Top 3 Biggest game disappointments

[Meintastic]

is it even a contest? the 3 greatest failures that had build-up leading to their release are

Duke Nukem Forever
Final Fantasy 14(I would use Final Fantasy 12 but 14 beats it by a large margin)
Perfect Dark Zero

[Kalyyn]

is it even a contest? the 3 greatest failures that had build-up leading to their release are

Duke Nukem Forever
Final Fantasy 14(I would use Final Fantasy 12 but 14 beats it by a large margin)
Perfect Dark Zero

What?! No!

I'm about as much of a Final Fantasy snob as you can be (FFVI was better than FFVII, btw. Kefka>Sephiroth) and I absolutely loved FFXIV. Parts of it were a little meh, but it has my favorite soundtrack of any Final Fantasy game, and visually it was one of the most beautiful games I've ever played (rivaling even Baiten Kaitos)

Edit: Good lord, I was thinking of Final Fantasy 13 >.<
Yes, Final Fantasy 14 is blatantly awful

[wombinator04]

SWTOR made it's money back of course. So not failure financially. But it's a failure as an MMORPG. Other than the story and questing, the game is mediocre in almost every way.

EA wanted a WoW, so they made a clone but with a Star Wars theme. If your going to try to compete with WoW, then please don't make the game worse than it.

[Northern Goblin]

The fact that it's still alive, doesn't mean its not a failure.

It's alive and making a profit.

If that's failure, your standards of success are exceedingly high.

---------- Post added 2012-11-24 at 05:18 AM ----------

is it even a contest? the 3 greatest failures that had build-up leading to their release are

Duke Nukem Forever
Final Fantasy 14(I would use Final Fantasy 12 but 14 beats it by a large margin)
Perfect Dark Zero

I don't recall any marketing for FFXIV.

Daikatana however....

[Digglett]

It's alive and making a profit.

If that's failure, your standards of success are exceedingly high.

Failure isn't always financial.

[Northern Goblin]

Failure isn't always financial.

This makes zero sense. It's a business venture and it makes money, it still has a stable income and supports itself and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.


The game was disappointing, but it wasn't a failure. A failure would be closed servers, record losses, offices shutting, Bioware culling staff from other divisions to fund the debt and EA not going near the online market.

Y'know, like Ion Storm.

[Digglett]

This makes zero sense. It's a business venture

Right. We're not just talking business here. But, if we are, for the amount it was made for, it should be making waaay more than it currently is.

[Northern Goblin]

Right. We're not just talking business here. But, if we are, for the amount it was made for, it should be making waaay more than it currently is.

It paid itself off and made a profit. There are varying degrees of success, and it might not have been as successful as they hoped, but that doesn't make it a failure.

I can't see any other critique to calling a game a failure, it's still alive, running with an active subscriber base and making a financial gain.

Can it be a disappointing game that lacks content at the endgame and is full of bugs? Yes. Can it be added to the evergrowing list of games that were overhyped and didn't deliver to the gibbering masses the nirvana of genre gameplay they'd hoped for? Yes. Is it still buggy and infuriating to play like nearly every other MMO in their first year because people had unrealistic expectations that bugs were a thing of the past? Yes.

If anything, TOR is guilty of having short vision developers who made a massive oversight at the end game, and a raving fanbase that really thought this time WoW would have real competition.

It was a disappointment for people who expected too much, or who lacked foresight in what they were creating. But a game that was critically acclaimed with great reviews and high marks, and continues to fill the bank accounts at EA? Well actually that's a failure I suppose in some people's eyes, another game helps EA get rich.

[akon]

1.Lineage2 : Goddess of Destruction ruined the gameplay for every class, we all end up being the same char with different stats and thats it 4 class for entire MMO, i mean srsly I used to play Gladiator-Duelist and suddenly I saw Tyrants and Destroyers be the same class with me after the 4th profesion.WTF they couldnt just write 10 names to be the 4th profesion for each class, Gladiator was dual wield burst char while Destroyer-Titan is a 2hand slow but huge dmg dealer,in the end we are both 2hand-dual wield users no matter what(Tyr warriors) with same skills etc.pathetic...
2. Aion,too much noise about the game, insane graphics but terrible terrible grinding system forced us to play endlessly just for money or mats ENDLESSLY and ofc their biggest advandage( the air combat) which ended to be the worst thing about the game.
3.Rift a really good game i really loved and played it but too "small" it could beat WoW in so many ways that personally feel like Riot went to the water source but they didnt manage to drink water and that is a failure....

[Migey]

Fengore, we know the number of subscribers needed for SWTOR to break even, but they never stated how long they needed those subs for; honestly, it seems pretty likely they havn't made back their money! Considering the costs which were not exactly 300 million, but OVER 300 million (by how much I couldn't guess), and the fact that they still have to pour money into the game, and develop new content for it.

They did get a great deal of money from box sales, as there were plenty of those, but subscriber levels have been very, very low, and while they are over the stated 'break even' point, this is EA we're talking about. Even if that is a realistic break even point, for the duration they have had those subs, I highly doubt they have made back their money yet.

I will admit that neither of us can prove anything, since we don't have concrete figures to tell if it is a financial sucess or not, but I think it's pretty obvious that it is not.

Incidentally, you think WoW will go for a F2P model sometime soon? Why on earth would it? F2P is becoming very sucessful for some games, but that doesn't mean every sucessful game has to go for it, no more then League of Legends should pick up a sub model because WoW is making money from it. WoW is making ridiculous amounts of money, and will be for ages to come, despite a small fraction of its playerbase departing (I havn't been keeping up too much with WoW since I quit it a year ago, but I remember reading that after about 3 quarters of steadily losing subs they ended up staying even at over 10 million). There is no possible reason for WoW to go F2P, especially since it already has some microtransactions (certain mounts, etc) which net them a lot of money.

Also, MMO reviews are always kinda... well, maybe this is just me but I don't bother listening to them. Reviews are generally done to tell people if they should buy a game or not and, like it or not, most MMOs are generally about the endgame, no matter how fun (and this was one of the stronger points of SWTOR) the journey there is. But obviously reviewers cant wait to get all the way to the endgame and get stuck into raiding before they give their early reviews...

You say it got great reviews, but from my perspective, I heard very little good about it since just a few weeks after release.

Anyway, to conclude, neither of us can really know if it was a financial sucess or not, but I doubt it. You need a lot more then box sales and a year of a meagre amount of subs to recoup what may be anything in between 300 to 400 million (I'm inclined to believe its closer to the latter now, but that really is just a personal guess because I don't have a concrete idea of how much running costs are, and how much the advertising would have cost (which was estimated to be a sizeable figure on top of the game development costs)).

[Lukazor]

Not really sure how anyone can list Diablo 3, WoW: Cata/MoP and GW2 as failures... I'd love to create a failure that made millions and millions of dollars...

GW2 is a beautifully crafted MMO that lots of people are playing and enjoying including myself. Cata/MoP, well I personally went off WoW and don't play it anymore but 10 million people surely can't be wrong, and the same with D3. I put around 200 hours into D3 before I stopped playing it for something else, I wouldn't call that a failure.

[Deleted]

I put around 200 hours into D3 before I stopped playing it for something else, I wouldn't call that a failure.

So hours played=quality. Farmvillle and zyngapoker are the best games EVER made.

[Vespian]

- Legacy of Kain: Soulreaver
You know, this probably could have been a good game I guess if it just have had a proper save/savepoint system. Every death meant you had to walk from the starting area to the area you actually where and that over and over and over and over... well you get the point.

Wow, are you kidding?

Soul Reaver, a game with outstanding cinematics, excellent gameplay, a brilliant (continuation of the) storyline, a top notch increase in difficulty in both combat and puzzle solving and on top of that graphically extremely impressive for its time period with no load times whatsoever, being the first in its kind.

You just called it a bad game? I defined my youth, pretty much.

[Feluna]

I peronally can't understand all the hate agaist sw:tor. I bought it, played it till March and stopped. I played it around 450-500hours. I think I got a lot of fun for my money. I never had so much fun while leveling a char as in this mmo. This game just gives you the feeling that you are a part of the Star Wars universe.
I'm a bit sad that Bioware couldn't use thier powerfull licence. There was just to less to do in the endgame, or for me, to less motivating things.

But overall, sw:tor was a great experience. And now I start leveling a char again with a wow friend, since it is f2p.

There were a lot worser games. My no.1 would be Warhammer Online, I just played it a few hours as a trial member and meh...

[Migey]

I personally did enjoy SWTOR in many aspects, although on the whole I personally think it sucks and is an inferior game, that didn't stop me getting enjoyment from it!

I still think it's a commercial failure though :P

[Luko]

So hours played=quality. Farmvillle and zyngapoker are the best games EVER made.

Quantity doesn't make something the "best" but in this day and age full of 9 hour games and action titles that end up being interactive movies with short combat scenes, a 200 hour title that broke tons of sales records and continues to be played to this day is certainly a huge success. And yes, Farmville and Zyngapoker are fantastic games when rated by number of downloads / plays and people begging for more.

People need to stop voting with their swollen sphincters and start using a little logic.

For me, Deus: Ex invisible War was the biggest failure.

---------- Post added 2012-11-24 at 08:38 AM ----------

I peronally can't understand all the hate agaist sw:tor. I bought it, played it till March and stopped. I played it around 450-500hours. I think I got a lot of fun for my money. I never had so much fun while leveling a char as in this mmo. This game just gives you the feeling that you are a part of the Star Wars universe.
I'm a bit sad that Bioware couldn't use thier powerfull licence. There was just to less to do in the endgame, or for me, to less motivating things.

But overall, sw:tor was a great experience. And now I start leveling a char again with a wow friend, since it is f2p.

There were a lot worser games. My no.1 would be Warhammer Online, I just played it a few hours as a trial member and meh...

For Swtor, they're gauging it based on its own self-hyped goals for success and the fact that it's an MMO, not a normal videogame title. Had you simply bought an offline RPG and played it for 500 hours, it'd be a huge personal success, but when speaking for an MMO, especially one that charges monthly, 500 hours is a drop in the bucket. Hell I've spent 5x that trying to get certain drops in other MMOs over the years.

The difference between a game like GW2 and Swtor is that the community hyped GW. Hyped the shit out of it. Everyone did, but the company itself was pretty humble as far as big title releases go. Swtor was boosted by its company before anything else. The game was constantly in your face, expectations were made, promises were had, claims were presented and so very, very few of those things had any sort of longevity to back them up.

Personally, i dont get invested into games enough to get butthurt over them, but in the case of Swtor, I'd say it's deserving of the resentment.

[WireRabbit]

Most people that hated D3 didn't understand what it is. It's a dungeon crawler, the game is about farming. Also i was a barb tank in Act 1 gear and made it to Diablo fairly easy. D3 is a great game now. They are finally polishing it up. Also i never even lvled a DH to lvl 2, i think it might be time i try.

[OneSent]

I peronally can't understand all the hate agaist sw:tor. I bought it, played it till March and stopped.

Exactly. You bought an MMO and quit playing it after only 3 months. The rest of us were hoping it would hold our interest for just a little longer than that.

But it's no surprise to see SW:TOR pretty much leading this thread. The game was such a disappointment for me that it would occupy all 3 slots in my 'Top 3 Biggest Game Failures', as nothing else has fell so far from the mark.

Some people, like Fengore, seem to be confusing the point of this thread with financial failure. Financial failure =/= personal failure.

The name of "SW:TOR" is met with universal shame and mockery. It is a failure in the only way that matters: to the people who left because they were disappointed; which was a lot of people.

And being the biggest commercial failure in recent gaming history, it just really chaps my ass when people adamantly defend the game because it broke even in the beginning. Too bad the profits will merely trickle in for the remainder of it's lifespan.

[Deleted]

Star Wars
Duke Nukem Forever
Sonic Free Riders (the one who decided Kinect for this game needs to burn)

[wombinator04]

Star Wars
Duke Nukem Forever
Sonic Free Riders (the one who decided Kinect for this game needs to burn)

I’m falling free in the wind, in the wind
Free to be me in the wind, in the wind

What would it feel like to be speeding light
And move the night and day
Watch as it passes by you, the masses try you
But they just can’t keep up
Into the free, into the me
Into the ever knowing
Felt so refrained, felt so constrained
But now I’m breaking out and
I’m falling free in the wind, in the wind
Free to be me in the wind, in the wind

This will make you kill yourself. If you get the reference.