10 Blatantly Unfinished Video Games (That Were Released Anyway)

10. Age Of Conan

In 2008, Age of Conan was released by Funcom as a successor to the World of Warcraft franchise. Many such MMO's had trodden this path in the past and failed at the attempt, but much was made of AoC, so much so that I decided to invest my own time, effort and hard cash into the game also...a mistake. The first 2 game codes I was given both proved invalid, and checking online, I saw this was a common trend throughout Europe (the USA release was smoother, if not perfect). A quote I remember that stuck with them from the forums of AoC was "games often only get 1 chance at a first impression, Funcom have blown theirs." The game has a raft of missing "promised" features of which to date, some of them still haven't been added, though numerous expansions have been released (at a price) to fix this. The state of the game was such that with every fix patch Funcom released, they ended up causing more problems, so it became an endless cycle, which they took too long to come out of. Possibly the devs weren't expecting people to reach max level so quickly, but many of the areas later in the game felt unpolished and bland, with nothing more than "kill x of this monster"-style quests to help the gamer along their way. People want a story, a sense that they are a part of a grander scheme, however with AoC, the content simply wasn't there to facilitate that goal. One such feature was the promise of 100 vs. 100 PVP (player vs. player) battles, however upon release the maximum supported was 48 vs. 48, which simply didn't cut the mustard. In the modern age of MMO's, developers really need to offer gamers a reason to a) buy their game, and more importantly b) stick around. By misinforming gamers, Funcom failed in the latter, which is the bread and butter of any online game. Sure, the initial cash injection is great, but it's the monthly subscriptions that draw the real income and allow the game's creators to flesh out and build upon their already polished game. Funcom simply tried to walk before they could crawl and lost their paying public, many before the initial free month of gaming was up.