Did WoW suck when it was first released?...

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It seems that 90% of MMO's that are relased suck in there first year/months out (AOC, champions online, APB (apprently) Star trek online, warhammer etc) I wasnt really into pc games when Wow was released. DId it get slated like the others? or was it 'special' from the start?
 
Launch was pretty solid, i remember it had some 'problems' for about 3 days? and they had to open and close periodical the CD key registration system to stop it from overloading. Lag due to hundreds of thousands of people being in the start zones was bad too for like a week but it soon got better.

So yeah, imo it was pretty much the best launch of any MMO to date, and i have played my fair share
 
I will openly admit I was somewhat addicted to WoW at one point, but it's an increadible game. I don't think I would bother starting now though, too much grinding, and you have an awful lot of work to do to get up to the more interesting content.

I played it for a good 3 years and never had any real problems from launch other than slow updates
 
Just be aware that many people see the release and first year of WoW through rose-tinted nostalgic glasses. It had problems back then, it has problems now just like any other MMO and it's still a great game as it was back then.
 
So yeah, imo it was pretty much the best launch of any MMO to date, and i have played my fair share

Lol were u also around for the farce that was champions online beta? Downloads not working, log in problems, server problems, low fps on random pc's etc??

thanks for the info! Allways wonderd about wow :P ty for fillin me in!
 
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The eu wow release was pretty stable, I however started from the us release and the us release suffered many of the opening weeks problems that many MMOs have. It wasn't a faultless perfect release, thankfully many of the problems encountered in the us release had been ironed out for the eu release, so we had it somewhat better over here.
 
Just be aware that many people see the release and first year of WoW through rose-tinted nostalgic glasses. It had problems back then, it has problems now just like any other MMO and it's still a great game as it was back then.

Yeah its not perfect, but no MMO -launched- as polished as WoW did.


Lol were u also around for the farce that was champions online beta? Downloads not working, log in problems, server problems, low fps on random pc's etc??

thanks for the info! Allways wonderd about wow :P ty for fillin me in!

No but i did play Anarchy Online Lol :( google the nightmare that was its release :P
 
It was one of the best games ever made when it first launched. Back in 2006 nothing really compared to it. I bought it the day it came out in Europe and was blown away by it. Despite what many may say, it was an incredibly polished game from the first day and all the teething problems were due to server loads due to Blizzard's low sales expectations (WoW was the game that made the genre mainstream). In the first month there were just four days of downtime, and every single player were compensated for those, even if they hadn't logged on during those times.

There hasn't been an MMO ever that launched with such solid foundations as WoW.

It set the high watermark that may never be matched. And is that really a problem? No, I don't think so.
 
The WoW beta was fairly solid but the US release had definite bandwidth\overload issues however there were pretty short lived. The EU rel;ease was pretty fault free
 
Indeed the euro release was pretty good, as they had 3 months to iron out lots of the bugs before we got it.

But the game still lacked a lot of content when released here still.
 
I played multiple beta's and even then found it to be excellent, better still on release. Anyone expecting perfection in something as large and complex as an MMO is unrealistic. In fact there will never be a perfect MMO, as the saying goes you can't please all of the people all of the time ;)
 
I played multiple beta's and even then found it to be excellent, better still on release. Anyone expecting perfection in something as large and complex as an MMO is unrealistic. In fact there will never be a perfect MMO, as the saying goes you can't please all of the people all of the time ;)

Hardcore on one side and the casuals on the other. :)
 
It was an OK release. The sheer amount of people that bought it caused problems from what i remember. My server (Burning Blade) had terrible lag during early evenings and weekends. Then there were the queues, ohh god that was terrible.
Basically amazing game but i left just after a month due to not being able to log in and play. I returned around 4 months later and became totally hooked as it was actually playable. I plan on going back for Cataclysm.

People say you look back with rose-tinted glasses but i really did love raiding in vanilla WoW. Admittedly i had the time to put in to become fully geared up and be in the top guild on my server.
Still to this day i think Blackwing Lair is the best raiding instance Blizzard has made. Truly Epic!
 
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No, WoW didn't suck on release. It was simply one of the best games I had ever played from the first moment onwards. Maybe it was because it was my first MMO, but no other MMO I've tried during beta or launch has been worth anything really. Warhammer and LotRO were decent but I really didn't want to spend any more time in those game worlds after about a week or two. WoW lasted around three years. Lately though, (in my opinion) the game has been getting worse and worse and these days PVE is pretty much all about grinding badges and tokens. I miss the days when 5-mans were worth visiting and you could spend few hours doing one of those trying to gather whatever materials and equipment you might be missing instead of rushing through them in 10 minutes for few more badges.
 
Only major problems I can really remember were server load issues due to the sheer number of people playing. If I remember correctly it got so bad they stopped selling WoW for a month or two until they could open up another datacentre.
 
Loved it on release, played for a couple of months, great MMO at the time.

Went back in WotLK, changed loads. But even after 3/4 years the classes were still having major balance changes every patch.

Makes me think opting for less classes would've been a great move. (See: Starcraft II)
 
It was something special from the start. Although I started playing 3 months in. When you think that still after over half a decade that no mmo truly compares to wow then I think you should understand just how great it was. I highly doubt it will ever recapture the magic of vanilla...... bwl & aq40 <3 <3
 
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