MMO Launches

I'm not one to post often... but I can't help but be blown away by the amount of people complaining about a pre-launch/launching of a MMO. I been in my fair share of MMO launches, and this by far as been the ea so i was wondering how many people here have done any other MMO Launch and if so list the game you have played at Launch.

Lord of the Rings
Dungeon and Dragons
Tabula Rasa
SW The Old Republic
Star Wars Galaxies

I have done 1.0 lol

That is all

Oh here comes the typical, "I'm accustomed to crap service, so everyone else should be too." argument again. Just because some mmorpg in the past had a crummy launch does not mean it's okay when a future one has one. Companies should study other companies past mistakes and successes, and then build off of those things. They should be held to a higher standard. It makes me absolutely sick when people try to attack others because they are not accustomed to a lifestyle of disappointments. People paid hard earned money for this game and they shouldn't have to settle because some company made someone else do it in the past.

Well its true there are almost always sever troubles on MMO launchers, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating or annoying.

It's interesting so many are so willing to defend this type of laziness on behalf of developer. Especially when this is Square Enix's last chance in the MMO space and first week reviews/word of mouth have a lot to do with making or breaking a game in the long run.

It will probably go something like this:

If D3 is any example, then after early access and come release the problems only got worse because the size of the crowds basically doubled. So here is the way the next few days will go.

Saturday: Unable to login, servers perpetually down, unplayable once in.

Sunday (today): Difficulties logging in, glitches everywhere, almost playable.

Monday: Login getting smoother, playable for stretches at a time, but not a full day, occasional hiccups throughout the day.

Tuesday: Release, crowds stream in, see Saturday.

Wednesday: See Sunday

Thursday: See Monday.

Friday: See Monday, again.

Saturday: Weekend, pop doubles again, see previous Saturday.

I played Lineage 2 at launch, it went horrible. Login issues were the same as this. Spent hours spamming the login button to only be given an error afterwards.

Star Wars Galaxies was broken for awhile where you couldn't register and then couldn't play.

World of Warcraft had insane queue times and issues staying connected at the start.

Guild Wars 2 had to actually stop selling the game for a couple of days because they had so many problems. The trading post was pretty much non-existent for the first week, the mail system was disabled, parties were crashing/not appearing, you were stuck in Overflow for seemingly ever, and never actually able to login to your actual home world (while that made the game playable, it also made it impossible to do anything with friends), and people were having their accounts hacked the first day, which caused a ton of issues with creating accounts and the e-mail security issues.

Just because it happens doesn't make it right. You would think by now that people would learn from other failed launches, and take all the extra precautions to prevent it from happening to their own game.

Hey guys, did you hear about the launch of Final Fantasy XIV? - That went really smoothly!

...in japan.

The very fact this game has launched without issue in Japan, yet has been nigh unplayable so far in EU/NA proves that a smooth MMO launch is possible, and furthermore is within the capabilities of Squeenix if they had put a little more effort into it.

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Originally Posted by TohruHonda

Just because it happens doesn't make it right. You would think by now that people would learn from other failed launches, and take all the extra precautions to prevent it from happening to their own game.

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True, but not all games are built the same... my two cents on that.

Played Swtor at EA and it was certainly much smoother than this for me. There were issues but nothing game breaking for my experience personally. EA here has been nom stop gamebreaking errors.

And what that other guy said, it's 2013 and this game isn't really trying anything new gameplay wise. This probably could have been avoided had the game been stress tested for more than 3 days. People need to stop being so conditioned to having to endure a poorly planned/tested product and raise their standards sometimes. Just because it was okay 10 years ago doesn't mean it needs to be now. It doesn't just apply to MMO's. Tons of single player games come out rushed and are buggy messes.

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Originally Posted by Elysius

It's interesting so many are so willing to defend this type of laziness on behalf of developer. Especially when this is Square Enix's last chance in the MMO space and first week reviews/word of mouth have a lot to do with making or breaking a game..

So here is the way the next few days will go.

Saturday: Unable to login, servers perpetually down, unplayable once in.

Sunday (today): Difficulties logging in, glitches everywhere, almost playable.

Monday: Login getting smoother, playable for stretches at a time, but not a full day, occasional hiccups throughout the day.

Tuesday: Release, crowds stream in, see Saturday.

Wednesday: See Sunday

Thursday: See Monday.

Friday: See Monday.

Saturday: Weekend, see previous Saturday.

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100% right

They need to aviod this by doing whatever they can (free time, free items, whatever.) to kep people.

Because however good the game is, if you can't play it, people will leave,

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Originally Posted by eagleone

Because however good the game is, if you can't play it, people will leave,

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The only thing which could make me leave right now, is the serious toxic community on this Forum. People will leave for reasons like that too. Think about it.

its not a fresh mmo launch the game is 3 years old

they knew how many pre orders they sold and how many to expect to login for early access

they know how others mmo launches went

no matter which way you slice it they failed

that being said now that they know its a problem they should be able to fix it I will give them a few days then just simply play on JP servers

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Originally Posted by Taral

True, but not all games are built the same... my two cents on that.

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But server managment works almost the same if not a "unique feature" (as GW2 overflow servers) is pressent, and so, many devs had incredible launches and good starts, just to give a name, Rift had the best launch ever in any MMO to date.

You can learn from your mistakes, and maybe even more important, from others mistakes. That "launches are like this" argument was good, 7 years ago, today you expect a better service, not only that, a very smooth launch, that SHOULD be standart by now, this is just a proof that devs are not learning. I can think of several more, even older games like EQII had really good and smooth launches. What they did that everything worked? I think the awnser may be, taking in count this problem is exclusive for NA/EU players: CARE.

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Originally Posted by jpem

This probably could have been avoided had the game been stress tested for more than 3 days.

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That i can agree with, i didn't see them really stress test much...

lmao http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab2L-bSp4CY

Everyone's complaining about the game, my experience has been pretty good. There were some times I got the 'world is full, please try again later' so I...tried again later. Went and made some food, took a shower, tried again and got in a queue and was on in 5 minutes. When instances were 'broken' I just went and did fates and stopped clogging up the servers, came back later before the scheduled maint and got into them just fine because congestion had died down. Maintenance time? Went and made some dinner and headed to bed. Aside from congestion issues, this has been pretty smooth compared to other launches. I dont know why people complain about bad service and saying SE is doing nothing, what do they think the maintenance is for?

Maybe if people would log off or try something else rather than clogging up the servers and doing nothing but sit there whining there wouldnt be so many problems.

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

I think the awnser may be, taking in count this problem is exclusive for NA/EU players: CARE.

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That's something i wish had happen for Star wars Galaxies, No care was given to this game and it died. so i agree with you fullly on that.

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Rift had the best launch ever in any MMO to date.

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That is so far from being true. Can people stop being liars, just to start an arguement?

I was there for Rift Release and to name a couple things which happend:

- In the six days of EA in Rift we had had queue's with waiting times up to SIX HOURS.
- Servers were FULL as well.
- They added 20+ Servers in the first days to get rid of the Server Congestion.
- Ongoing Maintenances for 30-60 Minutes each, every couple hours.

and so on... do you may see a pattern here compared to FFXIV ARR? The actual LAUNCH Day of Rift, AFTER Early Access was smooth and pretty much without downtimes for the Players, but if you were not in the EA you probably have no clue about what happend before to get those Servers as stable as they were.

Don't waste your breath, OP.

This is a customary tradition for every MMO launch since the dawn of time. MMO launches, there are problems, developers scramble to fix problems while people whine, the launch is considered a failure, people stomp their feet and stick their lips out and say "well I'll just go play somehting else and I'll never ever play your game EVER!"... it's as predictable and timeless as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. lol

my gripe with the whole thing is if your going to sell a product and than say to everyone that there will be NO maintenance during this time thx for pre-ordering here is 3 more days to play. if your going to use this as a selling point you might want to stick to it. Games should just stop giving early access on pre-orders. this game should have had a longer beta test even some stress tests. The game might be ready on the inside but with messed up hardware that was not fully tested (so it seems) makes this a PR nightmare. Early accuse is not a lets beta test some more its a ty for pre-ordering thing and your damn right people should be upset because they payed for it and are getting shafted
In short Im upset that I payed for something that I can't use and that is not right

This is by far the worst MMO launch I have ever played.

World of Warcraft vanilla - laggy but never had issues staying connected, they did maintenance for like 12 hours and it was fine.
BC - instances had issue for the first 16 hours and then it was fine after maintenance, everything else was playable
WOTLK - no issues other then minor lag and some monsters wouldn't re-spawn now and then
Cata - minor lag, that's it.
MOP - heavy lag for the first 5 hours and bugs with some respawns. Next day was perfectly fine.
Nexus TK- game was in the late 90s and it was by far the smoothest launch. Game only had like 10k people, was one of the first MMOs ever.
Guild Wars I - I don't remember any issues except a bit of lag, could be wrong.
Dragon's Nest - Servers were backed up and it lagged a bit but it was playable.

I've literally played hundreds of MMOs, and I've been in betas and launches in quite a few dozen of them. And never I've seen as many game-breaking server issues as in ARR, sorry.


And speaking of which, the only game from the last decade that I've had trouble after purchase because of server issues was SimCity, which is somewhat ironic because:

1) It was never supposed to be a MMO. People wanted it to be single player, but EA decided to ruin it for the sake of DRM.
2) It's Electronic Arts. Server issues and a shitty release is something we expect from EA, not Square Enix or any other AAA developers.

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Originally Posted by Dijana

Maybe if people would log off or try something else rather than clogging up the servers and doing nothing but sit there whining there wouldnt be so many problems.

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You're right, people shouldn't play what they paid good money for. Seriously, just go away.

I have played MMOs at launch that had queues over 1,000 people long to connect to a server.
I have played MMOs at launch that lagged to hell and back.
I have played MMOs at launch that had frequent downtime due either to crashes or maintenance.

I have never, not once played a MMO at launch...

...Where my character spent most of the producer-described trial weekend unable to log in.

...Where my character was completely unable to progress in the core quest mechanics of the game because the single player content runs off of a totally broken instance server.

...And spent an entire day unable to log in even though the servers are up because the game's developers are so incompetent that they had to drastically limit the amount of people connecting to the game in order to make it playable for the lucky few that logged in.

...That had absolutely no queue system for the connection limitation.

...That had no automated logout for inactive players.

ffxiv 1.0 i was able to play duing EA into launch all the menus slow and stuff. ARR cant even login or do class quest i get stuck in a loading screen.
age of conan was broken but i was still able to play that one and that was enough to kill that game.

but by now they should have an idea how to make a mmo work been 11 years since there first mmo. the game has nothing new and should be expected to work.
but in this day and age people are alright buying games that need patches & DLC to work right. now that lazyness is biting the dev they frogot how to QA the stuff.

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Originally Posted by Bustercucumbers

You're right, people shouldn't play what they paid good money for. Seriously, just go away.

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Except that...early access is free....

You didnt pay extra to get it, you paid the same amount for the rest of the game that will be there after EA. And Im talking about the people who AREN'T playing. The ones who sit there and complain on shout about how bad it all is, blocking people who are willing to get on and have fun with the rest of the game who DO want to play.

Welcome to the typical MMO community.

It's just a small minority of usually children / teens who are used to getting everything handed to them, and are not accustomed to not getting their way. Just ignore them and you'll enjoy the game much more. :)

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Originally Posted by Dijana

Except that...early access is free....

You didnt pay extra to get it, you paid the same amount for the rest of the game that will be there after EA. And Im talking about the people who AREN'T playing. The ones who sit there and complain on shout about how bad it all is, blocking people who are willing to get on and have fun with the rest of the game who DO want to play.

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EA is not free for the new people they had to buy the CE version of the game it cost more & non-legacy 1.0 accounts have to buy an upgrade to play in EA.

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Originally Posted by Dijana

Except that...early access is free....

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Yeah, forget about those who had to REPURCHASE the game to be able to play early access. Screw that, right?

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Originally Posted by Dijana

Except that...early access is free....

You didnt pay extra to get it, you paid the same amount for the rest of the game that will be there after EA.

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I think you need to look up the word "free" in a dictionary.


If you're unable to acquire the being free of charge, it's not free. You can't acquire Early Access free of charge (in legal ways), so it's not free.


At best you could consider it a tied good, which is an illegal practice in most places.

I had a big long response, but I just changed my mind. I'll put it this way, if you were a 1.0 player, who didn't HAVE to repurchase the game, but did so only for early access, congratulations, you spent $30-50 for 3 days of play time when you could have waited and got 2 weeks free without having to buy a thing. If you're willing to throw that kind of money around for 3 days, rebuying the game couldnt have been much of a burden.

Edit: "Free" was in regard to subscription fees, you're not paying for that.

This isn't World of Warcraft.
It's not 2004.
This isn't Squares first MMO.
This isn't Square's first time running this MMO.

Proclaiming you were there when <GameName> launched with bugs in no way excuses the consistent, dramatic issues occurring with the game people are actually trying to play right now.

You're doing yourself, and the game, a disservice by vehemently excusing and apologizing for a company that is letting it's customers (you can be a fan, you can be a detractor; but if you paid for the game, you're a customer) swing in the wind without clear feedback or a coherent line of communication to the.

FFXIV re-launched, in part, because of the abysmal impression it's initial launch left with the gaming press, and gamers in general. It was a second chance at a first impression. Even if you can personally tolerate the issues, it's still incredibly problematic that this is going to be the first experience with XIV for many, or for console gamers, an MMO in general.

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Originally Posted by Dijana

I had a big long response, but I just changed my mind. I'll put it this way, if you were a 1.0 player, who didn't HAVE to repurchase the game, but did so only for early access, congratulations, you spent $30-50 for 3 days of play time when you could have waited and got 2 weeks free without having to buy a thing. If you're willing to throw that kind of money around for 3 days, rebuying the game couldnt have been much of a burden.

Edit: "Free" was in regard to subscription fees, you're not paying for that.

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So I bought a service but didn't get what I paid for but it's ok because it wasn't much of a burden? If I mug you on the street is it ok because I couldn't take all the money you have in the bank too?

Now, I'm genuinely not posting to rant here - but correct me if I'm wrong in saying that this industry (gaming) is the most forgiving one when it comes to launches or new product.

Imagine a new restaurant, if you had a reservation during opening weekend and when you got there they said they wouldn't accommodate you, chances are you wouldn't return, correct? We can apply this logic to pretty much every service industry out there.

Again, I'd like to make it clear that I'm not ranting, I'm far past the age of being upset over... Well pretty much anything, since life is too short. But in any event - with the current market/trends, you'd think to only launch a new product when it was 100% fail-proof. Especially if it's your second time 'round.

As much as you all want to complain he is a little right heres one example after just a short amount of searching.
http://forums.riftgame.com/general-d...index2253.html

i think you all will see a commonality.

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Originally Posted by Elysius

It's interesting so many are so willing to defend this type of laziness on behalf of developer. Especially when this is Square Enix's last chance in the MMO space and first week reviews/word of mouth have a lot to do with making or breaking a game in the long run.

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These are the same people who encouraged 1.0 to be the mess it was, and if it was up to them we'd still be playing Tanaka's 1.0 cause everything is always fine and SE can do no wrong no matter what happens, just keep drinking the Koolaid and saying "It's a good thing this happened!" to everything.

These people encourage SE to strive for laziness and below-standard products/services. These are the people who said "The game is fine, if you don't like it leave." to everyone in 1.0, both pre-launch and post-launch. These sycophants who think of themselves as heroic "white knights" are bad for the game.

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Originally Posted by Bustercucumbers

Oh here comes the typical, "I'm accustomed to crap service, so everyone else should be too." argument again. Just because some mmorpg in the past had a crummy launch does not mean it's okay when a future one has one. Companies should study other companies past mistakes and successes, and then build off of those things. They should be held to a higher standard. It makes me absolutely sick when people try to attack others because they are not accustomed to a lifestyle of disappointments. People paid hard earned money for this game and they shouldn't have to settle because some company made someone else do it in the past.

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Except that's not what most people are saying. It's fine to be upset or annoyed at all the issues, very few people aren't. Saying that the companies need to have it perfect at launch, otherwise it's bad service, is ludicrous. In the western world, the sheer amount of people trying to play at the same time on the release of a new MMO is FAR FAR above what would normally happen. Even if NO one left, after a while they would mostly be playing around their normal times. Not all the time and constantly.

People say the JP servers have had little to no problems, yet people fail to mention that they don't have huge droves of people everywhere. They aren't hammering the servers like westerners do. So SE should make many many many more servers, split the playerbase up more, only to have to merge them down the road, wasting that money completely? Not to mention having ghost towns and having to merge bothers a whole 'nother group of customers.

These are the reasons people say to be patient. Making special accommodations JUST for launch, is as I said, ludicrous. It's not intentional, no way, but the sheer amount of players trying to all play at the same time, all the time, are most certainly part of the issue.

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WOTLK - no issues other then minor lag and some monsters wouldn't re-spawn now and then

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An expansion to an already existing game with a plateau'd population doesn't count as an "MMO launch." WoW's launch was very rough with long login queues and other issues when it started. Counting one of WoW's expansions among MMO launchis is just ludicrous.

Rocky launches aside, this could have been alleviated a bit had phase 4 not been for 3 days. Hardly a test.