Victor Wachter: A Decade in Review
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The first serious competitor to the first generation of MMOs was Anarchy Online, released in 2001. It's one of the most notable games in the field, for several reasons. Most widely known is its launch, which has become an exemplar for bad launches to this day. The game suffered from just about every type of issue an MMO can: gameplay bugs, server instability and billing issues all plagued the first days of its live operation. But to leave its significance at that would be unfair because it also pioneered alternative subscription models, including ad-supported free play, in addition to finally giving us a sci-fi MMO setting to free us from the fantasy bonds. Besides, games like Asheron's Call 2 and Dark and Light managed to repeat many of the same mistakes, taking a little of the "worst launch ever" burden from AO.
Other releases were substantially smoother, but had varying levels of success. While Dark Age of Camelot, released in 2001 had enjoyed early and sustained success, EVE Online, released in 2003, struggled for several years after its launch, only to emerge as one of the most successful currently live MMOs. Star Wars Galaxies was the first licensed MMO and should have been a license to print money, but fell well short of projected subscriptions (but I've already written about that, so I won't recycle words).
Of course, some games from the early part of the decade are no longer with us. Shadowbane, promising the dynamic world and meaningful PvP that early MMO players claimed to crave so much closed this year, having never gained tremendous traction. Others never got to see the light of day, including Mythic's Imperator, two versions of an Ultima Online sequel and SOE's MMORTS Sovereign.
