As other have pointed out not mentioning or having Warhammer listed the current holder of the title "epic failure" how is it possible you did not list it.
My blood pressure went up thirty points reading this article... If memory serves me right... Anarchy Online was the first pioneer into the sci-fi genre for MMO's and failed "Challenger-style", and then there was Neocron that I can say was very... "meh" as well. I can say that playing Shadowbane with it's sb.exe had prepared me for playing "Killing Floor", however.
I've posted it a few times before, but last latest MMO's I pre-purchased were Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London in major hopes of escaping "cookie cutter" MMO's. It turns out I was right, but yet so wrong.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Originally posted by XxMaticxX (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
Major changes, overhauls and removal of systems are not initiated by quality as you keep trying to make it sound. They are initiated by lack of quality. A company that intentionally rushes an unfinished product to market, especially when the beta testers are telling them not to, doesn't really stand as a pillar of quality.
There is a reason people chose to sit in a log in que for hours instead of playing eq2 where there was no waiting. Soe even had an ad campaign about "no waiting lines" and smed was rather smug about it.
Also, battlegrounds and arenas are additions to a game. That is called new content, which is drastically different than revamping major systems that your playerbase doesn't enjoy. Nice strawman attack though.
In the end, you can try to put lipstick on the pig all you want, but in the end it is still just a pig and there are reasons eq2 made the list.
Yes 72 hours to kill a Dragon was too long, but what would be too short a length of time? It all has to get easier and easier. Is 72 minutes too long? I don’t think so, but I am sure some of the “I don’t get to play more than an hour a day because <insert RL demand here>” players would think so. Oh and I have no time to group, so make it solo thanks! MMO’s are looking to expand their playerbase by making the games easier, particularly as new MMO’s are failing and a recession hits us. So they want to cater to every sort of player, even when those players don't want the same type of gameplay.
Which leads us to the question, is 72 seconds to kill a dragon too long? For some people it is and we need their sub, so let’s make the game even dumber! This is the end of the time equation we are being driven to, where two seconds is one second too many to do anything.
In a solo game the players who only have an hour a day just take longer to complete the game, no big deal. In a MMO, when companies try to pander to those with hardly any time to put into the game, we get ridiculously easy game design.
While on the subject spotlighted for it's fail for the game Star Wars Galaxies, I have to say the article failed to mention that before the legendary failure of NGE and the mistake of changing the core game with current subscribers, there was this thing called the "Combat Upgrade", or "CU". The game (community) was never the same since the CU, which turned out ok after a while. But you'd think they would've learned about changing people's game after the significant loss of subscribers resulting from the CU.
As other have pointed out not mentioning or having Warhammer listed the current holder of the title "epic failure" how is it possible you did not list it.
First: Because there are worse games than WAR.
Second: Because this article focused mainly on single design decisions, saying those decisions were fail, not necessarily the entire games themselves.
Third: This is PART ONE of a TWO PART article series, so we'll see more fail decisions in PART TWO.
As other have pointed out not mentioning or having Warhammer listed the current holder of the title "epic failure" how is it possible you did not list it.
First: Because there are worse games than WAR.
Second: Because this article focused mainly on single design decisions, saying those decisions were fail, not necessarily the entire games themselves.
Third: This is PART ONE of a TWO PART article series, so we'll see more fail decisions in PART TWO.
1. They lost 75% of the sub base in less than 6 months. No game ever released has screwed up that badly close to a million people tried it and at best they have 10% of that left in a little over a year.
2. WAR's game engine could not even support its own game design this is the first of the many fails. I would put that above SWG as the worst in history. This SINGLE decision was at the core of many of its problems and should be game design 101. They released a game with an engine that did not support is own game design.....think about that.
3. With the title of the article it should have been in the part one as no game has failed like WAR you could use any number of epically bad game design decisions and worse they completely misread their own gaming market and made a game that its fan based hated and opted to try to get some of the golden cows subs and by doing that both groups hated that game.
As other have pointed out not mentioning or having Warhammer listed the current holder of the title "epic failure" how is it possible you did not list it.
First: Because there are worse games than WAR.
Second: Because this article focused mainly on single design decisions, saying those decisions were fail, not necessarily the entire games themselves.
Scenarios - single design decision that killed the open-world pvp in WHO.
While I do agree with some of the posts on this topic. There are alot of half truths and fabrications also. The orignal article writer I beleive should never have posted this article in first place. It shows an obvious b ias slant on things. Lets look at EQ for example. It did not start seeing a serious depletion of accounts until WoW appeared. That highly amounts to a failure game. Not to mention until WoW game along it pretty much was in the top 3 for subs and revenue for a MMO. Then there is EQ2. While I do agree quality was some what of a problem. The biggest issue that tanked the game at release was SOE decision to future proof the game.. The game was unplayable by the standard pc spec at the time and extreme gamer platforms that were 5k + at the time of release could barely handle the game. That cut off 90% of your customer base and made alot of people unhappy. So that along with the plot change hosed up there launch.
Problem is EQ2 is not a bleek wasteland like people are making it out to be . If you really wanted to give an award to a game most improved it would go to EQ2 over aoc anyday. They brought back the Gods and class epics not to mention revamped the whole game to be more eq1 like. the game took off after that. The comments about servers closing. That only applies to station exchange and pvp. Both were pretty poor concepts. I guess they are chanigng pvp again and infact are putting in barttlegrounds scenerios along with armor. Another WoW pvp clone I am afraid to say. Overall EQ2 is not on life support right now.
As for all the comments about how well blizzard and bioware producrts are. Lets get rid of the fan boy attitude already. Bioware has had issues but overall they deserve the praise. Blizzard on the other hand, I do not know how or even care maybe the men in black used there mind wipe thing on everyone lol but there were issues at release to WoW that were not minor. They did even give out free time. There are still bugs in the game also that cause you to become a geeksquad tech to get your pc running right in the game. So while they maybe had a less flawed launch they are not some uber mythilogical never make a mistake company like some want us to believe. I will note that I am not playing any of these games at the momment. But I did beta test all of them and played them all within the last 5 yrs in final. Ever MMO out there has its issues. Burt I will say this there are far better examples then what is posted in this article. Its seems to me we have another disgruntled SWG player of past that cannot let the SOE hate go away already. I expected to see more games like Horizons Shadowbane. I think for the most part the major players of the MMO industry have there + and - no one company is better then the other.
While I do agree with some of the posts on this topic. There are alot of half truths and fabrications also. The orignal article writer I beleive should never have posted this article in first place. It shows an obvious b ias slant on things. Lets look at EQ for example. It did not start seeing a serious depletion of accounts until WoW appeared. That highly amounts to a failure game. Not to mention until WoW game along it pretty much was in the top 3 for subs and revenue for a MMO. Then there is EQ2. While I do agree quality was some what of a problem. The biggest issue that tanked the game at release was SOE decision to future proof the game.. The game was unplayable by the standard pc spec at the time and extreme gamer platforms that were 5k + at the time of release could barely handle the game. That cut off 90% of your customer base and made alot of people unhappy. So that along with the plot change hosed up there launch. Problem is EQ2 is not a bleek wasteland like people are making it out to be . If you really wanted to give an award to a game most improved it would go to EQ2 over aoc anyday. They brought back the Gods and class epics not to mention revamped the whole game to be more eq1 like. the game took off after that. The comments about servers closing. That only applies to station exchange and pvp. Both were pretty poor concepts. I guess they are chanigng pvp again and infact are putting in barttlegrounds scenerios along with armor. Another WoW pvp clone I am afraid to say. Overall EQ2 is not on life support right now. As for all the comments about how well blizzard and bioware producrts are. Lets get rid of the fan boy attitude already. Bioware has had issues but overall they deserve the praise. Blizzard on the other hand, I do not know how or even care maybe the men in black used there mind wipe thing on everyone lol but there were issues at release to WoW that were not minor. They did even give out free time. There are still bugs in the game also that cause you to become a geeksquad tech to get your pc running right in the game. So while they maybe had a less flawed launch they are not some uber mythilogical never make a mistake company like some want us to believe. I will note that I am not playing any of these games at the momment. But I did beta test all of them and played them all within the last 5 yrs in final. Ever MMO out there has its issues. Burt I will say this there are far better examples then what is posted in this article. Its seems to me we have another disgruntled SWG player of past that cannot let the SOE hate go away already. I expected to see more games like Horizons Shadowbane. I think for the most part the major players of the MMO industry have there + and - no one company is better then the other.
EQ had some bad game concepts that were are not considered successes in terms of how well players enjoyed them. Please don't confuse that with total failure that killed populations. The point was that designs in a game can be bad and have a negative impact on a game. It doesn't automatically mean failure to the point of closing servers or massive subscriber drops.
EQ2 closed 10 pve servers before they even had pvp servers. There were 36 game servers at release (not counting the 5 pvp servers that were added post release) and now there are 20. It isn't just pvp and station exchange.
AOC improved more this year than EQ2, which is why it won the award.
No one was saying that other mmo releases were perfect and yes most had major problems at release. If people chose to sit in line for hours to play a game that had massive server stability issues over a game that they could instantly log into and play, what does that say? That is why EQ2s mechanics were pointed at on the list.
Shadowbane did make the list, but horizons would have been an interesting entry.
It is just silly to think that all companies are equal to each other. There is a reason some companies has long track records of top 10 selling and rated games and other companies go bankrupt or are forced to close games/merge servers shortly after a games release.
UO was indeed the way you describe it. Took a lot of the fun out of the game at first. I still think the original concept wasn't that bad, it's just that they could've done better.
DAoC was my first true love in MMO. But yes, not only did the expansion kill the game, the numerous buff-bots in the game were really killer for lots of us that left the game. Such a shame, since the RvR was more than good PvP. Not to forget exploits like Radar and such, completely killed the game.
SWG was a tragedy in itself really. Not only did they launch an unfinished game at the start, they didn't fix it, and then in the end they kill what made it stand apart from other games. There you go, left over a poor type of WoW with a Star Wars shell slapped on top of it. I tried it again a few months ago out of curiosity, but it really is awefully poor and shallow compared to what it once was. I'd do a SWG2 based upon its original concept, but I guess no one wants to take that risk.
Let's not forget Anarchy Online. Arguably the worst MMO launch in history, and just when it recovers and is becoming a solid game, they tack an ENTIRE FANTASY GAME right onto a sci-fi game. I mean, it's like duct-taping an asshole on your forehead. It doesn't belong there, it's ugly, and stupid, and pointless. And let's not forget to mention that entire realms of this phantasy game were incomplete, broken, and in some cases not even there....to the point where the quest givers were intentionally missing or broken to prevent players from discovering that they'd been RIPPED OFF, by being sold an "expansion" that wasn't even finished. And STILL is not finished, years later.
Of course, we could also talk about Funcom's other bomb.....Age Of Conan....but I think we all know what happened there. Let's not beat a dead horse, eh?
Hmmm..... both AoC and AO had terrible launches. Yet, funcom does a good job at fixing them (admittedly, after crappy pre-release development).
Funcom surely wins the "Legendary failure Releases" award, but both AO and AoC developed into good games. Both games maintain more then steady populations. I must admit, AoC has many other issues *coughimmersioncough* and it tries to make up with good graphics, but it is one of the better MMO's out right now.
Originally posted by sundrop This is exactly what I was going to post. You got some of the games correct, but you obviously let the WoW fanboyism get ahead of you in your article. Eq2/Sony Has NOT failed. Do they still have a large stake in MMO? Yep. Do they still have subs? yep Do they still have a huge fanbase? Umm Hello SOE Fanfare.
Keep up the good articles, but try to keep the fanboy and the trolling out of the articles from now on.
Uhm.... noone said EQ2 is a terrible game. It's a game which had some pretty terrible features though, which is the point of this article.
Originally posted by nethaniah
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
It was a good read and he did point out everything frustrating about every MMO he listed. I personally liked Ultima Online, I wasn't a PVP person but I just accepted the fact that hey people can kill you in this cool, I also saw Ultima Online as a life in fantasy world simulator. One thing I did not like was how over crowded the servers on Ultima Online were. It was like very few feet someone had a house. I enjoyed the house feature and really loved how guilds could make their own towns etc. I would think it would of somewhat did better if they could of done two things. Make more servers, one that would only support a certain population, and then make a gate system similar to the moongates, maybe red ones ala Ultima VI, and allow cross server travel some how. Then if you played on a server, and your friend may play on another one that isn't crowded you could just pop on over via red moon gate.
I also played EQ1, personally I got bored with it rather quickly. Even at lower levels I got bored, go kill rats, bats, the orcs across the zone... etc, it was some what fun when you had people to play with but it was hard for me to get a party a lot of times to get an item that would only be good for a few more levels (shinny brass shield-or something) from the orcs near the elf zone.
My old man still plays EQ... he says the game is finally starting to die though. I never got into Star Wars Galaxies because I knew it wouldn't meet my expectations or be worth the subscription fee. It looked like a UO/EQ hybrid in space to me when it first came out...I did try to play Shadowbane and yea that really sucked kept getting disconnects and errors. Game makers need to know what they are doing before they release a game and make sure it doesn't shut down at random...
As for the other games I really had time to play because by the time some of them came out I was playing FFXI which didn't disappoint me one bit. I do think that maybe we as players are all too hard on MMOs though because we sometimes forget how hard it is to make one, how hard it is to sell one (advertising etc etc) and how hard it is to keep coming up with new ideas for players to enjoy. It would be like trying to plan a pen and paper D&D campaign that would last for years but instead of just you and your friends it has to appeal to the masses of people that play. Ultimately failing in one aspect or another in the eyes of someone else.
just some thoughts no one will read or pay attention to,
Good article, but a couple of things I disagree about.
DAoC was killed by Trials of Atlanits, simply put, noone that was used to DAoC before ToA came out was going to spend months leveling up equipment through long drawn out quests. People were used to maybe 2-3 hours max to get the best gear, then running around in the frontiers in a fairly balanced Frontiers. ToA just took way too long to get the items leveled, it's not EQ hehe.
The major problem with SWG wasn't that the new system wasn't good, infact it's not that bad. The problem is that SOE changed the entire game right after people bought the expansion, making that $50 you spent a waste. I've seen it in several different ways. SOE is greedy, they will do anything at all just to make a buck (points at subscription games with item malls...). That more than what happened with SWG is why I will never play anything that SOE has touched.
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
LOLOL in red, are you serious? I loved pre-cu, I enjoyed post cu, but to say that they "made it better" with the NGE is beyond hilarious. They made a different game and then wondered what happened when the player base didn't want a "new" game. Its that simple, no amount of negative players kills a game. A company that spit in the face of what their customers wanted and released a half baked revamp of core mechanics killed the game. Sorry to break it to you but you are in the ultra minority considering that basicially none of the players that played at that time much liked it and it didn't draw any new customers for the most part I guess that's all the proof I really need now isn't it.
Well, IMHO, I think Horizons (now Istaria) deserves a mention of a great concept game (think about it, no MMO has yet to allow you to be a Dragon like Horizons did) that failed big time in the end.. Ryzom could also end up as honorable mention after the major change that was done to the magic system..
Originally posted by treysmooth 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
LOLOL in red, are you serious? I loved pre-cu, I enjoyed post cu, but to say that they "made it better" with the NGE is beyond hilarious. They made a different game and then wondered what happened when the player base didn't want a "new" game. Its that simple, no amount of negative players kills a game. A company that spit in the face of what their customers wanted and released a half baked revamp of core mechanics killed the game. Sorry to break it to you but you are in the ultra minority considering that basicially none of the players that played at that time much liked it and it didn't draw any new customers for the most part I guess that's all the proof I really need now isn't it.
Yeah to funny how it is the players fault for what happened to an mmo.
Lets see, people didn't flock to the original game, because it was broken, buggy and unfinished.
People didn't flock to the nge, because it was ridiculously broken, buggy and unfinished to the point it made the original game look like it was a polished masterpiece. The conclusion is that somehow it is the players fault for not retaining or attract new players? Somehow new and old players are supposed to be excited about 2 years of player and developer work being thrown out the window without any notice and jump on the "it has potential" bandwagon? New players are supposed to be excited to give money to a company that just told their current players to piss off?
So soe completely tries to revamp an entire mmo in 2-3 months, delivers one of the worst releases in mmo history, intentionally alienates their customerbase in the process by lying about the changes and you wonder why swg had problems rebuilding a player base?
I wonder just how bad a game has to be or what massive blunders a company has to inflict on a game in order to be responsible for its own outcome and not some angry players.
Originally posted by treysmooth 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
LOLOL in red, are you serious? I loved pre-cu, I enjoyed post cu, but to say that they "made it better" with the NGE is beyond hilarious. They made a different game and then wondered what happened when the player base didn't want a "new" game. Its that simple, no amount of negative players kills a game. A company that spit in the face of what their customers wanted and released a half baked revamp of core mechanics killed the game. Sorry to break it to you but you are in the ultra minority considering that basicially none of the players that played at that time much liked it and it didn't draw any new customers for the most part I guess that's all the proof I really need now isn't it.
Yeah to funny how it is the players fault for what happened to an mmo.
Lets see, people didn't flock to the original game, because it was broken, buggy and unfinished.
People didn't flock to the nge, because it was ridiculously broken, buggy and unfinished to the point it made the original game look like it was a polished masterpiece. The conclusion is that somehow it is the players fault for not retaining or attract new players? Somehow new and old players are supposed to be excited about 2 years of player and developer work being thrown out the window without any notice and jump on the "it has potential" bandwagon? New players are supposed to be excited to give money to a company that just told their current players to piss off?
So soe completely tries to revamp an entire mmo in 2-3 months, delivers one of the worst releases in mmo history, intentionally alienates their customerbase in the process by lying about the changes and you wonder why swg had problems rebuilding a player base?
I wonder just how bad a game has to be or what massive blunders a company has to inflict on a game in order to be responsible for its own outcome and not some angry players.
The lies, thats exactly it. If you all would remember we got mustifar about a month before the NGE. One day somebody that would be me was cruizing around Amazon and found the Guide to Star Wars Galaxies NGE for the Console. it was posted on the SWG forums, and i got a 3 day ban for that after the firestorm erupted. SOE was like there is not going to be a console version. Lots of finger pointing went on, and we even had one Dev if anybody would care to remember who stood up for us. Care to take a guess. Tiggs. Long storry short for 2 months SOE lied and told us nothing was happening then all the sudden about month from the NGE they told us it was comming. NGE was what it was; as nothing existed from the old game except your characters. 80% of the player base quit, folks were so mad that had just got mustifar expansion now to have it all nerfed down folks actually got their money back. And then somebody says it made the game better, rofl at that. IF the NGE was so great then why have they had to merge servers, and why is it a ghost town. I know it is I play eq2 and I can send cross server tells across games even. So all my friends are on my list and guess what, nobody is playing with the exception of 2 of them.
Rofl NGE made the game better, I laughed so hard i had to clean my keyboard.
ahh the original EverCrack... so many painful memories, yet so many memorable moments too:D
what the OP didn't realize is just how much WORSE ragefire camp was, on the zek servers:D I was in one of those 72 hr camps and the difference between a blue server and a red server is that on a blue server, the camp is done by 1 person or 1 group of people. on the red servers, the camp is done by the ENTIRE guild + allies:D On tallon zek. I did the camp for one of the most beloved "light"(TZ was a light vs dark type server) clerics on the server. the ENTIRE 72 hr camp our guild + allies had no less then 50 people camping it:D when it spawned at around 4AM EST. we had maybe 80 people in zone. roughly half engaged in ragefire, the other half watching/defending against any PKers/KSers that comes our way:D but we did get our 1st "light side" cleric epic that night and everyone was tired:D
As EQ evolved, it became a raiding game. the gap between the casuals and raiders became about as wide as the grand canyon and there was really no motivation for casuals to continue. while it takes a full group of casual to kill a mob, a raider can easily solo the same mob and sometimes at a faster pace. at 1 point, the difference between casual and raider was the difference between 10k hp vs 20k hp... as the pool of recruits dwindled(from the lack of casuals) for the raiding guilds, attrition took its toll on the raiders. from the ever more complicated(long) flaggin/keying to the lack of qualified applicants, the raiders soon found greener pastures to feed on in other games.
HOWEVER, credit must be given where it's due. to date, EQ remain the most enjoyable "raiding game" on the market. no other game come close in complexity and technical difficulty of EQ raiding script. For masochists who enjoy large scale raids where 1 mistake can cost you the entire raid, it's a rush to see everything fall into place. The sense of accomplishment in a well executed raid is worth the 3 months of trail and error learning the script and the hours wait getting the raid started:D
EQ has trained more advanced raiders then any other games. and, WoW's raid game benefited greatly from the "already trained" raiders that fled from EQ:D its unfortunate that the blind mofo's steering the boat at SoE fail to understand that EQ is more of a niche game and do not refocus the game as a raiders paradise. instead of getting players closer to the meat of the game(raids) they still focus on putting more and more flags/keys between where the grind is and where the game is enjoyable. In the end, EQ killed itself with its AA system. it was a great idea when it came out, but after years and years of AA inflation, no new players have any chance of reaching "raid" level game because they are 2000AA's behind:D
anyway RIP EQ. your accomplishments will forever be remembered in the MMO era as the game that proliferated the genera of MMO and the game that WoW possible.
Might have been brought up already but next years this is a new one on this list, Cities XL. I am sure will be interesting to see a complete take on that disaster.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
Comments
As other have pointed out not mentioning or having Warhammer listed the current holder of the title "epic failure" how is it possible you did not list it.
My blood pressure went up thirty points reading this article... If memory serves me right... Anarchy Online was the first pioneer into the sci-fi genre for MMO's and failed "Challenger-style", and then there was Neocron that I can say was very... "meh" as well. I can say that playing Shadowbane with it's sb.exe had prepared me for playing "Killing Floor", however.
I've posted it a few times before, but last latest MMO's I pre-purchased were Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London in major hopes of escaping "cookie cutter" MMO's. It turns out I was right, but yet so wrong.
"There is only one thing of which I am certain, and that's nothing is certain."
Major changes, overhauls and removal of systems are not initiated by quality as you keep trying to make it sound. They are initiated by lack of quality. A company that intentionally rushes an unfinished product to market, especially when the beta testers are telling them not to, doesn't really stand as a pillar of quality.
There is a reason people chose to sit in a log in que for hours instead of playing eq2 where there was no waiting. Soe even had an ad campaign about "no waiting lines" and smed was rather smug about it.
Also, battlegrounds and arenas are additions to a game. That is called new content, which is drastically different than revamping major systems that your playerbase doesn't enjoy. Nice strawman attack though.
In the end, you can try to put lipstick on the pig all you want, but in the end it is still just a pig and there are reasons eq2 made the list.
Yes 72 hours to kill a Dragon was too long, but what would be too short a length of time? It all has to get easier and easier. Is 72 minutes too long? I don’t think so, but I am sure some of the “I don’t get to play more than an hour a day because <insert RL demand here>” players would think so. Oh and I have no time to group, so make it solo thanks! MMO’s are looking to expand their playerbase by making the games easier, particularly as new MMO’s are failing and a recession hits us. So they want to cater to every sort of player, even when those players don't want the same type of gameplay.
Which leads us to the question, is 72 seconds to kill a dragon too long? For some people it is and we need their sub, so let’s make the game even dumber! This is the end of the time equation we are being driven to, where two seconds is one second too many to do anything.
In a solo game the players who only have an hour a day just take longer to complete the game, no big deal. In a MMO, when companies try to pander to those with hardly any time to put into the game, we get ridiculously easy game design.
Nice article, look forward to the next one.
While on the subject spotlighted for it's fail for the game Star Wars Galaxies, I have to say the article failed to mention that before the legendary failure of NGE and the mistake of changing the core game with current subscribers, there was this thing called the "Combat Upgrade", or "CU". The game (community) was never the same since the CU, which turned out ok after a while. But you'd think they would've learned about changing people's game after the significant loss of subscribers resulting from the CU.
First: Because there are worse games than WAR.
Second: Because this article focused mainly on single design decisions, saying those decisions were fail, not necessarily the entire games themselves.
Third: This is PART ONE of a TWO PART article series, so we'll see more fail decisions in PART TWO.
Everything well put! ...
Good Read.
Life is a game - Play it!...
First: Because there are worse games than WAR.
Second: Because this article focused mainly on single design decisions, saying those decisions were fail, not necessarily the entire games themselves.
Third: This is PART ONE of a TWO PART article series, so we'll see more fail decisions in PART TWO.
1. They lost 75% of the sub base in less than 6 months. No game ever released has screwed up that badly close to a million people tried it and at best they have 10% of that left in a little over a year.
2. WAR's game engine could not even support its own game design this is the first of the many fails. I would put that above SWG as the worst in history. This SINGLE decision was at the core of many of its problems and should be game design 101. They released a game with an engine that did not support is own game design.....think about that.
3. With the title of the article it should have been in the part one as no game has failed like WAR you could use any number of epically bad game design decisions and worse they completely misread their own gaming market and made a game that its fan based hated and opted to try to get some of the golden cows subs and by doing that both groups hated that game.
I know.... makes the fact that this genre, for the most part, has gone to shit really come back into the forefront of my mind.
First: Because there are worse games than WAR.
Second: Because this article focused mainly on single design decisions, saying those decisions were fail, not necessarily the entire games themselves.
Scenarios - single design decision that killed the open-world pvp in WHO.
While I do agree with some of the posts on this topic. There are alot of half truths and fabrications also. The orignal article writer I beleive should never have posted this article in first place. It shows an obvious b ias slant on things. Lets look at EQ for example. It did not start seeing a serious depletion of accounts until WoW appeared. That highly amounts to a failure game. Not to mention until WoW game along it pretty much was in the top 3 for subs and revenue for a MMO. Then there is EQ2. While I do agree quality was some what of a problem. The biggest issue that tanked the game at release was SOE decision to future proof the game.. The game was unplayable by the standard pc spec at the time and extreme gamer platforms that were 5k + at the time of release could barely handle the game. That cut off 90% of your customer base and made alot of people unhappy. So that along with the plot change hosed up there launch.
Problem is EQ2 is not a bleek wasteland like people are making it out to be . If you really wanted to give an award to a game most improved it would go to EQ2 over aoc anyday. They brought back the Gods and class epics not to mention revamped the whole game to be more eq1 like. the game took off after that. The comments about servers closing. That only applies to station exchange and pvp. Both were pretty poor concepts. I guess they are chanigng pvp again and infact are putting in barttlegrounds scenerios along with armor. Another WoW pvp clone I am afraid to say. Overall EQ2 is not on life support right now.
As for all the comments about how well blizzard and bioware producrts are. Lets get rid of the fan boy attitude already. Bioware has had issues but overall they deserve the praise. Blizzard on the other hand, I do not know how or even care maybe the men in black used there mind wipe thing on everyone lol but there were issues at release to WoW that were not minor. They did even give out free time. There are still bugs in the game also that cause you to become a geeksquad tech to get your pc running right in the game. So while they maybe had a less flawed launch they are not some uber mythilogical never make a mistake company like some want us to believe. I will note that I am not playing any of these games at the momment. But I did beta test all of them and played them all within the last 5 yrs in final. Ever MMO out there has its issues. Burt I will say this there are far better examples then what is posted in this article. Its seems to me we have another disgruntled SWG player of past that cannot let the SOE hate go away already. I expected to see more games like Horizons Shadowbane. I think for the most part the major players of the MMO industry have there + and - no one company is better then the other.
Note that SWGEmu boasts "Pre-CU" gameplay, not "Pre-NGE". SWG failed with CU. NGE was just an additional failure on top, for a total of failure2.
Off-topic, the post editor on this forum sucks.
EQ had some bad game concepts that were are not considered successes in terms of how well players enjoyed them. Please don't confuse that with total failure that killed populations. The point was that designs in a game can be bad and have a negative impact on a game. It doesn't automatically mean failure to the point of closing servers or massive subscriber drops.
EQ2 closed 10 pve servers before they even had pvp servers. There were 36 game servers at release (not counting the 5 pvp servers that were added post release) and now there are 20. It isn't just pvp and station exchange.
AOC improved more this year than EQ2, which is why it won the award.
No one was saying that other mmo releases were perfect and yes most had major problems at release. If people chose to sit in line for hours to play a game that had massive server stability issues over a game that they could instantly log into and play, what does that say? That is why EQ2s mechanics were pointed at on the list.
Shadowbane did make the list, but horizons would have been an interesting entry.
It is just silly to think that all companies are equal to each other. There is a reason some companies has long track records of top 10 selling and rated games and other companies go bankrupt or are forced to close games/merge servers shortly after a games release.
Great read!
I played some of those games myself.
UO was indeed the way you describe it. Took a lot of the fun out of the game at first. I still think the original concept wasn't that bad, it's just that they could've done better.
DAoC was my first true love in MMO. But yes, not only did the expansion kill the game, the numerous buff-bots in the game were really killer for lots of us that left the game. Such a shame, since the RvR was more than good PvP. Not to forget exploits like Radar and such, completely killed the game.
SWG was a tragedy in itself really. Not only did they launch an unfinished game at the start, they didn't fix it, and then in the end they kill what made it stand apart from other games. There you go, left over a poor type of WoW with a Star Wars shell slapped on top of it. I tried it again a few months ago out of curiosity, but it really is awefully poor and shallow compared to what it once was. I'd do a SWG2 based upon its original concept, but I guess no one wants to take that risk.
Can't wait for the next part.
Hmmm..... both AoC and AO had terrible launches. Yet, funcom does a good job at fixing them (admittedly, after crappy pre-release development).
Funcom surely wins the "Legendary failure Releases" award, but both AO and AoC developed into good games.
Both games maintain more then steady populations. I must admit, AoC has many other issues *coughimmersioncough* and it tries to make up with good graphics, but it is one of the better MMO's out right now.
Uhm.... noone said EQ2 is a terrible game. It's a game which had some pretty terrible features though, which is the point of this article.
I think you forgot "no crying in the red circle" by the POTBS devs.
I would have deffo had that on my top ten legendary failures
Hello,
It was a good read and he did point out everything frustrating about every MMO he listed. I personally liked Ultima Online, I wasn't a PVP person but I just accepted the fact that hey people can kill you in this cool, I also saw Ultima Online as a life in fantasy world simulator. One thing I did not like was how over crowded the servers on Ultima Online were. It was like very few feet someone had a house. I enjoyed the house feature and really loved how guilds could make their own towns etc. I would think it would of somewhat did better if they could of done two things. Make more servers, one that would only support a certain population, and then make a gate system similar to the moongates, maybe red ones ala Ultima VI, and allow cross server travel some how. Then if you played on a server, and your friend may play on another one that isn't crowded you could just pop on over via red moon gate.
I also played EQ1, personally I got bored with it rather quickly. Even at lower levels I got bored, go kill rats, bats, the orcs across the zone... etc, it was some what fun when you had people to play with but it was hard for me to get a party a lot of times to get an item that would only be good for a few more levels (shinny brass shield-or something) from the orcs near the elf zone.
My old man still plays EQ... he says the game is finally starting to die though. I never got into Star Wars Galaxies because I knew it wouldn't meet my expectations or be worth the subscription fee. It looked like a UO/EQ hybrid in space to me when it first came out...I did try to play Shadowbane and yea that really sucked kept getting disconnects and errors. Game makers need to know what they are doing before they release a game and make sure it doesn't shut down at random...
As for the other games I really had time to play because by the time some of them came out I was playing FFXI which didn't disappoint me one bit. I do think that maybe we as players are all too hard on MMOs though because we sometimes forget how hard it is to make one, how hard it is to sell one (advertising etc etc) and how hard it is to keep coming up with new ideas for players to enjoy. It would be like trying to plan a pen and paper D&D campaign that would last for years but instead of just you and your friends it has to appeal to the masses of people that play. Ultimately failing in one aspect or another in the eyes of someone else.
just some thoughts no one will read or pay attention to,
Dustin
Good article, but a couple of things I disagree about.
DAoC was killed by Trials of Atlanits, simply put, noone that was used to DAoC before ToA came out was going to spend months leveling up equipment through long drawn out quests. People were used to maybe 2-3 hours max to get the best gear, then running around in the frontiers in a fairly balanced Frontiers. ToA just took way too long to get the items leveled, it's not EQ hehe.
The major problem with SWG wasn't that the new system wasn't good, infact it's not that bad. The problem is that SOE changed the entire game right after people bought the expansion, making that $50 you spent a waste. I've seen it in several different ways. SOE is greedy, they will do anything at all just to make a buck (points at subscription games with item malls...). That more than what happened with SWG is why I will never play anything that SOE has touched.
LOLOL in red, are you serious? I loved pre-cu, I enjoyed post cu, but to say that they "made it better" with the NGE is beyond hilarious. They made a different game and then wondered what happened when the player base didn't want a "new" game. Its that simple, no amount of negative players kills a game. A company that spit in the face of what their customers wanted and released a half baked revamp of core mechanics killed the game. Sorry to break it to you but you are in the ultra minority considering that basicially none of the players that played at that time much liked it and it didn't draw any new customers for the most part I guess that's all the proof I really need now isn't it.
Well, IMHO, I think Horizons (now Istaria) deserves a mention of a great concept game (think about it, no MMO has yet to allow you to be a Dragon like Horizons did) that failed big time in the end.. Ryzom could also end up as honorable mention after the major change that was done to the magic system..
LOLOL in red, are you serious? I loved pre-cu, I enjoyed post cu, but to say that they "made it better" with the NGE is beyond hilarious. They made a different game and then wondered what happened when the player base didn't want a "new" game. Its that simple, no amount of negative players kills a game. A company that spit in the face of what their customers wanted and released a half baked revamp of core mechanics killed the game. Sorry to break it to you but you are in the ultra minority considering that basicially none of the players that played at that time much liked it and it didn't draw any new customers for the most part I guess that's all the proof I really need now isn't it.
Yeah to funny how it is the players fault for what happened to an mmo.
Lets see, people didn't flock to the original game, because it was broken, buggy and unfinished.
People didn't flock to the nge, because it was ridiculously broken, buggy and unfinished to the point it made the original game look like it was a polished masterpiece. The conclusion is that somehow it is the players fault for not retaining or attract new players? Somehow new and old players are supposed to be excited about 2 years of player and developer work being thrown out the window without any notice and jump on the "it has potential" bandwagon? New players are supposed to be excited to give money to a company that just told their current players to piss off?
So soe completely tries to revamp an entire mmo in 2-3 months, delivers one of the worst releases in mmo history, intentionally alienates their customerbase in the process by lying about the changes and you wonder why swg had problems rebuilding a player base?
I wonder just how bad a game has to be or what massive blunders a company has to inflict on a game in order to be responsible for its own outcome and not some angry players.
LOLOL in red, are you serious? I loved pre-cu, I enjoyed post cu, but to say that they "made it better" with the NGE is beyond hilarious. They made a different game and then wondered what happened when the player base didn't want a "new" game. Its that simple, no amount of negative players kills a game. A company that spit in the face of what their customers wanted and released a half baked revamp of core mechanics killed the game. Sorry to break it to you but you are in the ultra minority considering that basicially none of the players that played at that time much liked it and it didn't draw any new customers for the most part I guess that's all the proof I really need now isn't it.
Yeah to funny how it is the players fault for what happened to an mmo.
Lets see, people didn't flock to the original game, because it was broken, buggy and unfinished.
People didn't flock to the nge, because it was ridiculously broken, buggy and unfinished to the point it made the original game look like it was a polished masterpiece. The conclusion is that somehow it is the players fault for not retaining or attract new players? Somehow new and old players are supposed to be excited about 2 years of player and developer work being thrown out the window without any notice and jump on the "it has potential" bandwagon? New players are supposed to be excited to give money to a company that just told their current players to piss off?
So soe completely tries to revamp an entire mmo in 2-3 months, delivers one of the worst releases in mmo history, intentionally alienates their customerbase in the process by lying about the changes and you wonder why swg had problems rebuilding a player base?
I wonder just how bad a game has to be or what massive blunders a company has to inflict on a game in order to be responsible for its own outcome and not some angry players.
The lies, thats exactly it. If you all would remember we got mustifar about a month before the NGE. One day somebody that would be me was cruizing around Amazon and found the Guide to Star Wars Galaxies NGE for the Console. it was posted on the SWG forums, and i got a 3 day ban for that after the firestorm erupted. SOE was like there is not going to be a console version. Lots of finger pointing went on, and we even had one Dev if anybody would care to remember who stood up for us. Care to take a guess. Tiggs. Long storry short for 2 months SOE lied and told us nothing was happening then all the sudden about month from the NGE they told us it was comming. NGE was what it was; as nothing existed from the old game except your characters. 80% of the player base quit, folks were so mad that had just got mustifar expansion now to have it all nerfed down folks actually got their money back. And then somebody says it made the game better, rofl at that. IF the NGE was so great then why have they had to merge servers, and why is it a ghost town. I know it is I play eq2 and I can send cross server tells across games even. So all my friends are on my list and guess what, nobody is playing with the exception of 2 of them.
Rofl NGE made the game better, I laughed so hard i had to clean my keyboard.
ahh the original EverCrack... so many painful memories, yet so many memorable moments too:D
what the OP didn't realize is just how much WORSE ragefire camp was, on the zek servers:D I was in one of those 72 hr camps and the difference between a blue server and a red server is that on a blue server, the camp is done by 1 person or 1 group of people. on the red servers, the camp is done by the ENTIRE guild + allies:D On tallon zek. I did the camp for one of the most beloved "light"(TZ was a light vs dark type server) clerics on the server. the ENTIRE 72 hr camp our guild + allies had no less then 50 people camping it:D when it spawned at around 4AM EST. we had maybe 80 people in zone. roughly half engaged in ragefire, the other half watching/defending against any PKers/KSers that comes our way:D but we did get our 1st "light side" cleric epic that night and everyone was tired:D
As EQ evolved, it became a raiding game. the gap between the casuals and raiders became about as wide as the grand canyon and there was really no motivation for casuals to continue. while it takes a full group of casual to kill a mob, a raider can easily solo the same mob and sometimes at a faster pace. at 1 point, the difference between casual and raider was the difference between 10k hp vs 20k hp... as the pool of recruits dwindled(from the lack of casuals) for the raiding guilds, attrition took its toll on the raiders. from the ever more complicated(long) flaggin/keying to the lack of qualified applicants, the raiders soon found greener pastures to feed on in other games.
HOWEVER, credit must be given where it's due. to date, EQ remain the most enjoyable "raiding game" on the market. no other game come close in complexity and technical difficulty of EQ raiding script. For masochists who enjoy large scale raids where 1 mistake can cost you the entire raid, it's a rush to see everything fall into place. The sense of accomplishment in a well executed raid is worth the 3 months of trail and error learning the script and the hours wait getting the raid started:D
EQ has trained more advanced raiders then any other games. and, WoW's raid game benefited greatly from the "already trained" raiders that fled from EQ:D its unfortunate that the blind mofo's steering the boat at SoE fail to understand that EQ is more of a niche game and do not refocus the game as a raiders paradise. instead of getting players closer to the meat of the game(raids) they still focus on putting more and more flags/keys between where the grind is and where the game is enjoyable. In the end, EQ killed itself with its AA system. it was a great idea when it came out, but after years and years of AA inflation, no new players have any chance of reaching "raid" level game because they are 2000AA's behind:D
anyway RIP EQ. your accomplishments will forever be remembered in the MMO era as the game that proliferated the genera of MMO and the game that WoW possible.
Might have been brought up already but next years this is a new one on this list, Cities XL. I am sure will be interesting to see a complete take on that disaster.
parrotpholk-Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better.
At least he said the correct thing this time - SB.EXE killed Shadowbane, not the PVP or concept. I think Lum has found a new home.
The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.