8 Games that Had Horrific Launches on PC
- Thread starter ffronw
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Its funny how people's memories can be short. How folks praise the hell out of certain games as classics and forget the troubles those games had. Diablo II was a huge mess at times, nearly every patch seemed to break something fundamental in it if memory serves and some patches reworked entire talent trees. Much like many MMO's to come. I remember WoW's woes and it reminds me that those issues were frustrating because I'd played in beta and wanted to see a fuller richer experience but was hampered by the major server issues.
Heck there was a time where I couldn't load a character in Ironforge because of the amount of people constantly there due to it being the only Alliance side Auction House available for all of Vanilla and Burning Crusade, and part of WotLK (memory may be fuzzy due to so many long raids).
The lesson I learned from years of PC gaming is that there's a possibility that a game may come out in crappy condition but giving it some patch time can make a crap experience turn into gold. Likewise I'm also thankful that games can be released with the option of patching said games because I remember some games being horribly broken and never getting a fix for them because there existed no delivery system for any fixes, unless you wanted to figure out how to code fixes for said game yourself.
And good luck doing that back in the day where you had to have mad code skills to even bother with fixing said games, because there were no tutorials and no interwebs to get them from. Maybe if you were lucky and had some contacts and a modem (and a free line handy that no one was going to pick up a receiver on anytime without warning) you could get on a BBS, trade some knowledge with some smarter folks than you or if you were a lottery lucky you might find a person who knew how to fix a specific game issue and they could explain it in terms you could understand.
People these days are much better off than some of us were back in the day. Granted it made the industry a bit more self-aware of putting out products that worked but you still ran into hardware issues because not every PC was going to be built with the same specs and there was no way to test software on every conceivable configuration available. Also people really had to know if they had the right recommended or required parts to play.
I'm not giving companies free passes, but the experience of 25+ years of PC gaming makes me a little more lenient on development.
Heck there was a time where I couldn't load a character in Ironforge because of the amount of people constantly there due to it being the only Alliance side Auction House available for all of Vanilla and Burning Crusade, and part of WotLK (memory may be fuzzy due to so many long raids).
The lesson I learned from years of PC gaming is that there's a possibility that a game may come out in crappy condition but giving it some patch time can make a crap experience turn into gold. Likewise I'm also thankful that games can be released with the option of patching said games because I remember some games being horribly broken and never getting a fix for them because there existed no delivery system for any fixes, unless you wanted to figure out how to code fixes for said game yourself.
And good luck doing that back in the day where you had to have mad code skills to even bother with fixing said games, because there were no tutorials and no interwebs to get them from. Maybe if you were lucky and had some contacts and a modem (and a free line handy that no one was going to pick up a receiver on anytime without warning) you could get on a BBS, trade some knowledge with some smarter folks than you or if you were a lottery lucky you might find a person who knew how to fix a specific game issue and they could explain it in terms you could understand.
People these days are much better off than some of us were back in the day. Granted it made the industry a bit more self-aware of putting out products that worked but you still ran into hardware issues because not every PC was going to be built with the same specs and there was no way to test software on every conceivable configuration available. Also people really had to know if they had the right recommended or required parts to play.
I'm not giving companies free passes, but the experience of 25+ years of PC gaming makes me a little more lenient on development.
The first Star Trek Armada from Activision. The game was buggy and glitchy even after applying the official patch. I got in contact with their tech support who suggested I run the game in safe mode, the game didn't crash constantly but it looked so horrible to the point of hurting my eyes when trying to discern the details. Activision considered this to be the problem solved.
Oh Warcraft....I remember that queue. Estimated time...unknown. Getting a queue time of hours was such an improvement...until it reset to something larger.
Still, I think I got angrier with Battlefield 4 and its numerous crashes than with WoW. I think that is a big reason why I no longer purchase games day one, and instead wait a few months down the line ( PC wise, anyway ).
Total War has had some bad launches as well, not to the extent of Rome 2 though. And Ultima....I remember you so. Well, moreso UO.
Oh, and Diablo....no matter how long I had waited for it ( like most who played D2 ) the moment I heard about always online, I knew to not get it right away. As such, I was able to view my friends' misery philosophically, tinged with some condescension ( I told you so was said a number of times).
Still, I think I got angrier with Battlefield 4 and its numerous crashes than with WoW. I think that is a big reason why I no longer purchase games day one, and instead wait a few months down the line ( PC wise, anyway ).
Total War has had some bad launches as well, not to the extent of Rome 2 though. And Ultima....I remember you so. Well, moreso UO.
Oh, and Diablo....no matter how long I had waited for it ( like most who played D2 ) the moment I heard about always online, I knew to not get it right away. As such, I was able to view my friends' misery philosophically, tinged with some condescension ( I told you so was said a number of times).
Rage and Brink were also horrible launches, both stemming from ID Tech software used to port the game over.
Both had horrendous issues with textures loading in repeatedly, even turning the camera in the game would cause the textures to re-render.
Also both has horrible optimization to the point where the FPS tanked even for systems near the recommended specs. I've tried booting both those games up, even with 2 980s they still run like garbage.
Both had horrendous issues with textures loading in repeatedly, even turning the camera in the game would cause the textures to re-render.
Also both has horrible optimization to the point where the FPS tanked even for systems near the recommended specs. I've tried booting both those games up, even with 2 980s they still run like garbage.