The year 2014 had its highs and lows. Today, our author Schuhmann only deals with the lows.
First of all: The assessments are, of course, subjective and do not claim to be exhaustive. Please note that it is always only about one aspect of the game, not about the whole MMO.
No. 5: The mega-servers in Guild Wars 2 and the feeling that as a European, you don’t count
For me, one of the five biggest disappointments in 2015: The mega-servers in Guild Wars 2 and how they dealt with the non-English-speaking community.
This is a present problem in many MMOs, where we non-English-speaking Europeans are regarded as a sort of “appendix” that somehow tags along.
In Guild Wars 2, the mega-servers in China and the USA, where there is only one language for a huge number of people, were certainly a great idea. In Europe, where Babylonian language confusion reigns, it looked quite different.
Learn English or die?
For months, there was a lot of anger and dissatisfaction in the forums about the quasi-forced server merging. There were a variety of problems. Players felt homeless, hardly saw their guilds, and there were brawls in the zones over the few, now overcrowded world bosses, the language confusion led to ugly, even xenophobic scenes (yes, “just” the internet, but still).
There was no clear statement from ArenaNet. German players sometimes felt like second-class gamers, whose interests had to take a backseat to those of the USA and China – for economic reasons.
This was not a good time for Guild Wars 2. Meanwhile, many major titles and companies ignore Europe as a separate market. They assume that gamers can simply inform themselves on the US sites and play on international servers because everyone can speak English. This seems to be a trend that one must get used to. And even if this will not be a problem for many, some who cannot do anything with English will be left behind.
No. 4: World of Warcraft’s content drought
I had to swallow when World of Warcraft won the price for MMO of the Year 2014 on some sites.
Guys, please: Game of the Year. Not the last 45 days.
Until November, there was no new content in WoW for the entire year. The Siege of Orgrimmar was eleven and a half out of twelve possible months in 2014 the current raid and many had already completed it on New Year’s Eve 2013.
Blizzard’s attempts to make old content more attractive with a few tricks “Oh, there are cool skins, achievements, pets!”, rather focus on these ongoing droughts than alleviate them substantively.
This year we really have it together, honestly, well, at least the chances are better than last time
For me, the ongoing content droughts in World of Warcraft are one of the biggest disappointments in the entire MMO genre. This year they promised again that it would be the last one of this length. This time, however, they had significantly more employees hired, but they first had to be trained and probably caused more work than they actually accomplished.
But meanwhile, they also do this with humor in WoW and you can hear them a bit sheepishly saying: “Yes… we know that we say this every year, but this year it looks better than before!”
No. 3: The console debacle in The Elder Scrolls Online
Only a few weeks before the console version was supposed to be released, it was announced that they needed another half a year. Technical difficulties!
Then there was no news from the console port for months, only to finally say at the end of 2014: We are waiting until our major renovations are complete and bear fruit. Then we will deliver.
The overall development at The Elder Scrolls Online is by no means disappointing. The renovations are sensible. The delay of the console port was certainly the right choice.
We noticed two weeks before that we needed another six months
But: Why didn’t they come clean with the fans? Especially since the truth is obvious: We are not currently able to bring it to consoles because we think it would not be successful. We will only release it when TESO meets our expectations.
This would have been refreshingly honest, and it would have created a more equal relationship with the fans. Instead, they created a climate where some are waiting for “finally the truth” to come out and TESO to prove to be the flop that so many are anticipating.
A “We noticed two weeks before that we needed another six months” and a “Oh, now that we have already waited six months, we can add another five”… this way, they simply treat the fans as fools. I would have wished for more backbone. Or Zenimax should have said much earlier: Guys, we will put the consoles on hold for now.
Timing and the way it was explained were disappointing for me, not the actual decision.
No. 2: The monthly content patch in WildStar
For me, the second biggest gaming flop of the year: The content flow in WildStar and its sudden drying up. Before the release, Carbine announced that they would deliver a new content patch every month.
The fans were extremely skeptical: “Do you really think you can manage that?”
“Trust us, we are professionals. We will show you that we justify your trust.”
Carbine wanted to work on 16 patches at the same time. When WildStar was released and the first monthly updates were due, they turned out to be far too buggy. The team’s resources, especially quality control, were too widely spread. The entire house of cards collapsed.
Bitten off more than one can chew
After just three months, the “monthly” patches died and they switched to a quarterly system. The fans that remained at that time reacted understandingly, anything was better than buggy mini-patches.
It remains the disappointment that one of the central promises was already taken back so early. Carbine simply overestimated itself.
No. 1: The partnership between Trion Worlds and XL Games on ArcheAge
For me, the biggest flop of the year was the collaboration between Trion Worlds and the Korean developers of XLGames on ArcheAge, with all the problems that arose from it.
Whether it’s the permeable hackshield and all the nasty tricks it made possible; the many small problems and bugs; the major catastrophes like the botched Auroria launch and the APEX exploit; the difficulties with the extended server downtime, or the chaotic introduction of cash shop items: ArcheAge did not have a good year.
Trion Worlds repeatedly pointed to Korea and said: We rely on their cooperation.
This led to a vague situation the entire time, where the executives of Trion Worlds sometimes seemed helpless, as if they were passing the buck elsewhere.
The culmination of it all was the introduction of special saplings in the cash shop that provided the coveted blitz wood. Trion Worlds responded to the justified allegations that it would turn the entire economy upside down: We didn’t know they would be that strong. XLGames handles the cash shop.
Did they change anything immediately? No, they had to wait for the normal cycle until they disappeared “naturally” again.
Customer service staff and shadowy figures
Thus, Trion Worlds essentially put itself in the position of customer service representatives who had to endure their customers’ bellowing on the phone, while the actual targets of the criticism became somehow dubious background figures who were never tangible. A very unsatisfactory situation for all parties involved, in which Trion Worlds merely acted as a facade that got eggs thrown at it.
The PR interviews and statements of Trion Worlds employees were compared at the end of the year in forums to the appearances of “Comical Ali”, the Iraqi information minister during Desert Storm. He was still talking about the triumph of the Iraqi army while US tanks were already rolling into Baghdad.
Moreover: The game thus has had a strange vibe from the very beginning. There were repeated concerns that Trion Worlds would not treat ArcheAge as carefully as their own game but would instead want to exploit the “horse” as much as possible at the start when enthusiasm is high and pull as much money out of it as they could. With their own product, it’s a commonly heard opinion that they would have treated it “more caringly”. Without test servers, they rushed to release major updates driven by insane time pressure and completely botched them. Whether they can recover from the debacle surrounding Auroria seems questionable.
“How could ArcheAge go so wrong when Rift went so well!”
For me, clearly the flop of the year and a main reason why ArcheAge has fallen short of expectations.
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