Originally posted by Lansid

 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.

Vanguard wasn't much different when it launched.  Performance was terrible.

While i loved shadowbane, the concept for the game was the best i have played, it deserves to be on here even without mentioning the HORRENDOUS rubberbanding.  I am an avid MMOer having played almost every P2P MMO out there and a ton of MUD's MOO's and BBS games in the 90's.  Having said that HOW IN THE HECK DID WWIIOL not make it on this list?

How long did the queue issue persist for in Aion?

I played AO, WoW, and Star Wars Galaxies on launch.  All three sucked.  It took WoW MONTHS to ramp up.  I don't buy giving Blizzard a pass.  They had a horrible launch, and no real plans to expand.  The betas were an indication of how popular the game would be.  They ignored it.  

Though, I agree with Anarchy Online.  I bought the game, and a 6 month membership.  I played for 3 days.  I feel like Funcom owes me a LOT of money for a complete failure of a launch.  I will never buy another one of their games, and will continue to tell all my friends to avoid them like the plague.  

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Originally posted by tbox
 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.  
 

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I can distinctly remember making a Suicide Button. Then after I'd spend 10 minutes arranging my bags I'd zone and everything would be out of order again. I never was able to get back into my apartment, just that one time and the key no longer worked (was missing as I recall now). It was a crazy time.

Actually, the OP needs to check the calendar.  Halloween is on Saturday not Sunday.  I can't believe that not a single soul proof reads their posts anymore.

pretty good list.  was around for most of those launches, and yes they were bad. 

honorable mentions that could have made it as well:

vanguard

everquest (original); though given the genre's infancy, I think this should get a pass.  There was no excuse for the AO launch.

Originally posted by Dana

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 :)

That gives me an idea for another worst of list.....

5 most unplayable games at launch

Like VG for example: One could register and log in with little problem, but once there.....yikes.

_______________________

Second, if Aion's queue's put it in the list, weren't WoW's queue issues worse? Dunno, didn't jump on the Aion bandwagon.

I second that Horizions should have been on the list. Nothing like pre ordering the game and having it be nothing like what was promised. It had horrible lag, the creatures wouldn't spawn unless you waited a long time. It was a terrible launch.

And ppl think Funcom has changed ? =)

Well - they are themselfs talking about the "miraclepatch" that fixed AOC 1 week before launch... Ye right..

The auctionhouse bug must have escaped that miracle =) 

Or the animiation fiasco that made female do less dmg than male ...

Want more ? 

Agree with Aion big time.

I had to wait 3.5 hrs to log into the HEAD START. Then the server would go down and the quene would be back around 5-8 hours. Totally ridiculous, yet legions of fanbots claim this wasn't a problem.

They knew exactly how many people they would have, yet a ton of people basically could not take advantage of the head start extra time - probably the main reason they preordered in the first place.

Originally posted by BuzWeaver

 

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Originally posted by tbox
 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.  
 

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I can distinctly remember making a Suicide Button. Then after I'd spend 10 minutes arranging my bags I'd zone and everything would be out of order again. I never was able to get back into my apartment, just that one time and the key no longer worked (was missing as I recall now). It was a crazy time.

Heck, After visiting my apartment the first time I wasnt able to find it again!  The lag and rubber banding was so bad I had lost my direction and never found it again.
 

Originally posted by LynxJSA

How long did the queue issue persist for in Aion?

Just over a week if I recall, which isn't that bad all things considered.

Personally, I love how WoW gets a "pass" on the list.  It had the same exact issue as Aion at launch (as another poster pointed out - 8+ hour queues, non-functioning servers, etc.), yet it magically gets excused for it, while a game that's been released for a month just happens to be the "newest" game to "slipped" into the list?

Care to be a bit more biased when it comes to comparing the two currently spotlighted MMOs?

Personally, I'm thinking that the author is a WoW player and just wants to toss Aion in the list just to be a douche.  However, before this gets flamed for fanboism, I'd expect the same vice versa.  Why the hell can't anyone just be neutral on these "reviews" when it comes to these two?  Every single article/review/comparison involving Wow vs. <insert new MMO here> is always done from clearly biased for one or the other.

And as others have pointed out, there are several games that aren't even mentioned that have failed EPICALLY at launch that should replace at least half of those currently listed.

Good article concept, however, if it were an MMO it would easily be in the top 10 failures as well.

EDIT: Oh, since I know the "IT WAS IN HEADSTART!" Aion argument surfaces again, sure, you can know EXACTLY how many people should be logging in.  HOWEVER, I'd like for these responders to try and predict how many of those people will choose the SAME SERVER.  That was the major issue, lotta people on a main server.  There were at least 2-3 that had no queue times at all and were pretty dead when you logged in.  Ironically, as per another one of my observations I should write about sometime, it was all the hard-to-pronounce servers that had the lowest queues, while the easiest one - Siel - had the largest queue times.  

You know, I don't comment on these sort of things.

But I really must say, This is the worst article ever. I honestly feel like slitting my own throat right now just so I don't have to swallow your garbage.

Sure you had some decent points. But really, do you even have half a clue?

Epic FAIL.  I hope to god you never write another thing about any game.  Cause in my books you just lost all rights to do as such.

Anyways, I am sure I should of explained myself and my reasoning some, but I honestly feel like it.

~wrtiii

"Velox, Versutus, Vigilans"

Originally posted by wrtiii

You know, I don't comment on these sort of things.

 But I really must say, This is the worst article ever. I honestly feel like slitting my own throat right now just so I don't have to swallow your garbage.

 Sure you had some decent points. But really, do you even have half a clue?

 Epic FAIL.  I hope to god you never write another thing about any game.  Cause in my books you just lost all rights to do as such.

 Anyways, I am sure I should of explained myself and my reasoning some, but I honestly feel like it.

 ~wrtiii

"Velox, Versutus, Vigilans"

Congratulations on your first post!  This is probably a very exciting time for you, so I'm here to help you through your transition from forum lurker to opinion spouter!

Now you're going to have to develop a thick skin, because there's nothing internet people love more than first time posters.  They'll call you things like dumb, or nonsensical and they'll call your posts dumb AND nonsensical.  You need to ignore all of this though and just continue posting, because you just know, in your heart of hearts, that everyone agrees with you. 

And remember, opinions can be stated as facts here.  And so can half-truths.  And blatant lies.  Just have fun with it and know that there's no one that can prove you wrong if you don't actually supply any actual facts to debate. 

Again, congratulations!  I hope your stay here is a long and fruitful one we can all learn from.

As an aside, didn't EQ2 have a particularly bad launch?  I seem to remember it being down for like, 2 or 3 days straight in the beginning.  I just remember switching to WoW at that time.  Ah well.

Originally posted by shylock1079

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.
 

I definitely agree with your assessment here...hands down. Was definitely one of, if not THE, smoothest launch to date, at least of the many I have experienced.

Originally posted by Nihilist

Agree with Aion big time.

 

I had to wait 3.5 hrs to log into the HEAD START. Then the server would go down and the quene would be back around 5-8 hours. Totally ridiculous, yet legions of fanbots claim this wasn't a problem.

 

They knew exactly how many people they would have, yet a ton of people basically could not take advantage of the head start extra time - probably the main reason they preordered in the first place.

 

 

I pre-ordered toward the end of beta (for the head start)....and due to some seemingly unnameable problem caused by a late patch  (I TRIED to elicit help from customer service...they couldn't figure out what was causing the issue, even though MANY on the forums were complaining about having it)....I never COULD get logged into the head start.

I cancelled my pre-order after 2 days of constantly trying to log in, and determined that, even though I had been anxiously awaiting this game's release,  I was NOT going to be playing it.

 Aion shouldn't be on this list.  

Vanguard, AoC, Warhammer, WoW, + a dozen others had rockier first months.

Aion? Really?

It was just crowded and some servers were real easy to get on. It also played fine when you logged on.

I was there in 2001 for AO launch. It was horrible.

Dana you forgot in Shadowbane of players hacking the game itself and acting like GMs, The Flying out over the ocean and teleporting you there so you drown with no hope of getting back to your corpse.

Shadowbane was still the best and purest PVP game ever made.A total life drain , always in fear of your guild Keep , completely chaotic  , never knew when you would be hit. I bet i used Trac on my scout 100,000 times, in my 3 years of playing it.

I was in the SWG launch but I was also in the WoW launch.

Do people so quickly forget that the World of Warcraft launch was terrible? For my playing experiences it was far and away the worst I've had. Star Wars Galaxies had some enormous hiccups but WoW was nearly unplayable for the first few weeks. The immense server load, shortage of servers, and the unstoppable game killing lag was horrendous.

Originally posted by comerb

 Aion shouldn't be on this list.  

 

Vanguard, AoC, Warhammer, WoW, + a dozen others had rockier first months.

Vanguard only because the game itself was unpolished and the same can be said for Age of Conan. Warhammer had a buttery smooth launch as far as I could tell. I didn't experience any significant lag, queues or crashes. WoW though... ya, that was bad.

Originally posted by Rampage9799

Dana you forgot in Shadowbane of players hacking the game itself and acting like GMs, The Flying out over the ocean and teleporting you there so you drown with no hope of getting back to your corpse.

Shadowbane was still the best and purest PVP game ever made.A total life drain , always in fear of your guild Keep , completely chaotic  , never knew when you would be hit. I bet i used Trac on my scout 100,000 times, in my 3 years of playing it.

Go check out Darkfall Online then if that's what you like.

Originally posted by erickdefores

Originally posted by BuzWeaver

 

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Originally posted by tbox
 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.  
 

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I can distinctly remember making a Suicide Button. Then after I'd spend 10 minutes arranging my bags I'd zone and everything would be out of order again. I never was able to get back into my apartment, just that one time and the key no longer worked (was missing as I recall now). It was a crazy time.

Heck, After visiting my apartment the first time I wasnt able to find it again!  The lag and rubber banding was so bad I had lost my direction and never found it again.
 

The main reason WOW gets more or less of a pass the games being released now, is because blizzard had no idea the number of people that were going to try WOW (this being a time that if a game had over 100k subscriptions it was considered a major success). 

'Tho yes WOW's release was pretty bad (bad enough that I didn't play it again untill after BC was released), but trully the only game I played at launch that had a smooth launch was LOTR.  There were  the epically bad ones (AO, SWG, Vanguard, EVE) and then launches that were just frustrating (COH, Matrix, Fallen Earth, WAR). 

I actually agree with Aion being a bad launch, for the majority of the first week there was little news coming from ncsoft and the queues were to the point that  I was hardly able to play, which I'm hardly the first nor the last person to make that claim.   Yes Aion stability was impressive, but that could be partly due that  a lot of people that wanted to be playing were sitting in a queue.
 

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.

Headstart is the same as launch, the game is launched but for a fewer number of people. WoW also knew how many games they had sold, every company knows how many copies they sell, it is the thing they monitor the most when they launch a game, not just online games, but any game for that matter.

So the excuse of excluding WoW for not knowing is not valid, Blizzard knew they had sold a ton of copies during launch and after launch, the same as NcSoft knew they sold a lot of copies.

What I noticed in general when articles are written about something bad happening in the mmo world, the writers tend to always exclude WoW, which I presonally find amusing, probably the editor in chief forbids the writers to publish anything bad about WoW or the Blizzard axe will cut his head :)

But anyways, when you write an article like this, try to be fair and accurate please, some people mentioned Vanguard, I am a big fan of Vanguard, and I still play it today, but it should definitly be in there. I remember once losing 3 levels in the same day because I was dying from running around. There was a bug where you would die for no reason, and because you lose exp in Vanguard at death, you could also your level. There were also a lot of billing issues, wrong CD key issues, and many other bugs that weren't even sorted out before a couple of months. So Vanguard should be in that list too...