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Why did VG fail? Some thoughts (serious)
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
I sure have my feelings as the disaster happens now, like the months of being ridiculed by vanbois. But I will leave this behind in this thread, so lets try to make some serious analysis together what went wrong.
As in life, in this matter I guess there will always be a debate about the real reasons. Let me say this: I did enjoy VG to a degree and I sincerly can say I wished it had succeeded. I love complex games and VG was a big hope for me. It still is; I still hope someone can really repair it. However, I think there are a few lessons, we can sum up now.
1. I was only in late beta, but after all we hear from early testers, Sigil didnt care a damn about what the beta testers said. I am quite sure one of the biggest faults of the game was Brad, or more his hubris being a great MMO visionary. I never liked the way he referred to his ideas as a"vision". A person with visions needs a doctor. Making games is, mostly, not something like making idealistic things, as many game players may presume. It is hard work and tedium. I guess Brad was way too much in the clouds, likely many around him as well. Essentially, Brad likely is a rather sensitive person, who avoids confrontations and prefers not to stand his man in the time of difficulty. Everything we hear from him indicates that. Thats not an excuse, its an explanation. Maybe he had that complex that leaving EQ1 was a mistake he wanted to compensate and he was fixated on that game. Essentially, Brad and the Sigil managemant was unwilling to listen to the testers and the warnings, which proved to be all too true.
2. I feel the industry (and the gamers) still havent fully understood the real impact of WOW. Sigil deluded themselves thinking they could fall back behind the standarts WOW had set and still make a game worth 30 million dollars. The REAL impact of WOW was not the simplicity (which is more a myth anyways), but its making a polished and complete game, not the skeleton of a game with tons of bugs! It was the way how self-explanatory WOW was, how complete it felt outright which has forever set a new standart! There just IS NO WAY going back behind that. Sigil learned the painful way. I remember one of the WOW devs once said, the way they made WOW was: they checked on every feature and asked themselves "is that fun", and if the answer was NO, it was out. Or changed.
3. Tedious game mechanics belong to the past. They have died out like dinosaurs. Maybe some niche is still existing for it, but not by far justifying the money input VG had. I seriously hope this message will be heard and we wont see things like corpse runs resurface EVER AGAIN! Period.
4. I think what we really have to accept is, that VG was VERY sterile and cold. It was above all the most dominating reason for me to quit. Much more than bugs, imbalance or hardcoreness. The few meager stories were all in diplomacy, which was a fault for many reasons. First, it totally seperates story & lore from the adventure, second the shallow card game was nice and fun, but never felt like a part of the game, more like a game in the game. I never felt those strange, sterile conversations were anything worth reading. Adding to the lack of story was the lack of animations, the small things EQ2, WOW, LOTRO and other games make great. Birds flying, kids playing, people walking, talking, gossip, EVERYTHING you see in Bree, Ironfist or Qeynos! Compared to that New Torgonor is a graveyard, no matter that is the most stunning graveyard. (Besides the fact the 2 biggest and most beautiful cities, New Torg. & Aghram were the most ill placed and most devoid of functionality cities I have EVER seen!)
(I will go as far as to say Diplomacy likely was a big mistake altogether. It was nice, and not bad. But ALL lore and story was put into dimplomacy, thus seperating it entirely from the core game, which ALWAYS is adventring. Thats what 90% of the people are doing 90% of the time: quests, killing, exploring, adventuring. The older concept was to make diplomacy a necessity for adventure, but for some reason they changed that making diplo a totally seperated sphere, which kinda sucked out all possible stories and now feels like some alien addtion to the game unlike something that really fit into it.)
5. Finally, the total lack of something to tell a big story. Yeah, we always heard people talking about freedom. Freedom is an option that you CAN roam as you wish. But what it does not imply is, that you dont HAVE anything else to do but roam around. VG never created a big picture, an overall story into which the smaller stories were embedded, into which the player was interwoven. WOW, LOTRO, SWG, DAoC, CoH, EQ2 are good because they have a big story going on in which you are a part. You are welcomed and made feel like at home in those worlds. I never played a MMO which more failed to make me feel at home than VG.
Those things run deep. I seriously wish VG luck and hope someday it becomes the great game it deserves. However, I wonder if SOE, who has to start the next chapter in this "saga" will make such a great change and will invest into it again.
Thoughts?
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Comments
(in before the trolls)
agree with 100% said here
Well, being the armchair game developer that I am, I'll say that I agree with a lot of what the OP stated. Take that for what it's worth.
I'll also add a few observations:
1). The money invested and budgeted could never be supported by the niche market it catered to. Sigil realized this (perhaps too late) and tried to switch gears by offering better casual play (casual players ARE the bread and butter of MMO profits). But in switching gears, they threw out their transmission. They peeved the 'nostalgia' players by deviating from the 'vision', while not being able to shirk the 'grind' label in order to attract casual players.
2). There's a segment of niche players with unrealistic expectations. They want a AAA title, the best graphics, cutting edge technology, the best developers on the project, hardcore play, while at the same time they only want 50k to 100k players (you know, NOT the masses) to play the game. For some reason, Brad fell into that fantasy world as well, believing he could make a 30 million dollar game with paltry revenues.
_____________________________
Currently Playing: LOTRO; DDO
Played: AC2, AO, Auto Assault, CoX, DAoC, DDO, Earth&Beyond, EQ1, EQ2, EVE, Fallen Earth, Jumpgate, Roma Victor, Second Life, SWG, V:SoH, WoW, World War II Online.
Games I'm watching: Infinity: The Quest for Earth, Force of Arms.
Find the Truth: http://www.factcheck.org/
2. Graphical inconsistencies, such as plastic barbie doll characters on top of realistic backgrounds, shiny space age buildings in high fantasy, medieval settings, etc.
3. Dead cities, sterile backgrounds, lobotomised npcs, etc.
4. Gross performance issues. (After every patch, there have been cries of victory about miraculous performance improvements. God, if you believed each, fps would have hit +200 so far).
5. Undecided mish mash of core game dynamics btw WoW and EQ.
6. Hype, mismanaged funds, void promises.
I have been away busy with LOTRO. When I checked back, I noted that the typical denial fest of Vanbois has not changed a bit. If you believe them, the game is a stellar success and the crown of all MMOs. It is this chronic attitude that neither terribly low subs, nor empty servers, neither media reviews, nor Brad's confessions would change.
Sadly, the blind devotion and denial of fans is the number one reason which created the VG junk in the first place. I can't believe there are still some who continue to defend this pathetic excuse of a game with ridiculously poor reasoning. After a chain of naive reasoning, the last resort is always, "But... but I am really having fun" makebelieve.
This attitude will turn the industry into a graveyard of stillborn MMOs by 2010.
CONTRIBUTE INTO THE GAMING INDUSTRY! STOP PAYING FOR BORING COPYCATS, UNFINISHED BUGFESTS AND CRANKY JUNKWARE. BE A RESPONSIBLE GAMER!
It was not fun. That's why.
right from the start...
no fun
graphics where not "that" great imho...
and for sure it offered nothing new
same fantasy - same grind - same classes
Tank, DD, buff, debuff, heal
/yawn
I hope sometimes someone breaks the (un)holy trinity Of Tank/Heal/DD
Besides the fact that Brad made it ? And that he made it adhering to most of the same old pigeon holes he's adhered to for most of his games, that also had miserable sized customer bases ?
Hmm, cant think of a thing, other than the above .
It failed because the people behind the game were living in the fantasy world they were trying to create
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
I agree with this post, but especially with point 4. Yes, they could have screwed up everything, classes, bugs, servercrashes and i would have sticked with it where it not for the fact that the gameworld felt completely and utterly lifeless. Being a roleplayer I had such high expectations of Vanguard, I thought out of all games up and coming Vanguard would be the purest for RP, but boy was I wrong. A sterile and empty world without character, without little touches and suprises. It has made what should have been the best world to roleplay in, into the game which is the worste to roleplay in (excluding guild wars).
To be able to truly roleplay one must live in a world, and one can only truly live in a world if it feels alive. I'm not a huge Lord of the Rings fan, but I'll tell you, any Vanguard roleplayer that takes a look at Bree or Hobbiton on an RP server in LOTRO, will never want to return to the "empty box" that is Vanguard.
I've descovered why Brad has been missing...
He's developing...
PacMan: Saga of Food....... it is being created in his "Vision" TM. Cinematics will be released soon. He's using paper and a pencil for the game engine. It will be AWESOME. Total innovation of PacMan.. DOUBLE THE FOOD! Hell ya... and and.. MORE GHOSTS! YES!
I agree 100%. I was really looking forward to playing VG and felt totaly let down with a lack of story, i understand they wanted you to make your own way in a world, but it really needs an on going story for you to fall back on when all else fails (and o it did). A main story gives life to a game and a purpose for its players to work towards.
EQ1 was my holy grail, I loved it, I wanted the same thing from VG but better and newer. I didn't get it and here's why...
1. There was no magical feeling you were part of something bigger (as the OP said). You existed in a bland world, devoid of any story.
2. Horrendous performance, bugs and only partly finished. They had to release early but that was a mistake.
3. The mounts, boats, houses, promised so much, but when you actually used them, they were kind of crap.
I'm one of those people that actually don't mind "the grind", although VG still managed to bore me to tears.
I pretty much agree.
As much as I wanted to love Vanguard, it was not fun for me. With all the great plans and ideas, the key ingredient of storyline or feeling involved with your world was missing. Bugs and poor performance did not bother me. The problem was I didn't enjoy playing. When I love a game, I'm addicted. I can't wait to get home from work to play. I think about what I'd like to do that night all day. There is never enough time to do everything I want. I felt that way the first few weeks, but then as I moved from area to area without any sense of accomplishment aside from levels, I thought why am I doing this. It felt like work, not fun. Not because it was hard. Far from it. I don't mind hard work at all. I love that feeling of accomplishment when you work for and reach a hard goal. I never felt like I was working toward anything except a level.
In contrast, I worked far harder in Final Fantasy to get a series of missions called Cop done (actually, I worked far harder in most everything in FFXI). Cop was annoying time-consuming, frustrating, agonizing, often tedious farming constantly along the way to get what we needed for each chapter. However, each victory felt amazing. When we finished that last mission, there was nothing like that feeling. Still hard to describe. Incredible excitement. We all relived the battle and talked about it over and over. It felt awesome and bittersweet at the same time. Sad that we were done, but very relieved. I'll probably always remember it. Don't know that I could go thru all that again, but it is a very fond memory. It felt worth it.
As much as I wanted to love Vanguard, there was no feeling of accomplishment for me. I honestly enjoyed doing quests and killing mobs, particularly with a good group. But as I levelled, I realized I was just levelling, not feeling any real attachment to the world or my character. It felt empty. I realized I was playing more out of habit than really enjoying it.
I was also very excited about the crafting initially. For all it's 'complexity', it felt like a tedious button pushing time sink for me. I made myself craft for awhile before I realized I did not want to play a game in my free time to be bored out of my mind. I'd watch a movie while clicking buttons... I'd rather just watch the movie without any distraction. In contrast, Final Fantasy crafting may have seemed simple, but there was a sense of fun in the way they did it (to me anyway). You'd be in the middle of an exp party, and someone would get something they could use to craft, and they'd craft it while the puller was pulling. Often, they'd announce their skillup and everyone would say grats and talk about their crafts, etc. It just seemed fun and rewarding to earn what you crafted with. There was a sense of community, probably because so much of that game is so geared to grouping. I guess crafting in Vanguard seemed incredibly cold and bland to me in contrast. Get a workorder, craft it, get paid, repeat... over and over and over and over... Only MMO I've ever played that I didn't enjoy crafting.
I still have my membership, but I am likely going to cancel. I thought I'd play a bit, but I haven't logged on in about a month now. I kept hoping for change, still hope for change, but honestly think it's just not a game that will work for me. I like character growth in more than just levels. I enjoy feeling a part of the world. With all the patches, it doesn't seem like this will be added. It seems like they think making things easier will solve all the problems. I don't mind that they are making some things easier, but I never felt it was overly challenging to begin with. I'd rather them add some meaningful content.
Game was boring....if it was fun, more people would have weathered through the buggy start...underneath it all, just a boring grind...
Brad saying it was Sony's fault pushing it too early is all spin...its simply him blaming it on somoene else, happens everyday in schoolyards across the world...
Newsflash....heres a big secret why WOW is so successful.....they made a nice simple game that worked, with lots of fun things to do and user friendly....and here's the biggest reason: TIMING...yes, look around you people..all the other games out there right now are crap!...yeah, there are a few games that are just OK for some diehards, but for the masses who want just a fun game with lots of fun things to do, there is squat...there are some good ones on the horizon but Im not sure if any of these games are EVER going to come out seems the good ones are taking forever....LOL heck i even re-activated my WOW subscription a few days ago because as excited as I am for some of these games c oming out...they are taking forever...im kind of mad about it actually..I didnt think I would have to play WOW again cuz all the other games are crap.
This talk of 'failure' is disheartening.
I play Vanguard because it is the only MMO thus far that does not disgust me to the point of complete disinterest. Because it has power and dignity. Because it feels less 'sterile' than the others. Because it has some soul.
It could have been better, of course. Much better. It disappointed me plenty. But there is nothing better for me, yet. I needed a world I could immerse myself into with my friends and loved ones, and all the other MMOs seemed to fail to take themselves seriously in terms of actually creating even a slightly immersive world of any reasonable size, beauty, atmosphere -- they fail to be anything poignant to me, while Telon is a piece of artwork I liken to any decent novel, piece of music, or worthwhile dream. Vanguard is as close to EVE in pure mood and emotion that mediaeval fantasy has come at the moment, and unlike EVE it does not hinge on hypercapitalism.
Sorry for the, erm, 'fanboy' attitude, but I am being sincere.
Vanguard is failing because its original vision was for the hardest core players to have fun and receive rewards, and everyone else just to toil in weak, mundane obscurity as a penalty for not being hardcore. Brad thinks that because he idolizes "l33t" players, the rest of us do too and would be willing to kill vermin in a meadow just for the privilege of seeing one of the "bleeding edge" players ride by.
It was not so in EQ. The raids were fun. The high level stuff was fun. But the low level stuff was fun too. Back then, Brad saw everyone as equals in the sense that every player should be enjoying themself. That was back when we were customers instead of "casuals" and "noobs."
The "Vision" was mean-spirited and the market has judged it equally harshly.
Vanguard is now on its own corpse run. How ironic ... and just.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Hardcore is the what now?
I don't know if you have ever met or conversed with McQuaid, or otherwise paid attention to his ruminations, but your perspective of his mindset is strange and I have no idea where you are seeing these 'penalties' for not being 'hardcore', 'elite' or whatever people are saying these days.
One thing I would encourage people not to overlook here is the fact that, like plenty of games that have been released "too early" vanguard has a chance to turn things around. I mean, look at EQ2. Granted, it was more 'finished' than vanguard was when it was released, but now there are so many facets of EQ2 that have changed so much that they are barely recognizable; class archetypes, crafting, and even a lot of the graphics have been changed on this game.
And while we're talking to Wow - affectively comparing apples to oranges - let me point out that WoW had horrednous lag when it first came out - one of more than a few 'bugs' that WoW lovers like to conveniently forget. Every game, regardless of how polished it is, will suffer from at least SOME bugs. Did vanguard have too many bugs? certainly. Was it read for release? Not by a long shot...but let me ask you, what would YOU do if you ran out of money? Scrap the project and eat the loss...assuming you could afford that? When it all comes down to it, the entire vanguard team recognized that the release was TOO EARLY, but they had NO CHOICE. It was either that, or 45+ pple were out of jobs, the company took over a 1 million dollar loss, and probably would end up dissolving altogether, as they had foolishly put all their eggs in one basket.
Vanguard was a disappointment, sure, but I'm still holding out for it. I believe they DO have a good world they've created, and they have something that STILL has some very strong potential. I plan on giving it 6-8 months, then trying it again. Hopefully by then, they will have been able to address more of the issues, and perhaps redevelope the game mechanics that just are not working.
- Overambitious. They had to cut down the size of Vanguard's world of Telon dramatically, there was supposed to be 4 continents ending up cutting one out as well as reducing the sizes of the others. Many features that were supposed to be in the game aren't. They went overboard with the whole concept and wasting large amounts of developmental time trying to reduce things and reduce their concepts.
- Poor mangement. They weren't hitting their milestones with anything apparently, that's why Mircrosoft pulled out of the game's funding.
- Released too way early. This game needed a minimum of 6 months to a year to be even worthly of release. Bugs, bugs, bugs, lack of polish, bad performance, bad coding, requiring a true monster of a computer to even hope of running the thing smoothy. People feel extremely ripped off paying for a beta game then expected to pay a subscription for it, no wonder Vanguard has turned into an amusing/tragic soap opera.
- Bad, bad marketing campaign. Very misleading. Said it would have something for everyone's playstyle, but truly this is a game dedicated for the grouper beyond level 10ish. On top of this they kept saying it was going to be a "3rd Gen MMO." Most people believe 3rd gen means innovative, fresh, revolutionary right? Building upon 2nd gen to make something welll and truly better? Brad's whole idea of 3rd Gen MMO was totally different. And evidently not as impressive. Honestly he should have just marketed the game for the old EQ players and left it at that. They tried to please everyone and ended up pleasing no one.
- Overhyping things to the extreme. They should have just shut-up for the most part and let the actual game do the talking. Or better yet, actually live up to those hypes. (but I'm only dreaming.)
Those are the main reasons I believe Vanguard failed, as well as all the other good points people have mentioned already.
When I played the open beta and then my 1st month, my mind was going WTF? this is bad!!! Really bad acting. I know then it caused damage to my wanting to play. Even the repetative 5-8 voice actors in Oblvion had more life. Heck, all the mobs from Doom had more life lines!
Anyway, my 2 cents. Peace out.
Wolflaynce
Played the game for a week. Quit, back to LOTRO beta. Yay, no lag in Bree or anywhere
Been playing LOTRO since. Having great fun.
SOE will never get a penny more from me.
Pre-CU FTW
Hauken Stormchaser
I want pre-CU back
Station.com : We got your game
Yeah?, Well i want it back!!!