Worst MMO Launch EVER

gaberial · April 2014

I have been playing MMO's since 1999 with Everquest and I do not even remember them being so bad at it.

1. NO customer support at all. Really guys just hire an intern to at least respond to the forum post.

2. You knew you had all these issues in Beta and still could not get it fixed. Everything that is going on was going 3 months ago.

You should honestly offer a refund to everyone who purchased this game.

signed
subscription cancelled

Jonnymorrow · April 2014

Ive seen far worse. For me apart from the maintence times it's be fine.

Laura · April 2014

its BAD but its not the worst. far from it. you either have a terrible memory or you are a bold faced liar.

other than the extreme exaggeration I agree they knew about these bugs and they should have pushed the release back a bit. I am sort of considering whether or not I should resub, i'll let the rest of the month dictate that.

Jadeviper1974 · April 2014

Laura wrote: »

its BAD but its not the worst. far from it. you either have a terrible memory or you are a ball faced liar.

Ok, then which one was worse? I have participated in most of the major MMO launches for the past 10 years, so please enlighten me.

Laura · April 2014

Jadeviper1974 wrote: »

Laura wrote: »

its BAD but its not the worst. far from it. you either have a terrible memory or you are a ball faced liar.

Ok, then which one was worse? I have participated in most of the major MMO launches for the past 10 years, so please enlighten me.

take a look at my edited quote but I'll bite.

Everquest was down almost every day for up to 8 hours for not only the launch but for the first two expansions. There was that platinum dupe trick in kunark that had every sever go back three days in progression.

WoW was pretty terrible but only if you were horde. You would literally have to grind for levels because there was almost an entire zone of quests missing there are several articles on this if you just look them up. (look up something along the lines of horde didn't always have it so good i think its a massively article still I remember it very clearly) Not to mention the constant downtime and the INSANE latency. I remember several days it was almost unplayable because of the latency.

I could discuss everquest2 and vanguard with you maybe even more. Granted this is ridiculous for a modern MMO I believe in being honest. It is far FAR from the worst.

Greydog · April 2014

Vanguard ..if you haven't heard of it, it's because the launch was that bad.

Laerrus · April 2014

Laura wrote: »

its BAD but its not the worst. far from it. you either have a terrible memory or you are a ball faced liar.

other than the extreme exaggeration I agree they knew about these bugs and they should have pushed the release back a bit. I am sort of considering whether or not I should resub, i'll let the rest of the month dictate that.

Agreed.

The game did not have to release on 04/04/14 just to try to look cool like Skyrim did on 11/11/11.

LazerusKI · April 2014

then quit this game, one whiner less.

i have seen FAR worse starts.
Rift had a complete servercrash for example,
SWtoR was unplayable during primetime, there was only one point that connected to the island where the servers were...great decision to send all EU player over just this single one. Not to mention that they needed 6 months to finish the game for a "release status"...
Warcraft? Nothing different, bugged quests, server downtimes during primetime etc etc
Secret World? Was not even in a multiplayer state at release. 90% of the quests where unplayable in a group or critical bugged, couldnt finish like 60% of the quests in the last zone, item balancing was horrible (just hop from dungeon to dungeon and gather the best loot...no one needed to quest)

I even think that ESO had one of the best starts ever.
I mean...im from germany, and i was seriously amazed when i heard that our EU server is currently in the US.
Sure there are a few broken quests, sure there are a few bugs, but if you look into the complexity of this game compared to others, where it is always just "read this text, go to this position, kill x, collect y, come back", its amazing that ESO runs so smoothly, even with so many players.
I seriously thought there would be even more broken quests or problems.

mccobleb14_ESO · April 2014

This isn't the worse launch as far as the sate of the game goes, in that regards it's actually the smoothest launch I have ever been apart of. That being said I have also never paid $80 for a game just to have my access to it shut off because they are not selling time cards anywhere yet. Through no fault of my own, I can't play. What makes this worse than the Diablo 3 launch to me is that the D3 issues were unintended and typical Blizzard. These action taken by Zenimax were/are deliberate. They deliberately cut access to a service that had been paid for while not even offering all the ways to pay for the service. It's like going out to eat at a restaurant and only after you order and eat they tell you their system isn't working and you have to pay with cash yet all you have is a credit card andthen they call the police for theft of services.

Daviiid_ESO · April 2014

Jadeviper1974 wrote: »

Laura wrote: »

its BAD but its not the worst. far from it. you either have a terrible memory or you are a ball faced liar.

Ok, then which one was worse? I have participated in most of the major MMO launches for the past 10 years, so please enlighten me.

TESO has been running smoothly for me since launch. The only problems I've really encountered is a bugged frog quest, some crashing when participating in crazy large PvP-battles and the launcher bugging, which was easily resolved. I don't know if it's because I'm on the EU servers or just lucky not to have encountered more than that. But for me personally it's been one of the smoother releases.

However WoW launch was a disaster iirc, so long ago though. AoC was horrifying as well since the content was pretty much nonexistant after a while, and the voice acting for example wasn't done for content after level 10.

You can get a refund by contacting support afaik.

Midgardian · April 2014

Yeah, I haven't encountered any bugs in game at all, either than some horse mounting issues. I haven't had any redemption code problems. My game arrived two days late, but so what?

I have had problems with the game crashing on one computer, and not launching on another. Which I wish could be fixed. But I'm not rabid about it, and have enjoyed how things have gone so far.

Red · April 2014

gaberial wrote: »

1. NO customer support at all. Really guys just hire an intern to at least respond to the forum post.

Now, that's not entirely true. They have about six customer support people. It's just that it turns out six people isn't quite enough to handle a million players running into constant account issues and item deletion.

Maybe if they didn't spend so much time writing cutesy RP support messages like "Oh, Molag Bal has infiltrated the banking system" and instead tried to actually support their customers they would get a little bit farther, but at the end of the day they didn't want to bother hiring enough people. They figure so many people are going to quit at the end of the first month they may as well cut costs so they can cash grab as much as possible.

cheeser123 · April 2014

Laura wrote: »

ball faced liar

Are you even serious right now? lolol.

Jadeviper1974 · April 2014

Laura wrote: »

Jadeviper1974 wrote: »

Laura wrote: »

its BAD but its not the worst. far from it. you either have a terrible memory or you are a ball faced liar.

Ok, then which one was worse? I have participated in most of the major MMO launches for the past 10 years, so please enlighten me.

take a look at my edited quote but I'll bite.

Everquest was down almost every day for up to 8 hours for not only the launch but for the first two expansions. There was that platinum dupe trick in kunark that had every sever go back three days in progression.

WoW was pretty terrible but only if you were horde. You would literally have to grind for levels because there was almost an entire zone of quests missing there are several articles on this if you just look them up. (look up something along the lines of horde didn't always have it so good i think its a massively article still I remember it very clearly) Not to mention the constant downtime and the INSANE latency. I remember several days it was almost unplayable because of the latency.

I could discuss everquest2 and vanguard with you maybe even more. Granted this is ridiculous for a modern MMO I believe in being honest. It is far FAR from the worst.

Ehh, maybe I see this one as a bit worse because I expect them to learn from the mistakes other MMO's have made in the past. I didn't actually do EQ, but to me WoW wasn't that bad. Now Vanguard, yea that one was at least as bad as this, I have to give you that one.

Midgardian · April 2014

Red wrote: »

gaberial wrote: »

1. NO customer support at all. Really guys just hire an intern to at least respond to the forum post.

Now, that's not entirely true. They have about six customer support people. It's just that it turns out six people isn't quite enough to handle a million players running into constant account issues and item deletion.

Maybe if they didn't spend so much time writing cutesy RP support messages like "Oh, Molag Bal has infiltrated the banking system" and instead tried to actually support their customers they would get a little bit farther, but at the end of the day they didn't want to bother hiring enough people. They figure so many people are going to quit at the end of the first month they may as well cut costs so they can cash grab as much as possible.

Yes, since you are an expert on how many people were hired and why they were hired. Agreed, the customer service is awful, but no need to make things up.

CTraveler · April 2014

ESO's been one of the smoothest launches I've been in. Last Major MMO launch I was in, I didn't even try logging in until three days after launch, the servers were bogged down that much by so many people trying to log in. They had to upgrade server size three times just to get it stable enough for people to log in without the entire server coming down on their heads.

Customer Service and account problems don't mean anything in the long run. What else were you expecting with a major launch? That people were going to moderate themselves and *wait* a few days to start playing and let the servers stabilize first? And people ARE logging into ESO, unlike some other MMO's that I shan't name here.

There may be bugs, there may be broken quests... but in the grand scheme of things, this launch has been as smooth as a bottle rocket taking flight.

BeeK · April 2014

Oh man, Shadowbane was horrible with the memory leak/crash problem.

At least I could log in to that game, but still. I am getting this 201 error for the second day now, haven't even been in game yet. I set up my account, subscription, downloaded the game (twice), install went fine, repaired, patched, and I am not able to log in to ESO. Even with all these troubles, I remain hopeful and patient. This is a massive undertaking, and I know they will have this all sorted out eventually.

Laura · April 2014

cheeser123 wrote: »

Laura wrote: »

ball faced liar

Are you even serious right now? lolol.

It was a typo, English isn't my first language

everyone loves a cynical basement troll. I think I'm doing a pretty fair job at it don't you?

wiz12268b14_ESO · April 2014

At this point all things considered it is only ahead of Vanguard in terms of so called AAA MMO releases.

The list for those is rather short but the ones ESO should be compared to...

In No particular order (other than Rift being the best)....

Rift
Lotro
GW2 (its an MMO)
Conan
FFXIV (the remodel)
Warhammer
SWOTOR
Vanguard

Then you have some second tier ones like

Pirates of the Burning Sea
Fallen Earth
STO
AOIN (IMO not a AAA)

But in all seriousness I would put it right in line with Fallen Earth and PoTBS with the myriad of issues it has had. From performance to bugs to account issues to (lack of) customer service, banned accounts, log in problems, etc etc etc.

RagePlug · April 2014

wiz12268b14_ESO wrote: »

At this point all things considered it is only ahead of Vanguard in terms of so called AAA MMO releases.

The list for those is rather short but the ones ESO should be compared to...

In No particular order (other than Rift being the best)....

Rift
Lotro
GW2 (its an MMO)
Conan
FFXIV (the remodel)
Warhammer
Vanguard

Then you have some second tier ones like

Pirates of the Burning Sea
Fallen Earth
STO
AOIN (IMO not a AAA)

But in all seriousness I would put it right in line with Fallen Earth and PoTBS with the myriad of issues it has had. From performance to bugs to account issues to (lack of) customer service, banned accounts, log in problems, etc etc etc.

Fixed for you.

Wreaken · April 2014

I am not sticking up for the companies involved in the handling of PR and customer support and what not, however, at the rate people are posting and playing this game and factoring in the sheer numbers of people who have purchased the game to date, one can only assume they simply can not keep up and when you have larger and larger sample sizes, the amount of vocal people is going to be big.

For people who have truly been around the MMORPG industry in the past 15 years, we know the people on forums is but the minority, and if the sheer amount of people on these forums is any indication of a minority, then I can't even imagine what kind of numbers are in game.

I can understand why they don't have an army of Forum mods spewing out canned responses, but honestly, ask yourself, what is it going to achieve in terms of communication that you can just get by using their support page? I know, you want to feel like you are being heard right? Well, sometimes, doing a little finger walking saves a lot of head ache for both parties involved.

But who am I? I am just another guy, on the internet.

Catkicker · April 2014

lets see, eso is making a try for worst launch, when i was able to play it was very stable and i had no problems. however, for 2 days now i havent been able to even play, and theres no info on why, a fix, or a timetable to fix it.

Anarchy Online i always thought would be the worst ever, if you could get in, it would crash about ever 15min, unless you went into a building, then youd have to log out and make a new toon. all the time this was happening to those of us that hadnt been in the beta, those that had were outside levelling, to max, the first day, exploiting.

best launch ive ever been in, fallen earth. no problems really, and if you didnt know how something worked, you asked in chat, did the other players help you? no, a support staffer was on 24/7 and if you got stuck, they'd come and get you out. best support ive ever seen in a game. until it was failling and everyone got the axe.

Oogaci · April 2014

Other than Vanguard, I believe Horizons (Empires of Istaria) was one of the worst launches ever. Their game engine was crap and it went downhill pretty darn fast and never recovered.

Kingslayer · April 2014

rofl

Elsonso · April 2014

gaberial wrote: »

1. NO customer support at all. Really guys just hire an intern to at least respond to the forum post.

Everyone knows there is customer support and people hired to do that job. There are at least three teams of people, one for each language, and Customer Service appears to be open 24 hours per day, every day. How effective they are may be subject to debate, but they are there. There are even several Zenimax people who respond to forum posts. Hiring an intern, or three, would make no difference and might actually make things worse.

I have been playing TESO daily since Sunday March 30. Aside from server down times, the game has logged me in every time I have tried since the Early Access started. The number one reason for me to be disconnected from the server is idle timeout because I spend too much time reading the forum.

Server lag has varied, being worst in the first couple days of Early Access, to being acceptable today. The lag has taken the form of everything stopping completely for several seconds and also not being able to interact with objects for a few seconds. Sometimes it takes 15-20 seconds to get an instance.

The quests seem to be functioning, at least the ones I have done. Some of them are a lot tougher than I would prefer, which is frustrating.

I have encountered some interesting bugs, like not being able to attack anything until I open inventory and close it. I have seen some animation bugs that may be lag. I have written /bug reports and submitted /feedback. I think the majority of the /bugs have been quest related, but I have no quests that I could not complete due to bugs. The game is very playable, but it is not perfect.

Even with all that, the difference between the scale beta weekends and today is like night and day. Compared to the beta, the game is smooth and stable. It is very playable.

I realize that people having problems don't want to hear about how glowingly great things are for others. I am hoping that by saying this, people who are having problems will realize that not everyone is miserable with the game right now and that once this rough patch is over, they will be able to see an entirely different, and better, game.

gaberial wrote: »

subscription cancelled

Well, maybe you won't be seeing a better game, but my expectation is that others will...

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO · April 2014

Laerrus wrote: »

Agreed.

The game did not have to release on 04/04/14 just to try to look cool like Skyrim did on 11/11/11.

No, once they said 4/4/14 they pretty much had to release it then regardless of if they felt it was ready. If it had been pushed back last minute (within the last month ish) The backlash would have been 10 times worse, with most people cancelling their orders and raging. The game would have been dead on arrival from it. Now we can argue they shouldn't have set the release date as early as they did and waited longer, but I'm willing to believe that decision was out of the dev's hands and completely in the hands of corporate and marketing.

Red · April 2014

jdkorreckpreub18_ESO wrote: »

No, once they said 4/4/14 they pretty much had to release it then regardless of if they felt it was ready [...] that decision was out of the dev's hands and completely in the hands of corporate and marketing.

Spot-on on both accounts.

By March, even if the devs had unanimously gone "there is absolutely no way we can release on schedule" the response from above would have been "Well, we don't have the budget to pay you past that unless you release, so it's then or never."

Grizzly_UK · April 2014

Let's face it, the biggest mistake was in deciding to have short beta sessions instead of a dedicated beta that ran for months. BioWare did the same with SWTOR and we all know what happened to that one! As for TESO being the worst MMO launch ever, either your memory is clouded or you've missed out on some other MMO's launch days! TESO hasn't had the worst launch, I've seen a few others that were worse!

Customer Support does exist, unfortunately they are swamped with so many ticket requests, something that's being made worse by the numbers of players who are submitting multiple tickets on a single issue when they don't get a response within an hour or so. I've seen this exact same thing happen with other MMO's at launch, BioWare had huge problems with their Customer Support for SWTOR being overwhelmed with support tickets because so many players were submitting multiple tickets. The only effect that submitting multiple tickets has is to slow down the response times!

Dragonchylde · April 2014

Your complaint is horribly flawed and ironically at that. Everquest was down constantly for days and days as well as ongoing server stability issues well into expansions. I may also be jaded because I am having a fantastic time playing ESO without any issues.

cheeser123 · April 2014

Laura wrote: »

It was a typo, English isn't my first language everyone loves a cynical basement troll. I think I'm doing a pretty fair job at it don't you?

I'm just imagining balls on somebody's face, you know. It's a weird reason to call somebody a liar. ; )

cheeser123 · April 2014

Dragonchylde wrote: »

Your complaint is horribly flawed and ironically at that. Everquest was down constantly for days and days as well as ongoing server stability issues well into expansions. I may also be jaded because I am having a fantastic time playing ESO without any issues.

That was FIFTEEN YEARS ago. I think if we adjust for advances in gaming, tech, etc. this release is still pretty darn bad. When Everquest came out, its main influences were existing adventure games and text-based MUDS. People were using dial-up and DSL to connect.