I was just sent a PM asking me if I was really 34 like my profile says. This person claims I need to act my age, that I am wrong in wishing bad things for brad. well, I am adding my reply here for everyone to see that I am not someone that just stepped into this forum to stir up crap. I spent a lot of time defending this game to be shot down by brads lies. Only God shall judge me, and he shall judge me on my heart and faith. Peace! I am actually 35 I have been testing and playing MMOs since 1994. I have worked in the industry on two ocassions, I have been invited to test games I did not solicite from Brad McQuaid, From SOE, from Origin, Blizzard, EA, 3DO, Atari, and several others.
I am experienced in many fields of the gaming industry, as to even at one point being respected for my opinions on upcomming games by several magazines.
In my post I wished no ill on Brad McQuaid or his team, or SOE. I did however comment that I hope this is Brads retirement. I did not ruin, or slander Brad in anyway. Brad has ruined his own image.
If you follow my post history I spent many months testing Vanguard, and defending Brad on his past mistakes.
I spent a lot of time combing through forums in hopes to make an impression and defend Brads image while testing this game because it had a lot of potintial which all of Brads games have.
I e-mail Brad himself and pointed out these forums and a couple others where he was being torn apart and helped convince him to come defend his game.
He came to these forums and posted a list of facts.One of these facts being that there are aspect of Vanguard that he created and have never been seen in the MMO genre. Point one out to me. This is a lie.The one thing that he dreamed up and told the beta testers about that was never seen in an MMO before was unable to be implemented in the game by the development team, so it was scratched out.
Brad told us SOE will not have any control over the game, they are only the publisher. Another lie, SOE was in the process of buying the game before it was even released, which is why it was pushed to release unfinished.
Brad McQuaid is a genius when it comes to the development of an MMO, but the man is the worst businessman I have ever seen.
If someone promised you something and then did not deliver would you still respect this person? I do. If this same person lies to you again, straight to your face. Will you still respect this person? Sure, but you will never trust him again.
Don't try to judge me off of one post. If you want to judge me, you read my past post, and watch me try to defend and glorify Vanguard to the masses on Brads behalf just be stab in that back by his blatant lies and deciet.
You want to judge me, you figure out who I am and judge me on every action, not just one post.
Brad McQuaid is nothing but a marketer in my mind now, he paints a pretty picture, then hands you an empty box.
If only god can judge you, then what gives you the right to judge Brad Mcquaid? Rather hypocritical.
You can't place the blame of your hopes on others. You make them yourself.
You said Mcquaid made countless posts saying this wouldn't happen. I'm assuming you're refering to the selling of Sigil to SoE. Can you provide a link to the countless posts were he said he woudn't do that? I'm not saying he didn't, just that I'm unaware of him saying it.
He didn't create Varant, he was hired to work for them. He has only owned one company and that is Sigil.
Sigil isn't the first developement company that had hopes of implementing a feature and had to scrap it. It's a recurring thing in game developement. Plans change; people should stop getting thier hopes up, or putting so much faith in what a developer says while a game is in developement. Not even Blizzard was able to implement everything they said they would during developement, like the DK system they promised for ganking people lower level then you; so they implemented a different system that many people disliked. It happens.
SoE started out as the publisher and wasn't developing the game when he made the statement you mention. When the process of selling started wasn't disclosed; so saying that the company was being sold before it was released can't be confirmed nor denied. Although, in my opinion, I believe that he was likely working out a deal to sell the company after the MS split, but not because it was his plan all along. I think the company was likely going into bankruptsy after the split from MS, and Mcquaid may not have had any other choice but to sell to keep the game live. Only those involved know the truth however. Speculating is fun, when it's made clear that it's just speculating and not presented as a fact; wich is what you did.
People keep saying that Mcquaid made promises that he didn't keep; I keep asking to be directed to these promises, and no one seems to provide links to them. Ownable flying mounts, and raids are being tested; these are the only 2 things I can think of though outside of ideas that were tossed out in regard to what could be done. Ideas aren't promises though. If you found the game to not be a challenge then that is an opinion, and again a promise wasn't broeken; me, I find it challenging. Meaningfull travel was also promised, and when I have to travel and explore to find quests then to me the travel was meaningfull; if you don't agree then that's your opinion and not a broken promise. Most importantly I don't ever recall Mcquaid promising not to sell the company.
Wikiopedia is hardly an unbiased source of information from which to draw conclusions expecially on a subject as emotive as vanguard. Perhaps you ought to read the exit interviews of sigil employees (of which there are plenty of links around) or even read the late night interview given by Brad himself where he spins (explains) how it was all microsofts fault. Brad has made many comments in the past the most recent one that I can recall is that SOE would never influence the game and were only providing the publishing and tech support for the game.
To bash someone else for their opinions when all YOU have to offer is opinion (and poorly based at that) is hypocritic at best, and perhaps spin control at the worst looking at your join date.
Btw anyone who has to resort to PM's to insult someone is a slimeball that doesn't even deserve forum posting priviges.
Yeah, um.
Nothing you wrote had any relevance to what I wrote.
I sited wikipedia to point out that Mcquaid didn't create Varant, or EQ.
I never bashed anyone.
PM's? Who sent a PM? I didn't, so why are you quoting me and about it?
If you're going to quote my post the least you could do is read it.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I judged Brad. I think I stated that he has lost my trust, lost my faith in him. That is not a judgement. That is a just a feeling that you get towards someone who has lied to you.
As far as EQ, Brad was involved, I doubt I could scrounge up and current links to all of the post among EQ, MMORPG, and various guild forums, but Brad did admit at some point he had a say in the sell of varant to SOE. Smedley wasn't alone, he just took the brunt of the abuse for it.
Brad has developed a history of going to the various forums and selling his product and then not delivering the same product. This is not a judgement on him, this is a fact made by him. If I went on Ebay as a seller, and listed a "Revolutionary new MMORPG, new design in UI's, complete freedom, and will never be sold to SOE to ruin it. Would you be trust me again after I sent you Vanguard?
I could be wrong, but I don't think I judged Brad. I think I stated that he has lost my trust, lost my faith in him. That is not a judgement. That is a just a feeling that you get towards someone who has lied to you. As far as EQ, Brad was involved, I doubt I could scrounge up and current links to all of the post among EQ, MMORPG, and various guild forums, but Brad did admit at some point he had a say in the sell of varant to SOE. Smedley wasn't alone, he just took the brunt of the abuse for it. Brad has developed a history of going to the various forums and selling his product and then not delivering the same product. This is not a judgement on him, this is a fact made by him. If I went on Ebay as a seller, and listed a "Revolutionary new MMORPG, new design in UI's, complete freedom, and will never be sold to SOE to ruin it. Would you be trust me again after I sent you Vanguard?
Don't worry about it dude you just get some people who get anal when someone states anything the don't like about a person responsible for a game they like playing. To behonest I agree with what you wrote any way, the guy from what I can gather from his posts in the past and other bits and bobs is that he is the type who will sell you the land of OZ in a bottle but when the time comes to deliver, all you get is some sand and a twig. So blaming MIcrosoft after they invested30 million dollars and then when they wanted results he gave they a nappy full of doodoo they actually took one look at it and left , is a bit cheeky. What he should have said is I can't develope a game for shizzle so it's my fault for acting like a used car sales man which is what he basically did, he lied through his teeth yet people will still respect him for it, I personally don't and place him in the same boat as John "Give it to me baby" Smedley.
As far as Vanguard is concerned it will remain as standard MMO nothing special and SOE will just milk it for what they can. SOE can't make a decent MMO for the life in them their history shows that. I don't hate SOE but I don't rate them highly as a games developer /publisher.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
This was probably the best thing for Vanguard, granted, I'm not happy with what SOE did with the continuous expansions in EverQuest, trying to juice out every penny of the game but SOE acquiring Sigil was indeed the best possible thing that can help save the game. The game was clearly going nowhere and Sigil was losing money and when you lose money, you don't have the funds for fixing up the game. This is where SOE comes in and hopefully they do a fine job in fixing up this game like they did with EQ2.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I judged Brad. I think I stated that he has lost my trust, lost my faith in him. That is not a judgement. That is a just a feeling that you get towards someone who has lied to you. As far as EQ, Brad was involved, I doubt I could scrounge up and current links to all of the post among EQ, MMORPG, and various guild forums, but Brad did admit at some point he had a say in the sell of varant to SOE. Smedley wasn't alone, he just took the brunt of the abuse for it. Brad has developed a history of going to the various forums and selling his product and then not delivering the same product. This is not a judgement on him, this is a fact made by him. If I went on Ebay as a seller, and listed a "Revolutionary new MMORPG, new design in UI's, complete freedom, and will never be sold to SOE to ruin it. Would you be trust me again after I sent you Vanguard?
Brad McQuaid is nothing but a marketer in my mind now
the man is the worst businessman I have ever seen
Those two lines you wrote, and they are judgemental.
Varant wasn't sold to SoE, and Mcquaid was never in a possition to make a call on it. Everything from the beginning was orchestrated by Sony. The creation of EQ and the company that developed the game, all Sony's doing. Check out the red text.
Sony Online Entertainment and Verant's history can be seen as starting with Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA), an internal game development studio of Sony that formed around 1995. In 1996, John Smedley (known to the gaming community as "Smed") was put in charge of SISA's development of an online computer role-playing game, or MMORPG that would evolve into EverQuest. Smed hired programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover who had come to Smedley's attention through their work on the singleplayer RPG Warwizard.
In April 1998, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was formed by merging parts of Sony Online Ventures with Sony Pictures Entertainment'. Within a matter of months after this change, Sony Interactive Studios America was renamed 989 Studios.
Towards the end of 1998, 989 Studios shifted its strategy to making PlayStationconsole games only. The company's computer game/online development branch spun off, initially calling itself RedEye Interactive and then soon after Verant Interactive.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on March 16, 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful. Numbers continued rising at a steady rate until mid-2001 when growth slowed. As of 2004, Sony reported subscription numbers close to 450,000.
When you fund the creation of a company that company belongs to you. If EQ failed Verant could have just folded and had minimul impact on Sony itself. It's a safe way of getting your feet wet in a market that is untested. Large corporations do this every day. Just like selling the company's assets when they find they are reaching a point that the company can no longer sustain itself.
I don't think a lot of people get this. It was a part of Mcquaid's job to sell his product.
http://www.mmorpg.com/features.cfm A link to the features section of this site. You'll notice lots of videos of games in developement that have been released by the company creating the game. Not really any dif. then forum posting by someone in the company trying to bring awareness to the product.
It's kind of funny. If VG had released on time, and had a lot of success, people would be praising Mcquaid for staying in touch with the player base. Granted his posts were pretty long winded, but it showed that not only did the guy in charge of Sigil and VG care about the game, he cared about his fans. How many times have you seen higher ups from Blizzard make a post on thier forums, hell, for that matter how many times do you see a dev. post.
Comments
If only god can judge you, then what gives you the right to judge Brad Mcquaid? Rather hypocritical.
You can't place the blame of your hopes on others. You make them yourself.
You said Mcquaid made countless posts saying this wouldn't happen. I'm assuming you're refering to the selling of Sigil to SoE. Can you provide a link to the countless posts were he said he woudn't do that? I'm not saying he didn't, just that I'm unaware of him saying it.
Mcquaid was hired by Smed. From Wikipedia:
EverQuest (EQ) is a 3D fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that was released on March 16, 1999. The original design is credited to Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost
He didn't create Varant, he was hired to work for them. He has only owned one company and that is Sigil.
Sigil isn't the first developement company that had hopes of implementing a feature and had to scrap it. It's a recurring thing in game developement. Plans change; people should stop getting thier hopes up, or putting so much faith in what a developer says while a game is in developement. Not even Blizzard was able to implement everything they said they would during developement, like the DK system they promised for ganking people lower level then you; so they implemented a different system that many people disliked. It happens.
SoE started out as the publisher and wasn't developing the game when he made the statement you mention. When the process of selling started wasn't disclosed; so saying that the company was being sold before it was released can't be confirmed nor denied. Although, in my opinion, I believe that he was likely working out a deal to sell the company after the MS split, but not because it was his plan all along. I think the company was likely going into bankruptsy after the split from MS, and Mcquaid may not have had any other choice but to sell to keep the game live. Only those involved know the truth however. Speculating is fun, when it's made clear that it's just speculating and not presented as a fact; wich is what you did.
People keep saying that Mcquaid made promises that he didn't keep; I keep asking to be directed to these promises, and no one seems to provide links to them. Ownable flying mounts, and raids are being tested; these are the only 2 things I can think of though outside of ideas that were tossed out in regard to what could be done. Ideas aren't promises though. If you found the game to not be a challenge then that is an opinion, and again a promise wasn't broeken; me, I find it challenging. Meaningfull travel was also promised, and when I have to travel and explore to find quests then to me the travel was meaningfull; if you don't agree then that's your opinion and not a broken promise. Most importantly I don't ever recall Mcquaid promising not to sell the company.
Wikiopedia is hardly an unbiased source of information from which to draw conclusions expecially on a subject as emotive as vanguard. Perhaps you ought to read the exit interviews of sigil employees (of which there are plenty of links around) or even read the late night interview given by Brad himself where he spins (explains) how it was all microsofts fault. Brad has made many comments in the past the most recent one that I can recall is that SOE would never influence the game and were only providing the publishing and tech support for the game.
To bash someone else for their opinions when all YOU have to offer is opinion (and poorly based at that) is hypocritic at best, and perhaps spin control at the worst looking at your join date.
Btw anyone who has to resort to PM's to insult someone is a slimeball that doesn't even deserve forum posting priviges.
Yeah, um.
Nothing you wrote had any relevance to what I wrote.
I sited wikipedia to point out that Mcquaid didn't create Varant, or EQ.
I never bashed anyone.
PM's? Who sent a PM? I didn't, so why are you quoting me and about it?
If you're going to quote my post the least you could do is read it.
Wish Darkfall would release.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I judged Brad. I think I stated that he has lost my trust, lost my faith in him. That is not a judgement. That is a just a feeling that you get towards someone who has lied to you.
As far as EQ, Brad was involved, I doubt I could scrounge up and current links to all of the post among EQ, MMORPG, and various guild forums, but Brad did admit at some point he had a say in the sell of varant to SOE. Smedley wasn't alone, he just took the brunt of the abuse for it.
Brad has developed a history of going to the various forums and selling his product and then not delivering the same product. This is not a judgement on him, this is a fact made by him. If I went on Ebay as a seller, and listed a "Revolutionary new MMORPG, new design in UI's, complete freedom, and will never be sold to SOE to ruin it. Would you be trust me again after I sent you Vanguard?
Not so nice guy!
As far as Vanguard is concerned it will remain as standard MMO nothing special and SOE will just milk it for what they can. SOE can't make a decent MMO for the life in them their history shows that. I don't hate SOE but I don't rate them highly as a games developer /publisher.
Water cooled Intel Corei7 920 D0 Stepping OC'd 4.3GHz - 6GB Corsair Dominator GT RAM 2000Mhz - ASUS RAGE II EXTREME X58 Mobo - 2x HD 5870 in Crossfire X, OC'd 0.9Ghz core 1.3Ghz RAM - Dell 2407WFP Flat Panel LCD 24" 1920x1200
Brad McQuaid is nothing but a marketer in my mind now
the man is the worst businessman I have ever seen
Those two lines you wrote, and they are judgemental.
Varant wasn't sold to SoE, and Mcquaid was never in a possition to make a call on it. Everything from the beginning was orchestrated by Sony. The creation of EQ and the company that developed the game, all Sony's doing. Check out the red text.
.......................................................................................................
Sony Online Entertainment and Verant's history can be seen as starting with Sony Interactive Studios America (SISA), an internal game development studio of Sony that formed around 1995. In 1996, John Smedley (known to the gaming community as "Smed") was put in charge of SISA's development of an online computer role-playing game, or MMORPG that would evolve into EverQuest. Smed hired programmers Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover who had come to Smedley's attention through their work on the singleplayer RPG Warwizard.
In April 1998, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was formed by merging parts of Sony Online Ventures with Sony Pictures Entertainment'. Within a matter of months after this change, Sony Interactive Studios America was renamed 989 Studios.
Towards the end of 1998, 989 Studios shifted its strategy to making PlayStation console games only. The company's computer game/online development branch spun off, initially calling itself RedEye Interactive and then soon after Verant Interactive.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on March 16, 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful. Numbers continued rising at a steady rate until mid-2001 when growth slowed. As of 2004, Sony reported subscription numbers close to 450,000.
In April 2000, Verant hired former Ultima Online developers Raph Koster and Rich Vogel forming its office in Austin, Texas to develop Star Wars Galaxies for LucasArts. SOE acquired Verant in June 2000 and eventually promoted Brad McQuaid to be its Chief Creative Officer.[1] EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark (March 2000) was the first in a long list of expansions for its hit MMORPG. In October 2001, McQuaid resigned and went on to found Sigil Games Online, drawing many of the original developers of EverQuest from SOE to develop their Vanguard: Saga of Heroes MMORPG, released January 2007.
............................................................................................................................................
When you fund the creation of a company that company belongs to you. If EQ failed Verant could have just folded and had minimul impact on Sony itself. It's a safe way of getting your feet wet in a market that is untested. Large corporations do this every day. Just like selling the company's assets when they find they are reaching a point that the company can no longer sustain itself.
I don't think a lot of people get this. It was a part of Mcquaid's job to sell his product.
http://www.mmorpg.com/features.cfm A link to the features section of this site. You'll notice lots of videos of games in developement that have been released by the company creating the game. Not really any dif. then forum posting by someone in the company trying to bring awareness to the product.
It's kind of funny. If VG had released on time, and had a lot of success, people would be praising Mcquaid for staying in touch with the player base. Granted his posts were pretty long winded, but it showed that not only did the guy in charge of Sigil and VG care about the game, he cared about his fans. How many times have you seen higher ups from Blizzard make a post on thier forums, hell, for that matter how many times do you see a dev. post.
Wish Darkfall would release.