f13.net

Ouch. Server merges with houses in a persistent public space. I can't imagine how they'd resolve those overlaps.

Condos? 

Condos? 

AA merged servers pretty fast too. Vanguard still may be the quickest, though. Would have to do some Googling to know for sure.

I think Planetside might have beaten all of them - though for different reasons. PS found they needed more ppl per server than they originally thought in order to keep the action going.

Servers


There will be 2 US PVE, 1 EU PVE, and 1 US PVP server.
Thunderaxe, Woefeather, and Gulgrethor would merge into server A PVE
Targonor, Hilsbury, Flamehammer and Shidreth would merge into sever B PVE
Tharridon, Varking, and Frengrot would merge into sever C PVP FFA
Gelenia and Infineum would merge into server D EU PVE
For Florendyl we will be soliciting feedback via a poll and discussion as to whether or not the players think it should be merged.
We are open to considering the option of leaving it up with the understanding that the population is way under what it needs to be to be healthy but we wouldn't recommend it.
 

All existing servers will go away and everyone will be moved to new servers.
We will post a poll so you can vote on the new server names.
PVP players will be able to move to PVP OR PVE servers.
PVE players will only be able to move to PVE servers.
PVP rule set will be FFA.
Each character will get one free server move after the merge.

 
Character Naming


Characters name priority is based on
First created, if also played within the last 30 days
Last Played
Those characters that have name collisions will be marked, and upon next login will have to choose a new name before that character can log in.
 
Housing


The price for the player's plot is refunded to the player in coin.
The resources used to generate the house are refunded to the player via the housing resource escrow.
The current upkeep balance will be refunded to the character
Fixtures and items in the house will be placed in the escrow.
 
Boats


Boats will be marked as needing to be named.
 
VGPlayers issues


We are still working out the specifics on this.
 
Corpses left in the world


All corpses will go away.
Any items left on corpses will go to your escrow account.
Exp on the corpse will be returned to you.
 
Mail


Any pending mail will be returned to sender.
 
Friends list


We are still working out the specifics on this.
 
Guild names


We are still working out the specifics on this.
 
Market items


Items in the market will be returned via mail.

The housing thing is pretty interesting, it basically means there is going to be a land rush to get the plots when the new servers come up...

Ouch. Server merges with houses in a persistent public space. I can't imagine how they'd resolve those overlaps.

Well, at least they're giving stuff back. I like the way they're handling the corpse issue especially with the XP. Someone keep us updated on how the actual merges end up. It's all nice and pretty in writing, but it may flop hard when it comes down to implementation.

Reminds me of Horizons.

I'm still ::gulp:: playing VG, =

Is that like playing L2 "where the hardcore sons of emo bitches play"?

The first clue I had that something was wrong was that nobody was working. Everyone was standing around talking. It seems that all the Maya and Max dongles were missing, so none of the artists could work. Someone had come in over the weekend and taken them all. The internet connection was also down, along with the email server. No one from IT could be found, which wasn’t entirely unheard of since IT support at Yosemite Entertainment was typically pretty bad, but not being able to find any of them when all the important servers where down was strange.
...
He was down from corporate, but not directly in the chain of command. He pretty much cut to the chase and said that they were closing the studio and that some of the people in the meeting would now go upstairs for a separate meeting

Bill something or other was laid off two weeks later when XXXXX corporate decided they didn’t need that much middle management now that there was nobody left to manage.

Admittedly, I only read part 1, but this doesn't seem comparable at all to the Vanguard situation. Assuming we accept that sometimes you have to shut down a whole studio, didn't they do it about as well as possible? They got the news out quickly and they offered good severance and relocation packages. It sucks to have someone stand in front of a whole studio and read out a list of names, but when it's a large group, I can't think how else to do it better -- I'm sure most people would rather know right away than, say, sit at home waiting for a phone call or letter. What do you think? Was management particularly insensitive given the job that had to be done?

Mass layoffs are never easy to do, but perhaps it could be better handled than reading names out on a list of people who get to stay.

It is difficult to get the proper information to a bunch of people fast enough that speculation and worry doesn't devolve the situation into a worse nightmare.  I don't think there is a non-sucky way to do a mass lay-off.

Last Lay-off I was a part of they pulled us all in for the mass-meeting, told us when and why we'd be shutting down, and that they'd be having short one-on-one meetings to go over our severance packages etc throughout the day and that after the meetings we'd be free to leave for the day if we felt we needed to.  It was the President of the Division having this conversation with us, not some moke in from main-office corporate.

 The one-on-ones were had with the Division President and our immediate supervisor and lasted from 10-25 minutes each.  Pre-arranged relocation offers were made in those meetings if they were made at all.   We were also given written recommendations and explanations of why we were seeking a job, signed by our Supervisor and the DP with their contact information.  Company fax/ copiers were made available to us for resumes as well as pointing us at several places within the company that needed our skills if we were willing to relocate there.

It still sucked pretty hard, but it was professional and well-ordered. If I had to go through it again, I'd rather it went that way.

It still sucked pretty hard, but it was professional and well-ordered. If I had to go through it again, I'd rather it went that way.

Well, I played VG since launch and took a two month break after burning out from two intense months of play. I've recently resubbed and personally the population problems don't affect me, I have a solid guild on Gelenia (which is the biggest server) and play with friends mostly.

The latest patch (1849) has really improved performance and crashes for most people so it's going the right direction.

Huh?

From the official boards, the server merger is about two weeks away. They have even decided to merge Florendyl, the RP server, after peak activity has fallen to 400-450 players, down about 30% in the last month, according to the dev. If that 400-450 is average activity across all 13 servers, then the game is probably hovering around the 50k subscriber level.

Generally the decent stuff is 10-20% off though :)

...
Like the odd copy of Auto Assault I still see on shelves.

They kept MXO with less...

They kept MXO with less...

This is interesting. Apparently SOE is targetting Vanguard subs who used to be EQ2 subs and offering them free EQ2 until September.

While this is great for EQ2, I can't come up with any way in which this is good for Vanguard.

I thought that had been established: more development team, maybe more players. I doubt that they expect some huge boost to EQ2 from whoever they get from VG though.

Don't forget to pick up a time card (http://cgi.ebay.com/Auto-Assault-Game-Time-Card-60-Days-NEW-PC_W0QQitemZ300130388251QQihZ020QQcategoryZ62053QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem)

If they are going to terminate it this soon why would they have bought it from Sigil?

They probably bought it for seven bucks worth of quarters and a six-pack of beer, and don't give a shit.

I wonder if things like some of VG's art assets might not be transferrable over to EQ2 (models, skins, etc).

They'd have to be transferable - the issue is just how much work it'd take, which would vary depending upon individual tools used and whatnot.  Given the huge mass of art assets in Vanguard, I'd have to guess that the cost/benefit of putting some Vanguard and EQ2 programmers/artists together in a room for a month or two to write conversion tools is far better than what it would cost to churn out new, original art.

The bit about the next EQ2 expansion having some "Vanguard-like" features (large, open terrain) sure sounds like the writing on the wall to me.  I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of that expansion coincides with announcements about Vanguard's fate.

Well, I've done some limited work with modeling inside user made content for mostly FPS games (Quake maps, etc...) and based on my very limited understanding of it, it works like this: You create the models and textures in universal tools like photoshop, 3D studio max, Maya, etc... and then you import those using whatever tools the engine developers gave you. The vast majority of the work is in photoshop, 3D studio max, etc... so if got copies of all Vanguards Art Assets still in their raw form as part of the deal, I see no reason why SOE couldn't just pop them right into their engine. That of course is assuming EQ2 isn't upgrading its engine with the next expansion. If you hear any announcements about EQ2 getting the Unreal 3 engine you'll know for a fact what's going on.

I personally would think that would be awsome. I just don't see how Vanguard could be saved. But if EQ2 gets a new engine, based loosely on Vanguards... and a sudden infusion of totally new content... wow... that would be a great game.

This game has been targeted for termination.

In theory, you are correct. However, other than raw geometry and textures, the animations, rigging, and in many cases engine specific "node information" within those raw models may be entirely different. The spectrum can go all the way from "drop in and play" to "better to just start over" for models, depending on engine differences. It's almost certain that unless both engines picked the same general node structure and rigging expectations, it is more work than just dropping them into EQ2's engine.

Come on... don't ruin my conspiracy theory!

The problem is that the VG mob models aren't all that great, at least what I saw for the 18 levels I played.

Uhm. What? The EQ2 models look a little like clay, but when they first came out they sure as hell beat anything else that was on the market.

Uhm. What? The EQ2 models look a little like clay, but when they first came out they sure as hell beat anything else that was on the market.

And early EQ was easy? Did you not wipe fifteen times while breaking into hate in Crafted armor? Or was that just because we sucked so badly that we had no idea what we were doing.


Later EQ was much, much easier than the earlier versions. I remember when people thought Bronze or Banded Armor and Fine Steel Longswords were something to be had.

I said, IMO it wasnt hard. There are things in L2 and FFXI that i consider hard, as in, even if you have a static, you still need to get lucky. EQ was a very relaxed game, there was nothing that stopped you from going ahead. I also, played in a static in EQ (3 man) so yeah, that was a huge help (and in FFXI i never had a static). I loved EQ.

Frankly, Diablo 2 has better spell animations then EQ2, sure the animations dont scale to the mob like EQ2 but EQ2 should not have such piss poor spell animations. FFXI has been out for 5+ years and the blm spells put EQ2 spells to complete shame. EQ2 has always had piss poor art. Vanguard imo has better char models then EQ2 so if they started using SoH character models, imo thats an upgrade.

Whatever a static is, I want one.

a static is a set party. (eh, idk if that was a joke or not lol)

Merging 13 servers into 4... that's a sure sign of success.  AMIRITE?

"Please note that all existing servers will be removed from the game and all characters will be moved onto one of the new servers."

I wonder. Is that simply a PR move to avoid anyone feeling there was favouritism towards a particular server, or are they being moved to lesser hardware as well as being merged? If you're going to free up 9 servers of a type and repurpose them, it might make sense to free up all 13 at once.

"Please note that all existing servers will be removed from the game and all characters will be moved onto one of the new servers."

I wonder. Is that simply a PR move to avoid anyone feeling there was favouritism towards a particular server, or are they being moved to lesser hardware as well as being merged? If you're going to free up 9 servers of a type and repurpose them, it might make sense to free up all 13 at once.

Honestly, I'd suggest the opposite: it would be more cost effective to move them to better hardware, so if hell freezes over and subscriptions increase, you can ride out the profit for as long as possible without a hardware change.

That's an interesting point. Are MMOs really moving into virtualization? I could see it being useful for load balancing and fault tolerance, but as far as I've seen, everybody uses tons of little dell PE1950 1U linux boxes for the app/world servers with distributed db backends on higher-end but still cheap linux clusters segmented for persistence and billing. And they don't really care about fault tolerance for anything but billing.

I bet the sky outside was still blue as well.

In very high performance tight tolerance applications like MMO clusters and database servers, VMs generally aren't a good choice except as a development environment.

I have to ask, why does anyone still play Vanguard?  Why did anyone ever play it?

Yeah, yeah, I'm that fucking crazy guy who still plays UO, but come on.  At least UO does some things which, for better or worse, all the other games aren't too interested in doing.  But there are a million games out there that are just like Vanguard, only better.  If you want to group up with a tank, and a nuker, and a healer, and a crowd control guy, and go farm some mobs to level up, why aren't you doing it in WoW?  Or EQ2?  Or EQ1, or DAoC, or anything that isn't fucking Vanguard?

You could write a book on internet tribalism in MMOs.

Let's put it this way: Something not worth reading is definitely not worth writing.

Let's put it this way: Something not worth reading is definitely not worth writing.

Certainly true but where would the intraweb be if people paid attention to that?

I don't know. I'd read a research paper on how people who will readily get drinks at a bar with people they don't know or get a facial massage from someone who might be a face stabbing serial killer won't spend an iota of time in a game with a non guild member. I dig that sort of internet social construct stuff though.

I don't know. I'd read a research paper on how people who will readily get drinks at a bar with people they don't know or get a facial massage from someone who might be a face stabbing serial killer won't spend an iota of time in a game with a non guild member. I dig that sort of internet social construct stuff though.

Let's put it this way: Something not worth reading is definitely not worth writing.

I have to ask, why does anyone still play Vanguard?  Why did anyone ever play it?

WoW's leveling period is one of the best games, not just MMOs but games, ever made. You're exploring, and questing, and constantly leveling and improving your character, and it's all incredibly seamless and polished. The endgame is pedestrian, so skip it.

Can't someone get shiz a trial or something.

Can't someone get shiz a trial or something.

I only play MMOGs. Single player games don't do it for me anymore, or at least they stopped doing it for me some years ago and I haven't been tempted back by anything seriously since (HL2, Railroad Tycoon 2, Civ4 were the last.) I just like the social aura of the games even if I branch away from my MMOG internet family.

Except WoW. I don't know why but I have zero interest in it. Strange.

I only play MMOGs.

Except WoW.

community respect (popularity contests)

So you're against time /played because it's "too addictive and time consuming" but you're for popularity contests... that require even more time and personal investment than the /played mechanic.  You've got a bit of a disconnect there, sam.

I prefer the mentoring systems.

I would find it hard to split XP with people not there helping me.  Basically the person still online is handicapping themselves and getting no reward.  At least in a mentoring system everyone benefits from grouping (faster kills, higher level mobs, better loot, working off debt, playing with buddies).  Brotherhoods seem to provide none of these benefits, although it would be a nice way for max level characters to level up their buddies on the home stretch.  A brotherhood would also be good if you had a regular play group - then if you missed a session here or there you would lose group effectiveness.

So, in other Vanguard news, Brotherhoods (formerly know as Fellowships) have been enabled on the live servers, and from what I've heard so far, the sky is not falling. ;-)   For those who don't know what it is:  Brotherhoods let you form a "permanent" group of up to 6 players who share all experience gains (except those used to repay debt generated by dying) evenly between all members, even while offline.  There's also a level restriction which (basically) makes it so that all members need to be within 5 levels of each other, and a leave/rejoin timer of 4 hours played time, to keep people from creating and disbanding them all the time.

Disclaimer: I was a big fan of this system back I was at Sigil, and I coded the initial implementation back in Dec '06. 

I thought I'd ask if anyone had any thoughts on this, and how it compares with mentor/sidekick systems or other systems designed to allow players who are RL friends play together despite different amounts of playtime, or systems that allow a group to keep someone who needs to go away for a little bit caught up with everyone else. 

I'm sure I haven't thought of every possible system, but I think it fills a role no other system I've seen does, and I'd like to see it show up in other games, in the future.

Personal investment perhaps, time no. You want players to be invested in your game. That's never a bad thing.

Popularity could be something as simple as easily finding a group, or how many people added you as their friend, or highly rated your kurt cobain tribute poem, or saved that awkwardly angled cameraphone photo of your tits. It's the ideal advancement mechanism for social networking myspace/facebook type MUSHes.

As to 'brotherhoods' or whatever, yeah it's an easy way to level-up alts or to leech xp off your hardcore friends.  It's also a fantastic way to create multiple accounts for resale at once.  Whoops.

I thought I'd ask if anyone had any thoughts on this, and how it compares with mentor/sidekick systems or other systems designed to allow players who are RL friends play together despite different amounts of playtime, or systems that allow a group to keep someone who needs to go away for a little bit caught up with everyone else.

Who does this benefit? Many people in group-centric games already have dedicated groups they play these games with, probably even more so in VG given the tightness of the community. As such, they're already either coordinating their activities as a mini-economy unto themselves or off hunting and leveling together. It's a good way to ensure someone away for a week doesn't get ditched, but social groups have long adapted to that too.

As you note, it does help for classes that can't solo as well. But then, chances are someone playing that class is already grouping often anyway because they realized the issues of soloing or chose the class specifically because they don't plan to solo it.

I also don't think it relates to mentoring/sidekicking much. Those are designed to erase the penalties of disparate time investment amongst more casually-linked friends at that moment  The above system rewards the type of personalities that wouldn't gain much benefit from mentoring/sidekicking because of their playstyle, and it doesn't benefit the casual dabbler anywhere near as much as sidekicking does..

To me, Brotherhoods could be improved if they emulated more closely AC1's experience-sharing Allegiances system, or straight-up sidekicking ala CoX (which is both ways) or EQ2 (which only does leveling-down).

Without a brotherhood-like system, they are forced to either adapt, advancing no faster than the slowest / least playtime member, or break up once the level difference becomes too large.

There's also a subtle point in that those stronger links are not necessarily "hardcore" players.

Iirc, upper-level players would donate some of their XP to people who've declared allegiance to them.

Well then say you're talking about attention whoring and My Space and whatever Raph's latest project that's "Not for YOU GUYS" is, not MMOs. 

Ok, that brings me back, thanks. Think I last thought about AC1 when I left seven years ago :)

So the benefits to the serfs was the usual twinkage and money then right?

Edit to add, AC1 had a good low-mid level mentoring system before the phrase was even invented.

AC1 did a lot of things well before the industry collectively got to understand what those things were.  A fair number of them were done well unintentionally.  I can only imagine that when the industry finally decides to break out of the Diku box and is looking for new things to try, AC1 is going to get heavily mined for ideas at last.  Then again, I though that five years ago too, so perhaps not so much.

You missed my joke. Sorry, I can't embed green in a quote :/

The Vanguard development team is relocating its offices to SOE's San Diego campus effective Monday, October 15, 2007. As part of the integration into the SOE family, the developers will benefit from having access to shared resources and the combined experience of SOE's other game development teams. As a result, not every Carlsbad employee has been invited to stay with the development team.

Under the new leadership of Thom Terrazas, an eight-year SOE veteran, SOE will continue its commitment to Vanguard and its players. The remaining Vanguard team members are going to continue to deliver on an exceptional product. They are a creative force in the online games space and we look forward to continuing the vision for Vanguard and to continue to deliver groundbreaking game play. SOE remains committed to seeing Vanguard grow and prosper.

I guess  "not every....invited to say" is a euphimism for 'laid off'.

This thread should have died long ago. Which is a euphemism for nothing at all.

A plague of gold sellers strangely, possibly because they're desperate to offload all the duped gold that is distorting the in-game economy.

The new patch has noticeably improved performance, but not without introducing a number of exciting new bugs. It does make it clear that the original engine was so demanding mostly because of poor implementation / testing.

They've started doing some nerfing / balancing for the raid game, which may lose them some subscribers if they are not extremely careful. The vast majority of people are casual raiders at best, and aren't interested in being nerfed to improve someone elses fun. There's still no actual raid content though... that comes later.

And at this point anyone who believes Vanguard is not headed for a spot next to Matrix-Online in the mothball cupboard is rather hopelessly optimistic.

The new patch has noticeably improved performance, but not without introducing a number of exciting new bugs. It does make it clear that the original engine was so demanding mostly because of poor implementation / testing.

A plague of gold sellers strangely, possibly because they're desperate to offload all the duped gold that is distorting the in-game economy.

The new patch has noticeably improved performance, but not without introducing a number of exciting new bugs. It does make it clear that the original engine was so demanding mostly because of poor implementation / testing.

They've started doing some nerfing / balancing for the raid game, which may lose them some subscribers if they are not extremely careful. The vast majority of people are casual raiders at best, and aren't interested in being nerfed to improve someone elses fun. There's still no actual raid content though... that comes later.

And at this point anyone who believes Vanguard is not headed for a spot next to Matrix-Online in the mothball cupboard is rather hopelessly optimistic.

Its been about 2 weeks since I could resub to wow but have not.

From the Vanguard forums:


I guess  "not every Carlsbad employee has been invited to stay" is a new euphimism for 'laid off'.

They've started doing some nerfing / balancing for the raid game...There's still no actual raid content though... that comes later.

Jerrith, Faelor says hey (the vanguardranger.com guy)

You guys know who Thom Terrazas is right?


Hes the last lead Dev for Planetside. He is quite an active (at least in PS) dev, as well as most of the more recent burst of development was him.

Hi Faelor. :)

I haven't talked to anyone still there about it, but it sounds like this change makes sense.  While not close, the main SOE offices aren't that far away, and keeping a big office (remember, Sigil was 100+ pre-release) open for a small number of people (I heard it was ~37 before this change, ~23 after), isn't really reasonable. 

Still, it's disappointing to hear the office I spent so much time in is now closed. :(

Heh, Thom Terrazas.. He started as a CS person in the first gasps of breath for the original Everquest (and someplace I might still have the email I got from him about a CS issue).

Him being a lead dev for Planetside wasn't what I considered a promising development, excepting his background in having reasonable CS skills. Leading the Vanguard team? I'm not impressed. Then again Smed (EQ1's CS lead) is leading the whole of SOE now, and we all can see the obvious benefits of that.

Vanguard Producer’s Letter

Let Yourself Free and Make This Game Great!

These are pretty exciting times for Vanguard right now. The team is currently putting the finishing touches on Phase 2 and 3 of Update 3 after having launched an astounding performance update in Phase 1. We received a lot of great feedback from you on Phase 1, and we're going to continue our focus in delivering consistently high quality, engaging and in-demand content in each update.

I'd like to introduce myself to many of you that do not know me. My name is Thom Terrazas, Producer for Vanguard. In a few words, I've been with Sony Online Entertainment over 9 years (unofficially). During that time, I have and still do work, with some of the greatest people in the MMO world of whom I intend to solicit feedback from and use to my advantage. One of the best things that I have learned in this industry is to work closely with your team, while at the same time allow them to do their jobs and show off their talents – and we have some amazingly passionate and talented developers working on Vanguard. I give them a lot of credit for launching an MMO of this caliber, and you'll continue to see their talents shining through in our future updates.

The Team's Current Focus

In the past few weeks, the team has been examining all of the fundamental game mechanics and discussing what we think it is fun to play and what is not. The great thing is we are not holding anything back – everything is fair game!. So something that may have been perceived as off limits in the past, is now an open for debate and is able to be measured on the fun-factor-scale. At the end of the day, we all want to say we created a great game that is fun to play – and of course, we want you to be the measuring stick of whether or not and to what extent we meet that goal. Without you, we wouldn't be here.

One of our current priority tasks is setting the Vision for Vanguard. We've come up with dozens upon dozens of elements that we believe will factor into determining the future path of Vanguard but it will take a few more weeks of fine tuning within our internal departments before we distill it down to the vision and have an agreed on list of critical success factors by which to measure all new development against. I'm not able to share the details at the moment but what I can say is that the desired end result of this exercise is to ensure that we produce high-quality game content and features that first and foremost fun to play.


Areas that we're going to make changes to

Optimizations; stability; optimizations; stability; optimizations; stability. I may be wrong but I think I see a pattern here. J Hey let's face it, Vanguard had some performance issues but we've made huge leaps since launch. If you've played since beta, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you had problems at launch and you haven't been back recently, you've got to give Vanguard another try. See for yourself how much has improved.


This bone is connected to that bone…Well, not any more!

Future optimization work you'll be seeing from us is focused on enhancing and optimizing our Player Character models. If you have a weak stomach, you may want to look away for a minute if you are closely attached to your character. (just kidding J ) Seriously though, we're going through our first phase of character model improvements that will eliminate unnecessary bones. What does this mean for you? This means that your computer will not have to work as hard to render each character which means faster performance all around.


We're bringing sexy back…

After phase one is complete, we'll be moving onto phase two where we'll be increasing the visual quality of our character models. Not only will we be delivering you a character that is more appealing to the eye, but we'll also be delivering a model that utilizes less resources and is easier on your computer. Again, win-win for everyone! A brief update on this is that we're almost complete on our visual improvements with human characters and we'll be moving onto adjustments to animations and to the different body types.

Grouping! Traveling! "Dude, where's my car mount?"

Holy smokes ~ the world of Telon is huge! And we recognize this. There are some fundamental challenges with a world of this size. It's difficult to meet up with other players on opposite sides of the world (especially if you haven't been there before); there are large areas between points of interest; the Riftway system doesn't display where and how you can use it ahead of time and you have to have a mount fairly early in order to explore and travel, etc… If you and your buddy log in to play together and you find yourselves spending more time trying to connect with each other than actually playing, there is something missing. It should be easy to group up in Vanguard. We know there are problems and we're discussing how to fix them right now. (Details coming soon!)


Feel rewarded

We're looking into the loot drop percentages and realize we've been a little cheap when it comes to loot rewards. We're going to tune this upward particularly at the lower levels and examine the mid and higher levels as well. At the end of your play session, we want you to feel like you accomplished something and were rewarded for the time you invested while playing.


Feel accomplished

Whether you log in and play for 30 minutes or for 3 hours, you should see and feel that you advanced your character. Now don't get me wrong. We don't want to create an "easy button" when it comes to leveling up but we definitely need to expedite the experience gain cycle to increase fun factor. We've made some steps already by adding Rest Experience and the ability to share experience within your Brotherhood, so we'll keep those in mind when discussing the percentage increase that we should take it up to in the near future.


Tactics

Vanguard doesn't have enough tactics. We want to make changes in our combat tactics and one tactic or ability that comes to mind is Stun. Stunning an NPC while they are in the middle of casting a spell needs to be available during battle. This is an essential part of warfare tactics and we're going to fix items similar to this.


Death Penalties, do we need them to be so severe?

We're talking about this now and we think that there are enough penalties to dieing that we don't need to sock it to you with a loss of experience. I know there may be some purists or hard-core gamers out there that may disagree, but we think that we can offset the experience loss with item degradation combined with the hurdles of traveling back to the location where you died.


What else is coming?

In no particular order, here are a number of topics we are evaluating for change and improvement:

    * Additional player housing
    * Improved map; map icons that distinctly show points of interest
    * City and Dungeon maps
    * Readily available information showing you where you can adventure at your level
    * Factions in towns
    * Consistency - Streamlining hand off quests that lead you in the proper direction for character progression
    * Changing some buff spells to group based
    * Combat Visual Timing – Improve the timing on combat responsiveness (when you click on an ability, the action performed is in sync)
    * Player power curve versus NPC power curve
    * The ease of obtaining bags (especially at lower levels)
    * Additional high-end content – Raid and Non-Raid content
    * Increasing the Quest Journal size – Also adding organizational tabs to distinguish Adventuring quests from Diplomacy and Crafting quests
    * Regional banks – remove them!
    * UI improvements
    * Alternate form of currency – Special "coins" to redeem at certain Vendors for obtaining items such as adventuring, diplomacy cards, titles, potions, etc.
    * Alternate advancement or specialization for your character


How do you get a say in all of this?

I think I've exposed many topics that we'll be working on in the near future. I hope that you will find some of these issues at the top of your list of desired changes as well. However, if they are not at the top of your list, please feel free to post your comments regarding this newsletter in the discussion thread on our Vanguard forums.

Also, we're going to be posting more frequently on the forums to keep you informed and to answer questions that are on topic with our development focus. We understand that you have valuable feedback and when you do not hear a response back on a topic, it can be very frustrating. We're responsible for keeping you informed and we'll make changes in that area.

If I was in charge….

As an added bonus to you, we will be opening up a new Forum that is dedicated to you as a player and as our future developer. Essentially, we want to know what you would do with Vanguard if you were in the driver seat. It will be really cool for us to see the ideas and changes that you would make to the game if given the opportunity. So stay tuned to a Vanguard Forum near you!

As always, thank you for your continued support. We look forward to providing you with our continuing commitment to making this game great!

Sincerely,

Thom Terrazas
-Vanguard Team

Thanks for the link, I had forgotten about Silkyvenom.  The Vanguard forum there has gone positively sane, what with reality having crashed home and everything.

Just a quick question:

Has any of the verifiable train wreaks *ever* attracted new players above their launch numbers? Meaning; once a shitbox of a game is verified to be a shitbox of a game and all but the most diehard of fanbois have left, has an MMO ever been able to re attract pre-shitbox numbers? Further, have any actually grown?

MMOGData.com has picked up where MMOGchart.com left off.

MMOGData.com has picked up where MMOGchart.com left off.

This line should generate some fun conversation. 

MMOGData.com has picked up where MMOGchart.com left off.

Quality often causes popularity though.

Quality often causes popularity though.

Infinite plausibility of the "often" clause beside, I'm just not nearly as confident that quality has nearly as much correlation with popularity as logic dictates it should.  There's just too many examples to the contrary.

All VG these days .. is stange, I don't know where they  heading.

If you look at "news" at VanguardSOH.com, you really must laugh, what sort of news/ propaganda is that. I have not played it for months, but certainly I would be more interested in game development, rather then screenshots contests(http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/newsArchive.vm?id=144&section=News), or "new" team management and bug teams (that article is a laugh http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/newsArchive.vm?id=142&section=News) or interviews with players about their characters (http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/newsArchive.vm?id=143&section=News, very exciting).

Looks to me they are deciding what to do next with this "healthy game" , as one manager said, and feed peple with this childly bullshit.

I am 100% sure that Vanguard is indeed still really really shitty shitty shit shit.

People are paying for it. Someone therefore thinks they're doing something right. That it's survived and is generating some amount of revenue is a shocker of course, but there it is.

I don't understand them sometimes. They actually think all of the stuff in this game is actually awesome.

Is someone able to explain this shitpile to me? Oooo, healers can also do damage, big deal.

People are paying for it. Someone therefore thinks they're doing something right. That it's survived and is generating some amount of revenue is a shocker of course, but there it is.

Vanguard boxes are back on the shelves at full price in my local EB. Earlier this year, they were trying to flog them off at half-price.


It's high fantasy (AD&D nerdity as opposed to WoW's pulp fiction), with an ambitious attempt at "next generation" systems. You don't just talk to quest NPCs, you manipulate their reactions in a subgame. You don't just do special moves, you do combos that can lead to other combos. You don't just craft, you chop down trees, work the wood, make the glue, and your chair assembly fails. The chair was for the house you crafted on the land you bought on the island you sailed to in your crafted boat.

The art director died IRL.

Then somehow it became a game.

Actually, he was tolerated for all of the above until he admitted to screwing his dog. Or wanting to. Or something.

Brad McQuaid vs SirBruce on the Vanguard beta boards was highly entertaining, though.

That is the real tragedy of Vanguard - the final work of Keith Parkinson (who did so much  :awesome_for_real: fantasy art in his lifetime) is such a crappy, soulless game full of bad art. It'd be like a good actor having his last film be "Streetfighter" or something. No, hang on....

I was doing QA on Vanguard (BACK VAMPIRES!)

YOU WERE THE ONE!

Or did they ramp up? Was your nickname Neo? What was the gimp mask like? Did they feed you every time you found a bug?

I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

It was a temp assignment with Microsoft Game Studios, before the SOE deal.  So you all probably know more of the gossip than I do.

I will say that it was fun to work on a MMOG, and I wouldn't mind doing it again someday.  :awesome_for_real:

Is it normal at Microsoft to only have 1 QA tester on a game?

OK, here's the story I heard, from someone still working at SOE SD. I'll start from a couple of years ago.

Kelly Flock spins off redeye/verant basically to give Smedley an object lesson-- surrounding yourself with talentless friends leads to ruin. Brad McQuaid was, and is, one of Smedley's talentless friends. Smedley is a stand-up guy. He'll always protect his friends... especially when he thinks they're directly responsible for making him a millionaire! Verant, the company, was just enough rope for Smed to hang himself. Kelly Flock assumed Verant would fail and Smed would learn his lesson. It didn't.

Brad McQuaid got lucky.

Prior to 1996, he had developed a shareware RPG in his spare time, and he played the hell out of a popular DIKUmud set in D&D's Forgotten Realms called Sojourn. In 1996, he was in the right place at the right time, and seized the oppurtunity to create a graphical version of his favorite MUD. After years of work with a huge team, with a huge budget, with a huge fanfare, Everquest was released in 1998. It made a gazillion dollars and is still raking in the cash hand over fist this very day.

Things weren't coming up roses at 989/redeye/verant. Brad himself had basically done no work whatsoever since Everquest's release, and many (including Kelly Flock) think he didn't do anything *before* its release. Brad thought of himself as infallible, and Everquest's incredible success, his millions, and his ferrari were all proof of his greatness. Being crowned a "Game @#%$" by PC Gamer didn't help either. His self-aggrandizement cannibalized Verant's customer relations for its entire existance. He insisted on being the sole point of contact with the public to promote his own name, and he did a miserable job.

Just this past week, he released Luclin screenshots without authorization and got incredibly defensive when SOE PR got upset. He sent out an email with a smarmy "I've been doing this for years, and the fact is that the screenshots were fine, people just hate change." His first hire for player relations, Gordon Wrinn, was, unbelievably enough, worse.

But people don't, as a rule, get fired from Verant. They quit. Like the lead graphics programmer, who quit a week after Everquest shipped. And his replacement, Brian Hook, who quit in disgust mere months after being hired. Then another EQ programmer left. And another. Then many others asked to be moved off the team.

(edit: as of today, SOE is beginning a round of layoffs. SOE is losing money. This is probably due more to the advertising crash than the pushed-back release dates, though.)

Smedley thinks everybody's happy because Verant had a low turnover. Even though everybody there is miserable, even the staff artists are making $125k/year and can't find a better job elsewhere.

Some were "promoted" off the team. Like Brad McQuaid. He was moved because they were "borderline ready to revolt". They "hated Brad so much they wanted to puke and constantly bitched about him." Now the EQ Live team is "busy hating Jeff Butler with a passion". Butler is a "major Brad lackey". The factions are split "more like 90:10 on the hate Brad/Jeff vs. like Brad/Jeff side. It was BAD." He is "so hated at Verant that out of a team of 60 people less than 10 would go with him. Probably closer to 5."

Note the quotemarks.

So anyway, Everquest made money like crazy, and Flock admitted his mistake. SOE bought out Verant for a tidy sum and Flock accepted Brad because he thought he was "part of the magic". Today he admitted his mistake. Sony Pictures (SOE's parent company) looked at the balance sheet, and Brad's salary, and the fact that titles kept getting pushed back. They essentially accused Smedley and Brad of lying to them about Verant's condition before the purchase, mainly the ship dates for Sovereign, EQ2, SWG, and Planetside. None of these games will ship before 2003, mostly through gross mismanagement.

Sovereign, for example, is Smed's baby. Smedley is Executive Producer on the project, and the producer is his lackey. The producer has absolutely no experience whatsoever in management. He's a former QA tester, 22 years old. The lead programmer is talented but anal and non-decisive. They already sacked the former lead programmer and two designers. The problem is really Smed, but he'll never admit it.

Anyway, Sony Pictures @#%$ itself, and Kelly Flock, who never liked Brad, feels the heat. In the meeting yesterday, Kelly says "Okay guys, this is @#%$, what the @#%$ are you doing?!" Brad and Smed get flustered, some words are thrown around, accusations are made of Brad being a no-talent weenie, and Brad decides on the spot to leave.

When SOE bought Verant, they gave both Smed and Brad three year contracts. Sony Pictures and Kelly Flock were *so* incensed at the cluster!$!% that is Verant that they basically said "@#%$ it guys, you wanna leave, fine, we need to clean up this mess and you're not going to be much help."

Verant as an entity, much like Origin, no longer exists. It's been disassembled and absorbed into Sony Online Entertainment.

The EQ live and EQ2 teams are in shock. Nobody knew that Brad was going to leave. They heard about it the same time you did.

And that's it.

Verant, the company, was just enough rope for Smed to hang himself. Kelly Flock assumed Verant would fail and Smed would learn his lesson. It didn't.

Even though everybody there is miserable, even the staff artists are making $125k/year and can't find a better job elsewhere.

Some were "promoted" off the team. Like Brad McQuaid. He was moved because they were "borderline ready to revolt". They "hated Brad so much they wanted to puke and constantly bitched about him." Now the EQ Live team is "busy hating Jeff Butler with a passion". Butler is a "major Brad lackey". The factions are split "more like 90:10 on the hate Brad/Jeff vs. like Brad/Jeff side. It was BAD." He is "so hated at Verant that out of a team of 60 people less than 10 would go with him. Probably closer to 5."

Everquest was released in 1998.

anyone remember what "Brads" version of EQ1 looked like? It was the worst UI I had ever seen:


(http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/images/everquest_nr.jpg)

anyone remember what "Brads" version of EQ1 looked like? It was the worst UI I had ever seen:


(http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/images/everquest_nr.jpg)

Brad just ripped the UI from Bard's Tale and gameplay from SojournMUD.  The only thing "origonal" about this brain child was the fact it was all 3D.

Of course, it was surprising the number of people who played for literally years without knowing about the fullscreen option...

I'm glad Schild clamped down on all the UO and SWG noise so that we could focus on "topical" games like this.  :oh_i_see:

d the UI from Bard's Tale and gameplay from SojournMUD.  The only thing "origonal" about this brain child was the fact it was all 3D.

Brad just ripped the UI from Bard's Tale and gameplay from SojournMUD.  The only thing "origonal" about this brain child was the fact it was all 3D.

I broke my "It has potential!" cherry on UO.

Well if you ever had a sub, its now free to play until the 18th of January.  I played a little tonight and i'm actually impressed* with the improvements.  If this game had come out in the next few months it would not of been such a laughing stock.

*Impressed on a scale however.  Compared to what this game used to be as it is now, I'm very impressed.

I can't really agree that it's anything but crap until you can at least play without seeing unfinished quests/quest hubs for like a few hours at least.  At least get the newbie quest lines done such that the player is guided to their main city smoothly.  Geesh.

Furthermore, they've done something funky with character movements during combat. The one thing VG did have going for it was a fluidity of human movements during combat that was, for lack of a better term, immersive. Now, that's been nerfed, probably in the interest of performance. The solid whacks and full spins my SK did with her 2h sword that felt so satisfying to complete in a chain now feel entirely disconnected from the physics of combat.

Funny, my computer specs are like your old one, and playing last night for an hour or so, I noticed no graphic hitching and sputtering and the combat animations were pretty good.

After playing two characters to 20ish, I have seen about 50% of the world and have no desire to see the rest.

Instancing isn't immersive, or something.  :uhrr:

There aren't enough people in VG to stand in line for anything. Place was deserted.

Edit - Here is a larger piccy of the original UI

[EQ1 UI picture]

It has to be said, while this UI does suck and only gives you about 60% of the screen actually viewable, there always was an option to go 'fullscreen' which would remove a lot of that crap.  Of course, it was surprising the number of people who played for literally years without knowing about the fullscreen option...

You know, as much as I hate having to carefully craft (AKA, lie through my teeth) an answer to "What was Vanguard's biggest failing?" in job interviews, I realized after reading that rather disappointing article how proud I am of it.

Know why? Because I can honestly say with 100% validity: I'm a big reason for Vanguard's failure. Not Brad Mcquaid - not Microsoft. Me. And Guess what? I'm really kind of proud of it.

Brad Mcquaid didn't do shit. (News Flash?) He's had an opiate addiction for years now, which only got progressively worse as the project failed. His cumulative face time with sigil designers in the most crucial final years of development? Approx: 15 minutes. And some of the time was spent begging for legitimately acquired narcotics (Or in times of desperation, jacking them from people's desk).

The lead designers didn't do shit. (News Flash?) Sigil fired all of their golden-boy, EQ-Genius designers (Save One) who this board once speculated simply "left." It wasn't even secretive. It all happened on the same day.

Sony didn't do shit. The extent of sony's help was 2 designers who ended up writing some diplomacy quests in Tanvu and some adventuring quests in Tursh. I think there was an artist that came in 2 days a week or something for about a month also. Thom Terrasas (sp?) is the only Sony employee that ever directly affected the direction of that game.

The only part Sony really played in Vanguard's destiny was to let its life unnaturally and undeserving-ly continue. And apparently, it's simply because they were naive enough to think this project was worth their cash. Hah! Even the staff at sigil was left wondering why the hell Sony would buy us. Dozens of lunch hours were spent trying to figure out why.

"What profitable web of intrigue and mystery was big'ol Smed spinning with this crazy move(????)," we'd often cry

It was pretty shocking (and just lame) to hear John Smedly actually get angry and complain to people after the layoff's that he, "didn't know what he was buying." He even expressed anger at Jeff and Brad for bamboozlin' him. Poor guy. Maybe next time tough-guy Smed decides to spend several million dollars on something he'll expend some brain power figuring out what it is first.

Dave Gilbertson DID do some shit. (News Flash!) But this guy? Man, so much stuff I could say about this guy. He was truly unbelievable. Even when you thought his insanely unprofessional antics couldn't get any more outrageous, he'd go and do something like tell everyone they're getting a raise (to keep crunching) and then one by one call people into his office who WERE actually getting raises (but would never actually get them), how much they were going to get (VERY, soon). Unfortunately he would move through desk rows one by one and simply skip over the unlucky ones. It took a whole 5 minutes for the office to see through his brilliantly laid out scheme. He used the same plan for the lay-offs too. Classy huh?

He's literally never played a video game in his life, yet when Brad died off and Dave inherited the position of Vanguard Jesus, he decided he must be the final call on every design decision. I guess if you ride dirt bikes with a gamer god, his genius just wears off on you.

Fortunately, sometime this would result in getting played like a fiddle by whoever happened to be lovingly pulling the strings that day. But more often than not, this just meant people had to go around him to get something in, only without the help of (Place whatever department here) that was necessary for a game feature to actually turn out right. Imagine for a second people at Sigil actually knew how to do something right? (Believe it or not, we did on occasion) this guy would become the bottleneck to prevent that from happening.

If there was a ceremony for the Gamespy award, Dave would be accepting. For the sake of all our future video game consumer habits, let's hope this guy goes back to the only thing he's qualified to do, whatever that might be.

Anyway, enough of my blabbering. The most shocking reality that I don't think anyone really ever understood is that Vanguard was made (exclusively the design staff, I should say) COMPLETELY by amateurs. People who had been hired less than a week with 0 prior experience were tasked with designing entire newbie areas that shipped. People who had never produced a game in their life were asked to fix a 40 million dollar fuck up. People with no experience were asked to fix the item, diplomacy, ability, content, quest and pretty much every system in the game.

The game that exists now was designed in a single year by people with 0 experience. If that sounds too vague think of it like this: about 1 year from release we had 0 quests in the DB because the tool didn't exist yet. When I decided to split the team there was over 30,000 quest object entries. Yeah, explains a lot doesn't it?

What a huge let down indeed.

Oddly enough, the whole situation was probably a bigger let down to the designers than the consumers. I accepted a position thinking I was going to work with a bunch of experts - Masters of their craft - and really learn the ropes of game design. Instead, my fellow design associates and I were unwittingly tasked with trying to fix a failed video game that had literally been canceled twice before any of us were even hired. So in retrospect, despite everything, I guess I'm still pretty proud of vanguard. Every team member should be proud in spite of a truly pitiful and pathetic waste.

This was posted over on FOH from one of the designers of VG.  I don't know the guy or if this guy actually had a hand in the game, but it was an amusing rant to say the least.

If that sounds too vague think of it like this: about 1 year from release we had 0 quests in the DB because the tool didn't exist yet. When I decided to split the team there was over 30,000 quest object entries. Yeah, explains a lot doesn't it?

I thought the drug-addiction thing was a pretty strong accusation. Is that common knowledge? Someone can usually recover from a train-wreck launch and it being common knowledge that you have no managerial skills at all. But a drug thing, wouldn't that be a career killer (except for Hollywood)?

I guess we now know where Brad McQuaalude got his visions from.

Is that common knowledge?

Just a random observation from reading that guys little rant...

Everyone is quick to blame the many headed monster of management for everything that went wrong with VSOH (or SWG, or any other game).  Management isn't the one writing the shitty shoddy code that doesn't work.  Are none of these devs, programmers, coders, etc going to step forward and say "Yeah, I worked on VSOH.  And my code completely sucked.  Full of typos, conflicts, all kinds of fun stuff.  It's my fault stuff got stuck in terrain because I was high when I coded it.  It's my fault quest #23 ends in a dead end because I didn't finish it."

Lots of blame to go around from the peons but none of the peons stepping up.  All to easy to blame "The Man" than themselves.

SWG?  I can speak pretty fluently on.  So, let's take Ranger camo.  Never worked.  That wasn't a question of design (hide the user from getting agro), it's a question of crappy code. 

But all this "WAAAHHGGG it's management's fault!!!" by programmers and coders is doing nothing but playing the blame game in many (but not all) instances.  Do people really need management to tell you to do your job correctly? 

I don't even know where to begin addressing that. Suffice it to say that the problems with Vanguard, and SWG, and in fact most MMORPGs are entirely on the design and software management side. Individual coding errors are simply bugs, easily correctable with even the most minimum of development standards.

Those people don't NEED to stand up. They're not the problem. In fact, in any even marginally competent enviroment those people's bugs (and mistakes are inevietable) are caught and corrected early, and people whose work is not up to snuff are either retasked to something they CAN handle or replaced.

The coder's aren't to blame. And if they actually HAPPEN to be to blame, the only reason they got the chance to screw up so severely is because their project was designed and managed by flaming morons.

Oh -- and no one's blaming management, so much as they're blaming design.

That you could even bypass the process to "sneak" code in, shows just a completely mismanaged product from the top down and I guess also includes the code monkeys as well if this is what they were doing

Their versioning was that loose? Hell, we use at least basic versioning for even our dinky little web-apps here, even if sole developer -- just for rollbacks, if nothing else.

You don't code for a living, do you? Or if you do, it's obviously small jobs where one or two people do the entire damn thing -- from design to testing.

But to answer your question: YES. WE FUCKING NEED MANAGEMENT TO TELL US HOW TO DO OUR FUCKING JOBS CORRECTLY. Why? Because goddamn correct is defined by the overall system design.

Which is defined by management. By the game designers.

Individual coder fuckups are minor, easily caught and corrected. Design fuckups kill your product. Fixing a coder error is easy. Fixing a design error, especially in a live product, is like having your nuts yanked out through your throat.

If you notice the problem for more than a patch cycle, it is almost certainly a design error.

So if the design document says "This is the stealth class.  When activating the stealth ability, the character disappears from view and radar".  And then the designer/manager hands this document over to the coder/programmer, how much more handholding does the coder/programmer need? 

You (not you specifically) need to be told to make it work and make it work correctly without typo/error or anything else? 

Really?

If it doesn't work, do you toss your hands up in the air as if to say Not my fault and blame it on the design document that told you what to do?

Maybe we're arguing two different points and neither one of us is realizing it....

Because the mistakes that linger, that aren't easily fixed, that plague your fucking product for all of eternity come from their decisions. Coders and programmers mistakes are so compartmentalized by modern processes that fixing it is more a matter of figuring out where the bug is occuring than anything else, and the bulk of mistakes are caught during coding and at intergration-level testing at the latest.

Just as a side note, not necessarily true.  I remember one of my forays into (game name excluded) into some pre-release focus group content testing involved a bug that took about a year to figure out.  Their login process for some unknown reason instanciated ports 0-255.  Well I'm sure they had a reason.  It did this randomly.  So it would establish a handshake operation by trying one of those ports.  Obviously the design wasn't very scalable, I mean if you had more than 256 trying to concurrently log in some one is going to have to wait.  With that aside at one point they had a network security review and one of the net techs while looking at logs saw lots of random access to this port 0.  Thinking no one in their right mind is trying to access that port they shut it down.

The result was random cannot connect messages for people trying to log in.  Reproduceable?  Well a 1-256 chance.  Which reminds me of another code bug in an MMO.  Semi well documented by the AC1 devs.  I think they called it the Wi bug.  Where a PC would always get initial aggro when starting an encounter breaking their distance / what ever initial aggro code they had.  I think it took them for ever and if I were to guess at the origins of this bug who ever originally coded it probably put a (if userid = 123 then AGGRO!) so they could unit test some piece of code.  Thinking no one would ever be assigned that userid left it there to be forgotten.  Since maybe 1 person per server would ever be affected and they would also have to be playing that character long enough to notice it, it never went found.

Then again these are logical (and actually code review and implementation issues) bugs and not so much "typos".  I don't think any amount of QA would ever have revealed these bugs and they definitely fall on the code monkeys shoulders.  The difference is, if some one is looking these are trivial bugs, fixable in maybe 5 minutes time.  Core design issues are rarely if ever quick fixes.  It is why you do iterative process prior to laying down code (which you already know any way).

The result was random cannot connect messages for people trying to log in.  Reproduceable?  Well a 1-256 chance.  Which reminds me of another code bug in an MMO.  Semi well documented by the AC1 devs.  I think they called it the Wi bug.  Where a PC would always get initial aggro when starting an encounter breaking their distance / what ever initial aggro code they had.  I think it took them for ever and if I were to guess at the origins of this bug who ever originally coded it probably put a (if userid = 123 then AGGRO!) so they could unit test some piece of code. 

I had a whole big explanation written of the actual bug, if you're interested, but here's a better, ore correct one:

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5167415&postcount=2698

It wasn't a 100% this person gets aggro every time type of thing, which is what made it particularly devious.  Indeed, the complaint is pretty much what you hear all the time from players complaining about random things not being in their favor, which one can typically write off to the frailty of human perception.  Just in this case they ended up being right.

I had a whole big explanation written of the actual bug, if you're interested, but here's a better, ore correct one:

http://guildwars.incgamers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=5167415&postcount=2698

It wasn't a 100% this person gets aggro every time type of thing, which is what made it particularly devious.  Indeed, the complaint is pretty much what you hear all the time from players complaining about random things not being in their favor, which one can typically write off to the frailty of human perception.  Just in this case they ended up being right.

But here is an MMO slant, if your RNG is truely random but when you look at a specific sample size you see streaks, is that process really random?  Meaning per user their streak chance is high but for your user base it just normalizes.  That's been my experience with most MMOs.  You can sense that some one took a shortcut and is using a predictable seed that while the entire solution is random the specific result is streaks of a non random nature.

Those people don't NEED to stand up. They're not the problem. In fact, in any even marginally competent enviroment those people's bugs (and mistakes are inevietable) are caught and corrected early, and people whose work is not up to snuff are either retasked to something they CAN handle or replaced.

The coder's aren't to blame. And if they actually HAPPEN to be to blame, the only reason they got the chance to screw up so severely is because their project was designed and managed by flaming morons.

Oh -- and no one's blaming management, so much as they're blaming design.

For instance, is this sequence of numbers random?

1234567890

Look, a coder's job is pretty simple -- he's given a set of requirements (which can range from vague to VERY specific) and he writes code that meets them. Good coders write cleaner, more elegant code and can generate more robust solutions (there are generally a LOT of ways to handle any problem) from vaguer descriptions. Poor coders need more detailed requirements. And testing against those requirements is pretty easy.

This is actually a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

Yes, in actual randomness you see streaks.  If you didn't see streaks it wouldn't be random.  And no, nobody's using predictable seeds.  To think that is to misunderstood what a "seed" is.  Indeed, almost certainly the RNGs are seeded once, at server startup, and even if you used the same seed every startup nobody would be able to tell after the simulation had been running for a while due to the inherent randomness of player input into the simulation.

It's significant that this particular documented case of a failure in random selection in an MMO had absolutely nothing to do with the RNG, which was functioning perfectly, but with the use of the output.  RNGs are a solved problem when it comes to the level of fidelity required by an MMO.  They are best understood as being perfectly random, not "pseudo" random (which is at best a term that is misleading, at worst an utterly meaningless term), without any flaw that could ever be detected by players, due to the aforementioned inherent randomness caused by players.

It's most likely that I consider the RNG system in it's entirety, meaning the generation and application to be one thing.  I mean a number as you state is meaningly less without it's interpretation, right?

I'll site it more from a system stand point:

9 players, each can roll from 1 to 9.  Player 1 always rolls 1s and player 2 always rolls 2s and so on.

If you looked at the subset of player 1, it is most definitely not random.  If you looked at your entire population it is most definitely random, in that after an infinite number of sequences you have an even distribution as you would expect.  It is what you want in theory out of an RNG system that through an entire population you have ensured even random distribution, any number has an equal chance as any other number of appearing.  It's a crude example but kind of proves my point.  In an RNG system while you expect streaks you do not expect streaks of streaks to the point of statistical impossibility.  I'll agree this most likely has nothing to do with the RNG used but with the application of such results.

If the management was so incompetent, why presume the people responsible for implementation weren't inept at similar level and as such able to negatively contribute to the whole mess?

If the design is to blame, then competent and responsible coder should at least be capable of telling when they are unable to do their work proper with the shit they're provided

Design is not the production process. A coder is supposed to understand the "fun factor" of the total system and how well it integrates with all of the other systems being developed compartmentally?

It's been pretty much admitted at this point, that the whole thing was built from ground up in one year, by amateurs.

It's been pretty much admitted at this point, that the whole thing was built from ground up in one year, by amateurs. If the management was so incompetent, why presume the people responsible for implementation weren't inept at similar level and as such able to negatively contribute to the whole mess?

If the design is to blame, then competent and responsible coder should at least be capable of telling when they are unable to do their work proper with the shit they're provided (or lack thereof) don't they?

If in fact that was the case, then color me impressed actually. The game had a lot of flaws, yes. But it did work. I could play it. There were group bugs and targeting bugs and geometry bugs and quest bugs, but I got two character into the high teens just fine. This bodes well for indie MMOs. Sigil pissed away $30M but if they actually made VG as it launched on the last $10M, think of what a truly dedicated team cojuld pull off. The Vanguard world is fucking massive. If the game had launched with half the landmass and that effort had been re-channeled into gameplay and bugs, it would have been a profitable 75-100k subscriber game.

Design is not the production process. A coder is supposed to understand the "fun factor" of the total system and how well it integrates with all of the other systems being developed compartmentally?

Meanwhile, I've figured out bard songs. It's like an EverQuest bard, but with a vast improvement on "twisting" - you don't get songs at new levels, you get elements of songs: music, lyrics, pauses, etc. You have to compose your own songs with these elements, each of which has an effect, e.g. buffs, healing, damage shield, runspeed, haste. You can make a running-and-healing song, an all-healing song, a fighting song (buff, haste and damage shield), etc. So every bard will be different and the competence of the player at putting together the right song matters.

lines for spawns in the limited number of dungeons

... any free trials anywhere?

Wow. That actually sounds neat. I wouldn't mind playing a game with systems like that.

I did the coding for the bard songs in Vanguard.  It's probably the system I'm most proud of having coded.  I think ability construction of this nature is a great concept I'd love to see more of in games.  Being able to create your own custom spells is really quite a bit of fun.

What I hope to see in a "next-gen" fantasy mmo is a magic system along these lines.  Let me tweak things like the mana cost and cast times of my abilities to better suit my playstyle.  I wouldn't say people should have to put everything together (which may be one of the flaws in the Vanguard system - all you got automatically created for you was a single level 1 song)...  Give out fireball.  For people interested let them break it apart into the components (say, things like "medium cast time", "sphere projectile", "fire damage", "medium mana cost") and mix and match their other components to create new spells.

Ryzom had this. You could customize the stock spells, and "learn" new components so that you could work them in there and create new spells.

It's a good idea. Let every level 1 mage have "fireball", and let those users who are interested in customization have at it.

I'd probably workaround that by making a side effect of a skill (that casters get lots of, and melee combatants only get a little of) that makes the range cost equivalent  to 0 range for a distance based on how much skill you have.  With maxed skill, a melee character might get up to something like 5m for free (autoattack range) while a caster would get something like 20-30m for free (depending on how draw distances and movement rates are setup).  Range modifiers would then be bonuses on top of that. 

My newbie half-elf bard started on a beach in Kojan. I've never played a bard or started on Kojan before, so it was all new to me.

I find out I'm not actually a newbie - I'm a well-known officer in the Emperor's evil army, wearing some evil-looking black armour, and my first quest is to slaughter six innocent civilians. The next is to encourage my "cowardly" soldiers to participate in a massacre at a monastery. I reach level 3, thinking "WTF?".

I make it to the monastery's head monk, and he is too powerful to kill. He convinces me that I am not all bad, and offers me redemption. I awake without my armour, in front of another monk in a village. I am given quests where I must help other people, to teach me the benefits of doing good (later there are quests where I can rebel back to the dark side - it's not linear).

The monks turn out to be refugees living outside the Emperor's city. It's all very Jade Empire and has that kind of Oriental martial arts atmosphere (although I'm a bard, not a monk). Eventually I am sent into the city on a quest, and the Emperor's NPCs occasionally have lines like "Hey, don't I know you? I've seen your face."

By the time I'm level 8, I'm exploring the hills above the town. There's a fort full of bad monks and as I fight my way in, "you hear a woman crying", "the woman's cries get louder", etc. Eventually I find her, and figuring I'm saving her, I click to talk. She morphs into the leader of the bad monks and attacks, taking me completely by surprise and I'm lucky to win.

Combat actually feels satisfying now - the special move animations my character has are kind of cool.

Higher in the hills, I find a population of yetis living around an abandoned monastery. I fight my way into the building, open every door and eventually find one surviving monk. He offers me enlightenment in the form of three quests, the first of which is basically "kill 10 yetis". Yawn. But the second quest is "blow this horn, and fight what it summons" - a nasty big yeti that is a long fight. OK, that was more interesting.

Part three is facing the spirit of something something. Another fight? No, I'm teleported to the top of a mountain, where a giant levitating woman asks me a series of riddles. They are not easy. I figure them out and get a pass, and she teleports me back to the monk.

He sends me up the hill to his master, who is levitating in a tent. He says I must show faith. There's a bridge behind him that ends in mid-air (with a huge drop below), and to show my faith, I must jump off. Just before I land, I am teleported back to the monk, who congratulates me and gives me mucho XP. That was a truly great newbie quest.

VG might not be complete crap now, though. Perhaps it's a comeback kid?

So basically, they're turning it into EQ2?   Just real slow like.

So basically, they're turning it into EQ2?   Just real slow like.

Put Hartsman on Vanguard and it may actually be worthwhile in a year or two.

The Newbie Island was the worst part of EQ2 for me.  Cramped and with a known quest bug.  Might be a good addition to Vanguard, though I just can't see it.  What's wrong with separate starting areas?

I did the coding for the bard songs in Vanguard.  It's probably the system I'm most proud of having coded.  I think ability construction of this nature is a great concept I'd love to see more of in games.  Being able to create your own custom spells is really quite a bit of fun.  You might think that at max level, every bard would end up playing the same songs, however that's not the case at all.  Beyond the different strategies related to what you want to do (various buffs or debuffs, melee, ranged, or caster dps, etc) energy regeneration plays a significant role.  Each bard song component has an energy cost associated with it, and generally you end up using multiple "rests" that return energy to decrease the cost.  However, with appropriate buffs and specialized equipment, you can significantly reduce the number of rests you need, allowing you to use those slots for additional effective components. 

What I hope to see in a "next-gen" fantasy mmo is a magic system along these lines.  Let me tweak things like the mana cost and cast times of my abilities to better suit my playstyle.  I wouldn't say people should have to put everything together (which may be one of the flaws in the Vanguard system - all you got automatically created for you was a single level 1 song)...  Give out fireball.  For people interested let them break it apart into the components (say, things like "medium cast time", "sphere projectile", "fire damage", "medium mana cost") and mix and match their other components to create new spells.

There was a game (Ryzom?) that had a very modular spell system, in fact they applied it to the weapon swinging, prospecting and harvesting systems, as well. Thought it was absolutely brilliant.

The game was SUPERgrindy, for unrelated (unrestricted character development) reasons, so I only stayed with it a few months, but I LOVED the optimization metagame for whatever you were trying to fight/find.

If ever a MMO does it again I am all over it.

Customized Actions and Stanzas

Modular Action System - The Saga of Ryzom combines every action you can do within the world into one unified game mechanic, called the Modular Action System. This system holds special combat manoeuvres, spells, material prospecting and harvesting, and even crafting.

Stanzas - Each individual Action is made up of a number of subcomponents, which are called Stanzas. These Stanzas each have different abilities and costs associated with them, and once you learn them, you can combine them into your own custom actions.

New Stanzas are learned by receiving training in different skills. For example, in the case of magic, you start with only one basic offensive magic spell, Acid Damage 1. After advancing a bit, you can learn Life Gift 1, which gives you additional Stanzas. The actual Stanzas for each of these spells are below:
'Acid Damage 1'
   'Life Gift 1'


By using the Modular Action System, you can then create your own custom spell, naming it whatever you would like:
'Free Acid Bolt'


Although it may not be very powerful, and has a serious range penalty, it does have the advantage of being completely free to cast. This makes it great in situations when you are already in close and don't need that extra range.

Of course, this example used only two different spell abilities. The more actions you are trained in, the more Stanzas you have access to, and the more possibilities there are to create ones perfectly suited to your play style.

Yea so let me bypass that by skipping the trial. If I could skip the EQ2 isle by signing up for a real account, I'd do that.

Eh?  You've been able to start in Kelethin for years and Neriak for several months now.

Biggest problem I had with the newbie areas is that there really aren't any newbies. 

The Orc and Goblin starting area is also very good. Well paced, has a story and customised content to support it. Since that's part of the same continent as Kojan maybe its indicative of a different designer / team working on that area? Certainly the various starting points on the other two continents I tried didn't even come close. Though even the Kojan area played up the lao-jin and Ra-jin angles like you had a choice but never went anywhere with it.