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General: The Worst MMORPG Launches

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  • BillMurphyBillMurphy Former Managing EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 4,565

    Hey folks,  Just wanted to call attention to one sentence then I'll leave you to the discussion...

    "Bear in mind, these are based on the author’s (my own) personal experiences since I began this hobby, and when I write the following synopses I’m not picking on the mentioned games… I’m just trying to call it like I see it."

    Try to be excellent to everyone you meet. You never know what someone else has seen or endured.

    My Review Manifesto
    Follow me on Twitter if you dare.

  • spookydomspookydom Member UncommonPosts: 1,782

    Originally posted by BillMurphy

    Hey folks,  Just wanted to call attention to one sentence then I'll leave you to the discussion...

    "Bear in mind, these are based on the author’s (my own) personal experiences since I began this hobby, and when I write the following synopses I’m not picking on the mentioned games… I’m just trying to call it like I see it."

    Reported for trolling;)

  • darker70darker70 Member UncommonPosts: 804

    Ok tell me this a joke,how on earth is the legend that is Dark and Light not number 1,How can a game be only played when one of the players had to write a patch and basically hack the launch exe,due to the fact the the devs were bloody incompetant to the point of  disbelief.

    How can a game launch and  then have the server go down when a necro cast a spell in a certain area which in turn crashed not one server but the whole world as there was one server so pretty damn annoying.

    How about the NPC'S missions consisting of nothing but kill said rat,collect said herb not to mention the buggiest crafting and trade system ever devised,and every Npc been a generic typecast in every city and town.And the castle sieges they were great hit a wall at the wrong point or basically participate and then get ready for that oh so familiar server dissconnected message usually in pigeon english.

    It get's better the source code for the engine was supposedly stolen so even at launch there was a possibilty that the game could have a court ruleing to stop the it in it's tracks !!

    Oh yeah also the rather annoying occurence of multiple payments taken from one account,or players been locked out or loseing there toons altogether !!

    So when somebody in RIFT complains about  well anything i'm pretty sure they never got to sample the delights of the buggiest piece of code ever written.There is prob more in fact there is much more so if u are beta testing just mention DnL and just maybe some poor unfortunate fellow prob a subbed SOG veteran aka Alpha tester might just regail with tales of  horror never hopefully to be seen in a Mo again.

    p>
  • Einherjar_LCEinherjar_LC Member UncommonPosts: 1,055

    Originally posted by ericbelser

    I'm sorry, but you have to be delusional to list WoW as the worst launch. It had very few problems compared to Anarchy Online and they were quickly solved, while the worst of AOs persisted for 3 months or longer (some for years!).

     

    ^^This.

     

    I was there for AO's launch and it, by far was the worst launch ever.

     

    I was around for WoW's launch and it's problems pailed in comparison to AO's.

     

    This poll just goes to show who rules the genre.  A good majority of people that voted WoW as the worst launch probably weren't even aware of MMO's when AO went live, lol.

     

    Oh well, with the masses comes a revision of the hstory of the genre.  We already know WoW created everything in the genre, they might as well have the worst launch ever added to their list...

    Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!

  • spookydomspookydom Member UncommonPosts: 1,782

    Originally posted by Einherjar_LC

    Originally posted by ericbelser

    I'm sorry, but you have to be delusional to list WoW as the worst launch. It had very few problems compared to Anarchy Online and they were quickly solved, while the worst of AOs persisted for 3 months or longer (some for years!).

     

    ^^This.

     

    I was there for AO's launch and it, by far was the worst launch ever.

     

    I was around for WoW's launch and it's problems pailed in comparison to AO's.

     

    This poll just goes to show who rules the genre.  A good majority of people that voted WoW as the worst launch probably weren't even aware of MMO's when AO went live, lol.

     

    Oh well, with the masses comes a revision of the hstory of the genre.  We already know WoW created everything in the genre, they might as well have the worst launch ever added to their list...

    This was not a poll. It was the authors personal opinion.

  • sirsammy33sirsammy33 Member Posts: 64

    i was in swg in lowca server ... it was a pain .. toke tme off work to :P vac days to not to play it .

  • PieterPieter Member Posts: 29

    While not a player anymore, WoW by no means belongs to that list. Yes, there were queues during Beta (!!) but the product at that time could be considered finished. Launch was one of the smoothest MMO experiences in recent history if you were wise enough to avoid busy servers. Even then, new servers were being added so fast and leveling those first moments was so easy that guilds had no bother whatsoever changing servers those first days when they were unlucky.

    Try again...

  • DinendaeDinendae Member Posts: 1,264

    "When it comes to server and client stability issues, few can take the honor of most aggravating away from Anarchy Online."

       AO quite frequently gets the title of worst launch ever, but there was another game that launched within two weeks of it: WWIIOnline. That game had the absolute worst launch ever. The company hosting the servers for CRS went bankrupt, and CRS had to travel to another city, pick up their servers, transport them back, and try to set up a network for the game to run on the night before the game went live.

       On launch day an estimated 200,000 people tried to log in, only to find out that they needed to download a 70 MB patch, which was unheard of at that time (2002; a lot of people were still using 56k modems, requiring 3 hours to download the patch). After that, players found that there were only two servers available, both capped at 500 players. CRS appologized for the crew up and stopped the clock on the free thirty days (which ended up lasting for half a year).

    "Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan

  • XoloXXoloX Member Posts: 83

    Just like darker70 just wrote, only to stress it...

    The absolutely worst, unearthly terrifying, "release" ever has really been Dark & Light, and I've seen quite a lot by now. It even was a ripoff on top of it. I seriously doubt any future release will ever be able to be worse. Ever.


    ...activating morph from silent reader to active poster...
    ...pending...
    ...pending...
    ...pending...

  • SidereusSidereus Member Posts: 316

    I disagree with Aion being on this list... There were queues but it was never that bad...never had more then 15 mins of waiting time during launch

    QUESTION:
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Xridnasa:
    -
    What's a "grocery store"? Is that like McDonald's?
    -
    ANSWER:
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sidimazz:
    -
    Kind of, just without the rapist.

  • pixeldogmeatpixeldogmeat Member Posts: 441

    hmm, i came here expecting to see "rift launches", but I think i read it wrong ;)

    PLAY WURM ONLINE!! www.wurmonline.com

  • VegettaVegetta Member Posts: 438

    Originally posted by ericbelser



    I'm sorry, but you have to be delusional to list WoW as the worst launch. It had very few problems compared to Anarchy Online and they were quickly solved, while the worst of AOs persisted for 3 months or longer (some for years!).

    It is also a shocking lapse to not have World War II Online in the list, unless you try to claim it isn't an MMO.


    Wow had Horrible queues at launch - You simply could not play the game - then when you finally did manage to log in and play you would get randomly booted and the whole ugly process would start over again. WOW was so crazy at launch that retailers ran out of boxed copies and people were selling copies of the game for $100  on ebay.  

    image

  • VegettaVegetta Member Posts: 438

    Wow had Horrible queues at launch - You simply could not play the game - then when you finally did manage to log in and play you would get randomly booted and the whole ugly process would start over again. WOW was so crazy at launch that retailers ran out of boxed copies and people were selling copies of the game for $100  on ebay.  

    image

  • MogcatMogcat Member UncommonPosts: 193

    I'm sorry but please take Aion off the list. I was playing on a US server and I had no problems at launch, no downtimes no lag it was fine for me and I have to say Aion made me very please lauch day and I had tons of fun for the 1st few days.

  • LidaneLidane Member CommonPosts: 2,300

    Any list of the worst MMO launches that ignores both WWII Online and Vanguard is automatically invalid.

  • IronfungusIronfungus Member Posts: 519

    The author of the article obviously didn't play WoW at launch. Compared to most MMOs, the launch was rather smooth. There were bugs of course, such as loot lag, but the game at its core worked and flourished beautifully. The game's controls still felt "tight" even back then, as if you were playing a shooter. The animations were lovely, and overall, the game was just a huge success at launch. It was handled like an MMO launch should be handled. 

    Guild Wars is another example of a perfect MMO launch. It had its shares of issues, but none of them were very serious. Like World of Warcraft, the animations were beautiful, the gameplay at its core was fluid, and the controls were well done. 

     

    But the author lost all credibility due to a large part in the fact that Final Fantasy XIV is not on this list; by far the worst MMO in history. This, and Star Trek Online. This is not some opinion from one person, but a fact. Those who might disagree have obviously not played either at launch (though playing those games now wouldn't be much of an improvement, if at all).

  • SenadinaSenadina Member UncommonPosts: 896

    Some of you are too young to remember how truly horrific A.O's launch was. It was simply unplayable for weeks. Those of us looking for a break from the fantasy MMO's of the day( EQ, AC, and UO) were jazzed for a sci-fi game. It was awfully disappointing.

    Galaxies was pretty bad too, very unstable servers, but A.O had bugs crawling out of the woodwork as well as server  issues. The worst I have experienced by far.

    image
  • maxstonemaxstone Member Posts: 151

    oddly I never had any of the problems with AO that everyone else had...I just trucked on through and played...meh I guess I was just lucky.

  • OzmodanOzmodan Member EpicPosts: 9,726

    Originally posted by Ambrose99

    'Ha!' to all those defending WoW like they were insulted personally. I remember all the horrific lag and server downtime when WoW first launched. When the huge lag spikes hit, the servers were down, or the game was just simply unplayable, I just played another game... no big deal... but it was just plain awful. 10 minutes... 15 minutes to loot. I remember my early guild even came up with a holiday attached to the terrible servers: Shiddylag! Shiddylag doesn't just come once per year... it came many, many, many, many times.

    Your memory has had a major lapse.  Never had a problem looting, sure servers went down at times, but it was nothing like your post.  I just get really tired of such disinformation.  Probably were not even around for the launch!

    Try the EQ2 launch it was laughable compared to Wow.  Half the computers could not even run the game.

  • thorwoodthorwood Member Posts: 485

    I would have  included Sony's Everquest 2.

    Issues included:

      * client crashes (if you had Intel/Nvidia PC's your experience may have been different)

     * servers crashed and for several days

     * major game play issues.  eg. Shards and shared xp loss were so badly implemented they were eventually removed from game or had major changes

     * quest NPC's that disappeared

     * resource spawns that could not be harvested

     * defeated enemies that could not be looted

     I moved to WoW and WoW was much better despite the server lag.

  • DarkcrystalDarkcrystal Member UncommonPosts: 963

    Originally posted by ericbelser

    I'm sorry, but you have to be delusional to list WoW as the worst launch. It had very few problems compared to Anarchy Online and they were quickly solved, while the worst of AOs persisted for 3 months or longer (some for years!).

    It is also a shocking lapse to not have World War II Online in the list, unless you try to claim it isn't an MMO.


     

     Are you kidding it took almost 2 months for players to find a server to play on , I moved 6 times before finding one that was not lagged to sh$t so yes it wins that award. I have  played all 5 of them and then some.

     

    IF you think WOW did not then you did not play at release the first month or so.

  • Garvon3Garvon3 Member CommonPosts: 2,898

    Originally posted by Lumanil

    Oh, they forgot Darkfall. It was the worst launch ever. The developers even had to limit the number of subscriptions available the first weeks, because the account-server crashed several times because of the massive influx of people.

    That's actually NOT what happened... They had more people interested in the game than their servers could hold, so they limited how many copies were sold so they didn't go after capacity. This made it so that people who owned the game could actually play, unlike the WoW launch, hence why it's not on this list. I wish people wouldn't keep dumping their half baked ideas out before actually figuring out what happened.

  • eury2eury2 Member UncommonPosts: 41

    yes i must say final fantasy xiv was horid i was a beta tester and i couldnt stay off the forums posting problems lol their stress tests was an ungodly misstake early on and they pushed the release way to early

  • odinsrathodinsrath Member UncommonPosts: 814

    my top 3 would be vanguard / wow ....and a drum roll plz! .....darkfail err um i mean darkfall..their launch was a joke

  • EricDanieEricDanie Member UncommonPosts: 2,238

    My experience is pretty weak, so I really have nothing to add to this list :(

    LOTRO & Guild Wars, while no launch is perfect (GW had to remove a minor feature for like 1 or 2 days but no downtime that I can remember of, though this is pretty much a #1 winner in the server downtime category, while not being technically a MMO it is still online only and not P2P based) I guess these were two of the smoothest ones. I might be wrong about LOTRO since I only played it casually so I don't remember any drama.

    Oh yeah, and Aion, I only remember a few rare server-wide lag spikes and the queues, I have to admit I used private shops to avoid the AFK timer though (before they made it so AFK private shops would also disconnect, it's a pity this old school feature was used for different purposes and effectively killed with that restriction), any login queue over 30 mins~1 hour is pretty much absurd and should be compensated in game-time, because coupled with further delays if you're going to group, the average player already lost like half of his gaming session. Even if you're hardcore, losing 1 hour like that is pretty significant. And Aion queues were 3-6 hours long.

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