For All you WOW haters

Blathian · February 2007

well hate to tell you vanbois, but Sigil is even saying they are trying to copy WOW.

"We'll try explore the use of some of the islands out in the ocean for some sort of ongoing PvP struggle that involves control of territory. If you're familiar with Warsong Gulch, that sort of style of PvP. Not instanced, but find a way to reset it on a regular basis. I think we've got some pretty good ideas how to bridge that gap and come up with a pretty engaging PvP experience. You should expect to see, I would say arenas right off the bat, but you should expect to see certainly some Battlegrounds-style PvP plans in the works in the near future"

Warsong Gulch, Arenas, Battlegrounds???? Hmm sound like a winner to me!!

Even Sigil knows when someone has mad something fun...AKA Blizzard

Andir · February 2007

Originally posted by Blathian

well hate to tell you vanbois, but Sigil is even saying they are trying to copy WOW.
"We'll try explore the use of some of the islands out in the ocean for some sort of ongoing PvP struggle that involves control of territory. If you're familiar with Warsong Gulch, that sort of style of PvP. Not instanced, but find a way to reset it on a regular basis. I think we've got some pretty good ideas how to bridge that gap and come up with a pretty engaging PvP experience. You should expect to see, I would say arenas right off the bat, but you should expect to see certainly some Battlegrounds-style PvP plans in the works in the near future"
Warsong Gulch, Arenas, Battlegrounds???? Hmm sound like a winner to me!!
Even Sigil knows when someone has mad something fun...AKA Blizzard

SWG had Battlegrounds...if I remember correctly. Not everything comes from WoW.

spikenog · February 2007

DAoC had them aswell.

Battlecat · February 2007

Did they have Warsong Gulch? Why didn't they call it capture the flag anyways?

Ethanael · February 2007

Originally posted by Blathian

Already know... and...

Come on now... There is very little room to revolutionise this industry. If you think I'm wrong, why don't you go make yourself a few million bucks with your idea? Everything is at the point of "copying" everything, these days. We could start back in the 1970s to how games now have copied those.

Why even start these threads?

Yes, Sigil has remixed the World of Warcraft user interface. How exactly does that make that a bad thing? Let's see... 8 Million people have played World of Warcraft, aaaand a lot of them were new to the MMORPG world. So, that means, when they think about trying Vanguard and eventually get into the game, it's going to feel like common grounds on the user interface side of the house. *yawn*

Regards,

spikenog · February 2007

Who cares?

Just because a game uses some mechanic that another uses...does not mean it is copying said game.

Let's face it...all games use mechanics and ideas that other games have, been happening for years and years. Get over it.

Not sure what is worse...WoW Fanbois or Vanguard Vanbois.

Blathian · February 2007

This is not a Bash post...it just seems every VG player hates WOW with such a passion...just letting them know what there developer gods are planning for their game.... and yes i know wow has copied many things as well. SWG battlegroundfs played from launch for 2 yrs...never once saw anything cool or fun happen in their Battlegrounds..ever

Crueak · February 2007

Originally posted by Blathian

well hate to tell you vanbois, but Sigil is even saying they are trying to copy WOW.
"We'll try explore the use of some of the islands out in the ocean for some sort of ongoing PvP struggle that involves control of territory. If you're familiar with Warsong Gulch, that sort of style of PvP. Not instanced, but find a way to reset it on a regular basis. I think we've got some pretty good ideas how to bridge that gap and come up with a pretty engaging PvP experience. You should expect to see, I would say arenas right off the bat, but you should expect to see certainly some Battlegrounds-style PvP plans in the works in the near future"
Warsong Gulch, Arenas, Battlegrounds???? Hmm sound like a winner to me!!
Even Sigil knows when someone has mad something fun...AKA Blizzard

well i hate to tell you WoW wanbois, but sigil is using an example here, not one word said they were going to copy anything the key phrase is "THAT SORT OF STYLE pvp" he could've as easily used an example from games before WoW that using your statement copied their crap from. i've said it before and will say again WoW was nothing revolutionary at all with the exception of it's Interface.

spookytooth · February 2007

Any kind of pvp that resets itself after a while is pointless. They can try and give it a point (items, or rankings), but I for one find that kind of meaningless conflict to be a joke. If however you could take territory and keep it till the other side takes it back, thats at least something tangible.

Never quite understood why Blizzard put battlegrounds in the game anyway. Its the sort of gameplay you can find in other games for free! It comlpetely ignores the persistant nature of the genre and ignores all the potential of having an online world.

Battlecat · February 2007

Originally posted by Crueak

Originally posted by Blathian

well hate to tell you vanbois, but Sigil is even saying they are trying to copy WOW.
"We'll try explore the use of some of the islands out in the ocean for some sort of ongoing PvP struggle that involves control of territory. If you're familiar with Warsong Gulch, that sort of style of PvP. Not instanced, but find a way to reset it on a regular basis. I think we've got some pretty good ideas how to bridge that gap and come up with a pretty engaging PvP experience. You should expect to see, I would say arenas right off the bat, but you should expect to see certainly some Battlegrounds-style PvP plans in the works in the near future"
Warsong Gulch, Arenas, Battlegrounds???? Hmm sound like a winner to me!!
Even Sigil knows when someone has mad something fun...AKA Blizzard

well i hate to tell you WoW vanbois, but sigil is using an example here, not one word said they were going to copy anything the key phrase is "THAT SORT OF STYLE pvp" he could've as easily used an example from games before WoW that using your statement copied their crap from. i've said it before and will say again WoW was nothing revolutionary at all with the exception of it's Interface.

WoW has been revolutionary in one way that can not be objected. It has drawn far far more people than any other P2P mmorpg in north America and Europe (AKA the places that tmatter). There are of course some factors. The fact that it was a huge success on release could be because Blizzard is known for occasionally releasing very very good games including Starcraft, Diablo series, Warcraft series. Having a good open beta was probably a good seller too. The continued expansion is probably mostly due to word of mouth and commersials, but also from the very good press reviews and articles the game got. The game is a huge success.

Are you okay with that?

What I wanted to say was this: Why would Sigil say that they want to do something like "If you're familiar with Warsong Gulch, that sort of style of PvP"? It was sigil that brought in WoW in the comparison, not the OP. They could just have said -We are going to do a capture the flag-style PvP battleground- but they didn't.

RECLAIMERS:

If there are grammatical errors it's because english is not my mother tongue.

If I am way off or not consistant it's because of single malt.

Sceptix · February 2007

I find this too ironic simply because of the hypocracy. Lets say that even 70 percent of the Vanguard players are ones that hate, or just generally dislike WoW for many reasons.

By aknowledging they are ok with Sigil and Brad using not only an interface thats almost similar, which is no big deal mind you, but also using features that were inspired by a game that many here claim to hate and think is boring.

So which one is it, either WoW is horrible or boring, or you really dont know what you are talking about. Sure WoW is boring, every freaking online game gets boring at some point and time to a user. But why are you bashing WoW and turn your head the other way when this game is clearly using a lot of stuff thats inspired by a game that the developers supposedly wanted to distance themselves from by making it the opposite of what Blizzard made? They are contradicting themselves. If you dont think anything in this game is WoW inspired from the get go, and i mean freakishly similar, just look at the damn interface, they didint even try to make it look like their own, they were too lazy! Flying mounts, Gryphons, that look 95 percent the same. Yeah ok, we are trying to be original we hate WoW, but lets copy their ideas and hope people fall for the revolutionary aspect.

Granted im talking about graphical look here so its a minor aspect, but please tell me you dont see a lot of stuff here inspired by the very game you spew venom at. Why doesint that make you angry about Vanguard?

Oh thats right, you cant level as fast, that must mean the game is original and challenging. Where did people get the idea that having more time then the next guy require skill. Do i need to find the dictionary for you and tell you what skill means?

I tell you what, me and you will put up a brick wall, i will race you, who has more skill at laying bricks, but the catch is i only have 3 hours to do it in and you have 8, same resources same knowledge about the field, who has more skill?

vylo · February 2007

Eh, I liked WoW, there just wasn't enough beef to it. Taking some ideas from there is not a bad thing. Some of their systems were great (rage, combo points). I must say though that the way BGs were handled in WoW wasn't extremely appealing, and WSG was a generally bland BG, AB was the best.

DuraheLL · February 2007

Originally posted by Blathian

well hate to tell you vanbois, but Sigil is even saying they are trying to copy WOW.
"We'll try explore the use of some of the islands out in the ocean for some sort of ongoing PvP struggle that involves control of territory. If you're familiar with Warsong Gulch, that sort of style of PvP. Not instanced, but find a way to reset it on a regular basis. I think we've got some pretty good ideas how to bridge that gap and come up with a pretty engaging PvP experience. You should expect to see, I would say arenas right off the bat, but you should expect to see certainly some Battlegrounds-style PvP plans in the works in the near future"
Warsong Gulch, Arenas, Battlegrounds???? Hmm sound like a winner to me!!
Even Sigil knows when someone has mad something fun...AKA Blizzard

Nice with the flaming.

What's the point with such a utterly stupid thread name?

What's the point with saying "vanbois"?

You seem to know too little of MMORPG's. You shouldn't be allowed to post before doing some research. WoW was hardly the start of online gaming. WoW has 100% nothing NEW whatsoever. If you came here to "BASH" vanguard because they compare their future plans by comparing something that works in WoW you are obviously not knowing what you are mumbling about.

Congratulations for successful flaming.

Sceptix · February 2007

Originally posted by vylo

Eh, I liked WoW, there just wasn't enough beef to it. Taking some ideas from there is not a bad thing. Some of their systems were great (rage, combo points). I must say though that the way BGs were handled in WoW wasn't extremely appealing, and WSG was a generally bland BG, AB was the best.

I agree battlegrounds got stale, but you have to remember they were around for more then a year, and its the same thing over and over again. But Blizzard introduced outside pvp by capturing towers, and now arena's for the max levels.

But anyways this is a vanguard forum so i will try not to talk about WoW but everyone keeps bringing it up all the time lol

If anything, Battlegrounds was the weaker aspect of WoW because it felt like a mini game that served no purpose. If will be interesting to see if Sigil copies the WoW arena's in pvp only, or if they will use the PVE ones as well where you have to keep beating elite mobs to advance forward and gain rewards.

Thats something ide love to see in a lot of games because that idea would never get old, at least not to me

Now that feels like a proper mini game, unlike battlegrounds, which felt like a seperate game completly, as it wasint even designed by blizzard but another company that blizzard payed.

Sceptix · February 2007

Nice with the flaming.

What's the point with such a utterly stupid thread name?

What's the point with saying "vanbois"?

You seem to know too little of MMORPG's. You shouldn't be allowed to post before doing some research. WoW was hardly the start of online gaming. WoW has 100% nothing NEW whatsoever. If you came here to "BASH" vanguard because they compare their future plans by comparing something that works in WoW you are obviously not knowing what you are mumbling about.

Congratulations for successful flaming.

There was nothing exceptionally new about Diablo, Starcraft or Warcraft.

But it goes to show you what a simpler interface, a more polished and user friendly product can gain for your company. Thats all it takes, even if the core of the gameplay is the same.

It shows the company is competant enough to finish the damn product before they release it. Say what you want about WoW, i find it very flawed. But flaming blizzard will make you lose credibility since they are a very respected company for a reason.

So dont go there girlfriend, uh huh!

Tnice · February 2007

WoW had a big influence on the Sigil Team after they already started their development. I am sure WoW shocked them when it came out and they had to change things very fast. That is why the game seems like a little of EQ, EQ2, and Wow. See Dev quote below:

Originally posted by Kendrick on ( http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/26809-vanguard-going-live-january-30th-24.html)

We started designing Vanguard in early 2002, nearly three years before WoW shipped.

Back then, it was "common knowledge" that there was only ~500k North American/European MMO subscribers to tap, shared amongst all the then-current MMO's.

The only solid data points at the time were EverQuest, which peaked at ~450k and was still holding strong, UO in the 100k range, DAOC somewhere near ~200k at peak, AC1 with ~100k, AO with lower numbers (but a solid recovery considering the launch), and enough data mining/polling to see that those games shared many subscribers.

Lineage 1 claimed seven-digit subscriber numbers, but the way they were counted was..odd. And even if L1's claimed sub numbers were totally accurate, the NA/Europe numbers were still fairly low...and we knew we weren't making a game just for the Korean market.

FFXI, SWG, CoH, EaB, EVE, Neocron, EQ2, AC2, Shadowbane, Horizons, L2, etc had not shipped yet.

So when the budget and pitch for Vanguard was being put together, our best-case subscriber scenario was ~400k.

But the target goal was to get ~200k subscribers and maintain a relatively low churn rate. If we hit those marks, the game would be quite profitable, with a strong ROI and anything over that would be gravy. We were never going for a mass market game, we were targeting a "core audience" that traditionally had the lowest churn rate.

Now granted, Vanguard's budget creeped upwards (and we knew that was going to happen), but even with what I think they've spent on the game so far versus the original budget projection, 200k subscribers and a modest churn rate will still make the game profitable in a relatively short period of time.

In my opinion there's enough game there right now to hit those numbers and quite possibly exceed them. On top of that the hooks are there for most of the deferred content and features, which can greatly add to the retention value in the long-term.

I think if you talked to the core Blizzard guys back in 2002, they were probably hoping to match EQ's peak numbers in NA/Europe and probably get a non-trivial amount of the Korean market thanks to brand awareness and familiarity with that audience. They were definitely looking for bigger numbers than we were with Vanguard.

But I doubt one of them would tell you that they really expected multi-million subscriber numbers. Yet they still spent over $50 million on development, because even at that cost, pulling down EQ numbers and retention makes for a tidy profit.

As for the WoW-ification of Vanguard, to my eyes that's just an adjustment, not a "sell out" Thanks to WoW's success, there's a few more things the target core audience now expects in a MMO, and to totally ignore that is just plain silly.

Things like having a large amount of directed content. That said, the quest journal was in the original 2002 design specs, and the first iteration was implemented that year as well. The question marks over the heads, well, that's just a case of not re-inventing the wheel.

As for death mechanics and failure penalties, that was always a hotly debated topic among MMO players and designers alike, and to me, Vanguard's current "pick your punishment" system is a decent compromise solution between EQ's harsh forced corpse recovery and WoW's milder graveyard mechanic.

Other things, like the UI, are also adjustments...the original UI looked more like classic EQ, just to provide a commonality in controls, because our core audience back then was assumed to be coming from EQ. Now our core audience is coming from both EQ and WoW. Once again, no need to re-invent the wheel.

The silliest thing Sigil could have done was to totally ignore WoW's impact on the market and keep marching on with the original 2002 Vanguard design in a vacuum. But even if WoW had never shipped, we knew we'd be making changes to the original design (and cutting things, or deferring things, or adding things) right to the end. No battle plan survives contact......

And finally, I think there's still a pretty large monetary gap between the "Most Expensive MMO" and the "Second Most Expensive MMO".

Battlecat · February 2007

Originally posted by Sceptix

There was nothing exceptionally new about Diablo, Starcraft or Warcraft.

But it goes to show you what a simpler interface, a more polished and user friendly product can gain for your company. Thats all it takes, even if the core of the gameplay is the same.

It shows the company is competant enough to finish the damn product before they release it. Say what you want about WoW, i find it very flawed. But flaming blizzard will make you lose credibility since they are a very respected company for a reason.

So dont go there girlfriend, uh huh!

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans had a lot of original stuff. The only real predecessor was Dune 2, and for being the same genre they are not sharing that many aspects.

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