Two weeks ago ESO launched and to say the game's launch is going smoothly is really laughable. From server connection issues, to very poor customer service, to in general game breaking bugs that affect main quest progression, there is many factors bogging down ESO. Many people shrug it off saying "it is standard in any MMO launch" but if this is standard in any MMO launch, wouldn't there be a case study or experts that can help address these problems before they take away from the game.
This is one of my biggest worry of City of Titains. ESO was backed by ZeniMax and with 200 million+ dollars in development, but ZOS (ZeniMax Online Studios) lack the experience in creating a MMO. Obviously CoT resources is considerably smaller than this, and raises the question are you guys using the launch of MMOs as case study on how to launch or in talks with someone in the industry that can help to avoid with launch pains that may drive away customers, or is it going to just be "wing it" and let the pieces fall as they come?
The problems associated with "typical MMO launches" don't just happen to MMOs. Basically the launch of any large software application that's expected to have a bunch of online users is almost by design going to experience something less than 100% perfection. I don't want my post here to degenerate into a "real world" political discussion but you only have to look at the problems the US government had with the rollout of its new Healthcare websites to see what I mean by that.
Clearly with the kind of budget Zenimax apparently had to work with on ESO they had relatively little excuse to have many launch problems. But still I suspect even if a company had near infinite amounts of resources and oversight to throw at a MMO there would still be some problems with it. As I implied before nothing's perfect.
As to wondering how MWM will fare with CoT I think we'll have to be realistic about it. I wish them all the success in the world but obviously CoT will start out as a game with a much smaller scope and ambition than say a huge ESO-type title. But I suspect because CoT is not going to attempt to be huge at the start it'll ultimately have just about the same relative level of "birthing pains" as any other MMO. I don't expect MWM to just "wing it" but by the same token I'm trying to keep my expectations reasonable and realize that CoT will simply be existing on a different scale in terms of what it'll try to accomplish.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
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Your right about large scale implementation (not just MMO) and like you said p(utting politic)s aside with any large scales implementation, there will be unknowns that will come up. I'm not expecting a perfect start with any strech of the imagination because there is too many vaiables that will affect the situation, but what I am asking is are they paying attention to past MMO implemntations to know what will hit them or consulting with an expert to minimize the errors in a bad launch (going back to ESO, one of the biggest gripe is customer service.)
Do a soft release. People (myself included) talk sh*t on NeverWinter but that's something it got right. Transition from Beta to actual was pretty unnoticeable. That of course means you have to buy the game to get into Beta testing which could provide its own problems, LOL.
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Actually... Neverwinter did what was the cheapest excuse. Releasing it in Beta with the store and such in working order and then having a "seamless transition" pisses me off so much because then you can have so many bugs and problems and just be able to give "Well it's still beta" as your excuse. Even worse when the "beta" lasts for months as in the case of Neverwinter.
Beta is beta. I understand that. But the time between Beta and Release shouldn't be the scope of hours or days.. but weeks/months. Plenty of time to fix the critical errors encountered in Beta and release a game with minimal bugs.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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Bugs are GOING to happen. Giving people the expectation of them happening is better than touting how "you're gonna get it right".
having "Launch week numbers" is not a selling point to us fiscal people and gamers I know personally hate the "Chaos" of launch week teaming (attempts to do so fail so hard). Soft releases are just a way to temper expectations.
I can agree that calling it "beta" kinda is a misnomer but it serves its purpose
Crowd Control Enthusiast
Bugs are going to happen, yes. Glitches will happen, slight clipping will happen, all the little things that are a slight annoyance but don't really interrupt gameplay are all going to happen. Gamebreaking bugs should NEVER happen on release, though. And big AAA titles having these and it being waved off because "Well they'll put a patch out in a week or two to fix it" just gives no incentive to put out working game. Back in the old days, some 7 years ago and before, when you put a game out there was no patching.
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
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This is particularly true for the old consoles... although they did ship with bugs, although thankfully the game stopping bugs were *generally* found, sometimes they still went through.
Have a look at some of the speed runs for old games... especially the glitches that sometimes happen. Hell, some of them had *potentially* game breaking bugs.
Anyway, for PC based games, if there were bugs, most developers patched them out via expansions ;)
Although for standalone games, you can see it happen... hell, even Doom released in different versions, and depending of the version of the game you had, you could have different bugs....
TBF the alternative is what RIFT did having a longer beta and having the game more polished and less buggy in fairly early beta than NW was at release. This is of course much more expensive.
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