Reminds me of what happened to Hellgate: London. Sure, it had a few other problems (annoying subscription system and poorly-balanced classes are all that spring to mind), but those were being fixed in patches (not the subscription thing though). What really killed it was EA pushing it out the door to meet a Halloween release date. The result was that events that were supposed to be subscriber-only were available to everyone and that was just the tip of the iceberg as far as bugs went.
By the time I got it; the game was running pretty smoothly. Sure, there were still some class balance problems (the Blademaster was worthless, for example) but it was still an enjoyable game and some of the things they did to prevent loot-hogs (by having a player only able to get at his share of the loot and not even be able to see what his friends found) were simple and effective*. But because of it's buggy launch, it got a reputation as being a buggy game and eventually the developers went bankrupt and the servers were shut down.
An impatient publisher and 'bam'; a bankrupt development company.
By the time I got it; the game was running pretty smoothly. Sure, there were still some class balance problems (the Blademaster was worthless, for example) but it was still an enjoyable game and some of the things they did to prevent loot-hogs (by having a player only able to get at his share of the loot and not even be able to see what his friends found) were simple and effective*. But because of it's buggy launch, it got a reputation as being a buggy game and eventually the developers went bankrupt and the servers were shut down.
An impatient publisher and 'bam'; a bankrupt development company.
