Dark & Light.  There can be no worse failure than that.

Let's take a terrain engine, ignore the licensing restrictions, tack some half-hearted combat systems in with cookie-cutter textures.  Then, let's write up a giant feature list of what everyone has been asking for all these years!  After delays and much backpedaling, let's release what we've got as a "preview" and then open pre-orders to suck $60 out of a few thousand people.

Oh yeah, that preview we said wasn't the game... yeah, that's the game, but we re-seeded the random terrain generation so it's got a whole new world!

Fortunately, I didn't fork out any cash for that pile... but I did get my hopes up quite a bit.  Oh well, now I know better than to ever bother trying to play an MMO when it opens.  If it's still there and not a ghost town 6 months after launch, it might be worth buying.  We'll see how Darkfall turns out...

I'd say vanguard because people actually thought it was going to be a quailty game.

Games like Mourning and DnL only scammed retarded people who couldn't tell an obvious shit-game even though it had a million and one signs.

AoC, it sux. Game except graphic has nothing to offer.

WAR, my own overhyping. Still do not know why I played it. Maybe it was like "FFS, there have to be something cool, lets try again"

I searched the forum and was surprised to not find it so I have to say it:

The Matrix Online

I think that speaks for itself. No explanations needed.

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just thought of another loser. ETERNAL LANDS, lesser known than MXO but just as horrible!

Ok I've inspired myself. Just for fun, let me throw down a Worst of the worst poll full of games I think bombed big time. I know Eternal Lands isn't on the poll, but I was limited to 10 games, and I know I could list a lot more. I do believe, however, that some of the games that I included in the list make Eternal Lands look revolutionary in its design and gameplay.

Obviously Tabula Rasa...one of the top 5 most expensive MMO's ever to develope (over $100 million), it hadly reached 100k subscribers after a year and was shut down.

Don't understand why its not on the list lol...nothing else comes close. AoC is actually rising in subs right now.

Everquest 2. It never managed to do anything EQ1 didn't do, the EQ2 UI is worse than the one EQ has and the raids in EQ2 are a joke when compared to EQ1.

EQ2 should have never ever been made, it was a huge mistake on SoE's part, EQ2 still doesn't manage to have more players than EQ1. The only thing is does is give people the wrong impression that because it's a sequel it's somehow better or more advanced, it's not, EQ2 was a waste of time and didn't help the EQ franchise at all.

Blizzard won't make the mistake to make WoW2, EQ2 is the red headed stepchild of the MMO industry. It's was an error on SoE's part to think that EQ1 players would migrate to EQ2, they didn't. In my opinion, EQ2 is the biggest mistake in MMO history, far worse than SWG's NGE.

You sure you weren't playing WoW?  That's what I immediatly thought of when I saw the title of this thread. 

EQII is great, and not childishly cartoonish like WoW  .  Been playing EQII since the second day it came out, and it has pleased me no end.

 After reading every post in this thread and deliberating for some time I have come to the conclusion that it would have to be World of Warcraft. As many people have pointed out there have been no inovative ideas brought to the MMO world and the ones that have arrived are ridiculed for not being like WoW. The ones that do end up being decent get ridiculed for being to much like WoW. If World of Warcraft would never have happened the MMO industry would have a much different landscape, not one devoid of inovation and inventiveness. It would still be an exciting industry. Instead we get the same rehashed games over and over for fear of not being as big as WoW. The games that are too different from WoW end up failing because they are to different. I will state that there are exceptions to the rule but WoW has single-handedly destroyed MMO's for years to come.

As another poster has pointed out almost every MMOer has played WoW, but the people who play WoW have played nothing else. There could not be a bigger disaster than that.

Vanguard.

At the time, it was the most expensive MMO ever developed (by a wide margin iirc).  Like someone said, there were a lot of people expecting it to be the MMO messiah.

Turned out it wasn't the MMO messiah. It was a terrible, TERRIBLE  WoW/EQ2/Feces hybrid,

And the resulting fury of the community towards the president/promoter dude (whose name I don't remember) was staggering. Especially when the development company was bought by sony,  and the  dude who everyone already hated didn't even show up to the "thanks for your hard work guys, you're all fired" meeting.

Fired employees flooded the forums to give us all the dirt and goings-down of the disastrous development of Vanguard.

That was some priceless drama.

I had a bunch of fun with EQ2.  Notice the topic is "Biggest Disaster".  Im kind of torn on my vote because I would like to say Vanguard, but from what I hear, Vanguard is actually doing okay now. 

I guess SWG after the cu would get my vote, because it seems like SOE had gold but threw it all away.

There was an incident on my DaoC-server when a database got corrupted and ALOT of characters lost their items. The backup must have failed, because they could not even do a rollback. :(

I would give it to SOE and SWG.    They totally borked an awesome game, lost tons of subs and many people to this day refuse to play any game ran by SOE.    That cost them so much, they may never recover.    I would like to add AC2, but even it pales in comparison to the SWG-NGE debacle.

Swg for changing a skill based game to linear progression 1 one patch nge whiping out entire character classes, items

 Mourning remembering a time when a reported developer insider came on these fourms and bashed all the testers reminding them of NDA and fighting with folks in the fourms. While i get anyone can come on the fourms claiming to be anyone just the fact that occured was so weird

 D & L for the people that brought life time subs shortly after the mourning happening expecting a different outcome

 i think wish was a mistep it could of gone some where

noticed no one mentioned shadowbane?

This poll is absurd.

Darkfall hasn't even released yet and anyone who played beta will tell you it is far more ready than MOST MMO games they have played.  Darkfall will be fine.

SWG was successful for 3 years before they ruined it.  So it wasn't a total flop.

EQ 2 isn't a disaster.

Dark and Light should win this easily.

vanguard for sure is the biggest disaster for mmo's

it was supposed to be the holy grail of the mmo industry, saving all of us from the curse of the wow demon infecting every other game with its disease

instead we got a broken pos lol

and i laughed see'ing darkfall voted highly as the biggest disaster when it hasnt even launched yet lol wtf people

Originally posted by Fibsdk

Originally posted by Midnitte

 

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Originally posted by Kasmos
Whatever trolls voted Darkfall, you're pathetic. It's not even out yet and you're calling it a disaster?
 
Lol, I know your butts must hurt being wrong about it being "vaporwarzesss lulz" but get over it and get a life.

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Sounds like your trolling the trolls.
The reason I think darkfall is a disaster is because the gameplay (from watching the videos) just seems to be ganking and trolling people by running around after them swinging weapons. If the finished product is alot better, then obviously that becomes an invalid point.

 

 

Let's get a few things straight.

You watched the videos and determined the game is crap. Good for you.

The game is not aimed at you obviously. There is nothing indicating it was ever aimed at you or people like you and your playstyle. The fact is there are people out there that want to play this game regardless of how you or anybody feels about it.

Unless you can show me an interview or some hard facts that the developers were trying to make a game with over 500k subscribers then there is no merrit in any of your bull. Believe it or not there are MMo companies out there that doesn't aim at millions of subscribers. KingsIsle Studios and their Wizard101 would be one of those companies. They are shocked right now they have a million accounts regardless what percentage is actually paying a sub or access passes.

It's all about how much money they have devoted to making it and running it.  They can easily be aiming at a 100k subs or less and still hitting the mark they aimed at. Because YOU think they should be competing with WoW does not make it so. Remember this is a small indie company that doesn't have the financial backup of bigger brand names. As such i think they are going to hit the mark they were aiming at.

 

That's funny. In such a rush to play fanboi protector of Darkfalls' virtue, you ranted and raved about all sorts of things EXCEPT for what he actually posted.

Take the blinders off and read before you rant next time.

hey remember that time when the hyped mmorpg failed horribly after launch because the game was actually a total mess and was missing a shit ton of things they stated would be in it....

or that time that other mmorpg did the same thing, or the time before that

good times

I voted for NGE SWG.  I suppose DnL was a huge cock-up too, but it didn't effect me personally as I had absolutely no interest in the game anyway.   Vanguard was massive failure too, lots of people (especially old-school EQers) thought that game was going to be the second coming. 

What happened to SWG, however, did effect me and any game publish that can alienate the vast majority of its subscribers and still has people complaining about it 3.5 years after the fact has to be doing something remarkably wrong! 

Go SOE! 

No.  Really.  Just go...

First off putting MMO's that are doing Ok on your list pretty much makes your poll useless.

Despite your opinion that some MMO's are less worthy than others, how about sticking to your subject and only put the canceled ones up, those are the true failures unlike most on your list.

You missed "Gods and Hero's"  from Perpetual which was canceled right before release.   Daron Stinnett and his crowd most certainly had the poison touch when came to MMO's.

My vote goes to Hellgate London.  I expected a lot from the developers but they produced a pile of crap.  Very disappointing.

Originally posted by anakinsella

Going to just say the obvious: You do realize only two of those games are failures right? The rest are still alive and kicking and are in NO WAY failures. If you want to call them failures, I'd love you to go say that to all the thousands of people still playing each one and enjoying the hell out of them and their game-world.

So between Dark and Light and Hellgate London? I'd say Dark and Light was more of a failure since Hellgate at least saw a "AAA" retail release and had pretty decent marketing.

yeah, that's why i picked Dark and Light as well! and most people are right the poll was flawed due to the lack of actually failed games as opposed to just games that declined or are hated on by others.
 

My top flops?

SWG - How could any company, even one as clueless and exploitive of its customers as Sony, screw up an MMO based on one of the greatest possible IPs for an MMO?  Hard to consider anything worse handled than SWG.

DDO - Again, such a huge IP and they release a single player game with a 3D lobby and call it an MMO.

AoC - So much hype, so much talk from the DEV team and so very, very little delivered.  Game launches to huge audience and in barely a month is reduced to irrelevence.

Vanguard - this game exemplifies the MMO epic fail in every way.  Total and complete /fail.

Honorable mention:

LotRO - A stable, well made and well crafted game that is so mindlessly boring it is hard to fathom playing for long.  Again, great IP - and a great world - but with all the claims from turbine about 'millions of characters' and all that marketting BS I have to consider it a flop even if it is likely finacially doing well.  Turbine made this game to be a WoW and barely got it above the bottom clutter of MMOs.  While the best game at its core (at least stucturally if not play wise) I consider it a flop because it so clearly has not acheived teh status that Turbine spent that first year trying to make people think it had achieved.

Add in just about any MMO since WoW really, all trying to swing for the fence and striking out looking.  The industry needs to suffer massive company failures and start again, it really has no chance to go anywhere else but from flop to flop anymore given the way things are in the genre.

Though there have been a few major flops in the last couple of years I still think SWG was the biggest disaster of them all.

That game had so much potential and was put together perfectly as far as how to make a true community work together and they flushed it down the toilet.

Originally posted by AgtSmith

LotRO - A stable, well made and well crafted game that is so mindlessly boring it is hard to fathom playing for long.  Again, great IP - and a great world - but with all the claims from turbine about 'millions of characters' and all that marketting BS I have to consider it a flop even if it is likely finacially doing well.  Turbine made this game to be a WoW and barely got it above the bottom clutter of MMOs.  While the best game at its core (at least stucturally if not play wise) I consider it a flop because it so clearly has not acheived teh status that Turbine spent that first year trying to make people think it had achieved.

Now that is a contradiction. How can it being doing well financially and also a flop except you define a flop as what you want it to be.

Like it or not, Lotro is not a flop. Its new xpack is critically acclaimed and even voted as such on THIS SITE.

Dark and Light hands down closely followed by Fury.

Tabula Rasa is not really a flop community wise, I'd say NCsoft and Garriott deserve the titles of flops. One won't be bothered to support a disapointment and one couldn't be bothered to pay attention to their game. TR was a nice appealing game that was handled horribly. :/