These days, New World is kind of the whipping boy of the week when it comes to tone-deaf attempts at managing its community. It’s not a problem that Amazon opted to go for a console launch, but it is a problem that the developers spent months telling players “everything will be good when we reveal our Big Thing in June!” and then the big thing was… well, a console launch that is still months away. Which is nice, but not actually what players wanted! Kind of a failure to read the room!
It’s hardly the first game with a studio that has accomplished that, though. Blizzard’s infamous “don’t you guys have phones” question was a similar unforced error, successfully making everyone angry about something that… well, it might never have gone over very well, but it didn’t have to go over that badly. Some developers even manage to build a history almost entirely built out of failing to read the room, although you can insert your own name there. So what’s your biggest example of an MMO developer failing to read the room? Maybe not even making a huge blunder in the larger sense, but utterly whiffing on grasping the zeitgeist of the moment?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
