Every time I read MMORPG its funny to read what people can come up with. Let me do some math: In the comming 5 years (a common used number in the investment world) Vanguard will be sold 1 mil. times (people come and go). Thats 1 mil x 10 dollar = 10.000.000 dollar (I use 10 dollar because the money going to Sigil isn't the full 40 dollar :P ) Lets assume Vanguard has a player base of 150.000 a month. I'll use 12 dollar / month to leave out the taxes paid. Thats 12 x 150000 x 12 (months) x 5 (years) = 108.000.000 dollar. Assuming 30% profit (normal number) thats 32.400.000 dollar. But here is the real profit! The expansions. Because we already pay the developers with our monthly fee the expansion is already made on our expense. Not all 1 mil. people will buy the expansion. Ill use the 150.000 subscribers for this one. Also, one expansion every year is a normal number. In this case 4 expansions (first year = original VG). Thats 4 (year) x 10 (dollar) x 150.000 (subscribers) = 6.000.000. In total, with only 150.000 subscribers, Sigil will make 48.400.000 dollar. Assuming Brad didn't lie and they got 30.000.000 dollar for making VG. They have a profit of 18.4 mil. dollar! So, trust me, enough profit here!
cool , a numbers game. What you didn't factor in is
Cd manufacturing. Which Sony does in house but they will charge Sigil for.
Cost of servers, the cost they pay Sony to run the servers
The cost of the customer service people,
The cost and salary of every sigil employees
The cost of the the building they are leasing + electricity + water +janitorial staff and house keeping
The big wig salaries and the cost of viral marketers .
32million dollars A year doesn't look so big. Then Factor in the unfinished prodct that is seeing lack luster reviews across a wide area of top reviewing outlets. This could very well be the biggest failure since Water World. Unlike Kevin Cosner, Sigil will not beable to make a come back , because this ain't the movies.
Uhmmm...in mathmetics...mean = average...go look it up. If you aren't just trolling, it becomes obvious that you know very little about economic wealth distribution.
You are indeed correct that average and mean are used interchangeably.
However as my example illustrated, an average by itself is meaningless because you can not tell
how uniformly distributed the data is. One could assume that the data has a small variance (or
standard deviation) and is concentrated near the average or one could just as easily assume that the
data has a very large variance or standard deviation) and that the data is widely distributed. A
bell curve could still be drawn in both cases (bell curve is defined as encompassing one to three
standard deviations where 68, 95, and 99 percent of the values are within the given variance).
In San Diego county, it is not unreasonable to find people who work in Taco Bell or people who
are heart surgeons. One heart surgeon can bring the average salary of an awful lot of fast food workers
up to 65K. Are you going to try and tell me that all the college students in San Diego county that work
(even part time) also make nearly 65K a year ? The diversity of situations and the amounts people
make would tend to make me believe that the standard deviation or variance is very large.
No, definitely not trolling.
My my, don't we just love jumping to conclusions.
As I said before, one can not conclude anything about the uniformity or clustering of the data by
only knowing the average.
No, using an average is not a meaningless number if used within the context of the original discussion about wage and salary conditions in So Cal. I can compare Coronado, Ca. where the average family income is approx. $90,000 per year, to Chula Vista where the average family income is approx. $42,000 per year. So the average will set a starting point for the entire range of the curve. But it seems you already understand this.
So let's pull a number out of the air and say one standard deviation is $20,000 (I have no real idea of what it truly is). If it were $20,000, then 68% of the families in the county would earn between $39,000 and $79,000 per year. That means that roughly 16% of families would earn above $79,000 per year.
That's enough to give a general picture of what economic conditions are like in the area. People are making general statements and I have given a general response. It doesn't give specifics and, of course, there are always variations in smaller areas.
None of my comments mentioned anything at all about clustering or uniformity of data.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
No, using an average is not a meaningless number if used within the context of the original discussion about wage and salary conditions in So Cal. I can compare Coronado, Ca. where the average family income is approx. $90,000 per year, to Chula Vista where the average family income is approx. $42,000 per year. So the average will set a starting point for the entire range of the curve. But it seems you already understand this.
So let's pull a number out of the air and say one standard deviation is $20,000 (I have no real idea of what it truly is). If it were $20,000, then 68% of the families in the county would earn between $39,000 and $79,000 per year. That means that roughly 16% of families would earn above $79,000 per year.
That's enough to give a general picture of what economic conditions are like in the area. People are making general statements and I have given a general response. It doesn't give specifics and, of course, there are always variations in smaller areas.
None of my comments mentioned anything at all about clustering or uniformity of data.
What began this whole discussion is that you claimed the average salary for San Diego county was 65K.
You then proceeded to conclude that everyone made close to 65K because of the bell curve. Now you pick
a random value of 20K and assume it is the standard deviation (again you have no basis for picking the
number which could actually be closer to 50K).
If you didn't mention anything about clustering, why did you mention the bell curve and then proceed to
imply that most of the values were close (clustering) to the average ?
My point was and still is that the average tells you nothing and any made up numbers you pick will not tell
cool , a numbers game. What you didn't factor in is
Cd manufacturing. Which Sony does in house but they will charge Sigil for.
Cost of servers, the cost they pay Sony to run the servers
The cost of the customer service people,
The cost and salary of every sigil employees
The cost of the the building they are leasing + electricity + water +janitorial staff and house keeping
The big wig salaries and the cost of viral marketers .
32million dollars A year doesn't look so big. Then Factor in the unfinished prodct that is seeing lack luster reviews across a wide area of top reviewing outlets. This could very well be the biggest failure since Water World. Unlike Kevin Cosner, Sigil will not beable to make a come back , because this ain't the movies.
who me ?
Dude.. really.. read again. I did calcuted all that. I didn't use 50 dollar but 10 dollar profit for every CD sold. I didn't use the 15 dollar a month but only 30% of it because the servers have to be paid etc. Really, read again please and not only the last 2 lines
But what I did wrong is I used 150.000 subscribers, it seems there are 150.000 registerd users which is something else
i sure dont see LOTR taking people from Vanguard, WOW yes but not VG. My whole guild left Vangarbage for LotRo. I agree, they are very similar but LOTR has as better graphics than WoW. One of the most hilarious concepts associated with Vanguard is that it is hard. Again, I used to buy into this. It is NOT hard or elaborate. The one fundamental difference between Vangarbage and other games is things take exponentially longer to do. Aside from that, if you think Vanguard has superior graphics I suggest maxing out LotRo @ 1920 x 1200 and then doing the same with ****guard. I have run them side by side and LotRo is far better and runs far better as well. LotRo doesnt really look like WoW at all tbh although I will concede there are some similarities. At the end of the day, who really cares. Vanguard will continue to stumble around in the dark with 50 - 100k subs while LotRo has probably outsold it 15 to 1 and it isn't even released yet. SOE destroy games. If anyone was in any doubt about that, it should no longer be a question. If any one good thing comes out of this, it will be that other developers will shun SOE and save their games from the same fate. These greedy hacks need to be taught a lesson and thankfully, Vanguard is a huge failure. This is being reinforced by them carebearing the game in a desperate attempt to try and compete with LotRo et al. They tried it with SWG and now they are doing it again, albeit far more expeditiously. SOE is a company that NEVER learns from it's mistakes. It seems to operate in a Fantasy world where it has no competition and they can spew out any old dross and make a fortune. The days of EQ being the sole player in the MMO game are over SOE and your BS tactics arent going to work anymore. BTW, don't try and tell me that SOE has nothing to do with this. This fiasco has SOE written all over it. Not like we didnt know that from the beginning in any case. S
cool , a numbers game. What you didn't factor in is
Cd manufacturing. Which Sony does in house but they will charge Sigil for.
Cost of servers, the cost they pay Sony to run the servers
The cost of the customer service people,
The cost and salary of every sigil employees
The cost of the the building they are leasing + electricity + water +janitorial staff and house keeping
The big wig salaries and the cost of viral marketers .
32million dollars A year doesn't look so big. Then Factor in the unfinished prodct that is seeing lack luster reviews across a wide area of top reviewing outlets. This could very well be the biggest failure since Water World. Unlike Kevin Cosner, Sigil will not beable to make a come back , because this ain't the movies.
who me ?
Dude.. really.. read again. I did calcuted all that. I didn't use 50 dollar but 10 dollar profit for every CD sold. I didn't use the 15 dollar a month but only 30% of it because the servers have to be paid etc. Really, read again please and not only the last 2 lines But what I did wrong is I used 150.000 subscribers, it seems there are 150.000 registerd users which is something else
You figuring is off , the profit of the game would be scraping to substain them monthly, because of the size of the staff their. When I wake up, if I wake up (lol never know ) then I will look into all the numbers... cause I do like numbers
Was reading this post and getting a good laugh out of it but that turned to guffaws when i read that LOTR looks better than Vanguard. LOTR looks almost like WOW neither shows depth. Its like looking at a flat picture. Vanguard looks like I can see depth like real 3d. EQ2 and Vanguard are the only MMOs that have fantastic graphics but you gotta have a machine capable. I like Vanguard and cancelled my station access and just subscribed to VG. Having played LOTR open beta and waiting to see AOC and Warhammer I think EQ2 and VG are head and shoulders above anything out there. Im in the largest guild on Thunderaxe server and every one there is having a blast. I really like the tradeskills not like WOW where u can craft while eating supper in the next room. . If Vanguard dies I will be the last one putting flowers on the grave. Dont think i will doing that anytime soon tho. The first poster is living in a world that he created. Exploits are widespread??? Gee havent seen any yet but heard of one and that guy got booted, and i sure dont see LOTR taking people from Vanguard, WOW yes but not VG. WOW and LOTR seem like the same game to me but thats just my opinion.
The death of the game is already well underway. It has a horrific reputation in the gaming community as a whole, and in my opinion based on my own experiences in the game, very well-deservedly so. It is buggy, it runs poorly on many systems (including many high end ones), it mistakes "time consuming" for "challenging", and the list goes on and on.
The hemmoraging will only worsen as 2007 continues and other titles that are much more polished and fun are released. That will begin with LOTRO later this month, and will continue as the year progresses with titles like AoC, WAR. Sure, LOTRO may not grab many diehard VG fans from the game, but it stop others from trying VG, and on a net/net basis, that is the same effect. As for the folks who are already subbed to VG, there's only so long that people will put up with the messy game that VG is -- after a point, only the diehard fanbois and masochists will remain, and the game will be relying on its inclusion in the Station Pass program as its lifeline.
Well this was an entertaining thread. I'm glad sigil gave me a shot to beta the game around December 20th.. After 2 days of downloading and getting about 7 characters to all around level 8-10, I knew the game was in trouble..
Especially since by mid January they announced it was going live the end of the month... Thats when I uninstalled the 20 gig pig of a game... I think they screwed up by making the world too vast and seamless.. Now I'm all for vastness and seamless but there was two major problems I found with it in VG. First, the world was pretty damn empty.. and when you crossed into a new chunk or zone, you still ended up loading for 15-20 seconds (the hitching effect).. It would of been a way better game had they reduced the size and concentrated more on filling in the emptiness.
Going from swg, to eq2 I was displeased with the constant loading from zone to zone.. But after playing Vanguard I now know why they did it that way.. It severely reduced lag and hitching was an unknown term because it wasn't there. VG would of been way better off making starter towns for each race, the making players load into an area around the town that had levels 1-10 quests and content, then off of that zone have another loading point into another area which had 10-20 content (accesible by all races) etc and so on up to 50..
It would of been a much more set pathed game (like eq2) and hand holding through the levels, but would of been way better for forming group hunts and made socializing and group forming quicker..
I recently been checking out WoW and I noticed striking similarities with the VG interface,loot windows and overall game in the early levels except WoW seemed to have smaller confined areas (so noobs couldn't get lost), and basically told me which direction to head in for quests 10-20.. Both games however played exactly the same as far as combat goes.. You get a few spells and cast them when the timers come around again.. As you progress you gain more spells and abilities lol.. Same old same old .. Except one minor difference, WoW was way to refined compared to VG. Which no doubt severely hurt them..
Suffice it to say though, I hated WoW's gameplay and since I seen so much similarities in VG, I just found it kind of funny that Brad tried to rip shit directly from blizzard.. Maybe it was original eq1 stuff he was ripping back? IDK because I never played eq1.. VG was claiming they had a next GEN MMO.. It was the furthest thing from next gen.. It was basically a SWG landscape in a fantasy setting with WoW UI and combat, but loaded with bugs, exploits and corpse runs.. There may have been slight variances in the combat from wow to VG but it looked and felt pretty damn similar to me, with VG leaning more towards a semi-hardcore crowd willing to beta test on live servers and put up with a ton of broken features and missing features.
When they announced the end of January launch and when I saw what they were charging players for the boxed client, I knew right there and then this was a basic snatch and grab.. I think Brad screwed up big time.. I read his official forum bio once and it said something to the effect of him not wanting to see anymore 30 million dollar failures.. lol.. How ironic eh? Poor guy, I do feel sorry for him though.. His names basically ruined, and I doubt he will be in on any other mmo games in the future.. Unless he bank rolls it himself, which I doubt he can afford.
I'm not really a huge fan of level progression games, but I have to put up with them since every mmo maker is scared to do something new in the industry. Raph koster was right when he said WoW set the industry back 10 years.. Because now everyone is scared to innovate new ideas and creativity goes right out the window. I think the true next GEN mmo's will have no levels and be rich with content, quests, items and armor.. I truely think people are tired of level grind games and want end game content from the word go.. I also think theres a strong market for people who just want to raid high end named bosses (eq2 raiding), and seek out new abilities, spells, have really complex crafting systems and real world economics in games.. As a gamer I'd rather spend my time in a game doing other things than grinding to max level. Typically these companies set up massive time sinks before you reach max level, and by the time the average gamer gets there, and sees that his content is to either raid, pvp or craft, they most likely do those things for a few months then look for another game to do the exact same thing in all over again. The question is why though? They leave for other games because the end game is not interesting enough for them to be bothered with it. Had more time and energy gone into making the end game, endless.. Maybe they would still be pursuing that exceptional or fabled loot.. Maybe there a crafter waiting for a combatant to bring them some exceptional hides to make rare armor.. or maybe an exceptional dragon tooth to make some type of rareity..
My vision for a great MMO game would be to have everyone log into a game and just start gathering items, resources and questing for gear, new spells and working up proficiency with a certain weapon type.. Don't like the weapon your using? Pick up another weapon and have a go at it... If your using an axe, your classed as an axe men who seeks out gear specific to your class. You wanna be a mage? Start using that starter staff and looking for new spells .. The game would be just an endless grind for gear, but not really a grind lol.. I don't know, I'm digressing here pretty much and will end it here..
I doubt anyone will read this crap anyways, on page 15 or whatever it is now...
VG was claiming they had a next GEN MMO.. It was the furthest thing from next gen.. It was basically a SWG landscape in a fantasy setting with WoW UI and combat, but loaded with bugs, exploits and corpse runs.. There may have been slight variances in the combat from wow to VG but it looked and felt pretty damn similar to me,
I totally agree with that summary. In fact, you have probably summarized it better than most people do.
Since you're playing LOTR, a 'fluff' game if I ever saw one; I'm not surprised you don't like Vanguard.
ROFL, I'd rather play a working "fluff" mmo, than a buggy, unstable one like Vangarbage. Let's face it, if Vangarbage follows the same SOE trends as SWG, it will be a Medieval FPS by July. Its already on the right track. At least LotRo is what it advertises itself to be and not some pathetic joke that was aimed at one group of gamers and then when SOE realised they weren't stupid enough to stick around and fund that disaster, they pull a complete 180 and try to sucker the more casual player. Typical SOE tactics.
... I have played DaoC, SWG, EvE, EQ2, WoW and DnL which were great fun.
... I wanted Vanguard because of the FUN of challenge
... I left Vanguard because of the challenge.
... I'm going for LotRO now.
... Vanguard has lost a customer.
That is roughly how about 80% of my gaming friends acted after VG released. No overall comparing to WoW or anything else. Vanguard is - plain and simple - not a good game. It makes complexity painful, it redefines the term "hardware hungry", it lacks lore and living world.... Overall, it makes many mistakes, even if it is to a smaller extent, that broke Dark and Lights Neck, huge world, big plans,
40% finished, 20% playable, 5% fun...
What remains are the hardcore-hard-core guys that play freelance pirat in EvE, the hardcore mode in D2 or grinded Jedi in SWG... you guys will never be representative.
for the usual gamer, the guy that leads a normal MMOG-life as a hobby, this game has just wasted its chance to get subs...
while I agree this isn't exactly breaking news. Let's face it VG had a terrbile launch. MMOs cannot recover from bad launches - they just can't. Sure the game "may" become somewhat decent in a years time but consumers will hardly walk into a game store and ask for a good MMO that's a couple of years old. People want new products and by the time VG has the slightest chance of being decent it will get clobbered by above mentioned titles.
Many games had a worse launch and survived. IE... Anarchy Online. It was in much worse shape than VG at launch, and here six years after, it's still around... has a good player base and is a great game. Don't agree? Well the successes of AO has funded the development of Age of Conan… both as a revenue maker and an example of game making that has secured FunCom funding from new sources. VG isn’t as bad as many here would have you believe. Take graphics for example... VG models have a high polygon count that stress today’s machines, where as LOTR has lower poly models with great textures. LOTR is as good looking as it will ever get... VG on the other hand has much room for improvement because the models are already complex and textures are easier to redo. Hence three years from now LOTR will look old and VG can and probably will look outstanding. Also because it is not based on very narrowly defined lore, VG can go any way the devs want to take it without fear of crossing the line of some franchise. While it was launched unfinished the dev team is working very hard to fix this... An example is game performance which has improved significantly recently. If you haven’t played since launch, you would be surprised.
You are correct about AO - one thing you have to take into account is that game was and is VERY unique, its genre, its character progression its endless ability to customize your character etc. Very innovative for its time - and quite advanced in everything but graphics.
There is no way you can compare AO to the craptastic lack-luster VG set of *me-too*
No, using an average is not a meaningless number if used within the context of the original discussion about wage and salary conditions in So Cal. I can compare Coronado, Ca. where the average family income is approx. $90,000 per year, to Chula Vista where the average family income is approx. $42,000 per year. So the average will set a starting point for the entire range of the curve. But it seems you already understand this.
So let's pull a number out of the air and say one standard deviation is $20,000 (I have no real idea of what it truly is). If it were $20,000, then 68% of the families in the county would earn between $39,000 and $79,000 per year. That means that roughly 16% of families would earn above $79,000 per year.
That's enough to give a general picture of what economic conditions are like in the area. People are making general statements and I have given a general response. It doesn't give specifics and, of course, there are always variations in smaller areas.
None of my comments mentioned anything at all about clustering or uniformity of data.
What began this whole discussion is that you claimed the average salary for San Diego county was 65K.
You then proceeded to conclude that everyone made close to 65K because of the bell curve. Now you pick
a random value of 20K and assume it is the standard deviation (again you have no basis for picking the
number which could actually be closer to 50K).
If you didn't mention anything about clustering, why did you mention the bell curve and then proceed to
imply that most of the values were close (clustering) to the average ?
My point was and still is that the average tells you nothing and any made up numbers you pick will not tell
you anything either.
Well, I've presented accurate real world numbers, with real world relevance, using scientifically sound methods. Until someone can present more valid numbers, proving me wrong, I'll continue to believe that I am right. I'm just vain like that.
Simply trying to pick at semantics and trying to twist the meanings of examples has not shown my information wrong.
As I'm not going to waste more time arguing just to argue, I think I'll spend my time with more interesting posts.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
Yes Vanguard is a poor game and is hemoraging subscribers. Yes, the people who invested in it are nervous. Yes you can expect the number of servers to start to drop.
But the game won't be declared dead any time soon.
Vanguard will never go away as long as it is connected to the station pass life support system. The fact that they made it a station pass game instead of letting it stand on its own should have been warning enough.
It is easy to doomsay any game but I am confident Vanguard will chug along into the next year or two without any financial stress. On that note, I canceled my account last week.
Acording to turbine Lord of rings online has already 600,000 preorders.
Lotr is a very polished game.. It could of released January 1st and no one would of complained about it except to maybe say there should be a bit more content..
I was in both VG and Lotr beta's all around the end of December.. After I got in Lotr, I felt no need to even test Vanguard anymore, since they were 3 weeks from launching as well.. One thing that turned me off about Lotr was I couldn't experience the entire world.. I would of liked to been able to goto Rohan as a starter city or play as a troll or evil class and start in Mordor etc... That pretty much turned me off, and the combat did seem to get boring fast.. About 3 weeks into beta I stopped playing.. just got bored quickly..
There was also a severe lack of classes as well, and I didn't feel they put much emphasis on group dynamics.. You know the old healer/tank/dps dynamic.. As much as I hated it in eq2, I seemed to miss it in Lotr.. Maybe it was not a requirement pre lvl 20? I only went up to about lvl 18 on a hunter.. Made a champion to lvl 10 as well.. The dwarf models seemed clunky too.. and I was not impressed that as a certain race, I couldn't play a certain class.. Maybe that because they were following tolkien lore? I don't know.. I'm not much into the Lotr lore..
It's probably a good thing they didn't implement the healer/tank/dps paradigm because it provides players with a lot more flexibility while forming a group... It will probably be very successful just for that fact.. Besides when gimli, aragon and that prancy elf guy were trekking across the country side as a party/group.. I don't think any of them were classed as healers.. and they survived till the end.
Lotr should do well in subs till the summer when Gods and hero's releases.. Then the people like me who aren't really into LOTR lore will most likely jump ships into something with more exciting combat and physics engine. But again, thats another game with a severe lack of class options.. We'll have to see..
Meta yes they are releasing classes based in the book of tolkien. As much as I like vanguard it'll never be a big hit. And already LOTR is a huge hit in pre orders. Turbine has nothing to worry about success, they in fact are a big success due to pre orders.
Comparing VG and LOTRO isn't really a fair comparison, though - but eh. Here's what I've noticed so far (I'm in the pre-order founder beta of LOTRO right now)
Vanguard / LOTRO
Vanguard is in their 3rd month of "Live" LOTRO is in a pre-open-beta.
Graphics :
On the highest graphic settings, both games are beautiful. On the highest graphic settings, Vanguard looks nicer. The problem is, that most computers can't play VG on the highest settings, or even 'high'. Playing VG on balanced (or lower) vs. playing LOTRO on the highest quality (with no lag?) = LOTRO has better graphics. In that sense, absolutely, I would say "At a playable graphics setting, LOTRO looks nicer." Now for the future, in a year or two when everyone has 4gb of ram, VG will be able to evolve graphically, I think. But for now? At the setting the majority of people can play at, LOTRO is better graphically.
Stability :
- Vanguard crashes for no reason at random times ( I have 3 computers with various specs, all of which blow away the recommended requirements, and I still get sporadic crashing). Vanguard gets memory leak and crashes if you zone around too much. Certain chunk lines have a pretty good chance to crash you to the desktop (Magi Hold anyone?) Staying online for more than a few hours requires a restart.
- LOTRO I've had crash once and only once, despite 14-hours-on-constantly, and that was when I went to sleep and left myself at the login screen, the next morning the game was closed I've never crashed while zoning and I can even play it on the highest settings on an older laptop without any problems at my office. (1gb/ram, 256mb/graphics card 2.0ghz/processor).
OF course, these things aren't the only things that make a game. But they are important when someone is making a decision. I think VG has a lot more complexity - at least at this time - but after all, you have to consider the first thing I said VG is a 'released' game, and LOTRO is still in beta.
Gaming? That's not gaming! That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
Comparing VG and LOTRO isn't really a fair comparison, though - but eh.
Here's what I've noticed so far (I'm in the pre-order founder beta of LOTRO right now) Vanguard / LOTRO Vanguard is in their 3rd month of "Live"
LOTRO is in a pre-open-beta. Graphics : On the highest graphic settings, both games are beautiful.
On the highest graphic settings, Vanguard looks nicer.
The problem is, that most computers can't play VG on the highest settings, or even 'high'.
Playing VG on balanced (or lower) vs. playing LOTRO on the highest quality (with no lag?) = LOTRO has better graphics. In that sense, absolutely, I would say "At a playable graphics setting, LOTRO looks nicer." Now for the future, in a year or two when everyone has 4gb of ram, VG will be able to evolve graphically, I think. But for now? At the setting the majority of people can play at, LOTRO is better graphically. Stability : - Vanguard crashes for no reason at random times ( I have 3 computers with various specs, all of which blow away the recommended requirements, and I still get sporadic crashing).
Vanguard gets memory leak and crashes if you zone around too much.
Certain chunk lines have a pretty good chance to crash you to the desktop (Magi Hold anyone?)
Staying online for more than a few hours requires a restart. - LOTRO I've had crash once and only once, despite 14-hours-on-constantly, and that was when I went to sleep and left myself at the login screen, the next morning the game was closed I've never crashed while zoning and I can even play it on the highest settings on an older laptop without any problems at my office. (1gb/ram, 256mb/graphics card 2.0ghz/processor).
OF course, these things aren't the only things that make a game. But they are important when someone is making a decision. I think VG has a lot more complexity - at least at this time - but after all, you have to consider the first thing I said VG is a 'released' game, and LOTRO is still in beta.
Don't forget that LOTRO also has a Hi-Res client which will make the game even better looking.
how does the hi-res client work? is it a special edition of the game you have to buy or just a setting? what are the system specs required for the hi-res client to run?
Comments
Cd manufacturing. Which Sony does in house but they will charge Sigil for.
Cost of servers, the cost they pay Sony to run the servers
The cost of the customer service people,
The cost and salary of every sigil employees
The cost of the the building they are leasing + electricity + water +janitorial staff and house keeping
The big wig salaries and the cost of viral marketers .
32million dollars A year doesn't look so big. Then Factor in the unfinished prodct that is seeing lack luster reviews across a wide area of top reviewing outlets. This could very well be the biggest failure since Water World. Unlike Kevin Cosner, Sigil will not beable to make a come back , because this ain't the movies.
who me ?
too many long posts head herts
You are indeed correct that average and mean are used interchangeably.
However as my example illustrated, an average by itself is meaningless because you can not tell
how uniformly distributed the data is. One could assume that the data has a small variance (or
standard deviation) and is concentrated near the average or one could just as easily assume that the
data has a very large variance or standard deviation) and that the data is widely distributed. A
bell curve could still be drawn in both cases (bell curve is defined as encompassing one to three
standard deviations where 68, 95, and 99 percent of the values are within the given variance).
In San Diego county, it is not unreasonable to find people who work in Taco Bell or people who
are heart surgeons. One heart surgeon can bring the average salary of an awful lot of fast food workers
up to 65K. Are you going to try and tell me that all the college students in San Diego county that work
(even part time) also make nearly 65K a year ? The diversity of situations and the amounts people
make would tend to make me believe that the standard deviation or variance is very large.
No, definitely not trolling.
My my, don't we just love jumping to conclusions.
As I said before, one can not conclude anything about the uniformity or clustering of the data by
only knowing the average.
No, using an average is not a meaningless number if used within the context of the original discussion about wage and salary conditions in So Cal. I can compare Coronado, Ca. where the average family income is approx. $90,000 per year, to Chula Vista where the average family income is approx. $42,000 per year. So the average will set a starting point for the entire range of the curve. But it seems you already understand this.
So let's pull a number out of the air and say one standard deviation is $20,000 (I have no real idea of what it truly is). If it were $20,000, then 68% of the families in the county would earn between $39,000 and $79,000 per year. That means that roughly 16% of families would earn above $79,000 per year.
That's enough to give a general picture of what economic conditions are like in the area. People are making general statements and I have given a general response. It doesn't give specifics and, of course, there are always variations in smaller areas.
None of my comments mentioned anything at all about clustering or uniformity of data.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
No, using an average is not a meaningless number if used within the context of the original discussion about wage and salary conditions in So Cal. I can compare Coronado, Ca. where the average family income is approx. $90,000 per year, to Chula Vista where the average family income is approx. $42,000 per year. So the average will set a starting point for the entire range of the curve. But it seems you already understand this.
So let's pull a number out of the air and say one standard deviation is $20,000 (I have no real idea of what it truly is). If it were $20,000, then 68% of the families in the county would earn between $39,000 and $79,000 per year. That means that roughly 16% of families would earn above $79,000 per year.
That's enough to give a general picture of what economic conditions are like in the area. People are making general statements and I have given a general response. It doesn't give specifics and, of course, there are always variations in smaller areas.
None of my comments mentioned anything at all about clustering or uniformity of data.
What began this whole discussion is that you claimed the average salary for San Diego county was 65K.
You then proceeded to conclude that everyone made close to 65K because of the bell curve. Now you pick
a random value of 20K and assume it is the standard deviation (again you have no basis for picking the
number which could actually be closer to 50K).
If you didn't mention anything about clustering, why did you mention the bell curve and then proceed to
imply that most of the values were close (clustering) to the average ?
My point was and still is that the average tells you nothing and any made up numbers you pick will not tell
you anything either.
Cd manufacturing. Which Sony does in house but they will charge Sigil for.
Cost of servers, the cost they pay Sony to run the servers
The cost of the customer service people,
The cost and salary of every sigil employees
The cost of the the building they are leasing + electricity + water +janitorial staff and house keeping
The big wig salaries and the cost of viral marketers .
32million dollars A year doesn't look so big. Then Factor in the unfinished prodct that is seeing lack luster reviews across a wide area of top reviewing outlets. This could very well be the biggest failure since Water World. Unlike Kevin Cosner, Sigil will not beable to make a come back , because this ain't the movies.
who me ?
Dude.. really.. read again. I did calcuted all that. I didn't use 50 dollar but 10 dollar profit for every CD sold. I didn't use the 15 dollar a month but only 30% of it because the servers have to be paid etc. Really, read again please and not only the last 2 lines
But what I did wrong is I used 150.000 subscribers, it seems there are 150.000 registerd users which is something else
who me ?
The hemmoraging will only worsen as 2007 continues and other titles that are much more polished and fun are released. That will begin with LOTRO later this month, and will continue as the year progresses with titles like AoC, WAR. Sure, LOTRO may not grab many diehard VG fans from the game, but it stop others from trying VG, and on a net/net basis, that is the same effect. As for the folks who are already subbed to VG, there's only so long that people will put up with the messy game that VG is -- after a point, only the diehard fanbois and masochists will remain, and the game will be relying on its inclusion in the Station Pass program as its lifeline.
Especially since by mid January they announced it was going live the end of the month... Thats when I uninstalled the 20 gig pig of a game... I think they screwed up by making the world too vast and seamless.. Now I'm all for vastness and seamless but there was two major problems I found with it in VG. First, the world was pretty damn empty.. and when you crossed into a new chunk or zone, you still ended up loading for 15-20 seconds (the hitching effect).. It would of been a way better game had they reduced the size and concentrated more on filling in the emptiness.
Going from swg, to eq2 I was displeased with the constant loading from zone to zone.. But after playing Vanguard I now know why they did it that way.. It severely reduced lag and hitching was an unknown term because it wasn't there. VG would of been way better off making starter towns for each race, the making players load into an area around the town that had levels 1-10 quests and content, then off of that zone have another loading point into another area which had 10-20 content (accesible by all races) etc and so on up to 50..
It would of been a much more set pathed game (like eq2) and hand holding through the levels, but would of been way better for forming group hunts and made socializing and group forming quicker..
I recently been checking out WoW and I noticed striking similarities with the VG interface,loot windows and overall game in the early levels except WoW seemed to have smaller confined areas (so noobs couldn't get lost), and basically told me which direction to head in for quests 10-20.. Both games however played exactly the same as far as combat goes.. You get a few spells and cast them when the timers come around again.. As you progress you gain more spells and abilities lol.. Same old same old .. Except one minor difference, WoW was way to refined compared to VG. Which no doubt severely hurt them..
Suffice it to say though, I hated WoW's gameplay and since I seen so much similarities in VG, I just found it kind of funny that Brad tried to rip shit directly from blizzard.. Maybe it was original eq1 stuff he was ripping back? IDK because I never played eq1.. VG was claiming they had a next GEN MMO.. It was the furthest thing from next gen.. It was basically a SWG landscape in a fantasy setting with WoW UI and combat, but loaded with bugs, exploits and corpse runs.. There may have been slight variances in the combat from wow to VG but it looked and felt pretty damn similar to me, with VG leaning more towards a semi-hardcore crowd willing to beta test on live servers and put up with a ton of broken features and missing features.
When they announced the end of January launch and when I saw what they were charging players for the boxed client, I knew right there and then this was a basic snatch and grab.. I think Brad screwed up big time.. I read his official forum bio once and it said something to the effect of him not wanting to see anymore 30 million dollar failures.. lol.. How ironic eh? Poor guy, I do feel sorry for him though.. His names basically ruined, and I doubt he will be in on any other mmo games in the future.. Unless he bank rolls it himself, which I doubt he can afford.
I'm not really a huge fan of level progression games, but I have to put up with them since every mmo maker is scared to do something new in the industry. Raph koster was right when he said WoW set the industry back 10 years.. Because now everyone is scared to innovate new ideas and creativity goes right out the window. I think the true next GEN mmo's will have no levels and be rich with content, quests, items and armor.. I truely think people are tired of level grind games and want end game content from the word go.. I also think theres a strong market for people who just want to raid high end named bosses (eq2 raiding), and seek out new abilities, spells, have really complex crafting systems and real world economics in games.. As a gamer I'd rather spend my time in a game doing other things than grinding to max level. Typically these companies set up massive time sinks before you reach max level, and by the time the average gamer gets there, and sees that his content is to either raid, pvp or craft, they most likely do those things for a few months then look for another game to do the exact same thing in all over again. The question is why though? They leave for other games because the end game is not interesting enough for them to be bothered with it. Had more time and energy gone into making the end game, endless.. Maybe they would still be pursuing that exceptional or fabled loot.. Maybe there a crafter waiting for a combatant to bring them some exceptional hides to make rare armor.. or maybe an exceptional dragon tooth to make some type of rareity..
My vision for a great MMO game would be to have everyone log into a game and just start gathering items, resources and questing for gear, new spells and working up proficiency with a certain weapon type.. Don't like the weapon your using? Pick up another weapon and have a go at it... If your using an axe, your classed as an axe men who seeks out gear specific to your class. You wanna be a mage? Start using that starter staff and looking for new spells .. The game would be just an endless grind for gear, but not really a grind lol.. I don't know, I'm digressing here pretty much and will end it here..
I doubt anyone will read this crap anyways, on page 15 or whatever it is now...
ROFL, I'd rather play a working "fluff" mmo, than a buggy, unstable one like Vangarbage. Let's face it, if Vangarbage follows the same SOE trends as SWG, it will be a Medieval FPS by July. Its already on the right track. At least LotRo is what it advertises itself to be and not some pathetic joke that was aimed at one group of gamers and then when SOE realised they weren't stupid enough to stick around and fund that disaster, they pull a complete 180 and try to sucker the more casual player. Typical SOE tactics.
Haha, I can't believe you're comparing VG to WoW.
Lets be serious, WoW out sold VG in it's first month and people kept buying it. Do you see anything remotely like that happening with VG? Nope.
http://www.greycouncil.org/
... I was really looking forward to Vanguard.
... I have played DaoC, SWG, EvE, EQ2, WoW and DnL which were great fun.
... I wanted Vanguard because of the FUN of challenge
... I left Vanguard because of the challenge.
... I'm going for LotRO now.
... Vanguard has lost a customer.
That is roughly how about 80% of my gaming friends acted after VG released. No overall comparing to WoW or anything else. Vanguard is - plain and simple - not a good game. It makes complexity painful, it redefines the term "hardware hungry", it lacks lore and living world.... Overall, it makes many mistakes, even if it is to a smaller extent, that broke Dark and Lights Neck, huge world, big plans,
40% finished, 20% playable, 5% fun...
What remains are the hardcore-hard-core guys that play freelance pirat in EvE, the hardcore mode in D2 or grinded Jedi in SWG... you guys will never be representative.
for the usual gamer, the guy that leads a normal MMOG-life as a hobby, this game has just wasted its chance to get subs...
Meridion
Many games had a worse launch and survived. IE... Anarchy Online. It was in much worse shape than VG at launch, and here six years after, it's still around... has a good player base and is a great game. Don't agree? Well the successes of AO has funded the development of Age of Conan… both as a revenue maker and an example of game making that has secured FunCom funding from new sources. VG isn’t as bad as many here would have you believe. Take graphics for example... VG models have a high polygon count that stress today’s machines, where as LOTR has lower poly models with great textures. LOTR is as good looking as it will ever get... VG on the other hand has much room for improvement because the models are already complex and textures are easier to redo. Hence three years from now LOTR will look old and VG can and probably will look outstanding. Also because it is not based on very narrowly defined lore, VG can go any way the devs want to take it without fear of crossing the line of some franchise. While it was launched unfinished the dev team is working very hard to fix this... An example is game performance which has improved significantly recently. If you haven’t played since launch, you would be surprised.
You are correct about AO - one thing you have to take into account is that game was and is VERY unique, its genre, its character progression its endless ability to customize your character etc. Very innovative for its time - and quite advanced in everything but graphics.
There is no way you can compare AO to the craptastic lack-luster VG set of *me-too*
FUNCOM - putting the FUN in disFUNctional !
No, using an average is not a meaningless number if used within the context of the original discussion about wage and salary conditions in So Cal. I can compare Coronado, Ca. where the average family income is approx. $90,000 per year, to Chula Vista where the average family income is approx. $42,000 per year. So the average will set a starting point for the entire range of the curve. But it seems you already understand this.
So let's pull a number out of the air and say one standard deviation is $20,000 (I have no real idea of what it truly is). If it were $20,000, then 68% of the families in the county would earn between $39,000 and $79,000 per year. That means that roughly 16% of families would earn above $79,000 per year.
That's enough to give a general picture of what economic conditions are like in the area. People are making general statements and I have given a general response. It doesn't give specifics and, of course, there are always variations in smaller areas.
None of my comments mentioned anything at all about clustering or uniformity of data.
What began this whole discussion is that you claimed the average salary for San Diego county was 65K.
You then proceeded to conclude that everyone made close to 65K because of the bell curve. Now you pick
a random value of 20K and assume it is the standard deviation (again you have no basis for picking the
number which could actually be closer to 50K).
If you didn't mention anything about clustering, why did you mention the bell curve and then proceed to
imply that most of the values were close (clustering) to the average ?
My point was and still is that the average tells you nothing and any made up numbers you pick will not tell
you anything either.
Well, I've presented accurate real world numbers, with real world relevance, using scientifically sound methods. Until someone can present more valid numbers, proving me wrong, I'll continue to believe that I am right. I'm just vain like that.
Simply trying to pick at semantics and trying to twist the meanings of examples has not shown my information wrong.
As I'm not going to waste more time arguing just to argue, I think I'll spend my time with more interesting posts.
- How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
- I don't know, but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?
Yes Vanguard is a poor game and is hemoraging subscribers. Yes, the people who invested in it are nervous. Yes you can expect the number of servers to start to drop.
But the game won't be declared dead any time soon.
I was in both VG and Lotr beta's all around the end of December.. After I got in Lotr, I felt no need to even test Vanguard anymore, since they were 3 weeks from launching as well.. One thing that turned me off about Lotr was I couldn't experience the entire world.. I would of liked to been able to goto Rohan as a starter city or play as a troll or evil class and start in Mordor etc... That pretty much turned me off, and the combat did seem to get boring fast.. About 3 weeks into beta I stopped playing.. just got bored quickly..
There was also a severe lack of classes as well, and I didn't feel they put much emphasis on group dynamics.. You know the old healer/tank/dps dynamic.. As much as I hated it in eq2, I seemed to miss it in Lotr.. Maybe it was not a requirement pre lvl 20? I only went up to about lvl 18 on a hunter.. Made a champion to lvl 10 as well.. The dwarf models seemed clunky too.. and I was not impressed that as a certain race, I couldn't play a certain class.. Maybe that because they were following tolkien lore? I don't know.. I'm not much into the Lotr lore..
It's probably a good thing they didn't implement the healer/tank/dps paradigm because it provides players with a lot more flexibility while forming a group... It will probably be very successful just for that fact.. Besides when gimli, aragon and that prancy elf guy were trekking across the country side as a party/group.. I don't think any of them were classed as healers.. and they survived till the end.
Lotr should do well in subs till the summer when Gods and hero's releases.. Then the people like me who aren't really into LOTR lore will most likely jump ships into something with more exciting combat and physics engine. But again, thats another game with a severe lack of class options.. We'll have to see..
Comparing VG and LOTRO isn't really a fair comparison, though - but eh.
Here's what I've noticed so far (I'm in the pre-order founder beta of LOTRO right now)
Vanguard / LOTRO
Vanguard is in their 3rd month of "Live"
LOTRO is in a pre-open-beta.
Graphics :
On the highest graphic settings, both games are beautiful.
On the highest graphic settings, Vanguard looks nicer.
The problem is, that most computers can't play VG on the highest settings, or even 'high'.
Playing VG on balanced (or lower) vs. playing LOTRO on the highest quality (with no lag?) = LOTRO has better graphics. In that sense, absolutely, I would say "At a playable graphics setting, LOTRO looks nicer." Now for the future, in a year or two when everyone has 4gb of ram, VG will be able to evolve graphically, I think. But for now? At the setting the majority of people can play at, LOTRO is better graphically.
Stability :
- Vanguard crashes for no reason at random times ( I have 3 computers with various specs, all of which blow away the recommended requirements, and I still get sporadic crashing).
Vanguard gets memory leak and crashes if you zone around too much.
Certain chunk lines have a pretty good chance to crash you to the desktop (Magi Hold anyone?)
Staying online for more than a few hours requires a restart.
- LOTRO I've had crash once and only once, despite 14-hours-on-constantly, and that was when I went to sleep and left myself at the login screen, the next morning the game was closed
I've never crashed while zoning and I can even play it on the highest settings on an older laptop without any problems at my office. (1gb/ram, 256mb/graphics card 2.0ghz/processor).
OF course, these things aren't the only things that make a game. But they are important when someone is making a decision. I think VG has a lot more complexity - at least at this time - but after all, you have to consider the first thing I said VG is a 'released' game, and LOTRO is still in beta.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...