Vanguard as a game has not failed yet as such, it was simply put out to the public a bit early.
Next year more people would be able to afford the system specs to play it and also it would have been a much more complete game.
I feel vanguard still could have a place in the market as long as people are willing to give it some time.
I'm not a fan boy of vanguard, I do play WoW, EQII, EQ, Guild Wars etc and I always look forward to new games and new players in the MMO sand box... Vanguard could fill a hole for a lot of people once it's clean.
What I find sad during all of this is that Vanguard was dedicated to one of the greatest Fantasy Artists of our time, Mr Kieth Parkinson who was the lead artist on vanguard and sadly died just before the game was released... I think we should all stop casting blame or other such things and show a little respect.
Give SOE some time and see what they can do with it....granted a lot of people think SOE stands for Satan Online and Evil .. but they do know how to run a game.
Vanguard as a game has not failed yet as such, it was simply put out to the public a bit early.
Next year more people would be able to afford the system specs to play it and also it would have been a much more complete game.
I feel vanguard still could have a place in the market as long as people are willing to give it some time.
I'm not a fan boy of vanguard, I do play WoW, EQII, EQ, Guild Wars etc and I always look forward to new games and new players in the MMO sand box... Vanguard could fill a hole for a lot of people once it's clean.
What I find sad during all of this is that Vanguard was dedicated to one of the greatest Fantasy Artists of our time, Mr Kieth Parkinson who was the lead artist on vanguard and sadly died just before the game was released... I think we should all stop casting blame or other such things and show a little respect.
Give SOE some time and see what they can do with it....granted a lot of people think SOE stands for Satan Online and Evil .. but they do know how to run a game.
V
EQII is actually getting good reviews and word of mouth now and the Kunark expansion will help even more but with SWG, EQII, Anarchy Online, and of course Vanguard, you see a pattern. It's never as good if it doesn't get it right out the gate. EQII's numbers are increasing but they could've had 500,000 subscribers or even a million easilly if they had not figured they can release as is and patch all the other stuff in later. For Vanguard to come along and do the same thing was completely idiotic. Considering VG didn't even have a strong IP to lean on, it was doomed from the get go.
As to the original poster: I think we can see now that Mismanagement and lack of management and "Good Ole Boy" hirings of friends instead of qualified employees were huge in the "failure" of VG. That's one good thing about Smed; he will fire his own mother if she ain't making the cash and getting the job done.
I was reading some of the ex-Dev interviews.. and there's a couple interesting tidbits I've picked up.
1) Upper management refused to listen to devs or beta testers.
2) Much of upper management had never played WoW.
Put the 2 together.. the company was run by people who had no idea what a modern MMO was like, and wouldn't listen to anybody who did. It's not a real shock that Sigil ended up with a game that plays like something a decade old.
Then, toss in Sigil's complete disregard for its customer base. Horrible to non-existent customer support, constant lies and hype, no official forums and my personal favorite of blaming the customer for flaws in the software.
So.. the reasons it's a failure to me are:
1) Dated gameplay.
2) Disregard for customers.
3) Early Release ( although even if they had waited to fix most of the problems the game would still have failed. See #1 )
4) Poor performance
5) There are too many better made games on the market.
Comments
Next year more people would be able to afford the system specs to play it and also it would have been a much more complete game.
I feel vanguard still could have a place in the market as long as people are willing to give it some time.
I'm not a fan boy of vanguard, I do play WoW, EQII, EQ, Guild Wars etc and I always look forward to new games and new players in the MMO sand box... Vanguard could fill a hole for a lot of people once it's clean.
What I find sad during all of this is that Vanguard was dedicated to one of the greatest Fantasy Artists of our time, Mr Kieth Parkinson who was the lead artist on vanguard and sadly died just before the game was released... I think we should all stop casting blame or other such things and show a little respect.
Give SOE some time and see what they can do with it....granted a lot of people think SOE stands for Satan Online and Evil .. but they do know how to run a game.
V
EQII is actually getting good reviews and word of mouth now and the Kunark expansion will help even more but with SWG, EQII, Anarchy Online, and of course Vanguard, you see a pattern. It's never as good if it doesn't get it right out the gate. EQII's numbers are increasing but they could've had 500,000 subscribers or even a million easilly if they had not figured they can release as is and patch all the other stuff in later. For Vanguard to come along and do the same thing was completely idiotic. Considering VG didn't even have a strong IP to lean on, it was doomed from the get go.
As to the original poster: I think we can see now that Mismanagement and lack of management and "Good Ole Boy" hirings of friends instead of qualified employees were huge in the "failure" of VG. That's one good thing about Smed; he will fire his own mother if she ain't making the cash and getting the job done.
I was reading some of the ex-Dev interviews.. and there's a couple interesting tidbits I've picked up.
1) Upper management refused to listen to devs or beta testers.
2) Much of upper management had never played WoW.
Put the 2 together.. the company was run by people who had no idea what a modern MMO was like, and wouldn't listen to anybody who did. It's not a real shock that Sigil ended up with a game that plays like something a decade old.
Then, toss in Sigil's complete disregard for its customer base. Horrible to non-existent customer support, constant lies and hype, no official forums and my personal favorite of blaming the customer for flaws in the software.
So.. the reasons it's a failure to me are:
1) Dated gameplay.
2) Disregard for customers.
3) Early Release ( although even if they had waited to fix most of the problems the game would still have failed. See #1 )
4) Poor performance
5) There are too many better made games on the market.