incomplete, but you are impressed by the quality of the company every time to take it to the repair shop.
more like you bought a car and customers complain about various designs of the car, and that company recalls the cars they sold and changed them based on customer complaints =.
Again you are looking at the effect and trying to make it the cause. People complained and left, because eq2 was loaded with failure at release. The redesigns were not something initiated by quality. They were in response to a lack of quality.
yes they were initiated by quality, like i said SOE made the game too "hardcore" for the casual based gamer now a days so they changed it.
Also I think if you look at the history of changes in EQ2 you will find soe wasn't responding to what its players wanted, but what soe thought new potential players wanted. That is why you see so many soe customers complaining of the "wowification" of their game and similar claims. Again, this isn't a company known for listening to its players.
Now yeah they don't want easy mode, but if you were on the beta forums and early forums they were filled with complaints about ... shards, crafting, archtype system and all that crap that you mentioned.
(2) This isn't about casual at all. EQ2 was a disjointed unfinished game that lacked direction and polish, because it was intentionally rushed to market to beat the competition by a few weeks. The result was that game crashed during a period when the mmo market was exploding. If 3 million people join the market and you have to close down servers, you are doing something wrong.
its completely about casual, EQ2s overland zones were filled with group ONLY content, quests lines were mostly group only, dungeons were group only hell crafting had to nearly be done in a group since you needed parts from OTHER crafters in order to get a finished product in your own craft.
(3) Sites like this are just as full of people calling blizzard the devil and how horrible wow is, but that doesn't seem to stop wow from being successful.
also helps they advertise. thats one of the only things i blame on SOE.
Do you even understand why blizzard and bioware have great reputations? They make great games. If bioware or blizzard had their name on eq2 it wouldn't have released in the sad condition that it was and it would not have spent the next several years constantly changing design directions trying to find a market of players that would be interested in playing the game. Neither of those companies find it acceptable to push broken and unfinished products to the market. Soe has a long and ugly history of screwing things up and some of it intentionally.
Like I said already, great games sell themselves. Somehow I don't think such a masterpiece is being held back by a small handful of angry former customers.
BGs, arenas and what not, thats blizzard changing direction of the game as well. so according to you that means WoW = fail. since WoW was a PVE game when it was launched.
ne
the Evil Raider that outgears you and makes you cry for welfare epics on the forums.
Shadowbane was not and is not a fail game it had a bad bug yes but other then that it was and still ahead of its time. Tho the last few patch kind of killed some of it.
I must say I never missed not being part of the ancient MMO era. I recall vividly trying out UO and EQ in it's days on friend's accounts, and I knew in no way in hell I would play such games. Only with post Eq2 era MMOs became interesting for me. Why people enjoy blowing up others at a picknick or camp 72 hours a boss is beyond me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
This article might be better than the last one about all the Trek geeks getting ready to eat a big excrement sandwich.
ToA was DAoC's downfall, not Catacombs. Yes, Warlocks were stupidly OP'd, but Classic servers for people refusing to do the ToA grind should be a fairly solid acknowledgment that ToA was a legendary fail.
AoC and probably WAR should have been on this list.
The best article I have read in a looong while. I have played almost all of the games mentioned and all I can say is: Spot on! Keep up the good writing. Thank you.
Ah, the Trammel Facet...Birthplace of the term "Trammy n00b"
The fun I used to have sitting at Brit bank (tram) and watching two macho "pk's" trading your-mom jokes until one of them gets soo mad he opens (gasp) the RED GATE!! and says just bring it!
DAoC held around 250k subs from launch until around 11 months after TOA came out. It wasn't until 2 months before catacombs that the populations began to fall, slowly at first, then once the expansion came out, very rapidly. People can claim TOA killed the game, but the fact remains that they had over 90% of the numbers they had at launch over a year after the that expansion came out. What killed that game, finally, was Mythic catering to the loud mouthed minority who demanded their own server. The classic server pulled around 15-20% of the subs from the main servers. While that number is high, the 80-85% of the population base that said no thanks is the real story. If this expansion was so horrible, why would 80+ % of the population continue to play it when another place without it existed? The real problem there was that 20% was definitely a problem for the others left behind. I played that game from launch until '07 and the people left behind felt like the ship was sinking and it was. Morale was the problem just before the Catacombs expansion. The game had almost as many subs when Catacombs came out as the did when they launched but people had a serious blow to their morale and when the over powered classes of catacombs came out it was the straw that broke the camel's backs. In that game, the best population indicators I saw over time were the numbers of people in the battlegrounds and RVR. I didn't see a noticable drop until the first 50's from catacombs started roaming the lands. People were leaving the game in a trickle at that point but a few months after that it became very obvious that people were leaving in droves. Yes, I understand that the loudest mouthed people that left were those that hated TOA so from an outsider's point of view, that was THE reason. But the sub numbers betray every word that comes out of their mouths. The FACT that the classic servers were empty when the final merge happened is just one more indicator that the true fans of the game, the ones that played TOA servers, the ones that still to this day keep the game alive, always outnumbered the ones who didn't like TOA. To anyone that claims that TOA killed the game, in a way I guess they are right in that the people that didn't have it in them to spend two weeks to get the same gear as anyone else yelled just loud enough that Mythic thought they were the majority and ruined the game because of it. Google DAoC;s sub numbers for yourself and see that more people quit when they caved to the TOA haters than actually left to play on the classic servers.
People should really keep arguing with someone who was actually on the DAoC staff. Really, keep going, because Im sure you know better than he does.
Anyone who played DAoC knows that ToA killed the game. Some long term subscriptions may have ran past the first month of its release, but the fact is that in-game, thats when the exodus began and when the bulk of people actually stopped logging on. Yes, NF and the catering to 8mans put the nail in the coffin later on, but ToA is unquestionably what killed DAoC and changed what most people loved about it.
And Scott, another great article. You should be careful though, having well-written articles that are also entertaining are taboo on this site and some of the other "writers" wont like it.
Another great read and I know I'm biased by not having much involvment with any of the others but I think you got it right with number one. Another interesting thing that reading this brought me to about SWG was that I recall being at the local game store here getting whatever console game I was into at the time since I had never played an mmo before and I overheard one of the workers there talking about SOE making a Star Wars game with a complex skill system that was going to break alot of mmo conventions. The way he spoke gave me a sense that this would truly be a unique game that was not for everyone and somehow hearing that got me hooked and made me decide for the first time to play an mmo which again I knew they existed but had never had the desire to play one.
Well when they launched I think the game was very much what the guy in the store described it as being though certainly not without it's problems. It just leads me to wonder how exactly this happened, if the guy in the store did have credible info on how this game was being made why the surprise when it turns out as you expected and then why the turn around. I think personally it was alot of what I heard at the time and that was the fact that WOWs success changed perspectives about the industry all around.
But I also loved reading about the pre SWG era games too as I stated I didn't play any of them but have been a student of sorts of the industry since so knew they all had there problems but I think this article more than most others I read did a good job of summing up what they were good job.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
A guy in my guild actually owns a collector's edition of Auto Assault that he bought as his first MMO before he met any of us. The only things worse than buying it was telling us. He will never ever live it down in vent.
Oh hey, I bought that too. For $4.99. The el cheapo headset made the purchase worth it. I used it on vent and to talk with people online long after the game crumbled.
This article sounds like it was written by someone who got bored of WoW and decided to try out some games that are 7+ years old and just don't work anymore.
lol great stuff cant wait for the next part. I never was involved in EQ1s endgame but boy did I hear alot of horror stories. And as far as DAoC I remember it declining quite a bit even before ToA... dying, no, but I do remember seeing the number of players on merlin drop quite a bit even before ToA. I also am kind of surprised Vanguard didnt make the list. anyway, great read.
Comments
Ehmm what? AC2 was shut down. Tabula Rasa was shut down. The rest in that list that is still running today, is struggling to stay afloat. With absolute minimum resources spend. Just to keep it running.
Plus, he didn't say that all the mentioned games shutted down. As Everquest 2 managed to recover with the Echoes of Faydwar expansion. Wich was one of the best and most expansive MMO expansions to date.
Cheers
Very informative post Evasia. Why are you holding backs with the facts that Scott Jennings apparently has to get straight.
Instead of bashing the excellent article with zero information trash and wasting our time, do us a favor and give us some information.
So why did AC2 fail? Maybe a list of points would be nice.
Thanks.
That list could go on and on... But the high points. One, it wasn't AC1(with an improved graphics engine), that turned off a lot of the existing player base, who expected it to be. Next, there was the *endless* series of "issues" major and minor. Some are only to be expected at the launch of a new game. But breaking the entire chat system, the combat system, the guild system, missing items from inventory(data base system), just to name a few was a bit much. Not only that, but those issues played musical chairs for months and months and months. All the while Microsoft and Turbine engaged in finger pointing at each other.
It was finally too much. Just to add the cherry on the top of the cake, Turbine closed the game down, not that long after selling many of us the expansion. That left a very bitter taste in many peoples mouths to this very day.
Oh how right you are; I will never forgive SOE for what they did to SWG. And I'm stopping now before I go off on a rabid rant...
The list isn't about total and complete failures, but rather things there were failures to various different degrees. Even a successful game can do things that are a failure or represent a bad aspect of mmos.
Scott Jennings You may want to read up a bit before you go telling people to go make mmos.
In my opinion AC2 failed because they took everything that was great about AC and threw it straight out the window, instead choosing to go with; a more 'EQ' style system with classes and skill trees, invisible walls, linear game play... etc
It was still an enjoyable game, but it just wasn't 'as' good as the original. Server populations were never very high.
What really pissed me off about that game was the fact that they released an expansion weeks before shutting down. The bastards had to know they were that close to the toilet, they knew the expansion sales wouldn't be enough to save them, but they just had to squeze every last dime out of those of us who supported the game.
To me this is right up there with the NGE in 'fail factor'.
The early problems of eq2 were varied and many and all had a hand in the decline of the game and it never reaching its potential.
The performance was just one more problem on top of a pile of problems and it was the result of a specific choice soe made. Soe decided to make a game with beyond start of the arts graphics and then cut the legs out from under any pc that had a decent chance of running it by coding the game engine to ignore the graphics card and push everything on the processor.
If the game was coded properly, then an average 2004 era pc could have run the game.
Who in their right mind purposefully rushes to release a game they know will perform like crap and their plan to fix it is hope, yes hope, technology catches up to the games needs in the future. That is an epic level failure on the part of management.
Ehmm what? AC2 was shut down. Tabula Rasa was shut down. The rest in that list that is still running today, is struggling to stay afloat. With absolute minimum resources spend. Just to keep it running.
Plus, he didn't say that all the mentioned games shutted down. As Everquest 2 managed to recover with the Echoes of Faydwar expansion. Wich was one of the best and most expansive MMO expansions to date.
Cheers
1st off I never said just 2 of the games shut down.
And were is it said that a game has to last forever to be a success??
Most of the games in his list were a success for what they were and filled a roll in the MMO world. Just because you or I do not like a game does not mean it was not a success. I hated Tabula Rasa but for its short lived life it had some die hard fans so for them the game was a success.
Now I am not saying just because a game had a few fans it is a success but lets look at a few of games in his list,
UO was a great success and even after Tram was released it still had alot of fans even in the age of 3D
SWG ( even tho I did not like it ) was a great success for scifi fans and yes NGE ( which was planed and approved by LA and was not all SOE's fault) did help kill alot of subs there were still a fair number of players that liked the game.
EQ still had a small following but was the BIG DOG til WoW came around.
Did things change in these games? YES
Were they for the best? well depends on who you ask
But change has to happen... and just because someone does not like a change does not mean the game is a Failure.
Assassin's like to do it in the dark and from behind.
(1) This article talks about the release problems of eq2, not what it is doing today. A game can launch and have mechanics that are failures which needed to be removed or redesigned. It doesn't mean the game is closing down.
Keep in mind soe rushed eq2 to market unfinished just so they could compete with wow head to head. This isn't about having wow numbers, but at the same time closing servers within a year after release is a failure and the reason people were leaving was because of the condition of the game and its mechanics.
(2) The entire point of this article is about games the failures caused by certain aspects of a game. EQ2 at release was chock full of terrible designs. Soe really thought they hit a homerun with eq2 at release and were going to clobber wow.
(3) There are millions and millions of new players who have joined the mmo market over the last several years that have little to no exposure with soe. You are looking at the result of a companies actions on their playerbase and trying to make it the cause of their problems.
The only thing that is holding eq2 back is eq2.
so basically because eq2 chose to adapt and redesign based on its CUSTOMERS complaints its fail? give me a break. if anything that should show you the quality of SOE, that they aren't stubborn like some other game companies and will work with their community in order to make them happy.
as for hitting a homerun, they probably thought they were, they didn't realize how "casual" this market would become. lets face it when EQ2 came out, while it was not as "hardcore" as EQ1 .... it still had hardcore elements. forced interdependency, spirit shards, group exp loss and little to no solo content in most quest lines. they still thought that MMO players played this genre to work together ... until WoW came out and basically presented the Massive Single Player online RPG. then they had to restructure their game to adapt to the new MSPORPG genre.
as for 3, yet those millions and millions have the internet, know sites like this and others where SOE is proclaimed as the devil by the certified stupid and the SWG "vets" who can't get over what lucas arts forced SOE to do. so my point still stands if Blizzard or Bioware or even Verant had their named stamped on EQ2 it would be considered the best MMO out there.
because thats what it is, its the best MMO out there.
the Evil Raider that outgears you and makes you cry for welfare epics on the forums.
Nope, what ruined DAoC was definatly Trials of Atlantis combined with New Frontiers, while New Frontiers was a noble project, it was too drastic, coupled with ToA was the demise of DAoC.
By the time Catacombs released, the damage had already been done. Seriously, if you think warlocks had anything to do with it you have no clue.
Now the actual drop in subs came right before Catacombs, because people were actually playing ToA and getting all the goodies, then they had the honeymoon period with NF, but then the bubble bursted and WoW released, it was a triple hit :
TOA + NF + WoW, and DAoC never recovered. If DAoC never had released ToA nor NF but instead small incremental updates not disturbing the balance between PvE and RvR and only tweaking old frontiers instead of totally remaking it, it would have been much more hardened to sustain WoW, and would have grown slowly like EVE did.
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
To the OP, you make my heart bleed ...
DAoC and SWG, two of the biggest epic adventures, now ruined, and all what is left are the grand tales of times long gone.
/cry
If you are interested in subscription or PCU numbers for MMORPG's, check out my site :
http://mmodata.blogspot.be/
Favorite MMORPG's : DAoC pre ToA-NF, SWG Pre CU-NGE, EVE Online
(1) Seriously? Quality? That is like saying you bought a new car that didn't function well and most of the systems incomplete, but you are impressed by the quality of the company every time to take it to the repair shop.
Again you are looking at the effect and trying to make it the cause. People complained and left, because eq2 was loaded with failure at release. The redesigns were not something initiated by quality. They were in response to a lack of quality.
Also I think if you look at the history of changes in EQ2 you will find soe wasn't responding to what its players wanted, but what soe thought new potential players wanted. That is why you see so many soe customers complaining of the "wowification" of their game and similar claims. Again, this isn't a company known for listening to its players.
(2) This isn't about casual at all. EQ2 was a disjointed unfinished game that lacked direction and polish, because it was intentionally rushed to market to beat the competition by a few weeks. The result was that game crashed during a period when the mmo market was exploding. If 3 million people join the market and you have to close down servers, you are doing something wrong.
(3) Sites like this are just as full of people calling blizzard the devil and how horrible wow is, but that doesn't seem to stop wow from being successful.
Do you even understand why blizzard and bioware have great reputations? They make great games. If bioware or blizzard had their name on eq2 it wouldn't have released in the sad condition that it was and it would not have spent the next several years constantly changing design directions trying to find a market of players that would be interested in playing the game. Neither of those companies find it acceptable to push broken and unfinished products to the market. Soe has a long and ugly history of screwing things up and some of it intentionally.
Like I said already, great games sell themselves. Somehow I don't think such a masterpiece is being held back by a small handful of angry former customers.
Usually I stay out of all of this. I read the articles, reflect, and move on about my business. And as soon as I saw the title of the article, I knew the kind of responses that were going to be here. So from a business point of veiw, mad props to the author for opening up a can of worms that will boost the hell out of traffic here. Since I have finally opened my mouth for the first time in a gaming forum in many years, I will say a couple things I guess.
1) You forgot Matrix Online... Beautiful concept at first, everyone was really getting into it. But you couldn't run those live events forever. Used to have a blast in there, but once that decline started, it continued ever so rapidly. With something so promising, epically failing, so should have been on that list.
2) Auto Assault - imho the game was marketed very poorly. Myself and those who played, absolutley loved the game. A small known fact, but a group of players, after the game closed, got ahold of the source code, spent weeks going through and working out bugs, and then presented it back to NC Soft asking for nothing in return but they open it back up. They were handed a cease and desist order. It had players, dedicated ones, just not enough to suit the companies wallet I suppose. *shrugs*
3) EQ2 - Out of the gate, I agree it was an epic fail. They tried too hard and players got turned off because they missed the target on the "feel" of EQ1 that all the old players were trying to obtain. That feeling doesn't exist anymore, you burnt it up in EQ1 raids that you called in to work stating your grandmother was dead for the 5th time. But take a look at it from then to now. They've made the game fun to play again. I've been peeking in on it off and on for the past 6 years, and though I'm not thrilled about all of the changes, they have made a solid game, that can very well be enjoyed for a long period of time. It lacks the shallow and fisher price of WoW, there's alot of people who appreciate that. I just started plying it solidly again a couple months ago, and am very satisfied with the experience thus far.
4) Another one that we all got pumped up for and had our hearts broken on was Vanguard. How excited were we that a game that out of the gate was going to take 13 GB to install?!?! And that we knew we were going to have to throw the can on the workbench and upgrade the hell out of. And somehow, with all of that, they missed. Still haven't placed my finger on it, but they did... Still foolishly holding out hope for this one to do something...
5) Are you seriously EQ1's failure was mainly based on ninja-looters??? Pain in the ass, infuriating, etc... yes! But don't think it can really be considered a failure, much less an epic one, when it still has a decently strong player base. Those who still do play (I must admit, I personally haven't gone back in for more than an hour in years now though, but still talk to many who do play) love the game and still play it to everywhere from casual to hardcore levels. My issues with it are personal, but I wouldn't call it a failure.
6) I agree on many fronts regarding SWG. I was one of the few fans that liked the changes and saw the possibilities that it could have brought, including a lot of new players that could have made the game more enjoyable. But as stated, the fanbois lost their damn minds and made new players even afraid to try the game. Don't really think the companies messed the game up, they truthfully made it better. The bad apples destroyed this one.
Anyways...guess that's enough said after my few years of silence in the gaming world....flame on guys
Ehmm what? AC2 was shut down. Tabula Rasa was shut down. The rest in that list that is still running today, is struggling to stay afloat. With absolute minimum resources spend. Just to keep it running.
Plus, he didn't say that all the mentioned games shutted down. As Everquest 2 managed to recover with the Echoes of Faydwar expansion. Wich was one of the best and most expansive MMO expansions to date.
Cheers
The fact that some of those games were shutdown isn't the point, the point is that the autor is classifiyng all the games in the list as failures when in fact some of them weren't.
The major problem resides in the player comunity that, lets face it, likes to be lead by the nose , kind of a donkey following the carrot hanging from the pole straped around its back , people only adere to two types of games, WoW type games, grind-grind-grind or Korean type games, grind grind grind grind, oh God more grind and in some pay for epic items type games.
Tabula Rasa for instance was a nice aproach to a new type of games, the point was immersing you in a frontline war and basicly making you fullfil quests, it took the weight out of the grind because quests ran smoother than most, and lets face it, it had more variety from escorts to holding bases, not much, BUT , infinitely better than, we have an infestation kill 100 fluffy bunnies to win 1000gold and pink sleepers of magic ( rinse and repeat ) type of quests and games.
Another point is that, a game is also sucessfull based on the quality of its player base, and lets face it, in general the player base is very very poor, ganking, smacking and so forth, most of you have surely seen it all. A game is only as good as its comunity and that is the problem with most games, not that the games itself are bad, but its a matter of taste, and most players despite not liking a game stick to it just to cause the most grief as they can until they eventually move on to the next game / get tire or are simply kicked.
Diversity, or the lack of it, you got a basilion fantasy porno type fairy fireball launching orc shaman undead games and for instance games like EvE are underpopulated, like SB or TB are down , and the others well. live on the diehards. Lets face it, the diversity isn't much, and when presented with options, people just randomly discard them. ( prays that Startrek Online turns out great )
And last but not least, bugs, i personally hate bugs, i play EvE, have played WAR and alot other games and to be honest what makes me leave its the bugs, EvE online so help me God if i won't leave it as soon as Startrek Online comes( at least i will wait to see if its as near as good as its being sold by the devs ) , i meen, EvE has the potential to be a great game and its bugged to hell and over, the only thing keeping CCP afloat with it its the playerbase that stuck with it for lack of better options or simply love for the game ( not that the comunity is all that great mind you but its a notch better than most ofthers ) .
I left WAR because of them, WAR was one of the most unbalanced games i ever saw in terms of bugs from the famous soldiers falling out of the sky to the new classes with aoe uberness that wrecked the chances for everyone wanting to roll other classes, lack of forums, then with forums lack of content in them, then GOA itself...
Conan now that i think of it, i played it also for about 3months and thats it, Conan was the kind of you get a ranger or a shaman, blast people from distance and thats it, everyone wants to be a w(h)inner, and well coupled with an impressive array of bugs and monstruous patches, not to mention the initial 30GB of Harddrive required plus almost top of the line computer... ( wich fortunately i have , but i am a drop amongst an ocean of players ),
Eve well, the last patch for Dominion is... well the very example of a bug domination, and a poor example of a dev team after some time, while at first they comunicated , now they seem to be in the clutches of the terrible beast of marketing teams and advisors, a really nasty pest that once it takes hold within a corporation... oh God.
So all this to say that the list on that article is biased and its the kind of example why a person should write from an observing and detached perspective sometimes, there are an infinite list of games that are still running and are a poor example of what we play today, and yet, surprise surprise, people do play them for the most undisclosed reasons, be that they're grief candy material to the latest fashion ( AION , oh God the grind.. .OH GOD ! how i "dislike" korean mmos ), or just lack of options.
(1) Seriously? Quality? That is like saying you bought a new car that didn't function well and most of the systems incomplete, but you are impressed by the quality of the company every time to take it to the repair shop.
more like you bought a car and customers complain about various designs of the car, and that company recalls the cars they sold and changed them based on customer complaints =.
Again you are looking at the effect and trying to make it the cause. People complained and left, because eq2 was loaded with failure at release. The redesigns were not something initiated by quality. They were in response to a lack of quality.
yes they were initiated by quality, like i said SOE made the game too "hardcore" for the casual based gamer now a days so they changed it.
Also I think if you look at the history of changes in EQ2 you will find soe wasn't responding to what its players wanted, but what soe thought new potential players wanted. That is why you see so many soe customers complaining of the "wowification" of their game and similar claims. Again, this isn't a company known for listening to its players.
Now yeah they don't want easy mode, but if you were on the beta forums and early forums they were filled with complaints about ... shards, crafting, archtype system and all that crap that you mentioned.
(2) This isn't about casual at all. EQ2 was a disjointed unfinished game that lacked direction and polish, because it was intentionally rushed to market to beat the competition by a few weeks. The result was that game crashed during a period when the mmo market was exploding. If 3 million people join the market and you have to close down servers, you are doing something wrong.
its completely about casual, EQ2s overland zones were filled with group ONLY content, quests lines were mostly group only, dungeons were group only hell crafting had to nearly be done in a group since you needed parts from OTHER crafters in order to get a finished product in your own craft.
(3) Sites like this are just as full of people calling blizzard the devil and how horrible wow is, but that doesn't seem to stop wow from being successful.
also helps they advertise. thats one of the only things i blame on SOE.
Do you even understand why blizzard and bioware have great reputations? They make great games. If bioware or blizzard had their name on eq2 it wouldn't have released in the sad condition that it was and it would not have spent the next several years constantly changing design directions trying to find a market of players that would be interested in playing the game. Neither of those companies find it acceptable to push broken and unfinished products to the market. Soe has a long and ugly history of screwing things up and some of it intentionally.
Like I said already, great games sell themselves. Somehow I don't think such a masterpiece is being held back by a small handful of angry former customers.
BGs, arenas and what not, thats blizzard changing direction of the game as well. so according to you that means WoW = fail. since WoW was a PVE game when it was launched.
ne
the Evil Raider that outgears you and makes you cry for welfare epics on the forums.
Shadowbane was not and is not a fail game it had a bad bug yes but other then that it was and still ahead of its time. Tho the last few patch kind of killed some of it.
I must say I never missed not being part of the ancient MMO era. I recall vividly trying out UO and EQ in it's days on friend's accounts, and I knew in no way in hell I would play such games. Only with post Eq2 era MMOs became interesting for me. Why people enjoy blowing up others at a picknick or camp 72 hours a boss is beyond me.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
This article might be better than the last one about all the Trek geeks getting ready to eat a big excrement sandwich.
ToA was DAoC's downfall, not Catacombs. Yes, Warlocks were stupidly OP'd, but Classic servers for people refusing to do the ToA grind should be a fairly solid acknowledgment that ToA was a legendary fail.
AoC and probably WAR should have been on this list.
The best article I have read in a looong while. I have played almost all of the games mentioned and all I can say is: Spot on! Keep up the good writing. Thank you.
SWG: Astromechs & Friday Features and Guides from SWG O-forums (2003-2005) (Read last post first for clarity)
Ah, the Trammel Facet...Birthplace of the term "Trammy n00b"
The fun I used to have sitting at Brit bank (tram) and watching two macho "pk's" trading your-mom jokes until one of them gets soo mad he opens (gasp) the RED GATE!! and says just bring it!
People should really keep arguing with someone who was actually on the DAoC staff. Really, keep going, because Im sure you know better than he does.
Anyone who played DAoC knows that ToA killed the game. Some long term subscriptions may have ran past the first month of its release, but the fact is that in-game, thats when the exodus began and when the bulk of people actually stopped logging on. Yes, NF and the catering to 8mans put the nail in the coffin later on, but ToA is unquestionably what killed DAoC and changed what most people loved about it.
And Scott, another great article. You should be careful though, having well-written articles that are also entertaining are taboo on this site and some of the other "writers" wont like it.
Good article, but you cannot speak of fail without including Vanguard.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Another great read and I know I'm biased by not having much involvment with any of the others but I think you got it right with number one. Another interesting thing that reading this brought me to about SWG was that I recall being at the local game store here getting whatever console game I was into at the time since I had never played an mmo before and I overheard one of the workers there talking about SOE making a Star Wars game with a complex skill system that was going to break alot of mmo conventions. The way he spoke gave me a sense that this would truly be a unique game that was not for everyone and somehow hearing that got me hooked and made me decide for the first time to play an mmo which again I knew they existed but had never had the desire to play one.
Well when they launched I think the game was very much what the guy in the store described it as being though certainly not without it's problems. It just leads me to wonder how exactly this happened, if the guy in the store did have credible info on how this game was being made why the surprise when it turns out as you expected and then why the turn around. I think personally it was alot of what I heard at the time and that was the fact that WOWs success changed perspectives about the industry all around.
But I also loved reading about the pre SWG era games too as I stated I didn't play any of them but have been a student of sorts of the industry since so knew they all had there problems but I think this article more than most others I read did a good job of summing up what they were good job.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Oh hey, I bought that too. For $4.99. The el cheapo headset made the purchase worth it. I used it on vent and to talk with people online long after the game crumbled.
But yeah, that game really sucked.
This article sounds like it was written by someone who got bored of WoW and decided to try out some games that are 7+ years old and just don't work anymore.
Sorry.
lol great stuff cant wait for the next part. I never was involved in EQ1s endgame but boy did I hear alot of horror stories. And as far as DAoC I remember it declining quite a bit even before ToA... dying, no, but I do remember seeing the number of players on merlin drop quite a bit even before ToA. I also am kind of surprised Vanguard didnt make the list. anyway, great read.