MMO Hype Train: When hype for MMOs bit me in the butt

Allowing yourself to get excited about an upcoming event, release, or acquisition comes with a risk. Hype is fun, in other words, but it isn’t always safe. You open yourself to disappointment, to mismanaged expectations, and to a letdown that could be crushing.

Still, I maintain that getting hyped up for game releases is worth that risk. It beats being a grumpy cynic who never allows for the possibility of success, and it can be kept from going overboard by remembering the times when hype got a little out of control. Has that happened to me? Oh my stars and garters, yes. Yet I learned a thing or two from these experiences and still retained a general upbeat attitude about the oft-volatile games industry.

Probably at one time or another, I got excited for almost every notable MMO that was in the development process, especially once the industry exploded in the mid-2000s. Every title seemed like it had a clever hook and limitless possibilities, and the only problem that I saw was deciding how to choose between them.

Some of these periods of hype paid off handsomely. I want to stress that! I spent two years heavily anticipating World of Warcraft before it launched, and that didn’t let me down in the least. Lord of the Rings Online also became a huge MMO staple for me, and I can trace my interest in that game back to its pre-launch marketing blitz.

But other times, this hype bit me in the butt. One of the first times that comes to memory was about 2006 when Hellgate London was all the buzz. Diablo in a post-apocalyptic environment with guns and magic and stuff! I remember devouring article after article about it, tormented by the decision to buy a lifetime subscription or not (I did not, thank goodness).

However, the end product, while not bad, wasn’t anywhere near as addictive as Diablo, and the entire project sank pretty fast when it didn’t end up being any more than a flash-in-the-pan with the gaming community. I moved on pretty quick from that and haven’t invested any time in one of the many “resurrections” that Hellgate saw.

Sometimes those higher levels of hype are generated by the involvement of an experienced team with a known launched product. I was deep into City of Heroes for a few years there (and remain quite fond of it to this day). So why wouldn’t I — and plenty of others — get super-pumped about Cryptic doing a follow-up with Champions Online? It seemed like it was City of Heroes: The Next Generation with more comic booky graphics, more costume pieces, more powerset options, and an actual IP from which to draw inspiration.

I actually documented a fair bit of my rising enthusiasm for Champions, as the pre-launch period happened about the time I started a games blog. Some of my Champions articles were among the most-read on my site, and I couldn’t stop daydreaming the characters I would create.

The launch and resulting thud of me falling back to earth taught me something about wishing for a currently existing game to be remade with better graphics and some more features. That’s never a guaranteed home run, friends. You can’t always replicate success, even with the same team in the same genre with nearly the same type of game. Just ask, say, Shroud of the Avatar.

Above these examples and many others stands the biggest letdown in my MMO gaming career, which was Warhammer Online. Oh, Warhammer! This sucker was announced right as I was going through a period of burnout with WoW and was hungry for the next big thing — and I wasn’t alone in that.

Everything about WAR seemed prime to explode into greatness. It was a team that wrote the book on fantasy RvR MMOs doing another one based on a very popular franchise that clearly “inspired” the Warcraft universe. It had high-personality devs talking up the title on a regular basis. It had some exciting and even innovative new systems that looked to take MMOs to the next level.

I spent the better part of a year not just being personally hyped for WAR but spreading that excitement with my gaming blog. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words in anticipation of this title, convincing myself along the way that I, a PvE carebear, would somehow be a prime candidate for conversion into the PvP lifestyle.

Then WAR launched and… it wasn’t bad. It was quite decent, even. I found it to be a solid MMO that provided a full year of gameplay. But it struggled hard to maintain a sizable population, and it definitely wasn’t the revolution I was hoping it would be. As the months went by, I learned another lesson: Don’t let hype blind you to potential dealbreakers — like a PvP emphasis that I wasn’t ever bound to enjoy.

I’ve always said that I don’t regret my time being excited and writing about Warhammer because it was a terrific ride while it lasted and helped to springboard me into professional MMORPG writing. That alone was worth it. But are there days that I’m wistful that WAR didn’t become the MMO I envisioned it to be? Definitely.

I could come up with other examples, but I think you get the picture by now. Getting hyped means getting stung, usually more often than being pleasantly rewarded. Yet it’s those times that a game meets — or exceeds! — my expectations that takes that sting away.

I’ve learned to be a little more guarded and wiser about how much hype I allow myself to feel, but I’m never going to shut off that valve and refuse to look forward to any game ever again. If I did that, why, I’d probably miss out on something wonderful coming down the road right now.