Has an MMORPG ever completely failed?

IronMaiden_burnout

-Asheron's call 2 fell into the abyss early but that was Microsoft's fault with their flaky gun servers. Turbine had great plans but they were rushed in by MS and ultimately lost all their subs due to unplayable bugs that stretched on for months. They had poor advertising but small team of geniuses as devs. as little as 10 staff at one point.
You can still play it now as they reopened a server so long as you are subbed in AC1 ( soon to be free, not F2P just open server with option for players to make their own)

-Aion online, bad flop right from the start also.
-Archlord belly flopped also early on
-Dungeon runner, although a real fun little game, NCsoft decided to drop it saying some sob story that it was costing them too much to keep the servers going.
-Auto Assult-- real cool concept but took a nose dive early on

beowulfsshield

Vanguard was a dismal failure, yet I read some of the posts here and wonder if we played the same game.

I started playing a week after launch and the game was all but unplayable in some areas, New Targoner being one of the worst. The lag was so horrible most people called it "New Lagoner" The lag was a constant and huge problem in most areas for the first several months of the game. If there were more than 5 people around you in a city, your FPS would drop to single digits with "fair" settings. And no, I wasn't playing the game on a potato, my rig back then was at least top mid range for gaming. Even gaming sites were aghast at how poorly the game played on good hardware.

Memory leaks were another horrible problem, even after implementing the /flush command.

Even so I stuck it out for over a year because I loved the crafting system and the combat mechanics.

RIP VG (I know, I'm a couple of months early).

Trust SOE to take something wonderful and crush the life out of it.

SEE ALSO: SWG post-NGE.

FrauPerchta

Worst failure I recall off the top of my head was Asherons's Call 2, it went under very quickly. Funny thing is after being dead and buried for 7 years Turbine dug it up, dusted it off, hung a beta label on it then opened up a server in '12. It wasn't a bad game but Turbine thought AC1 players would all move to AC2. Very few did because of the massive time investment they had in AC1 plus AC2 was released way before it was ready.

beowulfsshield

FrauPerchta wrote: »

Worst failure I recall off the top of my head was Asherons's Call 2, it went under very quickly. Funny thing is after being dead and buried for 7 years Turbine dug it up, dusted it off, hung a beta label on it then opened up a server in '12. It wasn't a bad game but Turbine thought AC1 players would all move to AC2. Very few did because of the massive time investment they had in AC1 plus AC2 was released way before it was ready.

I played AC2 for a few months, right at the sunset of the game. I had a lot of fun with it, and wondered why it was such a ghost town.

Didn't know it was back up. Might have to check it out.

Tandor

Just to clarify on Vanguard, it isn't being closed down because of low population or profitability concerns. John Smedley has made it clear that the decision was taken because, as a game independently developed by Sigil before SOE took it over, its coding architecture is completely different to SOE's own titles, and as such whenever they have to alter the security and authentication elements uniformly across their games portfolio it takes a disproportionate amount of staff time to sort out Vanguard. They just couldn't justify that any longer.

EramTheLiar

Everyone who still plays Champions is pretty sure it's failed because the developers are no longer interested in developing content for it. But it's still running.

Contrast with City of Heroes, which was revitalized by going F2P and the developers were actively adding content to it right up until NCSoft pulled the plug on it for Reasons.

Secret World was considered a failure based on all the reviews I've seen, but it's still out there and really fun to play. In my opinion.

I guess I'm not sure how to define "failure" in a situation like this.

Jeremy

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

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.

Like you say, I think this largely boils down to semantics over what the word fail means. Cause in my opinion if a game doesn't deliver on the goals it set out to achieve it could legitimately be considered a failure, even if it did manage to salvage a profit.

Tarwin

Dekkameron wrote: »

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

Dark and Light was the first one that came to mind. Can't believe the webpage is still up for it! Or maybe it's just the 5+ years of server maintenance?

beowulfsshield

Tandor wrote: »

Just to clarify on Vanguard, it isn't being closed down because of low population or profitability concerns. John Smedley has made it clear that the decision was taken because, as a game independently developed by Sigil before SOE took it over, its coding architecture is completely different to SOE's own titles, and as such whenever they have to alter the security and authentication elements uniformly across their games portfolio it takes a disproportionate amount of staff time to sort out Vanguard. They just couldn't justify that any longer.

That's the party line anyway. I resubbed for a few months last year and the place was deserted. Even the bots weren't bothering.

I love that game so much I even went paid (gold) membership rather than F2P. Still have a bunch of station cash.

FrauPerchta

@beowulfsshield, I was a beta tester for AC2. The Devs didn't bother to listen to any of our suggestions like don't publish yet because it's not ready to go Gold. One of the major complaints was that most buildings in the game were sealed up structures that were in place as window dressing, nothing else. AC1 players really detested that since in AC1 you could walk into every building you saw even if there wasn't much there. Then of course the big one was how the world worked. In AC1 you could take off running in a direction then after 45 mins to an hour hit the edge of the world without a single loading screen. We just to have south to north border races on weekends with prizes (player run). In AC2 the world was not open.

On a side note: AC1 had what ESO claims to have. Complete freedom in character progression, AC1 characters could be whatever they wished as there were not classes of any sort. You could use one of the canned builds if you wished but if you wanted to unique you could be since you have the ability to pick and choose skills as you wished.

zaria

EramTheLiar wrote: »

Everyone who still plays Champions is pretty sure it's failed because the developers are no longer interested in developing content for it. But it's still running.

Contrast with City of Heroes, which was revitalized by going F2P and the developers were actively adding content to it right up until NCSoft pulled the plug on it for Reasons.

Secret World was considered a failure based on all the reviews I've seen, but it's still out there and really fun to play. In my opinion.

I guess I'm not sure how to define "failure" in a situation like this.

Look to me that most games who fail fail as NCSoft pull the plug, might be that they have lots of MMO so killing of one might bring people to the other they have.

Most other leave old MMO running as an fan service who bring in some profit.

Secret world is made by an Norwegian company, same who made AoC.
They lack the manpower / money to make AAA MMO, they have realized this now.

zaria

Jeremy wrote: »

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

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.

Like you say, I think this largely boils down to semantics over what the word fail means. Cause in my opinion if a game doesn't deliver on the goals it set out to achieve it could legitimately be considered a failure, even if it did manage to salvage a profit.

it depend a lot on the expectations from the publisher, they can be very unrealistic.
As I understand the publisher saw the new Tomb raider as a fail as it did not sell as well as expected, yes it should make an good profit but not enough.

If ZOS expected ESO to outsell SWTOR it failed.

SadisticSavior

ausmack2014 wrote: »

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?

The Matrix MMO and SWG come to mind. Though I am sure there are many others.

I was a beta tester for Eve. I fully expected EVE to fail too. Just because it had such a narrow appeal. But I was wrong...it's narrow appeal was done very very well so it developed a dedicated following that kept it alive.

JJDrakken

1. The Chronicles of Spellborn
2. Tabula Rasa
3. Defiance
4. Ryzom(Though to be fair it did get re-booted & is doing ok now)
5. Archlord
6. Dark & Light
7. RF Online
8. Auto Assault
9. Asheron's Call 2(I really hate to say that, cuz I did enjoy that game)
10. Warhammer Online(Also enjoyed it, but so many issues)
11. Horizons: Empire of Istaria
12. Shadowbane
13. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
14. Earth & Beyond

That's just off the top of my head. I played all those in some form or another(Alphas/Betas/Release). I have played probably way to many MMOs

Tandor

beowulfsshield wrote: »

Tandor wrote: »

Just to clarify on Vanguard, it isn't being closed down because of low population or profitability concerns. John Smedley has made it clear that the decision was taken because, as a game independently developed by Sigil before SOE took it over, its coding architecture is completely different to SOE's own titles, and as such whenever they have to alter the security and authentication elements uniformly across their games portfolio it takes a disproportionate amount of staff time to sort out Vanguard. They just couldn't justify that any longer.

That's the party line anyway. I resubbed for a few months last year and the place was deserted. Even the bots weren't bothering.

I love that game so much I even went paid (gold) membership rather than F2P. Still have a bunch of station cash.

Depends which server you were on, if the European one then yes it would have been deserted as everyone had moved to the US server which wasn't deserted.

IronMaiden_burnout

FrauPerchta wrote: »

@beowulfsshield, I was a beta tester for AC2. The Devs didn't bother to listen to any of our suggestions like don't publish yet because it's not ready to go Gold. One of the major complaints was that most buildings in the game were sealed up structures that were in place as window dressing, nothing else. AC1 players really detested that since in AC1 you could walk into every building you saw even if there wasn't much there. Then of course the big one was how the world worked. In AC1 you could take off running in a direction then after 45 mins to an hour hit the edge of the world without a single loading screen. We just to have south to north border races on weekends with prizes (player run). In AC2 the world was not open.

On a side note: AC1 had what ESO claims to have. Complete freedom in character progression, AC1 characters could be whatever they wished as there were not classes of any sort. You could use one of the canned builds if you wished but if you wanted to unique you could be since you have the ability to pick and choose skills as you wished.

I was in beta of AC2 as well and I can tell you with certainty that AC2's demise was 100% due to Microsoft's clutches. Every time Turbine wanted to move ahead with letting players rebuild dereth, Microsoft exacted their muscle and stopped it. The servers MS ran never worked. it was this and the lack of advertising that lead to it's demise.
when turbine broke free of MS it was too late the reputation it had killed them.

Catches_the_Sun

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

I think WOW won that battle due to the NUMEROUS Blizzard fans cause EQ2 was simply the better game of the 2.

I completely agree with you on this. I played both games & loved EQ2, hated WoW. I didn't think it was even close, yet WoW simply won the population war.

SDZald

Anarchy Online, a SiFi based MMO. Came out after EQ, I think it was a Finish company. It was so bad it took 15 minutes just to cross a street, it wasn't a bad game when no one else was on and you weren't lagging out.

Jeremy

zaria wrote: »

Jeremy wrote: »

rawne1980b16_ESO wrote: »

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.

Like you say, I think this largely boils down to semantics over what the word fail means. Cause in my opinion if a game doesn't deliver on the goals it set out to achieve it could legitimately be considered a failure, even if it did manage to salvage a profit.

it depend a lot on the expectations from the publisher, they can be very unrealistic.
As I understand the publisher saw the new Tomb raider as a fail as it did not sell as well as expected, yes it should make an good profit but not enough.

If ZOS expected ESO to outsell SWTOR it failed.

I hope they didn't expect that because the Star Wars brand is a cultural icon that spans across generations. So would be very hard for any game to measure up to the amount of interest that game stirred.

So if that was their expectation I would agree with you that it was unrealistic and they were setting themselves up for disappointment.

infraction2008b16_ESO

Krovach wrote: »

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..

Not really, these people are short sighted.

When people usually compare MMO's, they usually look at WoW as a role model especially at the fact it's held a huge subscription base for so long. The reason it has been so successful was because it released at a time when there was no alternative payment model and paying for stuff via subscription was just coming of age. Things today are a lot tougher, the MMO market is hugely saturated. You got lots of great games with lots of competitive payment models so any new game charging a premium is going to have a much harder time then WoW did back then.

Truth is if WoW released in today's climate it would probably end up F2P is less than 6 months especially if it released with it's early content only.

Aria

Dekkameron wrote: »

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

While I cant comment on the others Vanguard did not fail it had a decent population and faithful following for a few years after release, this is despite SOE doing their best to ruin the game so it did not compete directly with EQ/EQ2.

The game was fantastic, and in another companies hands I believe it would have flourished!

Sarenia

It's been many years, but I seem to recall Shadowbane flopping quite badly. My experience was literally unplayable post-launch.

It's actually a little sad. It's one of precious few games to have playable D&D-style centaurs and minotaurs (in fact I can't think of any other game that has playable centaurs off hand).

Svann

Vanguard had a great game design, but poor coding.

columbineb14_ESO

SDZald wrote: »

Anarchy Online, a SiFi based MMO. Came out after EQ, I think it was a Finish company. It was so bad it took 15 minutes just to cross a street, it wasn't a bad game when no one else was on and you weren't lagging out.

Anarchy Online is still running. In fact after an official 12 years running it may be a longevity record holder. It had a very, very, very bad launch. I hear it's gotten better since then - for those who are still playing. Last I heard, Funcom was talking about upgrading it to the better rendering engine that The Secret World uses.

I liked both games - and the fact that Funcom is willing to try things that aren't Generic Quasi-Medieval Universe or Generic SF Universe. Wish I could have found more teammates in both.

One thing about Funcom is that they will not pull the plug on games as long as they're making enough to keep the servers running, so who knows how long they'll carry on.

Funcom is Norwegian, by the by.

Samriel

Warhammer and SWG technically didn't fail, both had their licenses pulled by companies who owned the trademarks (Games Workshop for Warhammer and Lucas Arts for SWG) with no license, they were forced to close the servers. SWG had their license pulled so as not to interfere with the new SWTOR project, and Games Workshop wanted a ton more cash to renew the license for Warhammer, more than Mythic/EA was willing to pay at the time. I know that the devs for Warhammer were planning on a massive overhaul to address several of the issues with the game at the time it was shut down. If it were not for the licensing issues, both games would surely still be running today in some form.

Ravinsild

Samriel wrote: »

Warhammer and SWG technically didn't fail, both had their licenses pulled by companies who owned the trademarks (Games Workshop for Warhammer and Lucas Arts for SWG) with no license, they were forced to close the servers. SWG had their license pulled so as not to interfere with the new SWTOR project, and Games Workshop wanted a ton more cash to renew the license for Warhammer, more than Mythic/EA was willing to pay at the time. I know that the devs for Warhammer were planning on a massive overhaul to address several of the issues with the game at the time it was shut down. If it were not for the licensing issues, both games would surely still be running today in some form.

They wanted to renew the license for the board game? That's what Warhammer is, right? Sort of a Pen & Paper board game RPG thing?

SadisticSavior

JJDrakken wrote: »

1. The Chronicles of Spellborn
2. Tabula Rasa
3. Defiance
4. Ryzom(Though to be fair it did get re-booted & is doing ok now)
5. Archlord
6. Dark & Light
7. RF Online
8. Auto Assault
9. Asheron's Call 2(I really hate to say that, cuz I did enjoy that game)
10. Warhammer Online(Also enjoyed it, but so many issues)
11. Horizons: Empire of Istaria
12. Shadowbane
13. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
14. Earth & Beyond

That's just off the top of my head. I played all those in some form or another(Alphas/Betas/Release). I have played probably way to many MMOs

Vanguard died? Aww

I played Auto-assault...even paid for it. Knew it was doomed as soon as it slid off the "Car Wars" model into fantasy territory. It got real stupid real quick.

SadisticSavior

columbineb14_ESO wrote: »

SDZald wrote: »

Anarchy Online, a SiFi based MMO. Came out after EQ, I think it was a Finish company. It was so bad it took 15 minutes just to cross a street, it wasn't a bad game when no one else was on and you weren't lagging out.

Anarchy Online is still running. In fact after an official 12 years running it may be a longevity record holder. It had a very, very, very bad launch. I hear it's gotten better since then - for those who are still playing. Last I heard, Funcom was talking about upgrading it to the better rendering engine that The Secret World uses.

My main issue with that game was that it is pretty much impossible to solo...if you do not join with an established group, you basically just get ass-*aped over and over. It is a good-ol-boys club for MMOs. There is not even a role play aspect to it. It's all about pwn or be pwned.

reggielee

sevcik.miroslaveb17_ESO wrote: »

I strongly agree that good MMO is impossible to live long. Everyone want fast paced stuff. They want to hit maximum level day 1 if possible. They do not want travel longer distances, they want huge ammount of drops, they want to faceroll everything.

In all honesty ESO is my last online game to be played. I will finish whole content (current) and then have some fun in PVP. When I get bored I will quit and won't ever again touch online gaming.

I was playing games for around 24 years now and all I see in online gaming to develop are graphics, game mechanics and lower and lower difficulty and insanly increased number of cheaters. Also there is huge lack of respect among gamers these days. There is too much competition and rush rather than to have fun.

ESO is the game which I like in most aspects, but I am convinced that it's difficulty will get lower due to voices of modern "gamers"

hate to say it.. me too, im tired of the whole mmo genre which i have enjoyed immensely for the last decade or so. too many good games go rotten with money grabs and stupid rng boxes to get items, they have turned into gambling meccas.

this kinda is my last hoo hah with them and so far its not working out like i wanted to ( really looked forward to grouping with my real family but we never can get on the same quest lines at the same time) Im really enjoying it for a solo game with some grouping and socializing but its gonna be the last for me. tbh, the nail in the coffin has just been other gamers, cheaters and hackers and plain rude ones, outnumber the gems you find and make lasting friendships with, right now eso is rotten with entitled cheaters

pwnettle_ESO

Halefire wrote: »

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

Some serious fail there. Or so I always thought!

I'm not sure I'd count SWG since it lasted for years (2003-2011) and was loved by many who played it.

AC2 was dreadfully bad but actually lasted 3 years, which is surprising because it was brutally bad compared to AC1 (released 1999 and still going). Shadowbane ran 2003 - 2009 - also surprising since it seemed like the game went nowhere upon release. I thought Horizons was mostly vapor but apparently it's still going (different name though after it was sold).

PBpsy wrote: »

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

Defiance is a decent game, but I wouldn't call it an MMORPG. It's more like FPS with some MMORPG elements. I've played it some and enjoyed it for what it is - it's not as deep as a "real" MMORPG and is something you can hop in for brief bursts of gunslinging FPS style fun.