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Feedback - Brad McQuaid & the upcoming "spiritual successor" to EverQuest (Poll Inside)
salaciouscrumbs
Member UncommonPosts: 169
I recently learned of the announcement regarding Brad McQuaid's upcoming "old school MMO" Kickstarter campaign. MMORPG Article. Brad McQuaid was a creative designer behind the original Everquest and Vanguard franchises. The crowd-funding campaign is starting very soon.
What we know so far:
- Brad McQuaid will (at minimum) play at important role
- Spiritual successor to original Everquest and Vanguard
- Game will be an "old school MMO"
- Game will not be "all things to all people"
- Game will be "challenging"
- Game will be in a fantasy setting
I have to admit - when I first learned of this announcement I was elated. I've suspected for quite some time that an "old-school MMO" would appear on Kickstarter sooner or later and hit a home run in funding. But then I noticed something else . . .
I couldn't help but read the plethora of comments underneath each and every article related to this announcement. Apparently, Brad McQuaid isn't just a controversial figure in the MMO industry - he's literally the spawn of the devil in many people's minds. There are hundreds upon hundreds of negative comments regarding this guy. He's a "drug addict", "scammer", "incompetent" - the list goes on and on.
Now I don't personally have any feelings towards Brad McQuaid. I missed the boat on Vanguard, because by the time I discovered the game it had already been lambasted into oblivion by the reviews. However, if the buzz surrounding him is any indication of what might happen during the crowd-funding campaign, we might be seriously in trouble. No, trouble is an understatement - we might be seriously, royally, fucked.
Why "fucked" you ask? Because if this Kickstarter campaign goes forward marketing itself as the spiritual successor of Everquest - with all the media behind it and big names attached (even John Smedley of SOE is being floated now) - and it fails, I honestly think we are going to be in for a long road until anyone even attempts to crowd-fund an "old-school" MMO again. In my opinion this game will either be the Star Citizen of the MMORPG genre, or the setback of the decade for challenging MMO's.
So my question is: are the comments and buzz surrounding Brad McQuaid any indication of this games success or failure at this early stage? Is the community going to abandon this game before it's been given a chance, or grudgingly back it and take a gamble on Brad McQuaid once more? I'm curious to know the thoughts of fellow community members and gauge and overall response to this announcement.
I've also added a poll below. Please respond to the poll - I tried to be as scientific as possible regarding the choices.
Comments
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Brad McQuaid showed his colors in his total and complete mismanagement of Vanguard, and his lack of respect for his employees at Sigil. I see no reason to help him get rich by investing in his chance to screw over another group of people.
Did Brad show his true colors or was Brad just in a terrible phase of his life with a drug addiction ruining his ability to run a company?
I don't fully know the answer but if you think its a black or white issue you are (probably choosing to be) ignorant.
I think kickstarting an MMORPG is a bad idea anyway, but if you want an old school, EQ1 like game Brad is *BY FAR* your best bet even with the sigil issues.
The guy had his chance, and he blew it big time. There's no reason to believe he won't do so again. Perhaps he learned his lesson & will do better now, but I'm not going to bet any money on that.
Edit: And no, I don't want an 'old school' MMO. There's a reason they fell by the wayside.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
Unfortunately, I am not one to throw money at every project. This will be to the detriment of players wanting "old school" games and trying to show publishers there is a market. I am in a "wait and see" mode when I see someone say "old school game."
My number one question when I see this is, "How do you define old school?" Does it mean forced grouping? If it does, my interest stops right there.
However, if they are talking about giving the players the possibility of failure, aspects to combat where crowd control (CC) factors in, combat that is not "3 hits and done", where a player's loot actually lasts longer than 3 fights... I am interested.
As far as Brad McQuaid is concerned, I have no opinions one way or the other. Everyone makes mistakes. He will show us if he learned from those mistakes or not.
I will wait and see how more defined this venture becomes before committing.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Interesting mix of responses thus far.
Can anyone tell me, bluntly and honestly (no exaggerations) what Brad McQuaid did to anger so many people?
Are the rumors true - if so, how were these rumors verified? Is there evidence?
This project died as soon as they said Brad McQuaid was leading the creative design. Here are a few things to consider.
- Everquest: If people take off the rose colored glasses and looked at the game objectively they would understand the game really wasn't all that good. It had good parts and a lot of bad parts like 30 minute boat rides and week long mob camps. Later on the game became even more punishing with a raid until you pass out at the keyboard mentality. Everquest in many ways gave old school thinking a bad name. Ultra hard core expansions like Planes of Power and Gates of Discord would fuel the exodus of players out of Everquest and into WoW.
EverQuest 2: This was supposed to be SoE's answer to WoW as a mass market MMO. Brad McQuaid played a significant role in the early design of this game. EQ2 suffered from a number of poor design decisions such as shared xp debt and corpse runs. The over land zones were 95% group content and soloing was limited to a few key areas. In some ways it was worse than the original Everquest. It is like they were saying we want our game to fail. They just handed WoW the crown.
- Vanguard: Game was a complete and total failure until SoE fixed it. The most important fix was removing all of Brad McQuaid's influence over the game. His ideas of what a game should be were completely horrible and needed to go.
Gonna wait and see when game is finished. Just say No.
Proud MMORPG.com member since March 2004! Make PvE GREAT Again!
Yes the reason is that casuals fill the market now and they don't want to be challenged or take longer than a week to get to level cap (not all casuals or newer players do this but a majority I'd wager). Outside of WoW most seem to get to lev cap (quickly and easily), play end game a few months and then switch to new game. But I believe that an old school type, challenging, slow player advancing game could find a good niche of 200-300,000 players. Not sure if thats enough for an indie game to profit, but going by forum talk seems like there is a small market. Just because you don't like idea doesn't mean it doesn't have a market.
You make me like charity
Possibly but not with grouping as main form of advancement, excessively long and dull travel (yes boats were dull) and raid or die as sole means of progress (yes wow has this but not the other 2) the three together would be the death knell of any game.
I do not believe most care how long it takes to level, as long as they can do it in bite size chunks, are not bored, and do not need to count on other people for a good chunk of it. Challenging - sure, long time to level sure. Those three up top, I'm out.
Once again, even though you don't like a game doesn't mean others didn't. No one needs to take of any glasses. If they like it, hey, they liked it. Regardless of you opinion. I actually agree with some things you said. I didn't play Van and didn't really care for EQ2 much, but EQ up to and around POP was great fun for me and many others. I didn't like how they were pushing all new content to high end gear grinding/raiding, but before that was a blast. I don't really have any opinion of McQuaid and would wait til release to play any game he was in charge of due to his track record. But bottom line-you are not the ultimate judge on what is a good game.
I agree with boats and downtime were terrible design decisions (at first were kind of quaint real world feel, but after years of playing, got really old). When you were sitting to regain mana, your screen was taken up by the spellbook (what the hell was that). I couldn't count how many times that giant in Oasis "snuck up" on me and pounded me to paste. My only problem is that the casualization went to far, has take out needless grinds or downtime, but keep the challenge, death penalties, some in world travel, group "encouragement", community builders. I hate the single player feel in games.
EQ - Loved EQ pre too much instancing. GoD was designed for people 5 levels higher, but they ended up not including the level raise in the expansion, so that was a flub for them.
EQ2 - Didn't really play it (was out shortly before WoW).
VG - Last fantasy mmo I really liked (and hasn't been much since imo).
So regarding EQ/VG, I am a fan. I do think for Brad, he would be better off having someone else in charge, and him being on the creative side, but not business.
Anyone who gives Brad McQuaid money in 2013 is an idiot. Setting your money on fire would be a much more productive plan. Or hell, give your cash to Curt Schilling. I hear he needs a few bits these days.
No way, no how would I support any Kickstarter that Brad's involved with. I'll stick to newer indie developers that have interesting ideas instead of old, washed up has-beens that have already run one studio into the ground.
I have never given money for a kickstarter, but I find these type of posts funny, sure everyone can do 'better' things with their money. Does everyone use public transportation or bike/walk to work, live in as small a space as possible, not pay for cable/internet and such...No.
This is a mmo forum, that means none of us that play games use all our time for the' greater good'.
Vanguard 1.5? No, sorry. Thanks. It didn't work the first time, and it will not work the second time as a kickstarter.
And by the way "oldschool" != "oldschool". I like oldschool, but i was never interested in EQ1 nor Vanguard nor any other game of that kind. I am more of a UO oldschool fan... and that is something completely different.
by that logic only MUDs are truly old school mmo's.
------
as for BMcquaid: i have no issues with someone getting a second, or hell even a third or fourth chance, i have screwed up too many times in life not to understand that.
but a second chance does not mean i have to put myself or anyone else in the exact same position that led to our downfall. in fact, not being in exactly the same position as before may be the lesson garnered from the previous screw up.
i would like to see BMcquaid, and even Smed and some others, join forces to create one last going out with style mmo. would it fail? i really think there is absolutely no way to really tell until the thing had launched and been patched a bit (all mmo's come out of the gate with problems).
and those two reasons above are why i would most likely not support a kickstarter.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
Boatrides were not like sitting still for half an hour, traveling through boring, uneventful wastelands. The oceans had places within them to adventure in and monsters that could make any trip exciting. There were even quests in the ocean zones.
The downtime, I also liked. I am tired of the games that giver every player insta-regeneration. EQ had that, but at only 1-3 health per tick (6 seconds). Potions had meaning as did spells. It was also nicely timed with the re-spawn of a camp you may have been camping. While sitting and healing, players would tend to chit-chat, which sometimes lead to bonds of friendship.
Of course, both of these "features" interrupted a player;s race to end game and leveling efficiency, but for me, that is no great loss.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
i'm with you in that i am not a fan of either of these phrases: 'race to endgame' and 'leveling efficiency'. out of all the complaints people have and their theories concerning the death of old school mmo's i really believe that those two phrases are at the heart of the problem.
"There are at least two kinds of games.
One could be called finite, the other infinite.
A finite game is played for the purpose of winning,
an infinite game for the purpose of continuing play."
Finite and Infinite Games, James Carse
The problem is people wanting to achieve something in a matter of seconds.
Oh i have 5 minuts to play last blast on my MMORPG and achieve something. An achievment is somethign you have to work for. actually achieving something takes alot of hard work and mostly time asswell.
In EQ getting your epic (or legendary) weapon was a very long questline so when u finnaly had your weapon you've actually achieved something. When you spend more time on somethign the reward fill feel that much greater. Instant gratification is really really shallow. But to cater that crowd downtime and things like travel have been removed.
edit: oh and about the topic. wow at people being real judgemental. Do you guys act the same towards more familiar people like a friend doing something wrong?
Im not saying that your right or wrong. But shooting a game down before touching it because it has name x or y hanging onto it is abit... meh. I'm not sure if i will put money on it tho for a diffrent reason. I don't believe in the whole kickstarter/buy your way in to alpha/beta thing.
But i might actually have to do it to show my support for old type MMO's
This post assumes that EQNext is Old School. I don't see anything Old School about it !
As far as Brad McQuaid, He is OK in my books. The problem with Vanguard is that they built the game with the same crap engine as Everquest 2, and that engine always sucked. That and the vision was so big that it ran out of money.
It also assumes that you like what EQNext. I hate everything the game has to offer.
problem imo with vanguard was it looked freaking horible at launch and it was riddled with bugs everywhere. the game wasnt ready to launch yet.
Well said, people go through problem but obviously not the person you quoted, he is perfect.
Say what you want about Brad but if he has sorted out his demons then he is right up there when it comes to mmo thinkers. I'll keep an eye on this and play it by ear, i ain't going to write him off because of passed mistakes.
Yes it was a buggy mess but i stuck with it up to present day, say what you want but the game has some great features. It has some the best dungeons, classes, music, features, crafting and housing in any mmo to date imo.
Like i said before, if Brad has sorted himself out then i'll be the first to invest in his game.