:uhrr:, the article: what are the stupidest things that happened in gaming?

[Lantyssa]

MMOs as a whole. How did we get from the potential of MUDs and UO to this shit?

It went from hobbyist enjoyment to monetary device.

[Yoru]

MMOs as a whole. How did we get from the potential of MUDs and UO to this shit?

It went from hobbyist enjoyment to monetary device.

Let's not forget that every single MMO system has to survive the full griefing weight of the internet crashing down upon it, and there are some ridiculously fat internet nerds out there. The inevitable conclusion which the industry is slowly realizing: people only want to play online in worlds inhabited by their actual friends, not random idiots. Between stupid money and the internet, MMOs were doomed from the start.

When your solution to "we don't want people to curse around kids" is to simply disallow player-to-player communication, and you're making a multiplayer game...  

[HaemishM]

MMO's as an entire medium is a failure above and beyond probably anything - because the fuckups have been so spectacular and the money spent post-WoW has been so goddamn over the top obscene. I don't think you should differentiate any particular MMO's because they've all been shit even the ones that were worth playing. Hell, this site probably wouldn't be here if not for the fuckups of MMO's even though it started as more than an MMO rant site. There could have been several decently budgeted Hollywood movies made out of the money pissed away on MMOG's since WoW's success and none of them have been worth a fuck even compared to EQ1. Just an utter museum of failure.

[Der Helm]

I don't watch the boardgame one but Schild might know who it was that was making some board/card game thing and funded, then everyone found out she was completely batshit insane when she said "the sun" was talking to her and said not to finish the game.

For the people who are to lazy to google but mildly interested.

[rattran]

Was it Anarchy Online that had the late-beta patch that put windows 2000 machines into a bootloop?

[Ironwood]

Ooh Oooh Oooh ;  what was that game that uninstalled the boot-root of your drive if you tried to get rid of it ?  It was a D&D one, wasn't it ?

That one's worth a giggle.

[Tarami]

The re-make of Pool of Radiance could trash your Windows installation when uninstalled, not sure if there have been others.

Edit, another candidate in that same category: Sierra's HL1 uninstaller used to forcefully remove the entire parent directory of the one HL1 was installed into. Installed it into /games/HL? Too bad. No more games for you.

[Paelos]

Witcher 2's combat tutorial. It might be the most confusing and difficult "tutorial" in all of gaming.

[Soulflame]

How about selling early access to games on Steam?

Or am I the only one that is bothered by that.

[lamaros]

WoW meeting stones.

[Kail]

How about selling early access to games on Steam?

Or am I the only one that is bothered by that.

Beats the fuck out of what they used to do, which is sell early access games on Steam but not tell you they were early access (like Towns).

Would any of Brad Wardell's stuff make the list?  The launch of Elemental, that weird harassment lawsuit, etc?

[Sky]

Romero's about to make you his bitch.

[Venkman]

MMO's as an entire medium is a failure above and beyond probably anything

Not directed at Haemish, just using the quote to make a point:

I think some of you people have developed a very interesting definition of "failure".

And when I mean "interesting", I mean matches no measurable reality at all.

Often did not meet delusion target success metrics, sure. Pissed off players by the thousands, ok. Were qualitatively subpar experiences when compared to games from genres with a narrower set of requirements, yea definitely.

But don't forget the amount of people MMOs have employed, how almost every business and design advance, and a good chuck of those people, have jumped to every one of those other genres, that there's still millions of people spending as much and billions more in hours playing them, and that outside of a niche group of ranters who have been around since the days where whole companies didn't stand in the way of direct developer/player dialog, most players don't give a rat's ass.

I mean jeezus, you all might as well say the Palm Pilot devices were a failure because they're not still around. Or Compaq. Or the Roman Empire.

Just because something is on the decline now doesn't mean a lot of people didn't make serious bank at it previously. Shit changes.

[lamaros]

Failure is a relative term, no shit. Are you proposing a universal definition we all have to abide by, or are we free to use language as language still?

[HaemishM]

Why are MMO's a failure? How about the fact that every post-WoW release has been so well-received that the very idea of a non-WoW game charging a monthly subscription fee is strange enough that people around here, who used to be diehard MMO people some with subscriptions to multiple games, most of us see an MMO charging a subscription and are like "NOPE NOPE NOPE." The entire business model has evaporated, and that was what made MMO's so attractive as investment properties for a good decade or so. Now? What do we have on the horizon MMO-wise? Elder Scrolls Online and Wildstar. Can you think of any others? MMO's used to be big news and now it seems the only one that can make any money without being F2P is WoW. Billions of dollars have been poured into MMO's since WoW's release - is even one of those MMO's that were released since still charging a subscription fee?

MMO's are creative failures and these days, they are such huge risks, almost no one is bothering anymore when they used to be the THING to develop.

[Sky]

Trove and EQN/Landmark?

[Ingmar]

The disk-trashing D&D game was indeed Pool of Radiance (the "new" one, which was not a remake) - it "only" did it if you installed to the non-default path, which just about everybody did back then.

Failure is a relative term, no shit. Are you proposing a universal definition we all have to abide by, or are we free to use language as language still?

Failure at f13 means "I didn't like it".

[IainC]

The disk-trashing D&D game was indeed Pool of Radiance (the "new" one, which was not a remake) - it "only" did it if you installed to the non-default path, which just about everybody did back then.

Also you would uninstall it because it was a pile of utter shit. Not just equally bad as most party-based RPGs with an actual P&P system under the hood but actively awful and borderline unplayable.

[Paelos]

Failure at f13 means "I didn't like it".

Meh, lots of people don't like the Bioware games, or WoW, or Activision, etc. They are hardly failures by any important metric.

[koro]

The Ruins of Myth Drannor "wiping your hard drive" thing also only applied to like... Windows 98, and I think you had to have no service packs installed, at a time when Windows XP was starting to come out.

[Rasix]

Failure at f13 means "I didn't like it".

This topic has failed pretty spectacularly.  Perhaps it should go on the list. 

I think samprimary wanted specific gaffes, not "Blizzard touched me in a dirty place", "all MMOs are bad", or "games with too much dialogue, LOLLLLERSKATES".

[Tarami]

(the "new" one, which was not a remake)

My bad, I haven't played either.

[lamaros]

Failure at f13 means "I didn't like it".

This topic has failed pretty spectacularly.  Perhaps it should go on the list. 

I think samprimary wanted specific gaffes, not "Blizzard touched me in a dirty place", "all MMOs are bad", or "games with too much dialogue, LOLLLLERSKATES".

The perils of crowd sourcing with a loose brief instead of just doing it yourself.

[Khaldun]

I think there's a lot of useful and directly pertinent replies in here amid the general thrashing about around MMOs etc.

[Jeff Kelly]

My addition would be the general bone-headedness of publishers and companies this cycle and their insistence to dictate what consumers should like and how they should use/consume stuff, despite ample evidence to that this doesn't work.

EA's insistence to follow a broken monetization strategy with their franchises even though it doesn't work and worse is counterproductive.
Microsoft's insistence on always-on DRM, Kinect, etc. even though the kinect hasn't been a customer draw nor did anything to add to game design and even though they had to backtrack on basically every policy they devised.
The insistence of publishers to shoehorn multiplayer into basically any franchise even though people don't play and even though it adds costs and delays to products that should have always been single-player experiences
Nintendo's insistence on a business model that makes sure they sell less units each console cycle and has pushed away all third parties.

Basically the ability of the big publishers to repeatedly fall on thier face without learning anything as if somehow the result will be different after the fifth total faceplant.

[Sir T]

Well, to be honest the insistence of publishers to add multilayer is encouraged ny the horde of rampant "WHAT ABOUT MULTIPLAYER THIS MUST HAVE MULTIPLAYER THE ONLY ADJETIVE I KNOW IS GAY AAAARGH" horde of morons that insist that multiplayer is always the most important thing in a game and that singleplayer is "gay"

And of course Valve repeatedly saying that a minority of people who played half life 2 and its expansions actually completed the single player campaign (And that wasn't a hint that it was shit.)

[HaemishM]

Trove and EQN/Landmark?

I know EQN/Landmark are going to be F2P (discounting the whole pay for alpha founders nonesense). Is Trove sub-based or F2P?

EDIT: And now that I think about it, how about the stupidity of all these Founder's Packs for alpha access shit on games that won't be finished even when the dev runs out of money and calls the game released? Looking at you, Mechwarrior, thought it's certainly not the only culprit.

[Phildo]

Has anyone mentioned Day 1 DLC yet, or is that rolled into the Mass Effect 3 shenanigans?

[Megrim]

ctrl+f

sb.exe

0 of 0

Really f13? Really?

[Simond]

MMOs as a whole. How did we get from the potential of MUDs and UO to this shit?

It went from hobbyist enjoyment to monetary device.

Hmm yase, Microsoft, EA and Sony set up and funded entire MMO divisions for "hobbyist enjoyment". Now please excuse me, my eyes have rolled clean out of my head and I must pick them up from the floor.

(Yeah, yeah, Turbine only had their game published by MS rather than funded. Details, details.  ).

And an actual example: The unsustainable "Blockbuster or bust!" AAA-game development model. It's only going to get worse from here on out.

[lamaros]

MMOs as a whole. How did we get from the potential of MUDs and UO to this shit?

It went from hobbyist enjoyment to monetary device.

Hmm yase, Microsoft, EA and Sony set up and funded entire MMO divisions for "hobbyist enjoyment". Now please excuse me, my eyes have rolled clean out of my head and I must pick them up from the floor.

(Yeah, yeah, Turbine only had their game published by MS rather than funded. Details, details.  ).

And an actual example: The unsustainable "Blockbuster or bust!" AAA-game development model. It's only going to get worse from here on out.

It's the same with Movies and Books. All media produced by large companies follows similar patterns. I wouldn't call it a game specific thing.

[Lantyssa]

MUDs == hobby
MMOs == money

So you didn't really dispute a word I said, but thanks for playing.

[Samprimary]

here's the ones I'm starting so far:

"You're a gamer who has purchased and downloaded Sim City 2013 to be ready for the launch. You're probably a fan of the venerable series. You're probably pretty excited about their much-touted Agents system. You start the game, and .."

and

"You're a gamer who has been playing Star Wars Galaxies for some time. Apparently, something called the New Games Experience is getting patched in, ..."

and

"You're a special little snowflake that just bought Aliens: Colonial Marines. ..."

and

"As a longtime fan of the franchise, you are excited to partake in an eagerly anticipated new Final Fantasy MMO, successor to 11,"

[schild]

Final Fantasy is too easy, everything has sucked since VI.

I don't even know what the deal is with Aliens.

[Ironwood]

I think it sucked.