Originally posted by Rrys I totally disagree with the author's opinion on EQOA. At the time it came out, I didn't even own a PC that could play any MMOs although I did have several PS2s and TVs. EQOA introduced me and my family to MMOs. I also have run across other players in MMOs of today that got their start in EQOA.
agree
EQOA did require extra hardware accessories (as described in article) but it did attract a dedicated audience beyond its PS2 competitors of FFXI and Phantasy Star Online
Truth is the only reason WoW got to 12 million subs was its remarkable advertising campaign during Wrath of the Lich King. Vivendi spent untold millions to get personalities like Ozzy, Mr. T, and Jean Claude Van Damme to do commercial spots and the developers changed modes and targeted the 12 year old age group like many Chinese flavor of the week MMOs do.
Prior to Wrath WoW only had about 2 million Subs, up from its 100k subs in its first year. So remember kids... its all in the marketing...
This is one of the most inaccurate posts I have ever seen on this site. WoW's first month (forget year) was over 400k, and the game itself was at around 7 million subs during Vanilla, WAAAYYY before their huge marketing campaign. The south park episode bumped them to about 9 million in BC, and WotLK/Cata Van Damn/Mr T brought them to 12 million.
The excuses from haters as to why WoW is so huge keep getting more creative :-)
And for all the hopefulls that "wow lost half its subscribers"...WoW peaked at 12 million, hush up lol.
Originally posted by antarek I m kinda amused to notice that this article only mentions games that have actually closed. Lack of courage so you don't displease publishers from MMORPG that are running yet ? Sounds like that.
Or possibly that on this site pronouncing a game "doomed" that has not, in fact, closed down owes more to one's personal dislike for it or simple trolling than any objective considerations?
Originally posted by ZenTaoYingYang I think FFXIV 1.0 should be the top of MMOs that were doomed to fail before launch, I remember in the Beta everyone and I mean everyone was angry on how bad it was, biggest flop ever
+1
+eso and 4 button combat
+trions payment model for AA
+funcoms moba ,cant even remember its name
+swg NGE ,never forget.
dozens of tiny projects,,but they knew their risks.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014. **On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
Originally posted by Ragnar1337 Should have had Vanguard on that list. That game never delivered anything it promised and was a total disaster at launch. The company was doomed to fail and they knew it, but they released it anyway to cash in on the hype.
^
Tabula Rasa though? It had the most well designed and fun combat systems for an action fps mmo to date. The setting and story was beautiful and unique. Every step you could see there was actually some creativity involved, not all this generic bs they sell in mmos today. It was a great game that had more problems with the people handling the publishing than problems with the game design itself.
The fps mmo audience just wasn't old enough yet for any game of its kind to actually get a significant piece of the cake. See Planetside, the first game struggled for years, just to reemerge sucessfully years later when the community of mmo gamers is actually "mature" enough to even try fps-mmos (even though i bloody hate the sequel...).
Originally posted by sugamari Motor City online LOL
???? The best racing game ever made this is why even until today people are trying to remake it.... So if your LOling this means, you know nothing about it.
Also it was never doomed before release. . EA was not very bright but has a big following with it being offline even to this day. I have yet to find a good racing game like it, that only worried about racing.. MCO Had the whole package..!!
I called the death of Tabula Rasa and The Matrix Online before they left beta when it was announced they were leaving beta. Neither had notable game play worth a crap... they could have been fixed before leaving beta but they flat out wouldn't listen to the beta testers saying "don't do it!"
Originally posted by scraca How on earth can Dark and Light not be on this list?
Thats the truth. There are worse games than Tabula Rasa, and at least the Matrix online had a good community team. Some of these so called games forums could learn a thing or two from those guys. Spellborn needs to be on the list, good game, horrible publisher, doomed to fail with those second Rate Acclaim guys.
It didn't seemed doomed to fail from the start though.. unless you consider the megaserver tech to have been ahead of its time.
I still don't know why they closed it down. I bought a new graphics card solely to play the game better when I was in the beta test. After the phase ended they just.. canceled it, and no one ever really knew why.
I agree! This game was absolutely amazing! I really WISH (see what I did there?) someone would scoop up the rights for this game and re-release it with new tech, etc...
I was in the understanding that the developer of Irth Worlds had bought the assets from wish? and of course then Irth Worlds went away too...
Good article, though I only personally have tried two of the titles on the list and I agree with the author.
TR was a terrible game in my view and the only time I really regretted spending money on a game. I thought it was neat for about a day and then kicked myself after that for having bought it, even though I did not pay full price.
I would put Auto Assault on the list too because even though I personally liked it, I knew that it was not going to last very long. It did not have enough meat on its bones to really warrant being THE car MMORPG. Shame, because it sure was fun in short spurts.
I would also put Ryzome on there because though it has a lot of neat ideas, it did not feel like a completed game. It was way ahead of its time and is one of the true sandboxes out there, but it needs more stuff to do in my opinion. In fact many of peoples' wishes Ryzome already has. It is merely that the execution of Ryzome's features is a little poor and unfinished and thus the game never really attracted the population it needs to make it really fun.
Shame about the Lego game. It should have been what Minecraft is.
Light & Dark: Game failed on day one and then there was a lawsuit that bankrupted to company. The game floated around underground with different publishers doing limited alpha and beta testing. It is like the game released in opposite universe where time went backwards. First have a paid release of the game, go bankrupt, then do alpha and beta testing before closing completely.
Vanguard Saga of Heroes: Let Brad McQuaid run a company with no business experience and then watch it fail. Game really wasn't that bad. It was the behind the scenes stuff at the company that killed it. For one firing the entire staff in the parking lot. Totally unprofessional.
Ultima Online 2: I am not sure of the details but this game had a lot of hype and just went splat for some reason. It was killed off in the alpha stage of development and never released. This was Richard Garriott's first failure. The failure of UO2 foreshadowed his second failure in Tabula Rasa.
All Points Bulletin: This game closed 40 days after launch due to financial problems within the company Real Time Worlds. A lot of this stems from mismanagement on the part of lead designer Dave Jones. The problem was he surrounded himself with "yes" men and didn't allow criticism of his awful ideas. A lot of resources where squandered away on pet features that never made it into the game because they proved unworkable. Please read the article I linked as it is a really interesting story.
Final Fantasy XIV: Lack luster combat, repetitive zone art, and a hated fatigue system were just some of the complaints about this game. Something close to half the beta testers could not even play the game due to graphics lag and over reach. One needed a $3000 PC to play this game in 2011 without lag. What saved the game was simply technology catching up in terms of processing power. When the game was re-released in 2013 the same amount of power could be bought in the sub $1000 range. This was basically an extreme example of repeating the same mistake EQ2 made in 2004 with graphics over reach. In the case of FFXIV the game actually had to close for a couple of years and if it wasn't for unlimited backing of a large corporation it probably never would have reopened.
I agree with others here. The games listed weren't the greatest of MMOs, but there are a lot of other games that should be on that list. And a game that ran 9 years probably shouldn't be on there at all, regardless of your personal opinion.
Off the top of my head, some games that probably should be on this list:
Asheron's Call 2: Seriously, this game used a pyramid sceme in place of a normal guild system. One of the main reasons I rage quit this game in it's first month was due to random people constantly walking up to me and telling me to swear loyalty to them. AC2 also had a horrible control system and a complete lack of towns or NPCs. You magically sold your junk from your inventory window, got your quests from statues, and there were these random locations with crafting tables and nothing else.
Star Trek Online: Yes, it's still alive and going strong today, but that's thanks to some serious life support effort post launch. STO launched with two playable factions, but one did not have any content! If you were Klingon, all you could do was sit around your own backyard and que up for PvP. And then, it was horribly broken ill designed PvP. I am still amazed that a game would be released in such an extremely incomplete state.
Auto Assault: Not sure how to even begin explaining this one. Great idea, terrible implementation. Pick up a quest in town, drive 5+ miles into the middle of nowhere, while being shot up by random enemies the whole way. Finally arrive in the quest area at half health, kill your 5 quest targets, and then head back to town to turn it in. That got old and irritating really quick.
Vanguard: For what it's worth, I enjoyed this game despite it's problems. I have a lot of positive things to remember from vanguard. But problems it did have. Performance was unbelievably bad. Content was horribly incomplete. They desperately patched the game post launch to 'finish' the content, but my friends and I were always about 10 levels ahead of the content they were fixing. And this MMO was the biggest culprit of "hotbutton overflow". At level 40 I counted about 60+ hotbuttons on my screen. That was beyond the point of stupid.
Final Fantasy XIV 1.0: The fatigue system alone made this a no-buy for me, despite my love for FF. I just knew that if the developers were dumb enough to make a massive mistake like the fatigue system, then they were probably screwing up everything else in the game as well. Turns out I was right.
There are probably a lot more MMOs that I either can't think of at the moment, or I didn't personally try, that belong on this "doomed before launch" list. There are even a few recently launched MMOs that probably belong on this list as well.
Originally posted by VicDynamo It's funny how most agree that Tabula Rasa was doomed before it ever launched but then try to use NCSoft's closure of the game as a reason to bash the publisher.
It wasn't so much the closure of Tabula Rasa, it was the underhanded manner in which they "fired" Richard Garriott (TR's creator) that speaks about NCSoft's lack of business integrity. Granted, most NCSoft bashers don't bother finding out about this - they just want to ride on the bandwagon with their friends.
I do notice that those mmo's were closed before the rush to re-launch, usually as f2p(not sure about lego though). If you take that into consideration games like mortal, darkfall, aoc, etc. could also be considered for inclution. With the biggest of course being swtor(all things being relative). The choice of an unfinished game engine, the desire to compete directly with wow, the lack of content and so on. Even the payment model is questionable here. It started off well with almost 2.5mil copies sold in the first 2 months, but the it just sank like a stone with the loss of over 90% purchasers leaving inside 6 months and no expectations of it recovering.
Also, as has been said before and despite the standard fanboy denial, going f2p doesn't really fix things as such, it just repeats what happened albeit on a smaller scale but usually over a longer period(even if that's just because they keep the f2p games around longer when p2p would mean it being shut down). So if these games had gone f2p would they be being called a success instead? What eronious, made up, out of date information would their fanboys be pointing to to prove it?
Seems too short a list. Fully agree on TR - back when I saw the game installed (on one of our company's high-end PC's) I was like, wow, that's awesome. Then in playing it, frustration set in...it proved to be terrible. Money wasted on that game.
Tabula Rasa was my favorite game when I played it throughout beta so I may be jaded. The launch failure I saw was due to non-existant marketing, seriously even when it was ready to launch it had no buzz and many people had no idea what it was. And there did not seem a solid design/qa team to point it in a direction to go. Updates seemed all over the place with possible features half implemented all the way into launch. I've never played another game that matched that playstyle. A lot of fps/mmorpg hybrids are doing well now so it was ahead of its time but I enjoyed the mix of gameplay it had more than the current offering.
Comments
agree
EQOA did require extra hardware accessories (as described in article) but it did attract a dedicated audience beyond its PS2 competitors of FFXI and Phantasy Star Online
EQ2 fan sites
This is one of the most inaccurate posts I have ever seen on this site. WoW's first month (forget year) was over 400k, and the game itself was at around 7 million subs during Vanilla, WAAAYYY before their huge marketing campaign. The south park episode bumped them to about 9 million in BC, and WotLK/Cata Van Damn/Mr T brought them to 12 million.
The excuses from haters as to why WoW is so huge keep getting more creative :-)
And for all the hopefulls that "wow lost half its subscribers"...WoW peaked at 12 million, hush up lol.
Or possibly that on this site pronouncing a game "doomed" that has not, in fact, closed down owes more to one's personal dislike for it or simple trolling than any objective considerations?
+1
+eso and 4 button combat
+trions payment model for AA
+funcoms moba ,cant even remember its name
+swg NGE ,never forget.
dozens of tiny projects,,but they knew their risks.
So, did ESO have a successful launch? Yes, yes it did.By Ryan Getchell on April 02, 2014.
**On the radar: http://www.cyberpunk.net/ **
MxO was actually really fun to play and I enjoyed my time there despite the major bugs.
Jumpgate Evolution should be on this list, but I doubt anyone remembers it, lol.
^
Tabula Rasa though? It had the most well designed and fun combat systems for an action fps mmo to date. The setting and story was beautiful and unique. Every step you could see there was actually some creativity involved, not all this generic bs they sell in mmos today. It was a great game that had more problems with the people handling the publishing than problems with the game design itself.
The fps mmo audience just wasn't old enough yet for any game of its kind to actually get a significant piece of the cake. See Planetside, the first game struggled for years, just to reemerge sucessfully years later when the community of mmo gamers is actually "mature" enough to even try fps-mmos (even though i bloody hate the sequel...).
EQOA? How could it make this list? That game was fun as all heck. I have FOND memories of that game, my first MMO. Deathfist Citedal anyone???!!!!
Loooooved EQOA 4ever
Current Games: WOW, EVE Online
Should have been 1st
This sentence is false.
???? The best racing game ever made this is why even until today people are trying to remake it.... So if your LOling this means, you know nothing about it.
Also it was never doomed before release. . EA was not very bright but has a big following with it being offline even to this day. I have yet to find a good racing game like it, that only worried about racing.. MCO Had the whole package..!!
Shadus
Thats the truth. There are worse games than Tabula Rasa, and at least the Matrix online had a good community team. Some of these so called games forums could learn a thing or two from those guys. Spellborn needs to be on the list, good game, horrible publisher, doomed to fail with those second Rate Acclaim guys.
I was in the understanding that the developer of Irth Worlds had bought the assets from wish? and of course then Irth Worlds went away too...
Good article, though I only personally have tried two of the titles on the list and I agree with the author.
TR was a terrible game in my view and the only time I really regretted spending money on a game. I thought it was neat for about a day and then kicked myself after that for having bought it, even though I did not pay full price.
I would put Auto Assault on the list too because even though I personally liked it, I knew that it was not going to last very long. It did not have enough meat on its bones to really warrant being THE car MMORPG. Shame, because it sure was fun in short spurts.
I would also put Ryzome on there because though it has a lot of neat ideas, it did not feel like a completed game. It was way ahead of its time and is one of the true sandboxes out there, but it needs more stuff to do in my opinion. In fact many of peoples' wishes Ryzome already has. It is merely that the execution of Ryzome's features is a little poor and unfinished and thus the game never really attracted the population it needs to make it really fun.
Shame about the Lego game. It should have been what Minecraft is.
Playing MUDs and MMOs since 1994.
Here is a better list of games that failed:
Light & Dark: Game failed on day one and then there was a lawsuit that bankrupted to company. The game floated around underground with different publishers doing limited alpha and beta testing. It is like the game released in opposite universe where time went backwards. First have a paid release of the game, go bankrupt, then do alpha and beta testing before closing completely.
Vanguard Saga of Heroes: Let Brad McQuaid run a company with no business experience and then watch it fail. Game really wasn't that bad. It was the behind the scenes stuff at the company that killed it. For one firing the entire staff in the parking lot. Totally unprofessional.
Ultima Online 2: I am not sure of the details but this game had a lot of hype and just went splat for some reason. It was killed off in the alpha stage of development and never released. This was Richard Garriott's first failure. The failure of UO2 foreshadowed his second failure in Tabula Rasa.
All Points Bulletin: This game closed 40 days after launch due to financial problems within the company Real Time Worlds. A lot of this stems from mismanagement on the part of lead designer Dave Jones. The problem was he surrounded himself with "yes" men and didn't allow criticism of his awful ideas. A lot of resources where squandered away on pet features that never made it into the game because they proved unworkable. Please read the article I linked as it is a really interesting story.
Final Fantasy XIV: Lack luster combat, repetitive zone art, and a hated fatigue system were just some of the complaints about this game. Something close to half the beta testers could not even play the game due to graphics lag and over reach. One needed a $3000 PC to play this game in 2011 without lag. What saved the game was simply technology catching up in terms of processing power. When the game was re-released in 2013 the same amount of power could be bought in the sub $1000 range. This was basically an extreme example of repeating the same mistake EQ2 made in 2004 with graphics over reach. In the case of FFXIV the game actually had to close for a couple of years and if it wasn't for unlimited backing of a large corporation it probably never would have reopened.
I agree with others here. The games listed weren't the greatest of MMOs, but there are a lot of other games that should be on that list. And a game that ran 9 years probably shouldn't be on there at all, regardless of your personal opinion.
Off the top of my head, some games that probably should be on this list:
Asheron's Call 2: Seriously, this game used a pyramid sceme in place of a normal guild system. One of the main reasons I rage quit this game in it's first month was due to random people constantly walking up to me and telling me to swear loyalty to them. AC2 also had a horrible control system and a complete lack of towns or NPCs. You magically sold your junk from your inventory window, got your quests from statues, and there were these random locations with crafting tables and nothing else.
Star Trek Online: Yes, it's still alive and going strong today, but that's thanks to some serious life support effort post launch. STO launched with two playable factions, but one did not have any content! If you were Klingon, all you could do was sit around your own backyard and que up for PvP. And then, it was horribly broken ill designed PvP. I am still amazed that a game would be released in such an extremely incomplete state.
Auto Assault: Not sure how to even begin explaining this one. Great idea, terrible implementation. Pick up a quest in town, drive 5+ miles into the middle of nowhere, while being shot up by random enemies the whole way. Finally arrive in the quest area at half health, kill your 5 quest targets, and then head back to town to turn it in. That got old and irritating really quick.
Vanguard: For what it's worth, I enjoyed this game despite it's problems. I have a lot of positive things to remember from vanguard. But problems it did have. Performance was unbelievably bad. Content was horribly incomplete. They desperately patched the game post launch to 'finish' the content, but my friends and I were always about 10 levels ahead of the content they were fixing. And this MMO was the biggest culprit of "hotbutton overflow". At level 40 I counted about 60+ hotbuttons on my screen. That was beyond the point of stupid.
Final Fantasy XIV 1.0: The fatigue system alone made this a no-buy for me, despite my love for FF. I just knew that if the developers were dumb enough to make a massive mistake like the fatigue system, then they were probably screwing up everything else in the game as well. Turns out I was right.
There are probably a lot more MMOs that I either can't think of at the moment, or I didn't personally try, that belong on this "doomed before launch" list. There are even a few recently launched MMOs that probably belong on this list as well.
It wasn't so much the closure of Tabula Rasa, it was the underhanded manner in which they "fired" Richard Garriott (TR's creator) that speaks about NCSoft's lack of business integrity. Granted, most NCSoft bashers don't bother finding out about this - they just want to ride on the bandwagon with their friends.
I knew WAR would fail miserably after I got into early beta. Game's quality was just too far from how hyped it was.
I do notice that those mmo's were closed before the rush to re-launch, usually as f2p(not sure about lego though). If you take that into consideration games like mortal, darkfall, aoc, etc. could also be considered for inclution. With the biggest of course being swtor(all things being relative). The choice of an unfinished game engine, the desire to compete directly with wow, the lack of content and so on. Even the payment model is questionable here. It started off well with almost 2.5mil copies sold in the first 2 months, but the it just sank like a stone with the loss of over 90% purchasers leaving inside 6 months and no expectations of it recovering.
Also, as has been said before and despite the standard fanboy denial, going f2p doesn't really fix things as such, it just repeats what happened albeit on a smaller scale but usually over a longer period(even if that's just because they keep the f2p games around longer when p2p would mean it being shut down). So if these games had gone f2p would they be being called a success instead? What eronious, made up, out of date information would their fanboys be pointing to to prove it?