What Brad said was nothing more than a hollow apology. It was spin. Monthly subscriptions are coming due again and I think Brad is running scared. People saying that he's courageous, upfront and honest should think about one thing. Vanguard was released too soon and in an unfinished, unpolished state. Brad has admitted that and cited it was due to financial reasons. Now he apologizes but he doesn't mind taking your money or letting you pay $50 or more for the game. It's more of the same: spin. Some of his comments about tech and upgrading pc's to play the game are why people are driven to consoles. To me it takes a lot of gall and nerve to say "Yeah we screwed up. We're sorry. Now give us your money." I like the game but why should I keep paying $15 sub to somebody who admits to putting out an unfinished product at full price? All the double xp weekends in the world don't make up for that and neither do promises of things to come. Brad and Sigil hasn't delivered what they promised so far. Why should they be trusted to do so in the future?
Some of us do not have to pay fees to play games so it is not really a big deal. If you do not like the game, you do not have to play.
Also, there are a lot of people who are very upset that they played the game the way it is and you do not have to rub it in, your post would not make them very happy, or tell them something that they didn't already know. Chances are actually, you did not play this game so you have no say in how it performs.
so he is basicaly saying all performance issues are player pc related and that everyone that has issues with performance just needs to buy a new pc. well well well....
I think what he was saying was they made the graphics too high end, not that we are too poor to buy a decent system. Very candid interview and I have more respect for him now than ever.
Aye, I agree
However
I bought one of the best systems out in the market AFTER one month of release. Vanguard was still slow and buggy on my system...and my system is a 3000 dollar system; I would be very safe to say my computer is probably more advanced than the majority of the systems Sigil has.
With that said, I do respect (and always had) respect Brad's candidness. SOE must hate him for that.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Seems to me Brad is hoping and wants people to buy computers good enough to handle this game since he boldly states he's hoping they become cheaper. But this shouldn't be the case and he's right, they did goof in making it such a huge world, this wasn't necessary to have a good game.
if anything he also says they're behind in population but again that's due in part to the game being so buggy and people needing more then avg comps to run it.
Big isn't always better, I think Brad now knows that.
I thought the post sounded very genuine and I can definitely sympathize with Brad. I really like the way he is outgoing about what the development and not turning a blind eye to the condition of this game, which is more than I can say for many development teams (*cough* swg). I have cancelled my vanguard account personally, but I didnt consider my $50 to be a waste at all as I felt like the game was pretty good (although I didnt experience any bugs except that one where monsters walk backwards sometimes, so I know a lot of you are upset about that), especially the long draw distance which was beautiful (but I know a lot of people without good compies cant enjoy that), and the diplomacy system (which almost kept me playing... To be honest I mostly stopped because I was scared I would become an addict), although I am more into non level/item based PvP so I cant really see myself sticking with vanguard.
It makes me sad to see you guys attack his post... His care for the game and players seems authentic... I'm not really sure what you guys expect him to post or what business decisions you expect sigil to make. Have you never had responsibility to complete something that you wanted to complete but were unable to? Unfinished projects? Underfunded ideas? I think you guys might be underestimating how difficult it is to produce elaborate and unique projects while staying within deadlines and fund limitations. It really isnt easy and we see that again and again with the majority of mmorpg releases; especially those that try to introduce something new to the genre.
Some replies here to Brad's post just sicken me, e.g. somebody compared him of being proud parent of a retarded son or name callings. The degree of immaturity on these boards is actually frightening, especially if you view the profiles and see the ages (if they are true).
Brad's post reveals honest self-critisism to a degree and sensible information, e.g. financial.
The path to success is recognise your mistakes and learn from them. Sigil is on their good way.
He says hardware isn't where he thought it would be... erm my ePenis should be more then capable of running Vanguard but at times it still runs like a sack of shizzle. What he should be saying is they opted for a poor choice when it comes to the engine, I've seen videos of Alan Wake which is far more complex then Vanguard running on a setup identical to mine with an OC'ed CPU and it runs extremely well.
I'd hate to think what sort of hardware this game actually needs to "run well" according Brad, may be quad crossfire and octal core setup? I don't think so some how. I think he should have supported SLI/Crossfire setups from the off and supported a multi-threaded environment so people with dual core setups or quad core setups would see a performance boost, however we don't see him state anything about this just complain about hardware in general.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
I think Brad McQuaid is simply trying to compensate for a guilty conscience. Not because Vanguard isn't what was expected, but basically that Vanguard isn't what was advertised as being the goal. I don't respect that per se and I don't really see the reason why it has to be said apart from Brad wanting others to feel sorry for him.
It is in my view a weak position to place yourself in, self pity is never constructive.
Never mind whether the individual elements are true or not, it is at its core, merely whining.
I enjoy Vanguard, I play it with a score of friends and it's fun. There are things that are more fun than others but right now no other MMO out there is as much fun while still offering as diverse a field of activities as Vanguard. But Brad needs to shut up, get that "amazing team" into gear and keep the focus. It is my guess that if they don't get the ball rolling fast (within 3 months) they are going to lose whatever chance they may have had in making this a broad commercial success. Right now it is a success for the players who want a lot of choices in what to do, wants to have all their actions influence various parts of the world individually and has sufficient friends online to secure a stable party base. And of course they have to have a powerful computer as well but I see that as a minor point personally.
The fact that he compares Vanguard to DDO and Burning Crusade is in my view retarded beyond words. The moment that trend starts taking root is the moment you know that Sigil gave up on creating something that was in some ways "more" (not necessarily better, that depends on the individual's preferences) and "larger". If they remain even partly faithful to the current formula, the core audience of Burning Crusade is not the core audience of Vanguard.
And he should stop bashing DDO, that just shows poor sportsmanship, DDO attempted something else entirely and they succeeded at it. Perhaps he is just envious that they succeeded in seeing an idea through and he failed.
Maybe new leadership with a set of balls would be nice before Brad makes a mess of everything?
lol it seems some people really need to grow-up, haha self pity isn't the thing he is doing, he is saying sorry to his community, haha i think when people like many of the above posters live in such a negative spiral its hard to really read what people like Brad actualy is saying, then to see how many people fall over the thing he said about DDO it really shows how immature some minds work, he was not comparing both games in how the games are, he was comparing launch !! Sad some kids see this as a bash, i bet they have not really made it in the real world yet and still living in that small narrowminded world of theirs.
Hahhahahhahahahah. FAR, far too funny. This guy makes snake oil salesmen and tobacco execs look honest. He's sooooo sorry. He "REALLY" wants to apologize. LOL. Whats even funnier than him though, is the people who still buy his lame crap. And by that, i mean, his "heart felt" sorrow for the state of his product crap, AND the crap product itself.
Yet another lesson for those of you who choose to worship this "wonder" of "game designing" I can't wait to see how many of you buy his next product.Im betting very few of you learn the lesson this time either.
Like i said,its just too damn funny.
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
Excuses and apologies. How about not charging for a product that is not finished.
now let's take a moment and think about what you just said....................
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
Excuses and apologies. How about not charging for a product that is not finished.
now let's take a moment and think about what you just said....................
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
Some replies here to Brad's post just sicken me, e.g. somebody compared him of being proud parent of a retarded son or name callings. The degree of immaturity on these boards is actually frightening, especially if you view the profiles and see the ages (if they are true). Brad's post reveals honest self-critisism to a degree and sensible information, e.g. financial. The path to success is recognise your mistakes and learn from them. Sigil is on their good way.
Brads posts just kick him down the ladder each time he does this. Tell us something we don't know and stop wasting everybodies time with these self pity moments. It is getting to a very critical point now where he is going to shot himself in the head if his subs dip under 100k. You can read it in these posts, he is losing it , big time.
Each time he posts he gets closer and closer to just telling us what he thinks. Right now it is just candy coated to not piss anyone off.
Someone needs to get him off the internet cause he is damaging the game more and more ....
Excuses and apologies. How about not charging for a product that is not finished.
now let's take a moment and think about what you just said....................
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
I can't even comprehend how you drew that conclusion. Did you even read what you typed?
Excuses and apologies. How about not charging for a product that is not finished.
now let's take a moment and think about what you just said....................
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
I can't even comprehend how you drew that conclusion. Did you even read what you typed?
Did you? Charging for the product from how I read it means sub fee, if he meant just the game being free of cost so pure DVD box then I apologize
so he is basicaly saying all performance issues are player pc related and that everyone that has issues with performance just needs to buy a new pc. well well well....
I think what he was saying was they made the graphics too high end, not that we are too poor to buy a decent system. Very candid interview and I have more respect for him now than ever.
Too high end? WTF???
This is the huge beef many people have with VG; even if you have a "high end system", the end results don't justify the hardware. Re-read Brad's posts again. The engine they used was the Unreal 2 engine - its been around for a while now!
The reason it runs like ass is because they are trying to do more with it than it was intended to do. They took a First Person Shooter engine and tried to cram a huge bloated MMORPG into it, and it simply wasn't designed to do that. This should concern people because it indicates there is a limit with how much refining and "tweaking" they can do.
In addition, some of the art and and animations flat out suck; NO graphics engine in the world can make crappy art decisions look good.
Excuses and apologies. How about not charging for a product that is not finished.
now let's take a moment and think about what you just said....................
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
I can't even comprehend how you drew that conclusion. Did you even read what you typed?
did you?
Apparently more than you did. Fleecing people for an unfinished product is bullshit no matter what genre or product category you are talking about. If you purchased a music CD and 4 tracks were missing, and the artist said "hey I'm sorry... I'm still in the studio recording those songs.. I need your money to pay for studio costs", you would probably flip your lid and there would be a huge uproar. For some reason, the gaming industry isn't taken seriously in that way and frankly it needs to be. Just because its a "game" doesn't mean that the consumer is any less deserving.
Brad is supposed to be a veteran of the MMORPG field. He was supposed to have all this experience to draw from and to know better. For him to pull this kind of stunt is a huge slap to his fans.
In 20/20 hindsight we probably should have gone a bit lower tech and made a smaller world.
Which would have been the smart thing to do. Put out an engine that actually works on most current setups, then revamp and update it later, maybe in an expansion pack, or in some other way that people know it's coming and that they need to upgrade to a much higher end machine than they can currently afford.
I'm going to have to mildly disagree with you here. If they went lower tech, they'd have to stay lower tech for a long time, if not forever. Doing a massive engine change/upgrade would piss off thousands of subscribers who would then complain "Now VG is making us upgrade and costing me $$$!!"
No, I think they were better off doing it this way in the long run. Decide on the tech you want and go with that. It's hard in the short run, when people don't quite have the hardware yet, but in the long run, you'll have a game that a year or two from now is still state of the art, and now easily playable, rather than one that is already 3-4 years out of date.
C
Uh, I hate to dispell this little fantasy, but, what you have in performance is what you have forever. The V:SoH is based on an old Unreal graphics engine. It is never going to get much better as the engine is not DX10 compatible. Heck, it is barely DX9 compatible. The same sort of philosophy was in play when EQ2 was developed and released with graphics that were for 'next-gen' computers. Well, it is 2 1/2 years later and EQ2 still cannot, and never will, run in a playable state with graphics options turned to higher quality levels. I am afraid the same is true of V:SoH. Without a Graphics Engine Upgrade, what you see is all you are ever going to get. Both in terms of quality and performance.I run EQ2 on the highest quality settings all the time i've never had a problem with it.
It makes me sad to see you guys attack his post... His care for the game and players seems authentic... I'm not really sure what you guys expect him to post or what business decisions you expect sigil to make. Have you never had responsibility to complete something that you wanted to complete but were unable to? Unfinished projects? Underfunded ideas? I think you guys might be underestimating how difficult it is to produce elaborate and unique projects while staying within deadlines and fund limitations.
What most people expected were professional decisions, especially by a guy who had been at the helm during EverQuest, and who has already developed an MMO before Vanguard.
Fund limitations? Pfft. The guy had over $30 million to play with, giving Sigil a budget second only to what Blizzard spent on WoW.
Deadlines? The game was in development for five years. That's plenty of time, especially for someone who has already gone through the development process for an MMO, like Brad McQuaid.
For the sake of comparison, let's look at Cryptic Studios, who have published both CoH and CoV, and who are now working on the Marvel MMO. They were founded in 2000, started working on CoH then, got picked up by NCSoft in 2002, and released the game in 2004. And this was a bunch of n00bs who liked superheroes, wanted to make an MMO, and lucked out on their funding when one guy cashed in during the dot com boom.
They had no experience with MMO's, no idea what the hell they were doing, and even had to go back at a very late stage of development (in a very early beta phase, if I remember correctly) and throw out the entire open character and power system they had been working on for many years in order to come up with the archetypes and power sets they have now. Despite that potentially fatal snafu, they *still* managed to release the game in just about four years. And this was with somewhere around 30 people total working on the game, and without any experience in developing an MMO.
I don't care what anyone says-- an experienced pair of devs like Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, backed by 100 people all working on the game, with unlimited time and $30+ million to play with, and support from Microsoft should have been able to come up with a lot more than the current state that Vanguard is in. And the game should have at least been ready for beta after four years, but apparently not. Hence, the jump to SOE. And as far as I can tell, even SOE looked at what they were getting after four years of development and decided that it had to come out within a year, no matter what state it was in, because it had been long enough. They even sent in some of their own people to try and spruce it up before release.
I just don't buy the excuses in that post by Brad, considering he's gone through this process before. I think they just mismanaged their time and money, got completely unfocused and too bogged down in some parts of the game more than others, and ultimately came up short.
It's a damned shame, too. The shell is there in Vanguard for a great game. If they'd only done things right from the start, they'd probably be in much better shape than they're in now. But now, they're in a position where they have to play catch-up to bring VG up to snuff, and up to what it should have been by now, and they have to do it before all these other newer games launch, or they risk being ignored or passed over for those other games.
I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would give this guy one second of sympathy or respect. This guy is the iconic reason why this genre has been going down the toilet. The number 1 reason for all the crap MMOs is because they are released too early. Giving this guy credit for anything or buying a game that you know isn't finished is only furthering the release of future MMOs as retail beta's. When you start holding developers to higher standards, then when we as gamers will get better games. You don't own stock in the company, so you don't have anything to gain if the game succeeds, so stop wearing rose colored glasses and make these idiots accountable by holding their feet to the fire.
It cracks me up that people are so impressed with Brad being up front. If only he was up front when the game was released and admitted people were paying him $50 to beta test his game.
The Vanguard community is a cult......no doubt about that!
It cracks me up that people are so impressed with Brad being up front. If only he was up front when the game was released and admitted people were paying him $50 to beta test his game. The Vanguard community is a cult......no doubt about that!
They announced that price well before the launch and he even stated that the game was far from ready but it was being released because of funding. Way to do your research when trying to insult a man.
What most people expected were professional decisions, especially by a guy who had been at the helm during EverQuest, and who has already developed an MMO before Vanguard.
Fund limitations? Pfft. The guy had over $30 million to play with, giving Sigil a budget second only to what Blizzard spent on WoW.
Deadlines? The game was in development for five years. That's plenty of time, especially for someone who has already gone through the development process for an MMO, like Brad McQuaid.
For the sake of comparison, let's look at Cryptic Studios, who have published both CoH and CoV, and who are now working on the Marvel MMO. They were founded in 2000, started working on CoH then, got picked up by NCSoft in 2002, and released the game in 2004. And this was a bunch of n00bs who liked superheroes, wanted to make an MMO, and lucked out on their funding when one guy cashed in during the dot com boom.
They had no experience with MMO's, no idea what the hell they were doing, and even had to go back at a very late stage of development (in a very early beta phase, if I remember correctly) and throw out the entire open character and power system they had been working on for many years in order to come up with the archetypes and power sets they have now. Despite that potentially fatal snafu, they *still* managed to release the game in just about four years. And this was with somewhere around 30 people total working on the game, and without any experience in developing an MMO.
I don't care what anyone says-- an experienced pair of devs like Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, backed by 100 people all working on the game, with unlimited time and $30+ million to play with, and support from Microsoft should have been able to come up with a lot more than the current state that Vanguard is in. And the game should have at least been ready for beta after four years, but apparently not. Hence, the jump to SOE. And as far as I can tell, even SOE looked at what they were getting after four years of development and decided that it had to come out within a year, no matter what state it was in, because it had been long enough. They even sent in some of their own people to try and spruce it up before release.
I just don't buy the excuses in that post by Brad, considering he's gone through this process before. I think they just mismanaged their time and money, got completely unfocused and too bogged down in some parts of the game more than others, and ultimately came up short.
It's a damned shame, too. The shell is there in Vanguard for a great game. If they'd only done things right from the start, they'd probably be in much better shape than they're in now. But now, they're in a position where they have to play catch-up to bring VG up to snuff, and up to what it should have been by now, and they have to do it before all these other newer games launch, or they risk being ignored or passed over for those other games.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Cryptic Studios is vastly more well managed and efficient than Sigil. And for those of you who think Sigil is doing a good job communicating with its customers , you'll be utterly amazed at how Cryptic is constantly providing feedback. CoH/Vs official forums are outstanding. Customer support for CoH/V is I think the best of all live MMOs out there.
I really do think Brad is still living in the past. It's time he stopped developing games. Jack Emmert of Cryptic is much more in tune with contemporary players and the the MMO field in general.
Well, let's see what was said here (without the fluff) : * "it needed 200k-300k to be successful" and "So far we are in the mid 150s". That would mean by Brad's own measure, V:SoH is NOT successful and is, indeed, a failure.
LOL. Sorry, this was blunt enough to make me actually laugh out loud. I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say he's admitting it's a failure, rather that it is an incomplete success at this time. (in Brad-speak, anyways)
Comments
It's hilarious that Brad is admitting the people who bought the game at release paid to beta test and help finish the game for him.
ROFLMAO @ $50.00 Beta Testers
OWNED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some of us do not have to pay fees to play games so it is not really a big deal. If you do not like the game, you do not have to play.
Also, there are a lot of people who are very upset that they played the game the way it is and you do not have to rub it in, your post would not make them very happy, or tell them something that they didn't already know. Chances are actually, you did not play this game so you have no say in how it performs.
I think what he was saying was they made the graphics too high end, not that we are too poor to buy a decent system. Very candid interview and I have more respect for him now than ever.
Aye, I agree
However
I bought one of the best systems out in the market AFTER one month of release. Vanguard was still slow and buggy on my system...and my system is a 3000 dollar system; I would be very safe to say my computer is probably more advanced than the majority of the systems Sigil has.
With that said, I do respect (and always had) respect Brad's candidness. SOE must hate him for that.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Seems to me Brad is hoping and wants people to buy computers good enough to handle this game since he boldly states he's hoping they become cheaper. But this shouldn't be the case and he's right, they did goof in making it such a huge world, this wasn't necessary to have a good game.
if anything he also says they're behind in population but again that's due in part to the game being so buggy and people needing more then avg comps to run it.
Big isn't always better, I think Brad now knows that.
I thought the post sounded very genuine and I can definitely sympathize with Brad. I really like the way he is outgoing about what the development and not turning a blind eye to the condition of this game, which is more than I can say for many development teams (*cough* swg). I have cancelled my vanguard account personally, but I didnt consider my $50 to be a waste at all as I felt like the game was pretty good (although I didnt experience any bugs except that one where monsters walk backwards sometimes, so I know a lot of you are upset about that), especially the long draw distance which was beautiful (but I know a lot of people without good compies cant enjoy that), and the diplomacy system (which almost kept me playing... To be honest I mostly stopped because I was scared I would become an addict), although I am more into non level/item based PvP so I cant really see myself sticking with vanguard.
It makes me sad to see you guys attack his post... His care for the game and players seems authentic... I'm not really sure what you guys expect him to post or what business decisions you expect sigil to make. Have you never had responsibility to complete something that you wanted to complete but were unable to? Unfinished projects? Underfunded ideas? I think you guys might be underestimating how difficult it is to produce elaborate and unique projects while staying within deadlines and fund limitations. It really isnt easy
and we see that again and again with the majority of mmorpg releases; especially those that try to introduce something new to the genre.
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
Some replies here to Brad's post just sicken me, e.g. somebody compared him of being proud parent of a retarded son or name callings. The degree of immaturity on these boards is actually frightening, especially if you view the profiles and see the ages (if they are true).
Brad's post reveals honest self-critisism to a degree and sensible information, e.g. financial.
The path to success is recognise your mistakes and learn from them. Sigil is on their good way.
I'd hate to think what sort of hardware this game actually needs to "run well" according Brad, may be quad crossfire and octal core setup? I don't think so some how. I think he should have supported SLI/Crossfire setups from the off and supported a multi-threaded environment so people with dual core setups or quad core setups would see a performance boost, however we don't see him state anything about this just complain about hardware in general.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
Excuses and apologies.
How about not charging for a product that is not finished.
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking
you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking
you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
????Each time he posts he gets closer and closer to just telling us what he thinks. Right now it is just candy coated to not piss anyone off.
Someone needs to get him off the internet cause he is damaging the game more and more ....
I like pie !
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking
you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
I can't even comprehend how you drew that conclusion. Did you even read what you typed?
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking
you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
I can't even comprehend how you drew that conclusion. Did you even read what you typed?
Did you? Charging for the product from how I read it means sub fee, if he meant just the game being free of cost so pure DVD box then I apologize
I think what he was saying was they made the graphics too high end, not that we are too poor to buy a decent system. Very candid interview and I have more respect for him now than ever.
Too high end? WTF???
This is the huge beef many people have with VG; even if you have a "high end system", the end results don't justify the hardware. Re-read Brad's posts again. The engine they used was the Unreal 2 engine - its been around for a while now!
The reason it runs like ass is because they are trying to do more with it than it was intended to do. They took a First Person Shooter engine and tried to cram a huge bloated MMORPG into it, and it simply wasn't designed to do that. This should concern people because it indicates there is a limit with how much refining and "tweaking" they can do.
In addition, some of the art and and animations flat out suck; NO graphics engine in the world can make crappy art decisions look good.
Let's see now, most (not all) but most single player games are finished products, so with your logic way of thinking
you would be okay with those single player release company's to setup a sub-fee because they released a finished game?
I can't even comprehend how you drew that conclusion. Did you even read what you typed?
did you?
Apparently more than you did. Fleecing people for an unfinished product is bullshit no matter what genre or product category you are talking about. If you purchased a music CD and 4 tracks were missing, and the artist said "hey I'm sorry... I'm still in the studio recording those songs.. I need your money to pay for studio costs", you would probably flip your lid and there would be a huge uproar. For some reason, the gaming industry isn't taken seriously in that way and frankly it needs to be. Just because its a "game" doesn't mean that the consumer is any less deserving.
Brad is supposed to be a veteran of the MMORPG field. He was supposed to have all this experience to draw from and to know better. For him to pull this kind of stunt is a huge slap to his fans.
No, I think they were better off doing it this way in the long run. Decide on the tech you want and go with that. It's hard in the short run, when people don't quite have the hardware yet, but in the long run, you'll have a game that a year or two from now is still state of the art, and now easily playable, rather than one that is already 3-4 years out of date.
C
Uh, I hate to dispell this little fantasy, but, what you have in performance is what you have forever. The V:SoH is based on an old Unreal graphics engine. It is never going to get much better as the engine is not DX10 compatible. Heck, it is barely DX9 compatible. The same sort of philosophy was in play when EQ2 was developed and released with graphics that were for 'next-gen' computers. Well, it is 2 1/2 years later and EQ2 still cannot, and never will, run in a playable state with graphics options turned to higher quality levels. I am afraid the same is true of V:SoH. Without a Graphics Engine Upgrade, what you see is all you are ever going to get. Both in terms of quality and performance.I run EQ2 on the highest quality settings all the time i've never had a problem with it.
Fund limitations? Pfft. The guy had over $30 million to play with, giving Sigil a budget second only to what Blizzard spent on WoW.
Deadlines? The game was in development for five years. That's plenty of time, especially for someone who has already gone through the development process for an MMO, like Brad McQuaid.
For the sake of comparison, let's look at Cryptic Studios, who have published both CoH and CoV, and who are now working on the Marvel MMO. They were founded in 2000, started working on CoH then, got picked up by NCSoft in 2002, and released the game in 2004. And this was a bunch of n00bs who liked superheroes, wanted to make an MMO, and lucked out on their funding when one guy cashed in during the dot com boom.
They had no experience with MMO's, no idea what the hell they were doing, and even had to go back at a very late stage of development (in a very early beta phase, if I remember correctly) and throw out the entire open character and power system they had been working on for many years in order to come up with the archetypes and power sets they have now. Despite that potentially fatal snafu, they *still* managed to release the game in just about four years. And this was with somewhere around 30 people total working on the game, and without any experience in developing an MMO.
I don't care what anyone says-- an experienced pair of devs like Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, backed by 100 people all working on the game, with unlimited time and $30+ million to play with, and support from Microsoft should have been able to come up with a lot more than the current state that Vanguard is in. And the game should have at least been ready for beta after four years, but apparently not. Hence, the jump to SOE. And as far as I can tell, even SOE looked at what they were getting after four years of development and decided that it had to come out within a year, no matter what state it was in, because it had been long enough. They even sent in some of their own people to try and spruce it up before release.
I just don't buy the excuses in that post by Brad, considering he's gone through this process before. I think they just mismanaged their time and money, got completely unfocused and too bogged down in some parts of the game more than others, and ultimately came up short.
It's a damned shame, too. The shell is there in Vanguard for a great game. If they'd only done things right from the start, they'd probably be in much better shape than they're in now. But now, they're in a position where they have to play catch-up to bring VG up to snuff, and up to what it should have been by now, and they have to do it before all these other newer games launch, or they risk being ignored or passed over for those other games.
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It cracks me up that people are so impressed with Brad being up front. If only he was up front when the game was released and admitted people were paying him $50 to beta test his game.
The Vanguard community is a cult......no doubt about that!
Cryptic Studios is vastly more well managed and efficient than Sigil. And for those of you who think Sigil is doing a good job communicating with its customers
I really do think Brad is still living in the past. It's time he stopped developing games. Jack Emmert of Cryptic is much more in tune with contemporary players and the the MMO field in general.