only reason why i stayed away from it, was because SOE's first patch implemented Soulbound items. I never looked at it again. SOE i think has just made it their own EQ3.
Playing: EVE Online Favorite MMOs: WoW, SWG Pre-cu, Lineage 2, UO, EQ, EVE online Looking forward to: Archeage, Kingdom Under Fire 2 KUF2's Official Website - http://www.kufii.com/ENG/ -
People still blaiming the failure of Vangaurd and Sigil on Sony Online Entertainment. It's about as hilarious as people blaiming EA for Hellgate Londons failures. Just plain funny I must say.
Why Vanguard is unpopular?... well IMO its because the GAMEPLAY is actually worse now (well when I left 3 months ago) than it was at launch. Performance aside - I say this because apart from falling through the world and the odd chunk disconnect, I was one of the few lucky ones that never really had a problem running Vanguard - I loved VG for the first 6 months. VG looks stunning (although why it never had AA beats me), the racial starting areas were all unique, I found the classes varied and fun, and I loved the fact that the world was so large. But then things started to change. First up SOE, in its efforts to get more subscribers, decided to lower the leveling curve. Trouble is in making leveling faster they didn't make any changes to the game design, meaning you out-leveled dungeons, questlines etc, BEFORE you completed them and got the reward. ie the reward was useless --> no incentive to do the quest/dungeon. Same as crafting you outleveled crafting tiers before you got the upgrade recipes for that tier. Just bad game design. IMo many of the changes to classes, just dumbed them down. Bloodmages (probably the most unique class in any MMO to date) became just another sit back healer. Tank classes were changed so each class tanked in a specific way ie warrior dual weld. The game was slowly loosing its sandbox appeal. BTW in what is a PvE game, why do classes have to be balanced. As long as each class is fun who really cares? Changes to character customization was IMO a backward step (but as I said I had no real performance issues). I hated the new Khal as well Diplomacy was great to start with, each race had a great storyline to follow. Unfortuanately the storyline quickly faded out, so the only way to increase diplomacy level was to grind. A year on and SOE still hadn't built on the storylines. Final straw for me was GU5, I mean giant lobster things as mounts??? I mean seriously.. why and where was the lore??? Although the flying mounts I do miss... the landscape was/is breath-taking and one of the things I really miss. But to top it all off, after playing VG for just over a year, the design team still had not fixed bugs that had been in the game since day one. eg numerous quests were still broken. Yes introduce even more mounts, but fix bugs... nah. I could go on and on - riftways, faction, etc etc. IMO VG has simply lost the plot, or rather it now has an identity crisis. It started as a great sandbox MMO, but then changes were made to design (to make it more casual??), yet there was no effort to fix bugs. It just doesn't know what type of game it wants to be. And really is now a very bland game. Really all SOE had to do was fix up performance and quest bugs.
well personally i never considered vanguard as a sandbox game, even from the beta it seemed to be mix and at release i think it was clear that it was going to be an "adventure" oriented game (eq)
for many things i can agree with you, i prefer too a solid lore to "funny" racial mounts but can live with them, same for the flying mounts renters, i can also agree with dip, but there devs honestly stated that there where other priorities (and i can understand that :P)
instead i dont agree at all when you speak about balance and toning down, the different weapon specializations for tanks where a nice touch imo and up to a certain level or in some situations you can still be effective with weapons not peculiar to your class (eg a pally with a 2h), itemization need some work (expecially for high end 2h) but the change itself brought flavor and more diversity
balnca is not necessary in a solo game (even if is still a good thing) but on multiplayer, expecially MMOs is needed, you speak about bm... well bm was the "OP healer" and needed some changes, the problem of this king of mmo is that you have a fixed number for group/raid and you have to do choices is you have a class that do the job way better than another well... you will 1 player always happy (the one who get always in group) and a very unappy and bored one...
i played an SK on eq2, was even considered a pretty good tank on my server (AB) and actually had not troubles for groups on in raid.... but, even i was kinda "lucky", never ever again to play a class so gimped
so a good balance should be always a thing to focus to have a game that is enjoyable for all the players and not for "selected few"
for lore i can agree to a certain point, actually you see some lore in the game, there is perception of something that is happening.
now that the game is more stable and have some solid content i hope devs will develope more these aspect in futuret GUs (game updates, sort of "miniexpansions") and consolidate it more (a good lore always make the world more "alive" and enjoyable)
in one of the next GUs there should be the rework of "pantheon of the ancients" and it seem there will be a lot of lore to discover. if it will deliver what it promises will be first and big step in this direction so i'm kinda hopefull for the future
also (imo) soe should wake up, vanguard can be a good PR for them, with some more money invested and a good relaunch i think the game can really shine, it will be also a good return of image and reputation after the rage they caused with SWG (and yep i was there when GU and NGE hit )
agree with alot what you said. And yes when I said sandbox, I did kinda mean adventure. My point was that things like class balancing, easier exp, more mounts (FFS) just shouldn't have been a priority. Do you know how many never ventured to Darguns Tomb (best dungeon in the game), because they outleveled it to quick. Or the obvious incomplete manor, STILL with a mirror that says - content to be inserted.
And lol yes I was a Bloodmage and my alt a warrior. And the changes they made killed it for me. Bloodmage went from a DPS/backup healer (yes the END BM was overpowered, but hey wasnt it great u could play a BM 4 ways - DPS, END, Pure Healer and combination) , to just sitting back and casting our big heal - pure healer (it was just more "mana" efficient). And I hated the dual weld tanking ability. As a Warrior before the change, I could tank with board and sword.. but if 2 tanks in a party I could switch to dual weld for the DPS. It was those little things that I loved about VG. Yes alone not a game killer. But with everything else VG just died for me.
VG should have been the new home for many of us that wanted the old EQ1 exp. And for the first 6 months - performance aside - it was. But IMO the game designers have alienated people like me, yet haven't attracted the WOW crowd like they wanted. ie a failed game.
The VG team is now so small, and I would suggest the VG team is not the best (EQ2 is SOE main MMO).
yet haven't attracted the WOW crowd like they wanted. ie a failed game.
Oooo...so not agree with that. In fact quite the contrary. The original ideas behind VG where to make a game that was the opposite of WoW. It was to be an alternitive for people who wanted more of a traditional MMORPG experience. After the horrible launch, they back peddled a bit and started adding some of the things that games like WoW have made standard like fast travel, bind items, rest XP, easier adventure leveling, raid focused endgame...all of that was added after the launch as they scrambled to "fix" the game.
Anyway, to answer the OP's question - it failed because it had a sh*t launch and no MMO, no matter what they have done, has ever recovered from a bad launch. It's as simple as that. VG spiked in its first month to around 250,000 users and they had all but dropped off by the fourth month.
The interest is there for an open, free roaming, non-linear world but consumers today are not very forgiving of wasting their time and money on garbage at launch.
I really enjoyed my time in VG....but I had to wait over a year and a half before it was worth my time to actually play it without the technical frustrations the game had. (I was also a beta tester for the game). It was unbelievable to me that they launched the game. History has repeated itself many times since.
The other issue the game suffers from for current players is that there is nothing really all that compelling to keep you playing. Why have a ship? It doesn't do anything special. There is no waterborne content, you can't fight with it, you can't access any exclusive areas with it. Its just eye candy. Same goes for a house...aside from storage, adding some crafting benches and a meeting place, it doesn't serve any function. Sure you could craft in it but crafting has been over shadowed by loot items and more importantly, the games population is not large enough to support a thriving economy. Why level? All you have to look forward to is a single raid dungeon. Weee....we need that like a stick in the eye.
There needs to be purpose behind taking the time to do things in a game, any game. Flying mounts, crafting, ships, houses, levels whatever you name, there needs to be a compelling reason for the player to take the time to achieve these things, VG is missing a lot of that.
It's one of those games that was so near and yet so far.
It is because of when it was first released. It was owned by Sigil and the CEO, Brad McQuaid did not know what the hell he was doing. He was too busy managing an affair with the PR director and his married Asst Vice President than to lead the game in terms of financial and development direction. Long story short, they released it way too early because they ran out of money due to poor business decisions. It was released with bugs everywhere and anywhere. Classes were screwed up, performance issues were bad. It was just really messy. They went from 250,000 users to 20,000 users in two months and then Sigil wen tout of business, selling the game to Sony. Brad Mcquaid got hundreds of thousand of dollars out of the deal and everyone else was fired in Sigil's parking lot on a Friday Afternoon by a 3rd party contractor that is leased out to fire people. Brad didn't even have the balls to tell the people who slaved over this game that he had to let them go and liquidate the company. Think of it as Age of Conan but with a smaller company involved.
Zero credibility. Been written on the internet doesnt means its true.
It is because of when it was first released. It was owned by Sigil and the CEO, Brad McQuaid did not know what the hell he was doing. He was too busy managing an affair with the PR director and his married Asst Vice President than to lead the game in terms of financial and development direction. Long story short, they released it way too early because they ran out of money due to poor business decisions. It was released with bugs everywhere and anywhere. Classes were screwed up, performance issues were bad. It was just really messy. They went from 250,000 users to 20,000 users in two months and then Sigil wen tout of business, selling the game to Sony. Brad Mcquaid got hundreds of thousand of dollars out of the deal and everyone else was fired in Sigil's parking lot on a Friday Afternoon by a 3rd party contractor that is leased out to fire people. Brad didn't even have the balls to tell the people who slaved over this game that he had to let them go and liquidate the company. Think of it as Age of Conan but with a smaller company involved.
It really was an internal management nightmare of incompetence on a level that I rarely have seen.
I would say it is even worse than that; there were serious external issues:
Awful marketing, direct appeals to "hardcore" raiders
Deplorable communication from the CEO to potential customers, misleading them to purchase "upgrades" and entire "new systems" to "run Vanguard"
Censorship of the truth on various web pages as a result of speaking the truth about the game's many and varied problems from bugs to incomplete content
Enigma is right. Internal factors (awful management and leadership) and external factors really are why Vanguard is not popular and probably never will be.
Edit: As an aside, Vanguard was not released early; it was released early + broken + false statements from the CEO + censorship. A wonderful lesson in the industry of what not to do.
The interest is there for an open, free roaming, non-linear world but consumers today are not very forgiving of wasting their time and money on garbage at launch.
I dislike replying to posts back-to-back, but this post commanded my attention because the above comment is so central to a paramount concern of mine, viz. that Vanguard is not wanted.
A game like Vanguard is in fact wanted, desired, and demanded... but it must be done right. The game still has performance issues.
People want
Freedom
Open Worlds
Non-linear Gameplay
Complex Combat (openers, finishers, abilities that use other classes' abilities)
Sophisticated Class System
Travel and Exploration
People do not want
Poor performance
Incomplete content
Bugs
Insufficient resources
Repeated class nerfings
Broken quests
Unfortunately, the Bad outweighs the Good, at least in the eyes of the market, and Vanguard is not popular for this reason. People want a game with the features that Vanguard has to offer, but implemented in a more competent, intuitive, and technologically feasible way. The game has to have these deeper, more complex features but be ... practical (accessible) at the same time.
Edit: I am eager to return to Vanguard when it gets better. It is still not quite there... at least for me.
It wasn't owned, developed, or created by SOE whatsoever.
When in development SOE only had publishing power...meaning they provided the financial interests in producing the DVDs and marketing them out. They also assisted with tech issues when the game came out.
You need to research this a little bit more before slamming SOE.
SOE (the publisher) was one of the few ( if not the only one) to make any money on this game.
Publishers always rake in the most profit from box sales, and then they turned around and got the game for a song.
This game was niche from the day they started making it. EQ 1 part two. Not what the market wanted.
Being released in the bad shape it was released in, well just put the nail in the coffin much sooner.
Some people don't have a clue about Vanguard even existing.
Most people don't even know about its release fiasco.
There are people out there that don't know a thing about SOE.
When I showed Vanguard to my friend, a typical WoW player (had no idea there were other mmorpgs, didn't know about VG's release etc.).
His answer after a while of gaming was "Why should I play a game that is so similar to what I am playing? I already have a game that I enjoy. Only because of nicer graphics?" (btw he had similar comments about eq2 and lotro).
Still, I think advertisement is key. Nothing else. Only that most of target population already play WoW. And they don't want to play something so similar after years of WoW.
Comments
only reason why i stayed away from it, was because SOE's first patch implemented Soulbound items. I never looked at it again. SOE i think has just made it their own EQ3.
Playing: EVE Online
Favorite MMOs: WoW, SWG Pre-cu, Lineage 2, UO, EQ, EVE online
Looking forward to: Archeage, Kingdom Under Fire 2
KUF2's Official Website - http://www.kufii.com/ENG/ -
People still blaiming the failure of Vangaurd and Sigil on Sony Online Entertainment. It's about as hilarious as people blaiming EA for Hellgate Londons failures. Just plain funny I must say.
well personally i never considered vanguard as a sandbox game, even from the beta it seemed to be mix and at release i think it was clear that it was going to be an "adventure" oriented game (eq)
for many things i can agree with you, i prefer too a solid lore to "funny" racial mounts but can live with them, same for the flying mounts renters, i can also agree with dip, but there devs honestly stated that there where other priorities (and i can understand that :P)
instead i dont agree at all when you speak about balance and toning down, the different weapon specializations for tanks where a nice touch imo and up to a certain level or in some situations you can still be effective with weapons not peculiar to your class (eg a pally with a 2h), itemization need some work (expecially for high end 2h) but the change itself brought flavor and more diversity
balnca is not necessary in a solo game (even if is still a good thing) but on multiplayer, expecially MMOs is needed, you speak about bm... well bm was the "OP healer" and needed some changes, the problem of this king of mmo is that you have a fixed number for group/raid and you have to do choices is you have a class that do the job way better than another well... you will 1 player always happy (the one who get always in group) and a very unappy and bored one...
i played an SK on eq2, was even considered a pretty good tank on my server (AB) and actually had not troubles for groups on in raid.... but, even i was kinda "lucky", never ever again to play a class so gimped
so a good balance should be always a thing to focus to have a game that is enjoyable for all the players and not for "selected few"
for lore i can agree to a certain point, actually you see some lore in the game, there is perception of something that is happening.
now that the game is more stable and have some solid content i hope devs will develope more these aspect in futuret GUs (game updates, sort of "miniexpansions") and consolidate it more (a good lore always make the world more "alive" and enjoyable)
in one of the next GUs there should be the rework of "pantheon of the ancients" and it seem there will be a lot of lore to discover. if it will deliver what it promises will be first and big step in this direction so i'm kinda hopefull for the future
also (imo) soe should wake up, vanguard can be a good PR for them, with some more money invested and a good relaunch i think the game can really shine, it will be also a good return of image and reputation after the rage they caused with SWG (and yep i was there when GU and NGE hit
)
Zilord,
agree with alot what you said. And yes when I said sandbox, I did kinda mean adventure. My point was that things like class balancing, easier exp, more mounts (FFS) just shouldn't have been a priority. Do you know how many never ventured to Darguns Tomb (best dungeon in the game), because they outleveled it to quick. Or the obvious incomplete manor, STILL with a mirror that says - content to be inserted.
And lol yes I was a Bloodmage and my alt a warrior. And the changes they made killed it for me. Bloodmage went from a DPS/backup healer (yes the END BM was overpowered, but hey wasnt it great u could play a BM 4 ways - DPS, END, Pure Healer and combination) , to just sitting back and casting our big heal - pure healer (it was just more "mana" efficient). And I hated the dual weld tanking ability. As a Warrior before the change, I could tank with board and sword.. but if 2 tanks in a party I could switch to dual weld for the DPS. It was those little things that I loved about VG. Yes alone not a game killer. But with everything else VG just died for me.
VG should have been the new home for many of us that wanted the old EQ1 exp. And for the first 6 months - performance aside - it was. But IMO the game designers have alienated people like me, yet haven't attracted the WOW crowd like they wanted. ie a failed game.
The VG team is now so small, and I would suggest the VG team is not the best (EQ2 is SOE main MMO).
Oooo...so not agree with that. In fact quite the contrary. The original ideas behind VG where to make a game that was the opposite of WoW. It was to be an alternitive for people who wanted more of a traditional MMORPG experience. After the horrible launch, they back peddled a bit and started adding some of the things that games like WoW have made standard like fast travel, bind items, rest XP, easier adventure leveling, raid focused endgame...all of that was added after the launch as they scrambled to "fix" the game.
Anyway, to answer the OP's question - it failed because it had a sh*t launch and no MMO, no matter what they have done, has ever recovered from a bad launch. It's as simple as that. VG spiked in its first month to around 250,000 users and they had all but dropped off by the fourth month.
The interest is there for an open, free roaming, non-linear world but consumers today are not very forgiving of wasting their time and money on garbage at launch.
I really enjoyed my time in VG....but I had to wait over a year and a half before it was worth my time to actually play it without the technical frustrations the game had. (I was also a beta tester for the game). It was unbelievable to me that they launched the game. History has repeated itself many times since.
The other issue the game suffers from for current players is that there is nothing really all that compelling to keep you playing. Why have a ship? It doesn't do anything special. There is no waterborne content, you can't fight with it, you can't access any exclusive areas with it. Its just eye candy. Same goes for a house...aside from storage, adding some crafting benches and a meeting place, it doesn't serve any function. Sure you could craft in it but crafting has been over shadowed by loot items and more importantly, the games population is not large enough to support a thriving economy. Why level? All you have to look forward to is a single raid dungeon. Weee....we need that like a stick in the eye.
There needs to be purpose behind taking the time to do things in a game, any game. Flying mounts, crafting, ships, houses, levels whatever you name, there needs to be a compelling reason for the player to take the time to achieve these things, VG is missing a lot of that.
It's one of those games that was so near and yet so far.
Zero credibility. Been written on the internet doesnt means its true.
It really was an internal management nightmare of incompetence on a level that I rarely have seen.
I would say it is even worse than that; there were serious external issues:
Enigma is right. Internal factors (awful management and leadership) and external factors really are why Vanguard is not popular and probably never will be.
Edit: As an aside, Vanguard was not released early; it was released early + broken + false statements from the CEO + censorship. A wonderful lesson in the industry of what not to do.
I dislike replying to posts back-to-back, but this post commanded my attention because the above comment is so central to a paramount concern of mine, viz. that Vanguard is not wanted.
A game like Vanguard is in fact wanted, desired, and demanded... but it must be done right. The game still has performance issues.
People want
People do not want
Unfortunately, the Bad outweighs the Good, at least in the eyes of the market, and Vanguard is not popular for this reason. People want a game with the features that Vanguard has to offer, but implemented in a more competent, intuitive, and technologically feasible way. The game has to have these deeper, more complex features but be ... practical (accessible) at the same time.
Edit: I am eager to return to Vanguard when it gets better. It is still not quite there... at least for me.
It wasn't owned, developed, or created by SOE whatsoever.
When in development SOE only had publishing power...meaning they provided the financial interests in producing the DVDs and marketing them out. They also assisted with tech issues when the game came out.
You need to research this a little bit more before slamming SOE.
SOE (the publisher) was one of the few ( if not the only one) to make any money on this game.
Publishers always rake in the most profit from box sales, and then they turned around and got the game for a song.
This game was niche from the day they started making it. EQ 1 part two. Not what the market wanted.
Being released in the bad shape it was released in, well just put the nail in the coffin much sooner.
Some people don't have a clue about Vanguard even existing.
Most people don't even know about its release fiasco.
There are people out there that don't know a thing about SOE.
When I showed Vanguard to my friend, a typical WoW player (had no idea there were other mmorpgs, didn't know about VG's release etc.).
His answer after a while of gaming was "Why should I play a game that is so similar to what I am playing? I already have a game that I enjoy. Only because of nicer graphics?" (btw he had similar comments about eq2 and lotro).
Still, I think advertisement is key. Nothing else. Only that most of target population already play WoW. And they don't want to play something so similar after years of WoW.