As with any game that’s released, there’s always the hype train following closely behind promising players the world, and while on rare occasions a game does deliver, most of the time it’s far from it. Today, we look at the top five most disappointing MMO games of the last three years as we break down just what happened and where they went wrong.
The list is in no specific order; just because I used SWTOR as the article header image doesn’t mean I think it’s the worst on the list.
Black Prophecy – Finally an action-combat space MMOFPS that not only looks amazing, but is free-to-play. My hopes for Black Prophecy couldn’t have been higher, so you can imagine how disappointing it was to find out that most of the game was instanced and it launched with virtually no PvP system. While it has improved since then, adding features and a PvP system, it is still far from a game I would dedicate my time to play on a consistent basis.
Mortal Online – On paper Mortal Online sounded like it was going to be the greatest medieval sandbox MMORPG; however, in reality, it fell far from the tree and still rolled a bit. Mortal Online was one of those games I just couldn’t give up on and went back to multiple times thinking things have changed enough to make it playable. However, when massive cities are void of any player life, and even less NPCs to interact with, not to mention a run system that makes it torturous to explore the world, it shuts-out everyone but the very hardcore.
Earthrise – With Masthead Studios recently announcing they are closing down Earthrise, this sandbox MMOFPS was an easy call to add to the list. Earthrise made huge promises, but then launched way before it was ready and flopped straight out of the gate. The game aimed to fill in the gap for a persistent world MMOFPS that has been empty since the original Planetside; although, with both DUST 514 and Planetside 2 now on their way, Earthrise either needs to fix itself quickly, or get out of the way.
Final Fantasy XIV – Another game on our list that launched pre-maturely and nearly destroyed itself. For the last year and a half, SquareEnix has been feverishly working on fixing all the things wrong with this game, and announced a “Version 2.0” that will be launching later this year with the hopes that it will turn the tide for this broken MMORPG. While SquareEnix has recently began charging players a monthly subscription fee again – suggesting the game is good enough to have to pay for – it’s still up in the air whether or not the changes coming with V2 will be enough to save the game.
Star Wars: The Old Republic – I’m sure there will be some “passionate” disagreements with my choice for adding SWTOR, but I felt as though I couldn’t make this list without it. SWTOR is arguably the most hyped MMORPG since the last SW MMO, and probably WoW before that. While it does a lot of things well, it does an equal amount of things horribly wrong. I don’t think anyone would argue that SWTOR‘s main feature and strongpoint is the story-telling, and while well done, it does make the game essentially a single-player game; which is not what MMORPG’s are about. With a horrible PvP system, and a grinding endgame for raids and flashpoints, it leaves players almost no choice but to re-roll or quit, and in my mind, is the benchmark of a broken game.
Star Trek Online, maybe?
agreed whole heartly on SW. a HUGE let down
A nice list, and despite having played few of these, I still wholeheartedly agree. I’m surprised someone would say something bad about SW:TOR, as I didn’t know how many would defend it. But those qualities don’t make it a good game, not one bit.
personally I have only played Earthrise and SWtoR. Earthrise is without question a sorry excuse of a game that just did meet the hype or quality it continuously promised. Sadly, SWtoR also enter this category because of several failures. First, they created too many servers so that each server hand so few player that dungeons instant mission requires hours to gather a useful team. if the had utilize WoW dungeon seeker then this would not be an issue for the most part or if they had limited the amount of servers to that once a certain amount of ppl entered a server a new one would open and the regular player of the original server would be able to move their character to the new one. Second, other the the creation of healing kits, med tool, and maybe saber crystals the crew skills were a complete disaster that should never have happen, better to leave it out and wait for the release of additional content so that player would not become frustrated by it. Third, the galactic market has the same build and nearly every other one in mmorpgs in the last ten years, but the combination of the horrible crew skills and the minimal amount of players on the servers make it completely useless in gather money or even getting the components one need for crafting. All in all this game had one of the greatest potentials in gaming in the last five years and even had a chance of enter legendary status on a level equal to WoW but sadly unless the fix the problems and fast I done see the game lasting past September-December 2012, especially with the secret world coming out in April
I think ppl should keep in mind just what wow was like on its release. It has taken 11 years to get wow up to where it is today. Swtor is a far superior game when you compare swtor and wow on launch. Would be interesting to see what Swtor will have in 11 years if ppl just stick by it.