Worst Launch Ever?

WoD had the worst of the worst. Latency issues fixed 3 weeks after release.

This is NOTHING, people overreacting. Demanding Yoshi to step down? Honestly, those people, need to have a meeting with a knuckle to their face.

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Originally Posted by Szazi

WoD had the worst of the worst. Latency issues fixed 3 weeks after release.

This is NOTHING, people overreacting. Demanding Yoshi to step down? Honestly, those people, need to have a meeting with a knuckle to their face.

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Hang out here for a day and you learn that these forums complain about anything and will do it loudly.

It would have to be among my top three. Crashing for zoning in/out of instances only to be greeted with a 3600+ queue that only seems to be going up since release, not down is a real buzzkill.

A crying shame because the expansion seems to be solid when you can actually play it.

Mist of Pandaria and Warlord of Draenor was a faillure too

Not by a long, long shot.

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Originally Posted by SwarleyMcSwarls

Since we all have time to be disconnected or locked out of content, just wanted to ask people the worst game launches that they can remember. The Stormblood launch is fresh on people's minds but there's gotta be worse ones than this that people can think of. Right?

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Technically Stormblood doesn't count because it hasn't officially launched, with that said I think WoW was the worst launch. When WoW launched in 2004 it was a buggy mess. It took weeks for them to fix the issues. Some people still had issues months later. RIFT was a pretty smooth launch though.

Within FFXIV, I remember ARR (2.0) launch was really bad, so far still worse than Stormblood (considering 4.0 isn't officially released to be honest), and it could have been worse, if I remember how I almost couldn't log in at all in-game during beta 4 phase. On the other hand I think Heavensward's (3.0) launch had less issues (the only really big issue I remember was not being able to go to Coertha's Western Highlands, resulting in they creating instanced field areas. Something they definitely learned, since the new 4.0 areas already have 3 instances)

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Originally Posted by TankHunter678

This is nothing compared to Warlords of Draenor.

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Actually I'd say it's about the same. queue problems a certain main story quest bottlenecking everything (garrisons) Yeah, I've spent about the same time trying to log in.

EverQuest had a simple patch once, which they applied of Friday evening just before they all went home.. Caused all servers to crash and they stayed down the entire weekend. On Monday it got fixed, but it required a rollback which for some reason put people back a week before the actual patch in question. No compensation, no apology, nothing.

And that was just a simple patch, without any new content :)

Not being able to login for 3 straight days after an update is definitely bad. Even if it is a minority of the playerbase.

I remember playing FFXIV 1.0 though the day after it went live, which is how long it took to update the initial install, only to be blown away by how awful it was after years of playing FFXI.
And FFXI had it's fair share of really crappy updates that took people a day to download due to congestion. But most of the awfulness of FFXI updates was the devs changing stuff to make it intentionally worse it seemed at times.

FFXI and FFXIV are the only online games I've ever played tbh. Despite starting my video game career in 1976. :p

Just here to say WoW's Cataclysm was exactly that. Wait two hours in queue only for the server to crash or a zone to error out, back to queue and do it again. Worse.. Bliz never got better. Every expansion held some new horror and issue. At least I am not lagging to death in SB.

Except SB has technically not officially launched yet, it is this coming week ;)

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Originally Posted by SwarleyMcSwarls

Since we all have time to be disconnected or locked out of content, just wanted to ask people the worst game launches that they can remember. The Stormblood launch is fresh on people's minds but there's gotta be worse ones than this that people can think of. Right?

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Every single MMO Launch ever. Archeage pretty much did the same "hours long queues" bit, and people getting stuck in zones. And since that was a PvP game, it realllllllly sucked if disconnected.

Overall, I can't think of any MMO that went smoothly between their beta and release, nor expansion packs. It's like no matter what happens, the company will never have enough capacity for the first 4 weeks, and then it just rapidly drops off a cliff depending on how easy the storyline content is. Once you complete the storyline content, populations start speading out due to crafting.

That said, freemium games tend to have even worse launches. I'm not talking about, the endless queue problem, more like the "dogpiled by bots" problem that is caused by doing nothing about the bots. Archeage had more bots running around zones than players and they were so predictable, when the zone switched to PvP mode, you could just pick them off and get the PvP points until they had none left.

It's not even in the top 20 of the worst launches.

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Originally Posted by SwarleyMcSwarls

Since we all have time to be disconnected or locked out of content, just wanted to ask people the worst game launches that they can remember. The Stormblood launch is fresh on people's minds but there's gotta be worse ones than this that people can think of. Right?

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Don't remember 1.0 do you.

Star Trek online had severe issues.

Stormblood launch isn't even top 5 in worst.

Anarchy Online was the worst of the worst.

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Sometimes everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and Exhibit A is 2001's Anarchy Online. When it launched, some players found that the product keys shipped with their discs were invalid, while others were billed twice for the same registration fee. Crashes were common, servers were often down, and once they were actually in the game, players found there were areas of the world they couldn't even access. Naturally, Funcom's customer service staff were overwhelmed.

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http://www.pcgamer.com/the-worst-pc-game-launches/

I defy anyone to tell me how Raubahn's quest being bugged compares.

More on Anarchy Online:

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Let's put it this way: Anything that could have gone wrong -- up to demonic possession and the apocalypse -- went wrong when Anarchy Online went live in 2001. Billing and account registration was a nightmare, the game was inaccessible to many, lag and latency was through the roof, and the MMO as a whole was pretty much unplayable. Yours truly was on the scene during that time, and I have to say that the slideshow that was Rubi-Ka did not impress me enough to stay. Years later, I wrote an article summing up the timeline of this launch, if you're so interested in revisiting the nightmare.

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https://www.engadget.com/2012/05/31/...s-of-all-time/

https://biobreak.wordpress.com/2009/...nlines-launch/

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So what went wrong with this launch? Just how bad was it, really? Let’s take a trip through the timeline of the disaster:
•June 27, 2001 – Anarchy Online launches in NA and Norway. “The number of subscribers we had at launch were much more than we had anticipated.” (CM Tor Andre)
•June 27, 2001 – According to Wikipedia, “Customers were unable to register to play using the product keys included with their installation discs. Others were accidentally billed for the registration fee twice, although they were never charged for the second bill. The game software would crash repeatedly, according to reports from players. Significant portions of the game world were inaccessible, and the game’s servers were routinely out of service.”
•July 2, 2001 – “Numerous complaints from Anarchy Online customers cited problems with registration and difficulties retrieving patches needed to play the game.” Funcom issues a statement through Gamespot saying that they were hard at work fixing the registration system.
•July 2, 2001 – Funcom announces 35,000 registered accounts created.
•July 3, 2001 – Funcom issues a statement on their website, apologizing for the disaster, and promising that no player would be charged until the mess got fixed.
•August 12, 2001 – Funcom sends out a Post Launch Newsletter, detailing why the launch went so wrong.
•September 21, 2001 – To lure players back, Funcom opens a free one-week trial.

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and read this:

http://www.somethingawful.com/featur...onlinei-first/

and then tell me that Stormblood's launch is worse.

At least I could download the expansion lol.

1.0's beta launch was so bad the launcher didn't even work. You had had to torrent the game if you wanted to play it.

Apart from the crazy hours long queues just to get into the game it have been pretty smooth for me. Got kicked from the game once during Palace of the Dead.

In 17 years of MMO playing, spanning FFXI, WOW, and FFXIV since 1.0 and through beta to now this is hands down the worst launch I

The title of this made me wonder about the worst lunch ever? Anyone have any particularly bad lunch experiences?

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Originally Posted by Naria

FFXIV 1.0's launch was a nightmare.

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I played on launch day. Servers were fine to be honest.
Lack of content not withstanding...

I would def say not the worst launch, but doesn't take away some of the annoyances.

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Originally Posted by Kuponutz

In 17 years of MMO playing, spanning FFXI, WOW, and FFXIV since 1.0 and through beta to now this is hands down the worst launch I

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Really now? You think all of WoW's launches were better than this?

I think you haven't played on any of WoW's launches.

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Originally Posted by Dameron

Really now? You think all of WoW's launches were better than this?

I think you haven't played on any of WoW's launches.

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The later expansions were better (though not flawless).

No sir. That goes to 1.0 and ARR.
This was a bottlenecking issue that sorted itself out in a day or two. Now we just have regular crowding disconnects like every other big launch.

My only issue I have is, started a dungeon, got all the way to the end with no issues, disconnect right at the boss. Now have a 2,204 queue wait to get back in. :C

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Originally Posted by Aeeninwen_Taldel

My only issue I have is, started a dungeon, got all the way to the end with no issues, disconnect right at the boss. Now have a 2,204 queue wait to get back in. :C

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I'll raise your 2.2k for a 6k after trying to do Pippin.

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Originally Posted by Mikhaill

I'll raise your 2.2k for a 6k after trying to do Pippin.

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I was fortunate to miss those bottlenecks. That would be rather a pain in the ass to have to sit through that. I feel for you, and everyone else who had to.

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Originally Posted by Kuponutz

In 17 years of MMO playing, spanning FFXI, WOW, and FFXIV since 1.0 and through beta to now this is hands down the worst launch I

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you need to play more MMOs.

This isn't the worst, but it's certainly not the smoothest.

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Originally Posted by Novastarone

This isn't the worst, but it's certainly not the smoothest.

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correct.

this launch has sucked. but it's not THE ABSOLUTE WORST EVER. there are several game/expansions whose launches were far worse, and most of THOSE games survived anyway.

2.0 will always take the cake.