Does anyone else remember the old harvesting system in phase 2? It was so unique, you actually had different attacks that you could do to mine or chop down a tree. It made harvesting into a real sort of mini-game. Then I remember one day logging in and seeing the yellow bar go across the screen, and i Think "WHAT?!!!" Why would you dumb down a game at the end? Its not like harvesting had a ton of problems, or at least I never saw any.
Or, anyone remember the old Dwarf starting zone? It was that crazy ass valley, and you had to like work your way up to that main kingdom area? That was some of the toughest fights ive ever had in an MMO. Me and a friend I made in game grouped up and adventured all the way to the main kingdom, we ended up bonding really well, and had some epic times. Then he left shortly after launch because of how much everything had changed, including that dwarf starting zone.
But unlike everyone else who puts blame on SOE, sorry it was 100% Sigils fault and Brad Mcquaid. You can read the countless reports and even see how he tucked his tail and ran when it things got bad at the end, and it all points to them.
I followed this game with anticipation for more than a year before it launched, and I beta tested it. While the game had many problems, one of the biggest in my opinion is that Brad McQuaid catered to a subset of the mmo market that wanted the game to be enjoyable only by the hardest core player. For years, every 5 minutes there was a post and an ensuing debate on the game's boards on how the game would just be another easy WoW clone unless [fill in some draconian feature that all but the hardest core player would hate]. Brad encouraged that and even went so far as to say, in substance, "many people will not enjoy Vanguard" and "the game is not for everyone," etc. He just kept throwing slab after slab of red meat to the "we want a very, very, very hard game that casual players will despise" constituency.
I said at the time (and took enormous crap for it) that while there is nothing wrong with hard core players (and having content that they enjoy), hard core players won't be enough to fill the servers. Also, once those hard core players consume the content, which they will very quickly, they will leave and move on to new challenges. A game needs "medium core" players and casual players, and as many other types of players it can get, to pay the bills for the whole game and ensure the company can keep adding content. Likewise, a hard core player needs to feel like they have achieved something in game that not everyone has, and how can that ever be if all the other players are hard core players just like them?
Brad ignored that warning and kept encouraging the game's reputation for being a hard core player's only club, until the game got closer to launch. Then he belatedly realized that in fact, he did need a larger player base for the game to be a financial success. So what did he do? He started telling everyone how much casual players would enjoy the game and how much content he had in it for them. That was not true and I said so at the time. (Took a lot of grief for that too lol).
So, the game launched to poor numbers, as I predicted, which have become more poor with every passing day, as I also predicted. Every single bit of the responsibility for that rests on Brad's shoulders. I see that he has a blog where he does a post mortum of why Vanguard failed, and he still doesn't get it. He still can't see that there is no reason whatsoever that a game designer can't make a game that appeals to, and is enjoyed by, a wide range of playstyles.
Original Everquest was my first mmo. I was a casual player, and I loved it. Hard core players loved it too, and what they were doing didn't get in my way and I didn't get in theirs. We all had a good time. Some of the most fun content in the game was at lower levels. Brad forgot that (if he ever knew, because I am convinced now that EQ succeeded through the efforts of less credited contributors), which is why he made a lousy game and did an even more lousy job of promoting it.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Out of all the MMOs ever produced, the failure of this one (especially during initial release) probably makes me the saddest. I obsessively played this game when it was first released. By the time I got my Goblin to 50, I was so disgusted with the antics of Brad, the shut down of Sigil and take-over by $OE that I deleted my character and I've never looked back. I had a love affair with this game and to see how it was handled after release was hard. I knew $OE wouldn't develop this game much after release. The whole island trial thing was a big farce. Why create more newbie areas when the world of Telon was already littered with many places for new players to start? Why not just retool what was already there? I'm glad to see I was right and all that wasted development time on a trial island proved to be unsuccessful.
Vanguard, even in its state at release, was probably the best MMO I've ever played. There was nothing hardcore about it. It was just like WoW except in a bigger, beautiful and more open-ended world. I just hope developers have now learned their lesson. Do not create a game with such high graphic requirements. Especially if you depend on monthly membership fees. As much as I loved VG, I struggled playing it with its chunking and frame rate issues. What killed this game even before the Brad/Sigil/$OE debacle was it's steep hardware requirements. It never recovered from this issue and a horrible game launch.
Ah well. VG will eventually die and it will be missed. One of the best guilds I've ever been a part of was in that game. Hail to Forge of Chaos! I still remember the good times!!!!
This is sad news for me also. To me this was THE best sandbox game I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Like so many others I played at the start, but then left because of all the technical issues. I returned after SOE had bought it, and had a tremendous time playing it. The immersion factor of this game was amazing.
IMHO the fault lies with Brad and Sigil. While it may be true that SOE bought the game because of its own personal, and perhaphs selfish reasons, Brad and Sigil failed us in putting out a half done game with bugs and miminal content at endgame. In all good conscious I cannot put the blame on SOE. The action they took allowed many of us to enjoy the game for much longer than I would have anticpated.
Once this game goes black, I don't know if we will ever see another of its kind. Semi-sandbox games like WoW and LOTRO are fine and good, throw in FE if you like, but for that TRUE sandbox lover (fantasy setting) out there I feel it will be a long time before we have that similiar feel that we all felt in VSOH.
I played vangaurd durrign beta, I was expecting it to take the place of SWG in my life. I even got 2 coppies of the game pre ordred for me and the wife. We lasted all of 3 months before giving up.
IT is sad to see this game go, the crafting system was great, other parts of the game had real promise. Only to be nerfed into oblivion. Now more server merges are comming they only have 4 So I guess they are going to one or two.
They should go ahead and shut this this game down and let it go ahead and die, as its has been in the slow process for the past year or so.
Sigil failed for the first 5 years and Soe failed for the next 3 years. No one is above responsibility for the failure that vanguard is. At least microsoft had the good sense to get out of the project, because they recognized that the team making the game could not recover it.
For those that hoped for vanguard to rebound (I did as well), that would have stole subscribers from eq2 and soe wasn't about to split the population of its only viable game on the off chance that vanguard might somehow rebound. Vanguard was dead the moment soe purchased it.
I followed this game with anticipation for more than a year before it launched, and I beta tested it. While the game had many problems, one of the biggest in my opinion is that Brad McQuaid catered to a subset of the mmo market that wanted the game to be enjoyable only by the hardest core player. For years, every 5 minutes there was a post and an ensuing debate on the game's boards on how the game would just be another easy WoW clone unless [fill in some draconian feature that all but the hardest core player would hate]. Brad encouraged that and even went so far as to say, in substance, "many people will not enjoy Vanguard" and "the game is not for everyone," etc. He just kept throwing slab after slab of red meat to the "we want a very, very, very hard game that casual players will despise" constituency. I said at the time (and took enormous crap for it) that while there is nothing wrong with hard core players (and having content that they enjoy), hard core players won't be enough to fill the servers. Also, once those hard core players consume the content, which they will very quickly, they will leave and move on to new challenges. A game needs "medium core" players and casual players, and as many other types of players it can get, to pay the bills for the whole game and ensure the company can keep adding content. Likewise, a hard core player needs to feel like they have achieved something in game that not everyone has, and how can that ever be if all the other players are hard core players just like them? Brad ignored that warning and kept encouraging the game's reputation for being a hard core player's only club, until the game got closer to launch. Then he belatedly realized that in fact, he did need a larger player base for the game to be a financial success. So what did he do? He started telling everyone how much casual players would enjoy the game and how much content he had in it for them. That was not true and I said so at the time. (Took a lot of grief for that too lol). So, the game launched to poor numbers, as I predicted, which have become more poor with every passing day, as I also predicted. Every single bit of the responsibility for that rests on Brad's shoulders. I see that he has a blog where he does a post mortum of why Vanguard failed, and he still doesn't get it. He still can't see that there is no reason whatsoever that a game designer can't make a game that appeals to, and is enjoyed by, a wide range of playstyles. Original Everquest was my first mmo. I was a casual player, and I loved it. Hard core players loved it too, and what they were doing didn't get in my way and I didn't get in theirs. We all had a good time. Some of the most fun content in the game was at lower levels. Brad forgot that (if he ever knew, because I am convinced now that EQ succeeded through the efforts of less credited contributors), which is why he made a lousy game and did an even more lousy job of promoting it.
Well said. I recall reading from one of the developers who did the actual programming I heard many had never made a MMO before and so they had no idea about how to make a MMO function. Of course the hardcore approach doomed VG to fail. You just can't build a MMO only on such a niche target audience who will rush through the game anyway. I never understood why SOE bought VG in the first place. It wasnt totally bad, but really it didnt have a chance unless someone would make a mayor investment into the game, which SOE didnt. But it still is one of the most sad failed games in MMO history IMO. It had many lovable characteristics.
One of the major issues as I see it was. Vanguard was released at a time when forced grouping already was SO out of fashion and the trend which is clear now, was already visible. Most MMO gamers today have no tolerance to large downtimes. I mean, it took sometimes up to 45 minutes to just travel the world to meet your group! Such things were possible in the EQ1 days, but when VG was released those days were LONG over and enough people said so. But as ever so often, they did no listen.
Other stuff like when you die in the depth of one of the deadly dungeons (I just say Kragnors End!) and then you lose ALL progress was such a big no-go at that time already. Anything halfway interesting like housing or ships or flying mounts were and are way too hard to get for any casual player. In the end VG was a way to elitarian game in a time where this design was already a dinosaur. I know I was bashed endlessly back when I was in beta, and most ex fans are still in denial and prolly will always be. But to everyone else it is clear as the day that such an elite concept could never work in our days.
Today most MMO gamers make very little compromises when it comes to grouping, penalities, long travels, downtimes asf., a development whose logical steps the great soloability of games like LOTRO and the NPC companion in a game like SWTOR is. The signs that this was the future was clear as the day back then already, but fanbois and Sigil leaders did not want to see it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Well Brad, if you're reading this thread I'll never forget how you called me out back when you were beta testing VG and said that no one would get a free ride to play your game.
I think you (faultily) assumed that I, and others asking for a chance, just wanted to preview your game. What I remember saying is that I wanted to test out your game, and I meant that literally.
I will never forget Brad Mcquaid's messages on the beta boards. I had some fun in VG after Sony had it for a while, but the forced grouping was too much for someone like me who doesn't always have a group to roll with.
I read that Mcquaid is interested in developing another mmo. Sadly, I think he never learned his lesson from VG. In modern gaming, gamers have long memories and are very unforgiving. Good luck getting another chance.
At VG players: I can see why you love the game, and I'm sorry for you that SOE is phasing it out without actually manning up and admitting they're phasing it out. Rest assured if it stays in the black with a skeleton crew running it it'll stick around for at least the next year.
wow after all these years that same oh water cooler Gossip bout what went on behind the scenes at sigil blah blah blah !! which is bout 99.9% BS anyways comes rising to the surface on the forums at the most lucritive moments.
but yet vanguard has had an open test server on all there so called failed content and none of these " in the know experts ever showed up to show there expertise but yet here we are at the water cooler again with the latest three old news gossip and rumor, there not closing vangaurd there taking a step back and start working on the part of the game that brings in the money and thats not end game content its lvl 1 to 45 content.
I dont think its the fact they shelved some end game content they were planning on putting out thats got some people so worked up i think its the fact they got the nerve to step back and tackle all the bugs that were being used as a free ride.
would like to see them divide the currency in two parts at lvl 50 if a player wants to charge 30 plat for a leather bag then let the lvl 50 player that wants to buy it but it will cost 50 blue plat or 500 blue gold coins ect that can only be had at lvl 50 somthing like that would help the new player sit back relax enjoy what vanguard has to offer
wow after all these years that same oh water cooler Gossip bout what went on behind the scenes at sigil blah blah blah !! which is bout 99.9% BS anyways comes rising to the surface on the forums at the most lucritive moments. but yet vanguard has had an open test server on all there so called failed content and none of these " in the know experts ever showed up to show there expertise but yet here we are at the water cooler again with the latest three old news gossip and rumor, there not closing vangaurd there taking a step back and start working on the part of the game that brings in the money and thats not end game content its lvl 1 to 45 content. I dont think its the fact they shelved some end game content they were planning on putting out thats got some people so worked up i think its the fact they got the nerve to step back and tackle all the bugs that were being used as a free ride. would like to see them divide the currency in two parts at lvl 50 if a player wants to charge 30 plat for a leather bag then let the lvl 50 player that wants to buy it but it will cost 50 blue plat or 500 blue gold coins ect that can only be had at lvl 50 somthing like that would help the new player sit back relax enjoy what vanguard has to offer
The game changed a lot. It's stable and runs decently now. The world is still huge but travel is much easier. It still has many hard-core types of effects in it that many newer types don't like (corpse runs, etc...) but it's a good, solid game.
I played it a bit earlier this year but I"m an old-school EQ person too. I clearly remember EQ and the changes that happened as they added in AA's. Seeing that on the list of changes for the near future -- I decided to look elsewhere and moved on.
Many senior players look at AA's as a good thing. I see them as I saw them in EQ -- over 900 AA's on my enchanter when I quit. AA's became the "new levels" where the guilds required max level and xx number of AA's with these specific AA's mandated to join. Looking at AA's being added to the game, I figured I'd get to the top levels just in time for AA requirements to push a few extra weeks on me and then it's grind the AA's when not raiding -- gotta keep up on 'em or the next new batch... Thanks but no thanks.
At least VG doesn't have the keying crap that EQ had where every couple of months or so you run another set through old content so you could bring new folks along on the "real" runs. Few keys required in VG so replacements aren't the nightmare they became in EQ but the AA's... That'll bite them in the long run as they have to design content to counter the AA skills so those AA skills shift from "nice to have" over to the "mandatory to do" category.
Still... for casual types looking for an "ultimate" PvE type of world/experience. It's an awesome game. For PvP -- I'd say don't even bother trying it in VG. It's not balanced at all for those activities and never really was.
there nonthing to put AA"s to.... really there's not its a train wreck waiting to happen if they would of stayed on course vangaurd would be back to the kill thousands rats then kill a thousand gnolls ect ect . at least this way there gonna get things done and done right instead of spending months on makeing new content that gets burnt down in a week.
there not Deleting AA's or anything else there just putting some stuff on the shelf till they get a better player base and broading the aspect of the game gonna have to be done.
vanguard not like eq2 or eq1 far from it just there gonna ween raiders a little bit teach them to stand on there own and start putting more resources into vanguard saga of heros and little less in to saga of raiders n beyond"
I followed this game with anticipation for more than a year before it launched, and I beta tested it. While the game had many problems, one of the biggest in my opinion is that Brad McQuaid catered to a subset of the mmo market that wanted the game to be enjoyable only by the hardest core player. For years, every 5 minutes there was a post and an ensuing debate on the game's boards on how the game would just be another easy WoW clone unless [fill in some draconian feature that all but the hardest core player would hate]. Brad encouraged that and even went so far as to say, in substance, "many people will not enjoy Vanguard" and "the game is not for everyone," etc. He just kept throwing slab after slab of red meat to the "we want a very, very, very hard game that casual players will despise" constituency. I said at the time (and took enormous crap for it) that while there is nothing wrong with hard core players (and having content that they enjoy), hard core players won't be enough to fill the servers. Also, once those hard core players consume the content, which they will very quickly, they will leave and move on to new challenges. A game needs "medium core" players and casual players, and as many other types of players it can get, to pay the bills for the whole game and ensure the company can keep adding content. Likewise, a hard core player needs to feel like they have achieved something in game that not everyone has, and how can that ever be if all the other players are hard core players just like them? Brad ignored that warning and kept encouraging the game's reputation for being a hard core player's only club, until the game got closer to launch. Then he belatedly realized that in fact, he did need a larger player base for the game to be a financial success. So what did he do? He started telling everyone how much casual players would enjoy the game and how much content he had in it for them. That was not true and I said so at the time. (Took a lot of grief for that too lol). So, the game launched to poor numbers, as I predicted, which have become more poor with every passing day, as I also predicted. Every single bit of the responsibility for that rests on Brad's shoulders. I see that he has a blog where he does a post mortum of why Vanguard failed, and he still doesn't get it. He still can't see that there is no reason whatsoever that a game designer can't make a game that appeals to, and is enjoyed by, a wide range of playstyles. Original Everquest was my first mmo. I was a casual player, and I loved it. Hard core players loved it too, and what they were doing didn't get in my way and I didn't get in theirs. We all had a good time. Some of the most fun content in the game was at lower levels. Brad forgot that (if he ever knew, because I am convinced now that EQ succeeded through the efforts of less credited contributors), which is why he made a lousy game and did an even more lousy job of promoting it.
Well said. I recall reading from one of the developers who did the actual programming I heard many had never made a MMO before and so they had no idea about how to make a MMO function. Of course the hardcore approach doomed VG to fail. You just can't build a MMO only on such a niche target audience who will rush through the game anyway. I never understood why SOE bought VG in the first place. It wasnt totally bad, but really it didnt have a chance unless someone would make a mayor investment into the game, which SOE didnt. But it still is one of the most sad failed games in MMO history IMO. It had many lovable characteristics.
One of the major issues as I see it was. Vanguard was released at a time when forced grouping already was SO out of fashion and the trend which is clear now, was already visible. Most MMO gamers today have no tolerance to large downtimes. I mean, it took sometimes up to 45 minutes to just travel the world to meet your group! Such things were possible in the EQ1 days, but when VG was released those days were LONG over and enough people said so. But as ever so often, they did no listen.
Other stuff like when you die in the depth of one of the deadly dungeons (I just say Kragnors End!) and then you lose ALL progress was such a big no-go at that time already. Anything halfway interesting like housing or ships or flying mounts were and are way too hard to get for any casual player. In the end VG was a way to elitarian game in a time where this design was already a dinosaur. I know I was bashed endlessly back when I was in beta, and most ex fans are still in denial and prolly will always be. But to everyone else it is clear as the day that such an elite concept could never work in our days.
Today most MMO gamers make very little compromises when it comes to grouping, penalities, long travels, downtimes asf., a development whose logical steps the great soloability of games like LOTRO and the NPC companion in a game like SWTOR is. The signs that this was the future was clear as the day back then already, but fanbois and Sigil leaders did not want to see it.
As much as I love Vanguard this is exactly how I feel as well! Well said both of you.
Vanguard is one of the most annoying MMOs I ever tried, with a following of equally annoying, anti-every-other-MMO fans. I'm amused to see it dying on the vine, but glad that a good chunk of the hard core purist gamers are playing there - and not where I am.
This is what happens when you let "hardcore" gamers get their way.
From the original Beta I have said that this game would fail because it does not appeal to the masses, but death penalties and a lack of "wow"ness coupled with an insistence to make this something for the hard-core gamers to wave their e-penises to has resulted in low subscriptions.
Stop listening to the hard core raider types, and listen to the masses, and this game could yet become popular, although frankly it is probably too late.
I have personally said as far back as i can remember that hardcore gamers are the worst to develop for. They burn through content quicker than it can be made and then whine about how the game sucks and move on, leaving garbage in their wakes.
A game should be developed for the majority and to ensure a long game life.
Brad was just a coke head and should have been tossed in prison for fraud. He outright commited fraud to all of his investors. The tool should be in prison.
Wow that was a depressing read, if you read the "roadmap" they almost sound like this is the end of the line, no?
I don't know, the fact that SOE rescued the game in the first place says that they have an interest in making it work.
If SOE was really interested in making Vanguard work, they wouldn't keep cutting staff and funding. At this point its painfully obvious they are just using it to pad their station pass count of games. Its too bad, Vanguard itself is a good game, and with the proper support, could have made quite a bit of money for who ever was willing to invest. This death by a thousand cuts is all to typical of SOE's mentality.
Are the MMORPG communty's memories REALLY that short?? All this reminiscing about how great this game could have been??
This game was doomed from the start. Lots of hype and talk about cool hardcore mechanics but there was NO actual ability to back up their grandiose claims. And people kept swallowing the hype even when there was no proof to back it up. (But that's typical for the MMORPG community)
The game failed only partly because of idiots like McQuaid for managers but also because of poor design decisions and lack of anything resembling a professional design process. Some of my favorite quotes from that interview:
f13.net: How was QA treated through the course of development?
Ex-Sigil: QA?
f13.net: QA.
Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November... ONE.
f13.net: What.
Ex-Sigil: 100% serious.
================
f13.net: Would you say, honestly, that they (the pinheaded managers) are directly responsible for the unfortunate conclusion?
Ex-Sigil: A part of it. You can't leave out the insane hype machine, the process failures, and the poor design decision making at the very highest levels.
This is a sorry end to a year of MMORPGs that is once again memorable for its failures. Lets see if developers learn anything from them.
SOE, no suprise, put the game on cruise control, try to squeeze a little more profit, would not be surpised to see the game go dark in 2011, just another reason I don't play SOE games any longer.. they suck the big one..
I've been a great fan of VG before release, the game on paper had it all.
But what killed the game was the high system requirement, it was unplayable.
Now that technology caught up I tried the game again, but I cannot get into it.
It's just missing the Xfactor.
Its graphics might be the biggest problem. There is a huge "uncanny valley" going on. The graphics pretend to be "realistic" especially compared to WoW's clear cartoon graphics, but they are completely wrong.
An example is a large port city, it is HUGE but empty, to empty for such a large port and there is no activity. And if you look closer, the architecture makes no sense. Ramps are made out of planks several times the size of a human being with nails the size of a leg. Did anyone at Sigil ever hear about the word "scale"?
The entire world, the look and feel of it never felt right for me. It felt like those cheap games were an amateur has slapped a few models together he found for free.
And the same really went for much of the game, it all felt disconnected. A lot of ideas put together but never actually refined into a single game.
SOE has rightfully gotten a reputation for half-assed games and I see them going the direction of Sierra. Once THE game producer, now just a joke of a name synonymous with trash products trying to squeeze the last bit of money out of the name.
Maybe that is a bit harsh but with EQ and the original SWG, the company has since fallen on hard time, once they owned the industry, now they still got the most titles but none of the big succeses. Blizzard, Turbine and NCSoft all got bigger titles. Even Funcom had better (initial) sales with Age of Conan. The mighty have fallen far.
Originally posted by sfc1971 SOE has rightfully gotten a reputation for half-assed games and I see them going the direction of Sierra. Once THE game producer, now just a joke of a name synonymous with trash products trying to squeeze the last bit of money out of the name. Maybe that is a bit harsh but with EQ and the original SWG, the company has since fallen on hard time, once they owned the industry, now they still got the most titles but none of the big succeses. Blizzard, Turbine and NCSoft all got bigger titles. Even Funcom had better (initial) sales with Age of Conan. The mighty have fallen far.
This right here might be the biggest unspoken truth about the game overall.
Realistically, soe purchased Everquest from verrant and since then has struggled to find success. Every single title they have touched has been a failure to one degree or another.
Soe as a company has losts its way. They no longer understand what players want and even if they did, they do not know how to deliver it. The design process seems to be driven by accountants and the implementation of those changes seems to be decided upon by throwing darts at a board. Make a huge change, target a different player demographic, reverse course and target a different demographic, change design course right in the middle of the previous course change, etc.
There is so little consistency in the company other than the fact that they will be inconsistent in their design course. Soe has such huge asperations for success, because they were there once, but they have no earthly idea how to achieve it.
I should add that i hope the best for Vanguard. Though i don't play it or any other SoE game anymore, i hope the game manages to survive and find new life for the players that still love it.
Flaws aside, it has a neat game world, neat lore and a concept that can still work.
I stand pat on my opinion that Bard McQuaid should be banned for life from touching another mmo.
Comments
My thoughts.
I've been a great fan of VG before release, the game on paper had it all.
But what killed the game was the high system requirement, it was unplayable.
Now that technology caught up I tried the game again, but I cannot get into it.
It's just missing the Xfactor.
Does anyone else remember the old harvesting system in phase 2? It was so unique, you actually had different attacks that you could do to mine or chop down a tree. It made harvesting into a real sort of mini-game. Then I remember one day logging in and seeing the yellow bar go across the screen, and i Think "WHAT?!!!" Why would you dumb down a game at the end? Its not like harvesting had a ton of problems, or at least I never saw any.
Or, anyone remember the old Dwarf starting zone? It was that crazy ass valley, and you had to like work your way up to that main kingdom area? That was some of the toughest fights ive ever had in an MMO. Me and a friend I made in game grouped up and adventured all the way to the main kingdom, we ended up bonding really well, and had some epic times. Then he left shortly after launch because of how much everything had changed, including that dwarf starting zone.
But unlike everyone else who puts blame on SOE, sorry it was 100% Sigils fault and Brad Mcquaid. You can read the countless reports and even see how he tucked his tail and ran when it things got bad at the end, and it all points to them.
I followed this game with anticipation for more than a year before it launched, and I beta tested it. While the game had many problems, one of the biggest in my opinion is that Brad McQuaid catered to a subset of the mmo market that wanted the game to be enjoyable only by the hardest core player. For years, every 5 minutes there was a post and an ensuing debate on the game's boards on how the game would just be another easy WoW clone unless [fill in some draconian feature that all but the hardest core player would hate]. Brad encouraged that and even went so far as to say, in substance, "many people will not enjoy Vanguard" and "the game is not for everyone," etc. He just kept throwing slab after slab of red meat to the "we want a very, very, very hard game that casual players will despise" constituency.
I said at the time (and took enormous crap for it) that while there is nothing wrong with hard core players (and having content that they enjoy), hard core players won't be enough to fill the servers. Also, once those hard core players consume the content, which they will very quickly, they will leave and move on to new challenges. A game needs "medium core" players and casual players, and as many other types of players it can get, to pay the bills for the whole game and ensure the company can keep adding content. Likewise, a hard core player needs to feel like they have achieved something in game that not everyone has, and how can that ever be if all the other players are hard core players just like them?
Brad ignored that warning and kept encouraging the game's reputation for being a hard core player's only club, until the game got closer to launch. Then he belatedly realized that in fact, he did need a larger player base for the game to be a financial success. So what did he do? He started telling everyone how much casual players would enjoy the game and how much content he had in it for them. That was not true and I said so at the time. (Took a lot of grief for that too lol).
So, the game launched to poor numbers, as I predicted, which have become more poor with every passing day, as I also predicted. Every single bit of the responsibility for that rests on Brad's shoulders. I see that he has a blog where he does a post mortum of why Vanguard failed, and he still doesn't get it. He still can't see that there is no reason whatsoever that a game designer can't make a game that appeals to, and is enjoyed by, a wide range of playstyles.
Original Everquest was my first mmo. I was a casual player, and I loved it. Hard core players loved it too, and what they were doing didn't get in my way and I didn't get in theirs. We all had a good time. Some of the most fun content in the game was at lower levels. Brad forgot that (if he ever knew, because I am convinced now that EQ succeeded through the efforts of less credited contributors), which is why he made a lousy game and did an even more lousy job of promoting it.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Out of all the MMOs ever produced, the failure of this one (especially during initial release) probably makes me the saddest. I obsessively played this game when it was first released. By the time I got my Goblin to 50, I was so disgusted with the antics of Brad, the shut down of Sigil and take-over by $OE that I deleted my character and I've never looked back. I had a love affair with this game and to see how it was handled after release was hard. I knew $OE wouldn't develop this game much after release. The whole island trial thing was a big farce. Why create more newbie areas when the world of Telon was already littered with many places for new players to start? Why not just retool what was already there? I'm glad to see I was right and all that wasted development time on a trial island proved to be unsuccessful.
Vanguard, even in its state at release, was probably the best MMO I've ever played. There was nothing hardcore about it. It was just like WoW except in a bigger, beautiful and more open-ended world. I just hope developers have now learned their lesson. Do not create a game with such high graphic requirements. Especially if you depend on monthly membership fees. As much as I loved VG, I struggled playing it with its chunking and frame rate issues. What killed this game even before the Brad/Sigil/$OE debacle was it's steep hardware requirements. It never recovered from this issue and a horrible game launch.
Ah well. VG will eventually die and it will be missed. One of the best guilds I've ever been a part of was in that game. Hail to Forge of Chaos! I still remember the good times!!!!
This is sad news for me also. To me this was THE best sandbox game I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Like so many others I played at the start, but then left because of all the technical issues. I returned after SOE had bought it, and had a tremendous time playing it. The immersion factor of this game was amazing.
IMHO the fault lies with Brad and Sigil. While it may be true that SOE bought the game because of its own personal, and perhaphs selfish reasons, Brad and Sigil failed us in putting out a half done game with bugs and miminal content at endgame. In all good conscious I cannot put the blame on SOE. The action they took allowed many of us to enjoy the game for much longer than I would have anticpated.
Once this game goes black, I don't know if we will ever see another of its kind. Semi-sandbox games like WoW and LOTRO are fine and good, throw in FE if you like, but for that TRUE sandbox lover (fantasy setting) out there I feel it will be a long time before we have that similiar feel that we all felt in VSOH.
-M
Had to write a blog about this, give it a read here.
Enjoy and have a very merry Christmas!
nothing left but the crying.
RIP VG.
Del Cabon
A US Army ('Just Cause') Vet and MMORPG Native formerly of Trinsic, Norath and Dereth. Currently playing LOTRO.
I played vangaurd durrign beta, I was expecting it to take the place of SWG in my life. I even got 2 coppies of the game pre ordred for me and the wife. We lasted all of 3 months before giving up.
IT is sad to see this game go, the crafting system was great, other parts of the game had real promise. Only to be nerfed into oblivion. Now more server merges are comming they only have 4 So I guess they are going to one or two.
They should go ahead and shut this this game down and let it go ahead and die, as its has been in the slow process for the past year or so.
Sigil failed for the first 5 years and Soe failed for the next 3 years. No one is above responsibility for the failure that vanguard is. At least microsoft had the good sense to get out of the project, because they recognized that the team making the game could not recover it.
For those that hoped for vanguard to rebound (I did as well), that would have stole subscribers from eq2 and soe wasn't about to split the population of its only viable game on the off chance that vanguard might somehow rebound. Vanguard was dead the moment soe purchased it.
Well said. I recall reading from one of the developers who did the actual programming I heard many had never made a MMO before and so they had no idea about how to make a MMO function. Of course the hardcore approach doomed VG to fail. You just can't build a MMO only on such a niche target audience who will rush through the game anyway. I never understood why SOE bought VG in the first place. It wasnt totally bad, but really it didnt have a chance unless someone would make a mayor investment into the game, which SOE didnt. But it still is one of the most sad failed games in MMO history IMO. It had many lovable characteristics.
One of the major issues as I see it was. Vanguard was released at a time when forced grouping already was SO out of fashion and the trend which is clear now, was already visible. Most MMO gamers today have no tolerance to large downtimes. I mean, it took sometimes up to 45 minutes to just travel the world to meet your group! Such things were possible in the EQ1 days, but when VG was released those days were LONG over and enough people said so. But as ever so often, they did no listen.
Other stuff like when you die in the depth of one of the deadly dungeons (I just say Kragnors End!) and then you lose ALL progress was such a big no-go at that time already. Anything halfway interesting like housing or ships or flying mounts were and are way too hard to get for any casual player. In the end VG was a way to elitarian game in a time where this design was already a dinosaur. I know I was bashed endlessly back when I was in beta, and most ex fans are still in denial and prolly will always be. But to everyone else it is clear as the day that such an elite concept could never work in our days.
Today most MMO gamers make very little compromises when it comes to grouping, penalities, long travels, downtimes asf., a development whose logical steps the great soloability of games like LOTRO and the NPC companion in a game like SWTOR is. The signs that this was the future was clear as the day back then already, but fanbois and Sigil leaders did not want to see it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Well Brad, if you're reading this thread I'll never forget how you called me out back when you were beta testing VG and said that no one would get a free ride to play your game.
I think you (faultily) assumed that I, and others asking for a chance, just wanted to preview your game. What I remember saying is that I wanted to test out your game, and I meant that literally.
I will never forget Brad Mcquaid's messages on the beta boards. I had some fun in VG after Sony had it for a while, but the forced grouping was too much for someone like me who doesn't always have a group to roll with.
I read that Mcquaid is interested in developing another mmo. Sadly, I think he never learned his lesson from VG. In modern gaming, gamers have long memories and are very unforgiving. Good luck getting another chance.
At VG players: I can see why you love the game, and I'm sorry for you that SOE is phasing it out without actually manning up and admitting they're phasing it out. Rest assured if it stays in the black with a skeleton crew running it it'll stick around for at least the next year.
-Cym
wow after all these years that same oh water cooler Gossip bout what went on behind the scenes at sigil blah blah blah !! which is bout 99.9% BS anyways comes rising to the surface on the forums at the most lucritive moments.
but yet vanguard has had an open test server on all there so called failed content and none of these " in the know experts ever showed up to show there expertise but yet here we are at the water cooler again with the latest three old news gossip and rumor, there not closing vangaurd there taking a step back and start working on the part of the game that brings in the money and thats not end game content its lvl 1 to 45 content.
I dont think its the fact they shelved some end game content they were planning on putting out thats got some people so worked up i think its the fact they got the nerve to step back and tackle all the bugs that were being used as a free ride.
would like to see them divide the currency in two parts at lvl 50 if a player wants to charge 30 plat for a leather bag then let the lvl 50 player that wants to buy it but it will cost 50 blue plat or 500 blue gold coins ect that can only be had at lvl 50 somthing like that would help the new player sit back relax enjoy what vanguard has to offer
The game changed a lot. It's stable and runs decently now. The world is still huge but travel is much easier. It still has many hard-core types of effects in it that many newer types don't like (corpse runs, etc...) but it's a good, solid game.
I played it a bit earlier this year but I"m an old-school EQ person too. I clearly remember EQ and the changes that happened as they added in AA's. Seeing that on the list of changes for the near future -- I decided to look elsewhere and moved on.
Many senior players look at AA's as a good thing. I see them as I saw them in EQ -- over 900 AA's on my enchanter when I quit. AA's became the "new levels" where the guilds required max level and xx number of AA's with these specific AA's mandated to join. Looking at AA's being added to the game, I figured I'd get to the top levels just in time for AA requirements to push a few extra weeks on me and then it's grind the AA's when not raiding -- gotta keep up on 'em or the next new batch... Thanks but no thanks.
At least VG doesn't have the keying crap that EQ had where every couple of months or so you run another set through old content so you could bring new folks along on the "real" runs. Few keys required in VG so replacements aren't the nightmare they became in EQ but the AA's... That'll bite them in the long run as they have to design content to counter the AA skills so those AA skills shift from "nice to have" over to the "mandatory to do" category.
Still... for casual types looking for an "ultimate" PvE type of world/experience. It's an awesome game. For PvP -- I'd say don't even bother trying it in VG. It's not balanced at all for those activities and never really was.
Oh they are adding it? my bad.
there nonthing to put AA"s to.... really there's not its a train wreck waiting to happen if they would of stayed on course vangaurd would be back to the kill thousands rats then kill a thousand gnolls ect ect . at least this way there gonna get things done and done right instead of spending months on makeing new content that gets burnt down in a week.
there not Deleting AA's or anything else there just putting some stuff on the shelf till they get a better player base and broading the aspect of the game gonna have to be done.
vanguard not like eq2 or eq1 far from it just there gonna ween raiders a little bit teach them to stand on there own and start putting more resources into vanguard saga of heros and little less in to saga of raiders n beyond"
Well said. I recall reading from one of the developers who did the actual programming I heard many had never made a MMO before and so they had no idea about how to make a MMO function. Of course the hardcore approach doomed VG to fail. You just can't build a MMO only on such a niche target audience who will rush through the game anyway. I never understood why SOE bought VG in the first place. It wasnt totally bad, but really it didnt have a chance unless someone would make a mayor investment into the game, which SOE didnt. But it still is one of the most sad failed games in MMO history IMO. It had many lovable characteristics.
One of the major issues as I see it was. Vanguard was released at a time when forced grouping already was SO out of fashion and the trend which is clear now, was already visible. Most MMO gamers today have no tolerance to large downtimes. I mean, it took sometimes up to 45 minutes to just travel the world to meet your group! Such things were possible in the EQ1 days, but when VG was released those days were LONG over and enough people said so. But as ever so often, they did no listen.
Other stuff like when you die in the depth of one of the deadly dungeons (I just say Kragnors End!) and then you lose ALL progress was such a big no-go at that time already. Anything halfway interesting like housing or ships or flying mounts were and are way too hard to get for any casual player. In the end VG was a way to elitarian game in a time where this design was already a dinosaur. I know I was bashed endlessly back when I was in beta, and most ex fans are still in denial and prolly will always be. But to everyone else it is clear as the day that such an elite concept could never work in our days.
Today most MMO gamers make very little compromises when it comes to grouping, penalities, long travels, downtimes asf., a development whose logical steps the great soloability of games like LOTRO and the NPC companion in a game like SWTOR is. The signs that this was the future was clear as the day back then already, but fanbois and Sigil leaders did not want to see it.
As much as I love Vanguard this is exactly how I feel as well! Well said both of you.
Vanguard is one of the most annoying MMOs I ever tried, with a following of equally annoying, anti-every-other-MMO fans. I'm amused to see it dying on the vine, but glad that a good chunk of the hard core purist gamers are playing there - and not where I am.
This is what happens when you let "hardcore" gamers get their way.
From the original Beta I have said that this game would fail because it does not appeal to the masses, but death penalties and a lack of "wow"ness coupled with an insistence to make this something for the hard-core gamers to wave their e-penises to has resulted in low subscriptions.
Stop listening to the hard core raider types, and listen to the masses, and this game could yet become popular, although frankly it is probably too late.
I have personally said as far back as i can remember that hardcore gamers are the worst to develop for. They burn through content quicker than it can be made and then whine about how the game sucks and move on, leaving garbage in their wakes.
A game should be developed for the majority and to ensure a long game life.
Brad was just a coke head and should have been tossed in prison for fraud. He outright commited fraud to all of his investors. The tool should be in prison.
I don't know, the fact that SOE rescued the game in the first place says that they have an interest in making it work.
If SOE was really interested in making Vanguard work, they wouldn't keep cutting staff and funding. At this point its painfully obvious they are just using it to pad their station pass count of games. Its too bad, Vanguard itself is a good game, and with the proper support, could have made quite a bit of money for who ever was willing to invest. This death by a thousand cuts is all to typical of SOE's mentality.
Are the MMORPG communty's memories REALLY that short?? All this reminiscing about how great this game could have been??
This game was doomed from the start. Lots of hype and talk about cool hardcore mechanics but there was NO actual ability to back up their grandiose claims. And people kept swallowing the hype even when there was no proof to back it up. (But that's typical for the MMORPG community)
http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=561#more
The game failed only partly because of idiots like McQuaid for managers but also because of poor design decisions and lack of anything resembling a professional design process. Some of my favorite quotes from that interview:
f13.net: How was QA treated through the course of development?
Ex-Sigil: QA?
f13.net: QA.
Ex-Sigil: QA was one person up until about November... ONE.
f13.net: What.
Ex-Sigil: 100% serious.
================
f13.net: Would you say, honestly, that they (the pinheaded managers) are directly responsible for the unfortunate conclusion?
Ex-Sigil: A part of it. You can't leave out the insane hype machine, the process failures, and the poor design decision making at the very highest levels.
This is a sorry end to a year of MMORPGs that is once again memorable for its failures. Lets see if developers learn anything from them.
SOE, no suprise, put the game on cruise control, try to squeeze a little more profit, would not be surpised to see the game go dark in 2011, just another reason I don't play SOE games any longer.. they suck the big one..
My thoughts.
I've been a great fan of VG before release, the game on paper had it all.
But what killed the game was the high system requirement, it was unplayable.
Now that technology caught up I tried the game again, but I cannot get into it.
It's just missing the Xfactor.
Its graphics might be the biggest problem. There is a huge "uncanny valley" going on. The graphics pretend to be "realistic" especially compared to WoW's clear cartoon graphics, but they are completely wrong.
An example is a large port city, it is HUGE but empty, to empty for such a large port and there is no activity. And if you look closer, the architecture makes no sense. Ramps are made out of planks several times the size of a human being with nails the size of a leg. Did anyone at Sigil ever hear about the word "scale"?
The entire world, the look and feel of it never felt right for me. It felt like those cheap games were an amateur has slapped a few models together he found for free.
And the same really went for much of the game, it all felt disconnected. A lot of ideas put together but never actually refined into a single game.
SOE has rightfully gotten a reputation for half-assed games and I see them going the direction of Sierra. Once THE game producer, now just a joke of a name synonymous with trash products trying to squeeze the last bit of money out of the name.
Maybe that is a bit harsh but with EQ and the original SWG, the company has since fallen on hard time, once they owned the industry, now they still got the most titles but none of the big succeses. Blizzard, Turbine and NCSoft all got bigger titles. Even Funcom had better (initial) sales with Age of Conan. The mighty have fallen far.
This right here might be the biggest unspoken truth about the game overall.
Realistically, soe purchased Everquest from verrant and since then has struggled to find success. Every single title they have touched has been a failure to one degree or another.
Soe as a company has losts its way. They no longer understand what players want and even if they did, they do not know how to deliver it. The design process seems to be driven by accountants and the implementation of those changes seems to be decided upon by throwing darts at a board. Make a huge change, target a different player demographic, reverse course and target a different demographic, change design course right in the middle of the previous course change, etc.
There is so little consistency in the company other than the fact that they will be inconsistent in their design course. Soe has such huge asperations for success, because they were there once, but they have no earthly idea how to achieve it.
I should add that i hope the best for Vanguard. Though i don't play it or any other SoE game anymore, i hope the game manages to survive and find new life for the players that still love it.
Flaws aside, it has a neat game world, neat lore and a concept that can still work.
I stand pat on my opinion that Bard McQuaid should be banned for life from touching another mmo.