They ( whoever you want to blame ) took what was once a innovative game and due to money or pressure or whatever, dumbed it down to get it out the door and it tripped. It will never be the game it was truely intended to be. It wasnt the same game at launch compaired to early beta even, too many core elements where changed/nixxed not to mention the classes where constantly in a state of flux. ( probably due to mismanagement )
Daily fixes being updated on a weekly basis has less than a trivial impact on the current state of the game. Brad failed to manage and motivate his team because they were sitting on a large pile of MS's cash, plain and simple.
MS had no idea exactly what they were getting themselves into with VG. Sigil failed to meet benchmarks and MS bailed, as would any responsible investor. Rinse repeat and SOE owns VG.
Perhaps you've missed my posts about the exploits that are STILL (as of 1 month ago anyway) in game that I /bugged in beta. And as far as being shipped months early, well that was months ago.
They ( whoever you want to blame ) took what was once a innovative game and due to money or pressure or whatever, dumbed it down to get it out the door and it tripped. It will never be the game it was truely intended to be. It wasnt the same game at launch compaired to early beta even, too many core elements where changed/nixxed not to mention the classes where constantly in a state of flux. ( probably due to mismanagement )
I say a game with death penalties fails
I say no great PvP-game fails
I say a game with 20 classes instead of 8 very balanced classes fails
I say a game like EQ1 and not like WoW fails
I have been right on the money and the Vanbois missed, no one wants to play your game of death penalties, boring grinds, slow leveling, and raids. NO ONE WILL PLAY!
I predicted Vanguard fails-happened
I predicted Brad sells out-happened
I predicted SOE owns the whole thing-happened
I have always been right and the Vanbois are always wrong. Copy WoW or die! Its not dumbing down, its making a game FUN not a chore.
Sigil wasted tons of time and money on artwork that may be nice to look at but is otherwise meaningless in the game. Look at Bordinar's Cleft for exhibit one. A truly amazing looking place but no one goes there because there is no reason to go there, no quests no adventuring, it's a pointless location.
Beyond that they had the artwork for a whole other continent that never made it into the game. They blew money early and were surprised when Microsoft stopped giving them cash. Thats just mismanagement.
Regardless who's at fault. Vanguard will go down in MMO history as a leason of what not to do. I believe this is the only really good thing Vanguard has done for the industry. Because of WOW more investors and Developers will throw their hats into the ring. I'm not sure how many subs WOW currently has but if you think about 6 million x 15 a month = more money per year than alot of hollywood movies.
For example the movie Spiderman costed the studio aprox 150 million and grossed a little over 800 million at the box office world wide. Take away the box office cut and advertising best guess is it netted aprox 150 million. Not bad
World of Warcraft development budget was reported to be around 80 million and hit a record $2.7 billion annually !!!
The thing that makes me scratch my head is the movie studio spent even more on Spiderman 2 and took in a total box office gross of 750 million. Blizzard spent estimated 2 million on their expansion and sold 8.5 million copies at 30 bucks which totals more than the budget of Spiderman 1 or 2.
And this begs the question: What in the hell is Blizzard doing with all that money? We have learned from games like SWG that it must not take much to keep a bunch of empty servers running so what IS Blizzard doing with all that cash?
No matter my point really is with a game like WOW out there i'm sure many investors will be a little more willing to back MMOs in the future. Let's just hope one of them is the kind of game we all want to play for years and years
And this begs the question: What in the hell is Blizzard doing with all that money? We have learned from games like SWG that it must not take much to keep a bunch of empty servers running so what IS Blizzard doing with all that cash?
I have also been asking that question myself. It certainly is not going to WoW. The WoW community, as a total, is addicted to grinding faction and raiding for armor sets. Not very deep, varied, or fun (my opinion).
My hope and theory is that all the WoW money is going to develop a truly awesome MMO. WoW does not need a whole lot of money because the community does not seem to demand much (look at TBC).
Blizzard is awesome. I hope something truly amazing (MMO) is released by them with WoW's money.
----- WoW and fast food = commercial successes. I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Daily fixes being updated on a weekly basis has less than a trivial impact on the current state of the game. Brad failed to manage and motivate his team because they were sitting on a large pile of MS's cash, plain and simple. MS had no idea exactly what they were getting themselves into with VG. Sigil failed to meet benchmarks and MS bailed, as would any responsible investor. Rinse repeat and SOE owns VG. Perhaps you've missed my posts about the exploits that are STILL (as of 1 month ago anyway) in game that I /bugged in beta. And as far as being shipped months early, well that was months ago.
So you begin by saying that how bug fixes were handled during beta has a trivial impact on the current state of the game. And you end by complaining about exploits you /bugged in beta that were never resolved.
100% mismanagement. MS didnt dump this pile because of WoW or any other game. They dumped it because it was a pile. It had been in development for years,burned through millions of dollars and was still a pile. It was a pile because sigil and brad mismanaged it. Maybe in the land of rainbows and unicorns game developers can spend endless money and time to release a product. In the world of investors/business loans you have timelines, benchmarks, etc. They can be adjusted if needed but you better have some results and valid explanations.
Im as big a $oe hater as you can find but they had nothing to do with vanguard sucking wind. I would imagine 2-4 years from now vanguard might even be a decent game but who knows what else will be out then and if it will even matter. Anything positive that happens to vanguard will be a credit to $oe not sigil.
Only a handfull of individuals know exactly what went wrong. From being in beta, various leaks from former sigil employees, posts from mcquaid,etc it isnt hard to sumise a general idea however. I put it directly on brad and sigil management.
Daily fixes being updatedon a weekly basis has less than a trivial impact on the current state of the game. Brad failed to manage and motivate his team because they were sitting on a large pile of MS's cash, plain and simple. MS had no idea exactly what they were getting themselves into with VG. Sigil failed to meet benchmarks and MS bailed, as would any responsible investor. Rinse repeat and SOE owns VG. Perhaps you've missed my posts about the exploits that are STILL (as of 1 month ago anyway) in game that I /bugged in beta. And as far as being shipped months early, well that was months ago.
So you begin by saying that how bug fixes were handled during beta has a trivial impact on the current state of the game. And you end by complaining about exploits you /bugged in beta that were never resolved.
Brilliant.
Exactly. How the updates were handled had no impact on the game. The lack of FIXES has everything to do with the current state.
I think most of what happened to Vanguard is pretty public now and that fault is probably ultimately on a lot of people but at the end of the day it rests on the CEO....
1. MS reorged and basically walked away from the MMORPG space leaving Vanguard in the hands of the Xbox 360 gaming division directly under the zoo tycoon management. Not exactly a good place to be.
2. Brad seeing things crumbling left the company trying to drum up more support and funding while being the visionary and driver in the company left a huge void. (This is not an unusual situation in an entrepreneurial business.)
3. In Brad's absence everyone became demorilized and funding was running out. (No doubt Brad popped in from time to time and destabliziced any management that was trying to move the game forward. again visionary ceo's are both good and bad. Good for getting everyone going but bad for crunch time and keeping things running)
4. Vanguard was too large and had too much to complete in the budget allocated but management didn't want to scale the fundamental game back and hoped they would get enough to ship a product that would work.
5. The moved to SOE and got a bit of funding but ultimately believed they could keep control of the game and ship something that they would be able to fix in time and survive.
6. They were wrong and retention wasn't enough to keep the game going and handle large bills to cover investment.
7. Sony steps in and buys rights to the game and assets for pennies on the dollar. (In some ways I can almost see this being a cut throat business game. Give Brad enough rope to hang himself and then take what is left.... I mean they gave Brad enough resources to get out from under MS and for them to get a stake in the game. Then they left Brad in control and gave him just enough funding to ship. Brad's ego made him think he could pull it off when he should have known it would fail. SOE probably knew it would and that they would then be able to take complete control of a bankrupted company gaining the game, and key employees.)
All in all I think SOE is really the winner here.... Now they just need to invest a few million dollars and fix the game and polish it, then do the relanch trial island thing which worked pretty well with eq2. Get a 100k subs and the money is going to start rolling in on the game. it isn't a wow but it is probably a pretty solid business plan.
So in the end the fault is with Brad. He didn't have a contingency plan. He didn't deal with MS well and didn't have a good arrangement. He wasn't able to sell his business plans to investors and gain additiional funding. He didn't manage his company well enough that he could leave and work on funding without things falling apart, ie he was a one man show with a bunch of helpers.
In the end the winner is SoE and for us gamers, we can be pretty confident that given time SoE will fix up the game as they have a good track record and while VG had a lot of problems the final game was in tact in terms of breadth and scope and was really lacking quality, debug, and polish all things that I think SoE is VERY capable of.
So the faults were pride and poor management in my opinion...
Comments
They ( whoever you want to blame ) took what was once a innovative game and due to money or pressure or whatever, dumbed it down to get it out the door and it tripped. It will never be the game it was truely intended to be. It wasnt the same game at launch compaired to early beta even, too many core elements where changed/nixxed not to mention the classes where constantly in a state of flux. ( probably due to mismanagement )
Daily fixes being updated on a weekly basis has less than a trivial impact on the current state of the game. Brad failed to manage and motivate his team because they were sitting on a large pile of MS's cash, plain and simple.
MS had no idea exactly what they were getting themselves into with VG. Sigil failed to meet benchmarks and MS bailed, as would any responsible investor. Rinse repeat and SOE owns VG.
Perhaps you've missed my posts about the exploits that are STILL (as of 1 month ago anyway) in game that I /bugged in beta. And as far as being shipped months early, well that was months ago.
I say a game with death penalties fails
I say no great PvP-game fails
I say a game with 20 classes instead of 8 very balanced classes fails
I say a game like EQ1 and not like WoW fails
I have been right on the money and the Vanbois missed, no one wants to play your game of death penalties, boring grinds, slow leveling, and raids. NO ONE WILL PLAY!
I predicted Vanguard fails-happened
I predicted Brad sells out-happened
I predicted SOE owns the whole thing-happened
I have always been right and the Vanbois are always wrong. Copy WoW or die! Its not dumbing down, its making a game FUN not a chore.
Sigil wasted tons of time and money on artwork that may be nice to look at but is otherwise meaningless in the game. Look at Bordinar's Cleft for exhibit one. A truly amazing looking place but no one goes there because there is no reason to go there, no quests no adventuring, it's a pointless location.
Beyond that they had the artwork for a whole other continent that never made it into the game. They blew money early and were surprised when Microsoft stopped giving them cash. Thats just mismanagement.
Regardless who's at fault. Vanguard will go down in MMO history as a leason of what not to do. I believe this is the only really good thing Vanguard has done for the industry. Because of WOW more investors and Developers will throw their hats into the ring. I'm not sure how many subs WOW currently has but if you think about 6 million x 15 a month = more money per year than alot of hollywood movies.
For example the movie Spiderman costed the studio aprox 150 million and grossed a little over 800 million at the box office world wide. Take away the box office cut and advertising best guess is it netted aprox 150 million. Not bad
World of Warcraft development budget was reported to be around 80 million and hit a record $2.7 billion annually !!!
The thing that makes me scratch my head is the movie studio spent even more on Spiderman 2 and took in a total box office gross of 750 million. Blizzard spent estimated 2 million on their expansion and sold 8.5 million copies at 30 bucks which totals more than the budget of Spiderman 1 or 2.
And this begs the question: What in the hell is Blizzard doing with all that money? We have learned from games like SWG that it must not take much to keep a bunch of empty servers running so what IS Blizzard doing with all that cash?
No matter my point really is with a game like WOW out there i'm sure many investors will be a little more willing to back MMOs in the future. Let's just hope one of them is the kind of game we all want to play for years and years
I have also been asking that question myself. It certainly is not going to WoW. The WoW community, as a total, is addicted to grinding faction and raiding for armor sets. Not very deep, varied, or fun (my opinion).
My hope and theory is that all the WoW money is going to develop a truly awesome MMO. WoW does not need a whole lot of money because the community does not seem to demand much (look at TBC).
Blizzard is awesome. I hope something truly amazing (MMO) is released by them with WoW's money.
-----
WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Brilliant.
-Feyshtey-
100% mismanagement. MS didnt dump this pile because of WoW or any other game. They dumped it because it was a pile. It had been in development for years,burned through millions of dollars and was still a pile. It was a pile because sigil and brad mismanaged it. Maybe in the land of rainbows and unicorns game developers can spend endless money and time to release a product. In the world of investors/business loans you have timelines, benchmarks, etc. They can be adjusted if needed but you better have some results and valid explanations.
Im as big a $oe hater as you can find but they had nothing to do with vanguard sucking wind. I would imagine 2-4 years from now vanguard might even be a decent game but who knows what else will be out then and if it will even matter. Anything positive that happens to vanguard will be a credit to $oe not sigil.
Only a handfull of individuals know exactly what went wrong. From being in beta, various leaks from former sigil employees, posts from mcquaid,etc it isnt hard to sumise a general idea however. I put it directly on brad and sigil management.
Brilliant.
Exactly. How the updates were handled had no impact on the game. The lack of FIXES has everything to do with the current state.Thank you for clarifying my point.
I think most of what happened to Vanguard is pretty public now and that fault is probably ultimately on a lot of people but at the end of the day it rests on the CEO....
1. MS reorged and basically walked away from the MMORPG space leaving Vanguard in the hands of the Xbox 360 gaming division directly under the zoo tycoon management. Not exactly a good place to be.
2. Brad seeing things crumbling left the company trying to drum up more support and funding while being the visionary and driver in the company left a huge void. (This is not an unusual situation in an entrepreneurial business.)
3. In Brad's absence everyone became demorilized and funding was running out. (No doubt Brad popped in from time to time and destabliziced any management that was trying to move the game forward. again visionary ceo's are both good and bad. Good for getting everyone going but bad for crunch time and keeping things running)
4. Vanguard was too large and had too much to complete in the budget allocated but management didn't want to scale the fundamental game back and hoped they would get enough to ship a product that would work.
5. The moved to SOE and got a bit of funding but ultimately believed they could keep control of the game and ship something that they would be able to fix in time and survive.
6. They were wrong and retention wasn't enough to keep the game going and handle large bills to cover investment.
7. Sony steps in and buys rights to the game and assets for pennies on the dollar. (In some ways I can almost see this being a cut throat business game. Give Brad enough rope to hang himself and then take what is left.... I mean they gave Brad enough resources to get out from under MS and for them to get a stake in the game. Then they left Brad in control and gave him just enough funding to ship. Brad's ego made him think he could pull it off when he should have known it would fail. SOE probably knew it would and that they would then be able to take complete control of a bankrupted company gaining the game, and key employees.)
All in all I think SOE is really the winner here.... Now they just need to invest a few million dollars and fix the game and polish it, then do the relanch trial island thing which worked pretty well with eq2. Get a 100k subs and the money is going to start rolling in on the game. it isn't a wow but it is probably a pretty solid business plan.
So in the end the fault is with Brad. He didn't have a contingency plan. He didn't deal with MS well and didn't have a good arrangement. He wasn't able to sell his business plans to investors and gain additiional funding. He didn't manage his company well enough that he could leave and work on funding without things falling apart, ie he was a one man show with a bunch of helpers.
In the end the winner is SoE and for us gamers, we can be pretty confident that given time SoE will fix up the game as they have a good track record and while VG had a lot of problems the final game was in tact in terms of breadth and scope and was really lacking quality, debug, and polish all things that I think SoE is VERY capable of.
So the faults were pride and poor management in my opinion...
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Ethion