Other MMO's - and why they failed in our hearts

Well, we're all here to play for a reason aren't we? Because we love MMO's, and have for a long time (at least most of us anyway). However, there's been some MMO's out there that have completely gotten our hopes up and then promptly stepped on our hearts.

To name a couple: Vanguard, Aion

Any other games out there that have broken your heart through hype? Discuss!

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Vanguard failed because of poor programming to be honest. I wasn't a fan of the character models and the limited face/hair combinations, but the game was MASSIVE, it was hardcore, it was DEEP in its story and lore, and the environments were sweet. IMO, a bunch of nerds got together to design it, got caught up in their nerddom, and forgot about deadlines, budget and hiring REAL programmers instead of Jachipo the Janitor.

Aion on the other hand, great character models (to much freedom if you ask me tho, takes away from immersion when you have grotesquely deformed characters just for the fun of it.) good story and design. But, they focused TOO much on an unbalanced PvP system to level.

I agree. Aion had a great thing going for them, but their need to PVP without being able to choose to do so is what killed it for me. And the extremely slow grinding didn't help. It wouldn't have been so bad if you felt a bit more important, but all you ever did was do quests until level 25, go to the abyss, get wrecked by level 50's, do NTC (Nashanta Training Camp) over and over until 30, and then the dungeons after that barely gave you anything..it was just too much. I understand not wanting people to level too fast, I get that, but you could play for hours and barely get anything done - and that's what it's all about, feeling like you've really done something.

I am in huge agreement about Aion. I honestly thought that it was going to be my next big MMO after XI, but I just couldn't get into it. I was mostly drawn to the promise of 3D combat, but found that the time limits (even though they increased with level) on flight were not my cup of tea. Also, I wanted to fight PvE enemies while flying, but I just didn't see that in the beta. The character customization was a great feature, but I agree about seeing people with grossly deformed features taking away from the experience. Here's hoping FFXIV strikes the perfect balance between social, OCD, and PvE I've been looking for.

Poor Aion, alough i agree i never enjoyed spending hours grinding just do die and have to spend 90% of my cash just to get 60-70% of the exp i lost back.

I kinda feel like the social aspect of the game is going to go down drastically from what it was in FFXI. It just feels like there wasn't as much time spent in the chat system as it was in FFXI...but that's just me. The font looks boring, the chat box starts too small, in order to reply to someone you have to /tell them before you can hit CTRL+R to talk to them again, and since they used WASD now, they made it so you can't just start typing and it opens up the chat. But that's purely based off my beta experience.

Here's to hoping they got it right

Luckily, I imagine that at least our linkshell won't have trouble being social. We have the benefit of already knowing each other for the most part, we're not searching for a guild in a fresh game, and I'm DYING to play with everyone.

You can stretch the chat bar and change the settings I believe, I'd done that for a bit when I was chatting more during the beta with Tiger and Kai and Nova, but because of where the action bar and health bars are placed it gets in the way.

Time will tell.

Yeah I don't think we'll have too much of a problem, plus we have a ventrilo setup too so I plan on using that as much as I can after release!

WoW: too much impetus to hit 80, too little reward for doing so. Only way to experience content was to get in a "real" raiding guild, which was full of elitist jerks and drama. Did get to do some 10 man stuff though... Ulduar and ToC mainly. Though that Naxx run was fun.

FFXI: just too much grinding for me. I'm hoping FFXIV reduced that a bit.

Everquest: where do I begin?

Everquest was great! It was definitely a hardcore MMO. I wish there were an MMO out there that could completely recapture it's feel. WoW is KINDA like it, but there's too many little kids playing that game along with immature keyboard warriors who think they're awesome. I remember the good ol' MMO days when people were patient with you, not 75% of the population being elitist...

I remember one time playing Everquest with my dad, I was on my druid running around in Dire Wolf form and we ran past some guards and since I was in wolf form I was aggressive to them for some reason, they hit me but my corpse was inside the rock face so my father and I had to find a necromancer to coffin resurrect my body out of the ice wall cliff because normal Clerics couldn't target my body. Oh that zone was awesome..and Giants were actually giants in that game >.>

My memories of EQ weren't good ones. Being stuck grinding orcs in Kelethin woods for hours on end only to progress to Camp Crush where you fight yet more orcs... Never got higher than 18 in that game, mostly due to my not having social connections with other people and the game's crushing refusal to allow solo play outside of necro kiting.

just... bad memories. WoW was at least better, in that I felt accomplished for having hit 80 and getting sufficient purple gear to raid 10 man ToC (as off tank!)... but mreh.

Yeah, but by EQ's time there was no definition of the word "grind"ing exp. It was just how things were done. It was the first 3D MMO to be released onto the PC platform if I'm correct. Druid's could also kite btw =P But for whatever reason, killing orcs in Crushbone was almost my favorite thing while I was able to do it lol then you'd go to the moon, kill some owlbears and skeletons mixed with aliens. God, that was a good game..