Vanguard was the worst and will always be the pinnacle of bad launches. The game was flat out unplayable for months, not weeks.
You'd log in, your FPS would drop to 0, literally you'd get 1 frame every 10 seconds. It would bog down your computer so bad you'd have to manually pull the power cord to restart because the entire system became unresponsive.
Heck, Vanguard did more harm to your computer than any virus ever did.
That being said, I'd put some serious consideration into making ArcheAge #1B. It didn't have the technical issues that these other games had but at least those games were going through uncharted waters.
ArcheAge has been out for 2 years. Imagine making cars for 2 years then releasing your newest model and forgetting to put an engine in it. Is that worse than coming up with a new mode of transportation and having lots of issues?
Yah, I think it is.
Sorry Vanguard, you're #2 now. ArcheAge takes over the top spot as all its problems were caused as direct result of being backed by an incompetent company.
First the website to buy the game was constantly down. Only 14k copies were sold. Then they shutted down the sales. The server was de-synced at launch. To fix that they took the server down for 3 or 5 days? Can't remember.
Was fun for the first month though afterwards, when everyone was a noob.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76) Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Originally posted by meonthissite Where's ArcheAge's honorable mention huh or Wildstar? Both of those games were riddled with bugs and exploits at launch it was all over reddit and their main forums!
Agree. Well, Wildstar exploits at least were fixed in days. AOC, Wildhammer, ... were also terribly buggy. Oh, and where is Aion? Indisputable king of gold spamming message in chat and king of mining and other bots?
Mine was the actual prelaunch of ArcheAge for founders (patrons) the login of the game cause a queue like most first official starts of MMO's but the login queue was divided for regular non paying players and patrons that already bought a package.
Patrons got stuck in 8 hour queues qlong zith regular players, missed their opportunies of a headstart as was promised and since you had to be fast to acquire a good strategic piece of land for yourself or your guild, this was detrimental
Almost all MMOs had a bad launch, so wouldnt it really be better to make a list of the 5 best launches?
I might be the only player in the world that really never had any serious problems with the launches, not even AO gave me problems.
While Archeage had a long queue, the biggest problem that game has is down to the design of it. Housing problems could have been solved with a better game design.
ESO had some technical problems, not how I played however. I found ESO to be good quality, but again bad game design.
Anarchy Online was my first MMO, nothing has really lived up to it since, and that isn't just because of the wonder of noobness. However, if I had started with its launch it might have been a very short, not to mention my last experience with the genre. The horror stories are legendary. Luckily I didn't get in until most of it had been smoothed out, although that game still had a few bugs last time I went back to visit, ten years after launch. I'd still mortgage my hypothetical soul for an Anarchy Online II though.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
Originally posted by Xiaoki What's next? An article about how 90% of WoWs population are Chinese that only pennies a month? Or how about an article on Trion Worlds' CEO Scot Hartsman eating live puppies?
This is a huge reason why I avoid game launches, a lesson well learned through many Microsoft products
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Originally posted by CrazKanuk Soooooooo, we can basically all agree that there has never been a "good" launch in the history of MMORPGs. Is that about right?
Yes. I think it would be a very short (non-existent?) list with MMOs that had a "perfect launch."
Every MMO ever produced has had some kind of trouble when it launched. It then boils down to the degree of the troubles
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse. - FARGIN_WAR
Any list of the worst MMO launches that fails to place AO in the number one slot is suspect. AO had, without any doubt, the worst launch in the history of MMO's and anyone who actually experienced it can verify that.
Placing it 3rd here makes me strongly suspect that the author didn't actually experience AO's launch.
Absolutely agree. I was stuck in that post-login light swirl on day one for hours before giving up. The rest of the week was no better but after playing even some of beta I truly wanted this game to work for me.
AO's release was absolutely non-playable for nearly everyone on any level. Most other games referenced here (outside of maybe APB which I had not even heard of before) pale in comparison to AO.
EQ's release was also littered with problems. If not for the fact that it was one of just a few options at the time and that its memory has now been consigned to the pantheon of MMO Gods, EQ would easily make my list. In EQ there were hours upon hours where you could not play due to server crashes, fixes, lag, being snagged on a server line or waiting your turn single file to enter a new zone. I waited a week at one point just to recover a toon that had gone missing in a zone crash.
WOWs release issue were more inconvenient for me than anything else. I remember the long queue's, the broken guild roster, the drops, world falling etc, but the game was still playable even if it was interrupted at times. WOW would not have made my top 5.
I played ESO beta and experienced many of the bugs that became part of its release which is why I waited out the first 6 months before purchasing the game. In fact the phasing issue still pisses me off. However, IMO there is no way I would add ESO to a top 5 list (maybe top 10 if they don't fix this server lag and phasing!! Cmon Zenimax!!). While the game has its problems its still playable and quickly recovering. I am still having fun even though I get frustrated at times.
Another game I would add was Shadowbane. So much potential up in smoke. It was the first MMO I played that offered the radial selector which is now being adopted by many rpgs and MMO's. I'm an old carebear gamer now, but in my glory days of PVP'ing this was the title that had me and my cohorts giggling like Japanese school girls. Sadly it was a case of "girl interrupted". Ahh good ole Wolfpack studios (RIP) left scratching the large intestine of Ubisoft. A top selling game on release but DOA. The list is long but in the end there was little venting, just mass exiting.
Del Cabon A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.
This article has so much wrong in it I don't where to start.
None of those one listed are "worst". Totally ignored the likes of Earthrise, AoC and many others that are WAYYY WORSE than any of those listed.
Also, APB's problem wasn't launch, it was the fact that it based itself on a non-sustainable payment model where players are earning WWAAAY TOO MUCH in game credits to not have to pay monthly for playing the game at all. They had a decent size player-base but no-one paying to play.
Seems the article was written base on a lot of half-truths and mis-information.
World of Warcraft should not be on the list at all.
Anarchy Online was actually worse than FFXVI, the game was unplayable and I mean UNPLAYABLE the first 3 weeks, and after that the lag was still so bad you could barely do anything and when you could was hit with bugs that prevented you from doing many things. That game had sold over 100k copies on day one, was the best one day sales in MMO history blah blah blah...less than 20k subbed after the first free month and at the 3 month mark they were around 10k players and the game still had massive issues with game breaking bugs, lag, disconnects, servers going down and the like.
And missing from the list, the game that should be in WoWs place...Horizon. It was so bad and retained so few players from its release the company went under and sold it off to another company that took a YEAR in re-working it and even changing the name of it in hopes to remove it from that horrible launch.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Originally posted by Xiaoki Really hate these "articles" on MMORPG.com that sound more like forum rants.
Seems like the writer put no actual effort or the slightest research into this.
What's next? An article about how 90% of WoWs population are Chinese that only pennies a month? Or how about an article on Trion Worlds' CEO Scot Hartsman eating live puppies?
Well, considering theres nothing else going on in the gaming world. Specially the MMO Field its not unusual to get fluff articles like these. Sure theres Elite: Dangerous and a few other half arse games coming out, but the meat and Potatoes is Star Citizen right now and the FPS release which is what many are waiting for.
There are roughly 2 dozen + MMOs that launched before or the same year as WoW. Yet WoW still had a worse launch experience than all of them. So....sorry, but fandom won't save that fact.
And how many of those MMOS had the kind of numbers that WoW did at launch? Fact is, MMOS have NEVER experienced the type of massive response that WoW gained when the game went live. Even Blizzard folks were hoping for a top-end figure of a million subscribers after the first year or so.
There are obviously some things they could have done better. But the fact is, nobody had any idea what an absolutely massive rush of people would be trying this game immediately---including Blizzard. They had a lineup of servers ready to go live one by one as the population increased. They ended up saying, "Fuck it, open them all."
None of the games you mentioned ever came close to sniffing that kind of response. And the genre at that time was strictly a niche genre. So, your argument that they should have been prepared simply because a slew of much less popular games in a niche market doesn't hold water.
There are roughly 2 dozen + MMOs that launched before or the same year as WoW. Yet WoW still had a worse launch experience than all of them. So....sorry, but fandom won't save that fact.
And how many of those MMOS had the kind of numbers that WoW did at launch? Fact is, MMOS have NEVER experienced the type of massive response that WoW gained when the game went live. Even Blizzard folks were hoping for a top-end figure of a million subscribers after the first year or so.
There are obviously some things they could have done better. But the fact is, nobody had any idea what an absolutely massive rush of people would be trying this game immediately---including Blizzard. They had a lineup of servers ready to go live one by one as the population increased. They ended up saying, "Fuck it, open them all."
None of the games you mentioned ever came close to sniffing that kind of response. And the genre at that time was strictly a niche genre. So, your argument that they should have been prepared simply because a slew of much less popular games in a niche market didn't have the kind of server crashes doesn't hold water.
Originally posted by GraThom there have probably been worse launches in history, but ArcheAge (Western version) launch done by Trion is by far the worst launch in years.
Agreed.
The login/land grab issue, that affected the ENTIRE crafting game is not a small thing to "forget".
It is/was something that affects the game to this day, and is a primary reason that more than a few people quit.
Should have been on the list, the consequences for the game are much worst than for some of the ones listed.
How in the **** does Warhammer Online not make this list?!
The game had to launch without 4 of it's capital cities, instead just launching with 1 city from each faction! And even worse, before launching the game, had to temporarily ax 4 classes that they just couldn't get to work for launch: the Choppa (Greenskin), the Hammerer (Dwarf), the Blackguard (Dark Elf), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)!
Not to mention the games crafting system was non-existent!
The game also had the typical launch issues with server probs, connection issues and performance problems -- with a major stuttering issue that made the game unplayable for some
On top of this, the graphics were hardly better than WoWs yet War was FAR more demanding! And anyone remember the visual customization options at launch? Oh wait, what's that? You don't remember?
That's because there were like 2 graphic settings you could adjust!
And don't even get me started on the sound for Warhammer Online during launch. My cousin uninstalled the game after a couple of hours because the sound quality was horrible and disconnected from the visuals (perhaps due to the aforementioned stuttering issues). It was pretty much broken!
Finally, there were the exploits -- namely the Bright Wizard exploit -- that made PvP in a PvP-focused game utter fail! Not sure if this was in at launch or was patched in shortly after; however, I know a lot of players that bailed on the game because Mythic could not find a fix for it soon enough.
Essentially, class balance was an absolute joke and far worse than any other MMO I've played at launch.
Not cool when you consider the money EA put into this game!
I remember some reviewers touting WAR as one of the smoothest launches in history, but I didn't feel that way. Most of the players I know had major issues with the game at launch, which makes me question how much EA invested in paying professional reviewers to review the game in only a positive light.
Furthermore, I can't give Mythic a pass and forgive the fact that in order to make their launch a more positive experience, they cut out a good portion of the game at launch.
Warhammer Online might not be number one on this list as launches don't get much worse than FFXVI, but if Warhammer Online isn't number 1A on that list, it is certainly number two!
Originally posted by DMKano I played WoW at launch, as well as Vanguard. AO was so much worse - I am having a hard time even seeing other MMOS in the same category as AO.
It's true...I dont think any other games had the terrible launch AO did. FFXIV (1rst try) was just a bad game...not a broken one. AO was literally broken inside and out.
Comments
Vanguard was the worst and will always be the pinnacle of bad launches. The game was flat out unplayable for months, not weeks.
You'd log in, your FPS would drop to 0, literally you'd get 1 frame every 10 seconds. It would bog down your computer so bad you'd have to manually pull the power cord to restart because the entire system became unresponsive.
Heck, Vanguard did more harm to your computer than any virus ever did.
That being said, I'd put some serious consideration into making ArcheAge #1B. It didn't have the technical issues that these other games had but at least those games were going through uncharted waters.
ArcheAge has been out for 2 years. Imagine making cars for 2 years then releasing your newest model and forgetting to put an engine in it. Is that worse than coming up with a new mode of transportation and having lots of issues?
Yah, I think it is.
Sorry Vanguard, you're #2 now. ArcheAge takes over the top spot as all its problems were caused as direct result of being backed by an incompetent company.
This article was brought to you by Trion Worlds, alienating customers across the world.
Where is Darkfall?
First the website to buy the game was constantly down. Only 14k copies were sold. Then they shutted down the sales. The server was de-synced at launch. To fix that they took the server down for 3 or 5 days? Can't remember.
Yeh Keller, Darkfall launch was no bed of roses.
Was fun for the first month though afterwards, when everyone was a noob.
Playing: Darkfall New Dawn (and planning to play Fallout 76)
Favourite games have included: UO, Lineage2, Darkfall, Lotro, Baldur's Gate, SSX, FF7 and yes the original Wizardry on an Apple IIe
Agree. Well, Wildstar exploits at least were fixed in days. AOC, Wildhammer, ... were also terribly buggy. Oh, and where is Aion? Indisputable king of gold spamming message in chat and king of mining and other bots?
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Mine was the actual prelaunch of ArcheAge for founders (patrons) the login of the game cause a queue like most first official starts of MMO's but the login queue was divided for regular non paying players and patrons that already bought a package.
Patrons got stuck in 8 hour queues qlong zith regular players, missed their opportunies of a headstart as was promised and since you had to be fast to acquire a good strategic piece of land for yourself or your guild, this was detrimental
Almost all MMOs had a bad launch, so wouldnt it really be better to make a list of the 5 best launches?
I might be the only player in the world that really never had any serious problems with the launches, not even AO gave me problems.
While Archeage had a long queue, the biggest problem that game has is down to the design of it. Housing problems could have been solved with a better game design.
ESO had some technical problems, not how I played however. I found ESO to be good quality, but again bad game design.
I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.
~Albert Einstein
i knew it !
EQ2 fan sites
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Every MMO ever produced has had some kind of trouble when it launched. It then boils down to the degree of the troubles
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Absolutely agree. I was stuck in that post-login light swirl on day one for hours before giving up. The rest of the week was no better but after playing even some of beta I truly wanted this game to work for me.
AO's release was absolutely non-playable for nearly everyone on any level. Most other games referenced here (outside of maybe APB which I had not even heard of before) pale in comparison to AO.
EQ's release was also littered with problems. If not for the fact that it was one of just a few options at the time and that its memory has now been consigned to the pantheon of MMO Gods, EQ would easily make my list. In EQ there were hours upon hours where you could not play due to server crashes, fixes, lag, being snagged on a server line or waiting your turn single file to enter a new zone. I waited a week at one point just to recover a toon that had gone missing in a zone crash.
WOWs release issue were more inconvenient for me than anything else. I remember the long queue's, the broken guild roster, the drops, world falling etc, but the game was still playable even if it was interrupted at times. WOW would not have made my top 5.
I played ESO beta and experienced many of the bugs that became part of its release which is why I waited out the first 6 months before purchasing the game. In fact the phasing issue still pisses me off. However, IMO there is no way I would add ESO to a top 5 list (maybe top 10 if they don't fix this server lag and phasing!! Cmon Zenimax!!). While the game has its problems its still playable and quickly recovering. I am still having fun even though I get frustrated at times.
Another game I would add was Shadowbane. So much potential up in smoke. It was the first MMO I played that offered the radial selector which is now being adopted by many rpgs and MMO's. I'm an old carebear gamer now, but in my glory days of PVP'ing this was the title that had me and my cohorts giggling like Japanese school girls. Sadly it was a case of "girl interrupted". Ahh good ole Wolfpack studios (RIP) left scratching the large intestine of Ubisoft. A top selling game on release but DOA. The list is long but in the end there was little venting, just mass exiting.
Del Cabon
A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.
This article has so much wrong in it I don't where to start.
None of those one listed are "worst". Totally ignored the likes of Earthrise, AoC and many others that are WAYYY WORSE than any of those listed.
Also, APB's problem wasn't launch, it was the fact that it based itself on a non-sustainable payment model where players are earning WWAAAY TOO MUCH in game credits to not have to pay monthly for playing the game at all. They had a decent size player-base but no-one paying to play.
Seems the article was written base on a lot of half-truths and mis-information.
World of Warcraft should not be on the list at all.
Anarchy Online was actually worse than FFXVI, the game was unplayable and I mean UNPLAYABLE the first 3 weeks, and after that the lag was still so bad you could barely do anything and when you could was hit with bugs that prevented you from doing many things. That game had sold over 100k copies on day one, was the best one day sales in MMO history blah blah blah...less than 20k subbed after the first free month and at the 3 month mark they were around 10k players and the game still had massive issues with game breaking bugs, lag, disconnects, servers going down and the like.
And missing from the list, the game that should be in WoWs place...Horizon. It was so bad and retained so few players from its release the company went under and sold it off to another company that took a YEAR in re-working it and even changing the name of it in hopes to remove it from that horrible launch.
"People who tell you youre awesome are useless. No, dangerous.
They are worse than useless because you want to believe them. They will defend you against critiques that are valid. They will seduce you into believing you are done learning, or into thinking that your work is better than it actually is." ~Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/2013/10/14/on-getting-criticism/
Well, considering theres nothing else going on in the gaming world. Specially the MMO Field its not unusual to get fluff articles like these. Sure theres Elite: Dangerous and a few other half arse games coming out, but the meat and Potatoes is Star Citizen right now and the FPS release which is what many are waiting for.
Played: UO, LotR, WoW, SWG, DDO, AoC, EVE, Warhammer, TF2, EQ2, SWTOR, TSW, CSS, KF, L4D, AoW, WoT
Playing: The Secret World until Citadel of Sorcery goes into Alpha testing.
Tired of: Linear quest games, dailies, and dumbed down games
Anticipating:Citadel of Sorcery
And how many of those MMOS had the kind of numbers that WoW did at launch? Fact is, MMOS have NEVER experienced the type of massive response that WoW gained when the game went live. Even Blizzard folks were hoping for a top-end figure of a million subscribers after the first year or so.
There are obviously some things they could have done better. But the fact is, nobody had any idea what an absolutely massive rush of people would be trying this game immediately---including Blizzard. They had a lineup of servers ready to go live one by one as the population increased. They ended up saying, "Fuck it, open them all."
None of the games you mentioned ever came close to sniffing that kind of response. And the genre at that time was strictly a niche genre. So, your argument that they should have been prepared simply because a slew of much less popular games in a niche market doesn't hold water.
Agreed.
The login/land grab issue, that affected the ENTIRE crafting game is not a small thing to "forget".
It is/was something that affects the game to this day, and is a primary reason that more than a few people quit.
Should have been on the list, the consequences for the game are much worst than for some of the ones listed.
Good god, where did you dig this "staff writer" up?
My guess is he's only played 5 MMOs and they all made the list.. lol
Bioware did a great job at launch overall.
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain
How in the **** does Warhammer Online not make this list?!
The game had to launch without 4 of it's capital cities, instead just launching with 1 city from each faction! And even worse, before launching the game, had to temporarily ax 4 classes that they just couldn't get to work for launch: the Choppa (Greenskin), the Hammerer (Dwarf), the Blackguard (Dark Elf), and the Knight of the Blazing Sun (Empire)!
Not to mention the games crafting system was non-existent!
The game also had the typical launch issues with server probs, connection issues and performance problems -- with a major stuttering issue that made the game unplayable for someOn top of this, the graphics were hardly better than WoWs yet War was FAR more demanding! And anyone remember the visual customization options at launch? Oh wait, what's that? You don't remember?
That's because there were like 2 graphic settings you could adjust!
And don't even get me started on the sound for Warhammer Online during launch. My cousin uninstalled the game after a couple of hours because the sound quality was horrible and disconnected from the visuals (perhaps due to the aforementioned stuttering issues). It was pretty much broken!
Finally, there were the exploits -- namely the Bright Wizard exploit -- that made PvP in a PvP-focused game utter fail! Not sure if this was in at launch or was patched in shortly after; however, I know a lot of players that bailed on the game because Mythic could not find a fix for it soon enough.
Essentially, class balance was an absolute joke and far worse than any other MMO I've played at launch.
Not cool when you consider the money EA put into this game!I remember some reviewers touting WAR as one of the smoothest launches in history, but I didn't feel that way. Most of the players I know had major issues with the game at launch, which makes me question how much EA invested in paying professional reviewers to review the game in only a positive light.
Furthermore, I can't give Mythic a pass and forgive the fact that in order to make their launch a more positive experience, they cut out a good portion of the game at launch.
Warhammer Online might not be number one on this list as launches don't get much worse than FFXVI, but if Warhammer Online isn't number 1A on that list, it is certainly number two!
Edit: typos
It's true...I dont think any other games had the terrible launch AO did. FFXIV (1rst try) was just a bad game...not a broken one. AO was literally broken inside and out.
This is coming from a DIE-HARD AO fanboy....
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