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All MMO suck at launch?

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Sosseres:
I have come to the conclusion that the only fun MMOs I have played have been about a year after launch (or even later). Then they have patched the most serious issues and the community has stabilised into one that is suited to the game instead of the initial hype.

Anybody else have an opinion on this?

xfreidax:
These are the games I've played at launch.

Age of Conan - Played for 5 months from launch. Was terrible once people started hitting close to level cap (Lack of content), first 50+ levels were fun. After 2 months, massive population drop which killed the game for many. But from what I've been reading FC has since managed to turn it into a decent mmo. Probably true in this case. Btw AoC started out as a pvp heavy game but has since been changed by FC into a raiding focus game.

Warhammer - Played for about 8 months from launch. The best times I had in warhammer were the first 2 months. 30sec Scenario queues. Plenty of world pvp at all levels, epic zone and keep caps happening all the time. Biggest complain, a little zergy. Then people started hitting T4 en masse and the game died. Players unlocked the city sieges and discovered a mess of half finished encounters and broken mechanics. End game was close to unplayable. Players left in droves. IMO warhammer never recovered from that. Even now, they are still tinkering with the end game trying to fix it. The only upside the last couple months I was playing was that the zergs died and there was plenty of small group roaming pvp. In the case of warhammer, best time to have played the game was probably at launch because the game just kept going downhill, for a very long time. Mythic started with something like close to 40 servers I think. Now it's down to 2 servers. That's how bad it's been...

Aion - Played for about 6 months from launch. Definitely better now. Lots more content and way less grindy. And they finally decided to fix loot drop rates, which was ridiculous at launch. The biggest problem now though is again player population. And for a pvp mmo, that just kills the game.

I think what you described is probably true most of the time with the exception of pvp centric mmo's. Getting in late means going up against players that have been sitting at cap for ages and in many cases, you will never be able to catch up. Unless you join at an expansion launch, when the old loot gets outdated.

vuzedome:
Depends, but you normally stick with something new for a few months first, if nothing improves then you mind as well try something else.

xfreidax:
I think the biggest problem for mmo developers these days is this.

Back when the genre was new and shiny. Player expectations were low. We were happy grinding mobs, camping named and place holders, hunting rare spawns. Simple tank and spank boss encounters. It didn't take much for us to consider something as "content". A game zone was just a map filled with mobs.

Then World of Warcraft came along and blew all our expectations out of the water. Even at launch, vanilla WoW was expansive and full featured. With lots to do, heaps of quests, multitude of dungeons, lots of open world pvp. And shortly after launch, bg's were added and all the 40 men raids etc. There was never a lack of things to do. In fact, there was too much to do. More than what most people have time for. And wow attracted a lot of players new to the genre. Which was a good thing. But the bad thing is, when these players move on from wow to try new games they expect the same level of content and discover the truth. That wow is an exception to the rule. That most games launch feature lite and gradually grow over time.

Now the older generation of players know this. They have more patience and are willing to wait for a game to grow. The newer players though have different expectations. Expectations that few developers can meet right off the bat at launch.

And so we have the situation today. Where games launch to massive numbers and great hype, fall flat then empties out within 3 months. I can't think of a single mmo launch since World of Warcraft that has not been like this. And a lot of these games never recover.

vuzedome:
I thought once you got on WoW, there is no escaping.

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