Many quit Vanguard because it was too hardcore, not because it had bugs, even though Vanguard wasn't even hardcore at all.
Incorrect.
Here is what Brad McQuaid had to say on the issue;
"Over 80% of the people who bought Vanguard and tried to play it quit by level 2 or 3. What could be the reason? Well, given how fast it was to level the first couple of times, what could be so horrible that people would quit so quickly? My bet is crappy framerate (due to rendering too many polygons and too many and too big textures) and bad hitching (being the result of the world being seamless and having huge art assets). We also released early and didn’t have a chance to optimize the code."
The only thing hardcore about Vanguard was its failure at launch....although Square Enix may have given them a run for their money.
Say what you want to about WoW, but it would NOT have as many subs as it does if it didn't do a lot of things right. The biggest one of those is accessibility. No matter how much or how little time you have, how much or how little skill, gender, race, age, computer, etc, you can still play WoW.
The majority of average gamers don't want a hardcore MMO, nevermind the more casual crowd that WoW draws. People want games where they can come home from work or school, sit down for a short stretch, and just relax while playing. You simply can't do that with hardcore MMOs.
With regards to Vanguard.... I'm sorry, but it failed because it sucks compared to the competition. Vanguard has some great features, but it has a massive amount of problems that would need some serious work to address, something that isn't going to happen with the current state of the game.
The first major blow to EQ1 was not WoW but an expac called Gates of Discord.
For months or even years a tiny minority posted endlessly on the forums that they wanted "the fear" back. They wanted to go back to long corpse runs, long travel times, monsters that hit mudflated toons like trucks. They wanted every session to feel like running from Qeynos to Freeport with a double helping of Kithicor.
SOE obliged and designed GoD accordingly. When it launched there was such a huge backlash and massive player exodus that SOE again demonstrated their lack of insight by personally inviting a bunch of uberguilds to a real life "Summit".
Uberguilds talked, SOE listened and then WoW went into stress test.
For the record I'm actually in favor of some kind of advancement system that allows players to select the overall difficulty of their experience and allow both hardcore and normal players to enjoy and coexist in the same game.
Or the "lol its SOE, I hate SOE"...they have made bad decisions I admit (SWG, wow did they ruin that) and free EQ2 is less free than paying for the regular game...but just because its SOE isn't really an excuse. I don't like Square Enix at all (they just make 1,000,000 and 1 final fantasies)...but some of the games they have are rather good (I liked Final Fantasy 9 and 10, 7 was good as well)
So just because its SOE is kind of a weak argument. Especially if someone really wanted a good oldschool style MMO. "Oh look VG is an oldschool...oh its SOE...I'll go onto the forums and ask for an oldschool MMO to come out"
Now I can see if its the lack of updates...because there hasn't been an update in months...thats a big turn off and a legitamate complaint. And my biggest complaint I have really. If they just put out an update just once to show they still care, man I would subscribe for life. But the game still has tons of stuff to do. People still haven't seen or done everything in VG, or seen all the crafting AND diplomacy stuff.
So, is it really oldschool MMOs people want?
What are your thoughts on this?
First, the side topic, SOE. You made a comment about not buying ice cream any more, but that isn't it. In the case of SOE, they didn't drop the ice cream. They changed the flavor we picked to something else.
But that wasn't the last straw. We then found a new flavor we loved, so to retaliate, they stopped selling it (A la MxO). After that I still continued to try free trials, betas of SOE's new products (including DCUO a couple weeks ago for 3-4 gaming sessions) and I just don't like them.
Add this to the fact that they even have the advantage of playing in several large IPs (Star Wars, Matrix) and plow them into the ground.
Eventually you get to a place where logic says you are an idiot if you don't make the assumption that the problem might just be SOE.
So I don't buy ice cream from that ice cream man anymore (I'll try the free samples until I find something I want again though.)
On the main topic: To be honest, I personally don't care about a weaker launch. SWG had a bad one, and I played through. I loved that game Pre-CU. The MMO I have my eye on, waiting for release now is Earthrise. Many other people are already dooming the game, because they don't like *insert aspect here*. It looks like it could be what SWG was. Because Masthead hasn't burned me before (They couldn't have as of yet, but that isn't the point), I'm going to ride it out for a while, and see what it turns into.
I won't be giving SOE any more free chances though. If they want me to buy their ice cream, they need to do it right the first time, and show proof of product.
If a new MMO were to come out today that was similar to EQ1 in terms of difficulty
I think it would only become a niche game.I think majority of people who got into the mmo scene at a later date than EQ's heyday wouldnt find it to their liking.
Heavy death penalties - corpse/gear retrieval and hours upon hours of exp gain lost...the high probability of dying again losing even more xp trying to retrieve your corpse.
No hand holding - No in game maps,no quest markers,no real compass or radar
No leveling by questing - mainly mob grinding in groups for best exp gain.Soloing relegated to certain classes who can do it well.
If a new MMO were to come out today that was similar to EQ1 in terms of difficulty
I think it would only become a niche game.I think majority of people who got into the mmo scene at a later date than EQ's heyday wouldnt find it to their liking.
Heavy death penalties - corpse/gear retrieval and hours upon hours of exp gain lost...the high probability of dying again losing even more xp trying to retrieve your corpse.
No hand holding - No in game maps,no quest markers,no real compass or radar
No leveling by questing - mainly mob grinding in groups for best exp gain.Soloing relegated to certain classes who can do it well.
yeah...me thinks it'd be niche,but I'd play it!
Well, thats just it in a nut shell. We know that the masses are not going to go for a game like this. The point is, some dev out there some where needs to see that this niche is needed. Sure they are not going to make WoW money and frankly nobody else is going to, But they could make a good chunk of change if they did it right. One of the things that made the game so great was that verant, at the time, was making a game for themselves and not for everyone. I still remember talking to some devs and I was telling them this game was going to be HUGE! They laughed and said they just hoped to get 5k of people in the first month and they would be extremely happy.
We also know their launch was BAD! to many people, not enough bandwidth equals the first week being very difficult to play. I spent my first 3 days fishing because I would get disconnected every single time I attacked a mob and said screw it, I will fish till it gets better lol.
I don't want a game exactly like eq1. There were things in it that I really hated but one thing about it is that you had a connection with your character. You tried your best to never die because death really sucked! The game went south fast after the first expansion pack. That was when they introduced mobs that hit like trucks. The old world was a cake walk after that. It is a shame about eq now. I went back last year and played for about a month or two and was sorely disappointed. Nobody played in the old world anymore. If you went there, it was only because they had some zone marked as extra exp. The old world is a complete ghost town now. It is one of the things that I hated about eq2. Every expansion pack the mobs hit harder and harder and made the old world less of a place you ever wanted to go to. That is one things that devs need to fix. You can introduce new levels and gear and still not make your main world obsolete. The thing about gear in the old days wasn't so much about stats, it was more about looks. Stats were just a bonus then.
"Oldschool" MMO's belong to past and that is where they should be. Yes, of course there is always player base who will be loud about "we want difficulty", "we want more hardcore" and so on... but simply fact is that majority of game community dont want that. And companies make product (MMO game) to be bought by majority, not to minor group who like to etiquete themself as "hardcore" , "elite" or "oldschool".
This is same questions as "do you want MS DOS back"? And guess what, there will be group who will cheer for that, who will make and explain 101 reasons why DOS is best OS ever.... etc. But as you can see, nobody is making new DOS and nobody have will to use it.
Fact is that "oldschool" MMO was pioneers in their time and to whole new genre in game industry. Iam not saying that they are bad, worthless or mistakes. They are just products of their time. Now we have new generation of MMO's with WoW as leader. Many of "oldschoolers" dont like that, they want back "their way" of MMO's. Probably sooner or later some company will make that kind of game, but most of new MMO's will be different, will be adjusted to new generation of players.
That is wheel to time, in this case wheel of bussines in game industry. And that happen with almost any game genre, just consider FPS'ers as last. If any of "oldschool" MMO's reach 5 or 10 million player base in their time then present will be different, WoW will be different game, but here we are with today's MMO's and direction where they go. You make like it or not, you can always choose will you play them or not, but that is current situation of MMO game industry.
People not only want oldschool MMO's, but there are people who want some of anything you can imagine.
A game with permadeath? There are people who want this.
A game designed by Ned Flanders to cater to child safety, illustrated by a cartoon fox? People want this too.
A FPS game that claims to be an MMORPG but is single player? People want this as well.
It really depends on who "people" are. There are some of everyone in the world, and there are plenty of everyone to go around. There are games made by 13 year olds that have many people playing them. Games such as the 134th remake of Dragon Ball Z RPG III: Goku's Revenge.
It is simply breathtaking the amount of gamers in the world. The amount of PEOPLE in the world. The amount of GAMES in the world.
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
"Oldschool" MMO's belong to past and that is where they should be. Yes, of course there is always player base who will be loud about "we want difficulty", "we want more hardcore" and so on... but simply fact is that majority of game community dont want that. And companies make product (MMO game) to be bought by majority, not to minor group who like to etiquete themself as "hardcore" , "elite" or "oldschool".
This is same questions as "do you want MS DOS back"? And guess what, there will be group who will cheer for that, who will make and explain 101 reasons why DOS is best OS ever.... etc. But as you can see, nobody is making new DOS and nobody have will to use it.
Fact is that "oldschool" MMO was pioneers in their time and to whole new genre in game industry. Iam not saying that they are bad, worthless or mistakes. They are just products of their time. Now we have new generation of MMO's with WoW as leader. Many of "oldschoolers" dont like that, they want back "their way" of MMO's. Probably sooner or later some company will make that kind of game, but most of new MMO's will be different, will be adjusted to new generation of players.
That is wheel to time, in this case wheel of bussines in game industry. And that happen with almost any game genre, just consider FPS'ers as last. If any of "oldschool" MMO's reach 5 or 10 million player base in their time then present will be different, WoW will be different game, but here we are with today's MMO's and direction where they go. You make like it or not, you can always choose will you play them or not, but that is current situation of MMO game industry.
I disagree with almost all of this. WoW was a fluke. There will probably never be another game that will get that type of subscribers again. So many companies have tried to copy that fluke that it has drove many a game under or left them with extremely low subscribers. I actually expect a company will in fact go back to old school and here is why. Old school will be NEW to all the folks that have just come into the MMO world. Just like EQ back in the day, there will be people that love it and hate it but I think it will come. Just like bell bottom jeans and hiphuggers, they fade but they always come back. You just watch, it will happen. Sadly probably wont happen till I am either dead or to old play it properly but it will come.
The first major blow to EQ1 was not WoW but an expac called Gates of Discord.
For months or even years a tiny minority posted endlessly on the forums that they wanted "the fear" back. They wanted to go back to long corpse runs, long travel times, monsters that hit mudflated toons like trucks. They wanted every session to feel like running from Qeynos to Freeport with a double helping of Kithicor.
SOE obliged and designed GoD accordingly. When it launched there was such a huge backlash and massive player exodus that SOE again demonstrated their lack of insight by personally inviting a bunch of uberguilds to a real life "Summit".
Uberguilds talked, SOE listened and then WoW went into stress test.
For the record I'm actually in favor of some kind of advancement system that allows players to select the overall difficulty of their experience and allow both hardcore and normal players to enjoy and coexist in the same game.
The backlash was due to the entire expansion only being for raiders that had completed PoP. Only a tiny number of guilds had enough gear to touch the beginning instances of the expansion. Most people were already pretty angry about PoP as well since nearly the entire expansion was for raiders but groupers could still get some advancement out of it. PoP might have made people less grumpy if casual guilds were allowed to advance but the keying/access processes pretty much prevented that.
The summit... yeah that was a smart move. They only invited guild leaders from the uber guilds finishing off any good will they had left from the main player base (players mostly seemed to willing to let them fix things before this). Woody from GU comics, who was no where near hardcore, was later invited as a "good faith" gesture when everyone found out who was invited to the summit.
SOE completely misread everything.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
I disagree with almost all of this. WoW was a fluke. There will probably never be another game that will get that type of subscribers again. So many companies have tried to copy that fluke that it has drove many a game under or left them with extremely low subscribers. I actually expect a company will in fact go back to old school and here is why. Old school will be NEW to all the folks that have just come into the MMO world. Just like EQ back in the day, there will be people that love it and hate it but I think it will come. Just like bell bottom jeans and hiphuggers, they fade but they always come back. You just watch, it will happen. Sadly probably wont happen till I am either dead or to old play it properly but it will come.
Yes, you can label WoW any way you want. That WoW destroy "true" MMO concept, that WoW banalize what MMO game is... we can agree or not about that, but as you can see, after WoW (almost) every company tried to copy that game concept. Also, we can see where that lead them (to failure).
So, as you say, in second try companies will change direction, maybe they will even go back to roots but that will be "oldschool" in new package. Can we then still label them as "oldschool" or progress in MMO game industry?
Dont forget, in next couple of years Blizzard will publish another MMO. Can we predict that circle will repeat again? Game will be succes, other companies will try to copy that concept and so on... Maybe that new Blizzard MMO will be back to roots or going further away, right now we dont know.
I dont believe that "oldschool" will come back again. Maybe there will games with same concept as EQ (or any other from that time), maybe there will be even some similarities, but they will be also different so cant consider that as "oldschool".
I don't care if it had a bad release since I tried when it was in a state where it was "supposed to be when released". I don't have any hate towards SOE.
I just think that the game sucks thats all. No excuses. The bad, far outweigh the good in it.
No, I don't like oldschool MMOs. They should be left in the past. Maybe they were good "way back when" but now that I know of something better, I can never go back and enjoy them. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Honestly I would. Most new games are to easy and 90% WoW and all they do is bore me and make me think back to Vanilla WoW 40 man stuff.
Whats kept me away from VG is the lack of updates, the emptiness and the standard fantasy setting(bored by it).
I would totally by a SWG style game with a different Scifi setting, little quick travel, no levels, no battlegrounds, playerbases and towns, item wear, SWG crafting, huge planets, etc. Sure it would need newish graphics and a few things from the newer MMOs but not nearly as much as games like RIFT and SWTOR are taking from WoW.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
i enjoyed these 2 games(lv45 in Vanguard and lv70 in EQ2). Unlike many players i prefers EQ2. The main things that made me quit those 2 games is the game engine. it is not the reason of their general fail (i have my own opinion) but mine.
Vanguard : FPS falls is just horrible (opening a door, more than 10 object in view...). I remember clipping was very bad too : you walk then a stone appears then a torch...
EQ2 : way too many long zoning in my opinion
Concerning "oldschool" game.
To me my reference is Everquest 1 (5 years, my best mmo ever). It is my personnal opinion :
Open world (no instance) : lots of issue of fairplay between players for named and boss. Not good for publisher/GM because they have to interfere : game don't regulating himself.
Zoning : zone loading and waiting. Not good if it is too long in my opinion. It breaks players immersion to game.
Big raid : we were used to big raid (more than 40+ players, even 100+ as open world) ) but it is true players with little guild couldnt reach big guild (for the same price subscription ). I think, as EQ1 was the only big mmo (one of the big but the biggest to me) at that time, people accepted and did not quit. Now with Internet explosion, PC explosion lot of mmo game are now in the market so players, little guild quit.
To me these 3 concept are dead. I don't say it is bad i say it doesn't gather players, doesn't keep them but it is my opinion. As i like to say : if i were a (successful) mmo conceptor, i will bet all one these 3 things first.
Except it ended up in the hands of SOE and died from too high hardware demands, too high bugs, and too much lack of advertisement and funding. Now there has been no upgrade whatsoever since the beginning of 2010 ... and the last things they did to the game have been awful.
Best hope now would be that they incooperate into EQ3 what was good about Vanguard ... although I would prefer not to get the hopes up too high.
Most people who say they want one would quit a few days after release.
Many quit Vanguard because it was too hardcore, not because it had bugs, even though Vanguard wasn't even hardcore at all. People are used to WoW now.
I remember the whines of Vanguard players on Silky Venom because Vanguard had no mounts at lower levels and no hubs at launch.
"we have to run" waaaaa
It was a great game though and there is still room for those games, but the majority of self-proclaimed "hardcore" players are softies.
Vanguard, FFXIV, EQ, Lineage, MHO there are a handful of hardcore games out right now, but most people aren't willing to play them.
Vanguard had level 10 mounts from the very start, and getting to level 10 was even at the start a matter of maybe ten hours and never leaving the newbie starter zone, if you're really slow.
Fast people of course later could, in those 10 hours, finish all four questlines (adventuring, crafting, diplomacy, and harvesting) on Isle of Dawn and continue a bit in the area of their choice afterwards.
I'm convinced that the main reason was that Vanguard was too hardcore for most players.
Brad McQuaid claims on his website
"Of course, looking back now with 20/20 hindsight, we were very wrong. Over 80% of the people who bought Vanguard and tried to play it quit by level 2 or 3. What could be the reason? Well, given how fast it was to level the first couple of times, what could be so horrible that people would quit so quickly? My bet is crappy framerate (due to rendering too many polygons and too many and too big textures) and bad hitching (being the result of the world being seamless and having huge art assets). We also released early and didn’t have a chance to optimize the code (but this is a subject I’ve already addressed in my blogs and not at all the only reason we had issues)."
Most people who say they want one would quit a few days after release.
Many quit Vanguard because it was too hardcore, not because it had bugs, even though Vanguard wasn't even hardcore at all. People are used to WoW now.
I remember the whines of Vanguard players on Silky Venom because Vanguard had no mounts at lower levels and no hubs at launch.
"we have to run" waaaaa
It was a great game though and there is still room for those games, but the majority of self-proclaimed "hardcore" players are softies.
Vanguard, FFXIV, EQ, Lineage, MHO there are a handful of hardcore games out right now, but most people aren't willing to play them.
Lol i quit Vanguard because they dumbed it down with rifts and mounts, and numerous other reasons but the Gimmebears helped to ruin that game also, The Rift and flihgts made Ships Obsolete , And then the ridiculous crying that they wanted dots over the mobs to tell what lvl .... and so on ..
Uh, thats not true.
Ships have been a huge help at any stage of the game.
Rifts only sent you to some general locations. The travel to specific locations was still very long, and owning a ship, especially a tier 4 one (personally I sadly never got around getting a tier 5 one) was still a huge help and timesaver for certain target destinations.
Not even flying mounts made ships completely obsolete, as ships are still faster (well at least the "junior" version of the flying mount versus the tier 4 version of the ship - I never managed to get the upgraded, raided version) and you almost never got dismounted from a ship (with a very unfortunate counterexample) so ships still where somewhat useful, useful enough anyway to still carry my tier 4 ship around after I finally managed to get a flying mount.
I just miss mmo's that let you put points into actual stats.(Dex,int,str,etc.) For some reason tech/skill trees just make me look at my character with a blah generic feeling. I know its a huge balance issue the former way but it just made me like my character more for some reason. I wonder if they could incorperate both and have ability point requirements for certain branches on a tech tree.
I tried Vanguard twice......while the game is one of the best i ever played (imho) it was too bad SONY just stopped working on it.
The fiew bugs that where in there at launch stil seem to be there (some of them where).
The only reason i quit this game because the community isnt enough to keep the world alive........with all do respect for those who still play it.....the community thats still there is some of the best around next to the EQ2 community.
makes me sad that sony is letting this game die.
even the gfx are still some of the best around imho
Of course I want an MMO designed after the old school, but not EQ. I want DAOC 2 instead, so Vanguard just won't fit that need as it has almost nothing in the way of PVP focus and 3 faction combat.
But regarding Vanguard, it might not be fair but it is certainly true (in my case anyways), you only get one chance to make a good first impression. LoTRO, AOC and Vanguard have reportedly all improved greatly since their early launch days (when I played them) but I won't go back. (as despite any changes, what I've read doesn't make them the game I want to play)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I tried Vanguard twice......while the game is one of the best i ever played (imho) it was too bad SONY just stopped working on it.
The fiew bugs that where in there at launch stil seem to be there (some of them where).
The only reason i quit this game because the community isnt enough to keep the world alive........with all do respect for those who still play it.....the community thats still there is some of the best around next to the EQ2 community.
makes me sad that sony is letting this game die.
even the gfx are still some of the best around imho
I wish this game did not go the way it has. I loved the game but agree'd with above SOE nuff said. IMO if Sony would iron out the issues maybe drop the sub to $10 there should not be a reason for the game not to thrive.
The first major blow to EQ1 was not WoW but an expac called Gates of Discord.
For months or even years a tiny minority posted endlessly on the forums that they wanted "the fear" back. They wanted to go back to long corpse runs, long travel times, monsters that hit mudflated toons like trucks. They wanted every session to feel like running from Qeynos to Freeport with a double helping of Kithicor.
SOE obliged and designed GoD accordingly. When it launched there was such a huge backlash and massive player exodus that SOE again demonstrated their lack of insight by personally inviting a bunch of uberguilds to a real life "Summit".
Uberguilds talked, SOE listened and then WoW went into stress test.
For the record I'm actually in favor of some kind of advancement system that allows players to select the overall difficulty of their experience and allow both hardcore and normal players to enjoy and coexist in the same game.
The backlash was due to the entire expansion only being for raiders that had completed PoP. Only a tiny number of guilds had enough gear to touch the beginning instances of the expansion. Most people were already pretty angry about PoP as well since nearly the entire expansion was for raiders but groupers could still get some advancement out of it. PoP might have made people less grumpy if casual guilds were allowed to advance but the keying/access processes pretty much prevented that.
The summit... yeah that was a smart move. They only invited guild leaders from the uber guilds finishing off any good will they had left from the main player base (players mostly seemed to willing to let them fix things before this). Woody from GU comics, who was no where near hardcore, was later invited as a "good faith" gesture when everyone found out who was invited to the summit.
SOE completely misread everything.
This is how I remember it, PoP and its keying process made many people frustrated and many people quit. Before PoP, difficulty determined whether or not you would enter a zone (with a couple exceptions like VP and Sleepers Tomb).
Once the main guild group was keyed up it was very hard to talk them into redoing the content (Can't blame them...by this time you were sick of this content) to key up newcommers or returning guild folk. So either people tried to key up by a pickup raid or quit due to frustration of not being able to join their guild on raid night.
Comments
Incorrect.
Here is what Brad McQuaid had to say on the issue;
"Over 80% of the people who bought Vanguard and tried to play it quit by level 2 or 3. What could be the reason? Well, given how fast it was to level the first couple of times, what could be so horrible that people would quit so quickly? My bet is crappy framerate (due to rendering too many polygons and too many and too big textures) and bad hitching (being the result of the world being seamless and having huge art assets). We also released early and didn’t have a chance to optimize the code."
The only thing hardcore about Vanguard was its failure at launch....although Square Enix may have given them a run for their money.
The short answer to this is no.
Say what you want to about WoW, but it would NOT have as many subs as it does if it didn't do a lot of things right. The biggest one of those is accessibility. No matter how much or how little time you have, how much or how little skill, gender, race, age, computer, etc, you can still play WoW.
The majority of average gamers don't want a hardcore MMO, nevermind the more casual crowd that WoW draws. People want games where they can come home from work or school, sit down for a short stretch, and just relax while playing. You simply can't do that with hardcore MMOs.
With regards to Vanguard.... I'm sorry, but it failed because it sucks compared to the competition. Vanguard has some great features, but it has a massive amount of problems that would need some serious work to address, something that isn't going to happen with the current state of the game.
And now for a history lesson.
The first major blow to EQ1 was not WoW but an expac called Gates of Discord.
For months or even years a tiny minority posted endlessly on the forums that they wanted "the fear" back. They wanted to go back to long corpse runs, long travel times, monsters that hit mudflated toons like trucks. They wanted every session to feel like running from Qeynos to Freeport with a double helping of Kithicor.
SOE obliged and designed GoD accordingly. When it launched there was such a huge backlash and massive player exodus that SOE again demonstrated their lack of insight by personally inviting a bunch of uberguilds to a real life "Summit".
Uberguilds talked, SOE listened and then WoW went into stress test.
For the record I'm actually in favor of some kind of advancement system that allows players to select the overall difficulty of their experience and allow both hardcore and normal players to enjoy and coexist in the same game.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
First, the side topic, SOE. You made a comment about not buying ice cream any more, but that isn't it. In the case of SOE, they didn't drop the ice cream. They changed the flavor we picked to something else.
But that wasn't the last straw. We then found a new flavor we loved, so to retaliate, they stopped selling it (A la MxO). After that I still continued to try free trials, betas of SOE's new products (including DCUO a couple weeks ago for 3-4 gaming sessions) and I just don't like them.
Add this to the fact that they even have the advantage of playing in several large IPs (Star Wars, Matrix) and plow them into the ground.
Eventually you get to a place where logic says you are an idiot if you don't make the assumption that the problem might just be SOE.
So I don't buy ice cream from that ice cream man anymore (I'll try the free samples until I find something I want again though.)
On the main topic: To be honest, I personally don't care about a weaker launch. SWG had a bad one, and I played through. I loved that game Pre-CU. The MMO I have my eye on, waiting for release now is Earthrise. Many other people are already dooming the game, because they don't like *insert aspect here*. It looks like it could be what SWG was. Because Masthead hasn't burned me before (They couldn't have as of yet, but that isn't the point), I'm going to ride it out for a while, and see what it turns into.
I won't be giving SOE any more free chances though. If they want me to buy their ice cream, they need to do it right the first time, and show proof of product.
If a new MMO were to come out today that was similar to EQ1 in terms of difficulty
I think it would only become a niche game.I think majority of people who got into the mmo scene at a later date than EQ's heyday wouldnt find it to their liking.
Heavy death penalties - corpse/gear retrieval and hours upon hours of exp gain lost...the high probability of dying again losing even more xp trying to retrieve your corpse.
No hand holding - No in game maps,no quest markers,no real compass or radar
No leveling by questing - mainly mob grinding in groups for best exp gain.Soloing relegated to certain classes who can do it well.
yeah...me thinks it'd be niche,but I'd play it!
Well, thats just it in a nut shell. We know that the masses are not going to go for a game like this. The point is, some dev out there some where needs to see that this niche is needed. Sure they are not going to make WoW money and frankly nobody else is going to, But they could make a good chunk of change if they did it right. One of the things that made the game so great was that verant, at the time, was making a game for themselves and not for everyone. I still remember talking to some devs and I was telling them this game was going to be HUGE! They laughed and said they just hoped to get 5k of people in the first month and they would be extremely happy.
We also know their launch was BAD! to many people, not enough bandwidth equals the first week being very difficult to play. I spent my first 3 days fishing because I would get disconnected every single time I attacked a mob and said screw it, I will fish till it gets better lol.
I don't want a game exactly like eq1. There were things in it that I really hated but one thing about it is that you had a connection with your character. You tried your best to never die because death really sucked! The game went south fast after the first expansion pack. That was when they introduced mobs that hit like trucks. The old world was a cake walk after that. It is a shame about eq now. I went back last year and played for about a month or two and was sorely disappointed. Nobody played in the old world anymore. If you went there, it was only because they had some zone marked as extra exp. The old world is a complete ghost town now. It is one of the things that I hated about eq2. Every expansion pack the mobs hit harder and harder and made the old world less of a place you ever wanted to go to. That is one things that devs need to fix. You can introduce new levels and gear and still not make your main world obsolete. The thing about gear in the old days wasn't so much about stats, it was more about looks. Stats were just a bonus then.
"Oldschool" MMO's belong to past and that is where they should be. Yes, of course there is always player base who will be loud about "we want difficulty", "we want more hardcore" and so on... but simply fact is that majority of game community dont want that. And companies make product (MMO game) to be bought by majority, not to minor group who like to etiquete themself as "hardcore" , "elite" or "oldschool".
This is same questions as "do you want MS DOS back"? And guess what, there will be group who will cheer for that, who will make and explain 101 reasons why DOS is best OS ever.... etc. But as you can see, nobody is making new DOS and nobody have will to use it.
Fact is that "oldschool" MMO was pioneers in their time and to whole new genre in game industry. Iam not saying that they are bad, worthless or mistakes. They are just products of their time. Now we have new generation of MMO's with WoW as leader. Many of "oldschoolers" dont like that, they want back "their way" of MMO's. Probably sooner or later some company will make that kind of game, but most of new MMO's will be different, will be adjusted to new generation of players.
That is wheel to time, in this case wheel of bussines in game industry. And that happen with almost any game genre, just consider FPS'ers as last. If any of "oldschool" MMO's reach 5 or 10 million player base in their time then present will be different, WoW will be different game, but here we are with today's MMO's and direction where they go. You make like it or not, you can always choose will you play them or not, but that is current situation of MMO game industry.
People not only want oldschool MMO's, but there are people who want some of anything you can imagine.
A game with permadeath? There are people who want this.
A game designed by Ned Flanders to cater to child safety, illustrated by a cartoon fox? People want this too.
A FPS game that claims to be an MMORPG but is single player? People want this as well.
It really depends on who "people" are. There are some of everyone in the world, and there are plenty of everyone to go around. There are games made by 13 year olds that have many people playing them. Games such as the 134th remake of Dragon Ball Z RPG III: Goku's Revenge.
It is simply breathtaking the amount of gamers in the world. The amount of PEOPLE in the world. The amount of GAMES in the world.
If being a developer means being quiet, mature, well-spoken, and disconnected from the community, then by all means do me a favor and believe I'm not one.
I disagree with almost all of this. WoW was a fluke. There will probably never be another game that will get that type of subscribers again. So many companies have tried to copy that fluke that it has drove many a game under or left them with extremely low subscribers. I actually expect a company will in fact go back to old school and here is why. Old school will be NEW to all the folks that have just come into the MMO world. Just like EQ back in the day, there will be people that love it and hate it but I think it will come. Just like bell bottom jeans and hiphuggers, they fade but they always come back. You just watch, it will happen. Sadly probably wont happen till I am either dead or to old play it properly but it will come.
The backlash was due to the entire expansion only being for raiders that had completed PoP. Only a tiny number of guilds had enough gear to touch the beginning instances of the expansion. Most people were already pretty angry about PoP as well since nearly the entire expansion was for raiders but groupers could still get some advancement out of it. PoP might have made people less grumpy if casual guilds were allowed to advance but the keying/access processes pretty much prevented that.
The summit... yeah that was a smart move. They only invited guild leaders from the uber guilds finishing off any good will they had left from the main player base (players mostly seemed to willing to let them fix things before this). Woody from GU comics, who was no where near hardcore, was later invited as a "good faith" gesture when everyone found out who was invited to the summit.
SOE completely misread everything.
Forever looking for employment. Life is rather dull without it.
Yes, you can label WoW any way you want. That WoW destroy "true" MMO concept, that WoW banalize what MMO game is... we can agree or not about that, but as you can see, after WoW (almost) every company tried to copy that game concept. Also, we can see where that lead them (to failure).
So, as you say, in second try companies will change direction, maybe they will even go back to roots but that will be "oldschool" in new package. Can we then still label them as "oldschool" or progress in MMO game industry?
Dont forget, in next couple of years Blizzard will publish another MMO. Can we predict that circle will repeat again? Game will be succes, other companies will try to copy that concept and so on... Maybe that new Blizzard MMO will be back to roots or going further away, right now we dont know.
I dont believe that "oldschool" will come back again. Maybe there will games with same concept as EQ (or any other from that time), maybe there will be even some similarities, but they will be also different so cant consider that as "oldschool".
I don't care if it had a bad release since I tried when it was in a state where it was "supposed to be when released". I don't have any hate towards SOE.
I just think that the game sucks thats all. No excuses. The bad, far outweigh the good in it.
No, I don't like oldschool MMOs. They should be left in the past. Maybe they were good "way back when" but now that I know of something better, I can never go back and enjoy them. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Honestly I would. Most new games are to easy and 90% WoW and all they do is bore me and make me think back to Vanilla WoW 40 man stuff.
Whats kept me away from VG is the lack of updates, the emptiness and the standard fantasy setting(bored by it).
I would totally by a SWG style game with a different Scifi setting, little quick travel, no levels, no battlegrounds, playerbases and towns, item wear, SWG crafting, huge planets, etc. Sure it would need newish graphics and a few things from the newer MMOs but not nearly as much as games like RIFT and SWTOR are taking from WoW.
I will not play a game with a cash shop ever again. A dev job should be to make the game better not make me pay so it sucks less.
Concerning Vanguard and EQ2.
i enjoyed these 2 games(lv45 in Vanguard and lv70 in EQ2). Unlike many players i prefers EQ2. The main things that made me quit those 2 games is the game engine. it is not the reason of their general fail (i have my own opinion) but mine.
Vanguard : FPS falls is just horrible (opening a door, more than 10 object in view...). I remember clipping was very bad too : you walk then a stone appears then a torch...
EQ2 : way too many long zoning in my opinion
Concerning "oldschool" game.
To me my reference is Everquest 1 (5 years, my best mmo ever). It is my personnal opinion :
Open world (no instance) : lots of issue of fairplay between players for named and boss. Not good for publisher/GM because they have to interfere : game don't regulating himself.
Zoning : zone loading and waiting. Not good if it is too long in my opinion. It breaks players immersion to game.
Big raid : we were used to big raid (more than 40+ players, even 100+ as open world) ) but it is true players with little guild couldnt reach big guild (for the same price subscription ). I think, as EQ1 was the only big mmo (one of the big but the biggest to me) at that time, people accepted and did not quit. Now with Internet explosion, PC explosion lot of mmo game are now in the market so players, little guild quit.
To me these 3 concept are dead. I don't say it is bad i say it doesn't gather players, doesn't keep them but it is my opinion. As i like to say : if i were a (successful) mmo conceptor, i will bet all one these 3 things first.
Well yeah, Vanguard rocks.
Except it ended up in the hands of SOE and died from too high hardware demands, too high bugs, and too much lack of advertisement and funding. Now there has been no upgrade whatsoever since the beginning of 2010 ... and the last things they did to the game have been awful.
Best hope now would be that they incooperate into EQ3 what was good about Vanguard ... although I would prefer not to get the hopes up too high.
Vanguard had level 10 mounts from the very start, and getting to level 10 was even at the start a matter of maybe ten hours and never leaving the newbie starter zone, if you're really slow.
Fast people of course later could, in those 10 hours, finish all four questlines (adventuring, crafting, diplomacy, and harvesting) on Isle of Dawn and continue a bit in the area of their choice afterwards.
Brad McQuaid claims on his website
"Of course, looking back now with 20/20 hindsight, we were very wrong. Over 80% of the people who bought Vanguard and tried to play it quit by level 2 or 3. What could be the reason? Well, given how fast it was to level the first couple of times, what could be so horrible that people would quit so quickly? My bet is crappy framerate (due to rendering too many polygons and too many and too big textures) and bad hitching (being the result of the world being seamless and having huge art assets). We also released early and didn’t have a chance to optimize the code (but this is a subject I’ve already addressed in my blogs and not at all the only reason we had issues)."
http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Entries/2009/8/9_Vanguard__Post-mortem_Part_3.html
Uh, thats not true.
Ships have been a huge help at any stage of the game.
Rifts only sent you to some general locations. The travel to specific locations was still very long, and owning a ship, especially a tier 4 one (personally I sadly never got around getting a tier 5 one) was still a huge help and timesaver for certain target destinations.
Not even flying mounts made ships completely obsolete, as ships are still faster (well at least the "junior" version of the flying mount versus the tier 4 version of the ship - I never managed to get the upgraded, raided version) and you almost never got dismounted from a ship (with a very unfortunate counterexample) so ships still where somewhat useful, useful enough anyway to still carry my tier 4 ship around after I finally managed to get a flying mount.
I just miss mmo's that let you put points into actual stats.(Dex,int,str,etc.) For some reason tech/skill trees just make me look at my character with a blah generic feeling. I know its a huge balance issue the former way but it just made me like my character more for some reason. I wonder if they could incorperate both and have ability point requirements for certain branches on a tech tree.
Err, who would be saying that ?
It got no updates since the beginning of 2010.
You can still play it, but thats all.
I tried Vanguard twice......while the game is one of the best i ever played (imho) it was too bad SONY just stopped working on it.
The fiew bugs that where in there at launch stil seem to be there (some of them where).
The only reason i quit this game because the community isnt enough to keep the world alive........with all do respect for those who still play it.....the community thats still there is some of the best around next to the EQ2 community.
makes me sad that sony is letting this game die.
Err, You can especially shut up about WoW, because its the most successful MMORPG and therefore, by definition, mainstream.
And mainstream is by definition NOT oldschool.
Oldschool, thats stuff like EQ1 and Vanguard.
Theres enough threads about WoW already.
Of course I want an MMO designed after the old school, but not EQ. I want DAOC 2 instead, so Vanguard just won't fit that need as it has almost nothing in the way of PVP focus and 3 faction combat.
But regarding Vanguard, it might not be fair but it is certainly true (in my case anyways), you only get one chance to make a good first impression. LoTRO, AOC and Vanguard have reportedly all improved greatly since their early launch days (when I played them) but I won't go back. (as despite any changes, what I've read doesn't make them the game I want to play)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I wish this game did not go the way it has. I loved the game but agree'd with above SOE nuff said. IMO if Sony would iron out the issues maybe drop the sub to $10 there should not be a reason for the game not to thrive.
This is how I remember it, PoP and its keying process made many people frustrated and many people quit. Before PoP, difficulty determined whether or not you would enter a zone (with a couple exceptions like VP and Sleepers Tomb).
Once the main guild group was keyed up it was very hard to talk them into redoing the content (Can't blame them...by this time you were sick of this content) to key up newcommers or returning guild folk. So either people tried to key up by a pickup raid or quit due to frustration of not being able to join their guild on raid night.
Horrible design IMO
Palazious <The Vindicators> Darkfall
Palazious r40, rr45 SW War
Palazious 50 Pirate PoTBS
Palazious 35 Sorcerer Vanguard
Palazious 75 wizard EQ
Paladori 50 Champion LOTRO
Poppa Reaver bugged at rank15