I really wonder about this as with computer concerns today there's far too much individual gaming cheating.

My consideration is Runescape where Jagex claim it as the most popular Free-To-Play game. Who forgets how they count a record number of accounts that real people have quit this game more than any other game. This statement of most F2P players is not at all true and all that happens in the free game is the Auto-Macroes start accounts there in multiples on one computer to quickly get all free stats very high so in members they can easy obtain stuff to fill their main account with while also selling items at the GE there and selling the items and cash in real life. This cheatting way so few control the game with, but ruin it totally for all the decent players. The costs on the GE have risen dramatically for an average player, soon items will be unobtainable due to costs caused by Auto-Botts working the GE continuously. Any doubts you may have about Auto-Macroes or Botts you need to realsie that the whole game is now Bottable including GE merchanting, Quests and all Diaries.  The few that run heaps of Botts just Bott-Trade all they can onto their main so that account can go have PVP fun at the cost of all genuine members getting so little. The game engine is also designed to reward those on longest so thus Botts get all the best gear while genuine players get less rewards than ever these days. Also the HighScores is so false with these botts like with the best Dungeoneer having 63million experience in , this means since it opened as the new skill on 12th April that botter has got 104 days playing so thats 606,770 experince a day. Considering on a best day of people playing genuinely with high levels for 8 hours they get about 150,000 experince. 3 times that is 24 hours so 450,000 experience and at hte lower levels even that isn't even close to attainable. So see thus this game is all Botters and nothing at all given to decent genuine players.

Is there any Game or Developer worse?

Also apart from my thoughts of making all games chargeable by the hour / time online in it, is there any better way to stop online cheating. Games are meant to be played by the people as we would from a disc. Do all games now need to be related to a registered disc of it thats only able to run one account at a time, this disc also confirming regularly it belongs to the genuine owner to discourage hacking aswell?

Patience while I try to count this now:

Runescape = omg, so far just me

Mortal Online = 1

Metin 2 = 1

oh STO (whats the full name?) by CRYPTIC = 9

SWG by SOE and Lucasart = 4

"Everquest" is this by SOE too = 2

Horizon by Artifact & online by Atari = 3

Dark & Life by NP Cube & released by Farlan Entertainment = 1

WOW (World Of Warcraft) a Blizzard job = 2

Diablo 2 by Blizzard too (I loved the original Diablo on PS1) = ?

Tabulua Rasa by NC Soft & Richard Garriet = 3

Aion = 3

Startrek = 1

Gpotato = 1

Xiah = 1

Champion Online = 1

Cheyane & simalar good people, can you state the Game & Developer clearer for me not knowing much about non-viewed games? Also people tell me, is Cryptic and SOE the same lot or what? Did I mention at all how abbreviations annoy me so much with far too many options for 3 parts to a full name!

Cheating is why I left EQ and will never play a SoE game again, the program that lets people cheat has been live for like 6 years, a big % of the playerbase uses it. (See the LINK below, it's called ghostkilling, you take 0 damage).

At some point they lose your trust, if the company doesn't care, why should I keep caring about their game.

Having a cheat-free MMO is my main priority for the next MMO I try. I understand it's nearly impossible to have 0 cheating, but there's a big difference between not caring at all and consistent banning and trying to fix issues as fast as possible.

I tried about 100 different MMORPGs of all scales and calibres. 2 easily worst of them are Mortal Online and Metin 2. Among those only Mortal Online I eagerly wish to disappear and stop embaracing the genre.

I sure hope the companies making all these games have some mature people hiding behind  them. Jagex Mods for Runescape claim to be 20 years old but still act like they are 14 instead. I am totally sure Jagex only care is that as amny accounts they can have in members means they don't even consider their own rules that have been about from the start of the game, they break vertually all of their own rules now.

There must also be some internet fraud systems out there that will soon find these scamming companies and shut them down. The problem here is how many other games like Runescape have so many help sites etc that rely on the game aswell. I know sites like RuneHq, Samoneus, Tipit and Zybez do all they can to help the decent players but also show a preference to RuneScape Mods aswell. For this reason like the game forums, it is impossible to tell these truthful facts on any of their sites forums.

I have spent well over $2000NZ in almost 8 years playing and near 8 months ago got hacked of about 3/4 of all my items from all that work. It may not seem like much but having to work aswell as be on-call limits how much I can play. Also a few years ago helping beginners etc was a simialr amount of work. Now kids buy those botted high level accounts (like here http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/279073/will-they-ever-go-back-to-the-way-runescape-used-to-be.html , sorry not the direct link but Devillicious is very good explaining all this problem of botts) from people that keep doing it for real-life cash.       

Wow your exaggerating your cause so much its not even funny, if you think botting in runescape is bad now you sure as hell werent playing the game before the RMT update. Jagex literally shut down 99% of all RMT in the game after it, and how can alts give  money to your main when you cant even trade more than what 100k?. Also how is jagex lying about it beign the most popular F2P game? Its in the guiness world record books for crying out loud, and even if people have multiple accounts are you saying in other games people don't and theirs no botting? Your up for disappointment friend.  If you don't mind me asking, how many other MMOs have you played?

In before blizzard and cryptic.

Worse thing even is that most gamers even think its normal to set up macros and bots if your not doing it they say your stupid go figure:(

Im affraid these days cheating is so commen most think its a valid way of playing a game:(

It is tough to feather and tar some developer because they could come up with a good game. I was ready to that to Turbine after AC 2 but LotRO is a great game . I was ready to do that to Funcom after Age of Conan and Anarchy Online but seriously I do not think these companies set out to specifically cheat and deceive you and after all Anarchy Online which I played for nearly 18 months was not so bad. It just dwidled in terms of population.

On the other hand I liked WoW a lot but the community was horrible which is not Blizzard's fault. I think the combat changes done by SOE must be labelled  as one really bad move in SWG. How do you want to classify this do you mean it as deliberate or just clueless like Brad McQuaid who could not manage a company or how Bill Roper did in Hellgate. What do you point at and say yes they did that on purpose.

Oh how the bots ruined Aion and the gold selling personal shops another horrid aspect of Aion or the endless account hijacks in WoW. What happens when companies just turn a blind eye or do you just sell the gold yourself to avoid others doing it.

Originally posted by Gabby-air

Wow your exaggerating your cause so much its not even funny, if you think botting in runescape is bad now you sure as hell werent playing the game before the RMT update. Jagex literally shut down 99% of all RMT in the game after it, and how can alts give  money to your main when you cant even trade more than what 100k?. Also how is jagex lying about it beign the most popular F2P game? Its in the guiness world record books for crying out loud, and even if people have multiple accounts are you saying in other games people don't and theirs no botting? Your up for disappointment friend.  If you don't mind me asking, how many other MMOs have you played?

 OMG, you have no idea of the present botts. In-game botts were removed from Runescape back then but now your computer can operate macroes to copy your mouse clicks thus Runescape Mods can't ID the botters any more. They need to change to charging by the hour to stop this alone. Lol Guiness Book of Records should have it for the most quit accounts - what ignorance you kids have not realising quit accounts are still counted as they never get removed at all & any account can start to play now nine years later on if dumb enough.

But that isn't likely to happen as in almost 8 years playing and just quitting very recent genuine fixes of the game are ignored totally. It's easy to tell by how the game recently changed that Jagex have given up on honesty and just want cash whatever way they can get it.

Look at what they've done to improve income; slow all abilities down:

1, meelee Torag long ago with 12 or so hits to kill - lately 11 hits but with 53 '0' strikes thus it takes ages more

2, woodcut a yew at lvl76 back then a lot faster than at lvl96 now

3, mine coal at lvl35 back then a lot faster than at lvl90 now (note; the action to use your pick too now)

4, fish tuna and swordfish at level 65 back then so much faster & easier than at lvl94 now

and so much more but now you get the idea. Even all quests are now unecessary long for even the easiest new ones. Another thing they recently did was allow you to try the old CLASSIC but it's sure as hell not the OLD RUNESCAPE CLASSIC as so many mates that used to play that tell me it's a pathetic copy. This is what they did to it to scare away those wanting to go back to the game not ruined by all these updates which keep destroying the game.

BTW Gabby, my friends tried to help me out after I was hacked and could trade up to 260k a time so imagine how much botters can trade overnight.

Also I have always tried to help people learn to try and stay healthy. Too much online game time means a lack of good health and here's a good place to start and see about health http://www.drmercola.com/ with a special note on the effects of less sunlight giving less vitamin D and thus helping you get fatal disease http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2004/03/31/cancer-sunlight.aspx with the list of sunlight archives here http://www.google.com/cse?cx=014893373595427585380%3Arz9po23sgms&ie=UTF-8&q=sunlight&sa=Search

This isn't the only place for such facts but it's a good accurate site where you don't need to buy anything to get the information. You can buy from it if you want but there's no obligation at all. This list in itself here will save a few lives!         

I also remember back when we played PSOne, PS2 and now they play XBOX360 how my nephews used to say they had clocked a game. What a joke that was and it was far too common with kids. Any idiot can get to the end of the disc('s) and say that noob thing but ask them if the got all the side quests and all items attainable. All you get is a silly blank look and 'no, I couldn't be bothered' . Of course I couldn't help but laugh at them just as I do about high lvl online game accounts. Such things are simply meaningless pixels created by the laziest people online who don't care a dam about who else's game they make a mess of.              

I have had some pretty bad experiences with Cryptic.  From their forum moderation to questional billing practices, outside of their actual game builds they seem to have screwed/ pissed off their player base at every turn. Couple that with lackluster game design, and uninspired graphics I have just been very disappointed with all of their MMO ventures.  A good number of people are a little more forgiving than I but Crypotic for me is hands down my least favorite MMO studio (limited to studios i have first hand experience of, of course)...

Horizons (aka Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted) by Artifact Entertainment get's my vote because they crushed my dreams when they dropped most of their playable species prior to launch. As for cheating and bots, I really couldn't say.

I think it would be a toss up with Horizons deveoped by Artifact Entertainment and released by Atari ... or Dark and Light developed by NP Cube, released by Farlan Entertainment. Both pretty much had the same exact problems only seporated on to sides of the ocean.

The both had massive game engine issues where mobs would attack you well before the game decided to draw them on your screen. It was very difficult to defend yourself against the many invisible men. Traders and other NPCs appeared to be missing. In reality, they weren't there for you .. but for other people.

Both had extreme amounts of lag that would not only rubber band yourself .. but would make your character's coordinates become out of sync with the server making it impossible to do anything before a relog.

Finally, the AI was horrendous. So much so, that my first experiences in Horizon's were fighting an undead simply to have him run off on me. I completely forgot about it and about 2 minutes later, I start getting attacked from behind. Turns out the undead ran around the world to the other side do to an object collision bug with the AI path finding.

Both of these games had EXTREME potential even with the cuts necessary to meet dead lines and lost funding. Amazing concepts but poor implementation.

Worst MMORPG game and developer?  Easy for me.

SOE & Lucasarts, and what they did with SWG.

SOE forced the NGE ("New Game Enhancements") out of the blue in '05, unannounced, to its players.  These changes weren't simply a tweak here, tweak there, and a nerf over here.  These were gameplay changes that totally altered the game to an unrecognizable, overly simplistic version of its former self.  Some said the changes were a poor mockery of what WoW was supposed to be, but I never played WoW.

The player response was overwhelmingly negative and people pleaded to get the old system back, but SOE didn't want to hear any of it.  What they wanted was a piece of WoW's newfound success, i.e. some of their players.  SOE & Lucasarts (both deserve blame) figured that the changes would drive out a bunch of the-then 200k players but would be replaced with the stampede of WoW's players (WoW + Star Wars name!  How can you possibly lose, right?).  Well, the majority of players left, and there was no stampede of eager newbies.

SOE & Lucasarts were perfectly fine on saying "F*** You" to their current, paying subscribers in a bid to get a possibly larger playerbase.  Even when their clumsy and poorly thought out plan didn't pan out, they refused to "Rollback" to the older systems.  They rather let the game languish in hell with a mockery of a population of what used to be than admit to their mistake and go back to the old system.

The poor thing about this stupid NGE was that it obviously took quite a bit of development time, and to top it off, it added even MORE bugs since it was a new system laid ontop of an already existing game that still had lingering bugs from release.  Alot of development time that could have been used to FIX the existing system and add more to the game.  But no, they wasted their time and effort, drove out once the vibrant, very tight knit playerbase, and soiled their reputation.

Instead of having by now a polished, fleshed out Star Wars SANDBOX game with a great, tight knit community, we have a laughable one that tries poorly to mimic another, more successful MMORPG, with a greatly diminished population of what once was.

cryptic is the worst

Originally posted by Warmaker

Worst MMORPG game and developer?  Easy for me.

SOE & Lucasarts, and what they did with SWG.

SOE forced the NGE ("New Game Enhancements") out of the blue in '05, unannounced, to its players.  These changes weren't simply a tweak here, tweak there, and a nerf over here.  These were gameplay changes that totally altered the game to an unrecognizable, overly simplistic version of its former self.  Some said the changes were a poor mockery of what WoW was supposed to be, but I never played WoW.

The player response was overwhelmingly negative and people pleaded to get the old system back, but SOE didn't want to hear any of it.  What they wanted was a piece of WoW's newfound success, i.e. some of their players.  SOE & Lucasarts (both deserve blame) figured that the changes would drive out a bunch of the-then 200k players but would be replaced with the stampede of WoW's players (WoW + Star Wars name!  How can you possibly lose, right?).  Well, the majority of players left, and there was no stampede of eager newbies.

SOE & Lucasarts were perfectly fine on saying "F*** You" to their current, paying subscribers in a bid to get a possibly larger playerbase.  Even when their clumsy and poorly thought out plan didn't pan out, they refused to "Rollback" to the older systems.  They rather let the game languish in hell with a mockery of a population of what used to be than admit to their mistake and go back to the old system.

The poor thing about this stupid NGE was that it obviously took quite a bit of development time, and to top it off, it added even MORE bugs since it was a new system laid ontop of an already existing game that still had lingering bugs from release.  Alot of development time that could have been used to FIX the existing system and add more to the game.  But no, they wasted their time and effort, drove out once the vibrant, very tight knit playerbase, and soiled their reputation.

Instead of having by now a polished, fleshed out Star Wars SANDBOX game with a great, tight knit community, we have a laughable one that tries poorly to mimic another, more successful MMORPG, with a greatly diminished population of what once was.

 That game was garbage before NGE. The only reason people didn't flock to it is because WoW was better, and they already tried out PRE CU when the game launched and they didn't like it so they went to wow, why would NGE do anything to attract the people that tried the game and left.   But ... that is not the worst game and developer in MMO history, that game has stil been going to this day.  They just made a huge mistake by pissing off their player base that wound up costing them.

I have played EQ1, UO, AC, AO, DAoC, AC2, Shadowbane, EQ2, FFXI, Lineage2, GW, Earth & Beyond, Sims Online, SWG, Horizons, WoW, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners, APB, LotRO, DDO, AOC, Fallen Earth and Aion. 

The one game I would call terrible would be Horizons and the developer (Artifact) was awful. 

Playing whilst sat next to my wife with our characters in game also side by side, I remember it being daytime on her screen and nighttime on mine.  When the best thing the fanbois could say about the game was how good the UI was you knew it was a game in trouble.  Just awful graphics engine, empty pointless world and what kind of a game has a signpost that says 'Monsters' with an arrow pointing in a direction?

Simply abysmal and the fact that a handful of sad people still playing leads me to believe that some folks will settle for any old crap. 

I know I threw my vote in already for SWG, but I just remembered a good, noteworthy failure.

Tabula Rasa, with NCsoft and Richard "I've lost my friggin' mind" Garriott.  Game came out in late '07 but pulled the plug for good in Feb '09.  Not even a 1.5 years of being live.  Let's not forget the troubled history the game had leading to release.  It started out as fantasy based, then years into development, was changed to sci-fi.

Never played the game but read and heard so much about it.  It's also the last MMORPG Lord British has worked on to date.

Originally posted by medmarijuana

Originally posted by Warmaker

Worst MMORPG game and developer?  Easy for me.

SOE & Lucasarts, and what they did with SWG.

SOE forced the NGE ("New Game Enhancements") out of the blue in '05, unannounced, to its players.  These changes weren't simply a tweak here, tweak there, and a nerf over here.  These were gameplay changes that totally altered the game to an unrecognizable, overly simplistic version of its former self.  Some said the changes were a poor mockery of what WoW was supposed to be, but I never played WoW.

The player response was overwhelmingly negative and people pleaded to get the old system back, but SOE didn't want to hear any of it.  What they wanted was a piece of WoW's newfound success, i.e. some of their players.  SOE & Lucasarts (both deserve blame) figured that the changes would drive out a bunch of the-then 200k players but would be replaced with the stampede of WoW's players (WoW + Star Wars name!  How can you possibly lose, right?).  Well, the majority of players left, and there was no stampede of eager newbies.

SOE & Lucasarts were perfectly fine on saying "F*** You" to their current, paying subscribers in a bid to get a possibly larger playerbase.  Even when their clumsy and poorly thought out plan didn't pan out, they refused to "Rollback" to the older systems.  They rather let the game languish in hell with a mockery of a population of what used to be than admit to their mistake and go back to the old system.

The poor thing about this stupid NGE was that it obviously took quite a bit of development time, and to top it off, it added even MORE bugs since it was a new system laid ontop of an already existing game that still had lingering bugs from release.  Alot of development time that could have been used to FIX the existing system and add more to the game.  But no, they wasted their time and effort, drove out once the vibrant, very tight knit playerbase, and soiled their reputation.

Instead of having by now a polished, fleshed out Star Wars SANDBOX game with a great, tight knit community, we have a laughable one that tries poorly to mimic another, more successful MMORPG, with a greatly diminished population of what once was.

 That game was garbage before NGE. The only reason people didn't flock to it is because WoW was better, and they already tried out PRE CU when the game launched and they didn't like it so they went to wow, why would NGE do anything to attract the people that tried the game and left.   But ... that is not the worst game and developer in MMO history, that game has stil been going to this day.  They just made a huge mistake by pissing off their player base that wound up costing them.

LOL, not refuting the development of the game.  Trust me we were b*tching about deficiencies, but what it did have was quite nice in gameplay and as well as the community.  I already pointed my reasons above and you gave no meat to yours.

The huge mistake you're mentioning is what I brought up and a major reason why SOE & LA are both crap.  As you said, their decision pissed off their playerbase.  They were quite willing to forsake it.  The game IS still there, but in greatly diminished numbers with servers being closed down.  Kind of like a zombie, and I know whoever is left there is wondering exactly what will happen when SWTOR comes out.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"

Two of the shallowest, blandest games that have ever dared to ask for a subsctiption are Aion and Star Trek Online.  The two companies expended the minimum effort they possibly could while trying to grab the maximum amount of cash they possibly could.  I've always kept the games I've bought, sometimes for years, but these two clunkers were thrown into the garbage without hesitation or regret.