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Greatest MMO fail

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  • JowenJowen Member Posts: 326

    I never took interest in the game before it failcascaded to such an unbelievable extend. Therefore I KNOW Mourning is the worst fail ever.

     

    Seriously, look it up and you will agree, there is a good thread here.

  • alakramalakram Member UncommonPosts: 2,301

    greatest mmo failure of all time? We should do some memory / investigation work here. To start, I dont think we should count on all the mmos that are still still running. for example I didnt like AoC but we can't call it the biggest mmo failure if it is still running. There some that are already closed while some others, the oldest ones are still running, we should looks for the biggest faiulre in the ones that are already closed.

    I'd say:

    Dark and Light.



  • neorandomneorandom Member Posts: 1,681

    Originally posted by ulthar50

    More often then not, when we get together my gaming friends and I always seem to wind up dissecting various MMO failures, e.g., "This game failed because of this. That game failed because of that." This got me thinking. What was the greatest MMO failure? Was it HGL? AoC?

     

    Just curious as to the collective wisdom of the interwebs.

    well it wasnt aoc since it came out and is still around making money.

     

    the ones that never made it out were collosal failures.  for example, jump gate evolution.  huge potential, it was being made, then whammo, its just gone.  or that awesome mech one ea was making that got cancled in beta.

     

    the biggest way to fail is to not take a game you get to the point of beta testing to market, you have already spent on programming it and polish passes.  if it looks like it wont make huge money, then dont spend alot on advertising, but for fuck sake, release it and polish it so it might attract a cult following that pays to play, dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

    dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

    dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

    uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

    hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

    hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

    hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  • RoshaRosha Member UncommonPosts: 29

    Top 3 for me:

    Horizons:Empire of Istaria / Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted / Istaria / Horizons - with all the issues they had just in developers, seriously.  Some mechanics were off the wall, harvesting 1 node area for the spawns in another to appear (linked).  Great story and by far more 'events' ingame than any other I've ever seen to date, but combat that simply couldn't work.  Unreal tournament engine wasn't made for 10s of thousands of people in single instance.  Open character classes, single server for all players, and dragons pretty much topped the list, shadowed by so much of the other fail it just couldn't ramp up. The capital city, 3 zones to get across and you would only meet other players, no NPCs except trainers and a merchant or three - and ALLLLLLLL those buildings, empty



    Vanguard - riddled with issues, lies and mismanagement, the potential was there to be great, and still could be, but too few and to far between. Biggest mistake was when they simply started ignoring the community outright.



    Dark and Light - from the beta, to the launch, to the billing fiascos. So much put into the game to be harrowed by a lifeless world and combat mechanics from hell.  So much was put into the game by the community, only to be taken advantage of.



    Other mentions for me;

    Dungeons and Dragons online - instances upon instances upon 30 more instances

    Matrix Online - Rolling with an oops to wtf happened?

    Auto Assault - *blink*

    Tabula Rasa - *blinkblink*

    Age of Conan - Butt sliders were never enough to recover the hype to launch.

    Lord of the Rings - Slow to expand to a known universe so rich and possible, missed the mark



    But the Grand Daddy of them all for me by far, -THE- largest fail would be SOE's Star Wars Galaxies.  

    - Like ALL MMOs this had bumps in the beginning, but as a mostly open world and a true sandbox when it came to well, almost everything. But alas that golden gated paradise shrouding the hum of lightsabers - oh wait, no it didn't it had everything BUT lightsabers, and when people noticed eventually the Bantha poodoo hit the fan - so they admitted they didn't put in Jedi because they didn't think people would suspect, or achieve what they thought would be the path to success so quickly, and so they retro inserted it (they got good at that) so that people could become Jedi and suffer perma death (then they made it easier to get, then easier, then a time sink, then easier).  An open world that opened so many hearts, only for Sony to squat over that heart and take a long, lengthy polluted dump almost every quarter. Jump to lightspeed was a huge bonus for the game, not Eve, but bridging that gap for all pilots of Xwing vs Tie Fighter, and then the decorating - boy howdy. But alas the SOE spiral intervened; every month was a nerf to make things easier, then a combat upgrade, then more nerfs and additions, then another combat upgrade/revamp, then same old same old, then came this monster HUGE expansion pack aligned with episode 3, only to secretly have eaten cheese taco sundaes all weekend watching that movie, preparing for what was to come; because you see, the dump they took on their paying customer base was so massive, so putrid and vile that 7 years later it still reeks throughout the community and leaves this aura around SOE that no amount of Febreeze will ever hide.





    The player base is what makes the game, when a developer fails to understand it, or ignores it, they are destined to dissappoint their shareholders.

  • CaldrinCaldrin Member UncommonPosts: 4,505

    Originally posted by Suraknar

    I would not say Failed, but rather disappointing MMO's, for me and my friends.

     

    EQ - PVE oriented, progression based (Same old same old)

    Err Same old same old? I think you might find that Everquest was basically the first 3d MMORPG so there was nothing the same or old about it LOL

    Lineage II (Pre GoD) - Korean Grind, RMT

    True it was a bit of a grind LOL but it had decent PVP

    SWG with NGE - Great game before it got beheaded ...

    When SWG was first released the game was the best out there and nothing has really done it again, sadly CU and NGE broke the game.

    WoW - Progression focussed, repetitious gameplay (Same old same old).

    First of the true themepark games and sadly destoryed the MMORPG industry.. but has also brought in some really good ideas.

    Vanguard (Launch) - Underdevelloped, same old same old

    Company had a lot of money issues and rushed the game out, sure it was basicalyl a themepark game but was a massive open world with lots of other things to do.. so not really same old same old.

    EVE - Time based Skills, no Tactics in Combat, it is all strategy focussed, boring.

    Well i guess this game is not for you thousands love this gmae..

    Darkfall - Just a huge mess

    Sure theg ame had a lot of issues to start with but it turned out to be one of the best MMORPG PVP games.

    WAR - Ill thought out RvR, Poor PvP mechanics at upper levels, same old same old.

    Never really played this

    POTBS - How can you make a sailing Game without Trade? Same old same old.

    Huh no trading ? the econamy was player run and one of the strong points fo the game.

    TABULA RASA - Unfinished, rushed.

    Yes

    Runes of Magic - P2W, Cash Shop oriented

    No idea what this is.

    RIFT - Same old same old, poor PvP

    Yes

    Dark & Light - Empty and Barren

    Was a big mess, rushed out very shady company behind the game and was a shame as well.. the world was massive and could ahve been awesome.

    World War II Online - Under funded.

    Very old and has been going forever still has an active player base and monthly sub.

    Dawntide - under-develloped

    Never released

    AoC - Same old same old

    Awesome combat system and one of the best PVE MMOs out there but not what was promised.

    STO - Orcs and Gnomes dressed as Ships

    Waste of the Star Trek IP

    SW:TOR - Same old same old

    Waste of the Star Wars IP

    D&D onine - not an MMO

    Not quite an MMO your right but still a half decent game.

    LOTRO - Same old same old

    Yes and a bit of a waste of the IP

    Allods - Same old same old, cash shop, P2W.

    WOW clone with a cash shop as you said.

    Black Prophesy - Unfun, unnexciting

    Never really got into this either..

     

    Really makes one Jaded...

     

    To me it sounds like MMORPGs are probally not the game for you hehe :)

     

  • Demmi77Demmi77 Member UncommonPosts: 229
    Recently the only true mmo that tailors was ff .14 .

    They had to basically scrap the entire game.

    Secondly was the original apb , closed down like 90 days after release.

    Other honorable mentions are,

    Conan still running but it failed hard at release.

    Warhammer same thing as above

    Ddo same thing as above.

    Swtor may be the biggest ever if the don't fix it. It's a success atm , but subs are dropping steadily. Games like wow grew in subs over the first few years, swtor has peaked at 2 months, so we may see the biggest fail ever. We are talking Kevin costner waterworld fail.
  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403

    Originally posted by alakram

    To start, I dont think we should count on all the mmos that are still still running.

    Um...under the original developers, perhaps?

    After the collapse, Hellgate got bought up cheap and relaunched as a F2P...by all accounts, still pretty bad, to this day.

    Original company destroyed and re-sold as salvage counts as a "fail", no?

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • alakramalakram Member UncommonPosts: 2,301

    Originally posted by Icewhite

    Originally posted by alakram

    To start, I dont think we should count on all the mmos that are still still running.

    Um...under the original developers, perhaps?

    After the collapse, Hellgate got bought up cheap and relaunched as a F2P...by all accounts, still pretty bad, to this day.

    Original company destroyed and re-sold as salvage counts as a "fail", no?

    Yep, only the ones still under the original developers, you are right.



  • troublmakertroublmaker Member Posts: 337

    Originally posted by alakram

    greatest mmo failure of all time? We should do some memory / investigation work here. To start, I dont think we should count on all the mmos that are still still running. for example I didnt like AoC but we can't call it the biggest mmo failure if it is still running. There some that are already closed while some others, the oldest ones are still running, we should looks for the biggest faiulre in the ones that are already closed.

    I'd say:

    Dark and Light.

    As I've said a "fail" can be the biggest disappointment as in "you failed me son."  An MMO that had no expectations can hardly been said to have failed as badly as one that had great expectations.

  • zimboy69zimboy69 Member UncommonPosts: 395

    none of these games   failed   like auto assault 

     

    it made it to beta  had a open beta and  no one  signed up

     

    they closed the game

     

    its a mmo which failed before release nothing else comes close

    image

  • thamighty213thamighty213 Member UncommonPosts: 1,637

    Originally posted by zimboy69

    none of these games   failed   like auto assault 

     

    it made it to beta  had a open beta and  no one  signed up

     

    they closed the game

     

    its a mmo which failed before release nothing else comes close

    Your info is wrong,  Auto Assault released in April 2006 it didnt shut down until mid 2007 due to a lack of subscribers.

     

    It lasted longer than some others have.

  • alakramalakram Member UncommonPosts: 2,301

    Originally posted by troublmaker

    Originally posted by alakram

    greatest mmo failure of all time? We should do some memory / investigation work here. To start, I dont think we should count on all the mmos that are still still running. for example I didnt like AoC but we can't call it the biggest mmo failure if it is still running. There some that are already closed while some others, the oldest ones are still running, we should looks for the biggest faiulre in the ones that are already closed.

    I'd say:

    Dark and Light.

    As I've said a "fail" can be the biggest disappointment as in "you failed me son."  An MMO that had no expectations can hardly been said to have failed as badly as one that had great expectations.

    You see fail as the diference between how much hype the game had and how much it delivered. It's looks like a good point to start but we coukd have some more points in consideration. Things like how many time it was running before closure (if it was closed) If it was bought again or not. How many money was invested, how much was recovered from initial game sales and I'm sure there are lots of stuff to take into consideration. Maybe we could even set up a "failure rating system" and evaluate a lot of mmos.

    About me pointing at Dark and Light, it was just an opinion, It just came to mind at the moment. I'm not sure if it is truly the greatest failure or not, but even if it didnt had the same hype aoc had, it really had a fair share of it and at that time we had a lot of discussion and drama about it on mmorpg.com but I dont want to discuss about this mmo in particular, it is more interesting to think about how we could rate failures in the mmo genre and If we could find the greatest mmo failure.



  • alakramalakram Member UncommonPosts: 2,301

    Originally posted by thamighty213

    Originally posted by zimboy69

    none of these games   failed   like auto assault 

     

    it made it to beta  had a open beta and  no one  signed up

     

    they closed the game

     

    its a mmo which failed before release nothing else comes close

    Your info is wrong,  Auto Assault released in April 2006 it didnt shut down until mid 2007 due to a lack of subscribers.

     

    It lasted longer than some others have.

    yep auto assault went live and some people bought it, they were playing for some time until the game closed but it made to live and was running for some time.



  • DauzqulDauzqul Member RarePosts: 1,982

    The two greatest fails in my book are both related to Star Wars.

    #1. SWTOR - This was honestly the worst MMO I've ever played. In fact, I wouldn't even classify it as a MMO.


    • Small Zones

    • Redundant Garbage: Dailies and Instanced PvP over and over...

    • Stupidly easy combat

    • Long-winded voice quests - It was cool at first. However, I found myself sighing when having to space through 5 minutes of some NPC telling me how important it is to click on supply crates.

    • Super Nintendo-like Space Combat

    • Childish Community

    • Arrogant developers who don't have a clue, e.g., Daniel Erickson.

    • Typecasted Characters to the point where it's embarrassing, e.g., Every smuggler must be rugged, have a wookie companion, and a fast / ugly ship.

    • Zero incentive to craft.

    • Clonish players - everyone wearing the same crap.

    • Zero end-game.

    #2. SWG-NGE

    • Obvious WoW-envy when they took a small, yet unique game and turned into a broken version of WoW's pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-alpha beta.
  • sirphobossirphobos Member UncommonPosts: 620

    Going to have to go with Vanguard, as it is pretty much a textbook example of how not to handle development and launch of an MMO.

  • GeezerGamerGeezerGamer Member EpicPosts: 8,855

    SWG gets my vote.

    It's one thing to never get a game out of the gate, or to have a game never really get off the ground and flying in it's own right. But it's entirely another thing when you destroy something that's doing what it was intended to do. It was as successful as any MMO had been before it. To take a game that was doing fine on it's own and trow away everything that the players had built up in the game after being online for a couple years just to chase after the WoW $$$$ brought it's own reward. The game never ever recovered........EVER!  Yeah, biggest failure. They ignored one of the biggest rules in life.

    If it ain't broke........

     

  • kanezfankanezfan Member UncommonPosts: 482

    swtor

  • lokiboardlokiboard Member UncommonPosts: 229

    The thing about loving or hating something is that it shows you care............

  • IcewhiteIcewhite Member Posts: 6,403

    I'd be more interested in what sort of things really make a player hate a company forever.  What creates a Lifetime Troll?

    I've seen the Bad Expansion blamed for "destroying" one game or other, several times.  Many examples of expectation vs. reality failures with new games.

    Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.

  • thamighty213thamighty213 Member UncommonPosts: 1,637

    Originally posted by GeezerGamer

    SWG gets my vote.

    It's one thing to never get a game out of the gate, or to have a game never really get off the ground and flying in it's own right. But it's entirely another thing when you destroy something that's doing what it was intended to do. It was as successful as any MMO had been before it. To take a game that was doing fine on it's own and trow away everything that the players had built up in the game after being online for a couple years just to chase after the WoW $$$$ brought it's own reward. The game never ever recovered........EVER!  Yeah, biggest failure. They ignored one of the biggest rules in life.

    If it ain't broke........

     

    I'd have to agree although its title could yet be taken by SWTOR )(not that its a MMO IMO which is where it falls short) now just picture the scene when swtor announces in a years time that its at 450k subs that same figure SWG was at before the NGE and was deemed unaccetable.

     

    What say Lucasarts then I wonder.

  • nariusseldonnariusseldon Member EpicPosts: 27,775

    Originally posted by mmoguy43

    World of Warcraft because it changed all high budget MMOs into themeparks

    No. That is the success. Turn the genre into better GAMES.

  • VarkingVarking Member UncommonPosts: 542

    The biggest MMO failure is the players. We hype every game through the roof and then the developers can not deliver. As soon as X game launches and the players rose tinted glasses get removed, they bash the game to no other. If you like X game, you are either a blind fanboi or an idiot. If you dislike any game for any reason you are a troll. MMORPGs have the worst, most vocal, easily influenced player bases of any genre. Half of the people on sites like this bash games they have never even played, they just repeat what other players say. It is the truth. :)

  • FennrisFennris Member UncommonPosts: 277
    This thread just highlights how jaded and basically stupid so many mmo'ers are today. Swtor, disappointing or not, like it or not, is one of the more successful video games of all time.

    Tabula Rasa, AC2 or Horizons are 3 of the biggest failures that made it to release so far.
  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769

    Originally posted by Fennris

    This thread just highlights how jaded and basically stupid so many mmo'ers are today. Swtor, disappointing or not, like it or not, is one of the more successful video games of all time. Tabula Rasa, AC2 or Horizons are 3 of the biggest failures that made it to release so far.

    Yuppers, focused on the negative.

    How about how to have fun in a game that isn't perfect?

    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

    Epic Music:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1

    https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1

    Kyleran:  "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."

    John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."

    FreddyNoNose:  "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."

    LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"




  • GreyhooffGreyhooff Member Posts: 654

    The biggest mmo fail often becomes the most recent one.

    Old MMOs get forgotten, the latest big drop in subs always dominates the news.

    image

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