Wow and Aion? come on now. Since when long queues is a sign of bad launches?

FFXIV should have been on this list instead of AION.

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Hey folks,  Just wanted to call attention to one sentence then I'll leave you to the discussion...

"Bear in mind, these are based on the author’s (my own) personal experiences since I began this hobby, and when I write the following synopses I’m not picking on the mentioned games… I’m just trying to call it like I see it."

Without disrespect Bill, the list is more a refelection of your experience than the actual worse MMORPG Launches. Perhaps the title should reflect that? Arguably AO is the only title that really deserves to be on there. No Dark & Light or Darlfall, what about Alganon? Dark and Light would get my number 1 spot and by any objective measure one cares to choose I think that is justified. I guess it's just a 'fluff' piece anyway, the MMO equivalent to 'cat stuck in tree'.

Originally posted by Solestran

Spot on for the most part, but I definitely believe that Vanguard:  Saga of Heroes should be in the top 5 worst launches ever.

 

I agree completely with that. Especially that in Vanguard in beta a lot of stuff  runned quite well and at the end of beta they changed and messed up so much things that the release was quite a debacle!

Originally posted by odinsrath

my top 3 would be vanguard / wow ....and a drum roll plz! .....darkfail err um i mean darkfall..their launch was a joke

Really? Because I could play on day 1 without any issues at all, AND it had all its promised features, unlike AoC and several others on this list.

WoW deserves its spot because, unlike SWG, Darkfall, Vanguard, and the others, you couldn't even actually play it for MONTHS after launch.

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by odinsrath

my top 3 would be vanguard / wow ....and a drum roll plz! .....darkfail err um i mean darkfall..their launch was a joke

Really? Because I could play on day 1 without any issues at all, AND it had all its promised features, unlike AoC and several others on this list.

 

WoW deserves its spot because, unlike SWG, Darkfall, Vanguard, and the others, you couldn't even actually play it for MONTHS after launch.

WoW launched late November of 04 and I purchased Jan of 05, so I can't speak for December. However, in January (around the 3rd or so), the game played fine. Queue times were around 10 min at peak and none off-peak, there was some looting lag issues, but nothing that was overly gamebreaking.

Stating that WoW was unplayable for months is a dramatic overexageration.

The only problem free launch I ever experienced was DAoC, and there was class balancing issues, but nothing that prevented game play. CoH had a pretty clean launch too.

Giving WoW top honors, over AO, is a joke though and just shows the bias on this site, or Bill's lack of experience with earlier games.

Aion even being on the list is a bit of a joke. The game played fine, getting in was a bit of a problem due to queues. That doesn't make a poor launch, it just means it had a popular launch.

EVE online and Anarchy online were the worst, hands down but it seems on this site you won't hear anything negative about CCP's game. How the hell did WoW make it to 1 place? Hate much? They had fucking rollbacks in some games and people cry about laggs and queues, bwuahaha.

EvE is rated number one everywhere on this site (and in a recent article) and wow is rated worst and bashed in yet another article? 

Is this site run by FOX?

Did you know WoW had 2-4 classes without talents at release. lololol. 

Also to quote above. There was wasn't anything to queue for when i started. No PVP was out, No dungeon finder, nothing. But i liked the old style (after PVP came out later)

Also EvE wasn't quite bad launch, just confusing.

As for everyone who has EvE Vs WoW or just WoW in comment.

Cough, WoW fanbois/girls. Stop defending your game/bashing others.

zz. Nvm. server queues. I can't edit my post, so posting this to say. Mybad.

Also people defending WoW servers. Look@WintersGrasp. And tolbarad. Theres now a limit because the server couldn't support 200people in one place, and either have 20second lag, or Crash it.

At first there servers couldn't handle 100people at first either, but they tweaked it a little bit to only lag a small fraction of what it was at first.

I'll take WoW's "bad" launch over almost every other MMO's "good" launch any time.  Who the hell thought WoW had the worst launch of all time???

Hi There,

Although your article focused on MMORPG's an infamous shout out should go to "World War II Online" by "Cornered Rat Software" as a MMOSIM / FPS. It rivaled Anarchy Online's abysmal gold launch back on June 2001 for WWII Online.

Here's the wikipedia link on the game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_Online

Look Under the "Initial Release" category.

I know that these are all based on the writers gaming career, but i would have to say if i knew better the worst launch in history would have to be FFXI, it was when squareenix was still squaresoft and they had never even made a 2 player game much less an mmorpg in time were there only true competetor was Everquest and the table top DND. They only did beta for a cumulative amount of maybe a day threw a 3 month period before the game launched. When the game did launch it had all the bugs you would expect from an early Alpha testing and so many people on both PC and Ps2 were trying to log in that it was almost impossible. It was like trying to fit 10 thousand people threw a door with glass shards coming from the frame. 

I have to go to what I would call the gold standard of MMO game launches in Lord of the Rings Online. LOTRO had to have been one of the best if not the best launches I have ever been a part of (and been a part of many). ANY game that fails to live up to that LOTRO's launch can not be called good.

Originally posted by Gruug

I have to go to what I would call the gold standard of MMO game launches in Lord of the Rings Online. LOTRO had to have been one of the best if not the best launches I have ever been a part of (and been a part of many). ANY game that fails to live up to that LOTRO's launch can not be called good.

I agree with this. LotRO and DAoC were the only good MMO launches I can think of. Granted, LotRO got their by gutting most of their game and axing almost all the unique features from alpha and turning into a WoW clone, but that's another issue...

The OPs list is a joke, There were several worse launches of P2P titles that were considerably worse, D+L, APB, POTBS, Darkfall, many others.

By comparison, SWG, which is on the list, increased the subscriber base in the months following launch, so except for "launch day", SWG although very far from perfect, did much better than the other games I mentioned.

And there is more to a launch than "launch day".

As any experienced MMO player knows.

---

Originally posted by pye088j
A list like that without Dark and light is pure bullshit

---

Dark and Light has to take the cake.. Awesome concept, poor execution, all sorts of weirdness with billing and game at launch.. yea.

Yet I still miss floating around on my hang-glider just exploring.. ahh good times.

Vanguard was playable just fine at launch for me, just some latency crossing 'zone borders' in the seamless world if i recall.. Pretty smooth.. But I understand many people had real problems heh.

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by Gruug

I have to go to what I would call the gold standard of MMO game launches in Lord of the Rings Online. LOTRO had to have been one of the best if not the best launches I have ever been a part of (and been a part of many). ANY game that fails to live up to that LOTRO's launch can not be called good.

I agree with this. LotRO and DAoC were the only good MMO launches I can think of. Granted, LotRO got their by gutting most of their game and axing almost all the unique features from alpha and turning into a WoW clone, but that's another issue...

 On that I have to disagree. Turbine took the game over from another (Sierra as I recall) and the "features" were never fleshed out in that game to a point where they were even doable. As to the "WoW clone", I would also have to say that is not true as LOTRO was much more true to the LOTR lore of which WoW is not really a part of except in the legacy that LOTR is to all fantasy role playing games. If anything, WoW is a poor LOTR (the books not the game) clone.

AION today is what it should have been on release.  Crafting and gathering are still very poor, but the exp boosts and better drop rate have made it much better (as well as the throttle on gank squads).  There are far fewer bots (I have seen a few in Theo, but apparently no one goes there anymore anyway.  

A list of worst MMO launches that doesn't mention Vanguard or Dark and Light is about as useful as a chocolate fireplace.

As for WoW having the worst ever launch, it was the market leader within months of release and has never looked back. I'm sure other publishers wouldn't mind a launch as bad as that.