The reason that EQ worked as well as it did back then is because it was really the first game of its kind. Sure, you had Meridian 59 and Ultima Online before then, but those games weren't in the same league as EQ. It was a novelty, simply because it was a new game type. For most people, it was the first experience that they would have with the MMO genre. In addition, it had no real competition, which is one of the primary reasons that it achieved the success that it did. After 2nd generation MMO's like EQ2 and WoW came out, and they stripped out all the tedium and BS that EQ had, most people breathed a sigh of relief and wondered how the hell they ever liked EQ1 so much to begin with.
I agree with many things in your statements part from one thing, Ultima Online isnt the same game as EQ or any other game that has followed ...Ultima Online is a sandbox gameworld that hasnt been made or copied (many have tried)..But your right (somewhat) It isnt in the same leage because UO was a world and EQ wasnt really a world it was just small zones puzzled together ...And furthermore It wasnt really anything else than a attemt to copy D&D
The biggest reason EQ was so popular back then was the "big 3D" game revolotion when everything where starting to become 3D...anyway UO was almost as big as EQ it just surpassed it by margin..So NO it wasnt that much bigger or greater..However it was the first MMO that introduced 3D..But as a roleplaying game I would defenatly say that EQ was way out of league(as you put it)..And It was also popular due to the reason above..It was very alike the D&D system.
So...No EQ wasnt that great..It was mostly tedious..But it was also suffering from beiing the "one of its kind"(Part from M59 and AC)..So how could it NOT draw people to the game like flies ?
1. Back then "people wasnt used to this" It would have been a success in any form, just on these 2 grounds,
3D,
Massive Online enviorment, people could actually play and see more than 10 people online at same time.
For me back then It was like playing in a Sci-fi dream, I was simply so impressed..So mainly due to this EQ was successful..but as an RPG it wasnt that impressive..
In regards to EQ, I would not confidently state that people enjoyed the following frustrating aspects (in the late 90s and very early 00s, they were less frustrating for many reasons):
(1) corpse runs (as discussed)
(2) harsh death penalty
(3) forced grouping (come on, SIGIL, this is 2007 and people want to solo in a meaningful and fun way)
--
I was considering making a post on the things we like about Vanguard since we discuss the things we hate (performance, bugs, forced-grouping, forced-questing, etc.)
I almost have to wonder if you were playing a different EQ than me.
Originally posted by SDFrost
I think part of what made EQ so immersive was the fact that there was almost no background music. I know, that sounds stupid at first, but think about it. All you hear is ambient sound, just your surroundings. Hearing background music makes you more aware that you're playing a game. It stops you from getting lost in the feel of exploring a world.
I remember background music in EQ. It was a long time ago but I definately remember it. Maybe like someone else said it only played for a little while but I know it was there.
EQ's 3rd person cameras were a nightmare to say the least. Not sure about others, but I played in first person because of this. Again, that made it feel more like actually being in your character's shoes (I played an Iksar so I didnt really wear shoes, but you know what I mean).
Huh? What was so terrible about EQ's 3rd person view? It was adjustable. I didn't have any problem with it. I played the game almost exclusively in 3rd person for the three or four years that I played it.
There was a more dynamic skill learning system than most games these days have. Not everyone of the same class/lvl necessarily had the exact same set of abilities since many had to be quested for, or bought from a particular merchant that may not have been easy to get to. This made the characters feel less cookie-cutter than many of todays MMO's.
Again...huh? This really makes me think we were playing different games. Everyone of the same class had the same abilities and spells. Ok, maybe you had to go to the other side of the world to buy a new spell. But it's not like anyone was unable to do that. In EQ the classes were about as cookie cutter as they could possible be.
Choosing a race had more than just a cosmetic affect on your character. Each race had noticable advantages and disadvantages over others, which added more uniquity to your character.
Well, ok...in the early days that was true. But mostly just because of starting stats. And later on there was so much insane stat bonuses on equipment that the racial stats became almost meaningless.
Speaking of uniquity, the ability to dye your equipment was an awesome way to avoid running into as many dopplegangers of yourself that you find nowadays.
I don't remember that every being a big thing in EQ. I can honestly say that I can't remember one single person who had dyed equipment.
Leveling wasn't linear. There were a multitude of areas you could go to to lvl up at any given lvl range, whereas in today's MMO's you're lucky if there's more than 1.
Yeah, there were different places you could go but it was still linear. It was still ladder climbing and once you outleveled an area you were done with it for the most part.
Then there was faction. You had to be careful where you treaded and who you killed, and gaining one group's trust usually meant another would want you dead. Even within cities there were multiple factions. Straying into the wrong part of town meant getting your ass handed to you back then, this I know for sure....did I mention I played an Iksar?
Heh, I do have some fond memories of faction agro so I won't argue with this one.
I wonder when you started playing EQ. Maybe that's why it sounds like you're describing a different game. I started in late 1999 and I was pretty much done with the game by the time the Luclin expansion came out. I lingered for a while messing with low to mid level alts but luclin marked the begining of the time when I stopped being "into" EQ so much.
Put me down on the side of those who say "no", EQ 1.1 would not succeed today. I never played the original, but I did play DAOC which still had some of the hardcore grinding mentality about it. When newer games like WOW came out, I was thrilled to find they had removed much of the tedious, time sink aspects that DAOC had. (It no longer does, they've changed the game completely)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I would like to tell you the lore and stories are there, and they are revealed as you do the diplomacy stuff, the diplomacy stories tell of all different snippets of the land as to why some races are where they are and information about the great destruction that had happened, please read the storied while you do diplomacy that gives you a good backdrop as to what , why and where all is going on in the game.
Originally posted by salenger
yeah all that your talking about in your post is in Vanguard, seriously it is. Only problem with Vanguard are its PVP servers ATM, if your not on either of those your playing a great game. AS for people Saying Vanguard wont offer RPG fans anything i correct that with it wont give people not interested in RP, lore and Content styled MMO's anything to enjoy. People who are into this and not just ACtion will definately love this game and IMO once most bugs are fixed this game should be rated higher than City of Heroes/Villains (its on the top five when 90% of mmorpg members are under the age of 18). anyways dont know how i began to rant again oh wait i remember lol im on MMORPG. Try Vanguard.
IMO, Vanguard brings the EQ feel of adventure, without the penalty for death, grind for XP type of gameplay.
There is more penalty for death in VG than games like WoW, and the levels are harder, but not anywhere near the level of EQ, and the penalty for death isn't a penalty at all if you walk back to your tombstone.
Also I would like to say that the reason EQ and UO were so amazing was because, at least for me, I didn't care about leveling.
It wasn't about leveling up, so there wasn't a such thing as grinding. You didn't focus on levels, but on fun and adventure.
I remember going through Qeynos Hills, conquering Black Burrow, exploring the barbarian icelands, and camping the outsides of Unrest.
I play EQ for 2 years and never had a single character past lvl 19.
Why? Because I didn't care about leveling, I cared bout fun, adventure, exploring, and having a good time.
IMO, the casual gamer doesn't care about lore, adventure, or fun. All they care about is grinding to the next level. If that's your thing, don't play Vanguard, play LOTR or WoW. Vanguard is about adventure, not grinding leveling number crunching.
When you go from having a fun adventure and exploring dungeons to crunching numbers and grinding mobs, you've lost the point of a RPG.
IMO, the casual gamer doesn't care about lore, adventure, or fun. All they care about is grinding to the next level. If that's your thing, don't play Vanguard, play LOTR or WoW. Vanguard is about adventure, not grinding leveling number crunching.
Actually, you've got it backwards. The casual player doesn't care about crunching numbers, or trying to min/max everything, or about having the top end raiding gear that you can only get by spending days or weeks (or, in the case of the original EQ-- months) raiding the same areas or mobs.
I'm a casual player. I did the whole EQ grind --raids and all-- for over three years. I'll never go back to a game that is that tedious. Ever.
These days, I play both CoH/CoV and World of Warcraft. To give an idea of just how casual a player I am now, my highest character in WoW is 29, and I created her when The Burning Crusade launched almost three months ago. And in the three years I've been playing CoH/CoV, I've only got two characters at max level. I'm never in a rush to hit the top levels. I enjoy playing the games, exploring the world, reading the backstories and the lore, and just having fun.
Even in the LOTR Online beta, I don't see the need to rush through anything. My boyfriend and I bought pre-order copies of the game yesterday just to see what the fuss was about, though we probably won't end up subscribing.
LOTR's very pretty, stable, playable, and above all, the starting quests, while linear (which I suspect is because they wanted a newbie experience that was accessible to anyone, even if they'd never played an MMO before, but I digress), are also involving. You can see hints of the larger story at work while you're making your own way around Middle Earth. It's neat.
When you go from having a fun adventure and exploring dungeons to crunching numbers and grinding mobs, you've lost the point of a RPG.
Exactly. But it's not the casual players who fall victim to that. That tends to come from the other, more hardcore side.
Also I would like to say that the reason EQ and UO were so amazing was because, at least for me, I didn't care about leveling. It wasn't about leveling up, so there wasn't a such thing as grinding. You didn't focus on levels, but on fun and adventure. I remember going through Qeynos Hills, conquering Black Burrow, exploring the barbarian icelands, and camping the outsides of Unrest. I play EQ for 2 years and never had a single character past lvl 19. Why? Because I didn't care about leveling, I cared bout fun, adventure, exploring, and having a good time. IMO, the casual gamer doesn't care about lore, adventure, or fun. All they care about is grinding to the next level. If that's your thing, don't play Vanguard, play LOTR or WoW. Vanguard is about adventure, not grinding leveling number crunching. When you go from having a fun adventure and exploring dungeons to crunching numbers and grinding mobs, you've lost the point of a RPG.
The casual gamer doesn't care about lore, adventure and fun? Those are all points that contributed to World of Warcraft's success, so that's incredibly backwards as Lidane already mentioned.
I personally went into WoW for exactly those reasons, Warcraft III happened to be fun, I cared about the lore and how WoW would move the story of Warcraft pass the Frozen Throne, and couldn't resist the prospect of Adventuring the world of Azeroth outside of the constrictive RTS format.
Even without having played past Warcraft games, World of Warcraft is exactly that kind of game to casual players (lore, adventure and fun), and that's exactly it's multi-million subscriber appeal.
Realize what you're saying in reference to Vanguard; "grinding levelling", that's an illness Vanguard suffers whereas World of Warcraft made it easy to level up leisurely and jump into playing alts if you so chose to. So in World of Warcraft, there's no problem with being casual in the respect of stopping to smell the roses, and still accomplish something when it comes to items and leveling.
Keep in mind, it was Sigil that decided to divide what they thought to be the traits of their population up between casual/core/hardcore, and then aim the vast majority of their content towards "core", not "casual". That could be the reason for your mix-up, and definitely the reason Vanguard is suffering low populations now since it banked on an audience of gamers that pretty much don't exist.
It's quite simple, for no reason other than looking at the biggest competitor in the market and how WoW is solely driving all dynamics of the market; the MMO market right now is a casual one, period. Sigil attempted to revive not-so-clever timesinks of the past to directly appeal with the masochistic of old, but that "core" audience is 7-8 years older and even they have grown more casual towards playing MMOs, or quit MMOs all together, and a "core" audience isn't something to replenish, it was finite in the first place. The market could only have one batch of people who knew of 1st generation MMOs and enjoyed them, those numbers don't increase like the casuals who constantly come into the market as first-time MMO gamers.
Anyway, your thinking is kind of divided and wrong towards casuals. Of course they like to have fun and not grinding it out to the next level. Vanguard at the very least is the perfect grind game, you have three highly toted spheres to grind it out with. It's just missing the whole fun and adventuring (with a purpose) aspect for most, and that's why Vanguard doesn't appeal to casuals.
Had Vanguard been a game made for casuals, or even the hardcore, rather than the mythical "core" player, it'd actually have a population worth noting.
At least Sigil is wising up now in revamping all of it's major timesinks (travel times, death penalty, levelling up), and making the game more casual.
Originally posted by Lidane Exactly. But it's not the casual players who fall victim to that. That tends to come from the other, more hardcore side.
I'd argue that the RPG died as soon as they let the internet as a whole join the game, as far back as UO, even.
They really, really, need to drop the RPG part of the moniker, and just go with MMOG, instead. The RP died a nasty death for many while being *azzraped* in UO. For the rest, the bucket was kicked in Greater Feydark, the original Barrens chat.
As for the casual market, there's a fairly good number of people that played EQ pretty hardcore in the day, but no longer have the drive, time, or energy to give their life over to a video game, but still want to do the raiding thing, and so on. WoW really has done a fine job of giving this group what they wanted, I have to say. Conversely, a lot of the original design ideas in VG seemed to be based on the conceit that if they built a better EQ mousetrap, the old crowd will come running back for more cheese.
Future games would be remiss to discount that, aside from the violently vocal minority that view misery as fun, most of the old guard want one of two things. Either EQ++ without all the suck, i.e. WoW, or they've moved past the diku formula altogether, and are looking for something more sandbox-y. Lately, there seems to be a contingent of console jockeys as well, who seem to gravitate towards games like AoC, or Huxley, which are more 'action' oriented. Or so they claim.
For what it's worth, I think LotRO has missed the mark as much as VG originally did, only in the opposite direction.
I really don't understand how some people think, how can they even think about comparing a new company that released there first product with a company that is given us games since 1992. Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is?
Thats the thing just because Sigil made agame which fits in the mmorpg does not main you can compare the two just because of that. There are many factors many of you seem totaly unaware about, Sepher my friend you do speak good things and make sence most of the time though i don't always agree with you , but i would have thought a person like you would have a better understanding in how things work, instead of this casual-core bs i keep reading, sorry man but there is much more then simply pushing a game towards the market , it takes time, experiance and what not, all of which Sigil is still in their baby years, Blizzard is the adult sort of speak and has learned from all the many games they already have made and with this experiance comes a good game. Just because Sigil is the house of a well known developer doesn't make it the best company. Just like every single new started company people need to learn. So does Sigil, but just like we saw with pre-cu SWG people wine and wine are unpatient till they completly revamp a game and then we get more winners cause it was not meant that way by them. All this BS when people like Vanguard they need to be some sort of machochist is really so out of perspective i can hardly beleive that when i see someone writting that. As if we like such style, as if i like grind, i "hate" grind" thats why I seem to enjoy Vanguard as there is hardly something i consider grind. Sure there is grind for those that want it ALL or want to be Uber or start crafting pure because they want to make a boat asap, yeah sure for those type of players its a grind, but for those that just game to have fun will avoid things like grind, you know in fact if people want every single mmorpg can be considered a grind only if you let it be a grind. The same thing can be said that no mmorpg is a grind again only if you let it.
I'd argue that the RPG died as soon as they let the internet as a whole join the game, as far back as UO, even.
They really, really, need to drop the RPG part of the moniker, and just go with MMOG, instead. The RP died a nasty death for many while being *azzraped* in UO. For the rest, the bucket was kicked in Greater Feydark, the original Barrens chat.
That's probably true. It's a far cry from the days of pen & paper or tabletop gaming, that's for sure.
Still, there IS a certain amount of roleplay at work in all of these games. As far as I'm aware, trolls, orcs, goblins, elves, etc. don't exist, nor do Azeroth, Norrath, Telon, or Middle Earth. And there aren't any superheroes flying around in the skies, either.
These games open up fictional worlds and allow people to step outside themselves for a while, relax, and go into a different headspace. It's a nice change of pace, even if it's not nearly as diehard an RPG experience as an old school D&D session.
As for the casual market, there's a fairly good number of people that played EQ pretty hardcore in the day, but no longer have the drive, time, or energy to give their life over to a video game, but still want to do the raiding thing, and so on. WoW really has done a fine job of giving this group what they wanted, I have to say. Conversely, a lot of the original design ideas in VG seemed to be based on the conceit that if they built a better EQ mousetrap, the old crowd will come running back for more cheese.
Yeah. Blizzard really did something right. They went straight for the people who liked EQ, or who were interested in trying it, but who hated even the idea of massive tedium and timesinks, while offering enough for the raiders to be happy with as well. They were also smart enough to place their game in the direct aftermath of the previous Warcraft games, so fans of the series would be interested in adventuring around in the world they'd only seen from a top down RTS perspective before.
As for Sigil, they were completely myopic. I really don't think they understood how things were changing and evolving around them. It's like they deliberately ignored all of the marketing for the games that came out after EQ. Each one highlighted features that were the exact opposite of EverQuest, slowly pulling players away from the game.
Future games would be remiss to discount that, aside from the violently vocal minority that view misery as fun,
Yes, well, those people would be much happier with a game like Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for the DS. In that game, every time you die, you lose all of the items and money you've just looted. It doesn't matter if you're right by the final exit of a dungeon that's taken you several hours to slog through. If you die, you lose it all.
Personally, I don't see the point of masochism in gaming. It's a GAME. I don't want to be miserable when I play. Feh.
most of the old guard want one of two things. Either EQ++ without all the suck, i.e. WoW, or they've moved past the diku formula altogether, and are looking for something more sandbox-y.
Yeah. I can see that.
Lately, there seems to be a contingent of console jockeys as well, who seem to gravitate towards games like AoC, or Huxley, which are more 'action' oriented. Or so they claim.
I'm actually looking forward to AoC, Huxley, and Tabula Rasa, just to see different types of games hitting the market. I think more choices are a good thing. Plus, giving a more action oriented, or non-EQ style game design will be fun. I can't wait to try them out in a beta.
For what it's worth, I think LotRO has missed the mark as much as VG originally did, only in the opposite direction.
I haven't paid any attention to it, really. I signed up for their beta ages ago, then forgot all about it until I got my closed beta invite months ago. Never installed the game, and never played it until these last couple of days.
It's okay, but not earth shattering. However, I can see Tolkien nerds who wouldn't otherwise glance at an MMO wanting to play it. After all, Frodo's journey wasn't the only thing that ever happened in Middle Earth, so it's something that would draw fans of the books in, at least for a while.
I'll say this, though. Any game where my character looks like this by Level 6, and strictly through quest rewards at that, can't be all bad:
I really don't understand how some people think, how can they even think about comparing a new company that released there first product with a company that is given us games since 1992. Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is?
Comparisons are to be expected. Many of the original players (developers and executives) are the same.
They (Brad and company) were riding their previous wave of glory. Look at almost every interview with
Brad and you will see that Everquest followed him wherever he went. Look at Brad's expectations - couched
in terms relating to the success of EQ. For better or worse, BMQ was Mr. Everquest and is now Mr. VSOH.
"Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is"?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It does not matter what it tastes like (Some may prefer vanilla,
others chocolate, and still others cherry). Enough people have to like it to make it economically viable.
I really don't understand how some people think, how can they even think about comparing a new company that released there first product with a company that is given us games since 1992. Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is?
Comparisons are to be expected. Many of the original players (developers and executives) are the same.
They (Brad and company) were riding their previous wave of glory. Look at almost every interview with
Brad and you will see that Everquest followed him wherever he went. Look at Brad's expectations - couched
in terms relating to the success of EQ. For better or worse, BMQ was Mr. Everquest and is now Mr. VSOH.
"Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is"?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It does not matter what it tastes like (Some may prefer vanilla,
others chocolate, and still others cherry). Enough people have to like it to make it economically viable.
The jury is still out on whether VSOH will be economically viable or not.
You may not understand or accept that VSOH will always be compared to EQ1 because of BMQ and its
roots (classes, races, and its attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the original EQ), but the rest of the
world does.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
A)Blizzard may have made a batch of successful single player games, but they were mainly RTS games, also single player with a multiplayer aspect via b.net is a very different beast than an MMO, as I'm sure any of the Blizzard devs will tell you.
B)While Sigil as a company may be in it's infancy, and I think this is the most important part by far, the developers and designers are pretty much all old EQ devs, and as such have at least some MMO experience under their belts. Which makes many of the mistakes they made all the more mind boggling. Because they've been there before and more so than Blizzard, who had no prior MMO experience, should have avoided a good many of the newb mistakes they made during the development of VG.
Originally posted by Lidane I'm actually looking forward to AoC, Huxley, and Tabula Rasa, just to see different types of games hitting the market. I think more choices are a good thing. Plus, giving a more action oriented, or non-EQ style game design will be fun. I can't wait to try them out in a beta.
Actually, I'm waiting on my beta invites for Tabula Rasa, and Huxley as well. AoC... I just don't have a lot of faith in Funcom. That, and given the graphics, I think it's gonna suffer from performance issues on a good many machines.
I agree, some new gameplay ideas are a much needed thing, but I'll settle for a non-fantasy setting, even though I plan on checking out WAR. At least till CCP starts releasing info on their WoD MMO. Or someone makes a cyberpunk MMO a la Shadowrun.
No doubt the hardcore community falls victim to number grunching and grinding, as well as rushing through quests, in my experience, which is a lot, it is also the casual gamer who rushes and number grunches just as much.
Casual Gamer means someone who doesn't play very much. Plays casually.
Hardcore Gamer means someone who plays A LOT.
Both of these fall victim to the boredom that is MMO's.
The thing is, hardcores are a very small community, and thus don't affect the game as nearly as much as casual players, who make up the majority of MMO's, are.
I played WoW, LOTR, DDO, DAoC, VG, and every other MMO on the face of the earth. Every single one of these has the MAJORITY of players rushing through dungeons, quests, lore, and number crunching and grinding. You cannot tell me that I just happen to meet every single one of the 1% of hardcore gamers and never a casual player. Quite the contrary, the casual player makes up the majority of the population right? Well then, they are the problem.
I don't care if you're casual, core, or hardcore. Your playtime doesn't matter. What matters is if you number crunch, rush, and grind or not. If you don't, HURRAY! If you do, I wish you didn't play on my server.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Absolutely not. If Brad was stuck in 1992, then VG would have become what all the hardcore fanatics wanted it to be.
The thing is, hardcores are a very small community, and thus don't affect the game as nearly as much as casual players, who make up the majority of MMO's, are.
Heh. That's really funny,considering that the loudest guilds in games like EverQuest demanding changes to this, that, or the other, and providing huge, mind-numbing spreadsheets of numbers weren't the casual guilds. They were the hardcore raiding guilds who played all the time, and who rushed through the rest of the game to get to the high levels.
That still holds true today. The hardcore, pre-PoP EQ uber-masochists might be in the minority now due to market share, but I can promise you that they more than make up for their minority status with a majority of the whining and demands on the devs of a game.
Just look at Vanguard-- any proposed design that wasn't insanely sadistic (i.e., a less harsh death penalty, putting maps in the game at all, etc.) was decried as "dumbing down" or "spoonfeeding" the game, and those people are still bitching now as Sigil continues to tweak their game mechanic in order to try and correct the mistake they made of listening to these people in the first place.
Those masochistic players are also the first to squeal like stuck pigs when anything is made even remotely palatable for a more casual audience.
I played WoW, LOTR, DDO, DAoC, VG, and every other MMO on the face of the earth.
Every single one? I find that hard to believe, sorry.
Every single one of these has the MAJORITY of players rushing through dungeons, quests, lore, and number crunching and grinding. You cannot tell me that I just happen to meet every single one of the 1% of hardcore gamers and never a casual player. Quite the contrary, the casual player makes up the majority of the population right? Well then, they are the problem.
Uh...what? You're conflating casual and hardcore. They're not the same thing.
The people rushing through the game to get to the highest levels so they can raid, and who also do the min/maxing and the number crunching? Those are the HARDCORE players, not the casual ones. The casual ones are the people who log in for 2-3 hours a day to hang out with their friends and do a few quests, then log off.
I don't care if you're casual, core, or hardcore. Your playtime doesn't matter. What matters is if you number crunch, rush, and grind or not. If you don't, HURRAY! If you do, I wish you didn't play on my server.
Again-- the number crunching, rushing, and grinding to max level as quickly as possible are the hardcore players, not the causal ones.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Absolutely not. If Brad was stuck in 1992, then VG would have become what all the hardcore fanatics wanted it to be.
AND THERE WOULDN'T BE A MINI-MAP!!!!
But it WAS what the hardcore people wanted - death penalties, corpse runs with multiple sets of
armor, strongly encouraged grouping, lots of intended raiding, etc. Just because it has been
toned down a bit, doesn't mean it was never there or intended. As for the mini-map, it could have
been a bone thrown to the casuals. The minimap hardly makes the game casual friendly.
I really don't understand how some people think, how can they even think about comparing a new company that released there first product with a company that is given us games since 1992. Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is?
That's a problem that Sigil has had to deal with, and will continue to deal with.
No one told Sigil to take a 30 million dollar budget and attempt to release a blockbuster with no established intellectual property, and no established track record as a company.
It's not like Turbine, Mythic and Funcom bought intellectual properties for the hell of it for their MMOs releasing this year, and it's not like Blizzard was wrong for using the momentum of it's Warcraft property and Mythic for pushing Warhammer with the RvR concept established by it's previous game.
Sigil had an angle with "I helped make EQ!", but obviously it wasn't strong enough or meaningful enough to have the same impact as other established methods in the MMO genre.
If Sigil had taken just a small bit of that budget, and first released a muuuch less ambitious MMO 2-3 years ago, they could've already had a collective experience of releasing an MMO, and an established track record.
Sigil being a brand new company and releasing their first product is their own doing. It's not like Richard Garriott created Destination Games after he left EA/Origin, started releasing internet propaganda about how he was going to create the spiritual successor to UO, then blew a huge budget on a too early released Tabula Rasa.
No, Garriott for instance took his time and established a relationship with NCSoft, became synonymous with the company's North America identity, oversaw the publisher's releases here and ended up with a development schedule for Tabula Rasa unmarred by publisher switches and financial shortages.
There's really no reason to have sympathy for Brad and Sigil when it comes to that obstacle of competing with existing strong companies. They should've just made themselves stronger before stepping onto the court.
Originally posted by Reklaw Thats the thing just because Sigil made agame which fits in the mmorpg does not main you can compare the two just because of that.
Why not? Wasn't the very first line in Brad's "Introduction to Vanguard" post on the old official forums a bulleted note about the differences between Vanguard and WoW?
We compare Vanguard to other MMOs like WoW because well...Sigil did so themselves. That whole "second-largest budget" thing and all...they've always attempted to poise Vanguard as mainstream and worthy of competition. Just because they're competing badly now doesn't mean the comparisons need to stop. Heck, it's the only way the game is going to get better.
Originally posted by Reklaw
Sepher my friend you do speak good things and make sence most of the time though i don't always agree with you , but i would have thought a person like you would have a better understanding in how things work, instead of this casual-core bs i keep reading, sorry man but there is much more then simply pushing a game towards the market , it takes time, experiance and what not, all of which Sigil is still in their baby years
That "casual-core bs" is of Sigil's creation, not my own.
I was just pointing out Sigil's way of thinking, they aimed for a "core" audience which obviously doesn't exist, or obviously didn't like the game too much. Thus, Sigil is now redirecting the game towards the "casual" crowd.
I'm not saying the market is as simple as a handful of different types of gamers, I'm just saying Sigil themselves divided the market up into three different types, and using their definition, they purposefully didn't aim for the "casuals" who apparently like World of Warcraft style of games since half the market does belong to World of Warcraft afterall.
It isn't from a lack of experience that Sigil didn't aim correctly...they purposefully rolled the dice. More important than anything was their desire to make a game the way they wanted to make it. Sigil felt they put in enough safety precautions in-line with market trends (solo content, mini-map, WoW-esque UI and corpse summoning for instance) to ensure 500k+ subscribers, but obviously they didn't.
As far as I can tell, Sigil wanted to change market dynamics set by WoW by deeming it all "easy", something you grow "tired" of and not as "deep" as Vanguard. Even now Brad is banking upon Vanguard's imminent success when "people get tired of BC".
It isn't that Sigil doesn't understand the market from lack of experience, they just suffered from way too much bravado in thinking they could sway even a significant portion of it. Obviously, Brad is still suffering from some of that bravado still, even though he's changing his tune on a lot lately.
Originally posted by Reklaw
Blizzard is the adult sort of speak and has learned from all the many games they already have made and with this experiance comes a good game. Just because Sigil is the house of a well known developer doesn't make it the best company. Just like every single new started company people need to learn.
As already mentioned, it was Sigil's doing in attempting to compete with the big boys without ever having swung a bat. No sympathy there, because there's plenty of examples of companies that have done it right; besides the Destination Games/Garriot example, how about the ex-Blizzard developers from ArenaNet who started with Guild Wars? Should they have started with the ambitious persistent world of Guild Wars 2? No, and Sigil shouldn't have taken so much money just to create a project they knew (and encouraged for a time) everyone would call Everquest III.
You learn to walk by crawling first. It's Sigil fault if they stood up, sprinted and fell on their face when they knew better not to.
Originally posted by Reklaw
So does Sigil, but just like we saw with pre-cu SWG people wine and wine are unpatient till they completly revamp a game and then we get more winners cause it was not meant that way by them.
As much as folks would probably like to believe their whining, or sole suggestions are the reasons games change...it isn't true. These games change based upon market changes and the "churn" of things as Brad likes to call it.
It isn't the whiner who's threatening to quit that gets these games to change, it's the silent majority who move in legions to World of Warcraft for very evident reasons.
Originally posted by Reklaw
All this BS when people like Vanguard they need to be some sort of machochist is really so out of perspective i can hardly beleive that when i see someone writting that. As if we like such style, as if i like grind, i "hate" grind" thats why I seem to enjoy Vanguard as there is hardly something i consider grind. Sure there is grind for those that want it ALL or want to be Uber or start crafting pure because they want to make a boat asap, yeah sure for those type of players its a grind, but for those that just game to have fun will avoid things like grind, you know in fact if people want every single mmorpg can be considered a grind only if you let it be a grind. The same thing can be said that no mmorpg is a grind again only if you let it.
Let's just agree that "grind" is bad, and it's opposite, "fun", is good.
Let's also agree that arguing over whether Vanguard is a grind or World of Warcraft is more of a grind is futile since everyone has their own opinions.
To make things simple, let's just agree that the majority decide what's "good", and what's "bad". With that in mind, Vanguard is probably a grind and less fun than World of Warcraft. So if World of Warcraft's design methodology is the key to "fun" and less "grind", well it's no wonder that it's mimicked eh?
The concept of "grind" isn't one to be treated so frivolous. Excusing it as "all MMOs have a grind" is only creating a reason as to why anyone would be befuddled about why World of Warcraft is so popular while other MMOs of similar surface appearance can go belly-up.
It may work for you to not "let" Vanguard become a grind, but that doesn't work for everyone. A game is either mostly a grind or not. I believe you can MAKE a game a grind by purposefully engaging in repetitive activity, but I don't believe in the opposite of dodging grind whenever the game throws it at you.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Absolutely not. If Brad was stuck in 1992, then VG would have become what all the hardcore fanatics wanted it to be.
AND THERE WOULDN'T BE A MINI-MAP!!!!
But it WAS what the hardcore people wanted - death penalties, corpse runs with multiple sets of
armor, strongly encouraged grouping, lots of intended raiding, etc. Just because it has been
toned down a bit, doesn't mean it was never there or intended. As for the mini-map, it could have
been a bone thrown to the casuals. The minimap hardly makes the game casual friendly.
Half-heartedly though, Breech. Vanguard is group-centric with solo content, dungeon-filled with quest-driven gameplay, corpse runs with altar summoning, a vast world with a mini-map, meaningful levelling with double experience weekends, etc.
It's a pretty bi-polar game, and it's difficult to take it's "hardcore" components as just that when they're purely optional.
I actually think Vanguard would've done better if it went strictly hardcore. At least then you'd know exactly who the intended audie, and they'd know too.
Comments
I agree with many things in your statements part from one thing, Ultima Online isnt the same game as EQ or any other game that has followed ...Ultima Online is a sandbox gameworld that hasnt been made or copied (many have tried)..But your right (somewhat) It isnt in the same leage because UO was a world and EQ wasnt really a world it was just small zones puzzled together ...And furthermore It wasnt really anything else than a attemt to copy D&D
The biggest reason EQ was so popular back then was the "big 3D" game revolotion when everything where starting to become 3D...anyway UO was almost as big as EQ it just surpassed it by margin..So NO it wasnt that much bigger or greater..However it was the first MMO that introduced 3D..But as a roleplaying game I would defenatly say that EQ was way out of league(as you put it)..And It was also popular due to the reason above..It was very alike the D&D system.
So...No EQ wasnt that great..It was mostly tedious..But it was also suffering from beiing the "one of its kind"(Part from M59 and AC)..So how could it NOT draw people to the game like flies ?
1. Back then "people wasnt used to this" It would have been a success in any form, just on these 2 grounds,
3D,
Massive Online enviorment, people could actually play and see more than 10 people online at same time.
For me back then It was like playing in a Sci-fi dream, I was simply so impressed..So mainly due to this EQ was successful..but as an RPG it wasnt that impressive..
/thark
I really enjoy this conversation.
In regards to EQ, I would not confidently state that people enjoyed the following frustrating aspects (in the late 90s and very early 00s, they were less frustrating for many reasons):
(1) corpse runs (as discussed)
(2) harsh death penalty
(3) forced grouping (come on, SIGIL, this is 2007 and people want to solo in a meaningful and fun way)
--
I was considering making a post on the things we like about Vanguard since we discuss the things we hate (performance, bugs, forced-grouping, forced-questing, etc.)
--
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
playing eq2 and two worlds
IMO, Vanguard brings the EQ feel of adventure, without the penalty for death, grind for XP type of gameplay.
There is more penalty for death in VG than games like WoW, and the levels are harder, but not anywhere near the level of EQ, and the penalty for death isn't a penalty at all if you walk back to your tombstone.
EQ without the frustration.
Also I would like to say that the reason EQ and UO were so amazing was because, at least for me, I didn't care about leveling.
It wasn't about leveling up, so there wasn't a such thing as grinding. You didn't focus on levels, but on fun and adventure.
I remember going through Qeynos Hills, conquering Black Burrow, exploring the barbarian icelands, and camping the outsides of Unrest.
I play EQ for 2 years and never had a single character past lvl 19.
Why? Because I didn't care about leveling, I cared bout fun, adventure, exploring, and having a good time.
IMO, the casual gamer doesn't care about lore, adventure, or fun. All they care about is grinding to the next level. If that's your thing, don't play Vanguard, play LOTR or WoW. Vanguard is about adventure, not grinding leveling number crunching.
When you go from having a fun adventure and exploring dungeons to crunching numbers and grinding mobs, you've lost the point of a RPG.
Actually, you've got it backwards. The casual player doesn't care about crunching numbers, or trying to min/max everything, or about having the top end raiding gear that you can only get by spending days or weeks (or, in the case of the original EQ-- months) raiding the same areas or mobs.
I'm a casual player. I did the whole EQ grind --raids and all-- for over three years. I'll never go back to a game that is that tedious. Ever.
These days, I play both CoH/CoV and World of Warcraft. To give an idea of just how casual a player I am now, my highest character in WoW is 29, and I created her when The Burning Crusade launched almost three months ago. And in the three years I've been playing CoH/CoV, I've only got two characters at max level. I'm never in a rush to hit the top levels. I enjoy playing the games, exploring the world, reading the backstories and the lore, and just having fun.
Even in the LOTR Online beta, I don't see the need to rush through anything. My boyfriend and I bought pre-order copies of the game yesterday just to see what the fuss was about, though we probably won't end up subscribing.
LOTR's very pretty, stable, playable, and above all, the starting quests, while linear (which I suspect is because they wanted a newbie experience that was accessible to anyone, even if they'd never played an MMO before, but I digress), are also involving. You can see hints of the larger story at work while you're making your own way around Middle Earth. It's neat.
Exactly. But it's not the casual players who fall victim to that. That tends to come from the other, more hardcore side.
I personally went into WoW for exactly those reasons, Warcraft III happened to be fun, I cared about the lore and how WoW would move the story of Warcraft pass the Frozen Throne, and couldn't resist the prospect of Adventuring the world of Azeroth outside of the constrictive RTS format.
Even without having played past Warcraft games, World of Warcraft is exactly that kind of game to casual players (lore, adventure and fun), and that's exactly it's multi-million subscriber appeal.
Realize what you're saying in reference to Vanguard; "grinding levelling", that's an illness Vanguard suffers whereas World of Warcraft made it easy to level up leisurely and jump into playing alts if you so chose to. So in World of Warcraft, there's no problem with being casual in the respect of stopping to smell the roses, and still accomplish something when it comes to items and leveling.
Keep in mind, it was Sigil that decided to divide what they thought to be the traits of their population up between casual/core/hardcore, and then aim the vast majority of their content towards "core", not "casual". That could be the reason for your mix-up, and definitely the reason Vanguard is suffering low populations now since it banked on an audience of gamers that pretty much don't exist.
It's quite simple, for no reason other than looking at the biggest competitor in the market and how WoW is solely driving all dynamics of the market; the MMO market right now is a casual one, period. Sigil attempted to revive not-so-clever timesinks of the past to directly appeal with the masochistic of old, but that "core" audience is 7-8 years older and even they have grown more casual towards playing MMOs, or quit MMOs all together, and a "core" audience isn't something to replenish, it was finite in the first place. The market could only have one batch of people who knew of 1st generation MMOs and enjoyed them, those numbers don't increase like the casuals who constantly come into the market as first-time MMO gamers.
Anyway, your thinking is kind of divided and wrong towards casuals. Of course they like to have fun and not grinding it out to the next level. Vanguard at the very least is the perfect grind game, you have three highly toted spheres to grind it out with. It's just missing the whole fun and adventuring (with a purpose) aspect for most, and that's why Vanguard doesn't appeal to casuals.
Had Vanguard been a game made for casuals, or even the hardcore, rather than the mythical "core" player, it'd actually have a population worth noting.
At least Sigil is wising up now in revamping all of it's major timesinks (travel times, death penalty, levelling up), and making the game more casual.
I'd argue that the RPG died as soon as they let the internet as a whole join the game, as far back as UO, even.
They really, really, need to drop the RPG part of the moniker, and just go with MMOG, instead. The RP died a nasty death for many while being *azzraped* in UO. For the rest, the bucket was kicked in Greater Feydark, the original Barrens chat.
As for the casual market, there's a fairly good number of people that played EQ pretty hardcore in the day, but no longer have the drive, time, or energy to give their life over to a video game, but still want to do the raiding thing, and so on. WoW really has done a fine job of giving this group what they wanted, I have to say. Conversely, a lot of the original design ideas in VG seemed to be based on the conceit that if they built a better EQ mousetrap, the old crowd will come running back for more cheese.
Future games would be remiss to discount that, aside from the violently vocal minority that view misery as fun, most of the old guard want one of two things. Either EQ++ without all the suck, i.e. WoW, or they've moved past the diku formula altogether, and are looking for something more sandbox-y. Lately, there seems to be a contingent of console jockeys as well, who seem to gravitate towards games like AoC, or Huxley, which are more 'action' oriented. Or so they claim.
For what it's worth, I think LotRO has missed the mark as much as VG originally did, only in the opposite direction.
I really don't understand how some people think, how can they even think about comparing a new company that released there first product with a company that is given us games since 1992. Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is?
Thats the thing just because Sigil made agame which fits in the mmorpg does not main you can compare the two just because of that. There are many factors many of you seem totaly unaware about, Sepher my friend you do speak good things and make sence most of the time though i don't always agree with you , but i would have thought a person like you would have a better understanding in how things work, instead of this casual-core bs i keep reading, sorry man but there is much more then simply pushing a game towards the market , it takes time, experiance and what not, all of which Sigil is still in their baby years, Blizzard is the adult sort of speak and has learned from all the many games they already have made and with this experiance comes a good game. Just because Sigil is the house of a well known developer doesn't make it the best company. Just like every single new started company people need to learn. So does Sigil, but just like we saw with pre-cu SWG people wine and wine are unpatient till they completly revamp a game and then we get more winners cause it was not meant that way by them. All this BS when people like Vanguard they need to be some sort of machochist is really so out of perspective i can hardly beleive that when i see someone writting that. As if we like such style, as if i like grind, i "hate" grind" thats why I seem to enjoy Vanguard as there is hardly something i consider grind. Sure there is grind for those that want it ALL or want to be Uber or start crafting pure because they want to make a boat asap, yeah sure for those type of players its a grind, but for those that just game to have fun will avoid things like grind, you know in fact if people want every single mmorpg can be considered a grind only if you let it be a grind. The same thing can be said that no mmorpg is a grind again only if you let it.
That's probably true. It's a far cry from the days of pen & paper or tabletop gaming, that's for sure.
Still, there IS a certain amount of roleplay at work in all of these games. As far as I'm aware, trolls, orcs, goblins, elves, etc. don't exist, nor do Azeroth, Norrath, Telon, or Middle Earth. And there aren't any superheroes flying around in the skies, either.
These games open up fictional worlds and allow people to step outside themselves for a while, relax, and go into a different headspace. It's a nice change of pace, even if it's not nearly as diehard an RPG experience as an old school D&D session.
Yeah. Blizzard really did something right. They went straight for the people who liked EQ, or who were interested in trying it, but who hated even the idea of massive tedium and timesinks, while offering enough for the raiders to be happy with as well. They were also smart enough to place their game in the direct aftermath of the previous Warcraft games, so fans of the series would be interested in adventuring around in the world they'd only seen from a top down RTS perspective before.
As for Sigil, they were completely myopic. I really don't think they understood how things were changing and evolving around them. It's like they deliberately ignored all of the marketing for the games that came out after EQ. Each one highlighted features that were the exact opposite of EverQuest, slowly pulling players away from the game.
Yes, well, those people would be much happier with a game like Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja for the DS. In that game, every time you die, you lose all of the items and money you've just looted. It doesn't matter if you're right by the final exit of a dungeon that's taken you several hours to slog through. If you die, you lose it all.
Personally, I don't see the point of masochism in gaming. It's a GAME. I don't want to be miserable when I play. Feh.
Yeah. I can see that.
I'm actually looking forward to AoC, Huxley, and Tabula Rasa, just to see different types of games hitting the market. I think more choices are a good thing. Plus, giving a more action oriented, or non-EQ style game design will be fun. I can't wait to try them out in a beta.
I haven't paid any attention to it, really. I signed up for their beta ages ago, then forgot all about it until I got my closed beta invite months ago. Never installed the game, and never played it until these last couple of days.
It's okay, but not earth shattering. However, I can see Tolkien nerds who wouldn't otherwise glance at an MMO wanting to play it. After all, Frodo's journey wasn't the only thing that ever happened in Middle Earth, so it's something that would draw fans of the books in, at least for a while.
I'll say this, though. Any game where my character looks like this by Level 6, and strictly through quest rewards at that, can't be all bad:
Hehe.
They (Brad and company) were riding their previous wave of glory. Look at almost every interview with
Brad and you will see that Everquest followed him wherever he went. Look at Brad's expectations - couched
in terms relating to the success of EQ. For better or worse, BMQ was Mr. Everquest and is now Mr. VSOH.
"Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is"?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It does not matter what it tastes like (Some may prefer vanilla,
others chocolate, and still others cherry). Enough people have to like it to make it economically viable.
(Economically viable = tastes good, not economically viable = tastes bad).
The jury is still out on whether VSOH will be economically viable or not.
You may not understand or accept that VSOH will always be compared to EQ1 because of BMQ and its
roots (classes, races, and its attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the original EQ), but the rest of the
world does.
They (Brad and company) were riding their previous wave of glory. Look at almost every interview with
Brad and you will see that Everquest followed him wherever he went. Look at Brad's expectations - couched
in terms relating to the success of EQ. For better or worse, BMQ was Mr. Everquest and is now Mr. VSOH.
"Now if Sigil was a company that already excisted since 1991 like Blizzard and if they already have made many games of which they will learn wouldn't some of you think that Vanguard would be better then some of you feel it is"?
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It does not matter what it tastes like (Some may prefer vanilla,
others chocolate, and still others cherry). Enough people have to like it to make it economically viable.
The jury is still out on whether VSOH will be economically viable or not.
You may not understand or accept that VSOH will always be compared to EQ1 because of BMQ and its
roots (classes, races, and its attempts to overcome the shortcomings of the original EQ), but the rest of the
world does.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
I'd agree, but for a few problems.
A)Blizzard may have made a batch of successful single player games, but they were mainly RTS games, also single player with a multiplayer aspect via b.net is a very different beast than an MMO, as I'm sure any of the Blizzard devs will tell you.
B)While Sigil as a company may be in it's infancy, and I think this is the most important part by far, the developers and designers are pretty much all old EQ devs, and as such have at least some MMO experience under their belts. Which makes many of the mistakes they made all the more mind boggling. Because they've been there before and more so than Blizzard, who had no prior MMO experience, should have avoided a good many of the newb mistakes they made during the development of VG.
Actually, I'm waiting on my beta invites for Tabula Rasa, and Huxley as well. AoC... I just don't have a lot of faith in Funcom. That, and given the graphics, I think it's gonna suffer from performance issues on a good many machines.
I agree, some new gameplay ideas are a much needed thing, but I'll settle for a non-fantasy setting, even though I plan on checking out WAR. At least till CCP starts releasing info on their WoD MMO. Or someone makes a cyberpunk MMO a la Shadowrun.
No doubt the hardcore community falls victim to number grunching and grinding, as well as rushing through quests, in my experience, which is a lot, it is also the casual gamer who rushes and number grunches just as much.
Casual Gamer means someone who doesn't play very much. Plays casually.
Hardcore Gamer means someone who plays A LOT.
Both of these fall victim to the boredom that is MMO's.
The thing is, hardcores are a very small community, and thus don't affect the game as nearly as much as casual players, who make up the majority of MMO's, are.
I played WoW, LOTR, DDO, DAoC, VG, and every other MMO on the face of the earth. Every single one of these has the MAJORITY of players rushing through dungeons, quests, lore, and number crunching and grinding. You cannot tell me that I just happen to meet every single one of the 1% of hardcore gamers and never a casual player. Quite the contrary, the casual player makes up the majority of the population right? Well then, they are the problem.
I don't care if you're casual, core, or hardcore. Your playtime doesn't matter. What matters is if you number crunch, rush, and grind or not. If you don't, HURRAY! If you do, I wish you didn't play on my server.
Also stuff
Agree and havn't looked from it from that perspective
Btw any chance anyone knows more about http://www.projectoffset.com/downloads.html
I also am abit tired of the basic fantasy's mmo's but this might turn out to be different, if it ever will make it into excistance....Thoughts ?
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Absolutely not. If Brad was stuck in 1992, then VG would have become what all the hardcore fanatics wanted it to be.
AND THERE WOULDN'T BE A MINI-MAP!!!!
Heh. That's really funny,considering that the loudest guilds in games like EverQuest demanding changes to this, that, or the other, and providing huge, mind-numbing spreadsheets of numbers weren't the casual guilds. They were the hardcore raiding guilds who played all the time, and who rushed through the rest of the game to get to the high levels.
That still holds true today. The hardcore, pre-PoP EQ uber-masochists might be in the minority now due to market share, but I can promise you that they more than make up for their minority status with a majority of the whining and demands on the devs of a game.
Just look at Vanguard-- any proposed design that wasn't insanely sadistic (i.e., a less harsh death penalty, putting maps in the game at all, etc.) was decried as "dumbing down" or "spoonfeeding" the game, and those people are still bitching now as Sigil continues to tweak their game mechanic in order to try and correct the mistake they made of listening to these people in the first place.
Those masochistic players are also the first to squeal like stuck pigs when anything is made even remotely palatable for a more casual audience.
Every single one? I find that hard to believe, sorry.
Uh...what? You're conflating casual and hardcore. They're not the same thing.
The people rushing through the game to get to the highest levels so they can raid, and who also do the min/maxing and the number crunching? Those are the HARDCORE players, not the casual ones. The casual ones are the people who log in for 2-3 hours a day to hang out with their friends and do a few quests, then log off.
Again-- the number crunching, rushing, and grinding to max level as quickly as possible are the hardcore players, not the causal ones.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Absolutely not. If Brad was stuck in 1992, then VG would have become what all the hardcore fanatics wanted it to be.
AND THERE WOULDN'T BE A MINI-MAP!!!!
But it WAS what the hardcore people wanted - death penalties, corpse runs with multiple sets of
armor, strongly encouraged grouping, lots of intended raiding, etc. Just because it has been
toned down a bit, doesn't mean it was never there or intended. As for the mini-map, it could have
been a bone thrown to the casuals. The minimap hardly makes the game casual friendly.
No one told Sigil to take a 30 million dollar budget and attempt to release a blockbuster with no established intellectual property, and no established track record as a company.
It's not like Turbine, Mythic and Funcom bought intellectual properties for the hell of it for their MMOs releasing this year, and it's not like Blizzard was wrong for using the momentum of it's Warcraft property and Mythic for pushing Warhammer with the RvR concept established by it's previous game.
Sigil had an angle with "I helped make EQ!", but obviously it wasn't strong enough or meaningful enough to have the same impact as other established methods in the MMO genre.
If Sigil had taken just a small bit of that budget, and first released a muuuch less ambitious MMO 2-3 years ago, they could've already had a collective experience of releasing an MMO, and an established track record.
Sigil being a brand new company and releasing their first product is their own doing. It's not like Richard Garriott created Destination Games after he left EA/Origin, started releasing internet propaganda about how he was going to create the spiritual successor to UO, then blew a huge budget on a too early released Tabula Rasa.
No, Garriott for instance took his time and established a relationship with NCSoft, became synonymous with the company's North America identity, oversaw the publisher's releases here and ended up with a development schedule for Tabula Rasa unmarred by publisher switches and financial shortages.
There's really no reason to have sympathy for Brad and Sigil when it comes to that obstacle of competing with existing strong companies. They should've just made themselves stronger before stepping onto the court.
Why not? Wasn't the very first line in Brad's "Introduction to Vanguard" post on the old official forums a bulleted note about the differences between Vanguard and WoW?
We compare Vanguard to other MMOs like WoW because well...Sigil did so themselves. That whole "second-largest budget" thing and all...they've always attempted to poise Vanguard as mainstream and worthy of competition. Just because they're competing badly now doesn't mean the comparisons need to stop. Heck, it's the only way the game is going to get better.
That "casual-core bs" is of Sigil's creation, not my own.
I was just pointing out Sigil's way of thinking, they aimed for a "core" audience which obviously doesn't exist, or obviously didn't like the game too much. Thus, Sigil is now redirecting the game towards the "casual" crowd.
I'm not saying the market is as simple as a handful of different types of gamers, I'm just saying Sigil themselves divided the market up into three different types, and using their definition, they purposefully didn't aim for the "casuals" who apparently like World of Warcraft style of games since half the market does belong to World of Warcraft afterall.
It isn't from a lack of experience that Sigil didn't aim correctly...they purposefully rolled the dice. More important than anything was their desire to make a game the way they wanted to make it. Sigil felt they put in enough safety precautions in-line with market trends (solo content, mini-map, WoW-esque UI and corpse summoning for instance) to ensure 500k+ subscribers, but obviously they didn't.
As far as I can tell, Sigil wanted to change market dynamics set by WoW by deeming it all "easy", something you grow "tired" of and not as "deep" as Vanguard. Even now Brad is banking upon Vanguard's imminent success when "people get tired of BC".
It isn't that Sigil doesn't understand the market from lack of experience, they just suffered from way too much bravado in thinking they could sway even a significant portion of it. Obviously, Brad is still suffering from some of that bravado still, even though he's changing his tune on a lot lately.
As already mentioned, it was Sigil's doing in attempting to compete with the big boys without ever having swung a bat. No sympathy there, because there's plenty of examples of companies that have done it right; besides the Destination Games/Garriot example, how about the ex-Blizzard developers from ArenaNet who started with Guild Wars? Should they have started with the ambitious persistent world of Guild Wars 2? No, and Sigil shouldn't have taken so much money just to create a project they knew (and encouraged for a time) everyone would call Everquest III.
You learn to walk by crawling first. It's Sigil fault if they stood up, sprinted and fell on their face when they knew better not to.
As much as folks would probably like to believe their whining, or sole suggestions are the reasons games change...it isn't true. These games change based upon market changes and the "churn" of things as Brad likes to call it.
It isn't the whiner who's threatening to quit that gets these games to change, it's the silent majority who move in legions to World of Warcraft for very evident reasons.
Let's just agree that "grind" is bad, and it's opposite, "fun", is good.
Let's also agree that arguing over whether Vanguard is a grind or World of Warcraft is more of a grind is futile since everyone has their own opinions.
To make things simple, let's just agree that the majority decide what's "good", and what's "bad". With that in mind, Vanguard is probably a grind and less fun than World of Warcraft. So if World of Warcraft's design methodology is the key to "fun" and less "grind", well it's no wonder that it's mimicked eh?
The concept of "grind" isn't one to be treated so frivolous. Excusing it as "all MMOs have a grind" is only creating a reason as to why anyone would be befuddled about why World of Warcraft is so popular while other MMOs of similar surface appearance can go belly-up.
It may work for you to not "let" Vanguard become a grind, but that doesn't work for everyone. A game is either mostly a grind or not. I believe you can MAKE a game a grind by purposefully engaging in repetitive activity, but I don't believe in the opposite of dodging grind whenever the game throws it at you.
Sorry bro but i understand and accept that VSOH will always be compared in some way or the other to EQ1, what i don't understand is how you made that asumtion i didn't ? If you read any of my previous post you already know my stand about Vanguard and i always will say some will like it and some wont regardless if the game in time would become fully optimized their always be players that might not like Vanguard, nothing wrong with that. I might have slipped somewhat of-topic but you did not hear/read me say anything about EQ1. As you must have read i was talking about company's and what we might expect in some sense.
Let's try this again. Some of the people who worked on EQ1 also worked on VSoH including the CEO.
The CEO's of both companies were the same. Why wouldn't a comparison be legitimate if some of the
decisionmakers are the same ? Some people make the same mistakes over and over again. Others'
management styles may not have changed to reflect the times. Perhaps people have concluded that Brad
is one of those people, who even though the MMO world has changed drastically, still thinks of the market in
1992 terms.
Absolutely not. If Brad was stuck in 1992, then VG would have become what all the hardcore fanatics wanted it to be.
AND THERE WOULDN'T BE A MINI-MAP!!!!
But it WAS what the hardcore people wanted - death penalties, corpse runs with multiple sets of
Half-heartedly though, Breech. Vanguard is group-centric with solo content, dungeon-filled with quest-driven gameplay, corpse runs with altar summoning, a vast world with a mini-map, meaningful levelling with double experience weekends, etc.armor, strongly encouraged grouping, lots of intended raiding, etc. Just because it has been
toned down a bit, doesn't mean it was never there or intended. As for the mini-map, it could have
been a bone thrown to the casuals. The minimap hardly makes the game casual friendly.
It's a pretty bi-polar game, and it's difficult to take it's "hardcore" components as just that when they're purely optional.
I actually think Vanguard would've done better if it went strictly hardcore. At least then you'd know exactly who the intended audie, and they'd know too.