Why do MMOs always get that "pass"?

[Gentlepenguin]

the thread so far is people demonstrating the OPs point, along with some WoW weiner envy. it never fails if a problem arises, the fanboys come forth with silly things like "omg if u dont LOOOOVE it don't play", "omg u rush 2 max level lol i'm experience SO many more things than you did", and "relax everything is broken when new mmos come out we should never expect better"

[Deleted]

TBH games in general have bugs and issues on release these days, how many console games have patches release withing 1-2 days of the game itself being released?

And people don't really except it, of all the MMO's you can think of that are incomplete how many are actually successful and by successful I mean turning a healthy profit without having to close of multiple servers/ go F2P. Not many, just the same as poor quality games of other genres there are a few people who still play them but the majority try's it realize it's poor quality and quit.

[Blufossa]

MMO's are fine.

Hell, look at Skyrim and all the freaky bugs it had on release and still has.

WoW and other existing MMOs are fine, and GW2 will probably be exceptional.

[Gavll]

To be honest, the more Blizzard ironed out bugs or 'fixed' imbalance, the less I liked them.

Wall jumping was a massive one. Banning people for going to GM island, shit like that. Bugs give a game character and can be special moments for those that find them or enjoy them. Who wants to play a perfectly polished game? All show, no substance...a bit like most modern music.

There was a brilliant one after 4.0 (I think it was 4.0) where you could druid fly over the whole world and avoid the insta teleports out of the new zone. That was pretty much the last enjoyable thing I did in WoW before I quit.

Edit: On Topic

Because they're huge ventures with a far greater scope for anomalies to occur

[Deleted]

I give MMOs a free pass at launch because of two things

1) I understand what a large undertaking it is and why the need for financial reimbursement is so important. An average game development is usually between 1.5-2.5 years, whereas most MMOs it seems to be 5years+, equally the budget is often much larger than a normal game, most companies don't just sit on a pot of gold so naturally there's a lot of pressure to ship the product out there and start generating income. Naturally I would probably prefer a more polished product but I'm really not going to fault some guys with their investment running into the hundreds of millions of dollars for wanting to make sure their hit the christmas market.

2) I am an adult and am perfectly capable of deciding if I think a game is complete enough to play. The thing about MMOs of course is that they continue to receive major development post launch which most other games don't get really beyond patches and (shudder) DLC. Basically I look at a game and might say "oh, it has features X,Y and Z but not features 1, 2 and 3 so all in all it's probably not worth it, with a MMO though I would say "Oh, well I can enjoy X, Y and Z now, and then once I'm done with those 1, 2 and 3 will probably be out.

[Nevintsha]

Imagine for a moment you're buying a new car and one of your tires has 10% of the thickness of all of your other tires and the manufactures says yeah we couldn't quite get the whole tire in there. So for the time being you can't drive on the freeway and the manufacturer says they'll get you that full tire in a few months. Would you be okay with that? No, of course you wouldn't. So why accept the same thing from an MMO?

I like this point, made me laugh xD
I've wondered to myself, "Why am I playing this!? So many buggs, lag, seems unfinished..." But I realized that the reason I enjoy playing these MMO's is because of the atmosphere, gameplay, lore, and player interactions. In other words I play a buggy game because I find it fun

[Fencers]

It's just a reality of programming. When you add in hundreds, thousands of players all at once following their own agendas.. well, you really can't expect 100% bug free games released in your lifetime.

[Valeron]

All things considering, mmos are probably the most difficult games to program. There are bound to be more bugs in an mmo than any other type of game.

[Fencers]

Can you imagine the massive feat it would be if the DE system in GW2 is mostly stable? As in say, 70% of them work as intended? That would be kind amazing and would def. set a new bar.

[Eroginous]

I agree with this to a certain extend but Blizzard is a bad example because despite all you just said WoW was also released with a shedload of bugs. Also keep in mind that Blizzard is an established company that does not have the same pressure on release dates as most other companies.

Once upon a time, yes, Blizzard would have been a bad example. However, lately, they are doing an exceptional job on their content at release. While Blizzard was once well known for extended server maintenance especially on patch days, they seem to have gotten the patching process down without nearly so many issues.

I stand by my earlier post about Blizzard, they really are setting the example at this point in time. I look forward to D3 and MoP.

On a side note, there have been several amazing Indie games out in the last couple years. My favorite is by a small studio called Paradox/Arrow head, who released Magicka early 2011. Magicka was released with numerous bugs and game play issues, effectively preventing it from ever becoming a huge hit.

It did well in terms of cost to profit ratio, partially due to a low price point and distribution via Steam. It's only saving grace is that Paradox released weekly patches until they got all the bugs fixed.

Most games are released when they are done. MMOs are never done. They are in a constant state of development.

Of course, you can always go play a bug free game like Skyrim. O wait.

This is extremely poor logic. MMOs might be in a constant state of development, but they are still in a finished state between content releases.

This is truth. By the standards people are holding all other games to, WoW's launch was an utter disaster.

Wow's launch was an utter disaster for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of the game or how finished it was.

- Wow launched over a holiday weekend (Thanksgiving).
- Wow sold over 240,000 copies in the first 24 hours, and another 110,000 copies over the weekend.
- Blizzard only had 40 servers at launch (capacity was about 100,000 players).
- Blizzard rushed to add another 40 servers over thanksgiving weekend.
- There was no precedence set by an MMO to give Blizzard some idea of what to expect.

You can't expect a company who simply wasn't prepared for that kind of popularity to perform flawlessly under those circumstances.

Also, let's not forget about virtually unplayable Hellfire Peninsula on the launch of BC.

But hey, every OTHER game needs to be perfect, right?

There's a difference between problems caused by a broken game and problems caused by servers operating above capacity.

[Jit]

I ask myself the same question whenever a bethesda game comes out.

OT mmo's hard to program so xpecting a mmo to be bug free is kinda foolish.

[papajohn4]

I give MMOs a free pass at launch because of two things

1) I understand what a large undertaking it is and why the need for financial reimbursement is so important. An average game development is usually between 1.5-2.5 years, whereas most MMOs it seems to be 5years+, equally the budget is often much larger than a normal game, most companies don't just sit on a pot of gold so naturally there's a lot of pressure to ship the product out there and start generating income. Naturally I would probably prefer a more polished product but I'm really not going to fault some guys with their investment running into the hundreds of millions of dollars for wanting to make sure their hit the christmas market.

2) I am an adult and am perfectly capable of deciding if I think a game is complete enough to play. The thing about MMOs of course is that they continue to receive major development post launch which most other games don't get really beyond patches and (shudder) DLC. Basically I look at a game and might say "oh, it has features X,Y and Z but not features 1, 2 and 3 so all in all it's probably not worth it, with a MMO though I would say "Oh, well I can enjoy X, Y and Z now, and then once I'm done with those 1, 2 and 3 will probably be out.

well said... /agree

[Balfire]

The sad thing is when MMO's nowadays, at least from my experience, don't receive this pass from many players. If an MMO launches needing work done now players jump ship immediately. Everyone is to used to WoW's polish and expects new games to live up to a game thats had years to fix its problems. When WAR first launched for example many players didn't even give it a chance, when it had great potential.

[Fencers]

Warhammer did have great potential. And to their credit, they fixed a lot wrong with the game after launch.

However, Warhammer was plagued by game stopping bugs, errors, performance issues and literally non-playable classes. As in you could not even zone into the world. Some skills would not trigger, icons didn't have artwork... mob AI wasn't complete...

Again, I give the devs a lot of credit in shaping up Warhammer over time. But WAR's launch problems weren't as banal as "OH NOES ILUM CHESTS!". All of which was compounded by a bizarre "nothing is wrong" stance the devs took, long patch cycles and no real compensation for player $.

That is the type of MMO launch that you shouldn't give a pass to-- as it was rushed and sloppy. See Also: Final Fantasy 14.

[StationaryHawk]

MMOs are larger, generally less linear, and are also updated and patched regularly. An MMO is never "done" as new content must be added constantly. It's no excuse for having blatantly unfinished content shoved into the game for the sake of content, but I don't see this occur all too much. Not meeting your standards doesn't mean it isn't complete or meeting other people's standards. There's also plenty of MMO bashing to go around regardless of these "passes" that people seem to be giving out.

Also, I'm not sure how this belongs in the GW2 section. GW2 is an MMO, yes, but it's also an unreleased MMO. This topic would be better off in the general Video Games section.

[Balfire]

Warhammer did have great potential. And to their credit, they fixed a lot wrong with the game after launch.

However, Warhammer was plagued by game stopping bugs, errors, performance issues and literally non-playable classes. As in you could not even zone into the world. Some skills would not trigger, icons didn't have artwork... mob AI wasn't complete...

Again, I give the devs a lot of credit in shaping up Warhammer over time. But WAR's launch problems weren't as banal as "OH NOES ILUM CHESTS!". All of which was compounded by a bizarre "nothing is wrong" stance the devs took, long patch cycles and no real compensation for player $.

That is the type of MMO launch that you shouldn't give a pass to-- as it was rushed and sloppy. See Also: Final Fantasy 14.

While you are correct WAR had more than most, it was mainly EAs fault for forcing an early release from Mythic. It was just an example if players had stuck around the coming months it would still be alive today, I stuck it out for a few months and they did a fantastic job with that game sadly even I jumped ship eventually but that was because of the shrinking community, not the game itself which I loved.

[Menkey]

Do you honestly have any idea how hard it is to fully balance/debug an MMO?

[Roose]

Why only use beta to test when you can get paying customers to test for you? That is exactly what is happening right now in TOR. Beta part 2.

The only reason they get away with it is because it is now accepted by so many players.

Seriously!? Infraction for that? How is that bashing? I do not mean to sound obstinate, but I am really confused and would like to know what I need to avoid. I have been infracted before and deserved it, but this makes no sense.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

Because we are putting all our hopes and dreams into every MMO that comes out, because video games are a volatile and risky market. The investors, the greedy money swindling bastards who make these games possible, want to see some interest from their potential audience before they dump truck loads of money on their cappuccino sipping-beret wearing-artists and game developers.

We want our favored licenses to succeed, and it only happens when people say yes or leave themselves open to the possibilities. I am guilty I have done my fair share of shunning to games like SWtOR. We overlook bugs and flaws because we see what we want to see. People always paint all kinds of pictures, they made WH out to be a wowkiller, they made Conan sound like a snuffest that would beat up WoW and take it's lunch money, they made Aion sound like the picasso of the game world and they made Rift sound like the one MMO that got everything right.

As an example let's use Rift. It was ambitious, artistic, innovative but ultimately flawed. End game raiders were stuck for months in unfinished raids with buggy bosses or exploitable bosses who could be LoSed or solo'd by the more unethical players out there. These things drove players away in droves.

[Nirawen]

Yeah, WvWvW is still my biggest concern. I wonder how they will be able to deliver a lag free environment when hundreds of players are in the same zone/area at the same time. We don't want another Wintergrasp.

Wintergrasp lagged because of the extreme limitations of the WoW engine when it comes to 'large' scale battles, DAoC could manage more people before it started to lag out and that engine was about 4-5 years older than WoW's. Similar deal with Planetside although the gameplay & graphics did facilitate easier larger battles, you would still get to 10x what lags in WoW before you would start to get any inkling of rubber banding etc.

That said it could still end up being a lag fest, just WoW really isn't the game to compare against for large scale things.. simply not designed for it.