f13.net

May 5, 2006 – Carlsbad & San Diego, CA – Sigil Games Online and Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced that Sigil is working with Microsoft Game Studios on an arrangement to acquire the rights to its highly anticipated massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.  These efforts have resulted in a tentative agreement for Vanguard to be co-published by both Sigil Games Online and SOE. All three companies will be showing the game at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as they work closely together for a successful transition. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is scheduled to launch this winter.

“As the development process is ongoing and constantly shifting, it became clear that MGS and Sigil had varying visions and direction for the title’s development,” said Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online.  “In the best interest of Vanguard, it was decided that we would buy back the publishing rights from Microsoft.”

As co-publisher of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil assumes greater control of marketing and PR, while maintaining responsibility for game development, community relations, media relations, customer support, and quality assurance. Under the terms of the agreement, SOE will provide distribution, marketing, hosting and back-end support -- including billing and technical support -- for the game. Additionally, SOE is tentatively planning on adding Vanguard, upon its release,to SOE’s Station Access™ subscription plan. Station Access allows players to enjoy all of SOE’s MMO titles for one low monthly price.

“We are very excited to be working with so many old friends at Sigil,” said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. “Vanguard looks beautiful and has an incredibly rich game world. It’s the type of game that will appeal directly to SOE’s hundreds of thousands of players and should fit in perfectly with the current line-up of games available in Station Access.”

”This decision was made mutually by Sigil and Microsoft, in the best interest of the long-term goals for the title,” said Phil Spencer, General Manager at Microsoft Game Studios.  “As a key Windows development partner, we will continue to work with Sigil to ensure Vanguard’s ongoing success.”

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is the next generation of massively multiplayer online games. The journey takes place in the fantasy setting of Telon, a vast and ancient world of magic, intrigue and adventure. Facing the challenges of a war torn world, the diverse people here struggle to rebuild their once great civilizations. A fragile alliance has been struck, with the lands set upon by invading forces, the races must band together to survive.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is currently in a closed beta phase. The game will remain available via Fileplanet for existing beta testers during the transition to SOE. New information will be sent out to testers as the changeover occurs.

For more information about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes please visit www.vanguardsoh.com.

Mole imo.

Smed's or Brad's?

One or the other because its his first post here. But then again when I started posting people though I was that dipshit telemod.
But he still smells like a mole.

I wouldn't let Blizzard set my game servers up if they paid me.

How many game servers do you have?

I made the mistake of introducing myself here talking close-to-nice of Auto Assault. :)
Mole!

I can't help but see this as repudiation of EQ2 by SOE.

and we still get to see Vanguard the way it was intended to be made

But he still smells like a mole.

Here's the problem. You think it's interesting.

It's not.

It's obvious. The MMORPG industry is infantile and much of the business done in it is infantile. Sounds like you wasted 2 hours and 55 minutes to come to that conclusion.

  because WoW owns the casual MMO market right now

Of course, that's the worst idea you could possibly have, because WoW owns the casual MMO market right now, and you'd just get stomped under the weight of it.

How can he be a mole?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would seem to me that the point of being a mole is to ingratiate oneself into a community and then start shilling for your corporate masters.  A one post wonder does not a mole make.

Retarded?  Most likely.  Mole?  Nah.

The game is absolutely terrible anyway. They couldn't pay me to play it.

It's painfully ugly but still runs like hell, it's not fun at all. The install was 16gb, and I don't even know why or how. It certainly wasn't jam packed with models, since every race was the exact same with a different head. The gameplay is worse than EQ1. if it doesn't get outright cancelled it's going to bomb hard.

Edit: Also, am I from fucking Mars or something? Haven't the FoH people been around forever? Don't they know shit when they smell shit? Jesus.

The FoH thread (http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/22202-soe-publish-vanguard-26.html) has a couple more similar :nda: breaches on p26 and p29.

Of course, when the NDA is dropped all of the Vanbois are going to blame the game sucking on SOE now.

It's painfully ugly but still runs like hell, it's not fun at all. The install was 16gb, and I don't even know why or how. It certainly wasn't jam packed with models, since every race was the exact same with a different head. The gameplay is worse than EQ1. if it doesn't get outright cancelled it's going to bomb hard.

Mole or no, I actually just copy/pasted a response I wrote on a couple other forums here and wanted to get the word out in general since it wasn't up on the forums yet. And posting happy fluffy things on these forums doesn't tend to shift opinion at all, just inflame the masses even further (yes, I've read the forums for a long time).

Ew....they're getting SOE all over my grindfest. Now it's going to suck!

All I have to say is where do I pre-order!@?

Here (http://www.Ilikeitinthegoatass.com).

It's already fucked. I'd suggest everyone forgets it exists. Fast-like.

Didn't we know it was fucked from the start?  I thought we were all on the same page with that.

You have to grind conversations as well. (That was my Inference. Hopefully it was also a Good Point. DING!)

Didn't we know it was fucked from the start?  I thought we were all on the same page with that.

I'd suggest everyone forgets it exists. Fast-like.

Lots of new screenshots (http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vanguard/screenindex.html?sid=6150471&page=1)

Anyone else getting huge DAoC flashbacks when looking at Vanguard's northern races architechture? In a way its worse, because its so mind numbingly bland. At least with DAoC the thing was new.

Having seen this game.

Uh.

SOE can't fuck it up.

It's already fucked. I'd suggest everyone forgets it exists. Fast-like.

Anyway, as some of you may know, Vanguard (check out the screenshots here), the upcoming MMORPG from Sigil Games (founded by one of the original creators of EverQuest), recently received a new publisher. So instead of paying them a visit tomorrow as part of my MS appointment, I caught a glimpse of the game during day one, at SOE's booth.

Now let me tell you, it's almost unbearably obvious why MS got rid of this one. Merely looking at the game was a disappointment right off the bat. One of the folks from the development team was trying half-heartedly to explain the game's features, controlling an avatar in a five-man party and clearing some monsters in a keep. All I could do was stare at, what appeared to be, an unattractive and unappealing fantasy MMO world. The character animation seemed stiff and the models were very poor when playing from third person perspective. Most of the areas were practically swimming in gray tones, and well, it's kind of hard to explain. In my humble opinion, the game just doesn't look appealing in the least bit.

Gameplay wise, Vanguard seemed standard in every possible sense. The developer explained to me that there are no instanced dungeons in the game world and that's about it from what I could understand. The interface seemed highly reminiscent of any other MMOG… and that's it. The content itself didn't seem fun to play.

Anyway, I think it could be interesting if every building leads to a single owned house. It's nothing new and nothing fancy if they are multi-instanced a la EQ2.

No instancing.
Urban sprawl and strong IGE housing market inc!

Has it occurred to you that maybe they wish to save their best for last? No point in telegraphing what you're doing to your competitors.

The denial is beautiful

I feel some things here need to be corrected. Please note that I am not in the beta, otherwise NDA would prevent me from posting.

1) Client size. You say it's 16 Gb. I believe it. They use Unreal Engine, and this engine takes a lot of space. And the game world is huge. But they stated a couple of time that they didn't optimize shit yet. Not the textures, not the smoothness, nothing. So maybe, just maybe the final client will be lighter.

2) Game is awful. While I obviously can't estimate how good the game is, but this just cannot be true. First, it'll be at least as good as EQ. EQ may be old, bulky and all, but it's still a great game. Not for everyone, that's for sure. It's not WoW, it's not even D&DO. It's a fucking hard game. This might not be the cup of tea of a lot of people, but to hardcore gamers, EQ1 is still the reference.

Lots of new screenshots (http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vanguard/screenindex.html?sid=6150471&page=1)

No instancing.
Urban sprawl and strong IGE housing market inc!

Maybe Vanguard can claim that they're in competition with CCP by having an unsharded world?

I see this as a good thing. What does SOE have more experience doing than any other company? Setting up massively multiplayer game servers.

What SOE has more experience of than any other company is making a midden out of online customer service.

From IGN Preview (http://pc.ign.com/articles/708/708176p1.html)

"And whichever building you erect, it has its own plot of land near which nothing else can be built. No ugly sprawl or obscured view as other homes pop up around yours, ever. It looks like Sigil has a plan."

I know we have to hate the game, but I am a sucker for housing done right.

X X X
X X X
X X X

X   X   X

X   X   X

X   X   X

Sure you won't get something like:


but instead you'll get something like:

and your view will still be obscured, just not as much.

Now we are just assuming things here. What if they decided that houses can only be built in say 1 mile from each other?

I laugh at games like Vanguard calling themselves "next generation" mmorpgs. There hasn't been a "next generation" mmorpg ever, since they all revolve around leveling treadmills and the endless pursuit of new loot until you eBay out of boredom. The real hillarity in this game is just how blatant the leveling treadmill/timesinks are.

There's 3 Leveling treadmills in the game, and all of them are equal in lack of fun.

Combat
You'd think this is fun but it really isn't. They talked up a huge game about how Vanguard's combat involves more than just hitting Auto-Attack and hoping the monster runs out of Hitpoints before you do. You get to see a monsters attack ahead of time, and simply choose whatever button is flashing to deflect it. That's it, that's their huge "next generation" improvement to the boredom of playing a melee: waiting for icons to flash and then click on them hoping the server lag doesn't cause the spells to timeout.

Solo'ing is non-existant. You can solo for hours and you won't come near the exp you get if you wait around for a group. Solo'ing is immensely boring, since every tactic involves spamming your direct damage spell while tanking. Deaths are harsh, you lose exp, you're naked, and you have to run back to your corpse. Usually you'll die on the way since monsters hit you from far away with their extendo arms of death. There's also this hillarious bug right now where the guards assist the monster its fighting and will kill you.

Tradeskills

I've only tried tradeskilling once, and was amazed at the time involvement. According to the forums, it takes just as long as combat leveling to level while tradeskilling. Apparently its like EQ2, you sit there and some bars go up and down and you have to mash flashing buttons until you "finish" a product. Apparently some guy did this for days and days and is level five and makes "Grade D table legs".

Harvesting takes for fucking ever. You have to group with other harvesters and you fight trees like you would a monster. Thats right, you need to get certain harvesting classes too, like "gleaners" and "refiners" in your group, and you sit around wacking some tree until the tree dies and then you get some loot. You then have to rest, since you get "tired" while wacking trees all day.

Want to solo while harvesting? Oh no you can't, because solo'ing doesn't exist at all in this game, if you solo it will A) take forever B) not get you anything meaningful C) you'll fail alot.

Parley..or the worst thing ever invented and is made fun of constantly on the beta forums

This is the best new "feature" of this great "next generation mmorpg". You have to parley with the npcs to get your quests. This is yet another ridiculous time sink. Thats right, when you want to talk to a npc about a quest, it opens a parley window where you fight the npc like a monster using arguments. You have the "dirty joke" spell, which lowers his liking of you, so then you have to reply with a "nice compliment" which then makes him like you more but then you have to keep the conversation interesting so you attack using a "interesting story"...I'm not making this shit up, you basically hammer keys until the conversation bar reaches the end(without other bars getting too low, its exactly like EQ2's crafting system) and you win the "parley".

Here's what is so great about it. EVERY SINGLE NPC makes you parley with him to get quest info. What is funny about it is that 95% of them have no quests or interesting info to give you, so you go from npc to npc parleying, mashing keys, until you "win" the "encounter" and you get nothing from it.

Overall

This game just fucking blows. There's nothing positive I can say about it, it is that bad. I've beta'ed alot of video games and this one is fundamentally fucked. I don't think I could come up with a worse video game if I tried. I'm amazed the login screen doesn't have some sort of time sink or if I want to customize my UI I don't have to parley it with "witty jokes". LONG LIVE EVERQUEST BEFORE LUCLIN!!

Parley..or the worst thing ever invented and is made fun of constantly on the beta forums

This is the best new "feature" of this great "next generation mmorpg". You have to parley with the npcs to get your quests. This is yet another ridiculous time sink. Thats right, when you want to talk to a npc about a quest, it opens a parley window where you fight the npc like a monster using arguments. You have the "dirty joke" spell, which lowers his liking of you, so then you have to reply with a "nice compliment" which then makes him like you more but then you have to keep the conversation interesting so you attack using a "interesting story"...I'm not making this shit up, you basically hammer keys until the conversation bar reaches the end(without other bars getting too low, its exactly like EQ2's crafting system) and you win the "parley".

Here's what is so great about it. EVERY SINGLE NPC makes you parley with him to get quest info. What is funny about it is that 95% of them have no quests or interesting info to give you, so you go from npc to npc parleying, mashing keys, until you "win" the "encounter" and you get nothing from it.

Wow that is just...amazing. I understand now why Microsoft was so willing to give up the Vanguard IP -- its worth is currently somewhere between jack and shit.

I expect further bitching when the game DOES release and their now-5-years-older asses are locked out of content by younger versions of themselves. Boy, that'll be rich.

Holy crap, thats horrible.  When is this due out?  I can't wait.

'This winter', apparently.

SOE needs another fantasy themed arduous exclusionary time sink? How exactly is this going to do the very thing they really need: a massive influx of new people to discontinue their intra-library cannabalization?

Vanguard = EQ1 Velious is about exactly right from what I saw and played (and read). It's a hit for Brad, but a miss for the genre. Just another example of people not learning the right lessons.

In the Vanguard thread dealing with the switch to SoE he made an off-hand comment like "SoE really needs a game like this in 2007" so it might not even be out this year.

Sigil thinks instancing is the work of the Behorned Lord of Darkness, so...no instanced apartments.

I bet IGE cannot wait for Vanguard to go live - slow levelling + mob camps for phat lewt + limited supply housing zones = $$$
Assuming, of course, that more than three people play the game.

They loved the stories and immersiveness of EverQuest, not the DPS tables. When they pulled mobs underwater in Kedge Keep, wearing their earring of water breathing, they were living the part of the elven ranger Aeliacio and his companion Grudskin the gnome wizard.Because it was a live action digital version of the atmosphere of AD&D, or high fantasy novels. They might join the whines about class balance and nerfs, but that's all secondary to the experience of being in a fantasy.

I always thought people were kind of joking about Vanguard being the mother of all grinds, and I couldn't really comprehend it since I had never played EQ. Yeah, that's right, I never played EQ. Ever. Not once.

This sounds like a fucking nightmare conjured forth from the firey anus of Satan himself. How the hell could that be fun? Are hardcore grinders really masochistic?

I think you people are wrong about "knowing what works". Brad is making a game for his peeps, and there are many of them.

I'm afraid you are severely misguided if you think that's what the 'hard core' EQ crowd looked like.

The Vanguard crowd are the people who stayed up for 8 hours in a row, weekend after weekend, chatting away in /gu while their raid leader bellowed commands at them.  They formed friendships and may even have vicariously enjoyed some immersion, supplied by the 1 or 2 RPer friends who were sort of dragged along to all this senseless raiding.

This makes no sense. If these "high fantasy" people you speak of are looking for a "high fantasy" game they are going to go to LOTRO. You know....the one with the internationally recognized liscense and all those books of lore?

Maybe this is part of a ploy by SOE to get SWG to look better. I mean, SWG sucks donkey balls, but I'd rather play that than Vanguard. (Assuming, of course, that what's leaking out is accurate).

Just spotted a new E3 Vanguard characters/mounts video (http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3788) (featuring "train journey to E3" crap at the start - I thought I had downloaded the wrong video).

You haven't understood what I'm saying. I'm not talking about the 'hard core' EQ crowd at all. I'm talking about people whose lives revolve around high fantasy. The kind of people who got into fantasy MUDs. That's why I think it is called Vanguard: they're building an enormous space for the vanguard who pioneered deep fantasy roleplaying, and their spiritual successors.

. I spoke to player upon player who had had it with EQ and was coming to DAoC as if it were the next nirvana. DAoC's launch was probably bigger than EQ's launch, but then something strange happened; people started going back to EQ.

This is the strange and mysterious part about all this. Why did this happen? For all intents and purposes, DAoC was not as grindy. It had interesting features EQ lacked. It had tradeskills that made some sense and were not mcquaidistic. It had possibilities that EQ simply couldn't provide. Yet the inexorable migration back to EQ started only months after DAOC's launch.

My theory is that the original years of EQ created such a level of shared trauma that folks had to go back. There's a psychological phenomena called Repetition Compulsion, wherein the subject relives in some fashion a past trauma, normally by emulating as best he can the original experience, in an effort to defeat the traumatic event. Much the same was occuring in EQ. People were going back to get that 'feeling', which was nothing more than grinding sweat, frustration and anxiety comingled with the understanding that others were undergoing the same experience as well.

I'm no Vanguard fanboi. I'm retaining my neutrality and speculating on what might be, as opposed to constantly rephrasing someone else's McQuaid-bashing post to keep up the appearance of maintaining teh hate.

I'm no Vanguard fanboi. I'm retaining my neutrality and speculating on what might be, as opposed to constantly rephrasing someone else's McQuaid-bashing post to keep up the appearance of maintaining teh hate.

I played EQ for nearly five years and i dont think i ever met any of those people you are talking about.

 Having the game encourage smaller groups by punishing you if you took more people and then giving you the exact numbers for the experience just to rub your face in it was the final straw. I had a character 5 levels below a RL friend who got better experience ungrouped beating on a mob while my  friend tanked it than he did grouped. That's just broken.

I played EQ for nearly five years and i dont think i ever met any of those people you are talking about.

Walk away now. This is not a 'game' to be 'neutral' about.

What about their spiritual successors?

"LOL poopsock catass cockblock" in the Vanguard thread.

catcat.jpg is one of the creepiest things I've seen on the internet, and having a hand in running r33t.org I've seen a lot of things.

You are right about combat mechanics in EQ. They were better, after, what, 3 years of tweaking, than DAoC's were. They probably still are better. There are any number of things that EQ may to this day do better than any other MMO out there. That said, McQuaid's insistence on time sinks as an 'immersion factor' is patently lidicrous.

catcat.jpg is one of the creepiest things I've seen on the internet, and having a hand in running r33t.org I've seen a lot of things.

Am I the only one wondering at this point where the talented grpahics artists from original EQ went.
I mean, I saw SoL (and so on) and then EQ2 and figured "Hey, they must have gone to Sigil"

After those pics?
I'm beginning to suspect that Milo sold them into white slavery to buy some more upgrades for his Porsche or something.

I think you people are wrong about "knowing what works". Brad is making a game for his peeps, and there are many of them. They are the long-haired or goateed Fan Faire attendees. The fat couples who roleplay elves. High fantasy AD&D and fantasy novel readers.

You may be right, but Brad's Peeps is a much smaller segment of gamers than you or he think.

Top console and handheld games of 2005:
1. Madden NFL 06 (PS2), Electronic Arts, over 2.9 million sold
2. Pokemon Emerald (GBA), Nintendo of America, over 1.7 million sold
3. Gran Turismo 4 (PS2), SCEA, over 1.5 million sold
4. Madden NFL 06 (Xbox), Electronic Arts, over 1.2 million sold
5. NCAA Football 06 (PS2), Electronic Arts, over 1.1 million sold
6. Star Wars: Battlefront II (PS2), LucasArts, over 1 million sold
7. MVP Baseball 2005 (PS2), Electronic Arts, over 970,000 sold
8. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (PS2), LucasArts, over 930,000 sold
9. NBA Live 06 (PS2), Electronic Arts, over 820,000 sold
10. LEGO Star Wars (PS2), Eidos, over 800,000 sold

It's arguable that Will Wright and Sid Meier don't understand the mainstream. Civ isn't near as big as geeks would like to think. The Sims is, but it was more of a phenomenon. Saying it was more fun than SimCity 2000 is a bit reaching. There's no doubt in my mind Will Wright makes the games he wants to play.

When I think of people who know what the REAL MAINSTREAM wants to play, I think of the people playing sports games, derivitive action games and games based on movie licenses.


That's 2005. I'm proud I'm not part of the mainstream.

WoW is missing that. Unless you try very very hard, its almost impossible to fail. Sure, you can do the story on rails, and always succeed. But creating your own story, with highs and lows, requires designing a very gimpy character indeed.

If it was as easy as cranking a difficulty slider all the way to Very Very Hard, would you really do it, when everybody else around you has maxed it in the opposite direction?

If it was as easy as cranking a difficulty slider all the way to Very Very Hard, would you really do it, when everybody else around you has maxed it in the opposite direction?

You can make any game that's too easy harder just by limiting your options. Is Molten Core too easy? Try fighting Baron Geddon and Shazzrah at the same time. UBRS getting boring? Try 3-manning it. &c.

No you aren't the only one. EQ may have had crude graphics even for its time but at least most of the zones had style. It was fun just travelling around the world seeing the sites and visiting all the cities (well except for maybe Grobb and Ogok, the Troll and Ogre cities :-D). WoW is the same way. EQ2, not at all (at least the small portion I saw during Beta) and Vanguard looks a lot like EQ2.

You might if the rewards were better.

No, LOTRO is a WoW clone. Seen the E3 video? It's going for the movie mass market.

Vanguard comes along, and much like the usual cycle of abuse in any relationship, its saying that this  time it'll be different.

I mean, I saw SoL (and so on) and then EQ2 and figured "Hey, they must have gone to Sigil"

After those pics?

It still has more LORE and a recognized FANTASY setting then Brad's craptacular camp trees game. ie your argument is moot.

It does have scads more lore than Vanguard will ever have thanks to Tolkien's writing, but my goodness have you seen the gameplay video? The interface is ripped straight from WoW. I know it's a good design and perhaps someone used it before WoW did, but damn Turbine. Even the animations smack of WoW. The hobbit or dwarf running animation looks like *shock* the gnome or dwarf running animation in WoW. Did Blizzard release an MMOG toolkit to developers? Actually, with the amount of WoW server emulation that has been going on since the game was in alpha testing, I wouldn't be surprised if there is more ripped from Blizzard than meets the eye.

What's Brad's background? How did he get his first job in the industry, where did he work before EQ?

From STRATICS E3 AWARDS: (http://www.stratics.com/content/portals/e3/content/goldencogs/2006/golden_cogs_2006.php)

"Best of Show: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
Developer: Sigil Games Online

A lot of people have speculated that the publishing rights to Vanguard: Saga of Heroes were not being sold by Microsoft Games Studio on good terms, but rather because the game was a failure. We can’t lay that theory to rest; however, we can tell you that the “failure” impressed us to no ends. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes features the most robust crafting, combat, and faction systems that we’ve seen to date. It also doesn’t hurt that the game is gorgeous, has great potential, and is being created by some of the industry’s most infamous developers."

Wonder how many doughnuts Smed had to send to Stratics for that?

What's Brad's background? How did he get his first job in the industry, where did he work before EQ? 'Cause I had the exact same bitch about Jeff Freeman -- the man wasn't designing for his players or the market, but designing "What I want to play". I felt it was an artifact of where Freeman came from (he got noticed doing UO grey shards -- in short, designing games for himself and his friends -- and never grew up as a designer).

It was an awesome grey shard.

I don't know how good Jeff Freeman was on his grey shard -- never played. But I saw SWG -- no sane or competent person would have sold the NGE on that timeframe. I'm guessing no sane man would on any time frame -- it was a clusterfuck waiting to happen. It's the fucking Peter principle.

DAoC's launch was probably bigger than EQ's launch, but then something strange happened; people started going back to EQ.

This is the strange and mysterious part about all this. Why did this happen? For all intents and purposes, DAoC was not as grindy. It had interesting features EQ lacked. It had tradeskills that made some sense and were not mcquaidistic. It had possibilities that EQ simply couldn't provide. Yet the inexorable migration back to EQ started only months after DAOC's launch.

My theory is that the original years of EQ created such a level of shared trauma that folks had to go back.

So I moved to the next area, I had to take a horse there. Near some forest, and there was a tower that was the local bind-point, but the close monsters were just too tough for me. I headed back in the other direction, and there were goblins and horses there that were a tough fight but good xp. But when I died, the corpse run was a 5-minute job. After 2 deaths or so, I never logged in again. All before the 30-day boxed time had expired.

Dundee didn't come up with the NGE, as I understand it.  He blogged about the process (then removed the post when the inevitable shitstorm hit), and it was another, more senior coder/designer that came up with the NGE kludge pretty much by himself, locked in his office for a while.  Dundee certainly bought in, big time - he made that clear - but anyone who's a developer has been caught up in that whole bandwagon of cool new stuff where a bunch of you talk each other into seeing how cool it is, and talk down the structural difficulties of implementation.

As I understand his post (which I have a sneaky copy of at home somewhere, having guessed which way the wind would blow on that one), he only then got made something like chief gameplay designer.

Now, sit back for a moment and compare that experience with your experience as a newb in EQ. I think you'd agree that life as a newb in EQ was at least equally daunting, if not moreso. Yet we endured with EQ simply because it was, originally, the only game out there. With DAoC we could return to EQ, where an old familiarity greeted us.

Both DAoC and EQ back then were a product that's no longer on the shelves; difficult and discouraging to the beginner, increasingly rewarding as time went on. As time went on, both these games adjusted their game play so that the newb suffered far far less.

That said, the memories of those incipient years in EQ has a stamp on the brain that no other game can replicate simply because it was both traumatically 'immersive' and because it was the first. That is the capital McQuaid is using.

The devs who showed it off clearly were all experienced EQ-style MMO players and showed off various subtle game systems and UI improvements that would only make sense if you were staring at a combat screen forever, such as pre-built combat macros for common tasks, inherent friendly- and enemy- target differentation and the like

Now, that's definitely not "hooray Vanguard!", but to me it sounds pretty far to "huge pile of crap" too..

EQ1 was the runaway hit against a handful of other titles that either looked less good or had more nichy elements about it. There were quite simply a lot fewer people playing these games.

The core concept was sound (obviously), but the iteration was something people accepted for a lack of truly compelling options more so than they wholeheartedly beloved. As evidenced by the genre five years later (and no, it's not about the graphics).

So we're back to "quality" and "fun"

When were we not? The only times those don't apply is when someone arguing against a game can't see why it's considered "quality" and "fun".

And I agree with Engel's question. Everyone's first MMOG has a special place in their heart. My own was UO, and while I didn't return to that like the eight times I did EQ1, it still is the experience I've attempted to replicate the most in newer games. We all have learned you can't go home again. Nothing can replace the sense of wonder upon the first steps into a world full of other breathing people, particularly poignant at a time before forums being everywhere and all posters therein having their own blog. The kiddies playing Club Penguin today don't know how good they've got it. Damned kids :)

Of course, I STILL haven't played my copy of Pirates!....I keep putting it off, afraid that the remake won't have the fun I found when I was 12 and playing it on an Apple IIe.

Isn't it pretty much just the exact same game with new shiny?

Azazel, I think by now we're basically saying the same thing, with slightly different language. Would you at least consider the possibility that if DAoC had been the first, your level of enamourment with it would be equal to that you and I hold for EQ's first moments? Or are you saying that there was something qualitatively different in EQ that made it better than DAoC, aside from being first on the scene, and therefor ready to take advantage of our lack of assumptions about game play?

07-12-05, 04:14 AM    #11 
Member

Join Date: 2005 Jul

bring back old style eq and camping for mobs for hrs...... if you really want the item you will camp it.

The good old times of being in line in GUK,solb .etc camps bring it back.No more instance zones apart from full scale raid mobs i say.

Isn't it pretty much just the exact same game with new shiny?  What I saw of it looked exactly like the version I played on the NES, but with spiffy combat and graphics, and dancing.

The real problem is I ain't 12 anymore, and times have moved on -- I've moved on. :) Now, if that fucker will just remake Alpha Centauri with a decent net code so I can actually play it through my router, like will be good.

Interesting new video out of E3, featuring gameplay, bad hair and player housing. Jeff "one of the first SWG Jedi" Butler is building a better SWG.
http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3810

There were rumors on the net that LA might be working with someone (other than SOE) to build a better SWG, but I didnt mention them here since if there was anything to them I figured one of you guys would have heard about it and mentioned it already.

Ok, after watching the movies, here is my unsolicited, unpopular outing:

I think I will like Vanguard, and I'll buy it.

Sorry Tale, I have to do it.  I just love the phrase.  I'm going to be saying this to Vanguard players forever.
Or are you one of their spiritual successors?

Please don't post ever again.

Falconeer, you're a sick fuck.

"Ya know, there's lots of games out there, but right now I'm going to ignore all of them and play one of these shitty games and perpetuate the myth that MMOG developers are going a good job.

Actually, all I was saying was that Vanguard won't be fun. At least not to me. And in a sane world it wouldn't be fun for anyone. But errr, ok. Yea, Disgaea 2 will be good - but it's a ways off.

If I send a copy of "A Theory of Fun for Game Design" to Brad care of SOE, d'you think he'd get it? In both senses?

Ok Hearless, here's the scoop. No, I'm not going to break the NDA and go into specifics about what the game has, shouldn't have or needs.

But I will tell you what's primarily wrong with beta right now. You may find it's not what the typical critics would think.

These are from my own personal notes that I keep, yet refuse to post because of the assholes in that beta.

This is one excerpt:

======================

The forums take peaks of highs and lows. You can literally sense people trying to like this game. People trying suspiciously hard to find something to write about on the forums that's positive. Unfortunately, these recounts are absent of any detail and hardly convince me that there is something more I haven't gotten to see that will change my perspective drastically.

I often wondered why that is. I have drawn the conclusion that people are afraid to speak constructively based on the firing squad that sits there refreshing the screen every minute to see who would dare speak when not spoken to.

They default to debating about MMOG's in general as a result. This indicates strongly that people do see a barren and shapeless world before them, even though they dare not admit it publically. I get the sense they are thrilled for an opportunity to mold this game into what they want it to be. Egos run rampant in this regard and several of the more vocal beta players are insistent upon getting their ideas burned into the blueprint. Especially when these people notice that the ink isn't even dry on that blueprint.

I dare say, the imagined wonderful Vanguard they testify about on the forums, is a contrived line of bullshit used as a means to suck up to developers in order to get their own ideas written into the design. If the design was there, they would just be testing. But considering it's not, this leaves an opportunity for the wannabe-game-designer, to gain a captive audience.

And captives we are. Many an unhappy tester has been silenced regularly by these fanatics who put any and every comment under their own jaded microscopes. Unfortunately this activity goes unchecked by any form of moderation. Subsequently, what you get is nothing but chastisement by the regular fanbois who seek to mold this game the way they see fit. Anyone pointing out the existing flaws, is summarily lynched, tarred and feathered, despite the validity of their concerns.

Even a developer was called on the carpet by beta players as recent as two weeks ago. The disrespect and rudeness of the regular, vocal dissenters of MMOG-today, ruthlessly bit into this poor guy like a pack of wolves. Just as the animals they are, at the first smell of blood, they all wanted a piece of him. The crime? The mere suggestion that corpse runs were not a fun factor and should be removed to a lesser penalty then what currently exists in Vanguard right now. What did Brad do? He basically apologized for his staff's outburst.

There is also a curious hatred for World of Warcraft, specifically. Curious, because much of what World of Warcraft has done was based on the original Everquest design and expounded from there. It's certainly ironic how these fanbois will rip apart anything WoW, yet praise, anything Everquest.

To the detriment of Vanguard, they will protest any implementation that even remotely resembles a mechanic within World of Warcraft. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. If it's something within WoW, they want it O-U-T. Likewise, if you are from WoW, they want YOU out, too. They've already succeeded in driving out many of those testers. They're long gone and I can't say I blame them.

I can't help, considering all that, but feel pity for Brad McQuaid. Here's a man who started out with a "vision" and held an open forum for years before beta, allowing others to share his space and ideas.

Yet something happened between then and now. Something worth pitying the man over. His leniency and viewpoints were thrown back in his face from disgruntled game-junkies from all over the virtual world spectrum. Vanguard is where many of the disgruntled and disbanded landed to bum a free meal. In the process, they are now trying to steal the keys to his house and his car and have already taken over his computer. The only thing left is to just hand over the code because they've already gotten into his game.

How can you not feel sorry for a man who now sits out on his own front steps, wondering if he should call the police or the psycho ward to rid them off of his property?

The game may very well be lifeless due to the fact that he doesn't know himself anymore, what it is he should do.

The void in his game speaks volumes towards the fact that he fears developing it the way it needs to be done.

Let's face it, this is a very capable man. He's demonstrated that with his history. A man who created Everquest, wrote the design for the lands, the characters, the events, etc. He's not stupid by any means. Yet his new world reflects a man who fears even adding the simplest mapping feature, for instance. A feature, so subetly done this past week, but was met with OUTRAGE by touted old-school gamers. How can a man function under that kind of idiotic pressure?

Vanguard's progress is evidence that he can't. His FAQ is constantly thrown in his face. An FAQ that was written years ago and probably has been totally reconsidered based on the fact that under 100 people are logging into his beta daily. It's not because the game doesn't have potential. It's more probably because normal people don't have time, nor energy, to put up with the nuts in that place and that's the truth!

Note to the clueless FAQ-touter: That page was taken down last week. Without fanfare or notice, it was quietly swept off the internet and replaced by the infamous "page not found" message. You have to get the impression that MAYBE this guy has finally realized SOMETHING?

While realization is the first step and is a good thing, he still has yet to rid himself of the crackpot company he has allowed in there.

My suggestion is to close beta entirely. Shut it down and use the excuse that time is now needed due to the change of publishers from Microsoft to Sony Online Entertainment. Say that hardware restructuring needs to be done and don't hold Vanguard to any reappearance date. Shut down the forums with a simple message that you will be back up after the transition is complete.

Dump all your beta testers to date and start fresh after you're back online and have something done to offer them.

Put in the ideas you have wanted to add and improve without having to get "permission" from your existing, suicidal fan-base.

Maybe then you can go back to enjoying what you do best - designing games.

Brad McQuaid vs SirBruce. Round one, fight! (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54545)

We're on record saying probably 60% group, 20% casual/solo and 20% raid. So it's a hard core game but is going to ignore the more casual player, when the amount of content planned in general focusing on each group is the same? Huh?

I also think it's a bit unfair to say that VG was all that much less ambitious than SWG.  They wanted to have an enormous gameworld with the handcrafted feel of WoW or EQ.  They wanted to have crafting and diplomacy content that was as deep and broad as the adventuring content.  They wanted similar housing and player run towns.  And it seems like they've come up with a bland mish-mash of a largely empty, modular gameworld, a boring combat system, and boring, tedious and unsatisfying crafting and diplomacy.  It sounds a lot like Koster-style overreaching to me.  A whole lot like SWG.

Yet something happened between then and now. Something worth pitying the man over. His leniency and viewpoints were thrown back in his face from disgruntled game-junkies from all over the virtual world spectrum. Vanguard is where many of the disgruntled and disbanded landed to bum a free meal. In the process, they are now trying to steal the keys to his house and his car and have already taken over his computer. The only thing left is to just hand over the code because they've already gotten into his game.

How can you not feel sorry for a man who now sits out on his own front steps, wondering if he should call the police or the psycho ward to rid them off of his property?

I also think it's a bit unfair to say that VG was all that much less ambitious than SWG. They wanted to have an enormous gameworld with the handcrafted feel of WoW or EQ. They wanted to have crafting and diplomacy content that was as deep and broad as the adventuring content. They wanted similar housing and player run towns. And it seems like they've come up with a bland mish-mash of a largely empty, modular gameworld, a boring combat system, and boring, tedious and unsatisfying crafting and diplomacy. It sounds a lot like Koster-style overreaching to me. A whole lot like SWG.

CoH
the good: quests, character customization, new combat, real 3D world, soloing
the lacking: housing, crafting, raiding, loot, mounts, PVP


Now many of you can quibble with my list, but the point is that the games that did well did not try to do everything. EQ2 came closest and their launch was lackluster and the devs have been playing catch-up (with moderate success.)

Play by play commentary (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1118176&postcount=125) of Brad vs. SirBruce fight.
And I am out of popcorn!

It would have been obvious looking at the people demo'ing combat that it's more action oriented than, say, EQ 1

I think now we could on the more optimistic side go north of 500k

As the posting goes on people begin to side with Bruce. 

Awesome.  It is a good reminder as to why the man is not allowed to post, and every F13 person should read this!

Hearing an actual professional use the words "core gamer" as if it actually represented some real segment of the gaming market makes me want to slap said professional with my rigid cock.

Awesome.  It is a good reminder as to why the man is not allowed to post, and every F13 person should read this!

Because his troll skills are so refined he is able to turn any words against the writer.  Eventually people begin to agree with him, despite how repugnant his stance is.  He could be discussing mutilating puppies in a thread and I guarantee by page three some people will agree with his stance.

Fear the powers of the troll.

I remember some blog of his where he described it, but what the fuck is a "core gamer" supposed to be again?

Our goal is to be as inclusionary as possible, but at the same time to not alienate existing, core MMOG gamers.

First and foremost, we want to appeal to gamers who have enjoyed the games we've worked on in the past. Then we want to expand outward and appeal to other core gamers with new and extended gameplay they might have found missing in previous games. Lastly, we want to grow the MMOG gamespace by appealing to 'non-core' gamers, but, again, never at the expense of the playerbase who already identifies with our goals and our previous work.

All games age, even massively multiplayer games with content that can be patched and updated. Economies grow old and inflated, the 'newness' and reward for exploring the world wears off. .... Our goal with Vanguard is to take everything we've learned ourselves in the last 8+ years and by watching and playing other MMOGs and take the genre to the next level.

Anyway, tough, yes. Rewarding, yes. Challenging, yes. Tedious, hopefully no. Camping, minimized the best we can. Travel, fun and dangerous in and of itself. Needing to group and work with others to really advance optimally and get the phat lewtz, yes.

WoW is both the end of the first generation and the beginning of the second.

Only *IF* you consider subscription numbers as the only measure. WoW is certainly NOT the "pinnacle" if you consider the non-combat aspects of MMO's.

Only in that it forces newer devs to create something completely unique. There were music genres created beyond Baroque. There will be hugely successful MMORPGs beyond WoW. All because of the unassailable success of it.

  For completeness, Merusk = Hitler.

The point was "Haydn killed Baroque and started Classical.  People did Baroque music after Haydn, but it was irrelevant. Classical composers, not malingering Baroquers, brought us to ThirdGen Romatic."  WoW=Hydin, EQ=Bach, UO=some fucking madrigal or something, Vanguard = irrelevant peons making Baroque music after Haydn.[/quote
Ah, I think I get ya.

Because his troll skills are so refined he is able to turn any words against the writer.  Eventually people begin to agree with him, despite how repugnant his stance is.  He could be discussing mutilating puppies in a thread and I guarantee by page three some people will agree with his stance.

Fear the powers of the troll.

People like Rasputin and Tale also make themselves look bad in that thread by going out of their way to post just to take shots at him.

you could have found someone else who would have taken you inside to see other aspects of the game had you asked

in though, I would politely assert that were you interested in Vanguard to any significant degree you would have tried a bit harder and found a Sigil person and either ask them to take you in to see more, or to have them show you more on the outside booths, or to hunt me down.

I really wish you would have tried harder

You could also have contacted me before E3 and I would have made an appointment with you to make sure that you received the full court demo

How did you get this? Honest question, really. Did Blizzard release subscriber numbers or just sales numbers?

Bruce is a noob.  He should have known that Brad was an epic level encounter that required a hell of a lot more grinding.  The inner SOE booth is a keyed raid zone anyways.  Besides you can't solo Brad, he should of brought a complete group which included the tank/healer/crowd-control trinity with him.

A random user said:
Originally Posted by RandomUser:
Grrrr!! I want death penalty tha will make my eyes bleed. I want long travel times. I want corpse retrieval to suck. Gah, please dont water Vanguard down, or hell, have a server with hard core rule sets. Challenge desired, not a cake walk.

Brad's answer:
Don't worry, nobody is watering the game down. What I outlined has been our plan from the start. Remember -- challenge does not have to equal tedium. We can make a challenging and rewarding game (both short and long term) but at the same time remove needless tedium. They don't have to go hand in hand.

I am surprised that the CEO of a company developing an MMO does not know how many subscribers WoW has and that they regularly release subscription numbers. He's just off in his own world

He only cares about SirBruce because his E3 article contained some negative comments

I am surprised that the CEO of a company developing an MMO does not know how many subscribers WoW has and that they regularly release subscription numbers.  He's just off in his own world.

I bet Lum is fucking psyched about having his name thrown around in that thread as a refutation to SirBruce.

Brad said:

Like I said, Lum, a person at least as skeptical of Vanguard as you if not more took the time to hunt me down and we took him back and make sure he saw whatever he wanted to see. I do indeed want all sorts of people to see the game, from the fan, to the average person, to the skeptic. In fact, arguably, it's more important to me that the skeptic sees the game as I am confident what all we had to show at E3 would have a positive effect on a skeptic (and it did with Lum).

SirBruce said:

What's interesting is that both Lum and I have the same expectation for the number of subscribers a game like Vanguard is likely to get. But Lum spun it in positive terms, whereas I spun it in more negative terms because your own expectations as well as those of many watching Vanguard are HIGHER than that. I won't speak for Lum, but I believe he and I would agree on many of the features of the product as "negative" in the sense that they'll appeal to a limited target of core gamers, but not to the much broader MMO market.

Lord knows if any game has earned frothing EULALALALALA jihad, it's Vanguard.

Heading away from the "Whoever wins, we lose" links, someone leaked a bunch of beta screenshots taken from a mid-range (Vanguard-specs-wise) PC.
No links because of  :nda: (but think pyromaniac angel in a hand-pulled wheeled taxicart).

Trouble is, I don't know we can call WoW Haydn yet, going by your analogy. Who's to say WoW doesn't get demoted by someone who's got even more truckloads of cash, rips off the same shit WoW rips off, but broadens the experience to actually include a few more million folks currently turned off by the grind2grind experience?

Ooooh I scrolled down further. There are actual UI screen shots.
I dont think Sigil has released any shots themselves showing the UI yet.

You obviously feel at home in the Retard Rickshaw.

Trouble is, I don't know we can call WoW Haydn yet, going by your analogy. Who's to say WoW doesn't get demoted by someone who's got even more truckloads of cash, rips off the same shit WoW rips off, but broadens the experience to actually include a few more million folks currently turned off by the grind2grind experience?

Darn... the game looks WAY uglier than I expected.
Could be that guy's video card?
Can't believe it's SO EQ2-ish.

Actually, on my comp EQ2 looks 10 times betters. Serious.

His PC spec: AMD X2 4200+ / 2GB RAM / Sapphire x800 GTO2.

I am tempted to doubt it.
Not for the framerate (some betas were terrible framerate-wise while the retail game run ok), but the overall look is so lacking that looks like some EQ2 early beta movie.
All the other screenshots I saw, including the E3 movies, looked way better.
Could be authentic, of course. In that case I am more disgusted day after day, although I will keep my judgment until I will finally be able to test it myself.

Who out there can dump that kind of money on development who has a reasonable chance of producing something better?

SOE is starting to become a place that unhealthy games go to die, slowly and without dignity.

The old school that they're pining for is dead dead dead. I've tried FFXI a bit in the last few days (they had a character retrieval special) and while I love the world, I love my character, and I love the gameplay in a lot of ways (individual roles, grouping, renkei). But I just can't stand sitting for 1 minute between kills, running for 30 minutes, and all that. Just no. No no no. Just not going to do it anymore.

The money is out there. As Haemish notes, that money is currently in consoles. But why is that a challenge anymore?

Because MMOG developers have shown themselves to be completely lacking of any sort of creative thought process, especially when it comes to gameplay?

Shit, we can't even get beyond "row of hotkey" interfaces.

certain people will either always or never win

The hair close-ups made me cringe. If you cannot do hair right, then don't try.

All I want is ONE good, massive, persistent game world that's twitchy. Just one. Not an entire genre. That isn't stepping on anybody's toes. The people who play as their "characters" (and not as "players") can have everything else.

All I want is ONE good, massive, persistent game world that's twitchy.

For example, a boss may give you only one window of opportunity to attack whenever he does some specific gesture (like when he stomps his feet, for example). Usually, bosses have gestures that indicate what kind of attack they're going to proceed with as well. This will tell you which way and when to dodge, block, jump, etc. (if any of this is confusing to you, play against Rhino in the Ultimate Spider-Man game. He's the first boss.....Or hell, just play Mike Tyson's Punch Out).

That, and the fact that the old crowd is skeptical right now. Many aren't even around anymore so Brad has very little bridges to burn. The current FoH forums aren't gonna bow to him. Utnayen pokes at him ad nauseam. It's too tough a crowd. It's called dis-association time.

I doubt you'll see him even post there again before release. It hasn't benefitted him lately. Look at the link in here Renee put up from N3rfed's. I remember that post too, but I love the guy's spin on it. Brad brings up collection SS's and please send them to Brad direct. Bruuce whines in with, "im too lazy to use email but you can use this one if you want to show off the char select screen" and then throws up the worst friggin shot in the game, showing ONE warrior in Brennan's Stead. LMAO! I have this mental picture of Brad just shitting in his pants right there. haha

Nah, he can't keep those guys. They're out of control. LOL. Neric is next to go, you watch. heh

You just don't come up with that CGM beta-slot idea either. That was done to bring in the new, naive blood. Blood that's not used to harcore either. They were probably in diapers when EQ1 was released. Those are the people that are going to be introduced to Beta 3. I have a feeling that Beta 3 will not be hardcore, but Luisagos (the guy who was mouthing off to Nino) and friends won't be there to bitch. He'll be giving them the boot, too. Making room for the new boys. Quietly.

Bear in mind, that's the least of his problems right now. He's lost 3 major designers in the past year plus a major artist died. He had minimal staff numbers for the longest time compared to the other MMO's. Warhammer had like 60+ off the bat. And he's only got 6 months to go. I don't see it happening.

I wouldn't waste anymore time on loyalty if I were you because really, all this hype is just NOT worth what's there. If it was, MS would have never let it go and SOE wouldn't be putting it in the B rated package deal.

And, there WOULD be more then 100 people logging in, because i haven't even seen that many.

***

I don't how to say this, so I'll just blurt out the truth instead of running around the bush like I did in the last post.

The discussion over hardcore or softcore, it's just stupid. Because the only thing that's in there to discuss was the CR. And while they were castrating Nino about that, Nino gets them good. He told them all how he knew they were using the in-game sysop commands to cheat and call their corpse. THAT'S how hardcore Luisagos is. Uh huh. Bitch about keeping CR's in but go ahead and cheat to get your own. Nino got him.

The only thing after that was the GPS map DOT. That's it! There was NOTHING else besides a crappy quest journal. That's all that told me anything about how hard it would be. That and the fact you spend a ton of time running around. It's dead. There's no real content. Feels like alpha with better graphics. There is no way of telling how this game will turn out by looking at it today. NONE. No could disclose shit about it if they wanted to.

When I read posts stating, "I'm really liking this game. I HATED [insert ANY major popular MMO here, except EQ]" I flip the bird at the monitor and say, "You're full of shit, ya liar."

I'll tell you the truth. I don't even GET his combat system! Why? Because it doesn't even work yet.

***

That's just it, Rayne. There's no serious changes to make because you need SOMETHING to change first.

You can't get into the player housing. You're not even allowed on the island. I haven't seen the boats. Some idiot said someone had made a boat already and at the same time, a dev clicked send and said they weren't in the game yet. So he's a liar.

The parley thing will drive you up the wall. If I hear hmm... ahhhh.. huuummm... uhhuh.. hmmmm.. ahhhh.. huuummm... uhuh, ONE more time, I'm gonna blow my friggin brains out!

Then you logout to the forums and you make a post honestly asking, WTF is this shit? And SURE enough, some nerdy dork whose voice hasn't even changed yet, will jump you two seconds later and say, "I'm liking this parley. It's so unique!" Flip the monitor the bird again, kick the frigging computer and the neighbor's dog just because and I'm out.

***

It's true about the mobs. The caves are mess. You go in and you can't see the mobs but you can see them screaming for help with the little I'm "STUCK!" over their heads. You wonder why there's like a 100 tombstones all over the place. Then you pull one and 50 come out of NOWHERE and you've just added your corpse to the pile in about 2 seconds flat.

/shrug.. If anything, it'll scare the crap out of you.

***

I don't know why Vanguard was even at E3. I don't know how long it takes to finish a game of this magnitude but it's barely done.

I'm not saying he may not come off with something ok two or three years from now. He very well might.

But he's asking for it by pushing the envelope this soon.

He asked for it when he didn't have a thing done and brought in testers. All the testers did after seeing a world waiting to be designed was debate how they were going to design it. When CR's were getting tiring and people brought that up post after post, the fights started. One side called them carebears and the other side called them vanbois. That article is QFT, except the writer doesn't know Brad.

He's also asking for it by continuing to hype it.

If I were him, I would just STFU, get the hell off the blowhorn and get down to work. Here's a thought. What the hell has he been doing all these years? Show me a game!

***

I wouldn't even give them the satisfaction of posting again. I'm not banned (I should be by now though, ha!) and I can't even read that shit anymore. The bullshit for sale in there is so thick, you couldn't slice through it with a dwarven axe.

That in itself is the real danger that's going to bury that game. The hype is so bad, that people are expecting a blockbuster success of unseen proportions.

Even by the slim chance they miraculously get something done by 2007, it'll never meet the expectations put in the minds of those raving lunatics.

Oh sure, they'll pretend they love it for maybe a month or two. Then they'll just disappear from guilds and game buddies because they'll be too embarrassed remembering how they fought for the CAUSE!

Or...WoW's raid bosses?

One side called them carebears and the other side called them vanbois.

Heh.  "Vanboi", that's fantastic.

And SURE enough, some nerdy dork whose voice hasn't even changed yet, will jump you two seconds later

Cars have had steering wheels for 100 years, since they haven't been replaced by ubarshiny Okudagrams does that mean all car designers are stupid?

Sometimes things get down to base principles and just work.  Humans will probably never be able to talk fast enough to have a completely verbal interface for their 1000 moves, and if you make it all twitch then its twitch and certain people will either always or never win.  Again, sometimes wisdom lies in keeping things the same rather than chaining flying pigs to your comp and requiring people to burp commands to them from their anus to swing their sword BECAUSE ITS INNOVATIVE.

Aradune Mithara
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 309


1. I am about 85% happy with the models, especially the playable races. They need some tweaks, and a LOT more outfits, items, etc. are going in. But I'm happy with the progress and am confident we'll be in good shape by launch. I'm completely happy and at peace with the 'unibody' decision -- having more outfits by an order of magnitude vs. races looking a bit more varied because they don't share a skeleton? It's a no brainer. A huge portion of these games are about collecting items and then wearing them to look different, show off the loot you've earned, etc. Being able to do this to a degree heretofore unseen was the right call. Same with being able to share them with humanoid NPCs -- having NPCs being able to wear PC gear and vice versa. This is huge. It may not be totally apparent yet, but it will be.

2. The animations. I'm pretty happy with the animation data we've captured thus far. Sure, I could nitpick. And yes, I wish I had more. And we will do more motion captures in the future, plus more hand animation.

3. The smoothness of the animations. No, not happy with that. But what you're seeing there is a product of several different things:

3a. The animation technology. It continues to improve. It's not where it needs to be yet. Things will blend together better and appear smoother as we continue to implement this tech and to tweak it. I am confident it will be in good shape by launch.

3b. The framerate in general. I'm not happy with the FPS. I'd be even more unhappy were we about to ship. I am pretty happy with the speed at which we are getting more and more optimizations done. The optimizations that were done between beta 2.5 and 3 in terms of Medium settings were very significant. The optimizations that we are doing right now for Low settings will be huge, not just in terms of FPS, but also in terms of making Low settings look a heck of a lot better. The last focus on general rendering optimizations will be focused on High and Very High settings, taking advantage of higher end machines, Crossfire and SLI, making 64bit clients, etc. Getting anti-aliasing in, etc. All of this will make the game look absolutely beautiful. And the vast majority of it, because of the way the engine was architected and because of the tech level we chose, can be done with minimal if any art changes, which is huge. In the past (say EQ), to make huge changes to how the game looked required a lot of work not only for programmers, but for artists too, and you also ended up with areas of the game that were clearly newer than other regions. This will be a LOT less true with Vanguard.

3c. What lower framerates are doing to animations. The lower the framerate, the less frames of an animation is played, and the less smooth it is. Frames are actually skipped, making the animations look bad. This was especially apparent with some of the FRAPs videos, because FRAPs makes you lose 7-10fps. And if you are, say, normally at 20fps, which is pretty good for an MMOG, and then you turn FRAPs on and are at 10-13fps, the difference is huge. Now if you were at 40fps, going down to 30-33fps isn't nearly as big of a deal. With a decent machine, you usually get 20fps or so outside, and 30-40+ fps inside on average (obviously it all depends on the area, what is being drawn, how many people are in your view (which with an MMOG, unlike, say, an shooter, is uncontrollable).

3d. We also have some other related animations focused on characters where we will use dynamic LODs for characters when a bunch of them appear on screen. Normally, LODs are used at a distance (and you can already see that we use this system extensively in Vanguard -- you *have* to with a seamless world where you can see for miles and miles). What you don't usually do, however, is switch to lower LODs up close. We will be if a bunch of people appear on screen all at once (say, a raid or a wedding, or whatever). There, we will switch and use LODs that would normally be used for drawing characters farther away up closer to keep the framerate high (of course, this will be such that you can set the degree you want the engine to do this in-game yourself). I think this technology will make a big difference, although we will be sacrifices visuals for framerate and smoothness.

Lastly, computer hardware, be it CPUs, RAM, HDs, graphics cards, sound cards, motherboards with pci-express and faster FSBs, etc. continue to become cheaper and cheaper (Moore's law and all of that). Right now you can buy a 256M ATI card that out performs and has more functionality than one you could buy a year ago, or even less, for a fraction of the cost. Take an ATI x800 or x850. They used to be $400 or so. You can buy a card that smokes an x800 or x850, plus again has better tech too, today for $130.

So whereas when we started the machines you can buy today were not even in existence, and the hot machines from 2 years ago that were more than $3000 became around $2000 a year ago and are now just a bit over $1000. When we release, they'll even be less than that.

We did make a choice with Vanguard and that was to take advantage of new technology to make our game both more immersive and also to stand the tests of time. There are downsides to this. Obviously games like WoW have done incredibly well and chose not to focus on tech, but instead using a more stylized approach, made a very immersive world using lower tech requirements. This certainly hasn't harmed them to-date. In North America, where people generally have higher end machines, the fact that there aren't a lot of choices in terms of games like WoW didn't hurt Blizzard much. Sure, there was EQ 2, but there were and are a lot of other factors there in terms of why WoW did so much better and it's not my place to do an analysis there -- everyone has compared the two games, their focus, their adherence to a vision, etc. ad nauseum and I'm not going to add to it. In Europe, and then big time in Asia, the combination of lower tech, the style of gameplay, and Blizzard's fantastic name and reputation there combined with their already tremendously successful line of RTS games and therefore their pre-existing channels of distribution in, say, Asia (which is VERY different than in North America) all added up to a HUGE unprecedented success. And as I've mentioned several times, not only a success for them, but they've potentially done all MMOG developers a huge favor by growing the gamespace by leaps and bounds -- no longer do you here people assert the MMOG gamespace is saturated and that only a million or so people will ever be into MMOGs, heh

All that said, our strategy is different (not necessarily better or worse, but different because we had no intention of building a WoW clone and never will -- people want choices, and people also like different styles of art (as well as gameplay, etc.).

Vanguard is the big AAA MMOG coming out and is going to be a huge deal in 2007. But it is also built for the long haul, the bitter lessons of EQ 1 and not planning ahead for success, keeping up with tech, adding expansions, adding features, etc. have haunted us since day one at Sigil. To that end we have hundreds of pages detailing expansions out to probably 5 or 6 years into the future. We have lists upon lists of game mechanics and features we will be adding to the game, whether it be revising and extending existing features, or adding completely new ones. And we have also designed an engine that will relatively very easily allow us to continue to take advantage of the technology that will exist in 07, 08, and well beyond. Going to 64bit, going to Vista, going to shader 3.0, taking full advantage of crossfire/SLI, taking advantage of dual core and then later multicore CPUs, migrating to DX10 and integrating Unreal 3.x technology, using physics cards -- all of this has been planned for, and not just on paper, but in code. Parts of that code are already there. Stubs in the code are sitting there ready to take advantage of this stuff are there.

Working with Microsoft for so long allowed us a very clear view into the future of technology from both a hardware and software standpoint. Our programmers sat on boards and didn't just hear what about the future but took part in those discussions and contributed. Our Director of Technology is great friends with Tim Sweeney and they talk all of the time and share ideas, and Tim is very excited about what we have done with their engine, how we have already done things with it that it doesn't support, how we have already implemented Unreal 3.0 code into the game, etc. We also talk to ATI and NVIDIA all of the time, do panels with them, etc. and have a very clear view of the road path ahead of us.

All of this has saved us a lot of time and has put us in a situation where we could make technology decisions that to people outside of the box might seem bleeding edge or risky. It's why we didn't announce a lot of our features early on and it's why we still shy away from being too specific in terms of min and recommended specs. It's why we've implemented some advanced code already, sometimes earlier than others would expect, but at the same time held back on implemented other technology (say, environmental shadows).

Now, by no means do I predict doom and gloom for WoW. Their installed base is absolutely incredible. Their sales are as well. Their penetration into Asia is fantastic. Their decision to go lower tech, mix single and MMOG gameplay together, to use stylized graphics, to set the rate of character advancement that they did was mostly planned out in advance and it has most certainly paid off.

But our philosophy is different. Coming from EQ 1, which is *still* going relatively strong, we think *very* long term and are very patient. We plan to receive the vast majority of our revenue from subscriptions not sales. Our focus is on retention and making sure the Vanguard of 2008 or 2009 both looks and plays great. The downside is that we most likely will not do as well in countries where the average gamer has a much lower end machine than, say, the average gamer in North America. We will also likely sell more slowly because we don't have the rep that Blizzard does in Asia, nor the sales channels and set up. We also didn't spend 5+ years and 80 or so million dollars focusing as much on polish as on content and long term playability.

Instead, we spent less money and have a different target audience -- the core gamer, as I've posted about so much that I'm not going to re-post about it right now. We only require a couple hundred thousand subscribers to start making money. Put us into the 500,000 realm, and we are making big time cash. Put us higher than that, and whew, things will be good. Likewise, take those subscriber numbers and combine them with a game that from a content, feature, and technology standpoint is designed to look and play great for 5-10 years and hold onto those people (e.g. high retention, like we saw in EQ 1 and like I'm pretty nobody has come close to to-date) for a long time, and you have our recipe for success. And not just a financial success, but a creative one, because we didn't come back and do a second High Fantasy game by coincidence. While most developers want to move onto other genres or themes, we wanted to make a better EQ and so much more. That's just who we are -- we really think long term, and we really want to achieve things in terms of creating a fantasy MMOG both at launch and far beyond launch that will go down in history as being unprecedented and revolutionary.

So, by all means it's important to make sure the average gamer can run Vanguard and have a great time at launch. And that we'll achieve that I am very confident, not just from gut instinct, but by the advances we have made in beta thus far. We will also run on less than average gamer machines, although unlike, say, a WoW, you will notice the visual consequences. But we'll also have a game that will look fantastic on higher end machines at launch, and those higher end machines will quickly become average machines in 6-12 months after launch, and then lower end machines 1-2 years after launch.

From a tech standpoint, we'll be likely the only game that will actually take advantage of a 64 bit client and more than 3 gigs of RAM, and by take advantage of, I mean you'll see the difference in the game and it will be noticeable. Same with Crossfire/SLI. Same with Vista and integration into Microsoft's future plans as they turn their focus from dominating the business and home side of PC operating systems to entertainment and as they change their focus from console to PC when it comes to Windows Gaming Live, etc. The same with shader 3.0, DX10, physics cards, etc.

And taking advantage of this tech, like I alluded to, won't be a nifty tech demo or will it manifest itself in some tiny subset of the game, but rather you'll see it immediately throughout the world of Telon. View distances are applicable in most places, except maybe a purposely fog enshrouded forest. A seamless world that currently only uses x and y coordinates when it comes to laying out the world will easily transition into using a z coordinate as well, allowing us to go well above and beyond the 2km by 2km regions we currently use -- you'll be able to fly a mount several km up into the air and explore entire floating cities or, conversely, travel kilometers into the earth and find an entire under world (think D&D's Underdark actually realized in an online virtual world). And like I said, you'll see the entire world, not just new expansion areas look better as we use DX 10, more Unreal 3 tech, shader 3.0, etc. allowing us to keep building and building the world as opposed to having to commit resources to re-do the world (or, worse yet, like EQ 1, let the old world become obsolete and unused).

We weren't sure last year whether we would having flying mounts by launch -- we are now, and we will. But we always knew they would be possible given the way we designed the technology and architecture of the world. And when we made that decision, we didn't have to change the world or just having flying mounts only usable in a subset of the world. Having ships that can sail anywhere and getting rid of all transportation on rails allows us unlimited expansion opportunities. Not using Instancing, coupled with our seamless world, has allowed us to not only add to the world at any time via patching or a major expansion, but also by having vast dungeons that can be shared experiences as well as have the room where the majority of people can own a house and have that house actually exist in the world and not be some pocket dimension (and therefore have its location relevant, have varying housing prices, have people sell their lots and move on as they level up, etc.) is pretty exciting. Having a seamless world also means we have to be able to load up *any* art asset in any part of the world at any given time -- yeah, that was tough to code and it wasn't fun writing that memory manager and it's still being tweaked -- but amongst other things, it means you can literally pick up any object from anywhere in the world (assuming it has an item pointing to it in the database), put it in your inventory, and then set it down in your house -- a totem or statue from Kojan can be placed in a house in Thestra or out in one of the several entire islands that exist so people can build on them and eventually create player driven cities with their own economies and RTS style gameplay. Integrating crafting into actual gameplay out in the real world means that characters will be able to fix bridges or remove cave-ins. How much harder will it be to have those bridges break or those cave-ins happen while you're standing their using physics cards, say a year from now? Not hard at all, and again, instead of it just looking nifty, we already have gameplay associated with it.

I know, I've gone on and on, but really, I've barely touched the surface. What we've shown to major gaming pubs and online sites when they've come and visited Sigil has blown their minds. When they come by E3 or Leipzig with 15 or so minutes in their calendar and then don't end up leaving for 3 hours and we're still not done showing them things -- well, that really says something, IMHO.

Ultimately, my point is that we made our choices and our competition made theirs. There are advantages to both. The advantages to the decisions Blizzard made can already be seen and can't be argued with. Our decisions people can still debate or be skeptical about. Not much I can do about that. Obviously, given the type of game we wanted to make, and have since really the mid 90s, the choices in terms of tech and gameplay foundations were correct. Given how much we rely on retention and long term playability, I think we made the right call. Given the evolutionary foundation behind Vanguard but then the revolutionary ideas behind it, both at launch and then planned after launch, we need and will need to be able to use technology that is cutting edge today. And if we can spend most of our time making games and not re-writing tech or re-creating art assets, then we'll be able to jump ahead over the years in terms of how much content we have, how good it looks and plays, how relevant it is, etc.

Short term, though, we do have a challenge. Games like WoW look more polished and generally run at higher framerates, especially given that our game isn't out yet and not optimized like it will be both before and after launch. Animations run smoother and don't drop frames. Some people like more stylized art better. Instancing allows the number of people in a given area to be more easily controlled. And so we have a tough job ahead of us getting the word out about the game, what it can do that no other game can, both at launch and well into the future. How much more freedom you have, how many more options you have, how many more play styles the game will appeal to, how those who do appreciate technology and update their machines for other genres of games regularly will be also rewarded with an MMOG. Getting the game done, getting more people into beta, continuing to polish and optimize, eventually drop the NDA so that people can see with their own eyes how much more immersive a seamless world with unparalleled character customization, no instancing, player owned towns and cities, multiple paths of characters advancement, the ability to sail a ship anywhere you want, and then later a flying mount...

There is a cost for freedom, whether one speaks of games or just about anything else. Again, I'm confident we're not talking about serious cost, especially by launch. But it will take more of a machine than, say, WoW. Our job is to get that message out, be clear about the advantages, display them, talk about them, show them. It's the same with the stereotypes that we fight about Vanguard being only for the Hard Core, all about down time, nerfs, boring travel, and the like. Short term interacting with the community has helped considerably, whether it be our own or on other boards like this. Screenshots will help, and videos even more. Ads will help, both online and in gaming pubs. Interviews with strong and clear messaging will be key. A solid beta 5 sans NDA will be HUGE.

We'll get the message out, no matter what it takes, how much effort, time, or money. Given the fact that we're likely the only other AAA MMOG for the year 2007 means that we can do no less. As does the fact that Vanguard is our dream, short and long term, and that almost a hundred people have poured their hearts and souls into it for over 4 years, not to mention an experience pool in terms of MMOG development that is absolutely unrivaled.

'Nuff said
Last edited by Aradune Mithara : 09-05-2006 at 07:54 AM.

"Given the fact that we're likely the only other AAA MMOG for the year 2007 means that we can do no less."

Aradune Mithara
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 309
   

Steve Clover and I did indeed write the initial design docs for EQ (Steve even came up with the name EverQuest). We were the first 2 guys hired for the EQ project in March 1996. I also was Producer (managed the entire team) for the duration of development until release (March 1996 thru March 1999) and also helped produce Kunark, Velious, and Luclin (although Andy Sites and Jeff Butler helped me with Kunark, and Jeff Butler was producer on Velious and Luclin while I was exec. producer).

The 'original team' never quit during development of the game and in fact we have very few of the original team leave until we started working on other games during Kunark (EQ 2, etc.), and then even fewer actually quit. Several did leave from EQ 1 and EQ 2 to help found Sigil with Jeff & me in Jan 2001, and more joined us soon after (including Steve Clover, Milo Cooper, and Kevin McPherson who were all part of the original team -- in fact, Kevin was the third member of the EQ 1 team if I recall correctly). Milo is also one of our character artists and was the main character artist behind the original EQ 1 models. McPherson is also the key programmer on Vanguard assigned to animations, characters, etc.

Not sure where you are getting your misinformation, but a lot of accurate info can be found http://www.sigil.com/team/bradmcquaid.html and elsewhere.
Last edited by Aradune Mithara : 09-05-2006 at 09:58 PM.

Aradune Mithara
Registered User
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: San Diego, CA
Posts: 309
   

I was lead programmer on EverQuest for a couple of months and then was promoted to Producer, after which I did no programming. So while my background in programming has helped me as a producer/exec. producer in my career, I haven't done any serious programming since the WarWizard 2 demo in the early 90s. (and I do miss programming, ah well).

On another note, McQuaid and Koster sound more and more alike every day.  I just picture them as the two old guys in the balcony on the Muppet Show, heckling WoW.

"Given the fact that we're likely the only other AAA MMOG for the year 2007 means that we can do no less."

On another note, McQuaid and Koster sound more and more alike every day.

The tradeoff is that SWG permits greater animated expressiveness for every race. This is, again, mostly a matter of taste. There are technical challenges both ways as well, of course. In WoW, tying each animation set to each character type means that you have to assume a budget for animations equal to having every animation set on screen. That almost certainly means less animations total in the game. It eats into your skeleton budget, and requires greater animation time, of course, which could have been spent somewhere else. In SWG, you lose distinctiveness per species. This gets spent instead on character customization...

I like way better WoW approach. I don't need "fluff". I feel more important an unique feel of my character than setting the pattern of my beard. The only thing I'd change in WoW is the possibility to set an height. That's it. Specific animations really give you a different "feel" of the character, imho. More than the control of details that create lag, problems to the netcode and are barely noticeable by anyone aside you.

Yeah, to me the Tauren walk is the fluff, and the beard matters to me. *shrug*

I love that nearly two years after launch and approaching seven million subs, Brad is still (not-so-)subtly hinting that the WoW playerbase is going to collapse Real Soon Now. Yup, just wait a little longer. Aaaaany day now.

I think the instancing in EQ happened after he left, it was not part of "The Vision".  Some of the best times I had in Everquest were in the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion.  It really helped break up the grind too, I would not have lasted as long as I did in EQ without instances.

I don't get why he's so against instancing.  EQ has it, right?

All the fancy graphics in the world won't keep you immersed if you are waiting in an actual line to kill something.

So, while the Frenzied Ghoul will be in a community dungeon, it will be your Frenzied Ghoul (once you do the quest to spawn it) and other people won't be able to interact with it or something like that.

Sounds pretty clumsy to me, but I'd have to see it in action.

  But then again when I started posting people though I was that dipshit telemod.

It's one of the reasons PvP worked so well in EQ

Games like D&D Online, Guildwars, Tabula Rasa, etc. are not about huge online worlds to explore, nor about freedom.

Brad does his passive-aggressive thing on AoConan (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1433479#post1433479%3Cbr%20/%3E)

"Only one race". Hah.

I love Brad, he's such a crazy nutjob.  "No, it's ok that it won't run on today's machines, really!  You can buy a better machine than now in a year.. THAT's what we're looking for!  (Along with ~400k subs)"   Those two statements.. they don't mesh so well, eh?

Perhaps it's a statement that they're only after 'serious' gamers who have the bankroll and care to keep their machines within the last 1-2 years worth of tech.

Supposedly, Vanguard will have pseudo-instancing for [some/most/all] important mobs.

I hope they release a lot more information about it, and I do know Funcom knows how to make a good game (AO). Is it something that is made to challenge WoW in 2007 like Vanguard?

please check out a couple of articles on www.bradmcquaid.com (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/)

Brad does his passive-aggressive thing on AoConan (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1433479#post1433479%3Cbr%20/%3E)

"Only one race". Hah.

Looking at Conan's tech, like I said, the graphics look great, but appear to be about a year or more behind Vanguard's in tech and they are rendering a LOT less.

I'm glad I avoided EQ all of those years. To be honest, I'm surprised that some of you are still interested in mmo's after those early experiences. That you aren't jaded for life.

I mean, I'm almost jaded by the idea of "good loot" period. Let alone the idea of "good loot" that can only be found in huge raids. I'm jaded by leveling period. I'm almost at the point that even "faster leveling" isn't good enough.

Dune. "Only one race." Hah.  :roll:

Oh, how I love the irony (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7846.0)

I've never seen TR say they were going after large numbers, nor are they making stupid claims like "It's ok that the specs are bleeding-edge supercomputer-high RIGHT NOW, really!"  I also pointed out that TR's specs AREN'T as crazy as you all were contending, they're at about the level of 'cutting edge' machines 1 1/2-2 years ago.  I was, however, waiting for someone to come in and post that link-back. Thanks for not dissapointing.  :-D   

The problem with this genre thus far has been longevity.

I don't think we're talking about a large virtual world to explore. I may be wrong here and they just haven't released that information yet.

In summary, very different game, older tech, likely a lot less content (and therefore longevity), solo player focus and then PvP focus -- where's the PvE and exploration? Cool combat system and lots of gore -- they're really going after the M rating where we are going for T. One race? Why so little info on the web site? Why the release date on the web site that seems a year off? And why do people call it an MMOG?

I have seen twelve year olds put together better, more coherent websites than that.  It looks like some sort of awful fan fiction site that someone with a serious mental deficiency would create.

This is a level of unprofessionalism I really didn't expect from him.

I can't believe he's posting lists of reasons why competing products will suck.  I mean people may like making fun of catasses and The Vision(tm) and whatnot, but as an EQ guy McQuaid is nevertheless something of a "name" in the industry.  This is a level of unprofessionalism I really didn't expect from him.

please check out a couple of articles on www.bradmcquaid.com (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/)

2. - For everyone claiming to not care either way about Vanguard, there's 10 pages of hyena yapping.

zomg lern2html n00b

When has McQuaid been professional?  Or outside?

Holy fuck, you aren't kidding. That's like Icy Hot Ninjaz peen-waving level shittiness.

You didn't play early EQ. He is responsible for a few of the truisms of bad PR in MMOG, such as "working as intended" and "bug not feature."

"Bug not feature" worked both ways, though.  If it was detrimental to the players or generally fucked with things, it was a feature not a bug. 

If it was helpful and outside of 'teh vision' it was a bug, not a feature.

Aggro management, main tanks, healers, and "more fookin' dots" doesn't even equal beating the shit out of Glass Joe.

No game has really worked out how to make an endgame that is anything but.

Camping, kiting.

And it certainly
doesn't look like vanguard has any answers. Assuming it even has a endgame at the moment.

Vanguard: The Are You Shitting Me? Edition (http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=646556)

Vanguard: The Are You Shitting Me? Edition (http://www.ebgames.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=646556)

The first 2 question volley has been launched. Non-inflammatory questions of course, Id hate to be considered a troll :)

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75627

It's not so much that we enjoy the grind but without some sort of harsh lvling or harsh death penalty the game will feel to easy. We dont want to play a game just for the sake of playing it. We want a challange so we feel that it's worth our time.

The crafting is fairly interesting... and that's the only positive thing I can say

Jesus Christ, I can't stop crying. Those fucking forums depress the hell out of me. Dumb motherfuckers.

We don't want to play a game just for the sake of playing it.

Grind and travel for the same reason : each bit of the game must mean something in term of personnal efforts and involvement.

I don't think Vanguard is expecting to please many people who really like WoW.

Without meaningful travel many of us feel that the world of telon would lack any sense of immersion/ challenge.

We want a challange so we feel that it's worth our time.

You want a lvl? it will be painful, long and you'll be proud of getting it.

As for grinding, what makes you think VG is full of grinding. IMO there won't be enough.

When you sign on each evening or whenever its a serious decison picking where to go level.

WoW's world is not large. Sorry but it has one of the smallest virtual worlds I've ever played in. And travel meaningful? In WoW? Did you even play WoW? Or are you one of those people you talk about that were introduced to MMORPGs by way of WoW and thus have nothing to compare WoW's world and travel to?

Can we go one day without some 15-year old WoW troll smelling up the forum?

PREVIOUS GAMES
10SIX - DOAC - SWG - Shadowbane - EQ2 - WoW -
and EQ-
70 Necromancer 70 shaman 70 Rogue
70 Mage x 2 70 Warrior 70 Enchanter
70 cleric 70 Ranger 70 Wizard x 5

1.) Long travel IS fun, or should be.

I think people that were introduced to MMORPG's via WoW will be 1 of 2 things:

MMOGs Played:
Just World of Warcraft

Not surprising :/

I hope you're not expecting Vanguard to have easy-mode travel.

The last I heard, there is no universal chat channel. So, you won't be getting a tell from someone half way around the world inviting you to a group. You will be grouping with the same people today you fought with yesterday, in the same general area that you are already in.

Dude, over an hour to get to Desolace from Menethil!?!?!?! ok adding say 5 minutes to catch the boat, It'd take me about 35 minutes tops (30 from Auberdine), and I did it at lvl 32, on Deathwing a Horde heavy server. My character I'm refering to is a Night Elf Hunter, so if I did it without Aspect of the Cheetah we'll say 41 minutes

OMG whats with your brain and why are you an idiot?
Have you played Vanguard? Let me answer for you NO.
Travel? ugh usually takes a while to run somewhere, try gettung off ur fast*** and running 1/2 a mile , not sow fast is it?

just means you need to plan on your adventure and not just log on and zone to where you can find one. I really look forward to it

get in and do a little xp'n

you just want to xp for a while

you are in a zone completely on the other side of the world to XP with someone

I'm buying a monthly planner just for Vanguard!

I just went to the vanguard forum for a visit. I didnt see one Vanguard dissenter. Heavy fanboi-dom. My nom de plum shall be short-wood!

Gotta remember the bad old days before EQ even had in-game maps. I used to have a whole 3 ring binder notebook stuffed with recepies, maps, ore pharming locations, etc. That is what these guys want back!

Jesus christ, I can't stop crying. Those fucking forums depress the hell out of me. Dumb motherfuckers.

Heh, did you just copy and paste that from a 4 year old thread about Horizons?

Gotta remember the bad old days before EQ even had in-game maps. I used to have a whole 3 ring binder notebook stuffed with recepies, maps, ore pharming locations, etc. That is what these guys want back!

I can see why people think they want to play Vanguard. But actually playing it is going to be something else.

Darkfall Fanbois > VG fanbois

Isn't Darkfall that religion where forum users worship a belief in a game that never existed?

Isn't Darkfall that religion where forum users worship a belief in a game that never existed?

C:\Games\Vanguard>dir /s

...

     Total Files Listed:
            5315 File(s) 22,458,371,516 bytes
             140 Dir(s)  27,580,272,640 bytes free

C:\Games\Vanguard>

What the fuck are they doing?

To properly prepare the players for the game itself, they should limit distribution to digital only, so the fuckers get their first ding-gratz only after a couple of days of catassing Fileplanet.

To properly prepare the players for the game itself, they should limit distribution to digital only, so the fuckers get their first ding-gratz only after a couple of days of catassing Fileplanet.

I should be part of the Vanguard target market. I find WOW dull. I like to group and I miss the sense of adventure and danger of EQ. I don't like the direction games have gone in. They may be more pleasurable from minute to minute, but to me they lack the peak moments that I got in the past.

Hmm, that's almost enough for me to check it out myself, Nija.  I love a train wreck.

I just left it to dl when I went to bed and it was all done in the morning.  That's how I download most stuff.

I should be part of the Vanguard target market. I find WOW dull. I like to group and I miss the sense of adventure and danger of EQ. I don't like the direction games have gone in. They may be more pleasurable from minute to minute, but to me they lack the peak moments that I got in the past.

You sound like someone who is ready to try EVE.

Ahh...santa's elves.

Gotta remember the bad old days before EQ even had in-game maps. I used to have a whole 3 ring binder notebook stuffed with recepies, maps, ore pharming locations, etc. That is what these guys want back!

I just left it to dl when I went to bed and it was all done in the morning.  That's how I download most stuff.

The guy who started this thread hasn't posted or visited since. Just saying.

Certain dungeons not having maps would be kind of cool. An entire game? Not so much.

ugh.  some old friend from sw:g are gearing up for this game...

Hehe. We have had a couple of them wander over here to defend their catasstastic honor too. They are definitely a special breed. And one that shouldn't breed, for that matter.

Have they previously shown signs of being functionally unable to learn from prior experiences?

Seriously, there are ex-SWG players looking forward to a game built by Verant/Sigil and published by SOE?

Shortwood posted for provocation over there, and Thosor Dow posted here for provocation.  Geddit?

Both worked.

Shortwood posted for provocation over there, and Thosor Dow posted here for provocation.  Geddit?

Both worked.

Shortwood posted for provocation over there, and Thosor Dow posted here for provocation.  Geddit?

What's the latest rumor on a ship date?

Bearing in mind that I've seen more than one Vanguard fan say things like "Another 6 - 12 months of development and it'll be a great game!", the most recent launch rumour I've heard is January.

I'm still trying to find a tester that can say something good about the game. Even so I hope it launches soon. I haven't had a good laugh since the last turbine game was released.

I'm still trying to find a tester that can say something good about the game. Even so I hope it launches soon. I haven't had a good laugh since the last turbine game was released.

22 gigs for a game client? Sweet crispy chocolate Jesus, I couldn't even think of fitting that on my gaming partition. Or any other windows-enabled partition. That's just out of control. Are they using 2000x2000 uncompressed bitmaps for textures or something?

For fuck's sake, when I saw it, they still hadn't managed to implement capitalization - attacking 'a toad' meant that all lines like 'a toad hits your face for 15 acid damages' started with a lowercase 'a'. It's text, it's not that hard to detect when you're starting a sentence and capitalize the words there.

Can I post a text file output of the directory structure / file sizes or is that too much?

I was flipping through the Shaders folder and there's a 180 meg file dealing with speedtree. Rest of the shaders are pretty small, 5-10 megs. Then there are about half a dozen that are 100+ megs with the speedtree one being the biggest.

Most data is contained in the models I THINK, I skimmed it last night but i couldn't really recognize the file types. I'd guess it's a container for the model+some textures for it combined.

You can't really compress the graphics that much, as they need to be frequently accessed, or so I'd assume.

I'm going to be buying a new hard drive to play Vanguard. Any recommendations?

We're in the "home stretch" of beta and one of the continents isn't implemented yet, much less tested.

I'm going to be buying a new hard drive to play Vanguard. Any recommendations?

I'm going to be buying a new hard drive to play Vanguard. Any recommendations?

Don't forget to also buy a bigger trash can for the 30+ cds it takes to hold the client.

Given what I saw of Vanguard at E3, they spent about half of the 22GB on polygons in hilariously disproportionate elf and catgirl boobies.

I'm going to be buying a new hard drive to play Vanguard. Any recommendations?

22GB for a client is fucking obscene. There's no excuse, none, nada, zip, not even for a beta client. It screams bloatware.

Ah, the old sand in the hard drive method of grinding.

On another note, I heard they are working on a Very Collector Edition of VG with a bonus 40 gig external hard drive included in the bundle (30 day trial only though).

Oh, and apparently the 20 gig beta client is also only a WIP. Brad expects it to be closer to 30 gigs at launch.

Apparently Butler was the 4th SWG Jedi and has 11 SWG accounts....

Has this game been euthanized already?

You can't euthanize something that's already dead.

corpse run!

You can't euthanize something that's already dead.

How do you kill that which has no life?

Perhaps I've been too hasty in dismissing Vanguard out of hand...

(http://xs207.xs.to/xs207/06414/ouch.jpg) (http://xs.to)
Not photoshopped in any way.

Man, I cannot wait for Vanguard to launch. It can't possibly live up to either the "If God made an MMORPG, it'd be Vanguard" hype, of course -- but I'm not so sure it can live up to the negative hype either. Can it really be that bad?

Are you serious? 22 GB install? You have to be kidding.

(I hope you are)

My friend insists it'll be the greatest MMO ever to be made and that it's reinventing the genre. No matter what I show him, not just me saying stuff, he still goes on. I just want them to release this heap and get it over with so I can say "I told you so."

Speaking of Horizons, here's something kind of interesting.  The new company, who had all those billing issues seems to have resolved some of them.  You can now subscribe and pay with your credit card without any problem.  Unfortunately, they found that people could bypass the credit card bit and make free accounts so they disabled character creation (it's been gone for almost three weeks).  Evidently, there is still the issue of not being able to always cancel.  Sooo... you can subscribe, pay, not make a character... or cancel.  The only thing you can be absolutely certain of is they'll get at least one payment of $13.95 from you. 

Sounds like a case of integrating legacy game code within a brand new billing system. How many partners has Horizons had now? Three? That's three different infrastructures they've had to recode Horizons to work with. And that's a lot harder than wrapping some DRM around a casual online game.

They did mention on their website that they would accomodate personal cheques.   :roll:

you think you can just show up here and make rational arguments?

A for effort, C for execution.

Vanguard preorder stuff. (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/pressrelease_20061013.php)
Somehow fitting that it was announced on Friday the 13th.

Edit: Bonus stupidity (http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78439) from the VG boards - "Wait, you're telling me that non-instanced dungeons with static spawns in an EQ-like game means I'll have to camp for loot?!? ZOMG fix this Brad!"

Hurray! Im glad we can camp rare spawns if we want to. It just give you another choice of gameplay.

Would buying multiple collector's editions to sell much later be a wise investment decision?

Maybe if you thought pets.com was a good investment.

WTS: Slightly used copy of Asheron's Call 2

I got a secret glimpse at the Special Edition Vanguard Box Set.  Now I know why it's so expensive.

That was a REAL post on the linked thread.  Have people forgotten that GAMES were supposed to be FUN?

There is a difference between camping a mob for a quest and camping a mob for an item.

The first is bad, the second is acceptable, because you don't really need the item.

In theory the idea of really rare items or creatures is cool. You might see one then not see one again for a few months. Pretty neat.

The problem is that rare creatures all spawn on timers in the same area and you just learn where they are. It is neat for a random newb but totally abusable. The fact that you know exactly where and when they spawn makes them not exotic at all.

One simple thing games could do is make the spawn areas much much larger. Like an entire zone in size. That way you really can't try to camp one. (Unless you are a crazy glutton for punishment)

Make them spawn much quicker but over a much wider area. That increases the chance of Joe Newb running into one randomly and lessens the chance of Joe Hardcore camping it.

In theory the idea of really rare items or creatures is cool. You might see one then not see one again for a few months. Pretty neat.

[...]

Make them spawn much quicker but over a much wider area. That increases the chance of Joe Newb running into one randomly and lessens the chance of Joe Hardcore camping it.

Seriosly, while gameplay advancement at mid to higher levels isn't as fast as WoW, it isn't that slow either, and we've created a world with so much more freedom -- different paths of advancement, ways to keep your group together including offline travel with our Caravan system, an advanced LFG system that looks for people with common interests so hopefully that pick up group turns into a regular group of friends, and such a vast, but still varied and interesting seamless world to explore, while you like won't hit max level as fast, you'll be doing so many other things, your overall days played will be longer, but they shouldn't feel like a timesink.

No, we're not perfect, and there will be some grind (just as there is in WoW), but we went into this project (almost 4.5 years ago now) planning on how to minimize the grind, make adventuring fun, make traveling meaningful and fun, and bringing back the 'doing of dungeons' with out encounter routes and non-instanced worlds.

Vanguard may not be for everyone, but I think to a great many it will be a breath of fresh air. The timesink and the grind is our enemy every bit as it is yours and we are comitted to stomping it out as much as possible, and we'll only get better and better

Why does a brand new game with a twenty or thirty gig install look this shitty? (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Mid/MidLevelBattle012.jpg)

While that screenshot is probably how most people with normal machines will see the game, it is far worse than the best eye candy the game can offer.

I like how the FoH people are basically just flaming Brad and the game now.  He posts a new batch of screenshots and the very next post is something like "I think LOL about sums those up."  Speaking of screenshots...

Why does a brand new game with a twenty or thirty gig install look this shitty? (http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Mid/MidLevelBattle012.jpg)

Also, their terrain engine just blows chunks.

Take a look at the yucca trees in the background. I'd guess that each spike on that tree is a triangle. They seem to have tried the "realism/quality by throwing polys at it" approach to graphics. It tends to lead to things looking like bad Poser models and adds a lot of space. The textures look detailed, it's just that the details are ugly.

Also, their terrain engine just blows chunks.

This in no way is meant to reflect my opinion on the game, but.....


I bet it doesn't look too bad within the game itself. Just about everything looks like shit when it comes to screenshots. Any current game you guys are playing, from Half Life 2 to CoH, look like shit in screenshots.

It's not just a graphic thing, the Vanguard gameplay looks just like crappy old EQ, which I guess some people want.

Games rarely look better in screens, and in some technical ways you're right, Stray. But compare the weakness of:

http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Mid/MidLevelBattle012.jpg

to the awesomeness of:

http://cerberus.gamershell.com/screenshots/1816/214107_full.jpg
http://cerberus.gamershell.com/screenshots/1816/214108_full.jpg

It's not just a graphic thing, the Vanguard gameplay looks just like crappy old EQ, which I guess some people want.

Rare loot can be fun and not rare. Put lots and lots of rares in the loot tables but give the items timers so no one keeps them forever. Make every rare LORE with every other rare.

Blurry amorphous blob land ftw! Those trees are done like normal trees, you can see them closer in some other shots, change the screenshot # in the url.

http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Mid/MidLevelBattle007.jpg

One simple thing games could do is make the spawn areas much much larger. Like an entire zone in size. That way you really can't try to camp one. (Unless you are a crazy glutton for punishment)

The plight of attempted realism. Eventually people will realized "real" looks crappy and just start going with style.