Top 5 worst and bodged PC Game Launches

Installing a new PC game can be something like a blind date. Yeah,sure, it may have sounded great when your friend was saying you'd beperfect for each other, but if things start off on a bad foot -- like,say, she vomits in your car -- you may just not want to bother with therest of the night. Plenty of atrocious PC game launches litter thepast, but what we have here are our five "favorites" -- the ones thatstill make us shake our heads and cluck our tongues and make other suchdisapproving gestures with our bodies as we recount their particularhorrors. And while it would be easy enough to fill this entire list atleast two times over with MMOs alone, we decided not to do that, asit's just too much fish-in-the-barrel shooting even for us. So let'slaugh, cry, and get annoyed all over again at five of the all-timeworst PC game launches. We promise, reading this list will notautomatically reformat your hard drive!
5. Hellgate: London

WhenHellgate opened on Halloween, 2007, s*** hit the fan. Never mind theongoing demonic invasion and dimensional gash in no-longer-jolly-oldEngland; players paid up to fight it off. But persistent crash bugswere a bad start. And while lost progress in an action-RPG is alwayspainful, double and triple billings chafe in any context. Manysubscribers to Hellgate: London's optional membership program, whoexchanged $9.99 a month or a flat lifetime fee of $149 for priorityserver access, easier in-game transportation, and other perks, reportedmassive problems and mistaken charges. According to popular gaming siteShacknews,one user claimed that he was "charged two times on November 3, one timeon November 4, and one time on November 5" and summarized the situationas "the worst online gaming experience I have ever had." On developer Flagship Studios' support forum, others claimed to have proof of payment with no subscription to show for it. Asian gamers encountered another crisis altogether. In November 2007, Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH),which operates Hellgate's Southeast Asia server, apologeticallyannounced that a forthcoming patch would entirely erase all progressplayers had made over the previous two weeks. The proposed compensation-- a 30-day free subscription -- couldn't cut it with an increasinglyirate audience. According to Singapore-based paper The Straits Times,"the resulting uproar...sent IAH back to the drawing board" in searchof a less drastic solution. In the end, and with Flagship'sintervention, IAH avoided the reset switch. By then, however, it wasHellgate's reputation that needed a reboot -- and perhaps someone,somewhere learned that any PR points gained by launching ademonic-themed game on Halloween aren't always worth the hassle. 
4. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Bookscould be written about everything that went wrong with Vanguard, andthat's before you do any real digging into the early development mess,where the money bled off to, what EverQuest co-creator and Sigil CEO Brad McQuaid was doing through all of it, and what happened in the parking lot afterward.Shoved out the door way too early for what were admitted to befinancial reasons, the game was just plain half-baked, plagued byenough bugs, missing content, and instability to compete with the verybest of the worst. From little things like a "display hoods/helmets"option that didn't do anything because none of the hoods or helmets inthe game even had any graphics to frequently previewed back-of-the-boxfeatures like flying mounts that didn't make it into the game untillong, long after release.Vanguard staggered away from its absolute train wreck of alaunch and slowly, steadily recovered. These days, it's pretty wellhealed up and finally living up to promises that were made and brokenlong before. But it's still hard to forget that, until lately, playerswere paying for the privilege of participating in a really, really longbeta. 
3. World War II Online

WhereGermany waged lightning war that engulfed Europe in 1939, MMOFPS WorldWar II Online sputtered into history with all the majesty of JedClampett on the highway to Beverly Hills, shooing off many potentialplayers with its opening salvo in 2001. Would-be warriors were forcedto download a 70MB patch before fighting -- massive in the age of 56Kmodems -- followed by subsequent hotfixes for slide-show framerates,audio oddities, a faulty interface, flat-out missing features, Hitler'smonorchism, and much more. In fact, for months, there was no war worthmentioning. Fed up players sought refunds, and as they continued tocomplain online, sales tanked. Codeveloper Playnetwaived subscription fees for a few months before cutting costs andfiling for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Despite these setbacks, WWII Onlinesoldiered on with an improved infrastructure, yet more patches, andmultiple rereleases. 
2. Steam/Half-Life 2

Yes, yes, we all love Steam now. It's the model of digital distribution and community management in PC gaming right now, utterly shaming Microsoft's embarrassingly inept Games for Windows Live initiative. But back in the day, we were even harsher on Valvethan we now are on Microsoft -- because the official launch of Steam onNovember 16, 2004, which coincided with the launch of Half-Life 2, wasan utter nightmare. Or at least it seemed that way at the time. To befair, some of what we complained about at the time was simply becausewe had never seen it before. Like, for example, a single-player gamethat required you to be online to play it. What seemed unreasonable anddemanding back in the day is now more par for the course. That said,the initial launch was a disaster, with Valve's servers backedup and crashing due to bottlenecks and general instability, making itliterally impossible for many players -- whether they'd bought a boxedcopy or a direct download -- to validate and play Half-Life 2. Yes,gamers finally had the most anticipated PC game in years in their hotlittle hands, but they couldn't play it because the online validationwas busted. As an advertisement for Valve's new distribution system,you couldn't have asked for anything worse. Since then, of course,Valve has gone out of their way to fix and improve Steam, and now wecan't imagine living without it. On November 16, 2004, though, it feltlike one of the biggest WTF moments in PC gaming history. 
1. Ultima IX: Ascension

Allhail the king of gaffed game launches: Though Ultima IX hit storeshelves in 1999 (following a troubled development cycle that saw atleast four different versions of the game and its engine), the box mayas well have been empty. Eager RPG fans booted the game up on theirfancy Voodoo3-equipped Pentium II rigs, only to run headlong intomyriad 3D engine bugs and crash after game-halting crash. Eventually(after several half-assed attempts on publisher EA'spart to fix U9's flubs), an unofficial patch was released anonymouslyby one of the game's developers, which at least made U9 playable. Givenhow much dirty laundry's come out in the years following U9's release(the usual corporate drama, repeated design reboots, and "creativedifferences"), we can't say we're surprised at how terrible it turnedout -- and despite several sequel attempts, Ultima's never regained theground it lost thanks to this dud. Such an unfitting end for such amagnificent series.