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Ex-Sigil Employees Move to Warhammer
Tnice
Member Posts: 563
Excerpt below. Interesting sentence highlighted in yellow. These are the Employees that were fired in the Sigil parking lot and not rehired by SOE or choose not to join SOE after Sigil went bust.
"We also picked up a few ex-vanguard people here at EA-Mythic central, they are all good people, they have to be to get passed our recruiter bulldog and the interviews we have here. We are marching to glory, Mark demands nothing less and 'The Hickman' ™ stands guard watching everything (and playing with his pirate pinkie ring), so, we are marching to glory and every body on the team needs to jump in feet first and give their all. At first they looked a little like deer in head lights. It can be quite daunting entering our place and seeing people smile, laugh, be joyous and basically loving their jobs. But we have a great team of people and we are making them feel at home.
Comments
SIGIL was a mismanaged company. People earn MBAs for a reason. You had very creative individuals (trying) to run a company.
I think Vanguard is now in good hands, however. I still think this Topic is more appropriate for News or Off Topic in General Discussion.
Edit: From marketing to personnel management things could have been a lot better from the limited information I have. I think Vanguard is a very creative game, though.
Lol Tnice what was you expecting that they gonna work in a supermarket?
Its nice to see them back at work and well if they qualify why not? Like none191 just said it looks like you sort of missed all about how Sigil was managed which resulted in the way things have gone with Sigil. Or maybe this post was made a warning to those looking forward to WAR and now they have ex-sigils in house might make it bad?
Ah another thing which is sort of a basic in live: The grass is always greener at your neighbours (dunno if this translates well in English)
So those statements you "yellowed" are what you can expect from people getting fired and from those hiring again. Trust me i know (i am a recruiter myself) 
No really, that's pretty cool I suppose. A few of them moved all the way from Carlsbad, California to Fairfax, Virginia just to continue pursuing involvement in mainstream MMOs. I wonder what few they were, what they did for Sigil and what they'll be doing for EA Mythic.
"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
The first highlight indicates that the Sigil environment must have been a really bad working environment as the Warhammer environment is the "opposite".
The second highlight indicates that not only regular Gamers consider Vanguard an absolute failure but industry Insiders as well.
The first highlight indicates that the Sigil environment must have been a really bad working environment as the Warhammer environment is the "opposite".
The second highlight indicates that not only regular Gamers consider Vanguard an absolute failure but industry Insiders as well.
I, for one, am very happy to see these guys land a job. I just hope everyone gets a great job like this after going through such a horrid experience.
It never was the developers ...it was the leader. I felt horrible for the developers and im glad to see them coming out of this intacted.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
You do know it had nothing to do with the Developers that made Vanguard bad dont you?
Also, I know a couple people who work at Mythic and I can tell you, they're hiring process is STRICT. If you get a job their as a developer then you know what the hell you're doing
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
You do know it had nothing to do with the Developers that made Vanguard bad dont you?
Also, I know a couple people who work at Mythic and I can tell you, they're hiring process is STRICT. If you get a job their as a developer then you know what the hell you're doing
Man.....I agree with both of you. I am nervous about the vanguard crew coming to war, but it is just the stigma that i have attached to vanguard. I am SO confident in mythic's ability to hire people that know what they are doing. So i guess what i am saying is although initially nervous i am overall happy....if mythic has faith i trust in them.
If they hired the entire Sigil team there would be cause for worry. If they took the Sigil
management team intact, then there would be cause for worry.
The fault lies with management not the coders and developers. They were only following
orders.
It was management that decided that 70 hour weeks for months on end would give good code.
They did not understand the concept of diminishing returns.
It was management who set the unrealistic deadlines and decided that a tiny QA department
was good enough.
It was management who decided there was no time for tools and scripting engines.
A few programmers this late in the development cycle is not going to change a whole lot.
Mythic is not rushing or trying to ship an incomplete and buggy product. The fact that they have
delayed their release from before Christmas til after the New Year to apply more polish and
enhance gameplay speaks volumes about where their focus is and what they want to achieve.
I have to agree, the problem is the retards at the top, and whoever designed the engine mechanics and optimization...
Anyone involved with the underlying code that runs the game should be shot
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
aye...if they hired Brad...then the game would have a need to worry.
The DEVs will be just fine
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
If they hired the entire Sigil team there would be cause for worry. If they took the Sigil
management team intact, then there would be cause for worry.
The fault lies with management not the coders and developers. They were only following
orders.
It was management that decided that 70 hour weeks for months on end would give good code.
They did not understand the concept of diminishing returns.
It was management who set the unrealistic deadlines and decided that a tiny QA department
was good enough.
It was management who decided there was no time for tools and scripting engines.
A few programmers this late in the development cycle is not going to change a whole lot.
Mythic is not rushing or trying to ship an incomplete and buggy product. The fact that they have
delayed their release from before Christmas til after the New Year to apply more polish and
enhance gameplay speaks volumes about where their focus is and what they want to achieve.
Look, I think Brad is the gaming equivalent of the antichrist. But he doesn't code anything. He rarely designs anything. He talks a lot, wastes other people's time, takes any credit to be taken for anything that works in spite of him, and sells stuff. In between he makes pathetically poor management decisions; that is, when he isn't hiding in his house and not managing at all.
All those bugs in the game? He didn't put them there. The lack of optimization and performance issues? Not him. The vast majority of faulty design problems with anything more than "big picture", so-called "Visionary "stuff? Somebody else. That giant piece of fatuous bloatware? Somebody else wrote that. The delays? In the words of Butthead, "that was, uh, other kids." The fact is that Brad is a big useless windbag. If anything was actually done poorly, it wasn't Brad because he doesn't do anything. His name is over in the category (with others) of stuff that should have been done and wasn't, or should never have been said and was. There are wagonloads of blame to go around, including for the people Mythic just hired. That scares me. I hope they watch those guys like a hungry hawk does a mouse.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
I would honostly hire Brad within a second if i had the change and needed someone like him. I just would never ever put him in charge or lead something, but lets try and be realistic that he still outnumbers most of us gamers in knowhow about game development. So its very short minded to consider someone like Brad the anticrist. When someone that speaks about Brad that has indeed acomplished more and better things i could understand some things some would say about him. But try to keep realistric and see the guy from a gamers perspective and you know he just should not lead something but his influence is still worth allot more then the driffel of "wanna-be-game-developers-forum-hoppers" we see on this forum. Don't be blinded by hate, become open mined and i'm pretty sure we don't have to follow all the politics behind these games and we will have more fun playing them, or simply leave them (yes i'm also talking to partial myself here)
Lets face another fact is WE ARE SPOILED!! (yes me 2
)
If they hired the entire Sigil team there would be cause for worry. If they took the Sigil
management team intact, then there would be cause for worry.
The fault lies with management not the coders and developers. They were only following
orders.
It was management that decided that 70 hour weeks for months on end would give good code.
They did not understand the concept of diminishing returns.
It was management who set the unrealistic deadlines and decided that a tiny QA department
was good enough.
It was management who decided there was no time for tools and scripting engines.
A few programmers this late in the development cycle is not going to change a whole lot.
Mythic is not rushing or trying to ship an incomplete and buggy product. The fact that they have
delayed their release from before Christmas til after the New Year to apply more polish and
enhance gameplay speaks volumes about where their focus is and what they want to achieve.
All those bugs in the game? He didn't put them there.
No, the seventy hour work weeks, lack of test tools, unrealistic deadlines, lack of a QA
department, decision to ship the product come hell or high water prevented the bugs
from being fixed.
The lack of optimization and performance issues? Not him.
Unrealistic deadlines, bad design choices, and a commitment to polish and fix it in the
field like they did with EQ1 were primarily responsible. It is very likely that all of the
programmers were not involved in the decision to go with the Unreal engine. Once that
decision was made, any code using it was at its mercy for optimization. If the engine
isn't optimized, no code using it will be optimized either. If you use El Cheapo delivery
service for your package and they get the package delivered in a month, it doesn't
matter that you trimmed a week off your production time - it's still going to take more
than a month to get your product to your customer.
The vast majority of faulty design problems with anything more than "big picture", so-called "Visionary "stuff? Somebody else. That giant piece of fatuous bloatware? Somebody else wrote that.
And what if that bloatware was the graphics engine ? The programmers were not the
ones who decided when it would ship. The programmers were not the ones who decided
it was good enough. The programmers were not the ones who decided this bug or that
bug were not severe enough to hold up release.
The delays? In the words of Butthead, "that was, uh, other kids." The fact is that Brad is a big useless windbag.
No argument there.
If anything was actually done poorly, it wasn't Brad because he doesn't do anything.
But that still leaves a lot for the management team to do. If the product is designed
and coded using mediocre practices, it doesn't matter how good the underlying code
is. Their philosophy was to look at the calendar to decide how good the code was.
His name is over in the category (with others) of stuff that should have been done and wasn't, or should never have been said and was. There are wagonloads of blame to go around, including for the people Mythic just hired. That scares me.
You know nothing of Mythic practices and test methodologies. Their philosophy and
practices might just prevent the very things that the Sigil environment fostered. If you
place your focus on QA and gameplay and not the calendar or have the philosophy of
"good enough", then thre won't be similar problems.
I hope they watch those guys like a hungry hawk does a mouse.
If their processes and practices are good, they won't have to.
It's good to hear that some of the poor unfortuantes that got run over from the Sigil train wreck have found new jobs with a respectable company like Mythic.
Paul B's blog is revealing about the industry views of Sigil and Vanguard, the people who worked there certainly racked up their share of 'scars'.
But those scars were inflicted by mis-management. Not just Brad M, he was just the most visible and obvious problem. The people Brad chose to make the everyday management decisions were just as incompetent. What kind of idiots don't give their people the proper freaking TOOLS to do their job and then force them to work insane numbers of hours?
That's like telling people they need to build a house designed by a clueless architect in only 2 weeks and there aren't any nails because the foremen bosses think they're not needed. Brad M was the architect, the foremen were the rest of Sigil management. It should be noted THEY didn't lose their jobs.
I think we can be safe in assuming Mythic works differently. Anyway best wishes to those folks who have found new jobs on WAR.
eqnext.wikia.com
Mythic's a great company. I'm glad that some of the folks from Sigil were able to make the jump, because now, they'll get to work in a much more professional, competent environment than they were in at Sigil. That's a good thing.
Give a bunch of talented programmers, designers and coders a stable, professional office environment that's competently run, and you can end up with a fantastic game. Give them the incompetence, nepotism, and total lack of direction of the upper management at Sigil, and you end up with a much poorer quality game.
I wish these folks well. They've rebounded from a horribly run company and have moved on to better things.
It is why Vanguard is a very creative, very advanced game. You can see in Vanguard where creativity and design really did not have boundaries: an incredibly enormous fantasy world without zoning. Heh. I think the designers went a bit extreme in some areas, but it has resulted in a much greater world that is interesting and very complex.
So, you have an incredibly creative and very fascinating game to play. It is so huge it is, unfortunately, still not finished.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! STAY AWAY FROM WARHAMMER!! NOOOOOO!
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!
WHY?
... well if WAR fails at least *I* know whom to blame now.
Edit: I am of course not 100% serious. I DO give the benefit of doubt, but it DID made me feel chilly.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! STAY AWAY FROM WARHAMMER!! NOOOOOO!
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!
WHY?
... well if WAR fails at least *I* know whom to blame now.
Edit: I am of course not 100% serious. I DO give the benefit of doubt, but it DID made me feel chilly.
What a load of BS. Even after your edit.You know that Sigil coded VG the hard way right? It takes talented people to do that. Upper management. Yes, crap. Regular dudes working, i think they did an amazing job with what they had. Please, get a clue.
eqnext.wikia.com
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Are you always this cheerful and in real-life?
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Are you always this cheerful and in real-life?
eqnext.wikia.com