I actually agree with this list, I know people will go wait what on some of them, okay WoW. But to tell the truth wow was horried on launch day. Few mmo's have ever had a good launch day, and I honestly chalk that up to the fact none of them do enough stress testing.  Even games well out from launch need to do it from time to time, EQ stormhammer server, day one. That is all I am going to say on bone headed post launch misstakes from a game.

Originally posted by Gruug

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.

You're wrong on that. Turbine got the writes to develop a Middle Earth MMO after Sierra lost it...in 1999. Then Turbine developed their own MMO called Middle Earth Online, marketed it as a sandbox game for years and years, showed it off, demoed it, made promises to innovative features, then they changed the name of the game in alpha (I was there) and gutted the interesting features.

Having different lore doesn't make it NOT a WoW clone.

And for the last time, Darkfall's limited launch was not a "failure". It in fact, saved the game. So I'd call that a MUCH better launch than most MMOs, cause I could actually log in and play without lag in launch week.

to much wow lover herelol

i think wow got is place there, i could not play for more then few minute before server crash i was not able to play  for 1 week because server was not stable, always disconnecting and returning me to the login screen, same for all my body outthere who was with me at launch.

when server was fix and stable. there was the loot problem. its took like 3-5 min to loot a mob and i remember walking in looting form lol i was stuck crouch lol.

and the loot problem was not fix asap, its was just less worst, but its was there,

but after launch game wen very well,

oh btw its not because ur server did not have any of those problem above that the wow launch was not horrible. u were maybe lucky. but alot people out there was not able to play like u did

Originally posted by Garvon3

And for the last time, Darkfall's limited launch was not a "failure". It in fact, saved the game. So I'd call that a MUCH better launch than most MMOs, cause I could actually log in and play without lag in launch week.

I don't know if I believe any of that, or if that is a bit of revisionist history.

What I do remember is that there were a lot of people that wanted to buy the game, and couldn't even weeks or months after the initial go.

I suppose it all depends on what constitutes a failed lauch, but if there were 10Ks of people that wanted in, and could not even buy the game, that has to be considered up there. Also, as I recall, there were massive exploits and gamebreaking bugs in the beginning, the threads on those are probably still in the back of the DF forum. Plus, half the stuff promised to be in the game, according to the developers own website, was not even there.

Anyway, it was certainly a worse launch than a couple of the other games mentioned.

Every single one of these MMO's is still with us. The launch could not have gone that badly then. This list like so many others is based more on picking title names you know than ones that actualy fit the list. Why is AoC here and not AO? AoC has the bigger name for most players so it makes the list. The MMO’s ‘fame’ being more important than whether or not it was the worst launch ever. Another point in case is WoW, logging on difficulties were acute but that was about it for most players, hardly worthy of being on this list.

Originally posted by Scot

Every single one of these MMO's is still with us. The launch could not have gone that badly then. This list like so many others is based more on picking title names you know than ones that actualy fit the list. Why is AoC here and not AO? AoC has the bigger name for most players so it makes the list. The MMO’s ‘fame’ being more important than whether or not it was the worst launch ever. Another point in case is WoW, logging on difficulties were acute but that was about it for most players, hardly worthy of being on this list.

 

Launch had definitely a big impact on game's popularity however just like in case of WoW you can have even horrible launch but if the game content itself is fun and you show players that even slowly but still you are working on the title then this is what happens:) Anyway on the other hand there are also titles that had good launch and are already dead or atleast things didn't go like developers wanted them to go so for instance they had to change their business model (which is in fact also not a good sign regarding playerbase).

Originally posted by Scot

Another point in case is WoW, logging on difficulties were acute but that was about it for most players, hardly worthy of being on this list.

 

Sorry for post after post. WoW isn't on the list for logging on difficulties. Just to name some problems that WoW had:

- bugs (obvious in mmo but situation where you can't even loot is simply hilarious)

- laggy

- poor stability (even after tbc it happened that servers were down for atleast a day for emergency maintanance)

- poor customer support (even unstucking character could take days then)

Not to name their mistakes they have done with tbc launch... So yes, those are big mistakes rather especially that they lasted for months (some problems of classic were present even months after tbc and still not resolved)

Not a very well thought out list... many games had so bad a lauch that it was crippled for life.

I never tried SWG but not being able to play for the first day isn't so bad. 

Aion have massive server ques because of people setting up afk shops to avoid them,  once they fixed that there was no other issues regarding launch.  It was actually a very good launch.

AoC was also a good launch, I had no problems playing the game, it just wasn't a very good game design wise, also the pvp was meaningless.

AO never tried this game, no comment.

I wasn't there for WoW's launch.  The game had massive server ques and bug's that took longer to fix because of massive server ques.  I bet Blizzard considered it a fantastic launch considering the explosive popularity.

The list was decent, but not perfect.

FFXIV was hands down the worst launch of all time and can be commented as such as the game has been out for several months, and the developer/publisher themselves have stated how bad the game is (restructuring, bluntly stating it in emails, F2P till fixed, etc).  FFXI was also a tad rough around the edges, but nothing abysmal.

Personally, I think SWG should be higher on the list...as the I distinctly remember having to stare at the ground just to make it to quest hubs in town, beaches full of mining facilities (and lag), etc...similar to some games higher on it.

I am guessing UO got dispensation for being first.  That was by far the worst launch of all time.  Nothing comes close.  For at least a month you had regular server outages with no warning...roll backs, where you would lose several hours of progress, and lag like nothing you currently see in games.

EQ2 was awful too, actual launch was great but a few days later they must have patched in a great deal of content and the performance went from great to single digits on a brand new gaming rig.  For me the most disappointing game of all time.

Age of Conan was a disaster, like EQ2, you had a great first couple of days, then out of the blue the game exploded and became unplayable.

Those are the worst that come to mind for me.

Originally posted by Garvon3

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...

A common trait among MMO gamers is to mistake developer wishlists and alpha-level planning (in this case, Sierra's plans for MEO) for concrete feature lists. Avid console gamers are the polar opposite. Devs can spew all the bullcrap they want and post all the 'feature lists' that they are planning, but  console fans have an "I'll believe it when I see it" mentality - until it is in a gameplay trailer or a released demo, they won't even consider it as a feature.

Dev: We are considering housing for our December release. We've been tossing around ideas of destructible environments and terraforming to make construction a truly engaging experience.

Console fan: This means you'll be demoing the housing stuff at PAX, right?

MMO fan: *runs to favorite forum to create post* Subject: Housing and Terraforming coming in December!

But, back on topic... LOTRO's launch was exceptionally handled. They managed the queues, monitored performance, didn't cave to the doom/gloom posts about how they are failing because they haven't opened new servers and were able to maintain a stable healthy server population in their game.

---

Originally posted by Yauchy

Personally, I think SWG should be higher on the list...as the I distinctly remember having to stare at the ground just to make it to quest hubs in town, beaches full of mining facilities (and lag), etc...similar to some games higher on it.

---

Besides all that, the Anchorhead-Bestine pvp and group interaction made it a VERY fun game regardless of the problems, too bad SOE went and axed all that.

Anyone defending WoW definitely did not play on one of the original 'terrible 20' servers.  Shortly after launch they instituted new servers, along with new technology for those servers, then attempted to 'upgrade' the original servers, which was a disaster.  Anyone playing on one of those servers had constant rollbacks, server crashes, inability to loot, etc.  For several months those servers were basically unplayable.

As for worst launch ever, I would have to say 'Horizons' though.  I have played several games at launch, but never one that didn't even have 2/3 of the features advertised on the box.  Add in the fact that their billing department were 'accidentally' double and triple billing their customers subscription fees (later to find out it was to pad the numbers so they could sell the game) and continuing to bill customers after they quit the game make this the worst launch IMO.

Originally posted by Shadowsil

snip 

As for worst launch ever, I would have to say 'Horizons' though.  I have played several games at launch, but never one that didn't even have 2/3 of the features advertised on the box.  Add in the fact that their billing department were 'accidentally' double and triple billing their customers subscription fees (later to find out it was to pad the numbers so they could sell the game) and continuing to bill customers after they quit the game make this the worst launch IMO.

I was waiting for someone to mention that. As that was one of the few I didn't play I  didn't think it was my place to bring it up.

Originally posted by Garvon3

Originally posted by Gruug

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.

You're wrong on that. Turbine got the writes to develop a Middle Earth MMO after Sierra lost it...in 1999. Then Turbine developed their own MMO called Middle Earth Online, marketed it as a sandbox game for years and years, showed it off, demoed it, made promises to innovative features, then they changed the name of the game in alpha (I was there) and gutted the interesting features.

 

Anarchy Online is a very fun game to this day - I had to say that to let all of you know that is just the truth. 

But by far AO had the worst launch in history. I was in beta - and beta was actually quite good. It felt fairly polished and well-presented for its time. But on that first day, I remember the ONLY way to remove enough lag to allow you to even move one step was to turn off visibility of ALL other players. It sort of worked, but was still bad. 

*shiver*

AO should be #1 on this list. 

insanex

It was actually the horizons launch that convinced me never to buy an MMO until has been out for at least a month.

What a waste that game was. It's one thing to have have sever instability or to just not have it up on your release date. Glitches and game breaking bugs are of course horrible, but they are fixable. Horizons was all of those things plus one worse.  It seemed that the developers didn't plan for anyone to make it much past level 10 in the first week of game play, because they hadn't added any content beyond the starter areas.

This list is almost laughable when you include games like Aion and World of Warcraft, both of whom experienced problems because they were a success.  Complaints about Aion's grind has nothing to do with whether or not it was a successful launch.  

Where is Vanguard?  Of all the mmorpgs to have ever been released, I can't possibly think of a game that had a worse launch than Vanguard.  A game from the original developers of EQ that was hyped to the moon for years which was released as a bug ridden mess that could only be ran by nasa computers, causing the company to close its doors days later. For that matter, where is APB?

Two comments:

Biggest issue I had with SWG launch day was creating my account. I went from IE to Firefox which solved that problem and then had no problem logging in on the Eclipse server. But yeah the game was buggy for months afterwards. The BioEng class was hopelessy broken so I ended up choosing Medic. The Jedi/hologram grind was a serious disapointment and a poor way to implement the jedi class.The data base was extrtremely unstable and when I lost a millon credits of crafted items and my house vendor then the CS told me to suck it up I quit and never looked back.

Only issue I had with WoW was server ques. The game and graphics did me in though, they give me a real life skull pop of a headache, no kidding. 20 days after launch I logged off and to this day have never went back.

My personal worst experiance was Ages of Conan. Game ran great for me the first week, then suddenly one morning the game started crashing at launch. Customer support was non existent. A bunch of us with the same issue had a 100+ page thread on the tech forums. The Funcom devs just ignored it. In desperation my last week of the 30 days I did a roll over format of my hard drive which worked, but when I logged in most of my guild had called it quits by then over bugs and performance issues. I think  played one more day then said to heck with it and went back to Lotro.

I actually played AION at launch and many months afterwords.. I hit end game but gave up frustrated after failing miragent legging (one of the poor eastern-based mechanics that were mentioned.) The game played fine for me.. But i know others had problems.. It was amazing at launch, i don't think i've ever seen that many people running around in a MMORPG and i thought the fun would continue forever.. But the game just wasn't properly developed as good in the later levels and most gave up instead of grinding elite mobs all day like i did to hit 50 lol.