Has an MMORPG ever completely failed?

ausmack2014

My experience with mmo's is quite limited, so this is purely curiosity. Has any large release mmorpg ever failed and been wound up? Or become so unplayable that it was reduced to something basic and rarely used?

PBpsy

I really wonder if Defiance still exists. I will not even bother to google that.

Leesha

Warhammer. Could have been a great game too.

stevenpotter321b14_ESO

Tabula Rasa, nuff said.

METALPUNKS

PBpsy wrote: »

I really wonder if Defiance still exists. I will not even bother to google that.

You are right, not worth a google even. Worst let down of last year for me. I did see its free now. Lol

Krovach

A mmo fails when the parent company pulls the plug and takes down the servers. Many also see a subscription game going free to play as a failure as well.

Warhammer Online was my largest disappointment as Mmo failures go. Many other games have come and gone or have adopted a free to play model. I believe that APB was the shortest lived MMO but it was not an Mmorpg.

zaria

As I understand this is rare, Warhamer is an modern example.
Lots of ancient MMO is still running, it don't cost much to have some servers up.
SWG was killed because of licence agreement timed out because of SWTOR.

Note that F2P main purpose is often not to bring in more revenue but to bring in new players on empty servers, no players leveling up gives empty leveling areas who put off new players.
SWTOR is actually doing decently, had probably done better without EA in you face cash shop who put off new players, kind of like commercials on max volume who force you to switch channel or going back to play ESO

Dekkameron

Vanguard, Dark and Light, Tabula Rasa er.. prolly more.

Chirru

OP
most failed MMO's go free to play for a while and quietly fade away.
There are heaps of them.
I have better hopes for ESO... and yet, unless they can get back control of the game (at the moments the bot-hackers have control) and unless the MMO players can be made to stay, ESO also will head first f2p and eventually end up in Oblivion.

Hypersillyman

Vanguard didn't really fail. It still has active servers and still brings in a steady revenue stream. It certainly didn't succeed on the level they wanted or expected it too, but it didn't really fail.

Warhammer is one of the most well known example of a failed MMO. It is notable for the sheer immensity of the collapse. They hyped it like crazy and poured a TON of money into it, and it completely and utterly crashed. It's been shut down for a while now.

Tabula Rasa is notable not just for it's failure as a product, but also for the controversy that surrounded it. Any company that intentionally screws over Richard Garriott is going to get more negative attention that they can handle. He successfully sued them for what they did to him, which just compounded the failure.

Defiance was heavily hyped, but failed to deliver. SWG never did reach it's full potential, but, rather than failing on its own, was actively destroyed by bad update decisions and poor management of the property and its license. Asheron's Call 2 flopped hard, but the original is still going. Final Fantasy 14 almost made this list, but they saved themselves with the relaunch, the (I thought) sincere apologies from the developers, and the efforts to make things up to the original batch of subscribers.

There have been a handful of others over the years. Most of them were fairly small time games that simply never took off. Some of them were exclusive to markets that could not support them. Some never received any hype whatsoever. Some were developed by studios to small and inexperienced to maintain them. Regardless of the reasons, most failed games just never get noticed in the first place, therefore their ultimate failure is also overlooked and forgotten.

Going free to play is not an automatic denotation of failure. Some games make more money after going F2P than they ever made as a sub game. SWTOR is a prime example of this. They have more players and make more money now than they ever did as a pure sub. The fact that they still allow "full access" subs creates a hybrid pay system that actually works quite well. They have made their money back at this point and continue to make a fairly decent profit. Rift and Vanguard also have done fairly well after their F2P conversion. Some games can survive the transition and come out stronger. Most don't, but those that do are all the stronger for it. It is not a kiss of death, however, and a change from P2P to F2P should be looked at as objectively as possible. That being said, a game that starts as a sub game should do everything in their power to stay that way, because the stigma is impossible to avoid, regardless of it's accuracy.

I do sometimes think the word "failure" is overused with games like this. A subscription MMO with around 100,000 subs may not be an all-time blockbuster, but that can still be a perfectly viable subscriber base. Especially for some of the smaller, independent games that don't have a huge budget. Just because a game doesn't have 1 million+ subs, or a big name property license, or a giant publisher or developer behind it, does not automatically indicate failure. Some games are just successful enough to survive and make a little money. Sometimes, that's all they really need to do.

Just my two copper.

rawne1980b16_ESO

APB - it went so badly it aided in the finacial ruin of Realtime Worlds. Lasted less than 2 months.

Warhammer Age of Reckoning - I'm a Warhammer fan, have been since the mid 80's. This should have been a dream game. Servers are shut, game is gone.

Tabula Rasa - servers gone.

Matrix Online - servers gone.

They are the only "failed" ones that come to mind.

A lot of MMO's people say failed are still going strong (Rift, Aion, SWTOR, TERA etc).

Of course, some of those didn't live up to expectations which is why people say they failed (especially with the budget SWTOR had and the team behind it) but they are still plodding along.

Akhratos

Warhammer had more subscribers the day it went offline than many of the most praised f2p mmos. Would have it become f2p it would be still alive, Im sure of it.

Had a lot of bugs, even more in the last times where they added content wich caused even more bugs in top of the existing (and never fixed) ones. Community was neglected by the devs and people still played it because in the conception and for the most part was a great game.

Aside from it, I dont think you can call that a complete fail when there are other games that went into a f2p model in 3 months or were taken down and completely reworked like FFXIV.

AoC, D&D, Tera...

Hypersillyman

I had completely forgotten about APB. That was a complete disaster.

At least Matrix went out with a bang. I heard that the final, shutdown day event was actually pretty cool. The game was an utter failure, but I've been told it died a pretty cool death.

dannymcgr81b14_ESO

Lego Universe died after two years.

Krovach

Seems we have a few that lament the demise of Warhammer.
I have to admit it was my first taste of rvr and I could not get enough. The day that mythic implemented outside ramps on keeps was the day I unsubbed.

I even tried to play DAOC after but the ui was too clunky for me at that point. (Wish I had tried it years earlier.)

Why must they ruin everything beautiful? Also dreading the knee jerk reaction that seems to follow when people don't resub after the free play time expires.

Don't knee jerk nerf or cave in zennimax! Stay strong.

Sorry for the off topic rant.

Rajani Isa

Auto Assault. A twisted metal MMO, basically.

Dungeon Runners. Which was a satire on the Diablo style/genre of games.

ZiRM

Hellgate London

Hypersillyman

Oh, and Shadowbane. Definitely Shadowbane.

Svann

Vanguard was a great mmo, but very buggy and very laggy for most people. Many left. Then they fixed a lot of the problems and some came back, but it was not enough. It never recovered to what it could have been. I hear they are about to finally pull the plug. It ran for like 10 years but it was on life support for the last 9.5.

lecarcajou_ESO

Oh, I loved loved loved Warhammer, flawed as it was. I don't know what it was about RvR that worked so well for me... never got into PvP in any other game. Is siege warfare in ESO anything like it used to be in WH?

Anyway, wasn't Age of Conan considered to have failed? I heard bad things.

Catches_the_Sun

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

Vanguard was a great mmo, but very buggy and very laggy for most people. Many left. Then they fixed a lot of the problems and some came back, but it was not enough. It never recovered to what it could have been. I hear they are about to finally pull the plug. It ran for like 10 years but it was on life support for the last 9.5.

IMO Vanguard was the first real victim of the "new" MMO population introduced to the genre by WoW. At the time it released, WoW had been out for 3 years. Understand that I'm not dogging WoW here...just pointing out that it introduced a massive population to the genre & then V:SOH comes along from the Everquest developers (Brad McQuaid) with it's no-handholding, no-nonsense old-school style that just doesn't suit that population. I played V:SOH from alpha testing on through about 6 months after release, and heard the frustrations from those players that they couldn't just solo faceroll everything on the map, that it took too long to level that leveling crafting was too slow, all the typical stuff.

The funny thing is the game itself was great & it had content that even rivals today's MMO's. It had 19 races & 15 classes, it had a really cool player-made housing system (carpentry being a crafting subclass), a diplomacy system, "racial-style" crafting system (possibly influencing ESO racial styles?), race-specific mounts, flying mounts, player-made customizable ships (both saltwater & inland river vessels). Quests were not always easymode like they are today, with indicators telling you where to pick up the quest, where to accomplish you task & finally where to turn it in. Some quests were "hidden" in a way that was not obvious & the rewards for those were great (I think Pegasus mount was one of these if I recall). Classes felt truly unique with some of them having vastly different mechanics (looking at you, Bard). It also had a seemingly massive map.

What seemed to kill Vanguard was that it was a game the relied on interdepencies & lacked the population to support it...people were already becoming accustomed to "soloing" their way through MMO's & Vanguard didn't suit them. I wanted badly for it to succeed, but when the population got to the point you could no longer find groups, that was it. Loved the game & enjoyed the content that it offered. Would love to see a modernized MMO in this style, but I'm afraid we never will...since the genre has gone mainstream, handholding & soloing comes with it.

Knootewoot

Hypersillyman wrote: »

Vanguard didn't really fail. It still has active servers and still brings in a steady revenue stream. It certainly didn't succeed on the level they wanted or expected it too, but it didn't really fail.

Warhammer is one of the most well known example of a failed MMO. It is notable for the sheer immensity of the collapse. They hyped it like crazy and poured a TON of money into it, and it completely and utterly crashed. It's been shut down for a while now.

Tabula Rasa is notable not just for it's failure as a product, but also for the controversy that surrounded it. Any company that intentionally screws over Richard Garriott is going to get more negative attention that they can handle. He successfully sued them for what they did to him, which just compounded the failure.

Vanguard has one server left and they are pulling the plug this summer in June i believe. I played from beta until the announcement. I loved the game and in my eyes the game did not fail but SOE's mismanagment (just like SWG)

WAR did not fail in my eyes. I loved the game. To bad it has been shut down recently.

Same as Tabula Rasa, i loved it. Richard went into space and NCSoft pulled the plug. Grrr

Brother_Numsie

NiRN wrote: »

Hellgate London

This, hands down the worst mmo fail of all time.

Close second is SWG and the whole Jedi thing.

Honorable Mention goes to Tabula Rosa, that was just a crappy thing to do to a person.

KariTR

To be fair, without SOE Vanguard may never have launched.

I'm so glad I got to be a tester; the (VG beta) Disciple is my favourite MMO class of all time. no portals (took 3 days of real time away from my guild to travel to and visit another continent). I subbed, but when they merged the servers, very soon after launch (like within 3 months?), I decided to leave. I'd been on Team PvP and we got stuck with the Open World PvP where even your own 'side' would portal camp your corpse. Damn portals.

EDIT: Oh and what was the much-hyped MMO that had a name-change and didn't release? Big news at the time.

Another poster touched on perception up there. Probably WoW again, but our perception of success has changed considerably in the last decade or so. Before WoW came along, Lineage (1 and 2) held 50% of the global MMO sub market with I think around 2 million subscribers. Very few of them in the west. Only 10% of homes had PCs back then compared to the 90% when surveyed a couple of years ago.

I've heard people say WoW was in the right place at the right time to take advantage of the explosion of growth in home computing (may even have said it myself), but its launch went practically head to head with EQ2 so it wasn't just about timing. Could never take to the game myself, but won't knock a MMO that not only attracted millions to its world, but kept them wanting to stay in it.

Knootewoot

SWG didn't fail. It run for almost 8 years which is longer then most mmo's. SOE made sadly a lot of mistakes and drove people off. But the game still had a good steady base when they shut down and even today people play it (like me) on the emu. Not millions but at least 3000.

Yes Tabula Rasa run for only 1 year but not because it was a bad game. Because NCsoft didn't get enough money and pulled the plug. I think the story and mechanics where great and also the exploration and creatures. And i love sci-fi and sadly there are not many (good) sci-fi mmo's

Ah well, memories

Catches_the_Sun

Brother_Numsie wrote: »

NiRN wrote: »

Hellgate London

This, hands down the worst mmo fail of all time.

Close second is SWG and the whole Jedi thing.

Honorable Mention goes to Tabula Rosa, that was just a crappy thing to do to a person.

Completely agree on SWG. That was another one that I beta-tested & there were ridiculous bugs. The release was so strange...we were testing under the assumption we had 6 months minimum until release as they hadn't announced a release date at that time. Then one day they announced "hey guys, game is releasing in a week!" What?! I have never seen such a short time between release date announcement & release date. It was like 9 days notice & the definition of rushed content. If you think ESO was bad, SWG had to give free 30 days to their subscribers because that first month was just garbage.

Shiaxi

Knootewoot wrote: »

Yes Tabula Rasa run for only 1 year but not because it was a bad game. Because NCsoft didn't get enough money and pulled the plug. I think the story and mechanics where great and also the exploration and creatures. And i love sci-fi and sadly there are not many (good) sci-fi mmo's
Ah well, memories

was actually the first real MMO I played friggin' loved that game

Mortelus

Hypersillyman wrote: »

I had completely forgotten about APB. That was a complete disaster.

At least Matrix went out with a bang. I heard that the final, shutdown day event was actually pretty cool. The game was an utter failure, but I've been told it died a pretty cool death.

I was there for the shut down, was sad to see my character implode into a tiny ball of crushed pixels.

I never played it from beginning to end but left after launch and came back towards the end. Regret not playing it more than I did. I miss it much...

EDIT: When I get home I will dig up my old pics

Halefire

Looking up at my shelf of old games, I see Horizons ,Shadowbane, Asherons Call 2, Star Wars Galaxy.

ausmack2014

Knootewoot wrote: »

SWG didn't fail. It run for almost 8 years which is longer then most mmo's. SOE made sadly a lot of mistakes and drove people off. But the game still had a good steady base when they shut down and even today people play it (like me) on the emu. Not millions but at least 3000.

Yes Tabula Rasa run for only 1 year but not because it was a bad game. Because NCsoft didn't get enough money and pulled the plug. I think the story and mechanics where great and also the exploration and creatures. And i love sci-fi and sadly there are not many (good) sci-fi mmo's

Ah well, memories

I remember years ago playing a SF PC game, named something about Traders, where you build colonies, traded and built up stuff, had to compete with other empires etc. I'd love to see a game like that online, where you could build up resources, establish colonies, build ships and armies and so on. Don't know if there is such a game but if it was along that line I'd be in it.

reggielee

Earth Eternal failed and a couple of others i played. Its sad to be there when servers are shut down. prob is alot of games are pretty good but if they dont make the money the backers want ( *cough cough Warner Brothers mafia) then its shut down after squeezing out the last dime from hard core fans