They would have to have released a vanguard one to have a vanguard two. Unfortunately they never really released a vanguard one. It was so very different a year before release in the early betas. It was so very much better (if even buggier than it was at release but that is expected). If they had kept true to how the game was and just made areas and fixed bugs from that point, then the game would have been so very much more.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple of things they look to Vanguard for inspiration. Too me EQ2 and Vanguard are two games from creative minds that should have been one. One side being Smed and one side being Brad. It's too bad they could not have stayed together for EQ2! My biggest problem with EQ2 was it never felt like a word, I had no sense of where i was on the map with the the islands and stupid bells. No sense of how i got there. My problem with Vanguard was the lack of polish. For me EQNext is sounding like it could finally be what EQ2 should have been, but even more evolved. Can't wait to see.
BTW you all know Brad is back at SOE right? Though not officially working on EQNext (he's back on EQ). Curious if he's had any input.
This company 989 was divided into different parts working on different projects.
Early in 1999 the part working on Everquest broke away from Sony to form a new company called Verant Interactive. Sony then saw the error of it's ways and bought Verant Interactive to keep the fantastic new franchise under it's umbrella.
I played Vanguard a bit. Long enough to know they were onto something interesting, but clearly lacked either the technology at the time or the finances to see the dream fully realized.
I think of any themepark game I could reference, Vanguard 2 might be the closest.
I am hoping it's more of an Arch Age 2 with EQ classes, races, lore, npc's, universe.
Incorrect. Sony always owned Verant and the IP.
"In April 1998, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was formed by merging parts of Sony Online Ventures with Sony Pictures Entertainment. Within a matter of months after this change, Sony Interactive Studios America was renamed 989 Studios.
Towards the end of 1998, 989 Studios shifted its strategy to making PlayStationconsole games only. The company's computer game/online development branch spun off, initially calling itself RedEye Interactive and then soon after Verant Interactive.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on March 16, 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful."
Careful margulis, your lack of knowledge is showing.
SOE did not develope Everquest. Everquest was a text based MMO developed by Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Tros. They did such a good job making a text based MMO into a 3d game, SOE picked up the game and the developers.
Lets see if I remember this next part correctly. Pretty sure brad hated the design of everquest 2, left SOE, created Sigil Games, and made what he wanted to be the true successor to Everquest, Vanguard. After running out of funding, SOE bought out Sigil and Vanguard, fired 90% of the staff basically the same day, and launched the game way too early with so many bugs it TANKED.
Since EQ Next is being developed by SOE, and SOE had nothing to do with either EQ or Vanguard, it would then technically be the spiritual successor to EQ2.
Ironic you start off the post by accusing someone else of having a lack of knowledge.
EQ was and always has been owned, developed, produced by Sony. Sony paid for the games development, hired the team.
Also Brad made vanguard in his vision and I think everyone agrees Vanguard was supposed to be an improved EQ1.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
No. Both EQ and Vanguard were themeparks. EQNext is planning to be something different, just set in the same world / IP as Everquest.
I don't think you even played EQ before POP came out.
Themepark ?
dozens of starting races, cities, classes
no real quest line to follow
no hand held to go here and here
dozens of zones for each level group to level in
did i mention no hand held main story ?
Original EQ was as far as you can get from a themepark and frankly I do not know why people keep saying it was one they're obviously people who did not play it. The game today is closer but the original EQ no way.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
No. Both EQ and Vanguard were themeparks. EQNext is planning to be something different, just set in the same world / IP as Everquest.
I don't think you even played EQ before POP came out.
Themepark ?
dozens of starting races, cities, classes
no real quest line to follow
no hand held to go here and here
dozens of zones for each level group to level in
did i mention no hand held main story ?
Original EQ was as far as you can get from a themepark and frankly I do not know why people keep saying it was one they're obviously people who did not play it. The game today is closer but the original EQ no way.
WOW started the themepark trend not EQ.
Ya, that's kind of how I felt about EQ. I played from launch to about 2003, and felt that the game had a very non-themepark feel to it. You were kinda just dropped into the world, in a starting city depending on what race/class you picked, and said "Go play". You could choose to go visit other starting cities or hunt on a completely different land (If you could make it there!). You had tons of freedom, non linear leveling paths, and a huge open world to explore.
A lot of people say it's a themepark, because it was not a sandbox.... but really, it's not quite that black and white. Very few games, if any, are true sandboxes. Just because EQ had raid monsters and NPC filled dungeons and some quests to perform, didn't make it exactly what we would call a themepark today.
You might be able to call EQ a themepark, but it sure didn't play or feel like one.
I love the VG and Sony debates every couple years. VG was a mess with Sigil and MS long before SOE was even involved. It played out pretty heavily in the early betas (and they had a long beta phase on that one) I was in the betas for a good year before it even "launched" and played it for about a year after launch.
As someone else mentioned, I see nothing to indicate EQNext will be similar to VG. However, it would be unlikely that they wouldn't attempt to learn from all of the games and tweak "pieces" of them for the new one. VG had some interesting systems in it, it was just incomplete, buggy and not efficient.
The definition of a Themepark and Sandbox MMO vary quite a bit. I am rather curious to see what they define as a "Sandbox" Everquest when they start to launch the game.
Most people i know didn't bother with quests really until much later in EQ1, but I still wouldn't call it a sandbox (at least how i personally would define one). I am not sure running quest to quest is what makes a game "themepark" to me. It is a lot more complex to me. I also don't think a lack of set "classes" or levels makes anything a sandbox to me either. I guess right now I just now what i label them after I see them in action.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
Originally posted by burdock2Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
No. Both EQ and Vanguard were themeparks. EQNext is planning to be something different, just set in the same world / IP as Everquest.
I don't think you even played EQ before POP came out.
Themepark ?
dozens of starting races, cities, classes
no real quest line to follow
no hand held to go here and here
dozens of zones for each level group to level in
did i mention no hand held main story ?
Original EQ was as far as you can get from a themepark and frankly I do not know why people keep saying it was one they're obviously people who did not play it. The game today is closer but the original EQ no way.
WOW started the themepark trend not EQ.
EQ was a themepark game, sorry. yes it was not story or quest driven but it was linear.
you killed in the newb area, then moved to the lvl 10-15 areas, then 15-20, and so on....
raid progression in EQ was very very much a themepark trait as well.
people always confuse freedom and choice to a sandbox only trait. look at the people that say TES series is a sandbox series simply because of the freedom to go anywhere, yet its very much quest driven.
a sandbox game must feature things that EQ didn't have, like being able to craft most things in the world and being able to destroy them as well.
after all that's why its called a "sandbox" because you create and destroy sandcastles in your sandbox.
crafting was not one of EQ's strong suits IMO, there are ultra themepark games with much more immersive crafting systems than EQ had.
lastly, just because EQ was a themepark doesn't mean it wasn't a great game.
Originally posted by uolen Everquest was completely text based.
The game Brad and his buddy made was not 'Everquest' - it was a totally different game with a totally different name. Sony gave Smed the greenlight to make an MMO, which he then brought in Brad and his buddy to help design the game as he liked their mud. Before Smed got involved Brad and his buddy worked for a greenhouse nursery designing inventory software.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
WRONG. Vanguard was a WOW clone (i.e., quest hubs).
WOW was a clone of everything before it. Just because it had quest doesn't make it a wow clone. Everything else about the game is the opposite of what wow did.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
WRONG. Vanguard was a WOW clone (i.e., quest hubs).
WOW was a clone of everything before it. Just because it had quest doesn't make it a wow clone. Everything else about the game is the opposite of what wow did.
The quest hubs killed it for me, else I'd have played it longer. Quest hubs are a game killer for me with any MMO these days.
So because it has quest hubs and you don't like quest hubs it's a WoW clone. I guess that would make sense to anyone that's a complete idiot.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
One could only hope. Vanguard was a game that had all the potential in the world and was let down by a combination of a developer with a little too much ambition, and some suits with a little too little patience.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple of things they look to Vanguard for inspiration. Too me EQ2 and Vanguard are two games from creative minds that should have been one. One side being Smed and one side being Brad. It's too bad they could not have stayed together for EQ2! My biggest problem with EQ2 was it never felt like a word, I had no sense of where i was on the map with the the islands and stupid bells. No sense of how i got there. My problem with Vanguard was the lack of polish. For me EQNext is sounding like it could finally be what EQ2 should have been, but even more evolved. Can't wait to see. BTW you all know Brad is back at SOE right? Though not officially working on EQNext (he's back on EQ). Curious if he's had any input.
Sounds like you were late to the party. EQ2 is called the shattered lands for a reason. The Shattering seperated the continents and at launch you had to do a group quest line to find maps to the lost areas, culminating in a group instance where you take the boat to the new lands (and get attacked on the way). There were no fast travel bells when EQ2 first launched. It was a dangerous journey travelling to new lands.
In other words, it was very well explained how you got there and the journey involved. This was before they transformed the game to be casual friendly, but the quest lines are still available to explain how the lost lands were rediscovered.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
One could only hope. Vanguard was a game that had all the potential in the world and was let down by a combination of a developer with a little too much ambition, and some suits with a little too little patience.
Well I will agree that the lead designer had a bit too much ambition, but I disagree that the suits had "too little patience". All games have a budget and a time limit. At some point, you have to launch. Going out of scope and biting off more than your team can chew is a fault of the designer. You can be slightly relaxed with a launch date, but VG needed 6-12 months more time, and had already sunk in way more money into the development then was feasible for the amount of subscribers they were aiming to attract.
As much as I wanted VG to succeed, It didn't. And sadly, the sole reason for this is because Brad went way out of scope for the amount of funding he had. In fact, he spent more money than he was supposed to by the time the game was still 6 months out from being near ready for beta. It's sad that the reason it failed was because he tried to be too innovative and put in too much content, because these are things that people want to see in an MMORPG.
Designing and developing a game, over-spending your budget, and still being 6-12 months away from completion even after going over-budget, is not the fault of any "suit". AAA video game productions are not charities. They're businesses. At the end of the day, they need to make money, or cut their loses when things don't work out.
Careful margulis, your lack of knowledge is showing.
SOE did not develope Everquest. Everquest was a text based MMO developed by Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, and Bill Tros. They did such a good job making a text based MMO into a 3d game, SOE picked up the game and the developers.
Lets see if I remember this next part correctly. Pretty sure brad hated the design of everquest 2, left SOE, created Sigil Games, and made what he wanted to be the true successor to Everquest, Vanguard. After running out of funding, SOE bought out Sigil and Vanguard, fired 90% of the staff basically the same day, and launched the game way too early with so many bugs it TANKED.
Since EQ Next is being developed by SOE, and SOE had nothing to do with either EQ or Vanguard, it would then technically be the spiritual successor to EQ2.
Verant was a SHELL COMPANY created by 989 games (aka SOE) please stop misinforming people. SOE from the jump has a hand in the making of Everquest.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
One could only hope. Vanguard was a game that had all the potential in the world and was let down by a combination of a developer with a little too much ambition, and some suits with a little too little patience.
Well I will agree that the lead designer had a bit too much ambition, but I disagree that the suits had "too little patience". All games have a budget and a time limit. At some point, you have to launch. Going out of scope and biting off more than your team can chew is a fault of the designer. You can be slightly relaxed with a launch date, but VG needed 6-12 months more time, and had already sunk in way more money into the development then was feasible for the amount of subscribers they were aiming to attract.
As much as I wanted VG to succeed, It didn't. And sadly, the sole reason for this is because Brad went way out of scope for the amount of funding he had. In fact, he spent more money than he was supposed to by the time the game was still 6 months out from being near ready for beta. It's sad that the reason it failed was because he tried to be too innovative and put in too much content, because these are things that people want to see in an MMORPG.
Designing and developing a game, over-spending your budget, and still being 6-12 months away from completion even after going over-budget, is not the fault of any "suit". AAA video game productions are not charities. They're businesses. At the end of the day, they need to make money, or cut their loses when things don't work out.
Exactly and when they buy games they need to tell customers of said game that they are going to support it and make it a fully supported title in their lineup, fix its issues, and release new content. If they didn't do that then all the remaining players would have quit, no one would have picked it up again, and the whole purchase would be pointless.
It is just smart business. Unfortunately for customers who got hooked by the bait and switch, they were misled. But that's what you should expect from SOE because Smedley is a businessman who runs a bad business and games like SWG, Planetside, Vanguard, Matrix Online, and others are just some of his failures. Don't disappoint him this time and I'm sure this time he will come through on his many promises.
Doesn't matter though because SOE knows they don't have people's trust, and they made all their games F2P anyways. So you don't really need to trust him, just hit buy and get that cash shop goodness. Instant satisfaction for your money's worth.
Originally posted by burdock2 Seeing as how Vanguard was hailed as a spiritual successor to the original EQ, would it stand to reason?
One could only hope. Vanguard was a game that had all the potential in the world and was let down by a combination of a developer with a little too much ambition, and some suits with a little too little patience.
Well I will agree that the lead designer had a bit too much ambition, but I disagree that the suits had "too little patience". All games have a budget and a time limit. At some point, you have to launch. Going out of scope and biting off more than your team can chew is a fault of the designer. You can be slightly relaxed with a launch date, but VG needed 6-12 months more time, and had already sunk in way more money into the development then was feasible for the amount of subscribers they were aiming to attract.
As much as I wanted VG to succeed, It didn't. And sadly, the sole reason for this is because Brad went way out of scope for the amount of funding he had. In fact, he spent more money than he was supposed to by the time the game was still 6 months out from being near ready for beta. It's sad that the reason it failed was because he tried to be too innovative and put in too much content, because these are things that people want to see in an MMORPG.
Designing and developing a game, over-spending your budget, and still being 6-12 months away from completion even after going over-budget, is not the fault of any "suit". AAA video game productions are not charities. They're businesses. At the end of the day, they need to make money, or cut their loses when things don't work out.
Exactly and when they buy games they need to tell customers of said game that they are going to support it and make it a fully supported title in their lineup, fix its issues, and release new content. If they didn't do that then all the remaining players would have quit, no one would have picked it up again, and the whole purchase would be pointless.
It is just smart business. Unfortunately for customers who got hooked by the bait and switch, they were misled. But that's what you should expect from SOE because Smedley is a businessman who runs a bad business and games like SWG, Planetside, Vanguard, Matrix Online, and others are just some of his failures. Don't disappoint him this time and I'm sure this time he will come through on his many promises.
Doesn't matter though because SOE knows they don't have people's trust, and they made all their games F2P anyways. So you don't really need to trust him, just hit buy and get that cash shop goodness. Instant satisfaction for your money's worth.
Not sure what you're trying to say. SOE has continued to support Vanguard. It's still live today and people are still playing it. I played it for about a year myself. After they cleaned it up and put some raid content in, it was a decent title that offered a lot of pretty cool features. I especially enjoyed it's gear, boat and housing creation and the crafting mechanics themselves. SOE basically revived a corpse and should be commended for it.
SWG wasn't a huge success, but many look back on SWG and think it was a good sandbox game.
Matrix Online, never played it, I heard it wasn't that good though.
Planetside is one of the best games that's ever come out and PS2 is amazingly fun and successful.
Just about every single MMORPG is F2P now a days. Even major big budget titles are using the F2P model. It has nothing to do with "trust", it's just a better business model for MMORPGs. I prefered subscription based games myself, but there are many things to like about F2P, and if it makes a company more money, and allows them to continue supporting the game longer, then all the power to them.
Comments
Hope that it isn't Vanguard 2. Tried it at launch and it ran like crap. Tried again when it went FTP on a different computer and it crashed.
Vanguard sounded like a cool game but, if it won't run, it doesn't matter.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are a couple of things they look to Vanguard for inspiration. Too me EQ2 and Vanguard are two games from creative minds that should have been one. One side being Smed and one side being Brad. It's too bad they could not have stayed together for EQ2! My biggest problem with EQ2 was it never felt like a word, I had no sense of where i was on the map with the the islands and stupid bells. No sense of how i got there. My problem with Vanguard was the lack of polish. For me EQNext is sounding like it could finally be what EQ2 should have been, but even more evolved. Can't wait to see.
BTW you all know Brad is back at SOE right? Though not officially working on EQNext (he's back on EQ). Curious if he's had any input.
Incorrect. Sony always owned Verant and the IP.
"In April 1998, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) was formed by merging parts of Sony Online Ventures with Sony Pictures Entertainment. Within a matter of months after this change, Sony Interactive Studios America was renamed 989 Studios.
Towards the end of 1998, 989 Studios shifted its strategy to making PlayStation console games only. The company's computer game/online development branch spun off, initially calling itself RedEye Interactive and then soon after Verant Interactive.
EverQuest launched with modest expectations from Sony on March 16, 1999 under its Verant Interactive brand and quickly became successful."
No. Both EQ and Vanguard were themeparks. EQNext is planning to be something different, just set in the same world / IP as Everquest.
I can see some concepts from vanguard making it into EQN, but I think they will be drastically different games.
Vanguard's world was massive, with multiple starting cities, and tons places to explore. You can expect to see that in EQN lol.
Vanguard had a really intricate crafting system. I suspect EQN will have something better.
Vanguard had open world housing. I suspect EQN will have something similar, but hopefully with more freedom (Like SWG).
But in the end EQN will probably be much different from Vanguard.
Legends of Kesmai, UO, EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SB, RO, SWG, EVE, EQ2, CoH, GW, VG:SOH, WAR, Aion, DF, CO, MO, DN, Tera, SWTOR, RO2, DP, GW2, PS2, BnS, NW, FF:XIV, ESO, EQ:NL
Ironic you start off the post by accusing someone else of having a lack of knowledge.
EQ was and always has been owned, developed, produced by Sony. Sony paid for the games development, hired the team.
Also Brad made vanguard in his vision and I think everyone agrees Vanguard was supposed to be an improved EQ1.
I don't think you even played EQ before POP came out.
Themepark ?
dozens of starting races, cities, classes
no real quest line to follow
no hand held to go here and here
dozens of zones for each level group to level in
did i mention no hand held main story ?
Original EQ was as far as you can get from a themepark and frankly I do not know why people keep saying it was one they're obviously people who did not play it. The game today is closer but the original EQ no way.
WOW started the themepark trend not EQ.
Search "EverCracked"
Know how EverQuest came to be from the mouths of those directly involved.
Ya, that's kind of how I felt about EQ. I played from launch to about 2003, and felt that the game had a very non-themepark feel to it. You were kinda just dropped into the world, in a starting city depending on what race/class you picked, and said "Go play". You could choose to go visit other starting cities or hunt on a completely different land (If you could make it there!). You had tons of freedom, non linear leveling paths, and a huge open world to explore.
A lot of people say it's a themepark, because it was not a sandbox.... but really, it's not quite that black and white. Very few games, if any, are true sandboxes. Just because EQ had raid monsters and NPC filled dungeons and some quests to perform, didn't make it exactly what we would call a themepark today.
You might be able to call EQ a themepark, but it sure didn't play or feel like one.
Legends of Kesmai, UO, EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SB, RO, SWG, EVE, EQ2, CoH, GW, VG:SOH, WAR, Aion, DF, CO, MO, DN, Tera, SWTOR, RO2, DP, GW2, PS2, BnS, NW, FF:XIV, ESO, EQ:NL
I love the VG and Sony debates every couple years. VG was a mess with Sigil and MS long before SOE was even involved. It played out pretty heavily in the early betas (and they had a long beta phase on that one) I was in the betas for a good year before it even "launched" and played it for about a year after launch.
As someone else mentioned, I see nothing to indicate EQNext will be similar to VG. However, it would be unlikely that they wouldn't attempt to learn from all of the games and tweak "pieces" of them for the new one. VG had some interesting systems in it, it was just incomplete, buggy and not efficient.
The definition of a Themepark and Sandbox MMO vary quite a bit. I am rather curious to see what they define as a "Sandbox" Everquest when they start to launch the game.
Most people i know didn't bother with quests really until much later in EQ1, but I still wouldn't call it a sandbox (at least how i personally would define one). I am not sure running quest to quest is what makes a game "themepark" to me. It is a lot more complex to me. I also don't think a lack of set "classes" or levels makes anything a sandbox to me either. I guess right now I just now what i label them after I see them in action.
"Because we all know the miracle patch fairy shows up the night before release and sprinkles magic dust on the server to make it allllll better." parrotpholk
The world, character gameplay and systems from VG felt more EQ but the progression options and polish from EQ2 seem a good fit.
I hope that it's a successor more for EQ than VG or EQ2.
I'm sure people that hope for Van 2 (in essence) aren't hoping that the bugs follow it. It's all about the ideas, man!
EQ was a themepark game, sorry. yes it was not story or quest driven but it was linear.
you killed in the newb area, then moved to the lvl 10-15 areas, then 15-20, and so on....
raid progression in EQ was very very much a themepark trait as well.
people always confuse freedom and choice to a sandbox only trait. look at the people that say TES series is a sandbox series simply because of the freedom to go anywhere, yet its very much quest driven.
a sandbox game must feature things that EQ didn't have, like being able to craft most things in the world and being able to destroy them as well.
after all that's why its called a "sandbox" because you create and destroy sandcastles in your sandbox.
crafting was not one of EQ's strong suits IMO, there are ultra themepark games with much more immersive crafting systems than EQ had.
lastly, just because EQ was a themepark doesn't mean it wasn't a great game.
just sayin...
The game Brad and his buddy made was not 'Everquest' - it was a totally different game with a totally different name. Sony gave Smed the greenlight to make an MMO, which he then brought in Brad and his buddy to help design the game as he liked their mud. Before Smed got involved Brad and his buddy worked for a greenhouse nursery designing inventory software.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
WOW was a clone of everything before it. Just because it had quest doesn't make it a wow clone. Everything else about the game is the opposite of what wow did.
Its going to be like planetside 2 but with swords and magic
I don't see this as being VG 2, I'd hope they're going in a new direction.
So because it has quest hubs and you don't like quest hubs it's a WoW clone. I guess that would make sense to anyone that's a complete idiot.
One could only hope. Vanguard was a game that had all the potential in the world and was let down by a combination of a developer with a little too much ambition, and some suits with a little too little patience.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Sounds like you were late to the party. EQ2 is called the shattered lands for a reason. The Shattering seperated the continents and at launch you had to do a group quest line to find maps to the lost areas, culminating in a group instance where you take the boat to the new lands (and get attacked on the way). There were no fast travel bells when EQ2 first launched. It was a dangerous journey travelling to new lands.In other words, it was very well explained how you got there and the journey involved. This was before they transformed the game to be casual friendly, but the quest lines are still available to explain how the lost lands were rediscovered.
Well I will agree that the lead designer had a bit too much ambition, but I disagree that the suits had "too little patience". All games have a budget and a time limit. At some point, you have to launch. Going out of scope and biting off more than your team can chew is a fault of the designer. You can be slightly relaxed with a launch date, but VG needed 6-12 months more time, and had already sunk in way more money into the development then was feasible for the amount of subscribers they were aiming to attract.
As much as I wanted VG to succeed, It didn't. And sadly, the sole reason for this is because Brad went way out of scope for the amount of funding he had. In fact, he spent more money than he was supposed to by the time the game was still 6 months out from being near ready for beta. It's sad that the reason it failed was because he tried to be too innovative and put in too much content, because these are things that people want to see in an MMORPG.
Designing and developing a game, over-spending your budget, and still being 6-12 months away from completion even after going over-budget, is not the fault of any "suit". AAA video game productions are not charities. They're businesses. At the end of the day, they need to make money, or cut their loses when things don't work out.
Legends of Kesmai, UO, EQ, AO, DAoC, AC, SB, RO, SWG, EVE, EQ2, CoH, GW, VG:SOH, WAR, Aion, DF, CO, MO, DN, Tera, SWTOR, RO2, DP, GW2, PS2, BnS, NW, FF:XIV, ESO, EQ:NL
Verant was a SHELL COMPANY created by 989 games (aka SOE) please stop misinforming people. SOE from the jump has a hand in the making of Everquest.
Exactly and when they buy games they need to tell customers of said game that they are going to support it and make it a fully supported title in their lineup, fix its issues, and release new content. If they didn't do that then all the remaining players would have quit, no one would have picked it up again, and the whole purchase would be pointless.
It is just smart business. Unfortunately for customers who got hooked by the bait and switch, they were misled. But that's what you should expect from SOE because Smedley is a businessman who runs a bad business and games like SWG, Planetside, Vanguard, Matrix Online, and others are just some of his failures. Don't disappoint him this time and I'm sure this time he will come through on his many promises.
Doesn't matter though because SOE knows they don't have people's trust, and they made all their games F2P anyways. So you don't really need to trust him, just hit buy and get that cash shop goodness. Instant satisfaction for your money's worth.
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Not sure what you're trying to say. SOE has continued to support Vanguard. It's still live today and people are still playing it. I played it for about a year myself. After they cleaned it up and put some raid content in, it was a decent title that offered a lot of pretty cool features. I especially enjoyed it's gear, boat and housing creation and the crafting mechanics themselves. SOE basically revived a corpse and should be commended for it.
SWG wasn't a huge success, but many look back on SWG and think it was a good sandbox game.
Matrix Online, never played it, I heard it wasn't that good though.
Planetside is one of the best games that's ever come out and PS2 is amazingly fun and successful.
Just about every single MMORPG is F2P now a days. Even major big budget titles are using the F2P model. It has nothing to do with "trust", it's just a better business model for MMORPGs. I prefered subscription based games myself, but there are many things to like about F2P, and if it makes a company more money, and allows them to continue supporting the game longer, then all the power to them.
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