do you guys remember HOW MANY people were trying to solve the Jedi riddle around the hermit?
We had pages over pages full of speculations on the fourms about some mysterious hermit and his teachings and we were all in a fever trying to find out what the hermit was all about because we were sure that the path to a jedi would start with him.
People even came up with mathematic calculations and conclusions which were even reasoned logically and made sense..
Lets face it .The Devs followed these discussions and if they would have been clever and flexible enough in that moment to reconstruct the path to being a jedi around this mystery it could have been a blast.
Instead they came up with this lame profession grinding crap and right there it starting going downhill for most of the people.
I would still, after all these years play the game if had not turned the wrong way.
i think and i am almost sure that the game started to loose their subscription numbers when the whole jedi crap was announced and surely when NGE was introduced.
I was in an international kinship (encouraged by the devs to go international) and the forums as a whole were easily the most mature online community I had ever seen. There were in depth discussions about the books, the themes, the characters.
The game was going to be a sandbox live in Middle Earth style game. Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises were working on it.
I went to Turbine Nation in Providence, RI 3 times to meet the developers. The first two events were great, thrown by the devs, great activities and previews, I won access to the MEO beta and went into a closed door interview with the developers about the game.
2 years later, Turbine won the rights to produce the game solo, without Tolkien enterprises. They immediately restructured their staff, got rid of a lot of their great devs and hired young 20 something year old folks to restructure the entire game. They axed the international kinships and the Elves of Imladris, once the most prominent and well known Kinship in the entire community, started to fall apart.
Finally I got into alpha of the game, and saw how much it had changed. The name changed to Lord of the Rings Online, and the focus went from sandox to, combat and quest based advancement in a linear, invisible wall filled Middle Earth. Our kinship, and many others that had built the MEO community disbanded and left the game after a few short months.
The worst crime is, this is the same level of crap as the SWG NGE, but since it happened at the last minute in beta, most aren't aware of it, but there are hundreds of thousands who still remember what Middle Earth Online could have been.
I've never found a community like that one again.
What is CURRENTLY breaking my heart is Vanguard Saga of Heroes.
It is easily the best PvE MMO on the market, and has the most potential, and its just sad to see SoE slowly strangle it to death.
Lineage 2 .. then Aion. halfway you realize.. really ? I have to grind my butt off to get to that..? sorry.. its fun while it lasted but for me when a game starts feeling like a second job, its time to hit that "cancel" button and move on the next mmo that I can really have fun with.
Perhaps that is due to Dark and Light not being a heartbreaker for many? I agree that DnL had tons of potential based on what was written on paper and I would love to see that game release someday.
Yet I just don't think that many people attacted themselves to it in a way that lead to big disappointement that they felt with other games. I considered listing Dark and Light, but I knew the game was going to bomb and that just made it one of many other games that died before they became relevant to my gaming.
I was in an international kinship (encouraged by the devs to go international) and the forums as a whole were easily the most mature online community I had ever seen. There were in depth discussions about the books, the themes, the characters.
The game was going to be a sandbox live in Middle Earth style game. Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises were working on it.
I went to Turbine Nation in Providence, RI 3 times to meet the developers. The first two events were great, thrown by the devs, great activities and previews, I won access to the MEO beta and went into a closed door interview with the developers about the game.
2 years later, Turbine won the rights to produce the game solo, without Tolkien enterprises. They immediately restructured their staff, got rid of a lot of their great devs and hired young 20 something year old folks to restructure the entire game. They axed the international kinships and the Elves of Imladris, once the most prominent and well known Kinship in the entire community, started to fall apart.
Finally I got into alpha of the game, and saw how much it had changed. The name changed to Lord of the Rings Online, and the focus went from sandox to, combat and quest based advancement in a linear, invisible wall filled Middle Earth. Our kinship, and many others that had built the MEO community disbanded and left the game after a few short months.
The worst crime is, this is the same level of crap as the SWG NGE, but since it happened at the last minute in beta, most aren't aware of it, but there are hundreds of thousands who still remember what Middle Earth Online could have been.
I've never found a community like that one again.
Oh wow that was a nice read and absolutely new to me.
I wondered anyhow which asshole was responsible for turning such wonderful reference material into such a carebear instance grinding crap.
people will ridicule me to no end but I'm going to say there.com. In had a very engrossing community that watched as a new ceo drove the thing into the ground by introducing numerous unwated features, stalling on core updates and making obvious deal for quick cash grabs to shore up the loss of revenue from alienated players. it had a beautiful world that in the right hands could have been a great marriage between free realms and secondlife had they not tried to hard to pander to an under 18 yr old demographic. Ironically I found myself plaing free realms because aside from the cash shop it painfully reminded me of things i enjoyed about there.com, specifically the open world feel and not so next gen graphics. a close second I'd say is of course planetside. The first expansion just really ruined the game for me, introdoucing the whole mech warrior time rift whatever blah blah really killed the game. I remeber my first 100 person raid in planetside the excitement of loading up carries with other players and crossing the continent to swarm a control point....i havent felt that kind of excitement in an mmo since.
I was in an international kinship (encouraged by the devs to go international) and the forums as a whole were easily the most mature online community I had ever seen. There were in depth discussions about the books, the themes, the characters.
The game was going to be a sandbox live in Middle Earth style game. Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises were working on it.
I went to Turbine Nation in Providence, RI 3 times to meet the developers. The first two events were great, thrown by the devs, great activities and previews, I won access to the MEO beta and went into a closed door interview with the developers about the game.
2 years later, Turbine won the rights to produce the game solo, without Tolkien enterprises. They immediately restructured their staff, got rid of a lot of their great devs and hired young 20 something year old folks to restructure the entire game. They axed the international kinships and the Elves of Imladris, once the most prominent and well known Kinship in the entire community, started to fall apart.
Finally I got into alpha of the game, and saw how much it had changed. The name changed to Lord of the Rings Online, and the focus went from sandox to, combat and quest based advancement in a linear, invisible wall filled Middle Earth. Our kinship, and many others that had built the MEO community disbanded and left the game after a few short months.
The worst crime is, this is the same level of crap as the SWG NGE, but since it happened at the last minute in beta, most aren't aware of it, but there are hundreds of thousands who still remember what Middle Earth Online could have been.
I've never found a community like that one again.
Oh wow that was a nice read and absolutely new to me.
I wonder anyhow which asshole was responsible for turning such wonderful reference material into such a carebear instance grinding crap.
It's what makes me cringe every time someone praises LotRO. LotRO is a well made WoW clone, probably about as good as a solo centric instanced WoW style game could be, but that isn't saying much. There was so much lost potential.
Turbine lost touch with their fans. I mentioned the first TWO Turbine Nation events were great. Well, the third one was solely organized by two members of the Elves of Imladris kinship. Their got sponsors from different websites, and flew from Texas to Rhode Island to host it. There was a scavenger hunt, and a raffle for Lord of the Rings movie props. I almost won Sting. But all that was done by the fans, and the Elves of Imladris, Turbine had already washed its hands of its community by then and renamed the game Lord of the Rings Online. It was the last Turbine Nation as the community collapsed soon after.
I was in an international kinship (encouraged by the devs to go international) and the forums as a whole were easily the most mature online community I had ever seen. There were in depth discussions about the books, the themes, the characters.
The game was going to be a sandbox live in Middle Earth style game. Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises were working on it.
I went to Turbine Nation in Providence, RI 3 times to meet the developers. The first two events were great, thrown by the devs, great activities and previews, I won access to the MEO beta and went into a closed door interview with the developers about the game.
2 years later, Turbine won the rights to produce the game solo, without Tolkien enterprises. They immediately restructured their staff, got rid of a lot of their great devs and hired young 20 something year old folks to restructure the entire game. They axed the international kinships and the Elves of Imladris, once the most prominent and well known Kinship in the entire community, started to fall apart.
Finally I got into alpha of the game, and saw how much it had changed. The name changed to Lord of the Rings Online, and the focus went from sandox to, combat and quest based advancement in a linear, invisible wall filled Middle Earth. Our kinship, and many others that had built the MEO community disbanded and left the game after a few short months.
The worst crime is, this is the same level of crap as the SWG NGE, but since it happened at the last minute in beta, most aren't aware of it, but there are hundreds of thousands who still remember what Middle Earth Online could have been.
I've never found a community like that one again.
Oh wow that was a nice read and absolutely new to me.
I wonder anyhow which asshole was responsible for turning such wonderful reference material into such a carebear instance grinding crap.
It's what makes me cringe every time someone praises LotRO. LotRO is a well made WoW clone, probably about as good as a solo centric instanced WoW style game could be, but that isn't saying much. There was so much lost potential.
Turbine lost touch with their fans. I mentioned the first TWO Turbine Nation events were great. Well, the third one was solely organized by two members of the Elves of Imladris kinship. Their got sponsors from different websites, and flew from Texas to Rhode Island to host it. There was a scavenger hunt, and a raffle for Lord of the Rings movie props. I almost won Sting. But all that was done by the fans, and the Elves of Imladris, Turbine had already washed its hands of its community by then and renamed the game Lord of the Rings Online. It was the last Turbine Nation as the community collapsed soon after.
You know, when someone tells me to adapt Lord of the rings into a MMOG, then everything in me shouts CONFLICT !! WAR!!! DRAMA!! and not endless questing, instanced pve and pvp . Middle Earth is a fucked up , corrupted and dark place not Fluffybunny Online.
Glad you did. No MMO has ever broken my heart, but a few of them came close. MEO for me would be #1 on the list.
The "Elves of Imladris" man oh man does that bring back memories, You guys and gals were great, hands down... and thank you. We did have an awesome community and I still miss it.
I started following MEO about the fall of 2004 I think, I met up on line with someone you might remember, her name was Fern (aka Finduilas) the founder of The Safe Havens of Arda (back then a "Neutral" Kinship). Together the Kinship members of SHoA with glee looked forward to MEO and planned how we were going to "attempt" to ride the middle ground between virtue and corruption, and take advantage of both, while still trying to be civil "inhabitants" of Middle Earth. It was going to be a rough road and we knew it. I have never been much into PvP but for this I was going to adapt and overcome if I could, and enjoy it living in a virtual Middle Earth true to the Tolkien's works.
We too were very upset... even broken hearted... when we heard of MEO's demise and LotRO's "birth". Some of us adapted to the changes and became alpha and beta testers for LotRO (and then mostly Lifers), and some did not. Now very few of the original core members remain and I feel like a "has been", all washed up and out of place in a MMO that is changing once again to something that this time I can not support. I have no problem whatsoever with free to play and having more people ingame, but the idea of a cash shop is too much. I have made my opinions known about it here and on the official boards but you know what they say about opinions....
First MEO and all that it could have been... and then LotRO which to be honest has always been for me barely acceptable as compared to MEO (but it IS middle Earth sort of)... and now F2P Cash Shop LotRO.
Yes these MMOs, MEO and LotRO jointly hold the heart breaker title for me too. over and over again.
........
If I had a number two it would have to be SWG, but that was mostly MY fault... bad timing.
I had spent just under a month studying everything there was to look up and read about SWG since at the time I was active in EvE and wasn't sure if I would switch or not. I finally decided to make the switch and on 13 November 2005 I purchased my account and began the download on a slow connection since at the time I could not find any hard copies of SWG and it's expansions.
On 18 November I FINALLY got the game working and logged in on a screen that didn't look as it was supposed to from what I had seen in screenshots...
... and discovered that the NGE had arrived. I am still pissed at myself that I waited so long to play SWG, as I had thought about it for a year or so, only to finally play it and discover I had missed the SWG that I would have loved. I did play the NGE for a few months but compared to what I know of SWG before the NGE, the NGE is garbage. Kind of like the difference between MEO and LotRO, but the NGE in my opinion is much worse.
I can not say SWG broke my heart, but I can say that being a chicken shat caused me to miss an opportunity with the "girl". That feels bad enough.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!" ............... "I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. " __Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__ ...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Age of conan. A promising start into an awesome and mature world which after the starter zone turned out to be a buggy, contentless mess. Played it as soon as it came out and couldn't bare more than a month. For them to so caringly construct the first zone's experience, voice acting and all, upon leaving it i just felt kinda cheated... though its been a while so I really should give it another go.
Another is WAR. Tonnes of hype, absorbed every bit of info i could find and I dunno, it just didn't turn out how i expected it to. A great IP that could've turned out to be so much better.
Star Wars Galaxies and its notorious implmentation of the NGE, wiping away all my previous experiences and characters former professions, Ranger, Creature Handler, the earned Force Sensitive Slot, and every other mix and match experiments I did with professions, like a Master Armorsmith/Doc or a Musican/Medic the combos were endless but fun, not every character in game was the same except the FOTM builds that noobs used. Running my own player shops, harvesting resources, exploration, hidden npcs and quests, the old man, running into ATAT walkers (rare occasions), pvp and base defense and attack, taming pets , in game events and special badges. For its flaws it was probably still one of the more better games sides EVE I've played in a long time.
Simply put, what game did you invest so much in mentally that it was exhausting...and in the end turned out to completely let you down?
For me personally it was, with no suprise here, Aion. I watched it for it felt like years on this site in anticipation. Finally got into closed beta and it lived up to my expectations. Joined a guild, played some more closed betas and finally open beta. I simply was at the point where this game felt like the game I could play for years, similar to my first mmo Tibia and vanilla WoW.
Without any needless bashing, I played till late game and after about 60 days realized all was for nothing. Aion failed me and broke my dorky MMO heart. My wife was happy in the end, so I guess it worked out for her.
So has this happened to you? So much personal hype built into a game and you get a hopes and dreams crushed by the realization of the games crapiness.
I don't have a single game per se but two companies will go on the list for most heart breaking. SOE for the way they borked the original SWG and the reason I don't say the game in general is because after moving on I realize what a piece of crap it truly was and after having played stable games like WOW and LOTRO and COH I would have left had they not NGE'd it. But SOE did get rid of my beloved CH and still that is by far the most work I ever put into achieving something in any game. I left beofre they did get rid of it so Iknow the blow was softened for me a somewhat. And second is Cryptic for allowing me to defend them to know end with comments like "yes they make shallow games with very little depth but they make fun games too." and turning around and dumping that bland piece of crap called STO on the community and forcing me to come here and eat crow until I started to poop black feathers, they get an extra knock up the scale to SOE levels simply for the way they run that game with all the dirty underhanded tricks they pull with the C-Store.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Glad you did. No MMO has ever broken my heart, but a few of them came close. MEO for me would be #1 on the list.
The "Elves of Imladris" man oh man does that bring back memories, You guys and gals were great, hands down... and thank you. We did have an awesome community and I still miss it. Thank you! And yes, looking over old threads in old forums really is depressing. Nothing like it since. We were both a part of something that sadly, few will remember.
I started following MEO about the fall of 2004 I think, I met up on line with someone you might remember, her name was Fern (aka Finduilas) the founder of The Safe Havens of Arda (back then a "Neutral" Kinship). I do indeed remember her! Together the Kinship members of SHoA with glee looked forward to MEO and planned how we were going to "attempt" to ride the middle ground between virtue and corruption, and take advantage of both, while still trying to be civil "inhabitants" of Middle Earth. Ah the corruption system... not WoW like enough for Turbine I guess. It was going to be a rough road and we knew it. I have never been much into PvP but for this I was going to adapt and overcome if I could, and enjoy it living in a virtual Middle Earth true to the Tolkien's works.
We too were very upset... even broken hearted... when we heard of MEO's demise and LotRO's "birth". Some of us adapted to the changes and became alpha and beta testers for LotRO (and then mostly Lifers), and some did not. (I tried. I was in from alpha to launch and even bought a collectors edition of the game, but I just couldn't get over how solo/instance centric the game was. They rejigged it to focus on combat and then forgot to make a good combat system. And once I got to about level 25 and was ONCE AGAIN killing the SAME boars, I was done.)Now very few of the original core members remain and I feel like a "has been", all washed up and out of place in a MMO that is changing once again to something that this time I can not support. I have no problem whatsoever with free to play and having more people ingame, but the idea of a cash shop is too much. I have made my opinions known about it here and on the official boards but you know what they say about opinions....
First MEO and all that it could have been... and then LotRO which to be honest has always been for me barely acceptable as compared to MEO (but it IS middle Earth sort of)... and now F2P Cash Shop LotRO.
Yes these MMOs, MEO and LotRO jointly hold the heart breaker title for me too. over and over again.
........
Here's to Middle Earth Online. People can scream and whine about SWG all they want, and it is terrible what happened, but at least that got public outcry and outrage. Turbine however, got away with a terrible, possibly even worse crime (butchering the father of all fantasy and killing the BEST online community to date) and people still praise them.
The closest a MMO has come to breaking my heart was DAOC. I hated all the constant adjusting of class stats (they called it balancing) and the result was the “Flavor of the Month” where some class would be way overpowered only to be hit by the nerf bat months later.
I don't have a single game per se but two companies will go on the list for most heart breaking. SOE for the way they borked the original SWG and the reason I don't say the game in general is because after moving on I realize what a piece of crap it truly was and after having played stable games like WOW and LOTRO and COH I would have left had they not NGE'd it. But SOE did get rid of my beloved CH and still that is by far the most work I ever put into achieving something in any game. I left beofre they did get rid of it so Iknow the blow was softened for me a somewhat. And second is Cryptic for allowing me to defend them to know end with comments like "yes they make shallow games with very little depth but they make fun games too." and turning around and dumping that bland piece of crap called STO on the community and forcing me to come here and eat crow until I started to poop black feathers, they get an extra knock up the scale to SOE levels simply for the way they run that game with all the dirty underhanded tricks they pull with the C-Store.
I'm right there with you, I spent 5 months going after a bull ranc baby, which was either a 1/250 or 1/500 chance from a wild nest before I actually got one. I spent 4 straight days of vacation once trying to find/tame baby plains hunter, when those were briefly available and actually got one.
Appreciate all the input everyone has put into this thread. Was a pleasure to read. I can safely say that many people had problems with SWG, and I am sure glad I didn't play this game.
For the record, "breaking your heart" was used a figure of speech to emphasis letting you down and anger generated by the games downfall. This in no way was mean't to be compared to a real-life incident that truely breaks your heart. I am sure most of the people understood this.
Glad you did. No MMO has ever broken my heart, but a few of them came close. MEO for me would be #1 on the list.
The "Elves of Imladris" man oh man does that bring back memories, You guys and gals were great, hands down... and thank you. We did have an awesome community and I still miss it. Thank you! And yes, looking over old threads in old forums really is depressing. Nothing like it since. We were both a part of something that sadly, few will remember.
I started following MEO about the fall of 2004 I think, I met up on line with someone you might remember, her name was Fern (aka Finduilas) the founder of The Safe Havens of Arda (back then a "Neutral" Kinship). I do indeed remember her! Together the Kinship members of SHoA with glee looked forward to MEO and planned how we were going to "attempt" to ride the middle ground between virtue and corruption, and take advantage of both, while still trying to be civil "inhabitants" of Middle Earth. Ah the corruption system... not WoW like enough for Turbine I guess. It was going to be a rough road and we knew it. I have never been much into PvP but for this I was going to adapt and overcome if I could, and enjoy it living in a virtual Middle Earth true to the Tolkien's works.
We too were very upset... even broken hearted... when we heard of MEO's demise and LotRO's "birth". Some of us adapted to the changes and became alpha and beta testers for LotRO (and then mostly Lifers), and some did not. (I tried. I was in from alpha to launch and even bought a collectors edition of the game, but I just couldn't get over how solo/instance centric the game was. They rejigged it to focus on combat and then forgot to make a good combat system. And once I got to about level 25 and was ONCE AGAIN killing the SAME boars, I was done.)Now very few of the original core members remain and I feel like a "has been", all washed up and out of place in a MMO that is changing once again to something that this time I can not support. I have no problem whatsoever with free to play and having more people ingame, but the idea of a cash shop is too much. I have made my opinions known about it here and on the official boards but you know what they say about opinions....
First MEO and all that it could have been... and then LotRO which to be honest has always been for me barely acceptable as compared to MEO (but it IS middle Earth sort of)... and now F2P Cash Shop LotRO.
Yes these MMOs, MEO and LotRO jointly hold the heart breaker title for me too. over and over again.
........
Here's to Middle Earth Online. People can scream and whine about SWG all they want, and it is terrible what happened, but at least that got public outcry and outrage. Turbine however, got away with a terrible, possibly even worse crime (butchering the father of all fantasy and killing the BEST online community to date) and people still praise them.
Yeah, I remember when it was still MEO. The community was pretty good. I got into LotRO closed beta and I was done. It's such a shame.
Star Wars Galaxies broke my heart but then again, if it wasnt for the crying and petitioning of the SWG players for Lucus to sign Bioware in creating the next SW MMO, none of us would have seen SWOTOR come to light. So all your WoW players that never played another MMO, tip your hat to a SWG veteran when you see in one in the new SWtoR game.
Comments
swg kettemoore server pre-cu
You want loot? Go kill some npcs, you wanna visit hades? come find ME, and dont forget to bring coins for the ferryman,
SWG ...
do you guys remember HOW MANY people were trying to solve the Jedi riddle around the hermit?
We had pages over pages full of speculations on the fourms about some mysterious hermit and his teachings and we were all in a fever trying to find out what the hermit was all about because we were sure that the path to a jedi would start with him.
People even came up with mathematic calculations and conclusions which were even reasoned logically and made sense..
Lets face it .The Devs followed these discussions and if they would have been clever and flexible enough in that moment to reconstruct the path to being a jedi around this mystery it could have been a blast.
Instead they came up with this lame profession grinding crap and right there it starting going downhill for most of the people.
I would still, after all these years play the game if had not turned the wrong way.
i think and i am almost sure that the game started to loose their subscription numbers when the whole jedi crap was announced and surely when NGE was introduced.
Middle Earth Online
I was in an international kinship (encouraged by the devs to go international) and the forums as a whole were easily the most mature online community I had ever seen. There were in depth discussions about the books, the themes, the characters.
The game was going to be a sandbox live in Middle Earth style game. Turbine and Tolkien Enterprises were working on it.
I went to Turbine Nation in Providence, RI 3 times to meet the developers. The first two events were great, thrown by the devs, great activities and previews, I won access to the MEO beta and went into a closed door interview with the developers about the game.
2 years later, Turbine won the rights to produce the game solo, without Tolkien enterprises. They immediately restructured their staff, got rid of a lot of their great devs and hired young 20 something year old folks to restructure the entire game. They axed the international kinships and the Elves of Imladris, once the most prominent and well known Kinship in the entire community, started to fall apart.
Finally I got into alpha of the game, and saw how much it had changed. The name changed to Lord of the Rings Online, and the focus went from sandox to, combat and quest based advancement in a linear, invisible wall filled Middle Earth. Our kinship, and many others that had built the MEO community disbanded and left the game after a few short months.
The worst crime is, this is the same level of crap as the SWG NGE, but since it happened at the last minute in beta, most aren't aware of it, but there are hundreds of thousands who still remember what Middle Earth Online could have been.
I've never found a community like that one again.
What is CURRENTLY breaking my heart is Vanguard Saga of Heroes.
It is easily the best PvE MMO on the market, and has the most potential, and its just sad to see SoE slowly strangle it to death.
Lineage 2 .. then Aion. halfway you realize.. really ? I have to grind my butt off to get to that..? sorry.. its fun while it lasted but for me when a game starts feeling like a second job, its time to hit that "cancel" button and move on the next mmo that I can really have fun with.
Perhaps that is due to Dark and Light not being a heartbreaker for many? I agree that DnL had tons of potential based on what was written on paper and I would love to see that game release someday.
Yet I just don't think that many people attacted themselves to it in a way that lead to big disappointement that they felt with other games. I considered listing Dark and Light, but I knew the game was going to bomb and that just made it one of many other games that died before they became relevant to my gaming.
Oh wow that was a nice read and absolutely new to me.
I wondered anyhow which asshole was responsible for turning such wonderful reference material into such a carebear instance grinding crap.
people will ridicule me to no end but I'm going to say there.com. In had a very engrossing community that watched as a new ceo drove the thing into the ground by introducing numerous unwated features, stalling on core updates and making obvious deal for quick cash grabs to shore up the loss of revenue from alienated players. it had a beautiful world that in the right hands could have been a great marriage between free realms and secondlife had they not tried to hard to pander to an under 18 yr old demographic. Ironically I found myself plaing free realms because aside from the cash shop it painfully reminded me of things i enjoyed about there.com, specifically the open world feel and not so next gen graphics. a close second I'd say is of course planetside. The first expansion just really ruined the game for me, introdoucing the whole mech warrior time rift whatever blah blah really killed the game. I remeber my first 100 person raid in planetside the excitement of loading up carries with other players and crossing the continent to swarm a control point....i havent felt that kind of excitement in an mmo since.
so say we all
It's what makes me cringe every time someone praises LotRO. LotRO is a well made WoW clone, probably about as good as a solo centric instanced WoW style game could be, but that isn't saying much. There was so much lost potential.
Turbine lost touch with their fans. I mentioned the first TWO Turbine Nation events were great. Well, the third one was solely organized by two members of the Elves of Imladris kinship. Their got sponsors from different websites, and flew from Texas to Rhode Island to host it. There was a scavenger hunt, and a raffle for Lord of the Rings movie props. I almost won Sting. But all that was done by the fans, and the Elves of Imladris, Turbine had already washed its hands of its community by then and renamed the game Lord of the Rings Online. It was the last Turbine Nation as the community collapsed soon after.
Starwars Galaxies
Star Wars Galaxies
I could run SOE better than John Smeldley, and that's saying something. Folks at SOE have no idea how to please a player base at all.
SOE Will never get another dime from me..
You know, when someone tells me to adapt Lord of the rings into a MMOG, then everything in me shouts CONFLICT !! WAR!!! DRAMA!! and not endless questing, instanced pve and pvp . Middle Earth is a fucked up , corrupted and dark place not Fluffybunny Online.
You just had to bring up MEO didn't you?
Glad you did. No MMO has ever broken my heart, but a few of them came close. MEO for me would be #1 on the list.
The "Elves of Imladris" man oh man does that bring back memories, You guys and gals were great, hands down... and thank you. We did have an awesome community and I still miss it.
I started following MEO about the fall of 2004 I think, I met up on line with someone you might remember, her name was Fern (aka Finduilas) the founder of The Safe Havens of Arda (back then a "Neutral" Kinship). Together the Kinship members of SHoA with glee looked forward to MEO and planned how we were going to "attempt" to ride the middle ground between virtue and corruption, and take advantage of both, while still trying to be civil "inhabitants" of Middle Earth. It was going to be a rough road and we knew it. I have never been much into PvP but for this I was going to adapt and overcome if I could, and enjoy it living in a virtual Middle Earth true to the Tolkien's works.
We too were very upset... even broken hearted... when we heard of MEO's demise and LotRO's "birth". Some of us adapted to the changes and became alpha and beta testers for LotRO (and then mostly Lifers), and some did not. Now very few of the original core members remain and I feel like a "has been", all washed up and out of place in a MMO that is changing once again to something that this time I can not support. I have no problem whatsoever with free to play and having more people ingame, but the idea of a cash shop is too much. I have made my opinions known about it here and on the official boards but you know what they say about opinions....
First MEO and all that it could have been... and then LotRO which to be honest has always been for me barely acceptable as compared to MEO (but it IS middle Earth sort of)... and now F2P Cash Shop LotRO.
Yes these MMOs, MEO and LotRO jointly hold the heart breaker title for me too. over and over again.
........
If I had a number two it would have to be SWG, but that was mostly MY fault... bad timing.
I had spent just under a month studying everything there was to look up and read about SWG since at the time I was active in EvE and wasn't sure if I would switch or not. I finally decided to make the switch and on 13 November 2005 I purchased my account and began the download on a slow connection since at the time I could not find any hard copies of SWG and it's expansions.
On 18 November I FINALLY got the game working and logged in on a screen that didn't look as it was supposed to from what I had seen in screenshots...
... and discovered that the NGE had arrived. I am still pissed at myself that I waited so long to play SWG, as I had thought about it for a year or so, only to finally play it and discover I had missed the SWG that I would have loved. I did play the NGE for a few months but compared to what I know of SWG before the NGE, the NGE is garbage. Kind of like the difference between MEO and LotRO, but the NGE in my opinion is much worse.
I can not say SWG broke my heart, but I can say that being a chicken shat caused me to miss an opportunity with the "girl". That feels bad enough.
I am the Player that wonders... "What the %#*& just happened?!"
...............
"I Believe... There should be NO financial connection or portals between the Real World and the Virtual in MMOs. "
__Ever Present Cockroach of the MMO Verses__
...scurrying to and fro... .munching on bits of garbage... always under foot...
Matrix Online!!!! SOE once again.
Age of conan. A promising start into an awesome and mature world which after the starter zone turned out to be a buggy, contentless mess. Played it as soon as it came out and couldn't bare more than a month. For them to so caringly construct the first zone's experience, voice acting and all, upon leaving it i just felt kinda cheated... though its been a while so I really should give it another go.
Another is WAR. Tonnes of hype, absorbed every bit of info i could find and I dunno, it just didn't turn out how i expected it to. A great IP that could've turned out to be so much better.
STO ... so many hopes for a Star Trek MMO at last dashed.
Star Wars Galaxies and its notorious implmentation of the NGE, wiping away all my previous experiences and characters former professions, Ranger, Creature Handler, the earned Force Sensitive Slot, and every other mix and match experiments I did with professions, like a Master Armorsmith/Doc or a Musican/Medic the combos were endless but fun, not every character in game was the same except the FOTM builds that noobs used. Running my own player shops, harvesting resources, exploration, hidden npcs and quests, the old man, running into ATAT walkers (rare occasions), pvp and base defense and attack, taming pets , in game events and special badges. For its flaws it was probably still one of the more better games sides EVE I've played in a long time.
I don't have a single game per se but two companies will go on the list for most heart breaking. SOE for the way they borked the original SWG and the reason I don't say the game in general is because after moving on I realize what a piece of crap it truly was and after having played stable games like WOW and LOTRO and COH I would have left had they not NGE'd it. But SOE did get rid of my beloved CH and still that is by far the most work I ever put into achieving something in any game. I left beofre they did get rid of it so Iknow the blow was softened for me a somewhat. And second is Cryptic for allowing me to defend them to know end with comments like "yes they make shallow games with very little depth but they make fun games too." and turning around and dumping that bland piece of crap called STO on the community and forcing me to come here and eat crow until I started to poop black feathers, they get an extra knock up the scale to SOE levels simply for the way they run that game with all the dirty underhanded tricks they pull with the C-Store.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Here's to Middle Earth Online. People can scream and whine about SWG all they want, and it is terrible what happened, but at least that got public outcry and outrage. Turbine however, got away with a terrible, possibly even worse crime (butchering the father of all fantasy and killing the BEST online community to date) and people still praise them.
The closest a MMO has come to breaking my heart was DAOC. I hated all the constant adjusting of class stats (they called it balancing) and the result was the “Flavor of the Month” where some class would be way overpowered only to be hit by the nerf bat months later.
I'm right there with you, I spent 5 months going after a bull ranc baby, which was either a 1/250 or 1/500 chance from a wild nest before I actually got one. I spent 4 straight days of vacation once trying to find/tame baby plains hunter, when those were briefly available and actually got one.
Good Times.
Appreciate all the input everyone has put into this thread. Was a pleasure to read. I can safely say that many people had problems with SWG, and I am sure glad I didn't play this game.
For the record, "breaking your heart" was used a figure of speech to emphasis letting you down and anger generated by the games downfall. This in no way was mean't to be compared to a real-life incident that truely breaks your heart. I am sure most of the people understood this.
Cheers and thanks.
Yeah, I remember when it was still MEO. The community was pretty good. I got into LotRO closed beta and I was done. It's such a shame.
WoW when TBC went live. Small pvp, small raids, epics were force fed to you.
Star Wars Galaxies broke my heart. But more recently, I was let down the most by Warhammer Online and it's steady decline.
I put my life on the line to find a way to be unforgettable
Star Wars Galaxies broke my heart but then again, if it wasnt for the crying and petitioning of the SWG players for Lucus to sign Bioware in creating the next SW MMO, none of us would have seen SWOTOR come to light. So all your WoW players that never played another MMO, tip your hat to a SWG veteran when you see in one in the new SWtoR game.