What game do you think has had the worst launch

All this bitching and everyone forgets Half Life 2.

HL2's bullshit is still the worst launch in gaming history.

why are you blaming the publisher for SimCity having a bad launch?

The Katawa Shoujo lunch was particularly embarrassing, especially given how clumsy Yuuko was.

Metal Gear Solid 2.

Simultaneous winner for best/worst launch ever.

Of the two you provided, I'd say Sim City. From what I've heard despite the also terrible server problems Diablo 3 is a good game, whereas Sim City doesn't seem to be so.

@sathingtonwaltz: Do you remember how long Diablo 3 took to come right I cant remember

Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines. Fantastic game, rushed out before it was fully complete on the same day as Half-Life 2.

I had no problems with the Diablo 3 launch, I started playing day 1 and never had problems.

I'm sure the actual worst launch was a SOE game, probably Star Wars Galaxies, I played the first month but not the first week, people complained about that week for years, they kept complaining until there was nobody left to listen.

Half-Life 3 launch is terrible.

Anarchy Online had a terrible launch.

I'd have to say Diablo 3. My friends and I preordered it planning to spend the launch day playing cooperatively but none of us could log in.

World of Warcraft. Couldn't play that shit for a week!

There is a reason this page exists.

Half Life 2?

It kind of raises an interesting question. Is "literally unplayable for a few days" worse than "pretty iffy for months". Remember those years when Tuesday meant WoW wasn't playable?

EA runs the servers, it required the always online back-end in all likelihood, and even if Maxis went along they did not decided the launch day, the servers, or the infrastructure to sell or maintain the game. This isn't a questions of "Who did what?" because the things that are going wrong ARE part of EA's responsibility.

The WarZ.

D3 only because they had years to work on the game & still was messed up (and feeling like only 1/3 of a full game) at launch.

World of Warcraft had a HORRENDOUS launch.

Out of the two options on the poll (ignoring other) I'd say Sim City. I was playing Diablo 3 the day after release, and if I understand correctly people are still having trouble with Sim City.

D3 was horrible for obvious reasons. Another from last year that was practically buried by a bad launch was Twisted Metal. Any hype for that game died immediately due to the completely broken MP.

Sim City's is worse than D3's. I only had to wait a couple of hours to get into D3. It was just minor annoyance at the end of the day. Sim City doesn't seem to be getting any better, it only seems to get worse and worse but now that i'm thinking about it, WoW's launch was pretty horrible so maybe that would be worse but Sim City isn't done yet and we don't know how bad it will be and if there will be issues months from now or not.

Shut up shut up shut up! Yuuko is an angel! She just needs encouragement!

She needs to get back together with Kenji. You know we'd all play that game.

You mean a game where you defenestrate Kenji, thus claiming Yuuko's love? I'd be into that.

Stalker was pretty bad.

Although i guess there wasn't nearly as much anticipation and most people ended up getting into it later once it had been patched up. Like 6 months after launch. It was broken for a long time.

Diablo and SimCity are on a greater magnitude than pretty much any i can remember before, and far worse for the fact in most cases the problem is you can't play AT ALL as opposed to it being buggy and broken. Also in both cases they are completely brought upon themselves by the publisher/developers after months of warnings and public doubt.

Castle Crashers made "online co-op with friends!" one of their main selling points. It took them over a year to get that working.

My vote is for that.

wasn't the launch of FF14 so completely fucked that they're relaunching it?

Half Life 2 was literally unplayable for a period that I remember as being at least a week. I've spent a few hours playing SimCity already. It doesn't excuse it, but contextualizes it for me. The HL2 problems were, as I understood at the time, universal.

Yeah it was. Worst was Valve couldn't give review copies at the time with how different primitive Steam was then, and most reviews were pretty late to reviewing it.

HL2 was the worst shit to happen to PC gaming at the time, and everyone said digital services wouldn't work. Oh the irony. Valve makes worst launch on PC gaming to fuel the fire of how shitty online only games are...but then they fix their shit.

EA is on the same boat. Give them a chance. Blizzard fixed D3, Valve fixed Steam issues.

Never Forget, Never Forgive. I wanted to murder Steam I hated it so friggin much.

Simcity is about to be released in Europe in less than 2 hours. I'd expect things to get even worse.

It was terrible. You could actually play it on launch day however, the problem with FFXIV was that the content you could play was flat out bad. Just a broken unfinished feeling, clumsy mess, you could connect just fine though.

My vote for worst launch is Age of Conan. No one could connect for the first 8 hours or so and some (myself included) waited days before they could get in. Now that was a mess.

I would say Diablo 3 just because I think more people wanted to play it. I have no interest in any type of simulation game.

This. People seem to forget that Steam was as bad, maybe even worse, then Origin is right now.

It took a few years for Valve to figure out the formula. Launching a worldwide digital distribution service is not something that can be done easily.

@connerthekewlkid: It's true though.

Its nowhere near the other things mentioned here

World of Warcraft.

Or maybe Anarchy Online.

Anarchy Online and WoW. People forget how horrible the WoW servers were at launch.

The last SOCOM launch was pretty bad iirc, since the sony servers were completely down for a month. Not really the fault of the game, but it definitely hurt the developer and the fans.

The game is new and the launch is bad, so therefore, it's the worst thing ever.

Literally. In two years, this shit is going to happen again and people are going to call that the worst shit ever.

They will completely forget how WoW, War Z, Anarchy Online, Diablo 3, all had shitty launches.

APB

The Challenger?!? (i HATE myself D: )

SimCity was running ok for me Monday and Tuesday but i remember when my friend bought Half Life 2 at launch ...he was FURIOUS but im am only.........dissatisfied

edit*

"What game do you think has had the worst launch" WELL didnt see that "game" part and now im just some asshole

Diablo 3 was pretty bad but they didn't go so far as to deactivate functions like EA did with Sim City.

Diablo 3 was only bad for a day, and iffy for maybe 2(for me any my brothers anyway and we all live within 100 miles of each other). They didn't make it so you couldn't visit vendors or play multiplayer though. The entire game stayed intact and they worked as quickly as they could to allocate more resources to diablo 3's server farm. I'm sure they're doing the same thing for SimCity, but they really don't seem to be saying much and they disabled features, which for me is a huge no-go.

Remember when the internet wasn't a thing and people released broken games that never gets fixed? Yeah.