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Word from Brad McQuaid
Akirax
Member Posts: 14
"To many MMOG players, you may already know about Vanguard and are either looking forward to it, or at least looking forward to getting into beta or checking out the game being played by someone else in beta, or perhaps even waiting to see how launch goes. To many other MMOG gamers, especially long time gamers, you're already active on our boards and avidly looking forward to the game. But then for many other MMOG gamers, there's a lot of about Vanguard you might not know about. Or, worse yet, you might have heard some rumors floating about that simply aren’t true. Perhaps you might have heard that it's yesterday’s game with nothing revolutionary or exciting, or only for hard core players with no lives, or that it's more about challenge and tedium than fun. Or, on the other hand, you may be playing in one of the current MMOGs and are looking for something new on the horizon. Well, if any of that’s true, our message and our efforts, whether interacting with people on our message boards, or releasing a series of screenshots or in-game videos, or doing interviews in magazines or on the web, may come as a bit of a surprise: yep, that’s right, this game was likely made for someone just like you.
No, no, of course you can’t make a game that’s everything for everybody (and, really, who’d want to?). And neither do we want to make a game that’s a copy or clone of a popular game that’s already out there – players want choices, and meaningful ones at that. But with our experience and the efforts and design we’ve put into the game, I bet there’s a very good chance Vanguard has something in it for you. Yep. Even if you’ve never heard of it, and especially if you have heard about it but the rumors sounded, well, ‘un-fun’. And so while we love the Internet and would hate to see rumors and stories and conspiracy theories go away completely, it is our job, especially with release closing in on us fast, to get the right messaging out… to let you know about this game, why it’s the next big thing, and just as importantly, to dispel some of those rumors so you can make an informed choice about what massively multiplayer game you’ll be spending your time playing early next year. Because spending your time is important, especially in a virtual world. You’re not just spending time, you’re investing time, both in your characters and in the relationships you form in these games. Some people may not understand online interactive entertainment yet and still think of them as just games, but while those guys play catch-up, we know they’re really so much more – they’re online communities – these people are real whether they live across the street or in another country and they’re our friends. And these ‘games’, the good ones anyway, aren’t just games, they’re homes.
So no matter who you are, we want to reach out to you and pique your interest in Vanguard because we are confident it's going to change the face of massively multiplayer online gaming next year, and the year after that, and… well, you get the picture – we’re in this for the long haul. A huge marketing and PR campaign has just begun with our co-publishers, Sony Online Entertainment. But the unique thing about Vanguard is that Sigil, a company founded by many of the original makers of EverQuest and other older MMOGs is that we are working together with SOE and have retained creative control over the project. Our aim, quite simply, is to offer an alternative to an online gaming genre that is dominated by a few very large and quite excellent games right now (Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft come to mind). Why? Because life, especially entertainment, is about choices. And, really, so is Vanguard itself. It’s about freedom of choice. It contains content and quests and adventures for all sorts of people -- casual players, 'core' players, and even those who spend a lot of time in these games raiding in large groups -- we're all about making a world that is inclusive, *not* exclusive. Vanguard offers a freedom that players have never before experienced -- you have a wide variety of races and classes to choose from, unparalleled capability to customize your character, multiple ways of advancing your character, be it traditional adventuring, to an exciting system of harvesting and crafting, to a brand new spin on gameplay called Diplomacy where you use your wits and not your sword to decide the outcome of events and make your mark on the world…
And on top of all of this, the world itself is simply so immersive it’s mind-blowing – Telon, the world in which Vanguard takes place, awaits all sorts of people who want to be part of a living, breathing, virtual environment, in which you can own your own house, ride or sail a ship anywhere as far as you can see, and even one day fly through the clouds on the back of a dragon, pegasus, or any number of mythical creatures to the destination of your choice. There are virtually no limitations in Vanguard -- you get what you put into it and so much more. The world of Telon takes the ‘massive’ in MMOG and turns it up to eleven -- but it's not just big for the sake of being big, no it's full of variety and laid out in a seamless environment where if you can see an interesting location miles away into the distance, a dungeon or a castle, or really anything interesting at all, you can always get there – exploration has been missing in these games as of late, but travel in Vanguard has meaning.
But we didn’t stop there either -- we expanded upon the traditional High Fantasy we all love and included not just one continent with familiar Western European, Tokieneque and Arthurian settings, but also another continent that draws from the tales of Arabian Nights, full of pyramids, hanging gardens, hidden jungles filled with exotic intrigue -- virtually the entirety of Persian, Egyptian, and other middle eastern mythology. And then we went nuts and didn't stop there either – there’s a third continent, this time with an Oriental twist, that forms a vast archipelago of islands. Picture yourself as a thief or a ninja, or a merchant or pirate, sailing from one isle to the next, discovering new lands and even lost empires swallowed whole long ago by the sea.
I’ll make a promise to you right now: I've given you but a taste of what’s in store for you the first quarter of 2007 -- there's simply *so* much more -- far, far too much to cover here. I’d have to write thousands of pages of history and lore and background and settings. I’d have to design detailed game mechanics and systems that build upon every bit of our experience making these games and then goes even farther into the next generation of online gaming. Ah, but wait! Our team of over 100 people have already done just that and built all of it into this game, and they’ve been pouring their hearts and souls into this for over four years (not to mention those who worked on games like EverQuest, who have been dreaming about a virtual world like this for over a decade)! In fact, we’ve planned so much that you’re not only going to have all of this to experience soon, but after the game launches we have both live and expansion teams ready to add new content to the game – content that has to a great degree already been planned out so we know what Vanguard will look like and offer not just in 2007, but for more than seven years after that!
So how do you find out more? The heck with design documents and quest scripts and all of the art and data that makes an MMOG tick – that’s what we work with in-house at Sigil. Instead, check out our web sites and other resources, with more and more information being revealed virtually every day. Head to joinvanguard.com to find out more about the game as well as vanguardsoh.com where again there are movies, screenshots, a detailed FAQ to answer your many questions about the game, as well as a very active message board already with well over 100,000 members. Find out what opportunities there will be to get into beta at some point. Read what people are saying about the game. Check out the screenshots and the videos. And don’t just read the boards -- participate and ask us questions – yeah, we’re really there, using one screen to work on the game and another to interact with YOU to make sure we’re making the game YOU want to play.
So what are you waiting for?
-Brad McQuaid "
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"Jack-of-all-trades-Master-of-none"
Comments
What does he know? "Noob, this game is not for everyone, this game is HARD, go back to WOW, noob."
great post!
sits and waits for the flames.....
Yeah, cool message from a couple months ago. I actually believed in what he was saying. And then I got into beta
sorry I just could not resist. The parallel was just too obvious.
I miss DAoC
Total time played: 9125 Days, 21 Hours, 29 Minutes, 27 Seconds
Time played this level: 39 Days, 1 Hour, 24 Minutes, 5 Seconds
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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I think the MMOG world that Mr. McQuaid created has passed him by. Other companies have taken his ideas and improved on them. It is sort of sad to see our hero go down this way. Due to lackluster sales Vanguard will not be able to give us all that he had hoped for.
I guess you can never go home again.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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Romero is a great FPS developer.
Brad is a great RPG developer.
Either way that's not the point of this topic.
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"Jack-of-all-trades-Master-of-none"
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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A Voice From Within
Ya guys like these forget or act like 'If it wasn't for my game' there wouldn't be an MMORPG following like there is today. What got me hooked on playing any game online was due to Gooseman the Inventor of the game of Counter Strike. MMORPG's for me was a natural evalution inspired by that one online game.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I doubt Mr. McQuaid reads these forums, as there's a lot of harsh criticism here that you won't find on forums like Silky Venom,
The fact of the matter, at least in my case and I hope many other folks as well, is that no one cares about your promises, or what's going to be there, or what expansion packs will bring. These promises have been poorly executed or never happened at all.
People who are paying you today don't want to hear about what next year will bring to the game, they want it now. As soon as you missed the mark, you shot yourself in the foot.
That's MY opinion on this prepared PR statement.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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Ya guys like these forget or act like 'If it wasn't for my game' there wouldn't be an MMORPG following like there is today. What got me hooked on playing any game online was due to Gooseman the Inventor of the game of Counter Strike. MMORPG's for me was a natural evalution inspired by that one online game. me too. ALL HAIL THE GOOSE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"MMORPG's for me was a natural evalution inspired by that one online game"
Everquest = 1998
Counter-Strike (Beta) = 1999
Fact.
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"Jack-of-all-trades-Master-of-none"
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
.jpg)
Agreed but one part ,On silky venom people post as harsh criticism about vanguard an the vanguard "team" as here, some times worse!Oddly enuff some times by posters with names that one would see here as a Vanboi ( Fanboy ) type here .Surely difrent people just odd seeing from one board a name posting blind love an in another site posting the same problems some here have been haveing.
Jackdog.. i laughted when i seen that pic.Then wondered how many people knew who ol john was an what advertisment poster was for. Then was pleased to see some people got it . For those that dont know who ol john is an why he wanted to make you his bitch .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
Agreed but one part ,On silky venom people post as harsh criticism about vanguard an the vanguard "team" as here, some times worse!Oddly enuff some times by posters with names that one would see here as a Vanboi ( Fanboy ) type here .Surely difrent people just odd seeing from one board a name posting blind love an in another site posting the same problems some here have been haveing.
Jackdog.. i laughted when i seen that pic.Then wondered how many people knew who ol john was an what advertisment poster was for. Then was pleased to see some people got it . For those that dont know who ol john is an why he wanted to make you his bitch .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero
Here's a direct link to the J Romero reference - archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/index20.shtml
This is what happens when developer's egos get the better of them
The game sucks. It sucks because he's still living in Everquest land. Wow, I'm resorting to personal attacks, see what it's done to me?
Frankly I want my 50 bucks back.
Rebuild the combat system, add real quests with story , add a real UI and provide information so you can figure out which freaking quests go to which areas, levels or npcs....
Don't get me started on the grind or the obsession with timesinks. (I'm sounding like a broken record from my other posts!)
I think the main reason most of us are so harsh about this game is that we've been so ripped off by the promise and complete failure to deliver.
Such is life when you believe the hype. At least Brad's own hype is so obviously a desperate prayer for subscriptions that it might elicit a spark of pity.... nah.
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"MMOs, for people that like think chatting is like a skill or something, rotflol"
http://purepwnage.com
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"Far away across the field, the tolling of the iron bell, calls the faithful to their knees. To hear the softly spoken magic spell" Pink Floyd-Dark Side of the Moon
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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