Halloween is on Sunday and we decided to honor it by bringing back some scary memories. We count down the five scariest MMO launches of all time!

Some early games, like EverQuest and Ultima Online, get breaks too. Why? No one had really done it on that scale before. They get a guinea pig exemption.

I am also going to overlook two of the worst in history, because, honestly, I am not sure they ever actually launched. I’m looking at you MouRning (or whatever it was calling itself that afternoon) and Dark and Light. They claimed they launched sure, I think they even charged some poor souls money, but for all intents and purposes, those games were dead on arrival.

Honorable mention goes out to World War II Online who hilariously launched a World War II MMO with planes that couldn’t fly.

This is a list of five terrible MMO launches (emphasis on launches). This is not about how good the games were or were not, just the ones that fell down and went boom.

Read it all here.

Aion...really?  That's a good problem to have imo so long as you can react to it quickly.  I love how easily we forget or perhaps conveniently forget how WoW at launch had some servers that were completely unplayable, and Blizzard had to stop selling or limit copies of the game until they could compensate from a server standpoint.  It also had the exact same queue problem due to underestimated sales soo...

Not defending the issue entirely because queues suck don't get me wrong, but it most definitely doesn't qualify as one of the top scariest launches as aside from the queue issue Aion had none of the issues that many of it's predecesors faced like characters getting stuck in the environment all over the place, bugs, and outright game breaking game issues or undeveloped areas as some that were not on this list.

Considering the title of the topic and all....

Then the reasons given..

How does Horizons not rank in the top 5??

I think Pirates of the Burning Sea... has to rank higher than Aion at least and shoudl have that spot.  Lot of potential doesn't change the launch...  As opposed to just not "launching with enough servers..."  which is my opinion of Aion.  Beyond the boring (yet not broken) game play.

Oh and at least 3 of the 5 wouldn't be in my top 5....  Yet I'll admit that's just my opinion.

Dana talked about why wow did not make the list and it is accurate. 

Aion had massive ques during the preorder event BEFORE the games official release.  It isn't like NCSoft was unaware of how many preorders were coming.  

@Dana

Good list and fanatastic call on Dark-n-light and Mourning.  WW2online planes that couldn't fly was also funny. 

I wasn't there for all those launches, but in my opinion, Age of Conan and Vanguard both had worse launches than Aion - not just for one issue like queues either.

Wow.

I suspect the line I'll be repeating this week (despite it being in the article) is: 

This is not about how good the games were at launch, just how bad their launches were.

...but anyway, here is time #1 :)

2 Things:

1. When WoW launched, the queues were just as insane as the queues for Aion. In fact, if you watch the queue dance that you linked in your article, it will continue to climb well into the hundreds of minutes, soaring past 8+ hours of queue time.

2. Ants are not bugs. They are insects.

That is all.

P.S. I don't even own Aion, so I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm just saying WoW's queue was just as bad.

 I remember AO's Launch It was a freaking headache.  I think we ended up not playing the game for a long time until it was fixed.  

Enjoyed the list. I was there fore a couple of them (SWG, Darkfall). It wasn't pretty, lol.

The legendary post in the AO section was so funny it made me wee a little.

Originally posted by TheMaelstrom

2 Things:

1. When WoW launched, the queues were just as insane as the queues for Aion. In fact, if you watch the queue dance that you linked in your article, it will continue to climb well into the hundreds of minutes, soaring past 8+ hours of queue time.

2. Ants are not bugs. They are insects.

That is all.

P.S. I don't even own Aion, so I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm just saying WoW's queue was just as bad.

Right, but WoW had that after launch and getting WAY more players than they ever dreamed (they were literally planning for 100k).

Aion had that in the headstart for pre-orders when they knew exactly how many players they'd have to deal with.

Good list. I remember getting my AO cd in the mail for the beta. I was giddy. For the most part it ran pretty decent. Then I remember some patch a few weeks before it came out and the game became unplayable to me. I couldn't believe it when it went out the door. I didn't buy it for a year or two afterwards.

SWG, I remember that one too. The registration problem was easily bypassed by using firefox. That's what worked for me anyway.

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by TheMaelstrom

2 Things:

1. When WoW launched, the queues were just as insane as the queues for Aion. In fact, if you watch the queue dance that you linked in your article, it will continue to climb well into the hundreds of minutes, soaring past 8+ hours of queue time.

2. Ants are not bugs. They are insects.

That is all.

P.S. I don't even own Aion, so I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm just saying WoW's queue was just as bad.

 

Right, but WoW had that after launch and getting WAY more players than they ever dreamed (they were literally planning for 100k).

Aion had that in the headstart for pre-orders when they knew exactly how many players they'd have to deal with.

Ohhhh... see I thought Aion's queue times didn't get crazy until after the official launch. I don't remember reading about people freaking out over 7 hour queues during head start. DOH! If you mentioned that in the article, it must have completely gone over my head. I'll go re-read it. My bad!

I was there for the AO launch and boy howdy was it a mess.  I was very excited about a Sci Fi MMO so I did my best to tough it out for 2 months.  After being charged 3 times for the same month My brand spanking new computer was ravaged by a memory leak and ... well I still have nightmartes of being trapped in lagg because I get to close to the teleporters.  I agree with AO recieving number one.  I also agree with Aion's spot.  They new how many pre orders were out there and instead of spending money to be prepared they did some bean counting and decided they could loose a certain amount of customers.

Originally posted by erickdefores

I was there for the AO launch and boy howdy was it a mess.  I was very excited about a Sci Fi MMO so I did my best to tough it out for 2 months.  After being charged 3 times for the same month My brand spanking new computer was ravaged by a memory leak and ... well I still have nightmartes of being trapped in lagg because I get to close to the teleporters.  I agree with AO recieving number one.  I also agree with Aion's spot.  They new how many pre orders were out there and instead of spending money to be prepared they did some bean counting and decided they could loose a certain amount of customers.

How could we forget the AO launch;)  Getting trapped in a mission, because all the doors turned into black holes and you couldn't leave the little instance room=)  Kind of funny.  I remember standing in front of my friends in the city but we couldn't see eachother.  The chat went something like, "HEY, I'm right in front of you!!"  "No you're not", "Yes I am, I'm jumping up and down on your head, you don't see me?"  Then 5 minutes later, people start popping into view, but they're not actually there, they're way out in the zone a few minutes away=)  And of course, we have the patch of doom 2-3 months in that cleared out about 75% of what remaining players were left;)

I'm surprised and not surprised by no mention of Eve's launch.  A game with no tutorial what so ever, so nobody had a freakin clue what to do=)  No explanation how anything even worked at all.  Gate camping exploits that left people high and dry.  NO missions.  No real content at all.  It took 5 minutes just to enter a space station, then you couldn't leave=)  Just stuck in there... and if you did zone out, you were stuck in a blurry graphical ball of around 20 other space ships all taking up the exact same spot=)  

If WOW a game that was more finished than most MMOs out for years get mentioned, Eve should get mentioned for barely having any sort of game there to play at all.  

Originally posted by TheMaelstrom

2 Things:

1. When WoW launched, the queues were just as insane as the queues for Aion. In fact, if you watch the queue dance that you linked in your article, it will continue to climb well into the hundreds of minutes, soaring past 8+ hours of queue time.

2. Ants are not bugs. They are insects.

That is all.

P.S. I don't even own Aion, so I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm just saying WoW's queue was just as bad.

I was at WOWs launch as well and remember the problems but again even if wow had numbers that compared similarly to Aions WOW was a huge success and this happened after WOWs full launch not during a period of time that Blizzard had took customers money for.  Aion did this to pre order customers and there is no excuse for not having the server capacity in the case of a limited release like that.

I am beginning to think that NCSoft really does not know how to operate a successful MMO.  The server placement, the lack of in game support, the bot/spammer problem, the queue problem at launch.  Of course Guild Wars is well done, but really that is an American run franchise.

Originally posted by avalon1000

I am beginning to think that NCSoft really does not know how to operate a successful MMO.  The server placement, the lack of in game support, the bot/spammer problem, the queue problem at launch.  Of course Guild Wars is well done, but really that is an American run franchise.

NCSOFT DID NOT MAKE GW Arena Net did, which was a group of people that left bliz during WoWs creation.

Anyways, yea DFO's launch was horrid; however, they did fix the problems fairly quickly. I completly agree with the list.

Worst: AO and Everquest 1 would have to tie. The first month of EQ was so sad that they refunded our money and gave us a free month. No one pays for being stuck in a mountain for hours.

Best: Lotro: I think this is the case mainly because they opened up both CB and open beta to practically everyone. I've participated in numerous beta's and launches, and this was easily the smoothest I've seen.
 

Good list and nice article. Thankfully I never been a part of any of these launches.

after being thru the launch of EQ and AO, I'd say I didn't find them that bad all in all.  The industry was new, we didn't have a clue for the most part what to expect and they made right by us (or atleast alot of us) for the launches.

I'm suprised Vanguard's not on the list.  I had no real issues with it (hell, i preferred it at launch to what it is now), but based on the rabid hype vs the reality of launch......

List is almost dead on except swg should be anked 1st, my gosh i remember how bad the launch was and rollback and all

How did Vanguard miss the top 5

Originally posted by Dana

Originally posted by TheMaelstrom

2 Things:

1. When WoW launched, the queues were just as insane as the queues for Aion. In fact, if you watch the queue dance that you linked in your article, it will continue to climb well into the hundreds of minutes, soaring past 8+ hours of queue time.

2. Ants are not bugs. They are insects.

That is all.

P.S. I don't even own Aion, so I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm just saying WoW's queue was just as bad.

 

Right, but WoW had that after launch and getting WAY more players than they ever dreamed (they were literally planning for 100k).

Aion had that in the headstart for pre-orders when they knew exactly how many players they'd have to deal with.

On the other hand, the PvP endgame in Aion will hinge on well populated servers, in a way that is similar to WAR.  I'd imagine that NCSoft saw the hugely negative impact spreading a playerbase too thin had on that game, and probably decided not to make the same mistake.

They did err a bit too much on the other side, I believe, but after just three weeks, the queues were basically gone, and all the servers had large populations.  I guess it worked out in the long run.

 I support OP's topic and judging of the games.

Anarchy Online was just that when it came out... I loved the game in beta even if it did destroy my computer twice while testing it. But it was near impossible to play at launch, and the fps was akin to that of a C64 trying to run it.

Spot on.