Guild Wars 2

In everyones opinion what are some of the famous blunders difference MMO franchises have made over the last decade or so. For me here are a few and why.

Everquest: 1. PoP and having to get flagged to use all the raid zones.
2. Countless major nerfs to favorite classes such as mitigation nerf to monks.
3. The HUGE disparity between raiders and groupers.

WoW: 1. BG’s and disparity between raiders and groupers. PvP was a blast till BG’s and gear started to matter ie at high lvls/raiding.
2. Eliminating hybrids making you either full tank/dps/heals.
3. Nerfing windfurry, I know it was OP when it procc’d but you had to rely pretty heavily on it so was balanced imo and didn’t proc too often.

GW2: 1. Adding a gear treadmill.
2. No open world PvP and it’s very gear dependent. I hate getting steamrolled just cause x players got better gear.

SWG’s November 15th patch didn’t make that list? Really?

jamasont.4653:

GW2: 1. Adding a gear treadmill.
2. No open world PvP and it’s very gear dependent. I hate getting steamrolled just cause x players got better gear.

You don’t play WvW much do you … you get steamrolled reguardless of gear … even warriors with buff gear can get taken down by a squishy thief.

C’mon you think any of this even makes the list?

How about Allods online, which at launch was pay-per-death (seriously, each time you died you need a cash shop item to remove the penalty and/or prevent it)

jamasont.4653:

2. No open world PvP and it’s very gear dependent. I hate getting steamrolled just cause x players got better gear.

I don’t understand the second part of that statement… You’re saying PvP in GW2 is too gear dependant? Obviously that’s not sPvP because the gear there is normalized.

So I guess you must be talking about WvW but I don’t see how that qualifies as one of the biggest blunders in mmo history since practically every AAA mmo I can think of includes gear dependancy in their PvP. How does GW2 stand out in this? If anything it’s done great things to mitigate it by creating sPvP separate.

Not having openworld PvP is not a blunder. It is right as it should be. Don’t mess with the PvE aspect of the game.

SWG NGE has to be top of the list i didnt play the game iand i ended up following the slow motion train wreck on the forums. There needs to be a manual for game developers with a chapter close to the front “Never do a Star wars”

Flaging in EQ a close second. Seemed to be when a fantastic comunity started falling appart.

I dont think GW2 makes the list yet but they do need to stop using the " Smedly guide to customer comunication"

Lets see, open world PvP … small group of lvl 80’s camp outside Divinity’s Reach waiting for the low lvl players to come through the gate so they can inflate their pvp kill achievement with ease ….

No thank you

Tolmos.8395:

SWG’s November 15th patch didn’t make that list? Really?

Haha, seriously. I’m not thrilled with ANet right now (and outright hostile to NCSoft), but nothing they’ve done comes close to the crap that SWG players lived through.

Speaking of NCSoft:

City of Heroes – Shutting the door on a profitable MMO so the bean counters can juggle the numbers more easily, and giving the entire staff no warning whatsoever that this was being even considered. Paragon City goes dark in 4 days, and it was all done probably to appease the arcane accounting demands of the very same Nexon investors we’re so thrilled to have meddling with this game now.

All that EQ stuff seems pretty silly to me. I don’t see what the big deal about backflagging is. Besides, didn’t they change that system in subsequent expansions?

To me, the whole GoD expansion was a bigger screwup than backflagging in PoP. At the time, I did everything through Quarm. I raided things like that fat guy in PoDisease and that dragon in PoValor a million times to backflag other people. It didn’t seem like a huge issue to me.

And seriously, nerfing monks is one if the biggest blunders in MMO history? Classes get nerfed. Deal with it.

The most famous was SWG’s NGE

We’ve seen a lot of crash-n-burns…
Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa (when the only positive thing you can say about a game is its creator…)
Darkfall — the fail so big no one ever heard of it

1. I think has to be Vanguard — Brad McQuaid (the lead dev) posted a post-mortem of the game not too long after launch that was so emo it was like bleeding on paper. As you read it you could hear My Chemical Romance playing in the background. 1 part confessional, 3 parts passing-the-buck, it confirmed without a doubt this fail train was off the rails.

I think you’re wrong about PoP and EQ1, cuz you’d had to be flagged for key zones all the way back to Kunark, not that big a deal and actually essential for open-world raiding to put some gates.

Anarchy Online.

Release for sale in US. Game is nice and balanced.
One to two months later, release to EU totally change the game completely and so in mass the US users leave the game

Don’t forget to add Dark Age of Camelot’s Trials of Atlantis expansion where they added PVE grind to the game. It single handily wrecked it.

Could add Lord of the Ring Online’s Radiance as well.

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

Are these threads going to start being deleted / combined? Because I’d like to read about something else on the forum other than just…

“Ascended is stupid.”
“They lied about their manifesto.”
“I don’t like grinding for things.”
“This game isn’t how I want it to be anymore.”
“Is anyone still going to play GW?”
“Is GW2 the worst game ever made now?”

We get it. Please stop making more threads, at least until we learn more about how they are going to solve the issues.

Sticky please

NGE takes the crown by a huge landslide, nothing even comes close.
I’d definitely put AoC’s launch on a list of top blunders.

Malefactor.2971:

NGE takes the crown by a huge landslide, nothing even comes close.
I’d definitely put AoC’s launch on a list of top blunders.

Age of Conan was a great opportunity squandered by mis-management.

But at least it was anatomically-correct.

Another one was Wish I believe, again a lot of people looked at it as the mmo’s great white hope (boy if we don’t fall for that every time). They did an open beta for a couple days, it was bumpy, but not the worst ever… A few days later the server was on an auction site and they cancelled it. That was different.

Star Wars the Old Republic wins the loser crown. An MMO that is highly focused on single player story experience? Free to play scrambling CONVERSION in less then 1 year of release. Im not even sure if the game is still online.

If anyone wants to complain about gear treadmill, go there and you will have legitimate grounds.

SWTOR is still very much online, and it’s not like they lied about the “gear treadmill”, they said from the very beginning that it would be a pretty standard MMO with BioWare storytelling and that’s exactly what it is.

Malefactor.2971:

SWTOR is still very much online, and it’s not like they lied about the “gear treadmill”, they said from the very beginning that it would be a pretty standard MMO with BioWare storytelling and that’s exactly what it is.

Well they certainly lied about rolling out content on a regular cadence month to month. All content addition stopped abruptly after 1.3 which was questionable in terms of content.

Most of the additional cosmetics and other things that were obviously completed and shown in teaser videos repeatedly for months were held to be sold in their gem shop.

That is a sham.

GoD was the EQ screw up way way more than anything PoP had. For the mere fact that they tuned the raids/end group for level 70’s, but didn’t increase the level beyond 65. It was so bad it caused EQ to just die out.

That and everyone hates discord theme.

jamasont.4653:

2. No open world PvP …

How is WvW not open world PvP?

mulch.2586:

Malefactor.2971:

NGE takes the crown by a huge landslide, nothing even comes close.
I’d definitely put AoC’s launch on a list of top blunders.

Age of Conan was a great opportunity squandered by mis-management.

But at least it was anatomically-correct.

It seems that mismanagement is a recurring theme for Funcom, starting with AO, followed by AoC (completely unfinished game past lvl 20/Tortage) and now TSW. All 3 games with lots of promise (and promises) but failed to live up to that promise in the execution. With the way things are going for them and their current financial situation, I wouldn’t be shocked at all to hear about them being bought out or shut down altogether.

Malefactor.2971:

mulch.2586:

Malefactor.2971:

NGE takes the crown by a huge landslide, nothing even comes close.
I’d definitely put AoC’s launch on a list of top blunders.

Age of Conan was a great opportunity squandered by mis-management.

But at least it was anatomically-correct.

It seems that mismanagement is a recurring theme for Funcom, starting with AO, followed by AoC (completely unfinished game past lvl 20/Tortage) and now TSW. All 3 games with lots of promise (and promises) but failed to live up to that promise in the execution. With the way things are going for them and their current financial situation, I wouldn’t be shocked at all to hear about them being bought out or shut down altogether.

Never like to hear of people losing a job. But I think the industry is better off without them.

dybryd.1358:

jamasont.4653:

2. No open world PvP …

How is WvW not open world PvP?

Uh, because it isn’t. It’s like a set of 4 300 man instanced PVP matches, that’s it.

arcaneclarity.5283:

dybryd.1358:

jamasont.4653:

2. No open world PvP …

How is WvW not open world PvP?

Uh, because it isn’t. It’s like a set of 4 300 man instanced PVP matches, that’s it.

Not taking place on Tyria is another clue.

To me for it to be true open pvp, it should have some consequence, which is missing in GW2.

There is no gear treadmill, please stop.

I’ve clearly played a LOT more MMOs probably like 30-50 more, but that’s another story. GW2 doesn’t even rank.

The biggest blunder so far with GW2 was having the free trail on the Karka Event. Where they couldn’t provide a good consistent game play. Anyone who got a free trail or if anyone wasn’t to embarrassed to give out trail keys went away with a bad taste in their mouth and probably one less friend for wasting their weekend.

That’s about the only major blunder so far. Anet isn’t suffering from any ONE thing there suffering from all the little things they’ve allowed to add up.

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

Are these threads going to start being deleted / combined? Because I’d like to read about something else on the forum other than just…

“Ascended is stupid.”
“They lied about their manifesto.”
“I don’t like grinding for things.”
“This game isn’t how I want it to be anymore.”
“Is anyone still going to play GW?”
“Is GW2 the worst game ever made now?”

We get it. Please stop making more threads, at least until we learn more about how they are going to solve the issues.

Or just read the AMA thread. They have learned their lesson , no more tiers.

mulch.2586:

arcaneclarity.5283:

dybryd.1358:

jamasont.4653:

2. No open world PvP …

How is WvW not open world PvP?

Uh, because it isn’t. It’s like a set of 4 300 man instanced PVP matches, that’s it.

Not taking place on Tyria is another clue.

To me for it to be true open pvp, it should have some consequence, which is missing in GW2.

I think you guys are looking for another game, that’s not GW2. It wasn’t Guild Wars 1 and I doubt it will ever be in anything Anet related so you can just move on to another game if that’s what your looking for.

Lost Shore patch was like a combination of Dark Age of Camelot’s Trials of Atlantis and Lord of the Rings Online’s Radiance combined.

Volomon.9147:

mulch.2586:

arcaneclarity.5283:

dybryd.1358:

jamasont.4653:

2. No open world PvP …

How is WvW not open world PvP?

Uh, because it isn’t. It’s like a set of 4 300 man instanced PVP matches, that’s it.

Not taking place on Tyria is another clue.

To me for it to be true open pvp, it should have some consequence, which is missing in GW2.

I think you guys are looking for another game, that’s not GW2. It wasn’t Guild Wars 1 and I doubt it will ever be in anything Anet related so you can just move on to another game if that’s what your looking for.

Don’t be so quick to send a player away. I know what GW2 is about. It’s just not a real pvp game. I’m ok with that.

SWG lol, thats pretty much unbeateble.

TERA was a real fail too. But i think GW2 is at least, winner of the year for failure lol

Worst blunders in MMO history

1 ) CORPSE RUNS!!!!
2 ) failure at upgrading braking your equipment .
3 ) Failure at crafting .
4 ) the PK system
5 ) Gear grinding
6 ) inspection

Would Final Fantasy 14 being released before it was finished or even well thought out count?
Game was beautiful as hell but so awful in every other aspect. It tanked pretty hard and damage control of firing their staff and making a trailer of them nuking the FF14 universe into oblivion was pretty epic. .-.

The ascended armor in GW2 may be a tragedy. It cost what, 1850 tokens just for the backpiece currently? That’s already a lot of work when people expected exotics to stay the cap. I’m scared to see how long it would take for the armor sets. Not to mention it’s not easy to get a group or complete it successfully with the whole disconnected issues. Not fun being DC’d and losing all your progress, or having to 3-4 man a fractal cuz someone else did. Wont truly know till it happens though.

A big personal blunder as well in GW2 for me is SPvP only having one style of PvP, which is capture the point matches.

Best open world PvP with reasons to PvP is still Shadowbane, at least for me..so much to do in that game..but bugs, laggy servers and then pvers who bought the game..but then freaked out when people killed them ruined it

Adine.2184:

2 ) failure at upgrading braking your equipment .

That remembers me the time i wasted 5 billion zenny in Violet Fears on iRO Valkyrie to get a +15 Violet Fear, i ragequit after that lol

Doggie.3184:

Would Final Fantasy 14 being released before it was finished or even well thought out count?
Game was beautiful as hell but so awful in every other aspect. It tanked pretty hard and damage control of firing their staff and making a trailer of them nuking the FF14 universe into oblivion was pretty epic. .-.

Yeah, that one’s going to occupy a place of infamy just because it’s so… so weird. Sometimes I think Square Enix makes about half their business decisions via Ouija Board.

UO:R … need not say more. Those that played UO pre-UO:R know what I’m talking about.

Melchior.2135:

Doggie.3184:

Would Final Fantasy 14 being released before it was finished or even well thought out count?
Game was beautiful as hell but so awful in every other aspect. It tanked pretty hard and damage control of firing their staff and making a trailer of them nuking the FF14 universe into oblivion was pretty epic. .-.

Yeah, that one’s going to occupy a place of infamy just because it’s so… so weird. Sometimes I think Square Enix makes about half their business decisions via Ouija Board.

Yeah, FFx1v is a great example.

I like that when they relaunch they’re gonna be a subscription model with the explanation “We promised our customers we’d bring them Final Fantasy MMO with a subscription” — as if anyone would really be mad if it were sub-free.

Yeah gw2 sure is up for failure of the year. I mean there was only what 100 people at the last dragon I did……..

Is this a serious thread chronicling some missteps and controversial decisions in the history of MMO design, or another thread decrying Ascended gear as the ruin of GW2? Assuming it’s the former, here is my list:

• World of Warcraft (vanilla) introducing the original Honor system. PVP was originally limited to the open world, and offered no rewards other than enjoyment. The Honor system not only introduced a system of top-tier rewards for World PVP, but made these rewards competitive, meaning you had to out-kill every other player in your faction in order to earn rank, and therefore gear. And you had to keep that gear.

The Honor system drove off a lot of players and killed the subculture of World PVP, replacing it with a gear grind of the worst kind. The competitive nature of the system ensured massive factional imbalances (the Alliance would almost always have a huge numerical advantage) and disproportionate rewards for players with far too much free time. It turned Tarren Mill/Southshore into a nearly inaccessible area, and led directly to the development of Battlegrounds and over four years of struggle trying to manage and balance PVP.

• Champions Online Day 1 Patch. CO generated a significant degree of hype. It was Cryptic Studio’s next, revised shot at a comprehensive superhero MMORPG after Paragon took up City of Heroes; CO attempted to be everything City of Heroes should have been. However, an early release coupled with serious balance, performance and design issues culminated in a massive Day 1 patch that retuned the game across the board.

CO has since bounced back. Or climbed back, rather. It took some time, but they’ve carved a solid niche for themselves with an innovative combat system and lovely design. They’ve been doing well and I’m happy for them. But I have to wonder how things might have been, if there were no Day 1 patch.

• DCUO – Limited Social Systems. DCUO was a wonderful game in so many ways, despite a few missteps: a highly stratified endgame raiding system, for example, and a bug-riddled post release. However, DCUO’s developers publically announced and went forward with a design plan that specifically limited social options. Owing partly to a PS3 release, chat was highly limited, and it was nearly impossible to find a group, join a guild or even emote.

DCUO vastly underestimated the importance of social options in an MMORPG—and this is coming from a player who passionately argues that one of the strongest qualities of City of Heroes was its robust social options. Consequently, the game was never able to fully capitalize on word-of-mouth hype and never facilitated the creation of a cohesive community. The game went free to play within months, and Sony Online cut half its staff.

And special mention of…

• World of Warcraft – Real Name Fiasco. This happened a few years ago alongside the introduction of the new Battle.net. WoW was on the verge of rolling out a new Real Name system, which would require everyone who posts on the forums to use their real names. The outcry was loud, angry and universal. Within a few days, Blizzard capitulated, issued an apology by e-mail and rolled back their decision.

It would’ve been arguably one of the biggest blunders, but it never actually happened.

Alexander Dragonfang.1759:

Adine.2184:

2 ) failure at upgrading braking your equipment .

That remembers me the time i wasted 5 billion zenny in Violet Fears on iRO Valkyrie to get a +15 Violet Fear, i ragequit after that lol

This is one of the things that killed Aion. Taking your gear to +15 didn’t break the armor, but it broke every upgrade you ever put into it, causing an instant loss of millions and millions of gold that probably made people want to hang themselves.

I can’t help to think that you didn’t even try on your top MMO blunders. SWG didn’t make the list but nerfing windfury did?

Nerfing Windfury was one of the top blunder in the history of MMOs? Mind=blown.

TERA went off the deep end after they decided to add a battlegrounds instead of focusing on their Open World PvP and Guild vs Guild…

Open world PvP could work in this game if they did something similar to TERA where you are penalized for killing a player x levels lower than you (in TERA you ended up perma flagged for PvP for a certain amount of time and anyone not flagged could attack you; players killing low levels ended up being chased off by other high level players).

I just hope that Anet focuses more on their open world content than on gear grinding dungeon instances; otherwise whats the point of having an open world game, might as well go back to one of my other games at that point… the open world is the only reason I am still here.

I like Dragon Nests PvP better.
Vindictus and Dragon Nest have plenty of instanced dungeons for me to run (and are action combat systems)
Skyrim for single player open world (which is what Gw2 is almost starting to feel like)

Anet needs to focus on what makes their game special out of the plethora of others; open world, gear plateau (past), great environments, and events. Just doing things a bit different than other online rpgs too.

mulch.2586:

Melchior.2135:

Doggie.3184:

Would Final Fantasy 14 being released before it was finished or even well thought out count?
Game was beautiful as hell but so awful in every other aspect. It tanked pretty hard and damage control of firing their staff and making a trailer of them nuking the FF14 universe into oblivion was pretty epic. .-.

Yeah, that one’s going to occupy a place of infamy just because it’s so… so weird. Sometimes I think Square Enix makes about half their business decisions via Ouija Board.

Yeah, FFx1v is a great example.

I like that when they relaunch they’re gonna be a subscription model with the explanation “We promised our customers we’d bring them Final Fantasy MMO with a subscription” — as if anyone would really be mad if it were sub-free.

I’d love to play the remake and hope very much that it doesn’t suck. But I wouldn’t be able to trust that it’s worth being pay 2 play. It’s pretty much impossible for me to trust a game at all anymore nowadays to be worth P2P. There’s always some horrible blunder that just ruins the game, or they just don’t take it anywhere fun and it feels like your just making a bad investment.

Doggie.3184:

mulch.2586:

Melchior.2135:

Doggie.3184:

Would Final Fantasy 14 being released before it was finished or even well thought out count?
Game was beautiful as hell but so awful in every other aspect. It tanked pretty hard and damage control of firing their staff and making a trailer of them nuking the FF14 universe into oblivion was pretty epic. .-.

Yeah, that one’s going to occupy a place of infamy just because it’s so… so weird. Sometimes I think Square Enix makes about half their business decisions via Ouija Board.

Yeah, FFx1v is a great example.

I like that when they relaunch they’re gonna be a subscription model with the explanation “We promised our customers we’d bring them Final Fantasy MMO with a subscription” — as if anyone would really be mad if it were sub-free.

I’d love to play the remake and hope very much that it doesn’t suck. But I wouldn’t be able to trust that it’s worth being pay 2 play. It’s pretty much impossible for me to trust a game at all anymore nowadays to be worth P2P. There’s always some horrible blunder that just ruins the game, or they just don’t take it anywhere fun and it feels like your just making a bad investment.

I am dumb founded that they didn’t make it f2p. They can’t realistically expect that it will succeed. No one is going to risk their money on it.

niea.7504:

And seriously, nerfing monks is one if the biggest blunders in MMO history? Classes get nerfed. Deal with it.

Thats just the thing I’m not used to getting screwed over and will not put up with it. But hey thats why I have my opinion and you have yours.

jamasont.4653:

In everyones opinion what are some of the famous blunders difference MMO franchises have made over the last decade or so. For me here are a few and why.

Everquest: 1. PoP and having to get flagged to use all the raid zones.
2. Countless major nerfs to favorite classes such as mitigation nerf to monks.
3. The HUGE disparity between raiders and groupers.

WoW: 1. BG’s and disparity between raiders and groupers. PvP was a blast till BG’s and gear started to matter ie at high lvls/raiding.
2. Eliminating hybrids making you either full tank/dps/heals.
3. Nerfing windfurry, I know it was OP when it procc’d but you had to rely pretty heavily on it so was balanced imo and didn’t proc too often.

GW2: 1. Adding a gear treadmill.
2. No open world PvP and it’s very gear dependent. I hate getting steamrolled just cause x players got better gear.

You might have a point, except for the GW2 one hasn’t happened yet. If you’re getting steam rolled in wvw right now then it’s because you’re bad. Ascended gear has nothing to do with it.

Shadowbane… Yeah the whole thing..

DAoC and their PvE expansion for a game that was just about pvp (or realm vs realm there)

Ongoing Mystic theme, Warhammer Online. How they made their whole pvp really nothing more then players vs doors.. ie you avoided fights vs players since you got more renown and xp hitting pve doors in rvr