Great article. I have to say the entry on Jack Emmert's statement regarding micro-transactions seems more of a case of foot in mouth than an actual 'blunder' such as printing false advertising on a package.

Quoted from the article - "..."Micro-transactions are the biggest bunch of nonsense," Emmert said. According to a rather detailed rundown of the event presented by the folks at Massively, Emmert explained how he liked to pay a single fee and not worry about it. He even pointed out that Pardo’s World of Warcraft, the most successful game in this genre, didn’t have them..." From this quote, I am getting the impression that Jack is merely expressing his own personal distaste for the particular strategy of utilizing micro-transactions either in addition to, or in place of utilizing purely subscription based models.

I think the fact that he has, shall we say, obviously seen the light - despite his personal feelings -and repented of his statement, shows me that he may have learned something from handing over the tightly held reins of the Cities of franchise to NC Soft/Paragon Studios. Regardless of what a developer might feel, sometimes trying to make a world tightly molded in their own personal vision can prove alienating to the player base. Since NC Soft took over, they have given us many things that we only dreamed about before. Players begged for years for new costume options, emotes to enhance the 'change' of costumes, fun new emotes, and many other 'fun' features - and now they are available for sale. I personally have purchased several (Wedding, Mac Items Pack (Valkyrie), Magic, Good vs Evil), and most on more than one account.

I think the direction of giving the players what they want (within reason) that the Cities have taken since the change in owndership has been nothing but positive and giving the players things that DO NOT affect game play and are just for 'fun' cannot hurt those who want to spend the extra entertainment funds this way. Any game can benefit from micro-transactions as long as they are handled properly and do not allow those with money to spare to buy superiority at the expense of those who cannot afford to constantly buy per-transaction upgrades.

I think I'd have to put Mythic high on the list.....and I'm a mythic fanboy.

Taking their reputation, and the Warhammer IP...touting a PvP/RvR game.....and they didn't even include a frontiers RvR type play to the game until beta testers screamed about it.  Keep takes and RvR lakes were added in as an afterthought.

Seriously...what MoMo decided that an RvR frontier wasn't needed in WAR?????  How could it possibly take a screaming fanbase screaming EPIC FAIL to realize that you may have made a mistake by leaving out the one feature that singled you out as a game to be reckoned with?

We all see the flawed result.  PvP/RvR added in as an after thought never works.  It needs to be designed in from the beginning.

I think that if the frontier style RvR had been part of the core design from the beginning, that Mythic wouldn't be having half the problems that they have now.

Instead they were so scared of copying DAOC's success that they tried to do an end run around it....but that DAOC success was the only thing they had going for them to begin with.

That's got to be almost as much of a sin as NGE or anytime Smedley and Tasos open their mouths in public....

Great article!!

Totally agree about SWG.... i was playing during the change.

I remember SOE saying it was what the people wanted, as in the players.

Best worst excuse ever. At least... so far.  =)

I generally agree with the list.  I think Jack Emmett's comments on micro-transactions, and the subsequent furore, have to do as much with the visceral dislike many MMO gamers have for the very concept of micro-transations.  This was always going to be a hot button topic, and anything Jack said about it was going to make waves.  (Personally, I'm OK with MTs for fluff alongside a subscription, or as an optional part of a F2P game, but tha'ts neither here nor there.)

My personal "PR FAIL" pick would have been the first two words in "Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa".  Tying an MMO so closely to one "auteur"'s brand was a complete mistake, especially given how little time and interest Garriott actually had in the game.  When he left, as he was inevitably going to do, the game couldn't last much longer.  

(None of this is to say the game didn't have other glaring flaws too that justified its cancellation, but it stands out to me as something that should have been planned for and thought about before the box was ever printed.) 

I think a similar things happened with WAR to a lesser extent-Mark Jacobs was treated as some sort of magical totem that was going to miraculously protect the game from the realities of the market, so when he left, it felt emotionally like a more significant event than it otherwise should have.

Originally posted by Wizardry

 There was one more that stood out in my mind,but it has been too long to remember what game it was.Some game offered a large cash prize and never came through with it.

 

 

 

 

 

I believe it was called "Advent Rising."  My ex-husband played it...for about two hours total.

EDISON, N.J., April 26, 2005 – Gamers now have one million more reasons to anticipate the May 31 launch of Advent Rising, as Majesco Entertainment Company (NASDAQ: COOL ), an innovative provider of diversified products and content for digital entertainment platforms , today revealed the details of its “Race to Save Humanity” million dollar play and win contest for its highly anticipated sci-fi action video game. The contest is available only on the Xbox® video game system from Microsoft.

Not only was the game unplayable - the mechanics were the screwiest I have ever seen in a game - but the reason they got away with not paying that million dollars was because of the fact that (if I remember correctly) the items one had to obtain in order to win the million bucks were not in the game!

Definitely in the top 5 list of blunders for a non-MMO.

Originally posted by dwyrin

Instead of looking at what not yet released mmo's may have done poorly in some press release, your time would have been better spent taking an indepth look at why those mmo's that have been released lately, have not held up to all the hype.  Now, you glimpsed into this with your brieft mention of AoC, and that was well done.  That being said, you could have done much more.  Furthermore, games like warhammer would, and should, make such a list as a lesson to future developers on how easy it is to go wrong during implimentation, regardless of how good an idea you start out with, and what this means in terms of how it will affect subscribers. 

Yup, if the name of the list was "top five MMOs that ddin't live up to the hype", then you'd be right. I was writing about mistakes made by developers specifically and quite obviously from the tone and content of the list, from a primarily PR perspective.

Originally posted by Samhael

Yes, excellent article, Dana!  I wish you had written it. 

I don't think anyone notices that the poster of the comment thread is generally NOT the author of the actual article.

No joke. I bet it'd cut down on 1/4 of the arguments around here if people would...well....read. lol!

As for the article Jon, as long as you had SOE at #1 I had no complaints about your list. It certainly tops my list and at #2 I would put Blizzards success with WoW. Some say it was a good thing, but I contend it is the focal point (along with human greed) that has caused a near one-sided view in the construction of an MMO by large gaming companies.

 Didn't read all the responses, and sorry to point this out Jon, ya know I luv ya man....

...but that picture on the front page for this article is C R E E P Y.

 lol

 Beau

Music to my ears Jon as I would content that the NGE may go down in the annals of the all time greatest blunder in MMO history, it's going to be hard to top.  I'm not sure how 'recent' that was though.  I didn't see anything about Warhammer in there though, surely there's something from that game that could be added. =P

Originally posted by Nifa

Originally posted by Wizardry

 There was one more that stood out in my mind,but it has been too long to remember what game it was.Some game offered a large cash prize and never came through with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I believe it was called "Advent Rising."  My ex-husband played it...for about two hours total.

EDISON, N.J., April 26, 2005 – Gamers now have one million more reasons to anticipate the May 31 launch of Advent Rising, as Majesco Entertainment Company (NASDAQ: COOL ), an innovative provider of diversified products and content for digital entertainment platforms , today revealed the details of its “Race to Save Humanity” million dollar play and win contest for its highly anticipated sci-fi action video game. The contest is available only on the Xbox® video game system from Microsoft.

Not only was the game unplayable - the mechanics were the screwiest I have ever seen in a game - but the reason they got away with not paying that million dollars was because of the fact that (if I remember correctly) the items one had to obtain in order to win the million bucks were not in the game!

 

Definitely in the top 5 list of blunders for a non-MMO.

Not an mmo, though.

The only mmo I can think of off hand would be RYL: Risk Your Life. They never made enough money to cover their "one million dollar challenge".

DAoC - Atlantis has to be number one, imo. SWG was not as popular as DAoC. Mythic took a thriving, growing game, and just crushed it. SWG sucked from the get go.

Good list.  Fun read, thx ^_^

Originally posted by Zorvan

 Definitely in the top 5 list of blunders for a non-MMO.

 

Not an mmo, though.

The only mmo I can think of off hand would be RYL: Risk Your Life. They never made enough money to cover their "one million dollar challenge".

Back to the reading bit that someone else mentioned.  ;)

As you can see, I commented that Advent Rising was not an MMO.

Never heard of Risk Your Life - sounds like my ignorance regarding that game isn't necessarily a bad thing.  :D

Originally posted by brostyn

DAoC - Atlantis has to be number one, imo. SWG was not as popular as DAoC. Mythic took a thriving, growing game, and just crushed it. SWG sucked from the get go.

I think you are confusing your own personal like of DAOCand dislike of SWG with popularity which certainly isn't the same thing at it's most DAoC had about 250k subs about the same as SWG but obviously on name recognition there is no competition.  Which I can assume is why DAoC did not even make the list.

How does Ultima Online - Trammel not take the top 3 at least?   I call bull$hit!

Originally posted by Wizardry

Blunders that stick in my mind are actually few.

Wow's infamous,instance plague infection ,that carries out to the whole server.

FFXI finally agrees to revamp the large slow weilding 2 handed weapons,then after they hit for most damage as should be,they claim it was a coding mistake and it ends up back where it started ,no revamp at all.Back to having little nub weapons do more damage,really sad.

SOE's mistake? not the NGE,that was just change that was going to happen anyhow,it doesn't matter that it was nge.Where the mistake was is their pr,then claiming it was a mistake in hopes to quiet the masses,but in reality,they know it was no mistake just giving the people what they wanted to hear.So there mistake was the way they handled it.

Played a game called Shaiya.They hold events,there is actually a bumbling mistakes on an event here.One they give out a christmas hat that is so powerful,that some players use a loophole to use it in PVP in the 1-15 zone[level 16 hat],it was a bigtime advantage over others who did not have it.If i remember right it was something like +15 or 20 to all stats,on just one hat lol.

Played RFO,they hold an event,the obvious problem is players using speed buffs.So the kind GM announces no speed buffs to be used,well immediately after saying that ,you can literally see hundreds buffing up for speed.Anyone w/o the speed buff of course has no chance.The GM goes onto say anyone caught gets banned,well no bans and instead threatens those complaining with a ban,ya fix all your screwups with ban warnings lmao.

SHAIYA ...again an event for top notch gear.They hold an event during the day when everyone at work ..lmao,talk about alienating 3/4's of the player base.No doubt because the GM in charge,probably does not work on weekends,so figured good time was when she was at work.Many complaints later,they decide to hold another,new problem,was like the first 10 to showup with the needed items gets prize.Well guess what ! the people off work al lday,already had the items ready,all they had to do is walk up to the GM and they win,the people that were at work all day  alienated again lmao,sad setup for an event.

Vanguard..they made a mistake with Hand to hand damage.I think it was the rogue that if using no weapon could deal damage that was at least 3x superior to the best weapon holders in the game.Took about a couple weeks before they fixed that.

Maybe the biggest bumbling mistake i have seen across the board is devs using Game Guard,it is such a laughable piece of anti rubbish,i can't believe any reputable gaming company tries to pan it off as anti cheat.

 

There was one more that stood out in my mind,but it has been too long to remember what game it was.Some game offered a large cash prize and never came through with it.

 

 

 

 

 

They used that as a test in order to compare that to the spread of diseases in real life

Originally posted by Sayoc

How does Ultima Online - Trammel not take the top 3 at least?   I call bull$hit!

 

 Because that was smart.

 Beau

Originally posted by Sayoc

How does Ultima Online - Trammel not take the top 3 at least?   I call bull$hit!

 

Because it's one man's personal list and not some official list like you are making it to be. And that one man also clearly stated to make your own lists and compare yet you chose to throw a hissy fit about his opinion instead of sitting down and thinking up your own list, like he asked you to.

That would be "how".

I though the title read "recent" and yet again we get more SWG BS....4 years ago and since then there were more then enough MMO blunders to fill a top 20 list....

Give it a rest already with this SWG bullshit. The game sucks, always did suck and always will suck.

Wouldnt just listing 5 companies for constantly blundering, not just single events but multiple pile ups of blunder be more all encompassing of a list.

5/....Any company now or in the future that Tasos, Brad McQuaid and Smedly work for.....

4/ Mythic Entertainment...mostly for not living up to the last part of their company name.

3/ Funcom....Put 100 monkies in a room with 100 typewriters and believing they can produce the complete works of Shakespear, and believing so much they advertise the launch of "Monkies do Shakespear".

2/ SOE

1/ SOE with so many blunders and so many currant star blundermiesters and ex blundermiesters see entry 5/ and with a busissness model that is confusing,frustrating and clearly isnt working a bit like Reganonics did in the 80,s . Suprised a new name for failed/failing busisness models hasnt been penned Smedlyonmics...So thats why they have the 2 top slots.

The above is a personnel view, if someone else can think of a more blundersome company with the same long pedigree and scale for blunders i,m all ears. My theory is SOE is a tax write off for SONY and all their actions are planned, because being that inept for so long requires allot of planning.

I am only writing this from a warhammer point of view...Mythic did bad we know that...very bad.....but the reason why Mythic is not on the list is the fact that the blunders mythic did are not as extreme as some of the ones on the list...yeah bashing the micro-trans wasn't too bad in my eyes but w/e i see how it made the list...back to war.....The keeps as an after thought were bad...but the problem wasnt just that the coding on the game was bad so you couldn't tell if your machine could even run it...now some of this has been fixed and a lot of the flaws removed (i resubed a few weeks back) ...but that RvR was not the same as DAoC...yeah Mythic wanted something different...but for everyone it would have been nice with copy paste RvR (minus the third realm) and the PvE that should have been in DAoC from the start...instead they made renown (unlike in DAoC) into a grind...that is why RvR suffered...that is why (among a few others ) the PVP crowd tended to stray off....Warhammer to me a a game for those who like to do both equally....this makes the Renown grind less of a grind and the PvE raiding aspect less of a grind...

NGE is by far the Worst thing to happen to any sucessful game (and you may not of liked it but me and my thousands of screaming...blood-pumping....raging friends did) and (as stated) the best thing to come out of it is to make sure it wont happen again....(and the sad thing is i wont be able to experience it again..until the emulators get better  becuase i dont want just a PvP i want my "Total Experience" like the box i bought )

IMOP

Bioware marketing realise that the less people know the more anticipation will create hype for them. This only works for prestigious companies with a great track record. Some of the KotOR rumours were and are being leaked by their marketing department. Lets just hope the game is actual decent.

Jack Emmert’s walking into fire about the Micro Transactions issue shows how it does not matter who you are, if your finance department or investors want you to go a different way then of you trot. So when you hear about how different revenue models are good for the industry remember how a cash shop is just ££ Kerching! $$ and nothing more than that.

Oh noes it doesn't have DX10 from launch......... whocares?

Noone buys a game cause it uses DX10 and frigging all the people moaning about it don't even care, they just wanna hate on something. Age of Conan is a good mmorpg that had a bad launch and guess what everyother mmo out there suffered from a bad launch too. Everquest 2 was rushed out too early like age of Conan and guess what they added all the features it shoulda had in from launch years after release. World of Warcraft was unplayable for the first few weeks of launch due to server queues, crashes and lag. EVE Online was total crap at launch and it took them years to add in much needed features. Star Wars Galaxies didn't even have player cities and mounts at launch.

Every MMO out there has had to make cut backs to fit launch and oh look people are happy with them now. The only reason people hate on Age of Conan is cause it's the latest MMO and it's the kool thing to do.

Originally posted by TsukieU

I'm absolutely shocked that Dark and Light didn't make this list.

me too! what high hopes did we have ... how deep did they fall... 

as I never was into SWG and therefore never experienced the NGE, D&L told me enough lessons of blunders for a whole player's life!

 NGE will remain top of my list for blunders however

 Mourning  remember the stink it caused way back then?

Dark and Light should have a mention as well, never forget pay a head beta test , then many of the newer releases did the order pre game and get to beta ......

Horizons had good bones but needed more