99.9% of all MMORPG's released are nothing less than a complete letdown...

But if I had to pick just one, I'd have to go with the choice to NOT go with 40K when producing the Warhammer MMO.

Originally posted by Sithos

Wish online.  Promised a ton of new stuff that would open up the genre, add new ideas and such. But died like 2 weeks into CB.

I'll second Wish due to cancellation, and also Ultima X: Odyssey, due to cancellation.

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Originally posted by John.A.Zoid
When the NGE was released for SWG or CC for Planetside.

When both of my fave games were ruined it broke my heart. I was so close to both of these mmorpgs and I thought they were amazing and just so sad when they were ruined. I've been looking for something since 2005 and still havn't found anything.

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Even the CU was a let down, how else can developers cause you to lose faith? By completely changing the dam game.

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Originally posted by Respit
E&B, and MCO.

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I'd have to say Horizons. 

EQ1 - "the game starts at lvl XXX".  Ok.. I got to that level, so..erm, where is this magic game?  Oh, now its lvl XXX + 5.  Maybe it was my server but no one was doing any content because of this stuid idea that you had to be lvl XXX before the game got good. This mentality followed over into WoW and now seems standard - race to the top, don't even try to have fun on the way.

Originally posted by Grandis

 The cancelation of the UO sequels.  

 

AoC, VG, WAR  all came out with much hype, mostly community built.  I was not suprised at all when I first logged on to these games, I had tried them and cut through the hype.  All 3 are doing just fine now despite nay sayers.  they have healthy populations to substain and grow a MMO.  Some ppl like them, some don't.   Some people even tried them before coming to conclusions, and even retried them later in release to see how they have grown.  If you are still making judgments based on release from a game that is over 6 mo old,  well I am sorry.  Be thankful that your parents held out on judging your ugly ass till ya grew a lil bit.  If you play a MMO on release then gripe, either you are a noob, or you can not learn from experiance.  If I try a game at release ( i don't) and it is buggy, I know that it will be a different game in 3 months, 6 months, a year.  All you that take snap shot of release and hold that as your judgement must have not played MMO's long, or just like being pig headed.  I would recomend ya'll try these hyped games again, and maybe they have some thing you are looking for now.

-G

 

Trying to say what transpired with Vanguard or Conan are the way things just go when a game releases is ridiculous because it just isn't true.  Yes...at launch games have issues but what happened with those two was far and beyind the norm.  Even ones that had issues at release such as WoW (yes I said WoW...get so tired of people that try to say WoW had a great launch) found other ways to keep people around and the fundamental aspects of the game plus doing things like offering free time kept quite a few around to grin and bear the growing pains while a company fixes the problems.  Not everyone that says a game was dissappointing to them is necessarily referring to the same old bs that we've come accustomed to with a newly released game.

Besides the main reason many quite AoC had nothing to do with the bugs.  Had to do with things like nothing to do at lvl 80 that took a ridiculous short amount of time to attain, a garbage crafting system that was so simple it makes games like WoW seem challenging, worst raiding material ever, no 80 content PvE wise even available besides the "raids" in the game, allowing item duping to go on for months, etc. You could write a freaking theses on that damn game. I know they've made improvements but that in no way makes what happened with that game acceptable nor does it equate to being coined "the norm" for a new mmorpg release.

Glad you may like that game but just because someone else doesn't that has no bearing on how little or long they may have played mmos.  It's called having opinions and like butts we all have them.

I used to think the biggest let down was Star Wars Galaxies NGE, but now its got to be Stargate Worlds.

Originally posted by Sneakers05

Yea i was kinda crushed when they cancled Gods and heroes, i was accepted in the beta for it.

While there will be no "Gods and Heroes" game, folks can still watch the movie "Gods and Monsters"; I think the two are related if I am not wrong.

Biggest letdown for me was...

1.  DnL

2.  AOC

3. WAR

Hello KItty

Originally posted by JGMIII 

Again as a new player you have no idea what you're talking about!

Every game releases unfinished and needing time to fill out months after release.

Please don't bring up DnL the game was a scam and has nothing to do with this discussion.

Call the way MMOs work Idiotic all you want but that's how it is. Keep playing WoW and living in a dream world but MMos are not easy to develop and take time to develop after release.

Just because your game has been around 5 years and is already filled with content and has bug squashed doesnt mean you can expect every new game to release that way.

Again just shows what kind of sickness WoW has brought to this genre, If it wasnt for small niche games players like You with your way of thinking and Ezmode wow would have ruined the genre totally.

What do you mean I am a new player and just don't understand?  I've been playing mmos since ultima online was released so I've seen the worst this genre has to offer.  Just because I think your theories are based on flawed assumptions doesn't mean I'm not experienced with mmos prior to wow.  In fact your entire theory is based on the assumption that the majority of the mmo populace are entire noobs, which I doubt they are in the manner you think.   Just because you think it is acceptable to pay for broken and unfinished products in no way makes everyone else uneducated.  It just means you have lower standards than the rest of the market. 

I respect wow for being a solid product and do not blame blizzard for the short commings that other companies suffer from.  Nor do I blame consumers for not lowering their standards so as to give companies that failed to do their basic job another chance...  and give up a better experience in their former game... and to pay for that privilege on top of that. 

The market was already heading towards more casual gameplay long before wow was even a thought, so it was inevitable for that market to expand in that direction.   It isn't a sickness as you seem to think.  In fact blizzard helped raise the standards of the genre and I'm glad they did.  It is just so crazy that you are actually suggesting the genre reverses momentum to actually support bad releases in the hopes that somehow something changes, which hasn't happened in the genre for a very very long time.  Honestly that is what you are saying.  Calling blizzard bad for showing that games can be polished and cheerleading for people to give money to companies that release unfinished games.  What kind of backwards logic is that?

The only reason warcraft is so dominating is because the rest of the market is so damn weak in comparison.  There is nothing stoping companies from making successful non-casual oriented games except themselves.  Had any of those other companies that you trip over yourself to deflect responsibility from, put half of the effort into making their games polished as they did hyping them we wouldn't even be having this conversation.  Why?  Because if just one of them had released a well designed and polished game it would show that the market is far more diverse than people seem to think it is.  Lets not say it is impossible either, because a few companies have done released polished games.  Turbine, NCsoft, Blizzard, etc. 

Blizzard does have some unbreakable strangle hold on the market and there are more than enough people ready for something new that another game can make an impressive spalsh.  The problem is no one else seems willing to go that extra mile. 

I have 4 major letdowns:

1) AC2. Nothing like AC. Pure garbage.

2) DDO. WTF??? Nothing else needs to be said.

3) Vanguard. Not a successor to EQ. Not even close.

4) WAR. Its like Mythic wanted to prove to everyone that games could have less depth, and take less skill than WoW. Well done, Mythic you succeeded in showing us your fail power. Tthe ToA expansion already convinced. You really didn't have to go out and fail again.

Originally posted by brostyn

I have 4 major letdowns:

 

1) AC2. Nothing like AC. Pure garbage.

2) DDO. WTF??? Nothing else needs to be said.

3) Vanguard. Not a successor to EQ. Not even close.

4) WAR. Its like Mythic wanted to prove to everyone that games could have less depth, and take less skill than WoW. Well done, Mythic you succeeded in showing us your fail power. Tthe ToA expansion already convinced. You really didn't have to go out and fail again.

How was AC2 garbage? That still is to this day, my favorite I've ever played. Granted I didn't play the original, and that's what I always hear from former AC players... Prior to the game being ruined by the level cap being raised and other retarded changes, AC2 was one of the most fun games I've ever played.

To me the biggest MMORPG failure was Age of Conan. Way too much hype, way too many problems, and way too long to fix them. AoC had problems, new direction with a new man who got things working. Also, I would agree with WAR, it's not an awful game, but it wasn't what it was described as being.

Everquest 2 - I cannot stand to even spectate the game,

Everquest Planes of Power - The most hatred toward any expansion I could ever have ;)

Point blank id like to say, Fury.

Pvp only turned me off.

When you started, you would get your a$$ handed to you.

The combat system was iffy.

Not to mention its eventual death.

Originally posted by Mazin

Originally posted by IVlonarch

WAR was a pretty big let down.

Darkfall was just the worst launch in gaming history, dont think many people actually believed DF would be nething.

 

Dark and Light was far worse than DF

If you're simple-minded enough to believe either game was going to be good, then yes it would be a huge let-down. The writing was on the wall months and years in advance that these games would be lacking.

Originally posted by Daffid011

The only reason warcraft is so dominating is because the rest of the market is so damn weak in comparison.  There is nothing stoping companies from making successful non-casual oriented games except themselves.  Had any of those other companies that you trip over yourself to deflect responsibility from, put half of the effort into making their games polished as they did hyping them we wouldn't even be having this conversation.  Why?  Because if just one of them had released a well designed and polished game it would show that the market is far more diverse than people seem to think it is.  Lets not say it is impossible either, because a few companies have done released polished games.  Turbine, NCsoft, Blizzard, etc. 

Blizzard does have some unbreakable strangle hold on the market and there are more than enough people ready for something new that another game can make an impressive spalsh.  The problem is no one else seems willing to go that extra mile. 

There are a couple reasons Warcraft is dominating, and it isn't because the other games are "weak." Unfinished and weak aren't the same thing, WoW wasn't finished at launch either.  One reason is simple: it is that WoW is, well, simple.  That made it appealing to a large segment that were turned off by EQ and UO.  The second reason is that, relative to other simple games, it had a substantial head start.  When you are the only (simple) game in town for a substantial amount of time, and are pulling in tons of money from subscriptions, you build a lead that very few companies will have the resources to close before having to release their product and get a revenue stream going.

Companies like Funcom and Mythic simply didn't have access to the kind of funding that would allow them to produce a product as polished as WoW, at least not with any substantial amount of content -- that isn't to say that both games didn't make poor design decisions as well, but a certain amount of poor decision making isn't the cause of all the things that were wrong at release.  Many were just the inevitable results of a game having to release when it needed more development dollars, rather than when it was ready.

As for your list of companies that released polished games, come on.  Did you play DDO, LOtRO, CoH/CoV, Tabula Rasa, Guild Wars, all at their launches?  DDO was not that polished.  LOtRO was only polished because there was barely anything to it, and no matter how much you polish a turd....  City of Heroes was unfinished and pretty dang boring when it first came out, CoV was better, but it wasn't really a launch, it was an expansion benefitting from the mistakes of CoH and the revenue CoH had generated.  Tabula Rasa, well, I don't need to discuss that one.  Guild Wars is interesting, but is such a fundamentally different game, both in terms of presentation and revenue model, that I am not sure it even belongs in a conversation about the WoW market. 

So really the only company on your list with a *strong* argument that it has launched a polished game is Blizzard, and even that wasn't anywhere near as polished as a lot of revisionist historians on these forums seem to think it was.

As for whether anyone is willing to go the extra mile to break the stranglehold, BioWare has the funding, they have the talent, and I am pretty sure if LucasArts stays out of their way they have the will, so here's to hoping.

Tough, such a long list.

I'd like to say Warhammer because the powers of EA meets Mythic should have been an epic combo to compete /w blizzard, but I think the game will eventually get better.

SWG is a major let down because SoE ruined it by changing the game mechanics all together.

AC2, Vanguard, and DnL come to mind also.

when it comes to a let down, I would say SWG could have been a great sandbox mmo ,if  the enhancements were done right. That would be the biggest let down so far and MMO history is still going it has not stopped. When we get to the point of MMo's not ever existing, we can sit down write articles and posts, on the biggest failures and biggest successes. Till then i have no great let downs or dissapointments.

Originally posted by luciusETRUR

Originally posted by brostyn

I have 4 major letdowns:

 

1) AC2. Nothing like AC. Pure garbage.

2) DDO. WTF??? Nothing else needs to be said.

3) Vanguard. Not a successor to EQ. Not even close.

4) WAR. Its like Mythic wanted to prove to everyone that games could have less depth, and take less skill than WoW. Well done, Mythic you succeeded in showing us your fail power. Tthe ToA expansion already convinced. You really didn't have to go out and fail again.

 

How was AC2 garbage? That still is to this day, my favorite I've ever played. Granted I didn't play the original, and that's what I always hear from former AC players... Prior to the game being ruined by the level cap being raised and other retarded changes, AC2 was one of the most fun games I've ever played.

To me the biggest MMORPG failure was Age of Conan. Way too much hype, way too many problems, and way too long to fix them. AoC had problems, new direction with a new man who got things working. Also, I would agree with WAR, it's not an awful game, but it wasn't what it was described as being.

After playing AC, then playing AC2 its like driving a Mercedes, then downgrading to a pinto. Sure, if you're going around walking, then a pinto is going to be quite the upgrade.

There is a reason AC2 failed. I know you enjoyed, and I don't wish to upset you. I'm happy that you enjoyed it for a time. I didn't.

For me it was AoC

I cant understand for the life of me why people actually are listing Darkfall. Anyone with a shread of common sense could see from an early stage that DF was going to be a big let down for the majority of "sandbox" fans, in turn making it not such a let down because you should have already known. Anyone who actually looked at the forums  one time could see countless threads pointing out many red flags.

I'll be surprised if nobody has mentioned this.

Fury, was probably he biggest disapointment for me. I actually payed $50 for it, sadly all I have to blame is myself   : (

Originally posted by HDomni

I'll be surprised if nobody has mentioned this.

Fury, was probably he biggest disapointment for me. I actually payed $50 for it, sadly all I have to blame is myself   : (

I was excited for Fury, kind of, but then I played beta and realized the entire game was trash. Had there been no open beta, I might be in the same boat (sort of). I didn't think it was the new best MMO, but I thought it would be a fun, fast-paced PvP game. Fury wasn't hyped, and Fury wasn't expected to be great, that is why it is not a let down.

AoC, WAR, Vanguard, etc. are all examples of hyped up games that didn't deliver early as expected. Are they good games today? AoC has made great advances, but the release and the few months following were just terrible and so the stigma sticks. Just like with Fury, but Fury was just a horrible game altogether..

Definitely WAR....yes, I am currently playing it, I actually don't find it to be a terrible game, it's just, I have been a fan of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k for a while now, way before I had even heard of the MMO.... I just expected so much more having such a great lore to back it up....talk about a let down......but, I do enjoy the game, it's just not what I expected...

Same goes for AoC though....the lore is soooo rich, and the game falls sooooo short of what it could be...

Star wars , dungeons and dragons and lord of the rings, have the most potential to dominate teh MMO market, larget fan bases, pakced with lore, and yet, they are 3 of the most sub par mmos out there.

Star wars is getting  a second pass, and the other 2 need to have the same thing done for them as well.