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Sigil Games Online
doobster
Member Posts: 736
Man, these guys will make a very good MMOG for Microsoft. I cant wait.
http://www.sigilgames.com/index.html
Discuss. 
Comments
Why try to explain something about what you like, that will be in the game they are making. Or why you think it might be a good game?
Discuss what, you really should start out by something to discuss, Sigil games is hardly news.
Let me help:
Brad McQuaid believes in 'time invested' type games as such I'll never play another game he has touched ever. Life is just to short.
Has MS ever made a good game? They buy good game companies, then produce crap. As such I'll never play a game MS has touched.
So sigil get's a big "Stay the away" from me.
furthermore, Sigil is making a game just like EQ and Hz. Brad HATES PvP, and has no understanding of game economies. How many EQ and Hz like games can the market support?
If you read the FAQ, the guy is still living in EQ land. His new game will contain everything I've grown to hate about EQ.
-=-=-=-=-
"EQ was once a great game. I wont deny it, but so was Asteroids. And just like Pong, EQ is obsolete by newer game standards."
A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50%
Games and players have a type. What type are you? click here
-=-=-=-=-
Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
I agree. Brad McQuaid screwed EQ up pretty bad in its early days. He told lies and never came through on promises...
They really listen to thier fans, and they take things from popular MMOG's and fix them and combine them all into one Massive Massivly Online Game!!!!!
hehehe
First let's review "listen to their fans", what does this mean? I assume you mean, they make changes to the game based on fans. Since "listening" could mean just simply having a remain account to send mail to that does nightly back-ups of that account to device null;
Changes based on the game. Look up a few posts back posted this article.
http://www.gamemethod.com/archive/214.php This form does a pretty good job of explain how MMORPG companies listen to their customers.
Dev teams come with ideas and make plans, they do not change those plans.
"we often sit in a room and just brainstorm on stuff, and some crazy people came up with the moon concept, which we then tossed around for a while and it turned out many of us thought it was a very cool idea." - Brad (http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3644)
"There was a time a few months back when we were conducting a lot of polls and gathering quite a bit of data, but it's really tapered off (mostly because ... [we] mined the data we were looking for). " - Brad
They may create polls and/or demographic research to determine the games appeal to a wider audience. But they do not make changes solely because some 14 year thought up something he though was a good idea.
Image a company that did try to "listen" to there customers, image what would happen? The game would break and no code could ever be written since it would have be to changed to please one of thousands of users. Companies make money (or they go belly up) they will only make the changes needed for them to keep making money.
Here is Brad explaining the same things.
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3281
Most of what he says sounds pretty good, but ask yourself. Nearly 3 years later, how much of these have been fixed?
Also funny, is note how many people said EQ would die. MMORPG's have allot of inertia and do not fall easily once moving.
Let's review some of my favorite Brad quotes.
"I think weve homogenized the classes too much over the years. Also, I would have liked to see more archetypical group roles defined. In other words, you currently have far fewer roles (tank, healer, mezzer, etc.) than you have classes. This can be problematic, because at the higher end of the game and in large groups, players want the very best class at those roles, and sometimes the more flexible or hybrid classes are deemed less desirable." - Brad July 2001.
"From a design standpoint, pulling is a bit frustrating because its much harder to set up an encounter with multiple NPCs that you desire to fight the player (or group of players) all at once. Pulling allows one to separate groups of NPCs, singling them out, making them easier to kill." - Brad July 2001
Much better to blame the users than make a better AI, good plan!
"heres my opinion anyway: I think youve seen two major types of MMORPGs come out. You have the EQ type, which is a game focused on depth (in this case, depth of combat/adventure). And then you have the UO type, which is a game focused on breadth (in this case, lots of different skills, many not combat related).
Both styles can make great games, and both have been very successful. My prediction is that future MMORPGs attempt to have both the depth and the breadth. In other words, in-depth, detailed advancement mechanisms, but not all focused solely on combat and adventure.
That definitely describes SW:G" - Brad July 2001
Yep that's SWG!
"As for making zones exclusive to the player or group of players assigned to a quest, I also feel that's incompatible with EQ's vision. Despite some problems with camping and criticisms that EQ 'forces' interdependence upon players, I think a shared world has really helped build community and relationships within the game. " - Brad
Notice it wasn't until long after Brad left they implemented these ideas. Brad would have never allowed LDoN to be made.
"please also remember that loot from raid level encounters will almost always be better than loot from less difficult encounters. Keep in mind that it's our desire that EverQuest ultimately appeal to all sorts of gamers, from the most causal all the way to the most "uber"" - Brad
Truely the best way to made a game balanced for all levels of time commitments.
"All in all, when this does happen, it probably (but not always) means that the level range differential in the zone is too great. And in 20/20 game design hindsight, this should typically be avoided - it's generally better that dungeons have a smaller level range differential." - Brad
Brad talks about how bad things are about 20/20 hindsight... but why didn't ever fix any of thise? He knows it's a problem... yet nothing.
"Players systematically seek out the fastest, safest, easiest way of doing anything in game and then post it for everyone who hasn't sought it out to see. More often than not, the fastest, safest, easiest way of doing something is also the most boring, but that doesn't stop people from using it. Sooner or later, more people than not are playing the game in the most boring manner possible." - Brad
Why is it fun is to win all the time? We should do dumb things so we can die more and have fun.
I'm sure I'll find more over the next week, truly allot of material to look over.
Those are old quotes, Brad has seen the light you say? Let's see....
----
"I think you'll see an effort to minimize needless downtime and tedious gameplay, yet still build a game that's based on time invested (as opposed to a twitch game or some new 'cutting edge' idea)."
Brad McQuaid
Original Producer and Co-Designer of EverQuest
President and CEO of Sigil Games, Inc.
In short, Brad believes what is important is "time invested" not gameplay. Pushing buttons (twitch) = bad, doing nothing = good.
"I think MMOGs are going to improve iteratively, and that's a good thing -- too many changes, too quickly, in a new genre can be dangerous, especially considering what it takes to build one of these games ... I know other MMOG developers disagree and feel we need paradigm shifts every few years (and perhaps want to be credited for these leaps). But look where it's gotten us ... we have 30 million dollar flops that hurt us ALL, making it harder for even experienced developers to get the funding they need, and incredibly tough on the newer developer. It's just too early to experiment in major ways ... let's get a few more hits out first and prove this genre as viable long term, ok?"
Brad McQuaid
Original Producer and Co-Designer of EverQuest
President and CEO of Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Let me translate this:
"I think MMOG's can improve. But if you make changes to games before I can make a competitive product, that wouldn't be fair to me, I probably won't make much money. What's important is I make money, Not the players of games. So just keeping coping the same old idea's, do not make anything new or innovative... ok?"
Brad does deserve some credit for making MMORPG's a well known formate. But let's put this guy out to pasture before he ends up embarrassing us all.
Resources:
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3644
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3657
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3669
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3689
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=2940
http://eq.crgaming.com/viewarticle.asp?Article=3807
http://www.gamespy.com/amdmmog/week8/index5.shtml
-=-=-=-=-
"EQ was once a great game. I wont deny it, but so was Asteroids. And just like Pong, EQ is obsolete by newer game standards."
A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50%
Games and players have a type. What type are you? click here
-=-=-=-=-
Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
I really agree with Clever_Clove, this gang of developers isn't in because they like making a game and want a perfect game being released, these guys is only in the business because they want loads of money. Clever_Clove, I would advice you to check on this game: www.trialsofascension.com
You and many other, should like it, it stuns me and we have a really nice community!