Guild Wars 2

Dead.7385:

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.

Guess I didnt see that cause I quit before it came out. I do remember people leaving in droves with PoP though.

felivear.1536:

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.

You just assume I’ve played SWG? Mind=blown. LOL, some people…

Trammel, the original game killer

… although I have to admit I did love designing and decorating custom houses :X

Ultima Online’s Felucca/Trammel split comes to mind. Of course, to be fair it was possibly a necessary evil. In the face of Everquest’s success, for all we know, Ultima Online may not have survived without some PvE friendly changes. While games like Eve Online have similar rulesets to classic UO, they weren’t faced with a direct competitor.

What was a big blunder, however, was the Item Insurance system. A fixed rate of gold for insuring any equipment item on your character (and it wasn’t very expensive at all). With insured items, they act as if they are blessed and will not drop with your corpse if you die (UO was a game where anything you carried was fair game if you died). However, even a less developed character could afford to keep his gear insured at all times due to its flat rate. It didn’t make much of a gold sink because of this, as even the best items would cost a paltry 600gp to insure (yes, that’s actually lunch money in UO). Finally, no more gear dropped on death in PvP because of it, effectively killing off the main income of Murderers/PKers in Felucca (even though, by this time, there weren’t enough players there to hunt anyways).

jamasont.4653:

Dead.7385:

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.

Guess I didnt see that cause I quit before it came out. I do remember people leaving in droves with PoP though.

EQ’s sub numbers rose consistently thru 2004 and didn’t drop til mid 2005, after EQ2 launched and after WoW got past its awkward starting phase.

GoD and even OoW did as well as any of the others.

I, too, would have to agree with the NGE release being the #1 game blunder in MMO history, and I didn’t even play that game.

Next, for me, was VG, and the mis-management from Brad McQuaid to Silius (may he forever….well, fill in the rest. Due to moderation, I won’t complete that) that game, for me, was the game to end all games, but 1 year of utter silence followed by more broken promises and no content updates, I had to go my own way.

EQ lost me due to the pumping out of expansions at 6 month intervals. I could barely make level caps and get 1 or 2 AA’s before the next expansion was on the horizon and I was back to ground zero. Then ‘progression servers came out, and I joyfully went to them, only to find that the top guilds were rushing out the content as quickly as possible and not really understanding the…’take it easy’ concept 90% of the server desired.

One of the top blunders I think in this game is the auto nerf. It’s bull being a lvl 80 character going into a level 5 area and getting nerfed down to 5 and having 3 mobs walk all over you.

In some areas the level of mobs may be 70 and the area has 2 entrances, one say is in a level 60 section and the other is in say a level 75 area, if you’re level 80 and enter through the 60 area you get rolled because you are nerfed down to 60 going against a level 75, but if you enter from the level 75 side, it’s fine because you are nerfed to 75.

Basically…Auto nerf sux.

Malefactor.2971:

NGE takes the crown by a huge landslide, nothing even comes close.

The fine points of many other MMO blunders can be debated, but the NGE is the Mt Everest and everything else are at best mountainous hills by comparison.

Games that fail/blunder within their first few months I don’t really view as that impactful of blunders. They tried something and it obviously failed. But when a relatively big, established game makes some kind of 180 change…that’s when we can start talking about “top” blunders.

I’ve really only played WoW and GW1 so here’s my list.

1. Welfare epics (World of Warcraft)
The game with the best vertical progression as claimed by so many people also has a broken item progression system that broke ever since the Ulduar patch was released during Wrath. Run Naxxramus to get the best gear in order to run Ulduar? No need, just run heroics. You don’t ever need to touch Naxx unless you’re just going for achievements. When Trial of the Champion came out Ulduar became obsolete because you could gear up for ToC from heroics. Why do you think people on the WoW forums are saying that WoW was awesome during the vanilla and BC days but crap after Wrath. The overall quality of the game didn’t decrease but item progression pretty much died.

2. No auction house (Guild Wars)
I didn’t play Factions or Nightfall but when Prophecies first came out there was no auction house. If you wanted to sell or buy something you had to spam trade chat over and over until someone finally whispered you. Either that or you had to sift through other people’s spam to find what you were looking for. The districts for each major city only exacerbated the problem because someone that had something you wanted could very well be in another district and so you had to constantly move between districts hoping you would get lucky.

Unnecessary disclaimer but yeah, this is all subjective.

• DAoC Trials of Atlantis
  So much good content wasted to poor implementation. It ruined RvR for me. Gated grind, arms race in RvR. To the point they ahd to make “classic” servers.

• LOTRO radiance
  Gated content, gear checks, grindastic. Removed by “whining”. A great favor to the game.

• LOTRO s legendary gear
  Great in concept, but horribly implemented. Grindy, boring, ‘complex’ and later on turned into a cash shop pusher. Makes the end game virtually not accessible by new/casual players.

• Age of Conan
  ‘Real time combat’ based on arrow combos oh god what the hell was that

• Darkfall

To soon to say anything about GW2 goes “slow treadmill”. Just because I hate it, doesn’t make it a blunder, like, going to destroy the game or something. I hardly doubt it.

Warhammer Online:
1. Releasing the Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun without having their opposites buffed to match.
2.Buffing certain classes without buffing their opposites.
But most major one 3. Level 90 and 100 gear. When it was first introduced it blew away even level 80 gear. Even after the much needed nerf it was still too powerfull for under level 80 gear.

SWTOR is probably the biggest MMO flop in history in terms of lost profits. They spent $200,000,000 on the game and lost half their subscribers (1.5mil) in 6 months.

Kalas.6743:

Warhammer Online:
1. Releasing the Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun without having their opposites buffed to match.
2.Buffing certain classes without buffing their opposites.
But most major one 3. Level 90 and 100 gear. When it was first introduced it blew away even level 80 gear. Even after the much needed nerf it was still too powerfull for under level 80 gear.

So few people played past the initial launch. Most everyone was gone long before these things came to pass.

I do think of it as one of the best intellectual properties for a MMO that was squandered by a really bad game.

Has anyone ever played Lineage II? I dont even know where to begin with blunders here. Ncsoft had potential to have a very successful game. Open world PvP game with a nice karma system as punishment, highly competitive. So, lets see the blunders I can name of the top of my head, each of them killed of a % of players.

1- Ignoring bots, they eventually overtook the map, farmed, ruined the economy to a point of no return.
2- Astronomical numbers of materials to craft gear
3- Implementation of element resistances and attack. The PvP was about how much element you have rather than skill
4- When they wanted to encourage team play, they just made it so players had 2-3 accounts, one main and a train of buffers following them, kicking them out of party after the buffs to get 100% of the xp. Real buffers were not needed unless it is mass PvP. That limited players to main damage classes only and support classes main were rare
5- free to play after 7 years! invasion of the children to a once mature community.
6- took the only last nice thing about the game, 34 different classes, merged them into the generic MMO selection (nuker, tank, healer, buffer, rogue, warrior) with very generic skills.
7- Nail in the coffin: instances, instances everywhere! no one steps foot outside town any-more for the PvP.

Tolmos.8395:

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

For reals, lol. I thought that would be #1

Hantu.2815:

Has anyone ever played Lineage II? I dont even know where to begin with blunders here. Ncsoft had potential to have a very successful game. Open world PvP game with a nice karma system as punishment, highly competitive. So, lets see the blunders I can name of the top of my head, each of them killed of a % of players.

1- Ignoring bots, they eventually overtook the map, farmed, ruined the economy to a point of no return.
2- Astronomical numbers of materials to craft gear
3- Implementation of element resistances and attack. The PvP was about how much element you have rather than skill
4- When they wanted to encourage team play, they just made it so players had 2-3 accounts, one main and a train of buffers following them, kicking them out of party after the buffs to get 100% of the xp. Real buffers were not needed unless it is mass PvP. That limited players to main damage classes only and support classes main were rare
5- free to play after 7 years! invasion of the children to a once mature community.
6- Nail in the coffin: instances, instances everywhere! no one steps foot outside town any-more for the PvP.

The Lineage franchise has been wildly successful, just not for English-speaking audience. When you consider their market penetration — prob’ly a similar % of Korean teams played those games as US teens watched South Park.

SWTOR Patch 1.1 (aka, the Ilum Patch)

Whatever doubt was left on whether or not they knew what the heck they were doing were confirmed. Honestly, though, that was just laughable it’s not even funny.

mulch.2586:

Hantu.2815:

Has anyone ever played Lineage II? I dont even know where to begin with blunders here. Ncsoft had potential to have a very successful game. Open world PvP game with a nice karma system as punishment, highly competitive. So, lets see the blunders I can name of the top of my head, each of them killed of a % of players.

1- Ignoring bots, they eventually overtook the map, farmed, ruined the economy to a point of no return.
2- Astronomical numbers of materials to craft gear
3- Implementation of element resistances and attack. The PvP was about how much element you have rather than skill
4- When they wanted to encourage team play, they just made it so players had 2-3 accounts, one main and a train of buffers following them, kicking them out of party after the buffs to get 100% of the xp. Real buffers were not needed unless it is mass PvP. That limited players to main damage classes only and support classes main were rare
5- free to play after 7 years! invasion of the children to a once mature community.
6- Nail in the coffin: instances, instances everywhere! no one steps foot outside town any-more for the PvP.

The Lineage franchise has been wildly successful, just not for English-speaking audience. When you consider their market penetration — prob’ly a similar % of Korean teams played those games as US teens watched South Park.

Yes it was very successful in Korea, until the Free-to play GOD update. They actually sent reps to internet cafes asking players why are they not playing L2. Then many player petitions later, they stated officially that they will reverse some chances by GOD, such as un-merging classes back to 34. And yes I agree, the West was badly mismanaged while Korea and Europe sustained the game well, until the GOD hit.

Meridian 59: 3DO’s sudden change in pricing pattern to a daily/weekly/monthly pattern. Then EverQuest came out.

Ultima Online: Trammel/Felucca Split, then it just kinda bled people over time.

EverQuest: Every Expansion ever after Scars of Velious saw people throw up their hands and leave. It got worse after Planes of Power. which was when I cut ties with my credit card. Reportedly it didn’t get real crazy until they decided to just rewrite lore on the fly to add in places and plots which wouldn’t have made sense with what went on previously.

Anything else I wasn’t around for, either because I’d quit earlier or I wasn’t playing the game. I have about a dozen more smaller MMOs I threw my time into for a while but they were less “obvious mistakes” and more “just didn’t do it”.

If there’s a top 5 list and GW2’s Lost Shores patch makes it, there’s a lot of older players of MMOs who would highly disagree.

See also the Minecraft fan meme: “Mojang goes out of business” to see how crazy this sort of statement can get

Well since playing EQ starting in 1999 I’ve always been entertained with how developers repeat the same mistakes over and over. Here are my favorites:

• SWG: The NGE. Never has there been such a clusterfark in all of MMOland. Sony Online Entertainment basically replaced an entire game midstream. Before a major expansion release even. What’s humorous is the expansion even promised items for classes that had been REMOVED from the game. Many people still swear never to buy another SOE product again. This is why you never change the core game design midstream.
  A brief rundown

• Vanguard This one is a wonderful lesson in not believing the hype and putting all your faith in so-called game designer “geniuses” such as Brad McQuaid. The man literally spent more time stroking his ego over on the “Fires of Heaven” message boards under the guise of “promoting his product” than actually working on the project itself. Also, letting your people get fired in a parking lot and not even having the guts to be there yourself shows that this was a weak man that had no business building anything much less a game. This interview sheds some light on some of the stupid things going on.
  Disgruntled Employee

• EQ I was there as a monk for the monk mitigation nerf and yes in the context of the time it was one of the stupidest decisions ever made in a MMO. It appeared to be done solely for the purpose of nerfing something to appease the playerbase (someone at SOE mixed up the meanings of appeased and incensed apparently). But what I thought was one of the funniest fiascos that plays along with GW2’s one-time Lost Shores event was the Sleepers Tomb from EQ. First make an unkillable mob, Second watch players succeeding in trying to kill it, and Third despawn it because you didn’t think players could do that and you hadn’t given it loot tables. Why there is not a class in a university somewhere for MMO developers to study at so they can learn about past mistakes before they jump in the real world I don’t know.
  Sleeper fiasco

• DAOC Trials of Atlantis Master Levels? Fractal Levels? Hmm read the paragraph in my link on Master levels to see if you can see another similarity with GW2. Once again, learn from the past people.
  LFG FoTM 1, Anybody out there???

• Warhammer Online The DAOC community had such high hopes that Mythic would make what was basically DAOC 2. I don’t blame them. DAOC’s RvR system is probably the best game dynamic I’ve ever come across. Where they screwed up in Warhammer was “NO THIRD FACTION” (oh, and you were basically pvping doors). I mean how hard could it have been? And it would have made all the difference. This is where I give GW2 props for basically bringing in that 3rd faction in WvW. Now if they could spice it up a lot, and I mean A LOT (can we start with autoloot? DAOC has had it for years!) then I will be here a long, long time.
  Spiting your face

There are many others that I could name, but most of them would just amount to boredom (Aion, Rift, and AoC come to mind). The point that I would hope ArenaNet takes from this post is this…There are a lot of veteran MMO’ers out there who are taking a mental checklist every time you pull one of these blunders mentioned above. At a certain point they realise that your just repeating history and move onto the other thing. You will have to actively avoid these screwups to keep a nice playerbase. (BTW, three months in and you already have more checks than you need, in my opinion).

I really like the game and I’ll just offer one more last bit of advice, not to the developers but the players. Watch out, do not believe what a designer says until it is actually done. The number of times I’ve seen things like the AMA where the catchphrase of the day is “We’re looking into it” turn into years of nothing being done is more often than you would believe. You can hope they will follow up with their statements, but its not gonna happen until it happens, and it may never happen. They tend to forget that “the player never forgets” and most players don’t throw a fit on the forums but quietly pack their bags and leave.

NOTHING compares to the Nov 15th SWG NGE “update” Took a beautiful sandbox game and gutted it to please Sony execs =(

Ultima Online: Reinassance Patch: Introduction of Trammel.
It pretty much created PvP/PvE servers. Use to be one server type containing all varieties of life. That melting pot made the perfect community which got split and made the community divided and other mmorpgs took notes and split server types. Pretty much ended what I’d consider a “true sandbox.”

jamasont.4653:

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.

HAHAHA, seriously? My only character was a shaman since vanilla, but I’m sorry man, this thread lost all credibility after I read that.

Errant Venture.9371:

NOTHING compares to the Nov 15th SWG NGE “update” Took a beautiful sandbox game and gutted it to please Sony execs =(

Let’s be honest here, the reason they made the NGE was to try and stem the loss of players that was happening, it was obviously the wrong move as it backfired and just accelerated the losses by a huge amount. You can read about it from one of the devs who worked on SWG here http://rubenfield.com/?p=86

And yes, it’s still the biggest blunder in MMO history.

I am surprised that not many mention Aion, the most anticipated game of year <cant remember> that merged servers very few months after release. The hype around it was crazy. Then we start playing just to find out that the hugely anticipated flying feature was bound to very few zones of the map. And then we level up, just to see that the race balance is non-existent, basically a competition of who has the biggest zerg, and that the game is so gear dependent that player skill becomes obsolete. They are down to 2 servers now I believe, but I dont care enough to check

Trials of Atlantis in Dark Age of Camelot – single biggest goof in history.

The Launch of Lolhammer. ANother Mythic classic!

The two Star Wars games are the bigger ones I’ve seen, with SWG taking the cake and SWTOR being kind of a cruel joke more than anything. AoC was bad, but at least the music and graphics were unreal for an MMO at that time lol. WAR? Meh… server issues more than anything.

While GW2 changes piss me off, the full effect on the game won’t be known for a while.

Going with only the games I’ve played, I would just put down whatever the developers were doing when both Vanguard and The Old Republic were being developed.

Having played both, I’d simply question where the money went. I don’t know if they’re 2 of the biggest financial failures in MMO history, but they have to be close, don’t they?

As for on-going games that made an abrupt change – while I didn’t play SWG, the NGE is something that has to be listed.

Kymaera Stormweaver.1069:

Ultima Online: Reinassance Patch: Introduction of Trammel.
It pretty much created PvP/PvE servers. Use to be one server type containing all varieties of life. That melting pot made the perfect community which got split and made the community divided and other mmorpgs took notes and split server types. Pretty much ended what I’d consider a “true sandbox.”

Perhaps, but otoh, Trammel saw a dramatic increase in subs. What pretty much killed the game for me was AoS, though I hung on for few years hoping they’d see the error in making crafting pretty much obsolete(a local, vibrant and viable crafting/manufacturing community fuels the economy, a lesson some of our politicians could learn) not to mention tone down some of their neon tiles. :/

For anyone feeling nostalgic, this blog sure refreshed some memories for me:
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2004/12/ultima_online_r.html

Morxeton.1743:

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

Hufflepuffer.4201:

Trammel, the original game killer

… although I have to admit I did love designing and decorating custom houses :X

Absolutely agree. I don’t recognize half of what these people are talking about, but I’ll never forget the downfall of UO. We really experienced something special with that game.

cargan.5689:

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

Haha, very well said and so true.

Speaking of UO nostalgia. Here’s a screenshot of me pwning a group of noob PKers that kept hiding in their house. They decided it wasn’t safe to open their door anymore. Worst PKers ever. I sure do miss PVP in UO…

Ryuujin.8236:

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)

I’ve unfortunately almost wasted 3 years in Allods and I have to say that isn’t true. FoD was removable with gold.

We could get PoP’s to prevent item curse at death for free with some instant daily quest. At least on eu server. They also got completely free in item shop just a short while after, a little bit later item curse at death got removed too.

It’s a very crappy game though (in my opinion). But not as crappy as people make it sound.

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.

Umm. Wvw is very similar to open world pvp. As some people already said, it would just ruin the gameplay for other people if we could pk in the pve world.
That would also possibly make wvw more empty. People at losing servers would probably simply give up.

I was worried about no open world pvp when I heard about gw2 but it turned out great imo.

PvP might be a bit gear dependent but you also forgot that we can get the best gear incredibly easy. Ascended will most likely be easier to obtain in the future. It is also confirmed 100% that we will be able to get ascended gear from other sources than just doing pve dungeons. Wvw for example.

The difference between exotics and ascended gear isn’t huge at all.
I’m also sorry to say this, if someone totally steamroll you 1v1, it isn’t because of the gear. As some other people also said, you wont most likely see completely even numbers in wvw. So gear doesn’t really matter much there.

Haha Morxeton, but where’s your castle?

Definitely fond memories…. live events, housing, skills rather than armour based, at least at the beginning. :/

And for everybody who doesn’t get the appeal of UO, but wants to emphasize with the old timers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4O3R5i39SQ#t=3033s

I followed UO over years, but I never played it, because even back then as a kid the open world PKing was something I would never have wanted to subject myself to, even if everything else sounded soooo much fun.

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.

Ya your posting a lie here there is no treadmill in GW2. Please do every one a favor and stop posting lies with out any proof.

jamasont.4653:

felivear.1536:

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.

You just assume I’ve played SWG? Mind=blown. LOL, some people…

I guess I assumed you had played it since the title of the thread was “Top Blunders in MMO history” and not “Top Blunders in MMOs I’ve played”

1) Naming this game GW2, failure to deliver anything GW.
2) Blizz implementing dungeon and raid finder, turning WoW into the joke it is today.. also, panda’s… lolreally, talk about pulling at strings. Pretty much anything past wotlk.
3) Swtor, instafail I couldn’t even make it past level 10 it is just a terrible terrible game, idk if they could have made it any more generic but story is not only what an MMO is about. Felt like I was in a crappy F2P game.
4) FFXIV, hands down the worst game in MMO history. I mean, is it even possible to fail harder than that? I think not. And their single player RPGs are failing just as bad too. I honestly feel bad for enix at this point.

In short: No one “gets it.” I’m sure there’s tons more but I haven’t tried em.

ASB.4295:

And for everybody who doesn’t get the appeal of UO, but wants to emphasize with the old timers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4O3R5i39SQ#t=3033s

I followed UO over years, but I never played it, because even back then as a kid the open world PKing was something I would never have wanted to subject myself to, even if everything else sounded soooo much fun.

The guy in that video, Jarrett Cale, pretty much nailed it. I played as a “protector”, as he called them… pretty much the anti-PK. I was always hunting with my friends who were not very good at PvP, and whenever PKers showed up, I would fight them off. There was a ton of excitement with never knowing what to expect. Every time you step out of town, you could die and lose everything to a PKer. Although there was a lot more to it than just that. He’s right though, UO was a once in a lifetime experience, since no games ever will be able to capture the social aspect that UO once had pre-UO:R. The “prey” (people who don’t PvP or PvP well) will never play a game with open PvP where they could lose everything upon death. That experience is lost forever.

Elarii.2756:

Haha Morxeton, but where’s your castle?

Definitely fond memories…. live events, housing, skills rather than armour based, at least at the beginning. :/

Hah, well I actually never owned a castle, let alone a large tower. I was too involved in PvP to actually farm enough gold to buy one. I agree, fond memories indeed… I have a few really good friends who I’ve met in UO when I started playing back in the late 90’s.

Playing as the anti-PK was a blast. Protecting people, kicking some kitten, etc. I did however PK people that deserved it. The “looters” as we called them, were people who intentionally blocked you in while a mob killed you, so they can loot your corpse. Basically they were too chicken to be an actual PK. I KOS’d them all the time. Even went red several times because of them. They learned to just run when they see me, even though I was blue most of the time. LOL

I also killed thieves who messed with me or my friends. I did however befriend some thieves after calling a truce. They agreed to never steal from me and my friends again, and I agreed to never kill them again. I would look the other way when they were stealing from other people I didn’t know. I guess you could say I was a bit corrupted, haha. Then you have the noto-PKs. They intentionally flagged gray so you’d attack them, and they would kill/loot you without repercussion. I’d KOS them too, serves them right for flagging gray and being too cheeseball to do the real deal and just outright PK.

Attached another pic for your enjoyment. This is even older, and when I was a bit more noob, as you can tell with the spells all over the place. I was too lazy to remove most of them since they were hotkeyed. This newb PK was terribad, but I wanted to post the pic more for the mare that I was riding, when I wasn’t even a tamer. There was a taming bug back then that a friend of mine used to transfer a mare to me. I couldn’t control it but hell, it was cool riding one being a tank mage.

Bregah.7365:

Going with only the games I’ve played, I would just put down whatever the developers were doing when both Vanguard and The Old Republic were being developed.

Having played both, I’d simply question where the money went. I don’t know if they’re 2 of the biggest financial failures in MMO history, but they have to be close, don’t they?

As for on-going games that made an abrupt change – while I didn’t play SWG, the NGE is something that has to be listed.

Oh yeah, I remember Vanguard. Oh, an evil path option for my character? Awesome…wait, its not implemented yet. Thats what I get for subbing to a half made game. What a loss that was, lol.

NGE by far takes the cake though.

Slyder.9215:

SWTOR Patch 1.1 (aka, the Ilum Patch)

Whatever doubt was left on whether or not they knew what the heck they were doing were confirmed. Honestly, though, that was just laughable it’s not even funny.

For me the 2 worst SWTOR decisions were going with Hero engine in the first place and opening with far far too many servers, they then sat on their hands waiting far too long in addressing the population issues.

Ryuujin.8236:

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)

I remember that one, it was pretty brutal.

It seemed like Allods was a neat game too. I was playing it at the time. As soon as they announced that feature, I uninstalled the game and haven’t read anything about it since.

+1 to the SWG NGE. Nothing comes close to the monumental pile of bull crap that was.

I mean they released an expansion, and two weeks later dropped the NGE bomb that completely flipped the game on its head and invalidated a good amount of that expansion’s content. The most blatant money-grab in the annals of MMO history.

Honorable mention goes to Mourning. People who pre-ordered the game got a plain CD in a cardboard box. With the BETA CLIENT burned on it.

Peacedog.6804:

Well since playing EQ starting in 1999 I’ve always been entertained with how developers repeat the same mistakes over and over. Here are my favorites:

• SWG: The NGE. Never has there been such a clusterfark in all of MMOland. Sony Online Entertainment basically replaced an entire game midstream. Before a major expansion release even. What’s humorous is the expansion even promised items for classes that had been REMOVED from the game. Many people still swear never to buy another SOE product again. This is why you never change the core game design midstream.
  A brief rundown

• Vanguard This one is a wonderful lesson in not believing the hype and putting all your faith in so-called game designer “geniuses” such as Brad McQuaid. The man literally spent more time stroking his ego over on the “Fires of Heaven” message boards under the guise of “promoting his product” than actually working on the project itself. Also, letting your people get fired in a parking lot and not even having the guts to be there yourself shows that this was a weak man that had no business building anything much less a game. This interview sheds some light on some of the stupid things going on.
  Disgruntled Employee

• EQ I was there as a monk for the monk mitigation nerf and yes in the context of the time it was one of the stupidest decisions ever made in a MMO. It appeared to be done solely for the purpose of nerfing something to appease the playerbase (someone at SOE mixed up the meanings of appeased and incensed apparently). But what I thought was one of the funniest fiascos that plays along with GW2’s one-time Lost Shores event was the Sleepers Tomb from EQ. First make an unkillable mob, Second watch players succeeding in trying to kill it, and Third despawn it because you didn’t think players could do that and you hadn’t given it loot tables. Why there is not a class in a university somewhere for MMO developers to study at so they can learn about past mistakes before they jump in the real world I don’t know.
  Sleeper fiasco

• DAOC Trials of Atlantis Master Levels? Fractal Levels? Hmm read the paragraph in my link on Master levels to see if you can see another similarity with GW2. Once again, learn from the past people.
  LFG FoTM 1, Anybody out there???

• Warhammer Online The DAOC community had such high hopes that Mythic would make what was basically DAOC 2. I don’t blame them. DAOC’s RvR system is probably the best game dynamic I’ve ever come across. Where they screwed up in Warhammer was “NO THIRD FACTION” (oh, and you were basically pvping doors). I mean how hard could it have been? And it would have made all the difference. This is where I give GW2 props for basically bringing in that 3rd faction in WvW. Now if they could spice it up a lot, and I mean A LOT (can we start with autoloot? DAOC has had it for years!) then I will be here a long, long time.
  Spiting your face

There are many others that I could name, but most of them would just amount to boredom (Aion, Rift, and AoC come to mind). The point that I would hope ArenaNet takes from this post is this…There are a lot of veteran MMO’ers out there who are taking a mental checklist every time you pull one of these blunders mentioned above. At a certain point they realise that your just repeating history and move onto the other thing. You will have to actively avoid these screwups to keep a nice playerbase. (BTW, three months in and you already have more checks than you need, in my opinion).

I really like the game and I’ll just offer one more last bit of advice, not to the developers but the players. Watch out, do not believe what a designer says until it is actually done. The number of times I’ve seen things like the AMA where the catchphrase of the day is “We’re looking into it” turn into years of nothing being done is more often than you would believe. You can hope they will follow up with their statements, but its not gonna happen until it happens, and it may never happen. They tend to forget that “the player never forgets” and most players don’t throw a fit on the forums but quietly pack their bags and leave.

I’ve also been playing MMOs for a very long time.

Here’s what “We’re looking into x” reads like to me:

“You’ll be gone long before we do anything about this. In fact, we probably won’t do anything about it period.”

Top blunders in MMO history:

1. UO:R
2. SWG NGE
3. UO publish 16 and/or UO:AoS

To include GW2 in a list of top mmo blunders at this point is plainly ridiculous.

A) I see what you did there…

B) this statement:

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.

is simply not true.

1- this “gear treadmill” doesn’t affect anybody except people who are in fractals level 15 and deeper.
2- its called WvWvW four huge maps full of world PVP.
do you want “world PVP” so you can gank lowbies in starter areas? very brave, WOW is that way |——→
3- if you are steamrolled in WWW, it is not because of the gear…
the difference between rare armor and exotic armor is negligible in WWW terms
and exotic weapons are cheap (2.5 to 5 gold for exotic pearl weapon… ) to buy.

you should re-think again, why are you “steamrolled” in WWW…

So the biggest blunder in MMO history is adding 2 items with a couple extra stats…..?

Please mods, delete this thread.

Elarii.2756:

Haha Morxeton, but where’s your castle?

Definitely fond memories…. live events, housing, skills rather than armour based, at least at the beginning. :/

Not a real pic of LB btw. Sorry to crap on the nostalgia, but there’s a guy on a beetle, and the shadowy-text overlay, both of which were implemented years after EA bought Origin and Garriott left.

Hi everyone,

These are the GW2 discussion forums, and are not fit to discuss what was the best/worst that other MMOs did. Therefore we are closing this thread. Please remember that in the future. Thanks