General Discussion

Just three pay to play MMOs that launched smoothly and succcessfully.

LOTRO is only one I can think of...even beta ran great. I prefer a much larger world though and wasn't my type of MMO...but I would say it launched smoothly. Although, it didn't seem like it had a lot of content at release, either.

All I want is three MMOs that launched smoothly...why? Because I'm thinking that almost every MMO that is launched as NOT launched smoothly. A MMO is released and tons of people are disappointed because of bugs/content/server issues...these are lame reasons, especially for a MMO that has just released. BUT, if you prove me wrong and show me three MMOs that have launched smoothly, then I may change my opinion on that.

SWG may have been good, but definitely did NOT launch smoothly

AC, UO, EQ did NOT launch smoothly either...and neither did WoW (although it was better than most). I don't remember DAOC launching very smoothly either.

My point, if I am right, is that MMOs in the past AND released in the future will have bugs/content/server issues. That includes, WAR, Aion and the other major waited for MMOs.

A common complaint I see with newly released MMOs is how bad the launch was. Well, guess what? Welcome to MMO launches...every MMO launch I've been in (except LOTRO less so, but even that had its problems) as not launched smoothly or filled with content.

Too high of expectations will ruin a MMO launch.

Now, all of that is my opinion and it could be wrong...so name me three p2p MMO launches that have launched smoothly and filled with content. I'm seriously interested in seeing how many p2p MMOs have launched really smoothly (includes how well servers run AND content of the game). If you can think of more than 3, go ahead and list them

The only ones that spring to mind are The Lord of The Ring's Online and Dark Age of Camelot but i don't know about EvE or City of Heroes, maybe they did.

I heard CoH had a good launch.  and I was in EVE beta and it was doing great, and then i started back up a little while after launch.  the only problem EVE had was the tutorial wasn't in depth enough, but thats hardly game breaking.

EVE was okay as there wasnt much complaints but a lower fanbase because ppl were converting from traditional mmorpgs to a sci-fi, sandboxy style mmog, so im guessing it was pretty smooth

I for one do not mind .. messy launches. Vanguard had a bad start but had potential, so i stayed on it. AoC had none so i stepped down.

That people have to high standards .. Might be but i still think that if a game attracts a person he will stick with it. For better or for worse.

Originally posted by mcharj11

The only ones that spring to mind are The Lord of The Ring's Online and Dark Age of Camelot but i don't know about EvE or City of Heroes, maybe they did.

I don't remember CoH's release (I remember being there, and I think it was good...but I don't remember how it was at all) and I wasn't there for Eve

DAOC did have problems as well...been a long time, forgot the server name...but my server was down and up and I kept getting rollbacks on my server.

I don't recall there being any serious issues with the EQ2 launch.

Also, I may be wrong, because I wasn't there, and didn't read too much about it at the time, but I have a sense that WoW's launch, while not smooth, did not have major issues with its game code, but with the unexpectedly huge interest in the game, resulting in massively overcrowded servers.  Thats a problem all MMOs should beg to have.

That really depends on your definition of 'smoothly' People have different tolerance levels for different problems. I do know expecting MMO launches NOT to go smoothly or companies that don't  even make an honest  attempt to make their launches smooth is a really really stupid thing to do. That's the problem here. Companies don't even seem to be trying in some cases and that's inexcusable.

City of Heroes had a VERY smooth launch.

The Lord of the Rings Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call and Everquest 2 were all pretty smooth from what I experienced.(I was there at launch for all four)  The industry widely considered all four of these as having a smooth launch also.