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WatchMojo - Top 10 Failed MMOs

Switch swg with swtor and put wildstar in there somewhere. Swtor failed so fast as a p2p game it had to be a record. I was there for the first year and by 6 months most servers were ghost towns with as much as maybe 10 players in the fleet(hub area). F2p less than a year and server merges with probably the most expensive MMO at the time. Even the star wars ip couldn't save that game.
 
City of heroes was successful for a while. I remember playing that before wow and thinking how cool it was then wow came out and I was like city of what? Lol
 
Some of the entries are a little strange.

I would say City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, and to some extent The Matrix Online don't belong on the list.

City of Heroes and SWG both had about 8 years of service. TMO had 4 years. I feel like SWG and CoH had pretty good lifespans, certainly much longer than a lot of other MMOs. 4 years is a little short, but not bad.
 
I used to play this MMO called Horizons which tried to sell itself on deep crafting and the ability to play as a dragon. However, the economy never developed which tanked the crafting aspect. Also, they tried to implent player homes on real property but offered way too few plots.
 
Out of all the post-WOW failed MMOs I enjoyed Aion the most. I'd probably still play it if they didn't transfer their EU servers to the worst company that can manage an MMO. Not sure why NCSoft couldn't just keep them online themselves like they still do NA servers.
 
Some of the entries are a little strange.

I would say City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, and to some extent The Matrix Online don't belong on the list.

City of Heroes and SWG both had about 8 years of service. TMO had 4 years. I feel like SWG and CoH had pretty good lifespans, certainly much longer than a lot of other MMOs. 4 years is a little short, but not bad.

I would probably agree without you on City of Heroes, since that did enjoy a good following throughout its time, but for as long as SWG went on for, NGE really did a number on its legacy that I feel justifies its inclusion on a list like this.
 
I used to play this MMO called horizons which tri3d to sell itself on deep crafting and the ability to play as a dragon. However, the economy never developed which tanked the crafting aspect. Also, they tried to implent player homes on real property but offered way too few plots.

I remember this game! Never played the retail release, but I played the beta. The thing I remember most about it was disliking the combat and the graphics being rather poor. It was an interesting concept though!
 
I really miss city of heroes and warhammer. Such great games. Still waiting for marvel to take a shot at mmo's but that won't happen. Too risky for disney
 
Some of the entries are a little strange.

I would say City of Heroes, Star Wars Galaxies, and to some extent The Matrix Online don't belong on the list.

City of Heroes and SWG both had about 8 years of service. TMO had 4 years. I feel like SWG and CoH had pretty good lifespans, certainly much longer than a lot of other MMOs. 4 years is a little short, but not bad.

I agree. IIRC SWG was only shut down because they couldn't renew the license, LA only wanted one Star Wars MMO up. Wasn't LA also behind the whole NGE thing?

Some obvious games that are missing are still technically playable, even if they are still huge failures like WS.
 
I remember Age of Conan being hyped up to be the "next" WoW killer. Wonder how it's doing today.

I was an idiot and bought a €90 collector's edition for that utter shit. It was what an Early Access game would look like today, it was released unfinished.

It is now F2P but I've never gone back to try it again.
 
I was an idiot and bought a €90 collector's edition for that utter shit. It was what an Early Access game would look like today, it was released unfinished.

It is now F2P but I've never gone back to try it again.

Don't feel so bad. I bought a retail copy too and uninstalled it the next day.
 
What forced swg devs to implement nge? Was it WoW? Because that period was the golden age of WoW. The game just came out and was gaining subs at a record pace. Was swg losing players due to WoW? And they wanted to use nge to make it more similar to their competition?
 
I think Copernicus deserves a mention. It was so expensive and so ambitious that it sunk its developer before they even had a chance to release it.

(The game from Curt Schilling/38 Studios, the Kingdoms of Amalur devs).
 
I was an idiot and bought a €90 collector's edition for that utter shit. It was what an Early Access game would look like today, it was released unfinished.

It is now F2P but I've never gone back to try it again.

I thought the intro area, Tortage, was actually really well done.
Big problem was that once you left, the game turned into the Thirteenth Floor.
Utterly barren and undercooked.
 
. Actually, I wouldn't say City of Heroes failed at all, now that I think about it.

NCSoft man...

It really didn't. It was pretty damn active for a long while. I was playing it for years, hah.

NCSoft just decided to kill the servers one year because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
What forced swg devs to implement nge? Was it WoW? Because that period was the golden age of WoW. The game just came out and was gaining subs at a record pace. Was swg losing players due to WoW? And they wanted to use nge to make it more similar to their competition?

The game was hemorrhaging players well before WoW. Endless bugs and general MMO mismanagement. The NGE and CU were clear reactions to WoW, but also reactions to the nightmare that balancing the original system was going to be, even by early 2000s balance standards.
 
I wouldn't say City of Heroes or Star Wars Galaxies failed. Galaxies went on for 11 years and City went for what? 8-9 years? Is the criteria for a non failed MMO is it has to go on for 15 years? Failed MMO's to me mean the game couldn't take off and last a year, maybe 2. 8-11? That's success. Feels like Mojo couldn't fill out a proper top 10 so they threw these in because they are no longer around

Tabula Rasa hurts me the most. I really enjoyed it :(
 
I remember being so enthralled by the concept of City or Heroes/Villains when I was younger, but not being able to pay a monthly fee for them. They eventually fell off my map and then went offline. I still recall the GAF thread about it (I think). Sad :(
 
APB was never a true MMO in the normal sense. It was more of a Open Lobby in which games take place.

Outside of the matches within said open world lobby there wasn't really anything of value going on.


Warhammer hurts, god damn that game.
 
Still got my Tabula Rasa collectors edition that I pre-ordered.

Past me made bad decisions.

The only things I remember about Tabula Rasa is 1) endless advertisements that I kept seeing while playing another NCSoft MMO, Exteel and 2) reading on Kotaku shortly after release that GameStop was literally tossing Collector's Edition copies to the dumpster because they couldn't get rid of them.

I felt so bad for anyone who spent money on that game.
 
I am guessing their definition of failure for an MMO means that the game was shut down.

Which makes me curious, is Aion still alive or something?! That game literally vanished into the ether.
 
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