Now I want to start off saying that I am one of these people, who expect waaay too much from a MMO right away at launch. It obviously comes from my obsession with how much UO released at launch, however this blog will be about glitches and bugs.
I think the MMORPG community of today has gotten waay too crazy about a game releasing buggy, about a game releasing with lag, or server crashes.
Now I agree that a company should take all the steps to avoid this as much as possible in beta, however what ever happened to just being understanding and letting the devs fix things? And before you post back let me explain.
When UO and EQ were released, as well as other very early games. They were ALL very very original development, so naturally they all came with many bugs. Devs are not perfect, and making a MMORPG is much different then doing anything else. So for example I consider AoC original development for a MMORPG, so when I play it and its full of server crashes, bugs and lag...it really wont bother me one bit in terms of how much I like the game.
Now there are two sides to this. One I would call the LOTRO/WoW approach (i play both on and off with max lvls) and the other I could call the AoC/Shadowbane approach.
The first approach is to make a game where the engine and gamplay style based on previous MMORPG's, add some variations and minor additions. Then release it with minimal content, BUT completely polished with minimal bugs/lag/crash ect. - now this seems to be what most people are expecting, however they are expecting this with games that release with far more content then WoW/LOTRO/EQ2.
And of course the second approach trys to give a completely new game, with new ideas, new gameplay elements, and a different approach to MMORPG's completely. Usually these games dont get the best reviews from "professionals" or gamers due to bugs/lag/crashes w/e....and people seem to think that making a innovative game is just as easy as following a path.
All im saying is give new games that actually try to innovate a chance if they release with problems. All the best MMO's and most original have been released with tons of bugs and difficulties BECAUSE THEY ARE UNIQUE!
User Comments
agreed 100% :) Bugs can be annoying but i can live with a handful of them without calling a game or it's release a failure. In fact i'd rather have some innovative gameplay than the 12323563th WoW-clone with a major IP. Good post.
As a professional software engineer for the past 25 years, I'll offer this observation: the reason that products are buggy today is because nobody complained when they were buggy yesterday. This has been continuing for as long as I've been building products. Customers are putting up with buggy software.
I don't endorse whining, but I do like the fact that customers are not putting up with buggy products any longer. At least in this space. There are ways to build products with very few defects, but the industry as a whole has not made that a priority. So we get defective software.
NICE!! You spoke like a true experienced online gamer! (Though I wouldn't know much about that)(I'm a newbie)=)
<Bugs can be annoying but ...
Yeah I agree with u there, bugs can be annoying
I agree.
I want to agree with this... but I can't. If a game is annoying because of bugs/crashes, much less unplayable a good portion of the time, then I don't care if it has an innovative design. I have better things to do with my time then to struggle through an UnFun experience. Once I find an MMO that doesn't have these problems I'll grow roots there, establish guilds and friends, gather items and experience, and will almost certainly never go back.
Now, if the game is Fun despite the flaws I'll certainly forge ahead. I'd suggest that developers not gamble on that, however.
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