MMO Weekly: Wasted Potential

04 Nov 2010 at 00:52:23 by Jeff Hollis

Ni hao, my fellow game-heads, and welcome to the very latest edition of MMO Weekly.  In this week's article, I'd like to discuss a part of my long, epic, virtual journey through the land of MMOs.  More specifically, I'm going to focus on the negative parts of that journey, the games that disappointed me. Of course, I'm referring to a number of MMOs that have captured my attention over the years, and made me say, “Wow, that's a great idea!” while they were in development. The common thread is that each of these games had a ton of potential but, somehow, managed to fall face-first in the dirt.   I'll also do a bit of a post-mortem, discussing what I see as the standout factors leading to each downfall. 

Tabula Rasa

I loved TR, or at least the idea behind TR – humans fighting alien hordes in a galactic war, with some ancient technology thrown in  –  and I really hoped it would be a successful MMO.  I even gave the game a positive pre-review after playing the early levels.  As I progressed into mid-game, TR really began to disappoint – it was just fighting inefficient wave after inefficient wave of slow moving aliens.  Aside from the generalized problem of boring content, the TR devs made a couple of critical errors, common amongst struggling or dead MMOs, and ultimately the game was shut down.  What went wrong? 

• “Humans only” – some devs assume that having unique races isn't really important, especially if your game has lots of customization options.  This is completely incorrect.  A significant number of MMO players really want to play something small and cute, or big and strong, or something strange and monstrous, or something just plain different.  If you make your game humans-only, a significant portion of your potential customers won't even look at the game.  TR recognized their mistake, and introduced alien hybrids after launch, and this noticeably invigorated the game.  Sadly, it was too late, and the game croaked.
• “Everyone has a machine gun” – Though this is (sadly) common in sci-fi MMOs, TR was truly horrible about this.  Would you like to use a machine gun, a gatling laser, a submachine gun, a machine pistol, an autocannon, or a rapid repeater?  Who the f*ck cares,  they're basically the exact same thing.  Also, pretty much every class in the game gets one or more of these, so everyone is as generic as possible.  Boring.

Gods and Heroes

This game held such amazing promise, but the game died a slow, agonizing death in utero.  The idea of Greco-Roman mythology coming to life in-game, the companions that your character acquired over time, the ability to solo nearly anything in the game, the fact that you and four buddies could flesh out a raid group using only your companions if need be – these concepts were brilliant.  Mind you, I never actually saw much of this stuff, as the company behind the game just didn't seem to be making much headway.  In fact, over time I began to suspect that the development company was the source of the problem. 

• Perpetual Entertainment, the aptly named developer, was constantly fund raising, and their game didn't seem to be making any significant, tangible progress.  My fellow writers and I actually began making jokes about Perpetual's obviously borked business model among ourselves, whenever we'd get their quarterly press release.  Each release was the same:  Perpetual acquired new funding partners, oh, and here's some unimpressive news about the game we've been working on.  This seemed to repeat itself endlessly. 
• BTW, Perpetual did the exact same thing – raise funds and make no noticeable progress – when they were working on Star Trek Online.  It was like an epidemic at this company.

Perpetual eventually sold STO to Cryptic, who did something Perpetual was never able to do – bring an MMO to market.  Even more amazing, as the company (now morphed into P2 Entertainment) was being liquidated, Gods and Heroes was sold, and is now being developed by Heatwave Interactive.  

BTW, both Perpetual and its ugly daughter-company are now out of business.     

Auto Assault

This was something of a “Mad Max” kind of MMO.  The only substantive difference was that the cars had a whole bunch of high-tech wizardry available to them (i.e., electromagnetic weapons, shields, etc).  Very cool concept, quite frankly.  Also, it was well executed, and fun to play, at least at first.

• What killed the game was the sameness of it all.  The gameplay was pretty good for a while, but you were endlessly fighting desert bandits of various names, kinds, and descriptions.
• Another factor, acknowledged by the devs, was the fact that players could never get out of their cars.  The devs felt that this kept people from identifying with their characters.  I felt that driving into the auction house in your car was mind-bogglingly silly.   

Stargate Worlds

Another MMO with bucket loads of potential.  This one had a great IP, considering that SG is one of the longest running sci-fi shows in history.  It also died prior to launch, and now Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment (CME) is in receivership.  That means they're bankrupt, folks. 

• The biggest single thing that killed the game was the company behind it, CME.  They had no experience developing MMOs, and they were constantly out of funds.  This “out of money” thing went on for years.  At various points during the game's development, CME was sued for unpaid bills, apparently shut down their PR department, and one of their employees even posted a website detailing, in days, how long it had been since they'd actually been paid.  These were all signs that the company wasn't exactly thriving.
• If you have any questions about what went wrong, why CME went out of business, or why Stargate Worlds just never made it to retail, just refer to my post about Perpetual/P2, above.  Fundamentally, it's the same story.

Asheron's Call 2

You have absolutely no idea how I loved – loved, I tell you! – this game as I was leveling up.  The game had innovations galore.  You could travel anywhere by navigating some jumpgates (walk into one, and it takes you to a corresponding gate somewhere else on the planet), and it had no NPCs at all (this really encouraged a player-based economy).  The game also boasted a unique guild system, a simply fantastic way to reset your skills/talents, and a nice variety of classes to choose from.  In fact, the game actually allowed you to change your class completely over time, so you could be a melee class today but, if you didn't like that, you could morph into a ranged DPS class, try that for a while, and later on morph again into a spellcaster.  So what killed it off?

• This game had bugs galore.  Particularly, the chat system was so utterly broken, most players experienced excessive frustration with it.  Mind you, the chat system is considered a foundational aspect of the game, and is usually built very early in development.  Yet somehow this game shipped with a broken chat system.  Amazing. 
• The game was prone to exploits.  There were “safe spots” in the game where you could stand still and shoot at mobs that could never reach you.  You could kill them endlessly, with utter impunity.  Fixes for these kinds of things were sloooooooow, and players really disliked the unfairness of it all.

The endgame was...well, it was nonexistent.  I have no idea what the endgame content was like, because I never experienced it. Once I got near the level cap, I simply didn't have anything to do.  Like many others, I did a bit of endgame PvP, but this wasn't exactly the finely crafted endgame PvP that Dark Age of Camelot was offering.  AC2's PvP was so badly organized that it was tortuous, and this ultimately killed the game off completely. 

Age of Conan's Reckoning Warhammer   

I combined Age of Conan and Warhammer Online because they suffered from nearly identical problems, and experienced almost identical fates.  These both disappointed me because each was made by an experienced MMO development company, each had a fantastic IP, and some of the most experienced people in the industry were working on both games.  What went wrong?

• Admitted by some of the devs, they didn't listen to the players who were beta testing their games.  While both games were supposed to be harder core versions of WoW, they just didn't have the fun factor that WoW built into the game.  So, basically, they were harder core versions of WoW if WoW was a slow, boring game. 
• They were both very dark and dismal.  The art styles were, at first, intriguing, but they became depressing.
• The depression deepened once you realized that there was no fun, or reasonably complete, endgame when the games released. 

Of course, that's only a sampling of the games that, ultimately, I found disappointing.  The laundry list of dead or dying MMOs is as long as my orcish virtual arm.  I am interested to hear your opinions of the games I've mentioned above, or of any other MMOs that just didn't work for you, so feel free to wax philosophical in the comments.  Of course, next week, we'll explore some very different aspects of virtual space, in all its geek glory.  For now, ciao!

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