General Discussion

Ultima Online (when it first came out)

Quake 1

Bioshock

Now all these people shouting EQ1 and WoW.. We better have some serious 3 year +vets in here, because the hype machine can ONLY dissapoint within the first 2 months of release BEFORE they have had time to fix everything up and get all pretty for ya..

So how many of you guys ACTUALLY beta'd EQ1 or at least pre ordered the original game back in 99? I didn't but I was told it wasn't really all roses and dandelions either..

I think we will ALL look back at some of these games we deem "failures" and when their populations start to get comfortable and rise we may say "hmm.. guess it wasn't THAT bad.."

Originally posted by Briansho

....

Quake 1

...

Still my favorite game of all time. 

Originally posted by Gajari

As previously said, AC1, DAoC, and WoW. And also as previously said, WoW actually exceeded my expectations... until I hit end-game. ;)

For me, it was EQ & WOW. I haven't got to the end game of WOW yet so I am still enjoying it a great deal.

However, I do understand that all good things come to an end and there is no reason I would enjoy ONE mmorpg forever. I am pretty prepared to move on to something else after I hit end-game for WOW.

Although I do expect that will take at least months if not a year because

a) I played to level my main to 70 and get the crafting epics & epic mounts. That alone would take time.

b) I haven't experience all the zones/quests via my main. For example, I never hit silverpine in my 10-20 level (i did that in ghostland). So I plan to at least do 1 (if not more) alts.

c) WOTLK probably will add another 6 months of play.

No game last forever but mmorpg last a LOT longer than single player games (like i spent less than 10 hours on Halo3 and I am done).

Most have there pros and cons in that somes things were good and others things blew. But for the most part my answer would have to be no.

The only MMO games that met the hype for me was

Everquest 1 (because it was my first one and didn't really know what to expect)

City of Heroes (That game met my expectations and more, I still play it)

World of Warcraft (put a big smile on my face, and still does!)

The most disapointing MMO that I thought would be awesome!!  I was expecting so much out of it but it really didn't deliver all it said it could do was "Horizons: Empire of Istaria"

Do you guys remember back in the day when it first started coming out and they said that they would have demon and angel classes in the game?  And Vampires too!  I was all excited, then the game came out and they didn't have any of those classes, and they STILL DON'T!!  I still played that game and maxxed out a dark elf healer and carpenter.  But I was so looking forward to that angel/demon and vampire war!!

You guys let me know if you remember that stuff!  That was back in the day!

Originally posted by gillvane1

Here's some games I waited on when they were hyped. Shadowbane. I thought it was going to be badass because you could build cities, and tear them down, and capture territory, and there were so many classes. Sounds like fun right? But the graphics turned out to be terrible, the point n click movement was awful, and getting your city torn down turns out not to be much fun when you have to grind to build it again.

I thought Vanguard would be fun, more of an old school game like EQ. But big worlds with no players, and goofy single player content, like Diplomacy in what is supposed to be a group oriented game made no sense, and it turned out not to be very fun. Nice world though. One thing I did was run across  the entire world at level 5. That is not easy to do. It also sucked to find out that once I was half way across the world in a low level area there were no trainers for my class, and I was supposed to go back home to train. WTF?

Dark and Light sounded fun. Again, another PvP opportunity with the ability to take over territory, and cool abilities like riding your shield down the side of a mountain like a sled. But, that turned out to be a complete borefest with an utter lack of content.

On the other hand, City of Heroes was fun. I waited on this one to arrive, and finally loaded it up, and what do you know it actually delivered! It wasn't deep enough to keep your attention for a long time, but the initial game, including character creation which rocked, was very, very fun. Good community too, with lots of roleplayers. Apparently it's easy to get into Superhero character.

 

But the point is, MOST of the time, the expectations don't meet the hype. So, without dwelling on those that didn't meet your expectations, which MMORPGs actually delivered the goods, and lived up to the hype when you finally got to play them?

Many of us are looking forward to AoC and WAR, and of course we hope the experience will be more like my City of Heroes experience, and less like my Vanguard experience.

 

MMORPG Maker

Funny you should bring this up. I was just thinking about how much of this industry has morphed in BS. Nine-tenths of every new release is hype and the remaining tenth is questionable sustance. Take for example, Pirates of the Burning Seas. That game was hyped, in no small part by this website, as being an innovative, creative and graphically beautiful game. As it turned out, there was NOTHING new about it. It's a knock-off of Voyage Century, albeit with better graphics and no bots (that I was aware of)  with a crafting system that isn't even as good as VC (plus everthing is instanced, even things that don't have to be).  

I shelled out $50 for the game and only played for about 3  weeks before I got bored with it.  I don't expect miracles in new games, especially ones that have predecessors.  However, I do expect improvements, better ways of doing things, especially when the game has been in developement for 6 years.  So after all the hype I expected a much more polished and innovative game than the one that was released.

 Ever since large corporations (or small ones that got large) started making games genuine innovation has gone down the tubes. Why? Because innovation involves a degree of financial risk that large gaming companies with anxious stockholders are unwilling to take. They reason, why mess around with something really new when the old ideas are making them millions? And with newbie gamers entering the market everyday (for who EVERYTHING is new) there is little motivation to change the basic business model.

That's why so many games, fundamentally,  look and/or play like some many others. It's also the reason for the hype, or as it's more commonly refered to - ADVERTISING. In the past, making money was obviously an incentive but creativity and innovation were the law. Now its ALL about making money and limiting risk with the predictable results we see today--sameness.

Along the same lines, there is a little known fact that gaming websites like this one, don't like to discuss. Namely, if they don't give positive and copius coverage to big game titles, they won't get the exclusive interviews with the devs that keeps peeps clicking on the sites weblink.

So my rule of thumb regarding hype and game releases is as follows: the level of hype surrounding a new release is inversely related to it's content, and, as always, buyer beware.

Originally posted by Vyeth

So how many of you guys ACTUALLY beta'd EQ1 or at least pre ordered the original game back in 99? I didn't but I was told it wasn't really all roses and dandelions either..

the best part of the game was interacting with the other players, bugs didnt matter at all

but again, EQ was not a hyped up game for me - so I cant include it

Since we are listing any and all games, I’m going to add:

• Diablo II
• Baldur's Gate, KotOR, Jade Empire
• HoMM 2 & 3
• Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
• Civilization IV

Originally posted by Nadia

 

Originally posted by Vyeth

So how many of you guys ACTUALLY beta'd EQ1 or at least pre ordered the original game back in 99? I didn't but I was told it wasn't really all roses and dandelions either..

I started playing EQ 3 months after launch -- July 1999

 

the best part of the game was interacting with the other players, bugs didnt matter at all

 

but again, EQ was not a hyped up game for me - so I cant include it

However, I played only a few years after release and i have to leave because I cannot stand the grinding. WOW fixes all that.