I love post like this, they really make my day. Since when do you and your experiences represent the entire community? Most of us have never had any major issue and its a known fact that 90% of people who play, never visit these forums unless they have an issue with the exception of people who like to help others.

deheartb14_ESO wrote: »

For me, it was "The Secret World". Bunch of things were actually game breaking buggy, and in the second area so many actual quests were uncompilable which completely stopped leveling progression that the GM's had to start giving quest completes to allow the players to continue playing.

Imagine having to stay online for hours just to make sure the GM actually got to you while you go around randomly mob killing which does not give you enough points to skill up you skills/weapons in order to proceed to the next area which was a very hard overcrowded with mobs area. And then the whole supposedly you jump back in que thing if you log off, I swear that if you didn't get helped in the first 3-4 hours it was better to delete your ticket and create a new one since once I had a ticket for 3 days later on before a GM completed the quests listed on it.

This lasted for at least 2 1/2 months from early access before burned out and unsubdued. Months of constantly encountering nearly game breaking gameplay glitches or uncompromisable quests. I did so love the game itself but too much frustration in the unfixed glitches.

That by far was my worst experience

I see that and raise you: When you input a boxed retail key, if you already had the grandmaster pack (Lifetime Subscription), it would set you on a monthly recurring fee.

If you contacted Customer Service about it, they'd tell you it was just an interface glitch, but, no, it actually wasn't. Happened to both me and my girlfriend.

Then, a couple days after launch, her entire inventory got nuked randomly. She logged on in Savage Coast without any Talismans, Weapons or consumables. And this was right after she'd bought Blue QL5s off the vendor out there. Customer Service was, "meh, just get more stuff."

SWG & Vanguard were terrible launches. That being said, ESO has had some very interesting & unique issues. Players unintentionally logging into other people's accounts? That was unprecedented indeed, but fixed within a day or two. The bank space issue is the biggest game breaker right now and seems to be difficult for them to pin down & fix. Quest bugs & such are expected, especially for those that rushed to Veteran content. Downtime seems a bit extreme, with 4-5 hours to release a patch & several hours of Saturday night for unscheduled maintenance. It's a rocky start, but certainly not the worst.

Hadan_of_Rift wrote: »

Can all the people who say all MMOs launch's are bad agree they have never had to patch a full game client after an update?

Nope I can't agree - had to do it for EVE, LOTRO, WOW, and SWTOR during those wonderful first weeks of start-up for each.

Design decisions really shouldn't factor into launch problems. Ir the SWTOR issues listed were purposeful then the game worked as intended. The same with a lack of broker system here. It is working as intended, so really can't count as a launch issue.

This game is pretty smooth. A relatively small number are having problems, coming to the forums and making it sound as if the world is coming to an end. It is the nature of both the internet and people in this era - everything gets played for maximum dramatic effect. What some of these folks would do if they really experienced a major problem in real life is beyond me. Yeah, they bought the software and installed it, but they should have done some research about MMO launches first. They would know that the first weeks are not all sunshine and lollipops. Saying they are upset that they can't play the game they paid justifies the torrents of nasty posts is just uninformed nonsense. It also brings down the community as a whole and makes things look gloomier than they are.

There are also a good number of folks who prefer to play the forums. They aren't actually experiencing issues in the game but they hop on the forums and act like they are having the worst problems imaginable just for kicks. Strange, sick puppies, but they exist. I would guess the majority of people who list every issue in the game fall into this category. Given the huge number of people having no issues it is unlikely that any one person would suffer them all (well, maybe one or two unlucky folks, but there are more than that who are trying to sound like they have every problem possible.) Come back to the forums in a few months when everything is fixed and forgotten - you will find those same folks moaning about something else. Their whole intention is to bring people down to their level of unhappiness and they succeed every time we give into their notion that whatever game they are trolling today is the worst ever.

liquid_wolf wrote: »

Grimth wrote: »

ROFL
What determines worse launch or best launch is how the bugs effect you.

SWTOR was missing key features that every single MMORPG released the previous two years had. That was the issue with it. It took them six moths to get that in-line, and they ALWAYS had it in the works. Their devs and development videos talked about the LFG system, and how they were working on the UI changes.

It was just forced out the door too soon to meet EAs requirements.

Nearly every single MMORPG release in the past ten years has had some terrible problems.

I expect ESO to address the AH issue at some point... it will happen inevitably in some format.

You have other methods to sell your stuff... unlike many of the games that were completely missing guild banks, interface modifications, or even a combat log.

Grimth's quote is what it's all about....BUGS are what determine whether a launch is successful or not.....NOT the quality of life issues with features such as a GF or even an AH. If buggy game is bugged and won't allow you to progress or even log in, then you can't have a good launch.....plain and simple. Arguing that other games had bad launches because of QoL issues to make this launch seem better than it truly is, is definitely wearing the shining armor and carrying the banner! Take off your blinders and quit being the typical "this is my favorite mmo fanboy".

***I actually enjoy the game and do plan to continue subbing so I'm not a hater....I'm a realist!

While I'm personally experiencing the 209 problem and also experienced the "deleted entire game" problem with the last patch, I've had a really smooth gameplay experience.

There have been a few quest bugs here and there, but nothing that's stopped me from progressing in the game. I've always found something else to do.

So personally, I'm fairly happy. But I feel bad for those who've had a less smooth experience.

robacooperb16_ESO wrote: »

Hadan_of_Rift wrote: »

Can all the people who say all MMOs launch's are bad agree they have never had to patch a full game client after an update?

Nope I can't agree - had to do it for EVE, LOTRO, WOW, and SWTOR during those wonderful first weeks of start-up for each.

That's odd dude. I played all of those games other than EVE at launch and never had to patch the full game client after an update. I think I would remember that.

f2pmmogamescub18_ESO wrote: »

#5 - Elder Scrolls Online (Special Award for #1 'Patches Just Making It Worse')

really?! they're gonna beat DICE & the BF series on that one? i don't think so.

liquid_wolf wrote: »

Age of Conan - Only the first zones finished, major texture and graphics problems? Skills borked.

f2pmmogamescub18_ESO wrote: »

#4 - Age of Conan (Special Award for #1 'Bait 'n Switch Game')

Also missing working group support where much of the content required groups. For example groups would frequently be unable to talk to one another and you would have to reform the group. If you died in an instance the trash mobs would respawn making it impossible to rejoin your group. Shortly after launch decided too many people were enjoying low level WORKING content and racheted up the difficulty disproprotionalty if you were too high that content. There was a certain dungeon I wanted to run because it had a great potential polearm drop - for awhile my main character hung around playing with the auction house listening to guild chat because I wanted to experience a particular dungeon and I didn't want to overlevel.

No way is ESO is worse than or as bad as AoC; there is plenty to do here and something as simple as account based guilds are really nice.

Hmm,

lets go through some "recent" launches.

Ultima

Its been ages, but I remember that you could kill players without them being able to response. Since Ultima allowed you to loot your opponents, people robbed each other
A bug with huge consequences, today we laugh about it, but back then it was a not so funny thing. Beeing stuck in the door way was also popular

AO

Anarchy Online had huge bugs and disappearing quest items. I didn't play it much, but I felt seriously lost in there, not knowing why my precious item was just gone.

WoW

I had a very smooth launch there, what I remember however are the server crashes around Xmas. Some people said that those crashes were due city raids, I never believed that to be honest. Besides that, some nodes couldn't be harvested and mobs couldn't be looted.
Quite a lot of the quest´s were bugged, like at STV with the trolls - a quest bug that existed for over 2 years if I remember correctly.

During our raids we also encountered many bugs, the most popular is probably in AQ40, but also Naxx had some of these.

As for the classes, I liked them at Vanilla. They all were different, while not balanced it was a wonderful RP experience for me.

AOC

A game that shipped without content. AOC defined itself by amazing graphics, a wonderful soundtrack but forgot that the level experience doesn't end at 30. There were no quest zones in the game for those 30+... people had to just grind mobs to level up.
Crafting also suffered from some massive bugs, you couldn't harvest node´s. Needles to say that some players experienced a massive memory leak, that forced players to restart their client every 30 minutes or so.

Warhammer

A game that had the worst release client ever, that closed European servers and never managed to actually allow players to do pvp without third party ini tweaks, that lowered the UI lags. Warhammer was a game where everyone wanted to turn off the UI, instead of expanding it.
The game was fun, but a game that only lags even on good PC´s, just cant be played. Warhammer is now history, as it closed down completely last year due the bugs that still couldn't be fixed.

SWTOR

This game shipped without HD textures. Besides that AA was bugged and lead to disappearing cut scenes. Cut scenes at SWTOR were based on a holo broadcast and very important for the story, like in the movies.

It was not fun hearing someone, but not knowing who actually told you that he will kill you. Besides that, the story was the major content point of that game - so ya people missed out there.

Besides that, the game had a horrible distance view, everything popped up right in front of you, it was a nightmare release. In the end of the launch phase EA just decided that people who played for months but sadly picked a server that now didn't had players left, should start from scratch, so all the chars were just deleted.

I lost all my chars in that process, the day I stopped.

TESO

The Launcher bug that deleted all game files is horrible for everyone with a bad connection. It took myself 12 hours to load the game. The Launcher seems third party, so ZO is probably not guilty there.

Also the issue´s with some retailers were unfortunate, broken figures, missing keys etc.
Last but not least some quest´s don't work, which is a pity if you want to advance.

Besides that, I feel that the TESO client is quite good. I run a three year old rig and have on ultra a decent 40-50 fps. Only in towns it drops to 27-36 which is understandable.

Cant say much about endgame or higher level yet, as I am just 11. But I would definitely say that TESO is not as bad as some people say it is.

WhiteQueen wrote: »

In my[ experience, having a broken launcher consistently over several patches makes this the most horrible launch ever. This is the most basic technology you need to function properly. It's the gateway to the game. It being broken doesn't speak well of the rest of the game. Especially to new players.

What launcher problems, never had a single one myself.

IMO to qualify for the 'word launch ever' this game would have had to suffer regular server crashes, random downtime, horrible login queues and the like.

ESO's had none of those. Yes, the bank bug is horrible, I've suffered too, but in the great scheme of things it's no more than an annoyance.

I can't say I remember ever having to redownload the entire game client after a patch in any other MMO. Howevever, I've also not had to redownload the entire game client for ESO (yet), so...

That is a lot of comparing apples to apples. This game and that game. I cut my teeth on MUDs first. As far as I can tell the OP was asking about the success of the launch. Not a rant on the catch 22. It's like WoW! it's not enough like WoW!!

As far as launches go. I don't think I've seen and I'm thinking back to the 4th of this month here, a launch that has prevented and blocked so many people from playing the game. There are people that still can't play. A rushed patch comes out and even more people cannot play the game.

To play the game is why I'm here. Thankfully I'm fortunate enough to be able to play because there is nothing quite like the Elder Scrolls environment and lore. I don't particularly enjoy loggin in with dread of losing bank or progress however its more in line with bad launch issues I've encountered in past.

I would have to say the show stoppers preventing people from logging in are making this the roughest in my experience.

Worst launch I have ever seen, and I played almost all MMOs of the last 10 years (except AoC and Secret World).