Worst Launch Ever?

[Keridwyn]

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.

[Maero]

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

[KisaiTenshi]

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?

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.

[Naberrie]

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

[lonix]

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?

Don't remember 1.0 do you.

Star Trek online had severe issues.

[JMadFour]

Stormblood launch isn't even top 5 in worst.

Anarchy Online was the worst of the worst.

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.

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:

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.

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

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

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.

and read this:

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

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

[basketofseals]

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.

[Lirion]

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.

[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

[Asphexius]

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