SOE makes one bad decision after another. They always do the opposite of the players wishes in the hopes of gaining more than they lose. It is beyond me how Smed still has a job because he is the most failed President that I can think of. Nothing he touches turns to gold but more like coal. SOE kills its games and not WOW.
He's the man with the non-Midas touch..!
He has the new Midas touch.... whatever he touches turns into a tire, that runs over players leaving them as roadkill.
Also Microsoft even Blizzard I think has laid off people of late. Well I feel sorry for the people who lose their jobs in this climate.
^^^
Think the circular discussion about WoW's impact on SoE isn't relevant. This likely ocurred as a result of the state of the US economy and poor sales across the board in just about every commercial sector. It doesn't matter if Blizzard bested SoE in own market, as this move was almost certainly made due to future predictions and not past results.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
I have news for you my friend.. WoW had nothing to do with Vanguard.. If WoW was never around, Vanguard still would of been a failed attempt at being a mmorpg.. Lack of money, Lack of love and a Lack of true mmorpg players is what doomed Vanguard, as it did with many games since 2004.. I'll go back once again and use my McDonalds annology.. The number of premium steak houses hasn't increased in the last 20 years, however McDonalds keep growing.. This doesn't mean that McDonalds makes better meals then the 5 star steak house (as some fast food fans might want to believe).. It means that the desire for cheap quick satisfaction crowd grew.. I don't think I would call that a good thing, and it sure as hell isn't an improvement.. Hell in todays era we can also use Walmart as the example with McDonalds.. More and more people want inexpensive basics quickly.. Walmart and McDs fill that role.. Just because a Macys or a Lonestar closes it's door, doesnt' mean that Walmart and McD drove them out of business..
You lost when you started using "true" in your statement. naturally true is as you define it and so you basically are trying to make a defacto declaration of the standards. Anyone who brings up the McDonalds wow analogy, in my mind, is a total idiot who needs to parrot the words of others.
Vangaurd was a POS game imo. If it had been a great game, it would have survived the fitness test of the mmorpg marketplace.
About Vanguard. The more I hear about the game like the really vast, seamless world and the diplomacy system, the more I think it's a shame that it didn't get the same development attention post-launch as other games as EQ2 got. I think it had the potential to be something awesome.
Sadly, Vanguard IS A good game... and the only game on earth where fans and players say that it's 'sad' that it's good.
90% of the issues at launch were technical. Crap was broken. There were bugs, broken quests, etc. But the main culprit was just that it was technically unplayable.
And SOE has fixed most of that, and nicely. The crew (not Sillius) was dedicated and skilled. It's just there was so few of them it took AGES to get things fixed, and by the time the game was playable and polished, it was too late... way too late.
A full dev crew could have gotten Vanguard to the point it was after 2 years in about 2 months. Launch was a mess though, and the first thing SOE did was put Vanguard on a skeleton crew. But for those of us that played beta extensively and could actually run the game on launch, it was never a question of the game having promise. We say it. It was a question of whether SOE was going to actually give it a chance to be good or simply let it rot as another crappy title to pimp for their station access.
How embarrassing would it have been if they gave Vanguard attention--via publishing/supporting Sigil fully or even after aquiring the game and throwing as much funding into it--and then it blew their flagship MMO EQ2 out of the water? The thing is, even on life support with a skeleton crew staff, Vanguard IS a better game than EQ2... thankfully for Smed, SOE, and prideful egos, people only started realizing that years after Vanguards launch and reputation ensured it would never be popular or respected as a AAA title.
Vangaurd was a POS game imo. If it had been a great game, it would have survived the fitness test of the mmorpg marketplace.
Did you play the game at launch?
The problem was that most of the playerbase couldn't due to bugs, crashes, stuttering and every conceivable technical issue you can imagine with a game.
The greatest game in the world will not get the attention it deserves if people can't stay logged in, playing the game. I remember one review from a reputable source that was basically a huge facepalm because they literally couldn't get enough play time to give an accurate review.
THAT is the kiss of death for most games, and most players, and most of the problem with Vanguard's launch. There were other issues, like a lack of end-game content at launch.... but the real problem was that a HUGE portion of the playerbase couldn't even run the game, much less make it to any sort of end-game.
And if you look now, the problems aren't that the game is a "POS." Reviews make this clear. The game is good now... but whose going to play a SOE based game with no dev support after the broken launch experience that it did have? Answer: 1.5 servers worth of the players the game has now, heh.
There is a big difference between getting fired and getting laid off. Getting fired means you are incompetent, and someone else has to do your job. Being laid off means you could be doing a great job, but the business isn't there to support you. Laid off people typically get a severance package, while those getting fired do not.
In the software business, it has become all too common to "lay" people off, instead of doing proper management and firing them. To actually fire someone for cause, you have to first document their failings, institute a recovery plan, and then document how they failed the recovery plan. To lay someone off, by contrast, is easy.
It does not surprise me that layoffs had to be done, business is down. My company has laid off many qualified and well-performing people, just because our customer base has shrunk.
As for Vanguard, I think it is one of the best MMORPG's out there now. It really does not need a large dev team, it already has more content than most games.
Also Microsoft even Blizzard I think has laid off people of late. Well I feel sorry for the people who lose their jobs in this climate.
I can't say I feel sorry. Some people who were fired were quite incompetent. The main source of all this is SoE and Smedley though. Smedleys idea is to grab market share wherever he can in any field, with plenty of bad MMO.
Blizzard is in now way comparable to SoE. Blizzard focuses on less than a handful of games of which only 1 is an MMO. SoE has like 10 MMO, card games, action games etc, and totaled they're still a drop in the ocean. SoE did good with EQ for a few years, then it basically went downhill from there, every game including EQ has only a few thousand players, I don't blame the economy, I blame the incompetence at SoE.
It angers me. SOE had some very creative game development folks. EQ2 and SWG rocked, and Vanguard could have become a really great game if SOE just would have invested into it for real. VG will always remain the best potential unused. I had a blast, but it was just too rought around the edges in the long run, and exodus emptied the servers too much for me to play it.
SOE management is what sucks. Those bean counters and desktop fools have no clue.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Also Microsoft even Blizzard I think has laid off people of late. Well I feel sorry for the people who lose their jobs in this climate.
I can't say I feel sorry. Some people who were fired were quite incompetent. The main source of all this is SoE and Smedley though. Smedleys idea is to grab market share wherever he can in any field, with plenty of bad MMO.
Blizzard is in now way comparable to SoE. Blizzard focuses on less than a handful of games of which only 1 is an MMO. SoE has like 10 MMO, card games, action games etc, and totaled they're still a drop in the ocean. SoE did good with EQ for a few years, then it basically went downhill from there, every game including EQ has only a few thousand players, I don't blame the economy, I blame the incompetence at SoE.
Well, it's interesting that to use a food hall in a mall analogy that post-EQ Success SOE went for a varied resteraunt approach, bringing many world cuisines to the mmorpg masses, while Blizzard just took the McDonalds approach and perfected the high fat fast food hamburger and nothing else. I don't think staff leavings actually means too much for SOE, after all they have games like DCUO coming that look alright and are new takes on the mmo genre.
Vanguard was never touted as a WoW killer in any means. Unless someone can post a link McQuaid saying so... it's a load of bullshit. Vanguard if anything was supposed to be the EQ2 killer..... the Everquest killer in general(If it had to be some kind of killer period, which is just plain silly). It just got rocked by a load of bugs, performance issues up the ying yang. It could never recover from all the issues it had. SOE didn't help matters much with the game, they would be damned if it ended up being better then their own EQ2, but they did keep a game that was simply just going to die, and kept it alive.
SOE sucks. They ruin games. They lie and insult gamers and tell them to piss off. Is it any wonder they are withering away.
The right leadership could turn SOE around, but Smed is like a tic, dug in and sucking the life out of his host. When SOE finally crashes and burns he will just hop off and infect another creature.
It is so frustrating to see a company that could be great consistently make the wrong decisions. It's like they ask themselves what should be done and then do the opposite.
Vanguard was never touted as a WoW killer in any means. Unless someone can post a link McQuaid saying so... it's a load of bullshit. Vanguard if anything was supposed to be the EQ2 killer..... the Everquest killer in general(If it had to be some kind of killer period, which is just plain silly). It just got rocked by a load of bugs, performance issues up the ying yang. It could never recover from all the issues it had. SOE didn't help matters much with the game, they would be damned if it ended up being better then their own EQ2, but they did keep a game that was simply just going to die, and kept it alive.
I am with you on this, Vanguard was never touted as a WOW or any other mmorpg killer, that's the over hype crew talking. People can think what they want about SOE but without them Vanguard would not have had the turn around it has over the last 3+ years.
It makes me laugh at people commenting on Vanguard and they have not played it or they played it 3 years ago, a lot has changed since then. They have just had a server merge and the new Telon server is absolutely bustling now, it's great.
One of the biggest guilds is the mmorpg.com guild that gave birth on these forums with over 150 members. I have been playing since beta and the game really is the last of a dying breed, it's just fantastic.
Anyone thinking SOE are going broke or going under are kidding themselves, we are talking Sony here, a giant .
These are the reasons why SoE is not doing well, and I would say it was quite a predictable outcome
Smedley as I always said many times, is not able to manage a company like SoE which is supposed to be the jewel of Sony crown.
He alone not only ruined a couple of decent MMOs, but alienated the majority of SoE player base and damaged SoE reputation with his non sense approach towards his customers "I do what I please, you keep paying" (in your dreams mate)
The Agency and DC Universe will end up exactly like CO and STO, they will sell lots of boxes but after 2 months nobody will play it.
SoE needs to design proper MMORPGs which provide SoE with long term subscription like EQ, not console games which don't provide a long term income.
Sony should hire someone from Blizzard or Bioware to lead SoE, how hard is to understand?
I am shocked it didn't happened yet.
Until Smedley remains at the helm of SoE, nothing is going to change.
I lol'd really hard when I read this, people really believe this stuff.....haha
Anyone with a sense of business knows that if only 10% of what people say about Smed would be true the man would long be gone and out of a job, geuss he's doing allot better then what some seem to pretend. It also doesn't mean I agree with what Smedley does or is doing, it just means he must be doing something good to still be there.....
And this is regardles how I personaly feel about SOE as I aint playing any SOE games and apart from SWG for several years I only touched Vanguard for about 3 months at it release and a month in beta, but thankfully never experianced all those bad things I only read on forums about the game in those months, just left cause I had enough of fantasy based MMO's.
At this point I'm wondering how this will effect Everquest Next, that apparently hasn't had any coverage at all lately. I suppose it can be a little selfish of me to focus on the next new iteration while people are losing their jobs. Its a tough economy and most likely we've not seen the worst of it.
The fan fair is just around the corner and I'm wondering what the mood will be like with this recent news.
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Vanguard was destroyed by not being technically playable...
And they didn't 'fire' anyone, as far as we know. There's a HUGE difference between laying employees off and firing them. Firing them implies there was misconduct on the employees parts that got them canned, which doesn't seem to be the case.
And yeah, these events have everything to do with WoW. Where's the damn eyeroll emoticon?
I would suggest layoffs bode darker things for the company.
Yes generally layoffs preceed other cuts as they tend to save the company money immediately. However as companies lay people off they also start to incur other tax penalties that will impact their bottom line as well. Anyway most companies that lay off employees are doing so because their revenue can no longer support the employees salaries and benefits. Which mean in most cases the company is not on solid financial ground i.e. revenue tends to be down, costs are up and any black ink is either small or turned to red on the profit line. So they are attempting to cut costs now to give themselves breathing room on the bottom line now.
Originally posted by uquipu They can't compete with WoW. . EQ2 never recovered after WoWs launch gradually losing customers. . Vangaurd was touted as a WoW killer but Vanguard was destroyed by WoW.
I've never bought into the idea that WoW is the measure of all MMO's. WoW is a fun game, however to suggest that its the template for all MMO's is grossly over generalized. Perhaps it can be argued that its a cash cow and an economic yard stick for the gaming industry, but I wouldn't call it as being the most substantive, engaging or end-depth MMO out there. WoW may be the centrifuge of a massive subscriber base, but that's where the difference lies.
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Originally posted by popsideath Originally posted by cyphers About Vanguard. The more I hear about the game like the really vast, seamless world and the diplomacy system, the more I think it's a shame that it didn't get the same development attention post-launch as other games as EQ2 got. I think it had the potential to be something awesome.
Sadly, Vanguard IS A good game... and the only game on earth where fans and players say that it's 'sad' that it's good.
90% of the issues at launch were technical. Crap was broken. There were bugs, broken quests, etc. But the main culprit was just that it was technically unplayable.
And SOE has fixed most of that, and nicely. The crew (not Sillius) was dedicated and skilled. It's just there was so few of them it took AGES to get things fixed, and by the time the game was playable and polished, it was too late... way too late.
A full dev crew could have gotten Vanguard to the point it was after 2 years in about 2 months. Launch was a mess though, and the first thing SOE did was put Vanguard on a skeleton crew. But for those of us that played beta extensively and could actually run the game on launch, it was never a question of the game having promise. We say it. It was a question of whether SOE was going to actually give it a chance to be good or simply let it rot as another crappy title to pimp for their station access.
How embarrassing would it have been if they gave Vanguard attention--via publishing/supporting Sigil fully or even after aquiring the game and throwing as much funding into it--and then it blew their flagship MMO EQ2 out of the water? The thing is, even on life support with a skeleton crew staff, Vanguard IS a better game than EQ2... thankfully for Smed, SOE, and prideful egos, people only started realizing that years after Vanguards launch and reputation ensured it would never be popular or respected as a AAA title.
Lets not forget the Brad McQuaid factor. When the leader decides to essentially abandon the project and the team is left leaderless it can present a lot of challenges. Then to add insult to injury a good many of them were fired, in a parking lot. Vanguard had potential, but McQuaid for all his creative talent isn't an effective leader. I wanted Vanguard to succeed, but it just felt like the game had no soul so I didn't play it beyond the Beta. I'm glad to hear that it does have a decent following and that there is a niche group of players that are still enjoying it.
The Old Timers Guild Laid back, not so serious, no drama. All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Vanguard was destroyed by not being technically playable...
And they didn't 'fire' anyone, as far as we know. There's a HUGE difference between laying employees off and firing them. Firing them implies there was misconduct on the employees parts that got them canned, which doesn't seem to be the case.
And yeah, these events have everything to do with WoW. Where's the damn eyeroll emoticon?
I would suggest layoffs bode darker things for the company.
Yes generally layoffs preceed other cuts as they tend to save the company money immediately. However as companies lay people off they also start to incur other tax penalties that will impact their bottom line as well. Anyway most companies that lay off employees are doing so because their revenue can no longer support the employees salaries and benefits. Which mean in most cases the company is not on solid financial ground i.e. revenue tends to be down, costs are up and any black ink is either small or turned to red on the profit line. So they are attempting to cut costs now to give themselves breathing room on the bottom line now.
Or in some cases weeding out the non productive is easier done, do to legal interference by unions and government agencies, by layoffs rather than outright fireing.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
Comments
He has the new Midas touch.... whatever he touches turns into a tire, that runs over players leaving them as roadkill.
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
Its been awhile since ive seen the SOE haters so happy. Have a great summer.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.
^^^
Think the circular discussion about WoW's impact on SoE isn't relevant. This likely ocurred as a result of the state of the US economy and poor sales across the board in just about every commercial sector. It doesn't matter if Blizzard bested SoE in own market, as this move was almost certainly made due to future predictions and not past results.
The morning sun has vanquished the horrible night.
You lost when you started using "true" in your statement. naturally true is as you define it and so you basically are trying to make a defacto declaration of the standards. Anyone who brings up the McDonalds wow analogy, in my mind, is a total idiot who needs to parrot the words of others.
Vangaurd was a POS game imo. If it had been a great game, it would have survived the fitness test of the mmorpg marketplace.
Sadly, Vanguard IS A good game... and the only game on earth where fans and players say that it's 'sad' that it's good.
90% of the issues at launch were technical. Crap was broken. There were bugs, broken quests, etc. But the main culprit was just that it was technically unplayable.
And SOE has fixed most of that, and nicely. The crew (not Sillius) was dedicated and skilled. It's just there was so few of them it took AGES to get things fixed, and by the time the game was playable and polished, it was too late... way too late.
A full dev crew could have gotten Vanguard to the point it was after 2 years in about 2 months. Launch was a mess though, and the first thing SOE did was put Vanguard on a skeleton crew. But for those of us that played beta extensively and could actually run the game on launch, it was never a question of the game having promise. We say it. It was a question of whether SOE was going to actually give it a chance to be good or simply let it rot as another crappy title to pimp for their station access.
How embarrassing would it have been if they gave Vanguard attention--via publishing/supporting Sigil fully or even after aquiring the game and throwing as much funding into it--and then it blew their flagship MMO EQ2 out of the water? The thing is, even on life support with a skeleton crew staff, Vanguard IS a better game than EQ2... thankfully for Smed, SOE, and prideful egos, people only started realizing that years after Vanguards launch and reputation ensured it would never be popular or respected as a AAA title.
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
Did you play the game at launch?
The problem was that most of the playerbase couldn't due to bugs, crashes, stuttering and every conceivable technical issue you can imagine with a game.
The greatest game in the world will not get the attention it deserves if people can't stay logged in, playing the game. I remember one review from a reputable source that was basically a huge facepalm because they literally couldn't get enough play time to give an accurate review.
THAT is the kiss of death for most games, and most players, and most of the problem with Vanguard's launch. There were other issues, like a lack of end-game content at launch.... but the real problem was that a HUGE portion of the playerbase couldn't even run the game, much less make it to any sort of end-game.
And if you look now, the problems aren't that the game is a "POS." Reviews make this clear. The game is good now... but whose going to play a SOE based game with no dev support after the broken launch experience that it did have? Answer: 1.5 servers worth of the players the game has now, heh.
According to a Facebook quiz, I'm a genius.
There is a big difference between getting fired and getting laid off. Getting fired means you are incompetent, and someone else has to do your job. Being laid off means you could be doing a great job, but the business isn't there to support you. Laid off people typically get a severance package, while those getting fired do not.
In the software business, it has become all too common to "lay" people off, instead of doing proper management and firing them. To actually fire someone for cause, you have to first document their failings, institute a recovery plan, and then document how they failed the recovery plan. To lay someone off, by contrast, is easy.
It does not surprise me that layoffs had to be done, business is down. My company has laid off many qualified and well-performing people, just because our customer base has shrunk.
As for Vanguard, I think it is one of the best MMORPG's out there now. It really does not need a large dev team, it already has more content than most games.
------------
2024: 47 years on the Net.
I can't say I feel sorry. Some people who were fired were quite incompetent. The main source of all this is SoE and Smedley though. Smedleys idea is to grab market share wherever he can in any field, with plenty of bad MMO.
Blizzard is in now way comparable to SoE. Blizzard focuses on less than a handful of games of which only 1 is an MMO. SoE has like 10 MMO, card games, action games etc, and totaled they're still a drop in the ocean. SoE did good with EQ for a few years, then it basically went downhill from there, every game including EQ has only a few thousand players, I don't blame the economy, I blame the incompetence at SoE.
It angers me. SOE had some very creative game development folks. EQ2 and SWG rocked, and Vanguard could have become a really great game if SOE just would have invested into it for real. VG will always remain the best potential unused. I had a blast, but it was just too rought around the edges in the long run, and exodus emptied the servers too much for me to play it.
SOE management is what sucks. Those bean counters and desktop fools have no clue.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
I can't say I feel sorry. Some people who were fired were quite incompetent. The main source of all this is SoE and Smedley though. Smedleys idea is to grab market share wherever he can in any field, with plenty of bad MMO.
Blizzard is in now way comparable to SoE. Blizzard focuses on less than a handful of games of which only 1 is an MMO. SoE has like 10 MMO, card games, action games etc, and totaled they're still a drop in the ocean. SoE did good with EQ for a few years, then it basically went downhill from there, every game including EQ has only a few thousand players, I don't blame the economy, I blame the incompetence at SoE.
Well, it's interesting that to use a food hall in a mall analogy that post-EQ Success SOE went for a varied resteraunt approach, bringing many world cuisines to the mmorpg masses, while Blizzard just took the McDonalds approach and perfected the high fat fast food hamburger and nothing else. I don't think staff leavings actually means too much for SOE, after all they have games like DCUO coming that look alright and are new takes on the mmo genre.Vanguard was never touted as a WoW killer in any means. Unless someone can post a link McQuaid saying so... it's a load of bullshit. Vanguard if anything was supposed to be the EQ2 killer..... the Everquest killer in general(If it had to be some kind of killer period, which is just plain silly). It just got rocked by a load of bugs, performance issues up the ying yang. It could never recover from all the issues it had. SOE didn't help matters much with the game, they would be damned if it ended up being better then their own EQ2, but they did keep a game that was simply just going to die, and kept it alive.
SOE sucks. They ruin games. They lie and insult gamers and tell them to piss off. Is it any wonder they are withering away.
The right leadership could turn SOE around, but Smed is like a tic, dug in and sucking the life out of his host. When SOE finally crashes and burns he will just hop off and infect another creature.
It is so frustrating to see a company that could be great consistently make the wrong decisions. It's like they ask themselves what should be done and then do the opposite.
I am with you on this, Vanguard was never touted as a WOW or any other mmorpg killer, that's the over hype crew talking. People can think what they want about SOE but without them Vanguard would not have had the turn around it has over the last 3+ years.
It makes me laugh at people commenting on Vanguard and they have not played it or they played it 3 years ago, a lot has changed since then. They have just had a server merge and the new Telon server is absolutely bustling now, it's great.
One of the biggest guilds is the mmorpg.com guild that gave birth on these forums with over 150 members. I have been playing since beta and the game really is the last of a dying breed, it's just fantastic.
Anyone thinking SOE are going broke or going under are kidding themselves, we are talking Sony here, a giant .
I lol'd really hard when I read this, people really believe this stuff.....haha
Anyone with a sense of business knows that if only 10% of what people say about Smed would be true the man would long be gone and out of a job, geuss he's doing allot better then what some seem to pretend. It also doesn't mean I agree with what Smedley does or is doing, it just means he must be doing something good to still be there.....
And this is regardles how I personaly feel about SOE as I aint playing any SOE games and apart from SWG for several years I only touched Vanguard for about 3 months at it release and a month in beta, but thankfully never experianced all those bad things I only read on forums about the game in those months, just left cause I had enough of fantasy based MMO's.
At this point I'm wondering how this will effect Everquest Next, that apparently hasn't had any coverage at all lately. I suppose it can be a little selfish of me to focus on the next new iteration while people are losing their jobs. Its a tough economy and most likely we've not seen the worst of it.
The fan fair is just around the corner and I'm wondering what the mood will be like with this recent news.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Yes generally layoffs preceed other cuts as they tend to save the company money immediately. However as companies lay people off they also start to incur other tax penalties that will impact their bottom line as well. Anyway most companies that lay off employees are doing so because their revenue can no longer support the employees salaries and benefits. Which mean in most cases the company is not on solid financial ground i.e. revenue tends to be down, costs are up and any black ink is either small or turned to red on the profit line. So they are attempting to cut costs now to give themselves breathing room on the bottom line now.
I've never bought into the idea that WoW is the measure of all MMO's. WoW is a fun game, however to suggest that its the template for all MMO's is grossly over generalized. Perhaps it can be argued that its a cash cow and an economic yard stick for the gaming industry, but I wouldn't call it as being the most substantive, engaging or end-depth MMO out there. WoW may be the centrifuge of a massive subscriber base, but that's where the difference lies.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Sadly, Vanguard IS A good game... and the only game on earth where fans and players say that it's 'sad' that it's good.
90% of the issues at launch were technical. Crap was broken. There were bugs, broken quests, etc. But the main culprit was just that it was technically unplayable.
And SOE has fixed most of that, and nicely. The crew (not Sillius) was dedicated and skilled. It's just there was so few of them it took AGES to get things fixed, and by the time the game was playable and polished, it was too late... way too late.
A full dev crew could have gotten Vanguard to the point it was after 2 years in about 2 months. Launch was a mess though, and the first thing SOE did was put Vanguard on a skeleton crew. But for those of us that played beta extensively and could actually run the game on launch, it was never a question of the game having promise. We say it. It was a question of whether SOE was going to actually give it a chance to be good or simply let it rot as another crappy title to pimp for their station access.
How embarrassing would it have been if they gave Vanguard attention--via publishing/supporting Sigil fully or even after aquiring the game and throwing as much funding into it--and then it blew their flagship MMO EQ2 out of the water? The thing is, even on life support with a skeleton crew staff, Vanguard IS a better game than EQ2... thankfully for Smed, SOE, and prideful egos, people only started realizing that years after Vanguards launch and reputation ensured it would never be popular or respected as a AAA title.
Lets not forget the Brad McQuaid factor. When the leader decides to essentially abandon the project and the team is left leaderless it can present a lot of challenges. Then to add insult to injury a good many of them were fired, in a parking lot. Vanguard had potential, but McQuaid for all his creative talent isn't an effective leader. I wanted Vanguard to succeed, but it just felt like the game had no soul so I didn't play it beyond the Beta. I'm glad to hear that it does have a decent following and that there is a niche group of players that are still enjoying it.
The Old Timers Guild
Laid back, not so serious, no drama.
All about the fun!
www.oldtimersguild.com
An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. - Jef Mallett
Or in some cases weeding out the non productive is easier done, do to legal interference by unions and government agencies, by layoffs rather than outright fireing.
WOW isnt great because it has 12 million players. WOW has 12 million players because its great.