Top 3 Biggest game disappointments

[Ellesime]

Sticking with what is this year from a MMO perspective..

1) MWO - Mechwarrior Online. Ouch. Painful. While I love the game play it is so over the top Pay too win its silly.

2) SWTOR - still beating the dead horse

3) any recent comic book hero game

Batman Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are really good though. Got high ratings to. Love those games.

For me, from the games I played:

1: Age of Conan. Was so excited for this games. Always heard the old Conan stories from my father back when I was little. The start of the game was good. Until you got out of the starting zone...

2: Assassin's Creed. The first game that is. Was really great at the beginning again. How beautiful Damascus was etc. But then I was repeating everything over and over. Loved the 2nd game though.

3: God of War 3. I guess I was just overhyped. GoW1 and 2 were awesome. But when you start this game you already get to fight and kill 1 of the most important gods in Greek mythology and shortly after another important god. Some boss fights weren't boss fights at all. And Kratos getting all emotional. For me GoW2 was so awesome. And it felt that they left a lot behind in the 3rd part. The game itself looked great though.

[dokilar]

some people have different views on what is a failure and what isnt. in my opinion any game that can generate revenue is not a failure. d3 and swtor i dont see ncessarily as failures because they did fantastic intial sales and still generate money. did swotr have a decline? sure they did, however they sold some 2+ million copies of the game and still have some subscribers and id be willing to bet the f2p model will generate a good chunk of money, at the bare minimum it will generate enough to sustain it.

that being said, i will give my opinion of a failed game.

1) diablo 3 - even though it sort of contradicts my theory of a non failed game, it failed in the sense that it didnt even come close to living up to its expectations (this is my personal opinion) the story was just absolutely horrid and while its not an mmo it was somewhat played off as a huge heroic raid. meaning nothing you did prior to inferno level really mattered. for me personally the game was over after normal mode, the story was so terrible i personally couldnt stomach playing past act 2 in the second difficulty. it was a waste of 60 bucks for. again this is pure opinion

2) warhammer : age of reckoning - while i wasnt around at launch due to work issues i did get to finally play my collectors edition (the only time ive ever bought a collectors edition) most of my guild was already at max level and working on their pvp rank. i have no knowledge of how they did in sales but it was something my guildies had been looking forward to for a long time, a game mostly based around pvp and wpvp. i managed to get to around 45 on one of my toons before my guildies gave up due to end game being so shitty. i never got a character to max level and the $80 collectors edition sits on my computer desk. at least i didnt open the figurine it came with!

3) swtor - again it somewhat contradicts my theory of being a failure, and despite being a game im currently subscribed to and love to death the game apparently didnt live up to peoples expectations and i can sort of see why. i had been part of the closed beta since around april of 2011. i got to play thru several different builds and in my opinion each one was a great improvement. that said i believe the game would have greatly benefitted from staying in beta for another 3-6 months. unfortunately i think EA had their hands in the decisions and basically said "release it or funding is cut". i applauded them not doing cross server type stuff, it fostered a tight knit community feeling reminiscant of vanilla WoW, unfortunately that type of player has been outpopulated by a new age genre of gamer that is more casual. i have no issue with this, but swtor launch wasnt ideal for it as it had no cross server capabilities and no dungeon type finder.

these are just my opinions and should be taken as such

[rogerwilko]

Diablo 3
SWTOR
Fallout tactics.

[Benitora]

Big flip flops for me have been:
Stronghold 3
Diablo 3
Dragon age 2.

If talking strictly MMO's:
WoW: Cataclysm (Worst expansion to date in WoW)
Aion
SWTOR

[parlaa]

World of Warcraft Cataclysm
CS SOURCE
Aion

[probert]

Battlecruiser 3000 AD.
Masters of Orion 3.
Daikatana.

If I limit the discussion to just MMOs...
Warhammer Age of Reckoning
Vanguard
Tabula Rasa

All three had major issues with their launch, and had high expectations...tehy were eventually patched/fixed, but too late and lost their audiences.

SW:TOR has been a large disappointment, but the core gameplay and stories are decent; its the lack of endgame that's problematic, and too much of the same as WoW. Their recent F2P conversion is probably going to be a failure though, since it is such a money grab though...

[Sacrament]

For me:

1. Duke Nukem Forever - (WAY over-hyped and defiantly not worth the wait)
2. Daikatana (OMG so bad!)
3. Total Annihilation: Kindoms (HUGE disappointment for me since I was a BIG Total Annihilation fan)

[Digglett]

I can't believe I forgot to add Cata. Yeah, HUGE let down, I was so pumped, my first midnight launch ever, first collector's edition, and bam. Awful, awful, awful. Completely turned me away from WoW as a whole. Not to mention the huge drop in subs during Cata.

[MasterOfKnees]

As long as youtube poop exists, they will be remembered.

I was talking about it from the creators' perspective, can't remember the last time I heard Nintendo mention the Virtual Boy.

[Knadra]

1. Duke Nukem forever
2. TOR
3. GW2

[Celista]

1. Duke Nukem forever
2. TOR
3. GW2

Interesting considering the massive amount of hype GW2 had pre-release...where had I seen that before...

I can't believe I forgot to add Cata. Yeah, HUGE let down, I was so pumped, my first midnight launch ever, first collector's edition, and bam. Awful, awful, awful. Completely turned me away from WoW as a whole. Not to mention the huge drop in subs during Cata.

Yup. I enjoyed Cata tbh but I don't consider it a success, there were so many game direction changes and difficulty level changes that my toons got whiplash after stepping into a raid.

Hopefully with MoP developers will stick with whatever goal/direction they have for the game.

[duster2]

In terms of MMOs....

SWTOR
WAR
AOC

Could also add APB for a 3 EA games....

[Kazlehoff]

Wow WOLK: B*tch queen dumbed wow down so hard. it made me quite sad.
Wow Cata: Cakeclisym was borring as hell. had great points but overall was dumb.
SWTOR/Rift/GW2/AoC/"wowkiller": Lol thinking they could kill wow. funny stuff. dont compete with wow. no matter how much they screw it up, they have the established fanbase to float them through.

[Hughes]

3. SWtoR:

I love this game, the only problems it has ever had is due to horrible management. It's like the bosses are completely clueless as to what to push for next and what is the most important. EA was branded the World's Worst Company 2 years in a row for a reason.

While the worst company 2 years in a row may be true, believe it or not they did not have alot to do with SWTOR (outside of being the 'owner' I suppose). That was Bioware's baby; they even outsourced customer service specifically for that game. I called EA raising hell about account problems, and I was politely told "Bioware has full control over that. We are not thrilled about the reports of the poor customer service, trust me, we're ticked off too."

[CHALET]

1) Star Wars: The Old Republic

Practically given a blank check and what do they do with it? Turn it into a WoW clone with lightsabers. A poor, buggy, WoW clone with a lack of endgame content. The stories were good (by no means amazing, this isn't Obsidian we're talking about). With typical BioWare logic they buried their heads in the sand, made a load of false promises and tried to pin blame on the playerbase. When this didn't happen? F2P damage control and lost most of its two million subscribers. Oh, and they probably scared off any big budget MMOs being made for the foreseeable future.


2) Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

See above, typical EA meddling. Dark Age of Camelot and the Warhammer license? What could go wrong?! A lot, apparently. Managed to destroy Myth's reputation in one fell swoop. There's a reason this is regarded as the first big "WoW killer failure". Rushed out to beat WotLK's release date meant that four out of six Capital Cities were removed (this is basically the same as removing four raids from your endgame) as well as four whole classes just to meet that deadline. Like SWTOR it was the biggest MMO launch for its time and the subs fell just as quickly. Good game, terrible execution.

3) Mass Effect 3.

"We want Call of Duties audience" just about sums it up. Buggy, plot holes out of its arse and ears, plus That Ending. No Mass Effect game was without its faults but 3 took the cake, reducing three dialogue options to just two, having Shepard auto-dialogue for half of the game, Day 1 DLC, bugs, bugs and more bugs, just generally shoddy and lazy design work over all (check YouTube), this along with SWTOR and Dragon Age 2 utterly destroyed BioWare's reputation.

[Requiemcliff]

Wow WOLK: B*tch queen dumbed wow down so hard. it made me quite sad.
Wow Cata: Cakeclisym was borring as hell. had great points but overall was dumb.
SWTOR/Rift/GW2/AoC/"wowkiller": Lol thinking they could kill wow. funny stuff. dont compete with wow. no matter how much they screw it up, they have the established fanbase to float them through.

I will say on your final point, admittedly none of them said they would compete against WoW (Except maybe RIFT) and most of those still are running as F2P/established games that make a profit, and none of them particularly suck enough to be considered a failure to me. I do get your point though.


Anyway, my list.

Duke Nukem Forever.
Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning
Revelations 2012
I consider those three the biggest failures, (KoA was more personal to me though.)

[Digglett]

SWTOR/Rift/GW2/AoC/"wowkiller": Lol thinking they could kill wow. funny stuff. dont compete with wow. no matter how much they screw it up, they have the established fanbase to float them through.

You know it was mostly the fanbase claiming they were WoW killers, right? (By fanbase, I mean mostly WoW fanbase tired of the game.) Besides Rift.

[Pachycrocuta]

You know it was mostly the fanbase claiming they were WoW killers, right? (By fanbase, I mean mostly WoW fanbase tired of the game.) Besides Rift.

And the one that was poking at WoW (Rift) is the only one that seems to be doing just fine. Not sure about GW2 as I haven't followed that. But it seems every single game out there that the playerbase has deemed a "wow killer" has gone free to play/freemium, except for Rift.

[Doozerjun]

I have found that most of the wow "killer" claims have come from disgruntled wow players.

[HBpapa]

SWTOR is really the only one I can come up with. It failed financially and it failed against even the most reasonable expectations of the consumers. I think Global Agenda can sit on that perch as well.

I have a hard time thinking of anything else at the moment...there are games I don't/didn't like that were big commercial successes (most MMS's) and there are games I really like that weren't all that profitable.