I just think its silly to quit a game that you liike because of Sony, I play a game for the game not for the developer or manufacturer. of course you are not going back to a restaurant if you get bad food, but your saying that vanguard gave you good food, who cares about the Matre dae when the food is great. Now you really dont explain why you quit , did your guild have a run in with sony?
You could say that. Twice in fact.
The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.
The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.
We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.
Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.
Personally, Ithink that Vanguard's current state has less to do with how good it is and more to do with SOE having its collective claws in to it. My whole guild quit just because of that. Not because it was a bad game. However, I most certainly am not still mad at SOE. It is simply that I have pledged to never give them another dime. I don't care if they make the next greatest game in the genre. In the same way that I would not return to a resteraunt that gave me bad food or service. You only get one chance to make an impression, usually, and I actually gave SOE two chances. Never again.
that is a silly statement, Vanguard cme out with the island and there were tons of people playing but the performance was still bad
People can play on the island all they want, but the island has MORE bugs than the main game, and its a bad representation of what Vanguard is like. And just coming out with an island wasn't enough, because NO advertising came out of SoE when the island came out, none. For the past 3 years Vanguard hasn't even been mentioned at the SoE fanfaire. They are trying to kill the game, its obvious.
they should have been sendiing out email like crazy, advertising on MMORPG , fileplanet and such , but I still feel the performance hurt the game more then anything , when you go to the Vanguard forums and people are saying to go out and buy an ssd drive andd 6 gig of 1366 ram just to play the game well that is sad
they should have been sendiing out email like crazy, advertising on MMORPG , fileplanet and such , but I still feel the performance hurt the game more then anything , when you go to the Vanguard forums and people are saying to go out and buy an ssd drive andd 6 gig of 1366 ram just to play the game well that is sad
Well, now you've not only answered you're own question, but you have perfectly described SOE as a publisher of games.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Pardon me if my friends and I no longer care to waste time with such a plainly inept company!
I just think its silly to quit a game that you liike because of Sony, I play a game for the game not for the developer or manufacturer. of course you are not going back to a restaurant if you get bad food, but your saying that vanguard gave you good food, who cares about the Matre dae when the food is great. Now you really dont explain why you quit , did your guild have a run in with sony?
You could say that. Twice in fact.
The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.
The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.
We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.
Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.
did Vanguard die at the hands of sony or brad, hard to say, AOC had performance problems when it started out but they were quickly fixed, perhaps the code in vanguard wont let sony fix it prob , on the other hand they have not done much for swg poor animations and quirkyness so you may be right. they seem to do a good job with eq2?
So what you're saying is... no MMO companies should try to make a game that was similar to a game released in 1999 because it's too hard...
Jesus what is wrong with this industry? I agree, Brad mismanaged the product to all hell, but the product he got out the door, the project sitting there right now waiting for subscribers, is so far ahead of most games out there right now, that its a sin that it's not dominating other games right now. And that is solely because SoE doesn't want the competition with its mother titles, it has EQ3 to think about soon. (they are working on it as we speak)
As much as Brad failed, if he tried again to do the same thing I'd be behind him 100%, because why should the MMO industry be moving backwards? Why can't we have living virtual worlds anymore? How come devs could handle it in 1999, but not now? Hasn't technology gotten BETTER?
I agree, the product as it is TODAY could be far more successful. But when it launched it was a choppy, tedious, bug-infested lag-spike orgy with kick-you-in-the-nuts game mechanics like swimming across an empty bay for 15 minutes just to get to a dungeon entrance.
The game is ahead _now_ because the essential ideas behind it and the sheer mass of quality content it features is amazingly great. But McQuaid drove this baby straight against the wall by setting the wrong priorities.
- He gave guys a pat on the back who designed cities with so many polygons on the screen it still makes a quadcore GeForce rig moan. Any lab-monkey can make something look pretty that only runs on NASA systems.
- He decided that content-mass is more important than quality, they forced 3 continents out the door while one alone provides content for all level ranges with multiple spots per level
- He as a seasoned MMO guru though you could drag harsh death penalty, long respawn timers, lacking fast travel, incredibly high repair costs into this game and exaggerate them. WIth the result that if you had a buddy in thestra who wanted to to run the lyceum and you just created a dark elf somewhere in the middle of the desert you could spend the rest of the evening travelling to even meet.
And I'd not even blame him, if he could not have known better. But other successful games were out showing what quality, polish and condensed game experience can do for your game. And the guy just ignored it.
So he pushed his half-assed game (back then) out the door, it flopped royally, he had to sell his company and SOE installed all the stuff that should have been in there from the start. Bugfixes, rift stones, reasonable grind, stable server park.
So it's - at the same time - SOE who created this deep and working product which is today's vanguard while still not marketing it at all...
So what you're saying is... no MMO companies should try to make a game that was similar to a game released in 1999 because it's too hard...
Jesus what is wrong with this industry? I agree, Brad mismanaged the product to all hell, but the product he got out the door, the project sitting there right now waiting for subscribers, is so far ahead of most games out there right now, that its a sin that it's not dominating other games right now. And that is solely because SoE doesn't want the competition with its mother titles, it has EQ3 to think about soon. (they are working on it as we speak)
As much as Brad failed, if he tried again to do the same thing I'd be behind him 100%, because why should the MMO industry be moving backwards? Why can't we have living virtual worlds anymore? How come devs could handle it in 1999, but not now? Hasn't technology gotten BETTER?
I agree, the product as it is TODAY could be far more successful. But when it launched it was a choppy, tedious, bug-infested lag-spike orgy with kick-you-in-the-nuts game mechanics like swimming across an empty bay for 15 minutes just to get to a dungeon entrance.
The game is ahead _now_ because the essential ideas behind it and the sheer mass of quality content it features is amazingly great. But McQuaid drove this baby straight against the wall by setting the wrong priorities.
- He gave guys a pat on the back who designed cities with so many polygons on the screen it still makes a quadcore GeForce rig moan. Any lab-monkey can make something look pretty that only runs on NASA systems.
- He decided that content-mass is more important than quality, they forced 3 continents out the door while one alone provides content for all level ranges with multiple spots per level
- He as a seasoned MMO guru though you could drag harsh death penalty, long respawn timers, lacking fast travel, incredibly high repair costs into this game and exaggerate them. WIth the result that if you had a buddy in thestra who wanted to to run the lyceum and you just created a dark elf somewhere in the middle of the desert you could spend the rest of the evening travelling to even meet.
And I'd not even blame him, if he could not have known better. But other successful games were out showing what quality, polish and condensed game experience can do for your game. And the guy just ignored it.
So he pushed his half-assed game (back then) out the door, it flopped royally, he had to sell his company and SOE installed all the stuff that should have been in there from the start. Bugfixes, rift stones, reasonable grind, stable server park.
So it's - at the same time - SOE who created this deep and working product which is today's vanguard while still not marketing it at all...
M
Its true, brad cme out with a very flawed product and sony fixed many of the flaws but then decided not to push it for some reason
they should have been sendiing out email like crazy, advertising on MMORPG , fileplanet and such , but I still feel the performance hurt the game more then anything , when you go to the Vanguard forums and people are saying to go out and buy an ssd drive andd 6 gig of 1366 ram just to play the game well that is sad
Well, now you've not only answered you're own question, but you have perfectly described SOE as a publisher of games.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Pardon me if my friends and I no longer care to waste time with such a plainly inept company!
Sony did fix a very flawed product but then decided it was a loser for some reason
It is WAY to late for this game. Vanguard is not EVE. It will not rebound. There is no investment into new content, and there never will be.
SOE has no interest in investing money into an old game like this, Period... They are not a gaming company, and have no interest in high risk mmo's.
Nothing will change this. My suggestion is to either keep playing it because you enjoy it, or bail because it is only a few years form the trash heap.
Yes, I played it... Yes it Rocks... Yes it will fail... soon...
Just adding a little real life to this post. To many "They shoulds", and "What IFs"
No MMO lives forever. You can't expect these products to be around for decades to come.
We have yet to reach the point when the first games close not because they're bad, not because their management screws up or their publisher stops funding, but just because they get old. You can't run these games on 3 linux systems and an office hub like MUD from 1991...
So it might be that Vanguard goes down this road earlier than other games, but I wouldn't hook my decision to play on the totally subjective life expectancy of the game. Play it if you like it and have fun while it's in town. There's loads of content to play through for any new player.
Heck, the regular attention span for an MMO is six months max anyways, after that you've literally "been there, done that" and just stay because of the people you know and like.
I stand by this statement, and will defend it to death.
If SoE put the slightest effort forward to get people to play Vanguard, it would be the number 1 PvE game on the market. It's the best one, easily, but SoE doesn't want competition with EverQuest, so they're slowly smothering it with a pillow until it leaves them alone.
If vanguard was so great, more people would play it. I know there are a mass of excuses why more people do not play, but the end result is that if this game is good enough to be the best and most popular game on the market, then more people would play.
Honestly Vanguard is a game that has taken 2.5 years of a companies best efforts and the results amount to what most other games do in a few updates. For years soe has struggled with getting the performance right, finishing content that sigil had already worked on and revamping already existing content. That isn't very impressive for 2.5 years of work.
I don't deny that the framework of the game is amazing and the potential is huge even if we disagree with how huge it is. The point is that vanguard isn't there and soe doesn't have the talent to fix the game or put any of that potential to good use.
Just to put on some counter-balance: I didn't like Vanguard. I regret the day I bought it - which was just before the free trials started. It just isn't that good. You can't blame SOE, you can't blame the bugs.
By all means try the free trial - do not buy it before you've tried it (like I did). I agree with the OP. They really should extend the free trial. Day 21 was about the time I lost interest in the game completely and I didn't play it for the last week I had payed for.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
SOE did give Vanguard a chance at the very beginning: the first content updates were great infact. Gameplay improvements&bug fixing, APW which turned out to be a great raidzone, Akande and many other highly challenging encounters for single groups along with some other griffonencounters, and much much more...
But Vanguard obviously didn't bring the expected success... and I believe these three points made their decision to stop supporting VG any longer fairly easy:
1) Vanguard attracts mainly adult (semi)hardcore gamers/raiders and roleplayers which make up only a small percentage of the whole MMO playerbase
2) This wouldn't be a problem if Sony didn't already support two fairly similar PvE aimed fantasy MMORPG which are not only attracting the same kind of players of Vanguard but also offering more content for casual gamers, newcomers, PvP or younger players...
3) Vanguard had a TERRIBLE start and remained fairly unknown, which makes it even harder to get more subscribers.
The result is no support, other than a way too small devteam with the attempt to keep the last few hardcore subscribers... the result is a terrible heavy grind path - the easiest and cheapest way to keep players busy (see their latest updates in the last ~8 months)...
And SOE won't put their hands off Vanguard... they are well aware of the potential this game has and the competition it would cause to EQ2.
SOE is doing a good job keeping this gem hidden, making it the most underrated MMO out there. There is absolutely no reason for them to promote this game - they got EQ2 to attract the very same kind of playerbase as mentioned...
Introducing Livegamer Exchange service on all REGULAR servers is just another attempt to make some last $ out of this, knowing the players who quit nowadays wouldn't return anyway.
Thus Vanguard is suffering a slow and painful death.
And I will definitely miss Vanguard... loved this game more than any other MMO
Yeh...but with every update, SOE tried to make the game more like WOW.
They dumped the death penalties, got rid of the boats used for travel (the docks, not personal boats), added portals and fast travel, got rid of ALL faction, got rid of character customization for several months, added RMT, etc....with the intention of bringing in a new crowd of younger and less "hardcore" players.
All they did was piss off their dedicated fanbase of "hardcore", older, more mature, roleplayers, by ruining or changing everything they liked about the game.
SOE/Vanguard was losing players faster than what it was bringing in. Most of the newer players left after a short time, leaving Telon emptier than it was before, and the former players never came back...or if they did, it was for a month, and then the devs would do something else really stupid - see second paragraph- and it would start all over again.
I would love to see what the subscription numbers were when SOE took over, what they were 3 months later, and what they are now. I'm thinking it jumped after SOE took it, jumped a small amount or stayed the same for the next 3 months....and then started dropping steadily until they are where they are today.
Ok all I will start to say I love Vanguard. I played it from launch up to 2 years after the game launched. I played thru all the bugs. All the crashes... Really I think I was one of the lucky ones because the computer I had ran it nicely with a few issues here and there. Granted some of patches made it a little crazy at times.
However I will say this..
Vanguard is lacking even as much I loved the open world with huge expanses you could lose yourself in as you explored.
The game had no real epic storyline to keep you going. Making it hard for many players to get into the gameworld or even their characters. That is not saying Vanguard didnt have a story but you had to really dig to get into it. Something alot of players these days dont really want to do.
You read all these posts talking about ohh I went to play and it seemed to be a good game and I left because of no dev support. I have to call total BS to that.
Vanguard has SOO much content that if you played for 1 or 2 months you werent even hardly scratching the surface. Why would the fact that Devs werent adding anything new to the game make you decide to quit playing it? Simple It wouldnt. Hell what the devs are doing is taking a game that has already been made mostly stable and making it even more stable even more desirable for many to play.
So all these people coming on this thread and saying I left after playing a month or 2 because of the devs not giving it support it needed to thrive is just bogus crap. Because there is no way the current issues with the devs would have effected your gameplay at all. Well ok one reason. Those people who have stayed true to Vanguard might leave making the gameworld seem even more devoid of player life.
My tip is this. IF you enjoyed your stay in Vanguard for a month. Stay there get your friends to play.. Maybe if enough people did play this game SOE would take notice.
I spent 2 great years in this game. Sad to see it is dieing.
Vanguard is a game I would have loved to love. It had a huge, detailed world, lots of quests, and interesting features that you find on a lot of sandbox wishlists. The only problem (besides bugs) is the lack of people. I'm a bit of a paradox in that I play my MMOs mostly solo. I just love the idea that I'm doing my thing in a "world" where other people are doing there's. Cities with people going to and fro, passing other players on roads or in the wilds, and knowing that while I act alone, I'm not alone in the world is what draws me to mmo's vs. single player games.
What sealed it for me was when I started an elf character-- a wood elf, I believe (been so long now, I forgot what types there are. This one started in the woods, so...). Now, the island had other people checking it out, so there was some activity there. Starting in one of the original starting areas is a totally different thing. I played for 3 days on a long weekend, spending an average of 8 hours or more a day on it, and saw not one soul. In fact, I can only recall one or two other people even talking on the chat channel and they were basically asking if anyone else was playing.
By the third day, I realized that for all the content and scope, the world was extremely lonely, and it killed it for me. If I read somewhere that there was a major resurgence in the playerbase, I wouldn't hesitate to re-open my sub and jump back in. Sadly, I don't think that will ever happen.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
By the third day, I realized that for all the content and scope, the world was extremely lonely, and it killed it for me. If I read somewhere that there was a major resurgence in the playerbase, I wouldn't hesitate to re-open my sub and jump back in. Sadly, I don't think that will ever happen.
Vanguard is top heavy now, meaning most players have reached max level. So there aren't many lowbees.
Vanguards biggest problem is SOE, they are like a millstone around the neck of anything that's associated with them. I and many other gamers continue to boycott them for various reasons. I'll never play anything with SOE on it or associated with John Smedley, so I'll never play Vanguard. No matter how good it is.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
Why not start playing it if you want to play it? If all say its not so many players and that is the cause why they dont start how in the world can it come more players to Vanguard? Someone has to do it and more and more will play.
SOE saved this game. Without them this game would have never seen the light of day. Maybe they would have invested more time into it but the team at Vanguard wasted millions of dollars during development and probably still haven't even made that money back yet through subs and vanguard sales.
I understand why SOE didn't invest more time into vanguard. VG was taboo. Everyone who heard of VG cringed at the terrible launch with all the bugs and the lack of content that was promised for release.
Hell, we should just be happy the game is alive at all! I played the game for a year and I loved it.
I just think its silly to quit a game that you liike because of Sony, I play a game for the game not for the developer or manufacturer. of course you are not going back to a restaurant if you get bad food, but your saying that vanguard gave you good food, who cares about the Matre dae when the food is great. Now you really dont explain why you quit , did your guild have a run in with sony?
You could say that. Twice in fact.
The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.
The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.
We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.
Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.
*twitch twitch* Argumentum ad Infinitum. SOE Didn't buy out Verant. SOE -is- Verant.
Comments
You could say that. Twice in fact.
The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.
The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.
We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.
Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.
that is a silly statement, Vanguard cme out with the island and there were tons of people playing but the performance was still bad
People can play on the island all they want, but the island has MORE bugs than the main game, and its a bad representation of what Vanguard is like. And just coming out with an island wasn't enough, because NO advertising came out of SoE when the island came out, none. For the past 3 years Vanguard hasn't even been mentioned at the SoE fanfaire. They are trying to kill the game, its obvious.
they should have been sendiing out email like crazy, advertising on MMORPG , fileplanet and such , but I still feel the performance hurt the game more then anything , when you go to the Vanguard forums and people are saying to go out and buy an ssd drive andd 6 gig of 1366 ram just to play the game well that is sad
Well, now you've not only answered you're own question, but you have perfectly described SOE as a publisher of games.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Pardon me if my friends and I no longer care to waste time with such a plainly inept company!
You could say that. Twice in fact.
The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.
The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.
We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.
Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.
did Vanguard die at the hands of sony or brad, hard to say, AOC had performance problems when it started out but they were quickly fixed, perhaps the code in vanguard wont let sony fix it prob , on the other hand they have not done much for swg poor animations and quirkyness so you may be right. they seem to do a good job with eq2?
Jesus what is wrong with this industry? I agree, Brad mismanaged the product to all hell, but the product he got out the door, the project sitting there right now waiting for subscribers, is so far ahead of most games out there right now, that its a sin that it's not dominating other games right now. And that is solely because SoE doesn't want the competition with its mother titles, it has EQ3 to think about soon. (they are working on it as we speak)
As much as Brad failed, if he tried again to do the same thing I'd be behind him 100%, because why should the MMO industry be moving backwards? Why can't we have living virtual worlds anymore? How come devs could handle it in 1999, but not now? Hasn't technology gotten BETTER?
I agree, the product as it is TODAY could be far more successful. But when it launched it was a choppy, tedious, bug-infested lag-spike orgy with kick-you-in-the-nuts game mechanics like swimming across an empty bay for 15 minutes just to get to a dungeon entrance.
The game is ahead _now_ because the essential ideas behind it and the sheer mass of quality content it features is amazingly great. But McQuaid drove this baby straight against the wall by setting the wrong priorities.
- He gave guys a pat on the back who designed cities with so many polygons on the screen it still makes a quadcore GeForce rig moan. Any lab-monkey can make something look pretty that only runs on NASA systems.
- He decided that content-mass is more important than quality, they forced 3 continents out the door while one alone provides content for all level ranges with multiple spots per level
- He as a seasoned MMO guru though you could drag harsh death penalty, long respawn timers, lacking fast travel, incredibly high repair costs into this game and exaggerate them. WIth the result that if you had a buddy in thestra who wanted to to run the lyceum and you just created a dark elf somewhere in the middle of the desert you could spend the rest of the evening travelling to even meet.
And I'd not even blame him, if he could not have known better. But other successful games were out showing what quality, polish and condensed game experience can do for your game. And the guy just ignored it.
So he pushed his half-assed game (back then) out the door, it flopped royally, he had to sell his company and SOE installed all the stuff that should have been in there from the start. Bugfixes, rift stones, reasonable grind, stable server park.
So it's - at the same time - SOE who created this deep and working product which is today's vanguard while still not marketing it at all...
M
Jesus what is wrong with this industry? I agree, Brad mismanaged the product to all hell, but the product he got out the door, the project sitting there right now waiting for subscribers, is so far ahead of most games out there right now, that its a sin that it's not dominating other games right now. And that is solely because SoE doesn't want the competition with its mother titles, it has EQ3 to think about soon. (they are working on it as we speak)
As much as Brad failed, if he tried again to do the same thing I'd be behind him 100%, because why should the MMO industry be moving backwards? Why can't we have living virtual worlds anymore? How come devs could handle it in 1999, but not now? Hasn't technology gotten BETTER?
I agree, the product as it is TODAY could be far more successful. But when it launched it was a choppy, tedious, bug-infested lag-spike orgy with kick-you-in-the-nuts game mechanics like swimming across an empty bay for 15 minutes just to get to a dungeon entrance.
The game is ahead _now_ because the essential ideas behind it and the sheer mass of quality content it features is amazingly great. But McQuaid drove this baby straight against the wall by setting the wrong priorities.
- He gave guys a pat on the back who designed cities with so many polygons on the screen it still makes a quadcore GeForce rig moan. Any lab-monkey can make something look pretty that only runs on NASA systems.
- He decided that content-mass is more important than quality, they forced 3 continents out the door while one alone provides content for all level ranges with multiple spots per level
- He as a seasoned MMO guru though you could drag harsh death penalty, long respawn timers, lacking fast travel, incredibly high repair costs into this game and exaggerate them. WIth the result that if you had a buddy in thestra who wanted to to run the lyceum and you just created a dark elf somewhere in the middle of the desert you could spend the rest of the evening travelling to even meet.
And I'd not even blame him, if he could not have known better. But other successful games were out showing what quality, polish and condensed game experience can do for your game. And the guy just ignored it.
So he pushed his half-assed game (back then) out the door, it flopped royally, he had to sell his company and SOE installed all the stuff that should have been in there from the start. Bugfixes, rift stones, reasonable grind, stable server park.
So it's - at the same time - SOE who created this deep and working product which is today's vanguard while still not marketing it at all...
M
Its true, brad cme out with a very flawed product and sony fixed many of the flaws but then decided not to push it for some reason
Well, now you've not only answered you're own question, but you have perfectly described SOE as a publisher of games.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Pardon me if my friends and I no longer care to waste time with such a plainly inept company!
Sony did fix a very flawed product but then decided it was a loser for some reason
I would play Vanguard definitely if there were more people and SOE was serious about developing content for it.
It is WAY to late for this game. Vanguard is not EVE. It will not rebound. There is no investment into new content, and there never will be.
SOE has no interest in investing money into an old game like this, Period... They are not a gaming company, and have no interest in high risk mmo's.
Nothing will change this. My suggestion is to either keep playing it because you enjoy it, or bail because it is only a few years form the trash heap.
Yes, I played it... Yes it Rocks... Yes it will fail... soon...
Just adding a little real life to this post. To many "They shoulds", and "What IFs"
BoB
No MMO lives forever. You can't expect these products to be around for decades to come.
We have yet to reach the point when the first games close not because they're bad, not because their management screws up or their publisher stops funding, but just because they get old. You can't run these games on 3 linux systems and an office hub like MUD from 1991...
So it might be that Vanguard goes down this road earlier than other games, but I wouldn't hook my decision to play on the totally subjective life expectancy of the game. Play it if you like it and have fun while it's in town. There's loads of content to play through for any new player.
Heck, the regular attention span for an MMO is six months max anyways, after that you've literally "been there, done that" and just stay because of the people you know and like.
M
If vanguard was so great, more people would play it. I know there are a mass of excuses why more people do not play, but the end result is that if this game is good enough to be the best and most popular game on the market, then more people would play.
Honestly Vanguard is a game that has taken 2.5 years of a companies best efforts and the results amount to what most other games do in a few updates. For years soe has struggled with getting the performance right, finishing content that sigil had already worked on and revamping already existing content. That isn't very impressive for 2.5 years of work.
I don't deny that the framework of the game is amazing and the potential is huge even if we disagree with how huge it is. The point is that vanguard isn't there and soe doesn't have the talent to fix the game or put any of that potential to good use.
It is a company that has lost touch with gamers.
This message was edited on 8/16/15 at 5:30:00 AM
Just to put on some counter-balance: I didn't like Vanguard. I regret the day I bought it - which was just before the free trials started. It just isn't that good. You can't blame SOE, you can't blame the bugs.
By all means try the free trial - do not buy it before you've tried it (like I did). I agree with the OP. They really should extend the free trial. Day 21 was about the time I lost interest in the game completely and I didn't play it for the last week I had payed for.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
I wish SOE would have never picked up this game, simply so it would have died without players blaming SOE for the fact that their game is dying.
SOE did give Vanguard a chance at the very beginning: the first content updates were great infact. Gameplay improvements&bug fixing, APW which turned out to be a great raidzone, Akande and many other highly challenging encounters for single groups along with some other griffonencounters, and much much more...
But Vanguard obviously didn't bring the expected success... and I believe these three points made their decision to stop supporting VG any longer fairly easy:
1) Vanguard attracts mainly adult (semi)hardcore gamers/raiders and roleplayers which make up only a small percentage of the whole MMO playerbase
2) This wouldn't be a problem if Sony didn't already support two fairly similar PvE aimed fantasy MMORPG which are not only attracting the same kind of players of Vanguard but also offering more content for casual gamers, newcomers, PvP or younger players...
3) Vanguard had a TERRIBLE start and remained fairly unknown, which makes it even harder to get more subscribers.
The result is no support, other than a way too small devteam with the attempt to keep the last few hardcore subscribers... the result is a terrible heavy grind path - the easiest and cheapest way to keep players busy (see their latest updates in the last ~8 months)...
And SOE won't put their hands off Vanguard... they are well aware of the potential this game has and the competition it would cause to EQ2.
SOE is doing a good job keeping this gem hidden, making it the most underrated MMO out there. There is absolutely no reason for them to promote this game - they got EQ2 to attract the very same kind of playerbase as mentioned...
Introducing Livegamer Exchange service on all REGULAR servers is just another attempt to make some last $ out of this, knowing the players who quit nowadays wouldn't return anyway.
Thus Vanguard is suffering a slow and painful death.
And I will definitely miss Vanguard... loved this game more than any other MMO
Yeh...but with every update, SOE tried to make the game more like WOW.
They dumped the death penalties, got rid of the boats used for travel (the docks, not personal boats), added portals and fast travel, got rid of ALL faction, got rid of character customization for several months, added RMT, etc....with the intention of bringing in a new crowd of younger and less "hardcore" players.
All they did was piss off their dedicated fanbase of "hardcore", older, more mature, roleplayers, by ruining or changing everything they liked about the game.
SOE/Vanguard was losing players faster than what it was bringing in. Most of the newer players left after a short time, leaving Telon emptier than it was before, and the former players never came back...or if they did, it was for a month, and then the devs would do something else really stupid - see second paragraph- and it would start all over again.
I would love to see what the subscription numbers were when SOE took over, what they were 3 months later, and what they are now. I'm thinking it jumped after SOE took it, jumped a small amount or stayed the same for the next 3 months....and then started dropping steadily until they are where they are today.
Just a hunch.
Ok all I will start to say I love Vanguard. I played it from launch up to 2 years after the game launched. I played thru all the bugs. All the crashes... Really I think I was one of the lucky ones because the computer I had ran it nicely with a few issues here and there. Granted some of patches made it a little crazy at times.
However I will say this..
Vanguard is lacking even as much I loved the open world with huge expanses you could lose yourself in as you explored.
The game had no real epic storyline to keep you going. Making it hard for many players to get into the gameworld or even their characters. That is not saying Vanguard didnt have a story but you had to really dig to get into it. Something alot of players these days dont really want to do.
You read all these posts talking about ohh I went to play and it seemed to be a good game and I left because of no dev support. I have to call total BS to that.
Vanguard has SOO much content that if you played for 1 or 2 months you werent even hardly scratching the surface. Why would the fact that Devs werent adding anything new to the game make you decide to quit playing it? Simple It wouldnt. Hell what the devs are doing is taking a game that has already been made mostly stable and making it even more stable even more desirable for many to play.
So all these people coming on this thread and saying I left after playing a month or 2 because of the devs not giving it support it needed to thrive is just bogus crap. Because there is no way the current issues with the devs would have effected your gameplay at all. Well ok one reason. Those people who have stayed true to Vanguard might leave making the gameworld seem even more devoid of player life.
My tip is this. IF you enjoyed your stay in Vanguard for a month. Stay there get your friends to play.. Maybe if enough people did play this game SOE would take notice.
I spent 2 great years in this game. Sad to see it is dieing.
Vanguard is a game I would have loved to love. It had a huge, detailed world, lots of quests, and interesting features that you find on a lot of sandbox wishlists. The only problem (besides bugs) is the lack of people. I'm a bit of a paradox in that I play my MMOs mostly solo. I just love the idea that I'm doing my thing in a "world" where other people are doing there's. Cities with people going to and fro, passing other players on roads or in the wilds, and knowing that while I act alone, I'm not alone in the world is what draws me to mmo's vs. single player games.
What sealed it for me was when I started an elf character-- a wood elf, I believe (been so long now, I forgot what types there are. This one started in the woods, so...). Now, the island had other people checking it out, so there was some activity there. Starting in one of the original starting areas is a totally different thing. I played for 3 days on a long weekend, spending an average of 8 hours or more a day on it, and saw not one soul. In fact, I can only recall one or two other people even talking on the chat channel and they were basically asking if anyone else was playing.
By the third day, I realized that for all the content and scope, the world was extremely lonely, and it killed it for me. If I read somewhere that there was a major resurgence in the playerbase, I wouldn't hesitate to re-open my sub and jump back in. Sadly, I don't think that will ever happen.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Vanguard is top heavy now, meaning most players have reached max level. So there aren't many lowbees.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Vanguards biggest problem is SOE, they are like a millstone around the neck of anything that's associated with them. I and many other gamers continue to boycott them for various reasons. I'll never play anything with SOE on it or associated with John Smedley, so I'll never play Vanguard. No matter how good it is.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Why not start playing it if you want to play it? If all say its not so many players and that is the cause why they dont start how in the world can it come more players to Vanguard? Someone has to do it and more and more will play.
I thought Vanguard was dead, and if its dead you leave it alone.
I play vanguard. played it for 2 years.
SOE saved this game. Without them this game would have never seen the light of day. Maybe they would have invested more time into it but the team at Vanguard wasted millions of dollars during development and probably still haven't even made that money back yet through subs and vanguard sales.
I understand why SOE didn't invest more time into vanguard. VG was taboo. Everyone who heard of VG cringed at the terrible launch with all the bugs and the lack of content that was promised for release.
Hell, we should just be happy the game is alive at all! I played the game for a year and I loved it.
You could say that. Twice in fact.
The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.
The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.
We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.
Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.
*twitch twitch* Argumentum ad Infinitum. SOE Didn't buy out Verant. SOE -is- Verant.