I played this game and wanted to like it so bad, but in fact, I wound up hating it.
WoW has done something to the entire genre, like it or not. It made getting to the top an easy run, it made solo content viable and fun (while supporting group based dungeon crawls) and it made quests interesting and a great read (for those that read them). In short, it set new expectations of what to expect with these types of games.
Then we play vanguard. Make opposite everything I said above and that is part of the reason why it failed. Agree or not, WoW has set a standard for what a finacial success is. Vanguard had the balls to go against the grain and try and get back to the old days, but the times have changed. The genre has changed, and most of all, the player base itself has changed. You long for the old days of early EQ, say, pre SoV? So do I, but that will never happen again. The genre has gone mainstream and that changed everything.
To make vanguard a playable game and possible financial success I would suggest trimming the world down to a smaller size and actualy filling the smaller world with content, not just a virtual kansas. I would make soloing an option for most (if not all) the classess available. I would clean up the code and the bugs with weekly patches, even if its only a couple small bug fixes at a time. Then I would focus on 50+ content. If the game doesn't try and compete with the key ingrediants to what makes a succussful MMO then there simply will be no competition at all (like now). And if your not competing, your dead in the water already. Like now.
Well assuming that Vanguard has failed and it certainly could have done better but I'm not sure I agree based on your criteria that it has failed...
But that said, I think the main reason it failed is that Microsoft pulled the financial plug before the game was finished and due to lack of funding and the inability to gain enough funding and downsize the scope of the game in time the game shipped in a buggy and incomplete state. I'd say a lot of this was due to Brad's ego in thinking he could keep the game scope and ship it and fix it fast enough to keep it afloat. Although it is hard to say that there was anything he could have done following the microsoft pullout that would have saved the game. I seriously doubt that he could have sold the game for enough to cover the costs or found any investor willing to invest heavily enough to take the game to completion with the financial debt that might have been owed to MS. In all likelihood other then shutting down VG completely we are looking at one of the best case scenarios. Sigil goes Bankrupt and sells off all assets to liquidate and pay off debtors as best as possible. SOE ends up aquiring a new game for pennies on the dollar with no debt.
Now as to whether VG is a financial failure for SOE I think that might be debatable. Remember Sigil was looking for 200K subs to be profitable. Since SOE took over that profile has significantly changed. Sigil was looking to cover debts, operating costs, and future development. They had a staff of 100+ employees.
Now SOE has cut the staff to maybe 1/3?? So just looking at staffing that is 1/3 or 200k or 66k subs. However this doesn't account for debt payments which if you drop these since SOE is only covering what it cost to buy the game I'd say you are looking at a much smaller number. Lets say 50k? I don't think it is unlikely that VG has in the neighborhood of 50k subs right now. Without knowing all the numbers I don't think there is any way to really assess how many subs are needed to be finiancially successfull. Even only 10k subs is 200k per month or around 2.4M per year. If you think of a loaded employee costing maybe 150k per year that covers what 15+ employees??
These games don't need huge numbers of subs to be financially successful. This is even more the case with a company like SOE with a large infrastructure where they gain many benifits from scale shared for all there games.
Like EQ2 I think they will keep working on VG and it will slowly gain subs assuming they can continue to improve the game. VG is a game without any peer in my opinion in terms of raw scale and potential. What remains to be seen is if they can capitalize on this and make the game a success?
performance. If you can't run it you can't test it. From BETA 2 (when I joined) to about 6 months ago there has been improvements, but sloppy chunking and considerable drops in fps with a 8000GTX, 4GB RAM, Core 2 duo and RAID 0 just should not happen.
and then...
content. Most of their time was spent fixing the initial problem, but content still isn't there. Leveling 1-40 is kinda ok (1-30 is very good) but beyond that and the game does show a lack of content.
what i think we'll happen...
it will take another year before VG becomes what it should/could have been. I do believe we will see a serious increase in population and credibility (like EQII) but this is assuming that SOE's investments stay put and competition like WAR and AoC don't steal the market. Some will say you can't compare VG with WAR and AOC, problem is from an MMO market perspective they do compete.
How can someone says the content is lacking in VG. That's simply not true. Even after level 40 there are many areas where you can quest/grind/group for dungeons. At end game you have several outdoor raid b osses and now a huge raid dungeon with 25 bosses. A[art from that you can spend months doing all diplomacy quests and learn the lore, or do the crafting and make a lot of money by selling it.
How can someone says the content is lacking in VG. That's simply not true. Even after level 40 there are many areas where you can quest/grind/group for dungeons. At end game you have several outdoor raid b osses and now a huge raid dungeon with 25 bosses. A[art from that you can spend months doing all diplomacy quests and learn the lore, or do the crafting and make a lot of money by selling it.
Because the content is lacking. For the most part it's mindless kill 100 of x and pick up 100 of y quests. The interesting things they do put in they stretch out by requiring ridiculous numbers of items or faction requirements.
I'll admit there is always something to do in Vanguard but most of them are boring. Crafting and diplomacy are the prime examples, diplomacy isnt even marginally challenging since they increased the hand sizes in april and havent balanced npc decks to match.
How can someone says the content is lacking in VG. That's simply not true. Even after level 40 there are many areas where you can quest/grind/group for dungeons. At end game you have several outdoor raid b osses and now a huge raid dungeon with 25 bosses. A[art from that you can spend months doing all diplomacy quests and learn the lore, or do the crafting and make a lot of money by selling it.
Because the content is lacking. For the most part it's mindless kill 100 of x and pick up 100 of y quests. The interesting things they do put in they stretch out by requiring ridiculous numbers of items or faction requirements.
I'll admit there is always something to do in Vanguard but most of them are boring. Crafting and diplomacy are the prime examples, diplomacy isnt even marginally challenging since they increased the hand sizes in april and havent balanced npc decks to match.
Yes it has many quests like kill 25 or 15 of something. It's not different from other quest driven MMORPG. Besides you are not forced to do them. There are 4-5 different dungeons at every level you can do with a party if you don't like soloing. And bet most of them arey very interesting and enjoyable.
You find diplomacy boring.. or not challenging. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to let players to learn the lore. You don't like it? Okay, many people do and they enjoy it. Other games have NO equivalent to this activity.
It is your opinion, you don't like complicated crafting, and you are not interested in VG lore. You don't want to do quests and you obviously don't want to group up with others because you find it boring. What to add?
So many good points in this thread that there are just to many people to list agreement with why things didn't go well.
My list
SOE funds Sigil game after the Microsoft breakup. This sent out shockwaves that started the downward spiral as I see it. First it showed that the game was in so much trouble that they needed to get in bed with SOE. Sigil was almost the anti-SOE at the time and this move cost them a sizable chunk of potential subscribers. Honestly I don't know if the game ever recovered from the negative buzz that started. In hindsight, everything people feared happening became true.
The Vanguard community was so harsh on anyone pointing out the games flaws that it drove people away. Blaming anyone who criticized the game as having a POS computer when the game engine is flawed doesn't promote a healthy community. To this day it still happens on this forum.
Also the game became labeled with a reputation for being hardcore and being seen as ONLY hardcore. Despite some mechanics that are outdated compared to what most games offer now that game isn't all that hardcore. I think this could have been overcome with a few slight changes that most games do after launch. The communities non stop hype of hardcore really hurt the casual rates which might have just pushed the game over the hump.
SOE cuts funding and Sigil is forced to ship. Sigil is to blame for not making good on a second chance and SOE is to blame for repeating the same mistake as Microsoft and not having enough control. End result if the game launched long before it was finished. Plagued with every variety of bug known to gaming from CTD to players losing equipment/levels/xp and on top of that there are huge gaps in content spread all over a huge world. Compound that with coin dupes and player exploiting and there wasn't fingers to plug all the holes.
Total boxes sold didn't even break the profit point. Brad said Vanguard needed 250k users to be profitable. He was later quoted as saying the game sold around 220k units which is shy of that number even if ever single person remained. (I think that number came from the F13 interview after Sigil folded). Not that they couldn't have made cuts to make 220k work, but the game didn't even meet initial projections which by any definition is a fail.
That is why I think the game ended up the way it did.
Yes it has many quests like kill 25 or 15 of something. It's not different from other quest driven MMORPG. Besides you are not forced to do them. There are 4-5 different dungeons at every level you can do with a party if you don't like soloing. And bet most of them arey very interesting and enjoyable. You find diplomacy boring.. or not challenging. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to let players to learn the lore. You don't like it? Okay, many people do and they enjoy it. Other games have NO equivalent to this activity. It is your opinion, you don't like complicated crafting, and you are not interested in VG lore. You don't want to do quests and you obviously don't want to group up with others because you find it boring. What to add?
The problem with dungeons, it's still hard to find a group, the dungeons are poorly organized and many of the quests require you to leave the dungeon to turn in a quest so you can get the next part of the quest. You then have to go back through everything you've already done in the dungeon to continue onwards, after 3 or 4 times over the same area of a dungeon it gets boring. Not only is that a problem but you will often have the problem of people working on different quests in the dungeon and people leaving after compeleting certain parts, forcing you to waste time trying to find more people to group with.
Diplomacy isnt just boring it's broken. In april they changed the number of cards you have in your hand, they were in the middle of balancing npc's to match the number of new cards players had. They've never completed this project. This is one problem with diplomacy, the other problem is the lack of content. They have a few low level quests and a few more quests later around level 30 but they are minimal and provide nowhere near the xp to level your character. To gain levels you have to take part in civic diplomacy with npc's who are unbalanced and so mindnumbingly easy to beat but you have to beat them repeatedly to get your level up and your presences. There are writs in for content as well and they reveal the most lore in the game, however they've been in since march or april and the rewards for them have still not been put in the game.
The game is broken and in poor shape. The only thing it does well is grinding. If you enjoy mindlessly grinding at a game this is the game for you otherwise there are much better options.
I am disapointed with Vanguard. I do not know all of the inside details, like Devs, Company info, or any of that type of stuff. I know I found the game, it sounded exciting, so I bought it. I played it for a week or so and was disillusioned by all of the bugs, graphical errors, and clunkiness of play.
I returned recently and played for a few hours and realized why I had left the first time. I will not be returning again.
This has been a huge disapointment considering what it appears this game could have been.
Yes it has many quests like kill 25 or 15 of something. It's not different from other quest driven MMORPG. Besides you are not forced to do them. There are 4-5 different dungeons at every level you can do with a party if you don't like soloing. And bet most of them arey very interesting and enjoyable. You find diplomacy boring.. or not challenging. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to let players to learn the lore. You don't like it? Okay, many people do and they enjoy it. Other games have NO equivalent to this activity. It is your opinion, you don't like complicated crafting, and you are not interested in VG lore. You don't want to do quests and you obviously don't want to group up with others because you find it boring. What to add?
The problem with dungeons, it's still hard to find a group, the dungeons are poorly organized and many of the quests require you to leave the dungeon to turn in a quest so you can get the next part of the quest. You then have to go back through everything you've already done in the dungeon to continue onwards, after 3 or 4 times over the same area of a dungeon it gets boring. Not only is that a problem but you will often have the problem of people working on different quests in the dungeon and people leaving after compeleting certain parts, forcing you to waste time trying to find more people to group with.
Diplomacy isnt just boring it's broken. In april they changed the number of cards you have in your hand, they were in the middle of balancing npc's to match the number of new cards players had. They've never completed this project. This is one problem with diplomacy, the other problem is the lack of content. They have a few low level quests and a few more quests later around level 30 but they are minimal and provide nowhere near the xp to level your character. To gain levels you have to take part in civic diplomacy with npc's who are unbalanced and so mindnumbingly easy to beat but you have to beat them repeatedly to get your level up and your presences. There are writs in for content as well and they reveal the most lore in the game, however they've been in since march or april and the rewards for them have still not been put in the game.
The game is broken and in poor shape. The only thing it does well is grinding. If you enjoy mindlessly grinding at a game this is the game for you otherwise there are much better options.
You have to realize you can't expect to do all the quests when you enter a dungeon:> Lots of dungeons have more parts, and that's the point. In most of them you have a chance to skip the part you already did. (getting the key for shortcut ..)
Getting a group is hard if you use only general chat. You have to whisper to people around your level, and in most cases they join. Very simple and very fast to get a group.
Leveling was made faster actually. Nowadays it takes like 9-10 played days to cap skipping crafting&diplomacy.
What I find the best parts of the game is the amazing nonzoned open world and greatly designed classes. Yes they are much more interesting and fun to play than in other MMO's. The amount of options you can train to improve is enormous. The combat is fast, there is no resting in dungeons, and the overall feeling of the gameplay is pretty good. Yes it demands more effort from a player to hit cap level, and to understand crafting tiers, and actually know where to go at what level. That's the way the game was built.
Because the content is lacking. For the most part it's mindless kill 100 of x and pick up 100 of y quests. The interesting things they do put in they stretch out by requiring ridiculous numbers of items or faction requirements.
I'll admit there is always something to do in Vanguard but most of them are boring. Crafting and diplomacy are the prime examples, diplomacy isnt even marginally challenging since they increased the hand sizes in april and havent balanced npc decks to match.
Yes it has many quests like kill 25 or 15 of something. It's not different from other quest driven MMORPG. Besides you are not forced to do them. There are 4-5 different dungeons at every level you can do with a party if you don't like soloing. And bet most of them arey very interesting and enjoyable.
You find diplomacy boring.. or not challenging. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to let players to learn the lore. You don't like it? Okay, many people do and they enjoy it. Other games have NO equivalent to this activity.
It is your opinion, you don't like complicated crafting, and you are not interested in VG lore. You don't want to do quests and you obviously don't want to group up with others because you find it boring. What to add?
I find myself agreeing with the Caldis. I think that adventuring quests upto maybe lvl 30 are pretty good. Some good quests and good creativity. However past lvl 30 you start running into these massive faction quests that are kill 100 mobs and get a few faction, or collect 100 bones etc. There are whole quest areas with nothing but mindless solo quests that go something like my horse is afraid of spiders can you kill 20 spiders to thin out the spider population. I mean really the game has remarkable capabilities and this is the best they could come up with for solo quests!? Seriously what happened in my opinion was lvl 30+ were not done and they needed to finish them ASAP for launch. So the direction was make quests and make them fast and simple...
As to crafting and diplomacy I think they are great but like so much the foundation is there and really is very good but what is lacking is the supporting content. There are/were npcs standing around all over with crafting quests but none of them have quests. There were even npcs in dungeons with rare recipes but as far as I know there is only one... Where is the rest of the crafting content? You can get a taste of the intent and the design but the content is lacking. The crafting system itself is amazing and well designed we just need crafting quests, rare recipes, and things to do other then just grind work orders. Again there are a few crafting quests and interesting things where they needs to be hundreds.
Diplomacy is similar. Good foundation and it looked like it was developing nicely but now the plug is pulled. Diplomacy is a very good example of the start but again past lvl 20 or so it starts to fall apart for lack of content... Who wants to just grind info for 30-40 levels!?! Like adventuring there needs to be a rich environment of quests and add a lot of the things that have been talked about like regional trade, and many other systems...
I played this game and wanted to like it so bad, but in fact, I wound up hating it. WoW has done something to the entire genre, like it or not. It made getting to the top an easy run, it made solo content viable and fun (while supporting group based dungeon crawls) and it made quests interesting and a great read (for those that read them). In short, it set new expectations of what to expect with these types of games. Then we play vanguard. Make opposite everything I said above and that is part of the reason why it failed. Agree or not, WoW has set a standard for what a finacial success is. Vanguard had the balls to go against the grain and try and get back to the old days, but the times have changed. The genre has changed, and most of all, the player base itself has changed. You long for the old days of early EQ, say, pre SoV? So do I, but that will never happen again. The genre has gone mainstream and that changed everything. To make vanguard a playable game and possible financial success I would suggest trimming the world down to a smaller size and actualy filling the smaller world with content, not just a virtual kansas. I would make soloing an option for most (if not all) the classess available. I would clean up the code and the bugs with weekly patches, even if its only a couple small bug fixes at a time. Then I would focus on 50+ content. If the game doesn't try and compete with the key ingrediants to what makes a succussful MMO then there simply will be no competition at all (like now). And if your not competing, your dead in the water already. Like now.
You are wrong in some aspects, like so many people who believe that WoW is the end all be all MMORPG in every single bits of design, and blame "old school" mechanics.
To succeed (aka, to be financially viable), a MMO needs 3 thing:
1) technical efficiency:
The distinctive difference between WoW and other MMORPGs (in our case, Vanguard) is not about mechanics or the content design. it's about technical polish: everything works well on any kind of config.
I could play WoW on 2002 hardware (P4 2Ghz, Radeon 9000), while Vanguard couldnt even run correctly on top end hardware of 2007...
2) Polish:
WoW is a technical prowess, because it was mostly bug-free when released.
For a MMO, this was a first, and from now on it's mandatory to deliver bug-free games, because we left the "epic" era of the first age of MMO (UO/EQ) where releasing a bugged game didnt bother a small community of really dedicated and hardcore gamers.
Now the MMO market is a mass market, "old school" gamers are in the process of leaving it, and the new consumers are used to polished products. you can't sell a bug-ridden product to them anymore.
3) Content:
In an experience/lvl treadmill, there isnt a million solution: you need mobs to kill, and dummy quests to hide the grinding. And those dummy quests need to be remotely entertaining. "Kill 10 bears" is becoming barely acceptable.
In that aspect, vanguard completely failed to deliver.
Conclusion:
If a game runs on an old config, is bugless and has content to keep you entertained from lvl 1 to max lvl, then no matter what the rules are, there will be a market for it.
The only thing you need to copy about wow is the high degree of polish, not the rules.
Vanguard failed because it was technically a failure, and this technical failure impacted on every step of the game development, leading to a failure in all major aspects that makes a game fun and interesting. It was like trying to build a house with broken tools: painful, tedious, and resulting in a deficient building.
If you took WoW graphic/game engine, applied Vanguard classes and rules, it would (have) be(en) a great success, full stop.
Also, just like Lotro was greatly helped by the movies and the franchise, WoW was also greatly helped by its own franchise and Blizzard's history in gaming. I'm not so sure it would have been the massive success we currently observe had it not beared the brands "World of Warcraft and "Blizzard".
A great success? obviously, but not a juggernaut.
My addiction History: >> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore >> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual >> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
For purposes of discussion, let's define "success" in financial terms. To be a success a game must be profitable, and that means the game must maintain at least a moderately large player base. I realize that fans of the game may have other measures to define success, but please keep comments limited to financial success and failure. Vanguard has only a fraction of the players it had on release. I believe the current subscription numbers are very low. Therefore, Vanguard is a financial failure. Why did Vanguard fail? There are bound to be multiple reasons, but is there one reason that really sticks out? Here's my opinion: In the days leading up to release, Vanguard marketed itself as friendly to the "core" gamer. The core gamer is a gamer that would like to be a hardcore gamer, but simply doesn't have time to play 24/7. The core gamer takes the long view, and ends up getting to level 50 by playing a few hours per week over the course of a year. The problem is that many of the core gamers courted by Vanguard didn't have a good enough computer system to run the game. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that the population Vanguard was counting on to act as a backbone to the game wasn't interested in giving Vanguard a shot.
1. Performance / PC Requirements - They are (were?) simply too high for most people to handle, thus the game can't get a large enough player base to really offer fun.
2. It's unfinished - I just started playing the game honestly, because it was only $20 and despite many bad things about it, I decided to try it. The game is simply unfinished. No helmet graphics, no flying mounts from what I understand, no mini-map from what I've experienced, no fast way to get around this massive world, no story for this world... the list can go on. I'm mainly disappointed that there seems to be a lack of any story, which I don't expect to be great in MMOs, but it definitely helps to have a story to immerse people.
3. The community - I've heard so many things about how great this community is? You know what? It's not true. All they do is debate WoW in chat. People asking things about the actual Vanguard tend to be ignored due to this constant babble about which game is better (WoW is much better BTW), this community is very much overrated. Outside of the constant WoW babble, you get a gold spammer. Maybe I'm missing something, but there only seems to be 2 channels. I'd really like to know if there is a noob channel, because this game sucks with the world being so big and finding the next questing spots is rather hard.
The game should not of been released, it still shouldn't. This game feels like a $20 beta that I will not be participating in after my 30 days free time is up, I praise Sony for trying to fix this piece of crap Sigil gave them, but at the same time I question why they picked it up, this game deserves to just disappear into oblivion.
1. Performance / PC Requirements - They are (were?) simply too high for most people to handle, thus the game can't get a large enough player base to really offer fun.
2. It's unfinished - I just started playing the game honestly, because it was only $20 and despite many bad things about it, I decided to try it. The game is simply unfinished. No helmet graphics, no flying mounts from what I understand, no mini-map from what I've experienced, no fast way to get around this massive world, no story for this world... the list can go on. I'm mainly disappointed that there seems to be a lack of any story, which I don't expect to be great in MMOs, but it definitely helps to have a story to immerse people. 3. The community - I've heard so many things about how great this community is? You know what? It's not true. All they do is debate WoW in chat. People asking things about the actual Vanguard tend to be ignored due to this constant babble about which game is better (WoW is much better BTW), this community is very much overrated. Outside of the constant WoW babble, you get a gold spammer. Maybe I'm missing something, but there only seems to be 2 channels. I'd really like to know if there is a noob channel, because this game sucks with the world being so big and finding the next questing spots is rather hard. The game should not of been released, it still shouldn't. This game feels like a $20 beta that I will not be participating in after my 30 days free time is up, I praise Sony for trying to fix this piece of crap Sigil gave them, but at the same time I question why they picked it up, this game deserves to just disappear into oblivion.
All right... where to start.. No minimap? There is minimap. No flying mounts? There are flying mounts. No story? There are HUNDREDS of dialogues and books that you can read and know the lore. You say the list could go on? What list? The list of idiotic missinformed lies? If you were unable to even turn on minimap... or find first flying mount that are rentable everywhere, I'm not surprised you didn't like the community. <Mod edit>
People simply don't want to pay subscription fees for a developer to build a game that should have been delivered at the time of purchase. It has nothing to do with marketing, hype, or system specs. The game was broken, and still is to a lesser degree.
This is very, very true. And it was a hard lesson for the folks at Sigil-- Brad in particular-- to learn.
There is absolutely no reason these days to pay subscription fees for an MMO that is unfinished, unoptimized and unpolished at the time of its release. With so many other games to choose from, you either bring your A game to the launch, and offer a compelling game right out of the box, or you fade into obscurity quickly, no matter how much work you do to fix your game after that. The window for gaining an audience is very narrow now. It's all about a strong product at launch. If your game doesn't install, patch and play with a minimum of hassle, and if you don't offer something that draws an audience in from the start, your game will die a quick, nasty death. Period.
It's why both WAR and Conan ended up delaying their launches and extending their betas around the time that Sigil imploded. They saw what happened to Vanguard and don't want the same thing to happen to them.
Too true good to see a few companies trying to take steps to stop the horrible torrent of early release games.
I played VG and still do now and then, its fixed but still broke in optimization in some areas and high end content. Hell I remember the horrible amount of bugs and problems at release. I think if they had just done 1 continent, like say thestra in game, and made sure it was optimized etc, they might actually have a decent size player base. Content is always appreciated by most mmorpg players, but overwhelming amounts at release can be horrible. I had to make 5 diff characters just to cover content in lower levels from all the areas.
Playing: Not much actively. Games played: to many to list, been playing MMO's since 2001 --------------------------
I revisited the game reciently and it was signifigantly improved technically.I realized I wanted /had to have a faction vs faction....rvr element in the mmog I play. SONY chose to eliminate that option when the consolidated servers.PVE is just not interesting enough for me.
Perfect example of a Vanguard fanatic. Flying mounts are RENTABLE, I KNOW THIS. You can't buy one, THUS NOT IN THE GAME. Oh really, so there is a mini-map that will allow one to see where harvesting nodes are and the like? And yeah, I didn't like the community because I must be an idiot. Constant WoW babble has nothing to do with it. Keep on trucking in your unfinished game.
The term "in game" usually means "implemented and working"...which is the case here.
As for mini-maps:NO they don't show you harvesting nodes spots (which would be silly by the way since the fun is about finding them)..it does show roads, moutains, quests marks,....well all you might reasonably expect from a map...
The game WAS unfinished at release - and many following months - but it's current state is definitely not what most of you are describing here...
1. Performance / PC Requirements - They are (were?) simply too high for most people to handle, thus the game can't get a large enough player base to really offer fun.
2. It's unfinished - I just started playing the game honestly, because it was only $20 and despite many bad things about it, I decided to try it. The game is simply unfinished. No helmet graphics, no flying mounts from what I understand, no mini-map from what I've experienced, no fast way to get around this massive world, no story for this world... the list can go on. I'm mainly disappointed that there seems to be a lack of any story, which I don't expect to be great in MMOs, but it definitely helps to have a story to immerse people.
3. The community - I've heard so many things about how great this community is? You know what? It's not true. All they do is debate WoW in chat. People asking things about the actual Vanguard tend to be ignored due to this constant babble about which game is better (WoW is much better BTW), this community is very much overrated. Outside of the constant WoW babble, you get a gold spammer. Maybe I'm missing something, but there only seems to be 2 channels. I'd really like to know if there is a noob channel, because this game sucks with the world being so big and finding the next questing spots is rather hard.
The game should not of been released, it still shouldn't. This game feels like a $20 beta that I will not be participating in after my 30 days free time is up, I praise Sony for trying to fix this piece of crap Sigil gave them, but at the same time I question why they picked it up, this game deserves to just disappear into oblivion.
All right... where to start..
No minimap? There is minimap. No flying mounts? There are flying mounts. No story? There are HUNDREDS of dialogues and books that you can read and know the lore. You say the list could go on? What list? The list of idiotic missinformed lies?
If you were unable to even turn on minimap... or find first flying mount that are rentable everywhere, I'm not surprised you didn't like the community. <Mod edit>
Perfect example of a Vanguard fanatic. Flying mounts are RENTABLE, I KNOW THIS. You can't buy one, THUS NOT IN THE GAME. Oh really, so there is a mini-map that will allow one to see where harvesting nodes are and the like?
And yeah, I didn't like the community because I must be an idiot. Constant WoW babble has nothing to do with it. Keep on trucking in your unfinished game.
Fanatic??
You come here saying there are no flying mounts, no minimap .. and when someone who actually plays the game comes here tell you the truth.. you call him FANATIC.
Look how simply it is to turn on minimap:
Go to main menu (ESC key or icon on user interface) There click on Settings, there Interface. Like 6th option from the top, there is..an option WINDOW VISIBILITY: Minimap. Quite simple huh. Not showing nodes? I guess you are used to that WOW-simplicity, you won't find it here. It was not an intent to show nodes.
Mounts are there fully working. Yes they are rentable at the moment (very cheap for everyone), and during christmas everyone got one for free for the whole 3 weeks. Flying mounts ARE IN GAME.
Constant WoW chat on general channel in game? Yes, ocassionally a person like you appears in game, that just wants to bash the game for no reason and compare how bad it is to WoW. Then a couple of guys take an opposition and it's 5-10minute discussion between 5 people on general chat. That's a community? Community is the quality of pugs (which is fantastic)
I want you to continue the list of other things you didn't like (like not being able to turn on minimap or find a rentable flying mounts that are almost at every bigger camp)
Lack of Polish and Too many Technical issues has to be acknowledged as the main overriding problems with this game. Read back through this thead, almost everyone mentions it. Crossing your fingers that you won't fall through the world everytime you go down a steep hill should not be a constant element of your gameplay experience. While running a Core 2 Duo @ 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, & 8800GT, I should not be having pixelated lockups, freezes, or CTDs very often, yet with this game they are an every night occurrence. Lastly, content should be more complete. If someone tells you to go talk to some person somewhere or go kill something somewhere, they should always give you at least some direction, especially considering how large the game world is. There should also not be quests labeled as level 16 that require you to kill something that takes a well organized level 20+ group.
I see some complaints that this game was designed targetting an audience that does not exist, and I have to disagree with that. The game mechanics and content in this game are vast and well designed. The crafting is great, the class and character customization choices are great, the ability to level all 3 Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy on one character is great, and the Game World is AMAZING. Emphasis on that last point. I think anyone who is a real fan of MMOs could pick up Vanguard and feel it was worth the money just from exploring Telon for 30 days. It's just a shame that the Fantastic design is a big contributing factor to the game's #1 problem I stated above. It's possibly just too big, and in the end I think that Sigil just big off more than they could chew. Reminds me a lot of SWG.
I think that down the road, there will be a game that is very complex, but has the needed polish and technical simplicity that will be reknowned as the #1 game in the industry. It won't be the #1 selling game as it will be too complex for many, but it will be a profitable game garnering the subscriptions from the serious MMO gaming core. Vanguard's failure is just one step closer to it. One more example to learn from.
Lack of Polish and Too many Technical issues has to be acknowledged as the main overriding problems with this game. Read back through this thead, almost everyone mentions it. Crossing your fingers that you won't fall through the world everytime you go down a steep hill should not be a constant element of your gameplay experience. While running a Core 2 Duo @ 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, & 8800GT, I should not be having pixelated lockups, freezes, or CTDs very often, yet with this game they are an every night occurrence. Lastly, content should be more complete. If someone tells you to go talk to some person somewhere or go kill something somewhere, they should always give you at least some direction, especially considering how large the game world is. There should also not be quests labeled as level 16 that require you to kill something that takes a well organized level 20+ group. I see some complaints that this game was designed targetting an audience that does not exist, and I have to disagree with that. The game mechanics and content in this game are vast and well designed. The crafting is great, the class and character customization choices are great, the ability to level all 3 Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy on one character is great, and the Game World is AMAZING. Emphasis on that last point. I think anyone who is a real fan of MMOs could pick up Vanguard and feel it was worth the money just from exploring Telon for 30 days. It's just a shame that the Fantastic design is a big contributing factor to the game's #1 problem I stated above. It's possibly just too big, and in the end I think that Sigil just big off more than they could chew. Reminds me a lot of SWG. I think that down the road, there will be a game that is very complex, but has the needed polish and technical simplicity that will be reknowned as the #1 game in the industry. It won't be the #1 selling game as it will be too complex for many, but it will be a profitable game garnering the subscriptions from the serious MMO gaming core. Vanguard's failure is just one step closer to it. One more example to learn from.
In some respects this is a fair assessment. Though I wouldn't write Vanguard off just yet. I'm unsure as to why you should be getting such bad performance. You're not a million miles away from my spec: AMD 4600, 2gb ram, 8800 GTX. Maybe check driver versions. I get a CTD about once / 3 days (if i'm not alt-tabbing a lot). And I haven't fallen through the world for months. Places like Khal and Aghram still cache and cause stutter whilst doing so, but once they're done they work beautifully on Balanced / Medium High settings (New Taragonor is a different matter and that place needs a performance "make over"). By the way, the latest drivers can force Anti-Aliasing in the game, which makes the game look A LOT better.
It is true that time is not on Vanguards side but the devs are certainly trying to keep the game alive, though some would prefer the fixes a little faster than what has been provided so far. However, the devs have admitted that they did try to shoot high with the recent game updates and are now shrinking the content list of each game update down to try to address this. So that things can be rolled out quicker instead of waiting for others to be completed in the update.
Many are returning to the game, regardless of what people might think. Sure, the majority are probably ex-players. But many of those are reporting huge differences in performance and are willing to subscribe because of it.
With regards to performance, they continue to work on it and are next looking to optimising the npc and player characters. Incidentally, the devs have been quoted as saying that the next game update should bring in the permanent flying mount quest and the "Beginnings of helms" (make of that what you will). Temporary flying mounts which last 10 minutes and the holiday-permanent christmas flying mount are already in, as previous posters have said. The holiday mount proved to all that the original chunking problems have practically been eliminated regarding the flying mounts. Rumour has it that the permanent flying mounts should be in game towards the end of this month (January).
The reason why Vanguard failed was because Sigil ran out of money. The "Core Gamer" has nothing to do with it. Sigil just ran out of cash. They couldn't polish the game, finish features, abilities. As such the game was generally broke when it was launched. I played the beta and also was there when the game was launched. Constant CTD's, lag, and all the bugs gave me reason enough to quit.
Now for a positive note I believe Vanguard can succeed. The game world is amazing, the classes are cool, the abilities are good, and the graphics are pretty much on par with Lord of the Rings Online and probably also with War and AOC. Only time will tell if Sony can fix the bugs and manage to get people to come back.
There's always going to be hope. SOE isn't known for shutting down games like other companies, and with the Station Pass keeping Vanguard on perpetual life support, there's always going to be a dev team working on the game in some form or fashion.
It's not about hope as much as it's about facing the hard truth of the MMO market these days. Just look at the list of games on this site, and look at the ones that are coming down the pipeline. Players have a myriad of choices. And reality says there's simply no reason to pay for a game that is still unfinished or unpolished after a year when there are so many other choices available.
Sure, some folks are re-subbing now after playing the game again. And there will always be an audience for Vanguard. But it's a pretty safe bet that the game isn't going to dramatically improve its numbers anytime soon, especially if both WAR and Conan end up launching with strong products.
That doesn't mean Vanguard can't or won't improve, but IMO it will never live up to what it could have been if Sigil hadn't dropped the ball in development.
Perfect example of a Vanguard fanatic. Flying mounts are RENTABLE, I KNOW THIS. You can't buy one, THUS NOT IN THE GAME. Oh really, so there is a mini-map that will allow one to see where harvesting nodes are and the like?
And yeah, I didn't like the community because I must be an idiot. Constant WoW babble has nothing to do with it. Keep on trucking in your unfinished game.
Correct me if I'm wrong but not even wow shows the nodes on the mini map do they without using an addon? And if you really want it there is a very nice map addon for VG that does indeed show the resource nodes, many npcs and various other mappable objects.
You also seem to be really cutting hairs on the flying mounts issue. First you say that that flying mounts aren't in the game but then you say you know there are rentable ones in the game but they don't count... Now they are either in the game or not and if you can't buy one perminently but can rent one that does kinda imply that they ARE in the game. You just want one perminently, which I think many people do but just because you can't buy it doesn't mean that functionality is missing. I think that in another update or two we will see a quest for a perminent flying mount and thus your point is really lost.
Comments
I played this game and wanted to like it so bad, but in fact, I wound up hating it.
WoW has done something to the entire genre, like it or not. It made getting to the top an easy run, it made solo content viable and fun (while supporting group based dungeon crawls) and it made quests interesting and a great read (for those that read them). In short, it set new expectations of what to expect with these types of games.
Then we play vanguard. Make opposite everything I said above and that is part of the reason why it failed. Agree or not, WoW has set a standard for what a finacial success is. Vanguard had the balls to go against the grain and try and get back to the old days, but the times have changed. The genre has changed, and most of all, the player base itself has changed. You long for the old days of early EQ, say, pre SoV? So do I, but that will never happen again. The genre has gone mainstream and that changed everything.
To make vanguard a playable game and possible financial success I would suggest trimming the world down to a smaller size and actualy filling the smaller world with content, not just a virtual kansas. I would make soloing an option for most (if not all) the classess available. I would clean up the code and the bugs with weekly patches, even if its only a couple small bug fixes at a time. Then I would focus on 50+ content. If the game doesn't try and compete with the key ingrediants to what makes a succussful MMO then there simply will be no competition at all (like now). And if your not competing, your dead in the water already. Like now.
Vanguard failed because soloing is boring in that game.
<serious> thats just one of the reasons it failed for me, and is failing again in my free month.
But the rest of them are allready named.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
Well assuming that Vanguard has failed and it certainly could have done better but I'm not sure I agree based on your criteria that it has failed...
But that said, I think the main reason it failed is that Microsoft pulled the financial plug before the game was finished and due to lack of funding and the inability to gain enough funding and downsize the scope of the game in time the game shipped in a buggy and incomplete state. I'd say a lot of this was due to Brad's ego in thinking he could keep the game scope and ship it and fix it fast enough to keep it afloat. Although it is hard to say that there was anything he could have done following the microsoft pullout that would have saved the game. I seriously doubt that he could have sold the game for enough to cover the costs or found any investor willing to invest heavily enough to take the game to completion with the financial debt that might have been owed to MS. In all likelihood other then shutting down VG completely we are looking at one of the best case scenarios. Sigil goes Bankrupt and sells off all assets to liquidate and pay off debtors as best as possible. SOE ends up aquiring a new game for pennies on the dollar with no debt.
Now as to whether VG is a financial failure for SOE I think that might be debatable. Remember Sigil was looking for 200K subs to be profitable. Since SOE took over that profile has significantly changed. Sigil was looking to cover debts, operating costs, and future development. They had a staff of 100+ employees.
Now SOE has cut the staff to maybe 1/3?? So just looking at staffing that is 1/3 or 200k or 66k subs. However this doesn't account for debt payments which if you drop these since SOE is only covering what it cost to buy the game I'd say you are looking at a much smaller number. Lets say 50k? I don't think it is unlikely that VG has in the neighborhood of 50k subs right now. Without knowing all the numbers I don't think there is any way to really assess how many subs are needed to be finiancially successfull. Even only 10k subs is 200k per month or around 2.4M per year. If you think of a loaded employee costing maybe 150k per year that covers what 15+ employees??
These games don't need huge numbers of subs to be financially successful. This is even more the case with a company like SOE with a large infrastructure where they gain many benifits from scale shared for all there games.
Like EQ2 I think they will keep working on VG and it will slowly gain subs assuming they can continue to improve the game. VG is a game without any peer in my opinion in terms of raw scale and potential. What remains to be seen is if they can capitalize on this and make the game a success?
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Ethion
How can someone says the content is lacking in VG. That's simply not true. Even after level 40 there are many areas where you can quest/grind/group for dungeons. At end game you have several outdoor raid b osses and now a huge raid dungeon with 25 bosses. A[art from that you can spend months doing all diplomacy quests and learn the lore, or do the crafting and make a lot of money by selling it.
REALITY CHECK
Vanguard failed at release so SOE could take over and make it best game ever :]]
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Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum!! ~Planescape: Torment~
I'll admit there is always something to do in Vanguard but most of them are boring. Crafting and diplomacy are the prime examples, diplomacy isnt even marginally challenging since they increased the hand sizes in april and havent balanced npc decks to match.
Because the content is lacking. For the most part it's mindless kill 100 of x and pick up 100 of y quests. The interesting things they do put in they stretch out by requiring ridiculous numbers of items or faction requirements.I'll admit there is always something to do in Vanguard but most of them are boring. Crafting and diplomacy are the prime examples, diplomacy isnt even marginally challenging since they increased the hand sizes in april and havent balanced npc decks to match.
Yes it has many quests like kill 25 or 15 of something. It's not different from other quest driven MMORPG. Besides you are not forced to do them. There are 4-5 different dungeons at every level you can do with a party if you don't like soloing. And bet most of them arey very interesting and enjoyable.
You find diplomacy boring.. or not challenging. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to let players to learn the lore. You don't like it? Okay, many people do and they enjoy it. Other games have NO equivalent to this activity.
It is your opinion, you don't like complicated crafting, and you are not interested in VG lore. You don't want to do quests and you obviously don't want to group up with others because you find it boring. What to add?
REALITY CHECK
So many good points in this thread that there are just to many people to list agreement with why things didn't go well.
My list
That is why I think the game ended up the way it did.
The problem with dungeons, it's still hard to find a group, the dungeons are poorly organized and many of the quests require you to leave the dungeon to turn in a quest so you can get the next part of the quest. You then have to go back through everything you've already done in the dungeon to continue onwards, after 3 or 4 times over the same area of a dungeon it gets boring. Not only is that a problem but you will often have the problem of people working on different quests in the dungeon and people leaving after compeleting certain parts, forcing you to waste time trying to find more people to group with.
Diplomacy isnt just boring it's broken. In april they changed the number of cards you have in your hand, they were in the middle of balancing npc's to match the number of new cards players had. They've never completed this project. This is one problem with diplomacy, the other problem is the lack of content. They have a few low level quests and a few more quests later around level 30 but they are minimal and provide nowhere near the xp to level your character. To gain levels you have to take part in civic diplomacy with npc's who are unbalanced and so mindnumbingly easy to beat but you have to beat them repeatedly to get your level up and your presences. There are writs in for content as well and they reveal the most lore in the game, however they've been in since march or april and the rewards for them have still not been put in the game.
The game is broken and in poor shape. The only thing it does well is grinding. If you enjoy mindlessly grinding at a game this is the game for you otherwise there are much better options.
I am disapointed with Vanguard. I do not know all of the inside details, like Devs, Company info, or any of that type of stuff. I know I found the game, it sounded exciting, so I bought it. I played it for a week or so and was disillusioned by all of the bugs, graphical errors, and clunkiness of play.
I returned recently and played for a few hours and realized why I had left the first time. I will not be returning again.
This has been a huge disapointment considering what it appears this game could have been.
The problem with dungeons, it's still hard to find a group, the dungeons are poorly organized and many of the quests require you to leave the dungeon to turn in a quest so you can get the next part of the quest. You then have to go back through everything you've already done in the dungeon to continue onwards, after 3 or 4 times over the same area of a dungeon it gets boring. Not only is that a problem but you will often have the problem of people working on different quests in the dungeon and people leaving after compeleting certain parts, forcing you to waste time trying to find more people to group with.
Diplomacy isnt just boring it's broken. In april they changed the number of cards you have in your hand, they were in the middle of balancing npc's to match the number of new cards players had. They've never completed this project. This is one problem with diplomacy, the other problem is the lack of content. They have a few low level quests and a few more quests later around level 30 but they are minimal and provide nowhere near the xp to level your character. To gain levels you have to take part in civic diplomacy with npc's who are unbalanced and so mindnumbingly easy to beat but you have to beat them repeatedly to get your level up and your presences. There are writs in for content as well and they reveal the most lore in the game, however they've been in since march or april and the rewards for them have still not been put in the game.
The game is broken and in poor shape. The only thing it does well is grinding. If you enjoy mindlessly grinding at a game this is the game for you otherwise there are much better options.
You have to realize you can't expect to do all the quests when you enter a dungeon:> Lots of dungeons have more parts, and that's the point. In most of them you have a chance to skip the part you already did. (getting the key for shortcut ..)
Getting a group is hard if you use only general chat. You have to whisper to people around your level, and in most cases they join. Very simple and very fast to get a group.
Leveling was made faster actually. Nowadays it takes like 9-10 played days to cap skipping crafting&diplomacy.
What I find the best parts of the game is the amazing nonzoned open world and greatly designed classes. Yes they are much more interesting and fun to play than in other MMO's. The amount of options you can train to improve is enormous. The combat is fast, there is no resting in dungeons, and the overall feeling of the gameplay is pretty good. Yes it demands more effort from a player to hit cap level, and to understand crafting tiers, and actually know where to go at what level. That's the way the game was built.
REALITY CHECK
Yes it has many quests like kill 25 or 15 of something. It's not different from other quest driven MMORPG. Besides you are not forced to do them. There are 4-5 different dungeons at every level you can do with a party if you don't like soloing. And bet most of them arey very interesting and enjoyable.
You find diplomacy boring.. or not challenging. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to let players to learn the lore. You don't like it? Okay, many people do and they enjoy it. Other games have NO equivalent to this activity.
It is your opinion, you don't like complicated crafting, and you are not interested in VG lore. You don't want to do quests and you obviously don't want to group up with others because you find it boring. What to add?
I find myself agreeing with the Caldis. I think that adventuring quests upto maybe lvl 30 are pretty good. Some good quests and good creativity. However past lvl 30 you start running into these massive faction quests that are kill 100 mobs and get a few faction, or collect 100 bones etc. There are whole quest areas with nothing but mindless solo quests that go something like my horse is afraid of spiders can you kill 20 spiders to thin out the spider population. I mean really the game has remarkable capabilities and this is the best they could come up with for solo quests!? Seriously what happened in my opinion was lvl 30+ were not done and they needed to finish them ASAP for launch. So the direction was make quests and make them fast and simple...
As to crafting and diplomacy I think they are great but like so much the foundation is there and really is very good but what is lacking is the supporting content. There are/were npcs standing around all over with crafting quests but none of them have quests. There were even npcs in dungeons with rare recipes but as far as I know there is only one... Where is the rest of the crafting content? You can get a taste of the intent and the design but the content is lacking. The crafting system itself is amazing and well designed we just need crafting quests, rare recipes, and things to do other then just grind work orders. Again there are a few crafting quests and interesting things where they needs to be hundreds.
Diplomacy is similar. Good foundation and it looked like it was developing nicely but now the plug is pulled. Diplomacy is a very good example of the start but again past lvl 20 or so it starts to fall apart for lack of content... Who wants to just grind info for 30-40 levels!?! Like adventuring there needs to be a rich environment of quests and add a lot of the things that have been talked about like regional trade, and many other systems...
Vanguard is a great foundation just incomplete.
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Ethion
You are wrong in some aspects, like so many people who believe that WoW is the end all be all MMORPG in every single bits of design, and blame "old school" mechanics.
To succeed (aka, to be financially viable), a MMO needs 3 thing:
1) technical efficiency:
The distinctive difference between WoW and other MMORPGs (in our case, Vanguard) is not about mechanics or the content design. it's about technical polish: everything works well on any kind of config.
I could play WoW on 2002 hardware (P4 2Ghz, Radeon 9000), while Vanguard couldnt even run correctly on top end hardware of 2007...
2) Polish:
WoW is a technical prowess, because it was mostly bug-free when released.
For a MMO, this was a first, and from now on it's mandatory to deliver bug-free games, because we left the "epic" era of the first age of MMO (UO/EQ) where releasing a bugged game didnt bother a small community of really dedicated and hardcore gamers.
Now the MMO market is a mass market, "old school" gamers are in the process of leaving it, and the new consumers are used to polished products. you can't sell a bug-ridden product to them anymore.
3) Content:
In an experience/lvl treadmill, there isnt a million solution: you need mobs to kill, and dummy quests to hide the grinding. And those dummy quests need to be remotely entertaining. "Kill 10 bears" is becoming barely acceptable.
In that aspect, vanguard completely failed to deliver.
Conclusion:
If a game runs on an old config, is bugless and has content to keep you entertained from lvl 1 to max lvl, then no matter what the rules are, there will be a market for it.
The only thing you need to copy about wow is the high degree of polish, not the rules.
Vanguard failed because it was technically a failure, and this technical failure impacted on every step of the game development, leading to a failure in all major aspects that makes a game fun and interesting. It was like trying to build a house with broken tools: painful, tedious, and resulting in a deficient building.
If you took WoW graphic/game engine, applied Vanguard classes and rules, it would (have) be(en) a great success, full stop.
Also, just like Lotro was greatly helped by the movies and the franchise, WoW was also greatly helped by its own franchise and Blizzard's history in gaming. I'm not so sure it would have been the massive success we currently observe had it not beared the brands "World of Warcraft and "Blizzard".
A great success? obviously, but not a juggernaut.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
1. Performance / PC Requirements - They are (were?) simply too high for most people to handle, thus the game can't get a large enough player base to really offer fun.2. It's unfinished - I just started playing the game honestly, because it was only $20 and despite many bad things about it, I decided to try it. The game is simply unfinished. No helmet graphics, no flying mounts from what I understand, no mini-map from what I've experienced, no fast way to get around this massive world, no story for this world... the list can go on. I'm mainly disappointed that there seems to be a lack of any story, which I don't expect to be great in MMOs, but it definitely helps to have a story to immerse people.
3. The community - I've heard so many things about how great this community is? You know what? It's not true. All they do is debate WoW in chat. People asking things about the actual Vanguard tend to be ignored due to this constant babble about which game is better (WoW is much better BTW), this community is very much overrated. Outside of the constant WoW babble, you get a gold spammer. Maybe I'm missing something, but there only seems to be 2 channels. I'd really like to know if there is a noob channel, because this game sucks with the world being so big and finding the next questing spots is rather hard.
The game should not of been released, it still shouldn't. This game feels like a $20 beta that I will not be participating in after my 30 days free time is up, I praise Sony for trying to fix this piece of crap Sigil gave them, but at the same time I question why they picked it up, this game deserves to just disappear into oblivion.
All right... where to start..
No minimap? There is minimap. No flying mounts? There are flying mounts. No story? There are HUNDREDS of dialogues and books that you can read and know the lore. You say the list could go on? What list? The list of idiotic missinformed lies?
If you were unable to even turn on minimap... or find first flying mount that are rentable everywhere, I'm not surprised you didn't like the community. <Mod edit>
REALITY CHECK
This is very, very true. And it was a hard lesson for the folks at Sigil-- Brad in particular-- to learn.
There is absolutely no reason these days to pay subscription fees for an MMO that is unfinished, unoptimized and unpolished at the time of its release. With so many other games to choose from, you either bring your A game to the launch, and offer a compelling game right out of the box, or you fade into obscurity quickly, no matter how much work you do to fix your game after that. The window for gaining an audience is very narrow now. It's all about a strong product at launch. If your game doesn't install, patch and play with a minimum of hassle, and if you don't offer something that draws an audience in from the start, your game will die a quick, nasty death. Period.
It's why both WAR and Conan ended up delaying their launches and extending their betas around the time that Sigil imploded. They saw what happened to Vanguard and don't want the same thing to happen to them.
Too true
good to see a few companies trying to take steps to stop the horrible torrent of early release games.
I played VG and still do now and then, its fixed but still broke in optimization in some areas and high end content. Hell I remember the horrible amount of bugs and problems at release. I think if they had just done 1 continent, like say thestra in game, and made sure it was optimized etc, they might actually have a decent size player base. Content is always appreciated by most mmorpg players, but overwhelming amounts at release can be horrible. I had to make 5 diff characters just to cover content in lower levels from all the areas.
Playing: Not much actively.
Games played: to many to list, been playing MMO's since 2001
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I revisited the game reciently and it was signifigantly improved technically.I realized I wanted /had to have a faction vs faction....rvr element in the mmog I play. SONY chose to eliminate that option when the consolidated servers.PVE is just not interesting enough for me.
The term "in game" usually means "implemented and working"...which is the case here.
As for mini-maps:NO they don't show you harvesting nodes spots (which would be silly by the way since the fun is about finding them)..it does show roads, moutains, quests marks,....well all you might reasonably expect from a map...
The game WAS unfinished at release - and many following months - but it's current state is definitely not what most of you are describing here...
All right... where to start..
No minimap? There is minimap. No flying mounts? There are flying mounts. No story? There are HUNDREDS of dialogues and books that you can read and know the lore. You say the list could go on? What list? The list of idiotic missinformed lies?
If you were unable to even turn on minimap... or find first flying mount that are rentable everywhere, I'm not surprised you didn't like the community. <Mod edit>
Perfect example of a Vanguard fanatic. Flying mounts are RENTABLE, I KNOW THIS. You can't buy one, THUS NOT IN THE GAME. Oh really, so there is a mini-map that will allow one to see where harvesting nodes are and the like?And yeah, I didn't like the community because I must be an idiot. Constant WoW babble has nothing to do with it. Keep on trucking in your unfinished game.
Fanatic??You come here saying there are no flying mounts, no minimap .. and when someone who actually plays the game comes here tell you the truth.. you call him FANATIC.
Look how simply it is to turn on minimap:
Go to main menu (ESC key or icon on user interface) There click on Settings, there Interface. Like 6th option from the top, there is..an option WINDOW VISIBILITY: Minimap. Quite simple huh. Not showing nodes? I guess you are used to that WOW-simplicity, you won't find it here. It was not an intent to show nodes.
Mounts are there fully working. Yes they are rentable at the moment (very cheap for everyone), and during christmas everyone got one for free for the whole 3 weeks. Flying mounts ARE IN GAME.
Constant WoW chat on general channel in game? Yes, ocassionally a person like you appears in game, that just wants to bash the game for no reason and compare how bad it is to WoW. Then a couple of guys take an opposition and it's 5-10minute discussion between 5 people on general chat. That's a community? Community is the quality of pugs (which is fantastic)
I want you to continue the list of other things you didn't like (like not being able to turn on minimap or find a rentable flying mounts that are almost at every bigger camp)
REALITY CHECK
No, it is because you tell lies as true. And as you change your wording, and meaning of the statements, to make them seem less of a lie.
...there was a minimap you was talking about not a minimap with this or that condition.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Lack of Polish and Too many Technical issues has to be acknowledged as the main overriding problems with this game. Read back through this thead, almost everyone mentions it. Crossing your fingers that you won't fall through the world everytime you go down a steep hill should not be a constant element of your gameplay experience. While running a Core 2 Duo @ 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, & 8800GT, I should not be having pixelated lockups, freezes, or CTDs very often, yet with this game they are an every night occurrence. Lastly, content should be more complete. If someone tells you to go talk to some person somewhere or go kill something somewhere, they should always give you at least some direction, especially considering how large the game world is. There should also not be quests labeled as level 16 that require you to kill something that takes a well organized level 20+ group.
I see some complaints that this game was designed targetting an audience that does not exist, and I have to disagree with that. The game mechanics and content in this game are vast and well designed. The crafting is great, the class and character customization choices are great, the ability to level all 3 Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy on one character is great, and the Game World is AMAZING. Emphasis on that last point. I think anyone who is a real fan of MMOs could pick up Vanguard and feel it was worth the money just from exploring Telon for 30 days. It's just a shame that the Fantastic design is a big contributing factor to the game's #1 problem I stated above. It's possibly just too big, and in the end I think that Sigil just big off more than they could chew. Reminds me a lot of SWG.
I think that down the road, there will be a game that is very complex, but has the needed polish and technical simplicity that will be reknowned as the #1 game in the industry. It won't be the #1 selling game as it will be too complex for many, but it will be a profitable game garnering the subscriptions from the serious MMO gaming core. Vanguard's failure is just one step closer to it. One more example to learn from.
In some respects this is a fair assessment. Though I wouldn't write Vanguard off just yet. I'm unsure as to why you should be getting such bad performance. You're not a million miles away from my spec: AMD 4600, 2gb ram, 8800 GTX. Maybe check driver versions. I get a CTD about once / 3 days (if i'm not alt-tabbing a lot). And I haven't fallen through the world for months. Places like Khal and Aghram still cache and cause stutter whilst doing so, but once they're done they work beautifully on Balanced / Medium High settings (New Taragonor is a different matter and that place needs a performance "make over"). By the way, the latest drivers can force Anti-Aliasing in the game, which makes the game look A LOT better.
It is true that time is not on Vanguards side but the devs are certainly trying to keep the game alive, though some would prefer the fixes a little faster than what has been provided so far. However, the devs have admitted that they did try to shoot high with the recent game updates and are now shrinking the content list of each game update down to try to address this. So that things can be rolled out quicker instead of waiting for others to be completed in the update.
Many are returning to the game, regardless of what people might think. Sure, the majority are probably ex-players. But many of those are reporting huge differences in performance and are willing to subscribe because of it.
With regards to performance, they continue to work on it and are next looking to optimising the npc and player characters. Incidentally, the devs have been quoted as saying that the next game update should bring in the permanent flying mount quest and the "Beginnings of helms" (make of that what you will). Temporary flying mounts which last 10 minutes and the holiday-permanent christmas flying mount are already in, as previous posters have said. The holiday mount proved to all that the original chunking problems have practically been eliminated regarding the flying mounts. Rumour has it that the permanent flying mounts should be in game towards the end of this month (January).
So, there's hope for Vanguard yet.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
The reason why Vanguard failed was because Sigil ran out of money. The "Core Gamer" has nothing to do with it. Sigil just ran out of cash. They couldn't polish the game, finish features, abilities. As such the game was generally broke when it was launched. I played the beta and also was there when the game was launched. Constant CTD's, lag, and all the bugs gave me reason enough to quit.
Now for a positive note I believe Vanguard can succeed. The game world is amazing, the classes are cool, the abilities are good, and the graphics are pretty much on par with Lord of the Rings Online and probably also with War and AOC. Only time will tell if Sony can fix the bugs and manage to get people to come back.
There's always going to be hope. SOE isn't known for shutting down games like other companies, and with the Station Pass keeping Vanguard on perpetual life support, there's always going to be a dev team working on the game in some form or fashion.
It's not about hope as much as it's about facing the hard truth of the MMO market these days. Just look at the list of games on this site, and look at the ones that are coming down the pipeline. Players have a myriad of choices. And reality says there's simply no reason to pay for a game that is still unfinished or unpolished after a year when there are so many other choices available.
Sure, some folks are re-subbing now after playing the game again. And there will always be an audience for Vanguard. But it's a pretty safe bet that the game isn't going to dramatically improve its numbers anytime soon, especially if both WAR and Conan end up launching with strong products.
That doesn't mean Vanguard can't or won't improve, but IMO it will never live up to what it could have been if Sigil hadn't dropped the ball in development.
Correct me if I'm wrong but not even wow shows the nodes on the mini map do they without using an addon? And if you really want it there is a very nice map addon for VG that does indeed show the resource nodes, many npcs and various other mappable objects.
You also seem to be really cutting hairs on the flying mounts issue. First you say that that flying mounts aren't in the game but then you say you know there are rentable ones in the game but they don't count... Now they are either in the game or not and if you can't buy one perminently but can rent one that does kinda imply that they ARE in the game. You just want one perminently, which I think many people do but just because you can't buy it doesn't mean that functionality is missing. I think that in another update or two we will see a quest for a perminent flying mount and thus your point is really lost.
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Ethion