Despite our nostalgia goggles and cries for legacy versions of MMORPGs, the real truth is that most 1.0 versions of our online games were pretty rough stuff. That’s kind of how selective memory works: We retain the good and filter out the aspects that had us flipping tables and whining loudly on our MySpace account how the devs were slapping us in the face or something.
So I thought it’d be fun to dust off those traumatic memories and recall some of the rockier early versions of MMOs that we don’t tend to glorify these days. Let us revel in our past pain and misery… and perhaps be glad that these games got patched up along the way.
Lord of the Rings Online was incredibly group-centric
As a WoW clone of sorts, LOTRO drew a lot of inspiration from Blizzard’s (and other MMOs’) design elements in the 2000s — which included a heavier emphasis on “encouraged” grouping in the world. This meant that our cozy, relaxed Middle-earth journey was often interrupted by group-mandatory quests and portions of the map that would wipe the floor with you unless you ventured into them with a full party.
City of Heroes forced you to run the same 20-minute tutorial for each alt
If there’s one thing that City of Heroes is known for, it’s for becoming an MMO that enabled our altoholic lifestyles. This was a game that egged you to keep making an army of superheroes. And in the very early launched iteration of the game, each of those alts meant that you had to run the same boring tutorial — “Outbreak” — again and again and again. Did you know that WASD moves your character? You do now. You surely do.
Final Fantasy XIV v1.0 was a half-finished mess
Considering how acclaimed FFXIV is these days, I think it’s funny how the collective memory of its 2010 iteration is quickly becoming extinct. Of course, not as many current FFXIV players experienced 1.0 for themselves, but if they did, they would’ve been shocked at the extremely poor performance, the repetitive maps, and the sheer lack of stuff to do. It wasn’t a finished product, although it did get a lot better with heroic efforts by the dev team prior to its shutdown.
World of Warcraft was front-loaded in the extreme
A lot of people gushed over World of Warcraft at its launch in 2004 for a robust and casual-friendly game, only to find out over the next six months that the back half of this MMO was very much still under construction. There weren’t any battlegrounds, some of the higher-level dungeons were still being built, and quests quickly petered out as players ventured into the endgame zones. Heck, the game didn’t even have chat bubbles yet!
EverQuest’s launch broke the internet
A truly big launch of a popular online game wasn’t something the internet had experienced that often or was prepared for back in 1999, so when EverQuest debuted with tens of thousands of players looking to cram into its foyer, the sheer deluge of data packets overwhelmed San Diego’s internet capacity and even triggered a blackout. That cascaded into several other issues for local companies, including one losing much-needed access to GPS satellites. The issue took a whopping three months to fully fix.
EverQuest II would murder your computer
In the early 2000s, SOE seemed determine to put out some of the most visually striking titles in the MMO space, but this came at a huge cost to performance on a lot of machines that couldn’t handle the demands. Such was the case for EverQuest II, which looked quite attractive for the time but was a system hog with bad optimization and obscenely long loading screens every time a player switched zones.
Star Wars Galaxies had little pre-fab content and nowhere to fly
For all of the nostalgic gushing over Star Wars Galaxies these days, let’s not pretend that it launched as anything other than an empty sandbox. The initial release was starving for themepark content, and the outer space portion was postponed until the first expansion. But at least you could go to Jabba’s Palace and hang out with the big guy?
Anarchy Online was unstable for a half-year
Destined to go down as one of the roughest launches in MMO history, Anarchy Online’s July 2001 release couldn’t have gone more wrong. Over 35,000 subscribers found themselves struggling to make accounts, log in, and make it three steps without the game dissolving into a slideshow. What’s worse is that these crippling issues persisted for up to a half-year afterward until Funcom finally got a handle on these problems.
Star Trek Online couldn’t get exploration right
Star Trek Online veterans will remember that the early version of the game contained many features that Cryptic eventually retired. One of these was sector exploration — an attempt to fulfill the “explore strange new worlds” of the Star Trek mantra. However, this system was bare-bones and not very well liked, and instead of working to improve it, the devs swept it under the rug and put in features like patrols instead.
EVE Online was far more barebones than you might remember
Given that over 20 years and many expansions have filled out the EVE Online universe, players may be unaware of how scanty this scifi sandbox was back in 2003. The tutorial was practically non-existent, there were only three classes of ships, PLEX hadn’t been introduced yet, and there was no skill queue whatsoever… yet.
Everyone likes a good list, and we are no different! Perfect Ten takes an MMO topic and divvies it up into 10 delicious, entertaining, and often informative segments for your snacking pleasure. Got a good idea for a list? Email us at justin@massivelyop.com or eliot@massivelyop.com with the subject line “Perfect Ten.”
