remember the days when you bought a game
and it worked right out of the box yeah
and neither do I is there a reason for
delay
welcome to watchmojo.com and today we’re
counting down our picks for the top ten
botched video game launches for this
list we’re looking at those video game
launches that disappointed fans at the
time of release either by having buggy
gameplay backing up servers or anything
else that would cause fans and critics
to deem it a failure we’re not saying
that these games ended up being failures
a lot of them actually ended up being
resounding successes in the long run
keep your mouth shut about here number
10
world of warcraft what is perhaps the
biggest and most well known MMORPG today
world of warcraft had a less than
stellar opening few days
to start with and this will be a pattern
going forward the game had such insane
hype behind it that servers were backed
up upon release preventing many people
from actually playing those who were
lucky enough to get in were greeted with
buggy and insanely laggy gameplay this
unfortunately wouldn’t be the last time
that Jam servers would leave Blizzard
bans disappointed on launch day number
nine half-life 2 and steam your Freeman
aren’t you I wouldn’t believe it if I
couldn’t see with my own eyes
half-life 2 and steam are two of the
biggest success stories of our time but
launching them together proved to be a
bad move as players flocked to try out
what would later be dubbed one of the
best games of all time they were forced
to go through Steam the brand-new
digital distribution software that just
so happened to have clogged servers but
getting there with that hunter chopper
on your ass next to impossible digital
distribution and the half-life name did
survive but many swore that steam was
the devil itself in those early days
number 8 Grand Theft Auto online welcome
to paradise
when Grand Theft Auto 5 was released it
broke sales records with 29 million
units sold within the first month so
guess what happened when a decent chunk
of those 29 million tried to use the
online mode all at once
you guessed it the server’s friggin
melted and I was offered if that wasn’t
bad enough many players experienced
their personal character data to be
wiped clean meaning all of their
progress was lost to the wind they were
forced to start again from square one
need to better represent I Joseph no
Tama number 7 world worked you online
while an online game centering around
world war two battles sounded like a
great idea in reality it was a nightmare
to begin with players were greeted with
a 70 megabyte update which doesn’t sound
like a lot today but back in 2001 when
56k modems were still the norm this was
considered ridiculously large and turned
off many players right from the start it
ended up selling so poorly that the
development team ended up filing for
bankruptcy although it was re-released a
few years later with an updated title
and graphics engine it still gone down
as a mega failure number 6 driveclub
what was considered to be the new racing
franchise that could rival the force of
series
driveclub ended up falling flat on its
face for a number of reasons at launch
the game was considered too buggy to
play properly
including a glitch that makes you travel
at borderline supersonic speeds
perhaps most infamously the AI drivers
were considered overly aggressive often
bumping into the player and ramming them
right off the road
then of course the servers were a mess I
guess that one speaks for itself
number five Assassin’s Creed unity this
is what happens when you give command of
the government to half-starved lunatics
and command of the army to bloodthirsty
savages after the amazing series
rejuvenation that was Black Flag fan
expectations were very high for unity
but well you know French Revolution era
Paris must have been an amazing place to
live
what with the levitating citizens
complete lack of physics and even the
ability to warp through the ground and
enter a purgatory like state beneath the
streets topping it all off the PC
version crashed like a Bandicoot and the
console version had a slideshow
framerate but seriously fans were
extremely upset about the games many
bugs and as such the game has been
described as one of the worst in the
series and arguably one that may have
killed it for good where I can find a
shooting yo I don’t know I don’t know
about the degree number for Diablo 3
Blizzard Entertainment clearly didn’t
learn their lesson from World of
Warcraft and produced yet another bomb
of a launch jam servers produced the
infamous error 37 naturally preventing
players from locking in this compound
the frustration that you had to log in
to play the game at all seeing as many
people had no interest in taking their
adventure online and that’s to say
nothing of the real money auction house
that nobody really asked for it’s
horrible it caused an uproar among fans
and gaming journalists – like with many
marking it as a worrying precedent for
the future of gaming number three final
fantasy xiv online xiv title in the
acclaimed JRPG series almost sank the
Final Fantasy name when it was launched
it was almost universally panned for a
plethora of issues ranging from dull
quests an interface that made it
impossible to find your friends and a
poorly explained leveling up system
that’s not to mention that a lot of
players would play with the sound off
thanks to their characters really loud
and annoying footsteps
it was so bad that Square Enix ended up
dumping the entire development team and
started all over again
with a new team giving us Final Fantasy
14 a realm reborn three years after the
original launched well don’t keep us in
suspense number two battlefield 4 while
previous battlefield games have had
issues at lunch the release of this
board line broken game jostled players
and caused them to lower their
expectations for the battlefield series
in general clearly rushed out the door
to compete with the likes of Call of
Duty the game was shipped with numerous
bugs and glitches but perhaps most
importantly players were being kicked
out because their games were constantly
crashing causing them to lose their
progress and their tempers hi oh yeah
it’s Eris it became so bad that dice had
to postpone their dlc in order to fix
the game’s many problems for some
players it took a whole year before the
game was stable enough to really commit
you before we unveil our top pick here
are a few honorable mentions
keep the lead
number one Sim City what is perhaps
become the new poster boy for broken
game launches Sim City required a
mandatory online connection for social
features that no one asked for as a
result at launch there were problems
with the network with players reporting
that they couldn’t even play not only
that but the players who could play the
game experience save files simply
vanishing causing understandable
frustration amongst the community
we’re still this colossal failure was
the beginning of the end for the
legendary development studio Maxis as
they were eventually shut down by EA so
what did we learn today the server’s
always crash anyway do you agree with
our list I pray we reuse the company
what game do you think had the worst
lunch at least we don’t Sparkle for more
critical top 10s published every day be
sure to subscribe to watchmojo.com a
party I wasn’t invited
and it worked right out of the box yeah
and neither do I is there a reason for
delay
welcome to watchmojo.com and today we’re
counting down our picks for the top ten
botched video game launches for this
list we’re looking at those video game
launches that disappointed fans at the
time of release either by having buggy
gameplay backing up servers or anything
else that would cause fans and critics
to deem it a failure we’re not saying
that these games ended up being failures
a lot of them actually ended up being
resounding successes in the long run
keep your mouth shut about here number
10
world of warcraft what is perhaps the
biggest and most well known MMORPG today
world of warcraft had a less than
stellar opening few days
to start with and this will be a pattern
going forward the game had such insane
hype behind it that servers were backed
up upon release preventing many people
from actually playing those who were
lucky enough to get in were greeted with
buggy and insanely laggy gameplay this
unfortunately wouldn’t be the last time
that Jam servers would leave Blizzard
bans disappointed on launch day number
nine half-life 2 and steam your Freeman
aren’t you I wouldn’t believe it if I
couldn’t see with my own eyes
half-life 2 and steam are two of the
biggest success stories of our time but
launching them together proved to be a
bad move as players flocked to try out
what would later be dubbed one of the
best games of all time they were forced
to go through Steam the brand-new
digital distribution software that just
so happened to have clogged servers but
getting there with that hunter chopper
on your ass next to impossible digital
distribution and the half-life name did
survive but many swore that steam was
the devil itself in those early days
number 8 Grand Theft Auto online welcome
to paradise
when Grand Theft Auto 5 was released it
broke sales records with 29 million
units sold within the first month so
guess what happened when a decent chunk
of those 29 million tried to use the
online mode all at once
you guessed it the server’s friggin
melted and I was offered if that wasn’t
bad enough many players experienced
their personal character data to be
wiped clean meaning all of their
progress was lost to the wind they were
forced to start again from square one
need to better represent I Joseph no
Tama number 7 world worked you online
while an online game centering around
world war two battles sounded like a
great idea in reality it was a nightmare
to begin with players were greeted with
a 70 megabyte update which doesn’t sound
like a lot today but back in 2001 when
56k modems were still the norm this was
considered ridiculously large and turned
off many players right from the start it
ended up selling so poorly that the
development team ended up filing for
bankruptcy although it was re-released a
few years later with an updated title
and graphics engine it still gone down
as a mega failure number 6 driveclub
what was considered to be the new racing
franchise that could rival the force of
series
driveclub ended up falling flat on its
face for a number of reasons at launch
the game was considered too buggy to
play properly
including a glitch that makes you travel
at borderline supersonic speeds
perhaps most infamously the AI drivers
were considered overly aggressive often
bumping into the player and ramming them
right off the road
then of course the servers were a mess I
guess that one speaks for itself
number five Assassin’s Creed unity this
is what happens when you give command of
the government to half-starved lunatics
and command of the army to bloodthirsty
savages after the amazing series
rejuvenation that was Black Flag fan
expectations were very high for unity
but well you know French Revolution era
Paris must have been an amazing place to
live
what with the levitating citizens
complete lack of physics and even the
ability to warp through the ground and
enter a purgatory like state beneath the
streets topping it all off the PC
version crashed like a Bandicoot and the
console version had a slideshow
framerate but seriously fans were
extremely upset about the games many
bugs and as such the game has been
described as one of the worst in the
series and arguably one that may have
killed it for good where I can find a
shooting yo I don’t know I don’t know
about the degree number for Diablo 3
Blizzard Entertainment clearly didn’t
learn their lesson from World of
Warcraft and produced yet another bomb
of a launch jam servers produced the
infamous error 37 naturally preventing
players from locking in this compound
the frustration that you had to log in
to play the game at all seeing as many
people had no interest in taking their
adventure online and that’s to say
nothing of the real money auction house
that nobody really asked for it’s
horrible it caused an uproar among fans
and gaming journalists – like with many
marking it as a worrying precedent for
the future of gaming number three final
fantasy xiv online xiv title in the
acclaimed JRPG series almost sank the
Final Fantasy name when it was launched
it was almost universally panned for a
plethora of issues ranging from dull
quests an interface that made it
impossible to find your friends and a
poorly explained leveling up system
that’s not to mention that a lot of
players would play with the sound off
thanks to their characters really loud
and annoying footsteps
it was so bad that Square Enix ended up
dumping the entire development team and
started all over again
with a new team giving us Final Fantasy
14 a realm reborn three years after the
original launched well don’t keep us in
suspense number two battlefield 4 while
previous battlefield games have had
issues at lunch the release of this
board line broken game jostled players
and caused them to lower their
expectations for the battlefield series
in general clearly rushed out the door
to compete with the likes of Call of
Duty the game was shipped with numerous
bugs and glitches but perhaps most
importantly players were being kicked
out because their games were constantly
crashing causing them to lose their
progress and their tempers hi oh yeah
it’s Eris it became so bad that dice had
to postpone their dlc in order to fix
the game’s many problems for some
players it took a whole year before the
game was stable enough to really commit
you before we unveil our top pick here
are a few honorable mentions
keep the lead
number one Sim City what is perhaps
become the new poster boy for broken
game launches Sim City required a
mandatory online connection for social
features that no one asked for as a
result at launch there were problems
with the network with players reporting
that they couldn’t even play not only
that but the players who could play the
game experience save files simply
vanishing causing understandable
frustration amongst the community
we’re still this colossal failure was
the beginning of the end for the
legendary development studio Maxis as
they were eventually shut down by EA so
what did we learn today the server’s
always crash anyway do you agree with
our list I pray we reuse the company
what game do you think had the worst
lunch at least we don’t Sparkle for more
critical top 10s published every day be
sure to subscribe to watchmojo.com a
party I wasn’t invited
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