The Great Digital Hype

The Escapist is running a piece looking at how over-hype can kill a game just as fast as a buggy build or bad gameplay. With certain titles, especially Massive games, the expectations of a community can become so out of step with reality that whatever is released will not live up to the image. Article author Dana Massey looks at this issue, with personal experience, through the failure of the MMOG Wish. From the article: "On January 1, 2005, we opened the doors to the 80,000-plus players who had signed up to participate in our open beta. It was during this time that the Half-Life 2 demo had released, and I remember being quite pleased when our beta dropped it down to second on the most active list over at FilePlanet. It looked like things were going well. Famous last words ..."