Originally posted by Deathstrike2

Good list, but I would have put Vanguard on there for sure.  Releasing a game 6-12 months early is much worse IMO than anything Aion's done.  BTW, I pre-ordered Aion and have played since early access.  I don't know if I'm just lucky or what, but I have never once encountered a wait to log in. 

Try launching one 10 years early like WWII Online.  It was so bad two years into it they renamed it BattleGround Europe because the Lawyers found that they infringed using Blitzkrieg

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

Maybe NCsoft learned from other games that if you over expand your servers it is more of a pain to merge servers when the populations dies down.

Every Game is super crowded at the start , and what to the developers do ?!  They say "OMG we are gonna be rich! Lets double our servers". Then after 4 months the population is 40% of the start and each servers' pop is so low  noone can find a group anymore.Now its time to not only address a problem but tell them that the solution is going to cause them more pain in having to transfer chars and hope you can get you name, not to mention all the cost of the ("OMG we are gonna be rich! Lets double our servers")  that are no longer needed.

As tough as it was, they prolly lost less customers than they would have if they have opened up many more servers.(in the long run)

Aion?? Granted the ques were scary, but it no wear compares to Age of Conan.. which i believe should've been on the list. Age of Conan was AO all over again with Funcom.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

I played WoW at launch and I don't know what game you were palying but it was pretty much unplayable for a month or longer from server crashes and long ass ques. Hell they gave all of us subscribers free play time on top of the free month becuase of it.  If Aion belongs on that list then WoW definately does. As I said before though its good to be the King lol.

A MMO that had only queue issues at release day made it into the top5, did the genre really have no other launches with structural, network or any other problems? Can't comment much on which ones specifically because the only ones I've played at NA day one were LOTRO, Aion and Guild Wars, and from these Aion was the only not-so-smooth release (never suffered directly from the queues issues though as I login in the morning).

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

I played WoW at release... I played Aion at release.

WoW was worse, far worse.  Servers constantly crashed or were in maintenance states for hours on end, you'd get stuck for hours and hours in a crouched position because of loot lag.  Queues would go into the thousands.  If I recall they even pushed billing cycles back several times in their first couple months due to extended downtimes.

In Aion, they had queues for a couple days..  Because NCSoft was so "cheap" we now have a cluster of servers with very healthy populations, no queues, and equally balanced factions.  Damn you NCsoft for doing a good job!! 

Again, I like Blizzard... I like WoW.  I'm not a huge fan of NCSoft because of their weak gold seller/botting policing.  But Aions launch was handled very well, and WoWs was not.

Aion in no way deserves to be on a list of worst mmo launches. say what you will about the game, but the launch was not that horrible. compared to other games on this list? and in front of SWG?!?! i may of been lucky, but i was in the head start, and for the first few weeks of the games release, and i never once saw a queue. i've since stopped playing, but thats due to the community being too much like WoW, hoping it cleans up, and i'll try again later. seriously though, i've been at the launch of a lot of mmos, and Aion was beautifully smooth for me. my list would be

5. AoC

4. WoW

3. Vanguard

2. SWG

1. Anarchy Online

granted, all based on personal experiences, as i know people who played SWG on launch day, and yet it took me a few days to even get an account made... my only problem with Aion, was giving NCsoft more money, when i have collectors editions of Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa, staring at me.... i loved both games, and royally pissed NCsoft axed them. hell, netdevil even asked to buy Auto Assault back, so they could still run a lone server like they do for jumpgate, and NCsoft said no, to making a little more cash.....

Originally posted by Illyssia

Originally posted by Hiz85

When i saw Aion #4 i stopped reading. Yes queue's suck and can't be justified most times, what NCSoft did with the queue's was balancing issue's mostly (Reason why we got balanced servers now, can anyone say WAR Servers where balanced? ) and one ingame problem called personal shops. You could setup shop and stay ingame for infinite time and not get kicked out for being afk meaning anyone in the queue stayed there, they fixed this later on and queue where almost non-existent. There are definitely worse launches out there and makes me think you hardly did any research on it.

For the rest Aion was one of the smoother launch i experienced in a long while.

  Either way it is a poor excuse, you can always merge low pop servers as the game goes along, even Blizzard and WoW do this.

WoW is Blizzard  same company, and what you just typed makes you loose any value your post had.

Merging server is not good ever in any MMO.  A Poor excuse? look at war, they didn't regulate their servers sides where unbalanced and months later the game need not one but several server merges. And i don't think you even understand what caused those queue's and why.

As does the person who made this article, i geuss you don't need much to get a staff position..

LOL is this article even remotely serious?  Aion for all the things that it has going against itself (bots, gold, grind) was the smoothest launch I think I have ever seen in a MMORPG for a long time.  To say a server had a long queue because of popularity is not a good reason when there were other servers out there to play on that filled up just as fast...your guild or friends could have easily coordinated and changed servers. 

How is a launch as bad as AoC not on here?  Terrible servers, unpolished client (which is part of the damn launch) and other problems lead to the almost complete destruction of the game.  In fact most MMO players refer to AoC as the lesson to learn from...don't keep people in the dark on stuff and deliver a good product and experience at launch.

Ok some people don't agree with the AION pick.. Let's see. What a game is? The box? The manual? The screenshots? The forums (hell yeah for the trolls)? No.. it's the game itself.. And what is the most important thing of all? To be able to f... play it. Waiting 8 hours or even 3 hours to play a game it's not ok. Among all those people who tried AION u could find working men/women who simple could not log in and play during their free hours. So yes.. it had a bad launch. They were also very slow resolving the problem with the addition of new servers

Originally posted by Helloween81

Ok some people don't agree with the AION pick.. Let's see. What a game is? The box? The manual? The screenshots? The forums (hell yeah for the trolls)? No.. it's the game itself.. And what is the most important thing of all? To be able to f... play it. Waiting 8 hours or even 3 hours to play a game it's not ok. Among all those people who tried AION u could find working men/women who simple could not log in and play during their free hours. So yes.. it had a bad launch. They were also very slow resolving the problem with the addition of new servers

 

It was not as bad as WoWs that's a fact.

I remember SWG on its launch day, I had gone to compusa here locally and was so excited about it, I had been reading all the news about it but hadn't been in beta and was just giddy to death about it, as soon as I got my hands on that box I even grabbed the help book and ran home as soon as I could to install it.  It seemed like the install took forever and ever and ever to go through.. I finally got it installed and saw that last little bit that said experience the greatest adventure ever your own.. then it jumped to a registration window...and that's where I got stuck....for a day...

The next day, after work I was so disappointed I tried again to get onto it, woah I got registered...yeah....then I click play and ...there goes the downloading new updates window.....for hours................ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Thankfully it coming up on a weekend and I played like 72hrs straight once i got in...lol...

Originally posted by Helloween81

Ok some people don't agree with the AION pick.. Let's see. What a game is? The box? The manual? The screenshots? The forums (hell yeah for the trolls)? No.. it's the game itself.. And what is the most important thing of all? To be able to f... play it. Waiting 8 hours or even 3 hours to play a game it's not ok. Among all those people who tried AION u could find working men/women who simple could not log in and play during their free hours. So yes.. it had a bad launch. They were also very slow resolving the problem with the addition of new servers

 

It's not that most people agree or don't agree with the Aion pick that is the problem, it's that the author used a lame excuse to exclude WoW which in fact had the exact same problem in terms of queue time as Aion did but far worst than Aion.

His excuse is that WoW did not know it's going to be popular, but Aion did, which is far from the truth, both NcSoft and Blizzard knew exactly what was coming their way.

So either leave Aion out of this list, or list it at # 4 and WoW # 3.  It's simple...

Originally posted by Helloween81

Ok some people don't agree with the AION pick.. Let's see. What a game is? The box? The manual? The screenshots? The forums (hell yeah for the trolls)? No.. it's the game itself.. And what is the most important thing of all? To be able to f... play it. Waiting 8 hours or even 3 hours to play a game it's not ok. Among all those people who tried AION u could find working men/women who simple could not log in and play during their free hours. So yes.. it had a bad launch. They were also very slow resolving the problem with the addition of new servers

 

 

Aion had one of the best launches iv ever seen. All the screen shots of crazy que times are not right. The very first day of head start was bad but they were limiting the number of people that could log in at one time to keep the starting zones from being swamped. The 2nd day of head start was bad when i loged in it gave me a 10+ hour que time but it olny took 1 1/2  hours to log in at peak time.  Que times stayed about 1 to 2 hours till they patched the private stores limiting the amount of time people could idle  in game that was like a week after launch then it went to about half hour at most on weekend nights. And i played on lumiel the 2nd highest pop server. People bashing aion or any game over something they know nothing about is bad. WoW's  and vanguards launch was much worse than aions. Argue what you want about WoW but the constant crashing, que times and extended mantance for days even a month after put it above aion.  Dose not matter if wow is or is not a better game than aion that is a different argument. 

Anarchy Online... Heh, I didn't even make it to launch.

I was in the beta, and I couldn't get out of my room. (At that time you started in your apartment.) After a month with no replys from support/dev, I gave up.  A couple years later I found out they had it working and you now start in a newbie 'training' area.

Just imagine what that month was like for me. Make a character, load it to play. Find yourself in a barren cube like gray room with a non-functioning exit... Oh well, I've seen worse... :)

I still find it ironic that people are confusing quality of game vs. launch day issues (but that was noted very early by the OP).  But then again....reading comprehension, grammar, and diction are definitely not top priority on the "Internets" these days.

I agree with the list, though personally I don't remember myself having an issue with SWG...or it might be because I blocked those memories out of my mind <_<.  It seems to me lots of folks have pent up SOE & FunCome aggression - I suggest more FPSing to wash away all the pent up angst away; also, I'll add that WoW's launch may have not been good, but compared to the issues with battle.net - I'd argue a world of improvement. 

I would also put WAR on the list. Well at least for us Aussie's. When we bought the game, they didnt include the games war.exe file as part of the install. So you had to contact Mythic and then get them to send you the file so you could run it.

Just wanted to nominate WWII Online for a spot on the list. Few remember that launch though, as it was overshadowed by AO a month or so later. ;-)

Originally posted by Lazarus71

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

 

I played WoW at launch and I don't know what game you were palying but it was pretty much unplayable for a month or longer from server crashes and long ass ques. Hell they gave all of us subscribers free play time on top of the free month becuase of it.  If Aion belongs on that list then WoW definately does. As I said before though its good to be the King lol.

Sorry you did NOT play Wow at the start then.  The game was fine.  There were a few hours downtime initially, but I played everyday and had few problems.  The only thing your post shows is ignorance!

Aion on the other hand I could not even play because the server queue was sometimes over 7 hours long!

So much for the Aion bigots!

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Lazarus71

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

 

I played WoW at launch and I don't know what game you were palying but it was pretty much unplayable for a month or longer from server crashes and long ass ques. Hell they gave all of us subscribers free play time on top of the free month becuase of it.  If Aion belongs on that list then WoW definately does. As I said before though its good to be the King lol.

Sorry you did NOT play Wow at the start then.  The game was fine.  There were a few hours downtime initially, but I played everyday and had few problems.  The only thing your post shows is ignorance!

Aion on the other hand I could not even play because the server queue was sometimes over 7 hours long!

So much for the Aion bigots!

 You are showing your true colors by first telling me I didn't play at launch and then insulting me. I was in closed beta and then immediately purchased the game and started playing at launch. I played the game for 3 1/2 yrs after launch. You obviously were not there at launch if you think none of those problems I mentioned happened.  There was major crashing of the servers and long extended periods of maintenance. Also horrible que times and as I said and I am sure others can attest to the fact they gave out free play time to players shortly after launch because of all the problems. There are plenty of people who can back up what I said about WoWs launch, hell I am not the only one in this thread alone to talk about it. Please get a clue...

Your statement that refers to me as an Aion bigot is also untrue. While I do play the game I have barely touched it since purchase and have no rose colored glasses on when it come to the game and its shortcomings. I was merely pointing out that WoW deserved to be on that list more than Aion.

edit: wow did I just use the word launch that many times...... sorry lol

Originally posted by Lazarus71

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Lazarus71

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

 

I played WoW at launch and I don't know what game you were palying but it was pretty much unplayable for a month or longer from server crashes and long ass ques. Hell they gave all of us subscribers free play time on top of the free month becuase of it.  If Aion belongs on that list then WoW definately does. As I said before though its good to be the King lol.

Sorry you did NOT play Wow at the start then.  The game was fine.  There were a few hours downtime initially, but I played everyday and had few problems.  The only thing your post shows is ignorance!

Aion on the other hand I could not even play because the server queue was sometimes over 7 hours long!

So much for the Aion bigots!

 

 You are showing your true colors by first telling me I didn't play at launch and then insulting me. I was in closed beta and then immediately purchased the game and started playing at launch. I played the game for 3 1/2 yrs after launch. You obviously were not there at launch if you think none of those problems I mentioned happened.  There was major crashing of the servers and long extended periods of maintenance. Also horrible que times and as I said and I am sure others can attest to the fact they gave out free play time to players shortly after launch because of all the problems. There are plenty of people who can back up what I said about WoWs launch, hell I am not the only one in this thread alone to talk about it. Please get a clue...

Your statement that refers to me as an Aion bigot is also untrue. While I do play the game I have barely touched it since purchase and have no rose colored glasses on when it come to the game and its shortcomings. I was merely pointing out that WoW deserved to be on that list more than Aion.

edit: wow did I just use the word launch that many times...... sorry lol

I  was there  2nd day after launch and i dont remember it being as bad as you say, there were a few problems (que's and a crash or two) that i experienced. I'm sure Blizzard never expected a million+ people to buy the game on the first week.So ofcourse there were gonna be que's and some overload crashes.Yes i got my free month too, but i never looked back on WoW as a bad release game.

Originally posted by Rampage9799

Originally posted by Lazarus71

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by Lazarus71

Originally posted by Ozmodan

There has been a lot of bad releases in this genre.  Hard to pick even 5 out of that morass.  Anyone trying to put Wow on that list did not play the game at release though.  Any problems Blizzard had were minor compared to those on this list. 

I think Aion belongs on this list because of NCSoft being extremely cheap, they did not want to spend much on servers to handle the initial load and in so doing made almost everyone suffer.  With their limited characters on the account it made the queues even worse. 

 

I played WoW at launch and I don't know what game you were palying but it was pretty much unplayable for a month or longer from server crashes and long ass ques. Hell they gave all of us subscribers free play time on top of the free month becuase of it.  If Aion belongs on that list then WoW definately does. As I said before though its good to be the King lol.

Sorry you did NOT play Wow at the start then.  The game was fine.  There were a few hours downtime initially, but I played everyday and had few problems.  The only thing your post shows is ignorance!

Aion on the other hand I could not even play because the server queue was sometimes over 7 hours long!

So much for the Aion bigots!

 

 You are showing your true colors by first telling me I didn't play at launch and then insulting me. I was in closed beta and then immediately purchased the game and started playing at launch. I played the game for 3 1/2 yrs after launch. You obviously were not there at launch if you think none of those problems I mentioned happened.  There was major crashing of the servers and long extended periods of maintenance. Also horrible que times and as I said and I am sure others can attest to the fact they gave out free play time to players shortly after launch because of all the problems. There are plenty of people who can back up what I said about WoWs launch, hell I am not the only one in this thread alone to talk about it. Please get a clue...

Your statement that refers to me as an Aion bigot is also untrue. While I do play the game I have barely touched it since purchase and have no rose colored glasses on when it come to the game and its shortcomings. I was merely pointing out that WoW deserved to be on that list more than Aion.

edit: wow did I just use the word launch that many times...... sorry lol

 

I  was there  2nd day after launch and i dont remember it being as bad as you say, there were a few problems (que's and a crash or two) that i experienced. I'm sure Blizzard never expected a million+ people to buy the game on the first week.So ofcourse there were gonna be que's and some overload crashes.Yes i got my free month too, but i never looked back on WoW as a bad release game.

Just do a search for "WoWs problems at launch" or any number of  other topics regarding WoWs launch in a search engine and you will find tons of info on just the problems I mentioned when WoW was released. There are always going to be people who say they never experienced these problems becuase of server choice or other factors though.

As to your statemnet about me inferring WoW was a bad release game. I never said that or thought that, the criteria for the list was scariest launches and Aion was put on that list for que issues. I was just pointing out that WoW had plenty of problems at launch including ridiculously long que times.  Therefore it deserved to be on the list more in my opinion than Aion.

How in the world did Vanguard: Saga of heroes not make it into this list???? wow

It was the worst MMO game I ever played at launch. Yet you put aion in over a Queue problem? Vanguard was riddled with huge, laughable bugs, many of which persisted in the game for a half a year before being addressed. They are just now finally trying to claim the game is all fixed....2 or 3 years later.

How could you leave Vanguard off? It's been like 3 years and they are still fixing the game.

I know Aion had queues but it's difficult to predict demand. Vanguard....what else needs to be said, highly anticipated, total let down on every level?

Also Horizons was pretty scary also. Another highly anticipated game that crashed headfirst into the dirt on every level.

How about Hellgate London?

Asherons Call 2? Lord talk about scary launch, you could hardly chat for 6 months...

The list goes on and on...