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Admire or Disdain? Corporate Greed or Mismanagement? The Case and Saga of Vanguard (pun not intende
truenorthbg
Member Posts: 1,453
Is the jury still out? Great game or great potential?
Brad's fault? SOE's fault? MSFT's fault? Whose fault?
Theory: corporate greed, in the spirit of WoW whereby developers make user-friendly and addictive MMOs, is what prevented Vanguard's original intent and vision from being fulfilled.
When MSFT dumped Vanguard, SIGIL's budget, time, resources, and everything else also got dumped.
MFST wanted a WoW clone; SIGIL wanted a brilliant game, and the opposite of WoW.
I have come to admire Vanguard. When I look at LotR, which I have played, it is nothing more (or less) of a WoW clone. Boring. Shallow. Predictable. Not-so-demanding PC requirements.
Vanguard wanted to be unpredictable, deep, and complex with extraordinary PC requirements. I think a lot of the drama, although mostly died-out, has more to do with us and less with the game. We have grown comfortable with games that require no-thinking and whose challenge requires not skill but more time to grind and raid.
Speaking of time, SIGIL did not have the time to fulfill the vision for Vanguard. I do not know if that vision will be fulfilled with SOE's participation, contribution, and cooperation. Unfortunately, only time will tell.
The gaming industry seems to be a self-destructive one. Read this www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/150922 for more discussion on self-destructive proclivities of developers and executives.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Comments
Vanguard has more grind and less thought to the gameplay than WOW. Instead of actual content they have horrible grindfests to get faction, the arena quests to get endless supplys of tokens you can trade in for gear, dungeons with quests that require you to enter and leave multiple times forcing you to repeat steps you've already completed.
The only difference in the two is that WOW is more casual player friendly up to the level max. Then you hit the raiding for gear grindfest.
Vanguard (Brad) tried to cater to a certain type of player (EQ) - what Brad didn't realize is that most players hated the grind in EQ - so EQ had lots of subs - but back then what choice in mmo's did you really have?
On the question of innovation (or 3rd gen)
I played Vanguard - there was nothing 3rd gen about it (imo) it had some new toys, sure - but innovative? No.
If you wnat to make a hit mmo game today - again this is my opnion, u need to move away from WoW and make something totally innovative/different. Vanguard wasn't that.
Vanguard was a flop, because well - it's a flop - nothing really new... kill mobs and level.... sorry I've been playing ten years worth of mmo's - if you want my money you will have to do better.
it all depends how you want to level Caldis.
Ive done it 1 way on my ranger whereas i did all the dungeons etc repeatedly going in for bits n bobs and it feels as though it has took forever but i have always had the best gear for my level.
but ive also done it the casual solo quest way just bouncing around from outpost to outpost for level the game is very casual friendly and quicker IMO.
It all depends how you want to play do you want to enjoy what content there is on the way to 50 or out n out powergind to 50 im for the former Telon is a magical beautiful world and just breezing past it on the quest for 50 is a injustice this is probaly where VG went wrong the most by not understanding the nature of the beast that plays MMO's and just wants top level asap.
They would have been better served adding a lot more 50 dungeons than the multiple 30-40 ones that there is.
Was it Brad's fault ?? again a No directly however i think his projections of where tech would be and what a player wanted where grossly wrong and he just didnt have the leadership skills or the team to make this vision he had, to put it in a line from a film (his ego's writing cheques your body cant cash) which i also feel was probably part of the problem Mcquaid has probably the biggest ego in the gaming industry hell the guy even gives smedley and richard garriott a ass whooping and i cannot see him listening to his team too much if they threw up suggestions.
Again on the public being the problem i agree wholeheartedly with you since the days of pre-cu swg beefore buffs no game has been a challenge or took any skill people are now used to being spoon fed VG at its core doesnt either however a skillful player can stand out. Ive seen rangers stand in awe as i solo 4 dots levels above me is it because im better than them nope i just took the time to learn my class inside out, and the same applies for every other class i have seen rubbish guys mash one button and i have seen others be so damn good at knowing there class and when to use certain skills that it scares me.
As for will VG reach its potential i strongly feel with the current team and direction then VG can go on to be one of the best mmo's out there, couple gu3 which will give people with lower end systems access to the game and the upcoming trial island i think we will see a massive increase in population, and i think from there VG will just go from strength to strength with more good press and good word of mouth being put out there
Wait a minute. You say it wasn't Brad's fault then go on to say that it was.
Yeah, it WAS Brad's fault (as you point out). He was in charge of the project (and Sigil) and Sigil is no more. Vanguard was overly ambitious and had no focus. The "vision" changed continuously and in the end, had no clue as to the market they were trying to focus on.
Im no WoW fan by any means, however I respect the approach they took. They knew exactly what they wanted and delivered a polished product within the resources that they had.
You are probably not going to find a bigger capitalist than me on this web page.
I am showing that corporate greed is undermining creativity, innovation, and even fun in MMOs in an effort to make them repetitively addictive. Grinding and raiding are also timesinks to keep YOU paying money so that developers do not have to get creative or innovative with their MMO.
And communism is a political system. Socialism is an economic system (as well as capitalism). Respectfully, sue your teacher and vicariously your school, college, and university. What if you are on television someday and you confuse economic systems with political systems?
Political System: Communism.
Economic System: Socialism, Capitalism.
China
Political System: Communism.
Economic System: Capitalism.
USA
Political System: Democratic Republic (or, I prefer, Constitutional Republic).
Economic System: Capitalism.
Cuba
Political System: Communism.
Economic System: Socialism.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
As an aside, I know two people who work at MFST. From what they tell me, it is an arrogant, bloated, and super greed corporation. IT IS NO SURPRISE THAT GOOGLE AND APPLE PRODUCE MORE CREATIVE, INNOVATIVE, AND FUN PRODUCTS. MFST cannot think outside of the box, on MMOs or anything else.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
[Paragraph 2] I think if we were to psychoanalyze Brad McQuaid there is no doubt he is an egomaniac. Perhaps I am presumptuous, but I would say 90% + of the population does not understand, appreciate, or can comprehend the risks, challenges, pressures, anxieties, randomness, and soforth of running a company of virtually any size.
[Paragraph 3] I think you are right. People want more customization in their particular class. I think people want deep customization. People want a unique appearance in addition to unique abilities and spells; or a unique combination of abilities and spells. As SWG had before NGU or whatever, players could select multiple classes. People like that.
[Paragraph 4] Vanguard is seeing a population increase. I am a station pass Vanguard player, but my server and my guild have people whose first MMO and/or exclusive MMO is Vanguard. Population increases perhaps are directly related to progress made on the game to optimize performance and implement features that were promised.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Brad had a very good idea of what he was after. He might not have provided enough oversight to his teams to realize that goal, but he knew what he wanted. The problem was largely the potential customers. They raised holy hell on forums everywhere about misconceptions of the game's direction, and as a result MS put pressure on Sigil to change direction.
I don't know if Brad and Co pushed back on MS enough about the pressure, or if MS decided that the game would never be what they wanted it to be, but Microsoft's withdaw from the project should come as an indicator that Brad wasn't willing to completely comply with the corporate greed. Which pretty much invalidates your opinion that it was 'Brad's fault'. I suspect that Brad eventually had to cave to the corporate mindset at Sony just so that the game could ever see the light of day. But you can bet he wasn't at all happy about his baby getting packed into the stale old MMO mold we live with in most games now.
-Feyshtey-
I want people like you to pay for your wierd ideas of what a great game is, $100.00 a month! This is not 1999 when you play EQ1 or nothing, this is 2007. You like WIERD, NICHE, UNPOPULAR games, you pay for em, we won't!
WoW is 100 times better then boring, grindfest, raidfest early EQ1, the masses have spoken with their wallets. I don't think corpse runs, forced grouping, raid or suck is ANY fun at all. I am an adult and don't have time for 5-8 hour raids with 12 deaths for 6 months then restart every expansion or have a crappy character. Gimme a game that isn't a second career and I have fun. Games should be FUN not a chore, and thats all you guys want. Well PAY for it then, no one else wants it and we don't have to put up with it!
If you have any questions please ask. I have moved on to WoW from eq and no longer have any desire to play a dead game. Thank you. (posted by another selling his account in EQ1)
Sebbonx, I think your point is "WoW is better." Actually, "100 times better" to be precise.
WoW Community: Children, Botters, Farmers
WoW's Community is 100 times worse
When discussing WoW's population, let's be mindful that less flesh-and-blood Americans and Europeans play the game than Asians. An entire industry is built around botting and farming in WoW. I sold my account to a Thai, and I do not speak Thai. The community mainly consists of people who do not speak my language and kids. And, if they are adults, more often than not childish adults.
WoW is Forced: End-Game Options - Raid or Grind?
WoW is a Chore
In WoW, it is a binary decision. 1) you can raid the same places ad infinitum at the same appointed times, usually around 7:00 p.m. for North American guild. Or 2) you can faction-grind the same mobs ad nauseum to gear-up. I expect more when I pay money. I am a capitalist, afterall.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
I play wow. So does my wife, my best friend, and 3 members of my extended family. I play the game with a grandmother, a father of 3, and a guild of people that are between 28-55 years old. The perception is that wow consists of the community you claim because those people are loud, obnoxious, high-profile or all of the above. The pleasant people have the general channels off, and are doing their own thing quietly, so you dont see them. There are plenty of jerks, to be sure. But part of the reason it's so obvious is purely a matter of scale. 20% asshats in a population of 150k isnt as noticeable as 20% asshats in a population of 9 million.
WoW is Forced:
Name a game that one of the following is not true:
- End-game means grindning faction/cash/gear
- End-game means raiding
- End-game means you're done, and you either start over or quit.
By your statement, you must not be playing an MMO right now at all. Either that or you quit as soon as you reach End-game content.
-Feyshtey-
Corporate Greed? Do you even know what that means? That doesn't mean a company that tries to make money is greedy. If you want a game developer to be in this for charity you better call Red Cross. Corporate greed is Enron, Sprint, or something along those lines where the company is ripping off consumers and employees.
Vanguard was mismanagement. WoW didn't have any effect on Vanguard. WoW is not the devil. WoW is not the anti-christ. Get over it. McQuaid had no clue how to make a successful game. He had no clue how to get people to work together to make ideas happen.
Its ok. Most people lack that skill. That's why they sit at the desk pounding out the hard work, while more the bosses order them around. McQuiad didn't have the balls, or skills, to make people pound it out. He sat around singing "koombaya", instead of making sure things were getting done.
I sold my EVERQUEST account to someone in HONG KONG, last I looked that was is Asia. WoW has no higher a percentage of farmers then any other game, and Blizzard does more to cheaters then SOE. In fact Vanguard has hackers duping gold (cough cough EQ2) and they are getting away with it!
I want YOU to pay back the $30 million invested in YOUR crappy game, Vanguard. $100.00 a month for a game YOU wanted sounds fair.
Brad Mcquaid is a complete idiot and this game should have been scrapped back when MS dumped it. He wasted 30 million on his vision of taking everything everyone hated most from EQ and building a game around it. The game was horribly designed, runs like crap, and offers none of what it was advertised to be. $oE came in and published it in yet another shameless money grab to capitalise on the hype. Now 9 months later the game is still a beta if that. It takes them 3 months to fix even the most minor bug because they have a staff of about 5 people by now with the sub numbers dropping every month. Big waste of time and money this game is now relegated to the station pass line up of failed games.
TBH the problem with VG is the same as most MMORPG's. It used to be MMORPG meant Masive Multiplayer Online Role playing game now it's more like Masive Multiplayer Online Repetitive Perpetual Grind ! and this will eventually hurt the industry.
Vanguard along with many MMOs seem to fail when managment teams cannot plan things out. Anyone can dream of building a great building but unless you can plan out exactly how it will go together and keep on schedule then all you will have a bunch of concrete, iron, wood and pissed off investors. Also the lack of Quality Assurance seems to escape the minds of the developers as well.
MMO's are just like the movies. They get one chance to make an impression and if the people experiencing it are not satified then it will die fast.
I still play VG everyday and I can still tell you it is NOT retail. The game will still crash about 3 times an hour if your in a large group. Not good for a game that is primarily based on grouping. Anyone that plays it while grouping with 7 or more will tell you how the constant crashing is anoying to say the least.
APW is the raid content they will come out with in the next couple of weeks. Raid groups will be 18 and I will tell you that an 18 man group will be hard as hell to keep up when people are always crashing. My guild goes out every night with at least 18 of us and it takes forever to get everyone to where they need to be because of crashing. Try to do a 53 six dot mob and you spend most of your time trying to reinvite peeps back to group.
Brad had a dream but like alot of dev teams just didn't know how to make it a reality.
Exactly right.
I was originally focusing my attention more on 1) developers and 2) business executives at Blizzard, et al. However, someone brilliantly pointed out that it is the 3) the players that are turning it into a "Massive Multiplayer Online Repetitive Grind." The players are willing to put in 60+ hours for "uber" gear by repeatedly (a) raiding the same zone ad infinitum and/or (b) killing the same mob ad nauseum for faction.
An MMO should (and I believe could) offer more. So long as players are satisfied with MMORPGrind and not MMORPGame, the developers will not bother attempting to be creative or innovative.
The industry is making the game more appealing to the masses by 1) dumbing down and 2) ensuring user-friendliness (low PC requirements). It is less about the game's creativity and more about how many subscribers from Asia we can get (1 million? 2 million? 5 million? Jackpot!)
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
So... Basically, what some people want is "Creative content, handed to them on a platter"? God forbid one goes out into the online world of their choice and look for the content themself. That would be tedious and boring, not to mention it goes unrewarded with a bounty of xp/lewt.
On one end one wants creative content, on the other one wants to be rewarded. If you want it both in one package, go play D&DO. That's creative content, handed to you on a platter. Vanguard has plenty of creativity, you just have to go out and look for it.
Did you know there's a large number of dungeons, caves and points of interest that are simply "there"? No quests to guide you there, nothing to indicate it exists for any other purpose than "It makes sense to have griffons nest there". In WoW, every mob serves a purpose. Every mob is there to be grinded (ground?), wether it's for faction or for a "kill x"-quest. In Vanguard, a lot of mobs are there because they're there. What you do with them is your choice.
Of course one gets rewarded *more* for a grind. It's *more* work. But no one is forcing you to grind- in ANY MMO (except those asian MMO's ^^). And explain to me a mechanic that doesn't involve grinding yet rewards well enough to allow character progression, and isn't completely abusable. There's two examples that come to mind; Eve Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online. Both of which are so-called "niche games".
Now playing: City of Heroes/Villains, Age of Conan
Played: Eve, Hg:L, Vanguard, WoW, FFXI, Planetside, Neocron, Battlezone, EQII, AO, CoX, AA, DDO
I win at Vanguard.
Hopefully Darkfall will fall into that category as well. Yeh I like to switch between DDo and VG, when I get too tired of looking for things in VG and want some instant action i go play some nice fast FPS combat dungeon in DDo.
REALITY CHECK
Ahh... so you are trying to invalidate my "opinion" with conjecture. Makes sense.
Ultimately, since Brad was CEO he is responsible for the final product. That's a bad part of being a CEO (unless the final product is a success). You can try and blame it on other entities, but when it's all said and done - the success or failure of a company is in the hands of the CEO.
Ahh... so you are trying to invalidate my "opinion" with conjecture. Makes sense.
Ultimately, since Brad was CEO he is responsible for the final product. That's a bad part of being a CEO (unless the final product is a success). You can try and blame it on other entities, but when it's all said and done - the success or failure of a company is in the hands of the CEO.
The difference is that my conjecture is based on actual knowledge of non-public events, and on the knowledge of the team's desire for the direction of the game. I know that they didn't do what they wanted to do in many places ('they' includes Brad). The only logical conclusion is that a force outside of Sigil molded some decisions."The success or failure of a company is in the hands of the CEO", eh? Hehehe, it's cute how naive you are.
The CEO can make any decision about the company that he likes.... Except when his partners say no. Oh, and except when the board of directors says no (there wasn't at Sigil, but for the sake of this statement....). And let's not forget the investors - if they so no he's screwed. Oh, and let's remember the contracts he signed with his publishers. Those are the legal limitations of his power. Let's move on to the logistical limitations.
When an investor funds a project, the contract to do so includes several means for that investor to back out of that project. It's a protection for themselves so that if the team working on the project proves to be complete morons, the company can escape the deal with only the money spent (or with a buyout). The investors don't even need a really good reason to back out. They just have to decide that the project is not what they pictured. When you put an amount in the neighborhood of $35 million on the table, and there's an entire company and it's project that are wholly reliant on that $35 million, you know, the company knows, and the CEO of that company knows, that you have their balls in a vice. Now, that CEO -can- make any decision he wants.... But the result of that decision has one very binary outcome: Either I will continue to let him suckle the $35 million teet, or I won't. He can tell me to go blow. He can tell me to get the hell out of his building and slam his door in my face. But a responsible CEO who knows he has the fate of 100+ people in his hands (his employees who need the income from the jobs that $35 million supplies), won't be so irresponsible. A wise CEO would know that telling a huge investor "Piss off, I'm doing it my way." is word that will travel, and that he won't likely find another $35 million coming the way of such an uncooperative company.
When Vanguard first went to production, WoW was not yet a reality. 500,000 subscribers was a pretty darn respectable business. Maybe not quite the top of a heap, but certainly noteworthy. That's the target Brad was shooting for with Vangaurd. Look it up. He said it 100's of times, along with the fact that he hoped to keep those 500,000 people for a very long time. Microsoft was on board.
Then WoW exploded onto the scene. 4million subs?!? 5!??!? 7 million?!?!?!?
Microsoft took note. Microsoft said to themselves "Heeeeyyyy.... we're funding a project like this aren't we? And we're spending $35 million on it? And , and we hope to get 500,000 people?!
Now, do you think that:
a) Microsoft said "Ah screw it. 500,000 subs is cool. "
or b) Microsft said "HOLY ****!!!!!! OVER 5 MILLION SUBS?!?! BRAD!! COPY THAT ****!!!!!"
-Feyshtey-
Admiration (for original concept) which turned into disdain (SOE's mold)
Mismanagement (Sigil) which turned into corporate greed (SOE)
Jury's out (game could go up or down from here)
HAD Great potential
Brad + SOE's fault (who could blame MS?)
I've said many times that the core game is good and fits my play style. However, any company that sits on bug fixes for 2 months needs a head check, as well as maybe a forearm shiver from the customer base. I mean who the hell operates like this?
"Oh yea, we had that fixed 7 weeks ago, we'll implement it next week"
SOE will most likely build a game that that will draw in some players and sustain itself for quite some time. I just have doubts that it will be players like myself. Which might just make some of you rejoice
MS definately deserves some of the press for the current state.
If MS hadnt pushed back on Brad and Co to change direction on some of the design elements, the game could have continued on its original course. If they hadn't pushed the schedule as hard as they did, there would have been more time to polish. If they had been more cooperative on managing the beta pushes early in the development, early production could;ve been a lot more productive. (MS insisted on being responsible for packaging and distributing the beta updates, and refused to do it more than about once a week, even when their were dozens of daily bug fixes ready for external testing. It took months of negotiating to allow Sigil to push out the updates when they felt it was appropriate. Which was just about every day.)
MS finally jumping ship gave SOE a ton of leverage on the game's direction and design if Brad wanted it to ever be published. And true to SOE form, it was shipped months before it was ready.
-Feyshtey-
It was what I meant how creativity, innovation, and a developer's ideas are not being implemented in a game because the company is less interested in those things than they are in money. The strategy to produce a WoW clone will not succeed. The market has WoW, and everyone has tried it. However, people are looking for something more and different. The companies seem unwilling to take the risk to produce something more or different.
I am an entrepreneur by nature, and it is all about risk-taking. Companies, particularly large companies (MFST, who is trying to clone all sorts of things including the iPod with Zune) have an inability to think outside of the box and become innovative. MFST is getting its ass kicked with Google and Apple, and I think it has a lot (perhaps mostly) to do with its inability to innovate.
Innovation can be breakthrough or incremental. MFST's innovation is incremental on a very incremental level with small changes in software or producing operating systems no one wants, trusts, or needs.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.