SOE to Publish Vanguard

[Velorath]

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.

Except in this case his stance isn't repugnant.  All those frothing VG fans who can't allow anyone to speak ill of the game are the ones making cases to have themselves banned from posting on websites.  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.  The problem with Bruce posting here was always two-fold.  It wasn't just Bruce himself that was a problem, but people who went out of their way to bait him for the sake of starting shit so they could watch Bruce be Bruce.  Fuck even someone like Brad who's the head of a company and thus expected to act somewhat professional is being a quite a dick in that thread.  If there's anything to be learned here it's that as bad as Bruce can be (and for the record when we had that poll I was one of the people who voted for him not to come back) there's a lot of fuckers worse than him.

[Cheddar]

I am reading the Bruce vs Brad vs Raving fanbois who have no reading comprehension thread, and wow.  Seriously, wow.  I have new respect for fanboism.  They are constantly trying to defend any slight against their baby while attacking SirBruce, yet do not realize he did not even review the game.  It is amazing, and if this is an indication of the "core" player in that game then Brad is going to have some serious issues with retention (churn) in that game. 

[Falconeer]

And the match GOES ON!

Brad fights back with a flurry of blows!

Bruce tries to dodge and lands a jab...

...Followed by a nasty one-two..!

(There are many lessere blows between the two in that topic, but they are so many I decided to bring you just the higlights..)

Stay tuned for more sweat and blood, right after the break.

[Tale]

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.

The use of the word journalism to describe SirBruce's article set me off. I'm a journalist by trade (hard news, not games/tech). I believe a writer's interests should be declared.

[Miasma]

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

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.

[Miasma]

Actually, the current numbre is 6.5 million, and that is subscribers, not boxes solds. Over 1 million North American, 1 million in Europe, and the rest mostly in China.

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

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.

[Mesozoic]

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

[Hutch]

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

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.

McQuaid is just retconning the encounter. He only cares about SirBruce because his E3 article contained some negative comments. If the article was lavishing praise on Vanguard, or didn't mention it at all, or (better still) hadn't been posted to the forums, then McQuaid wouldn't be putting on the big PR push.

This is old-school mmog promotion. Closed beta. NDA. Private, guided-tour play sessions for friendly preview authors. Monitor the forums and fansites, to counter any negative press as quickly as possible.

Don't build a game that people actually want to play. Don't have a months-long beta period of your high-quality game, so that people try it and get their friends interested through word-of-mouth marketing. That would be too much like World of Warcraft, and that's just not the target audience (aka level of financial success) that you aspire to.

[Falconeer]

From the Vanguard forum:

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 fascinated, in a morbid way, by both the former and the latter message.

[stray]

[edit] Oops

[Venkman]

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 used to be, but your last sentence is the key. Depending on the company size, sometimes the CEO is getting their hands dirty with more than just managing the corp and doing the PR thing. Brad in particular seems very "hands on", doing both real PR and community management PR as well as being something of a Creative Director/Vision Manager.

So it's not surprising he doesn't trowl the forums, blogs, news sifters and new sites every day for every bit of info that comes down the pipe. He's literally in his own little world, and pretty much was fine there with the backing of MS and that the Xbox 360 would have been an environment almost entirely free from competition from other MMOs. Things started going sour with the SOE we're-just-another-grindy-fantasy-MMO event.

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

Which is incredibly insightful about just how much Brad doesn't know about the genre these days. He's talking to his exact target audience and doesn't realize just how much in the minority that is.

[Tale]

Actually, the current numbre is 6.5 million, and that is subscribers, not boxes solds. Over 1 million North American, 1 million in Europe, and the rest mostly in China.

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

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 don't see how Bruce's numbers work out from his links. There is nothing to indicate his claimed breakdown of "1 million North American, 1 million in Europe, and the rest mostly in China".

[Engels]

Wow, anyone else having flashbacks to the EQ boards circa 1999? Just before SOE closed them?

Brad should not be allowed to post, for his own game's sake. He may be a great game designer, but he is not a PR person. He alienated players in the past with his draconian Castro-like missives. Now he's only barely hiding his anger against SirBruce and is coming across as defensive, simply by replying to SirBruce's trolling.

Brad's replies to the old EQ boards caused Sony to hire Absor in order to do damage control. Sony really needs to take Brad aside and have a 'chat' with him before we see Vanguard distributed by Electronic Arts in a bundled deal with NFL Cheerleader Madness III.

[Mesozoic]

The thread has devolved into an argument of whether or not Bruce tried hard enough to find Brad.  The mind boggles.

[Toast]

Brad did offer to fly Bruce in for a personal demo of the game. That's pretty cool, I guess.

[Lum]

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

Cockle status: warmed.

[Falconeer]

Lum, care to comment about these?

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).

or

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.

[Lum]

I talked about my impressions of Vanguard on my blog. I don't really want to get involved in SirBruce's jihad.

[Mesozoic]

You say "jihad" like its a bad thing. 

[SpaceDrake]

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

[Engels]

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

Fixed!

[Simond]

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  (but think pyromaniac angel in a hand-pulled wheeled taxicart).

[Broughden]

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  (but think pyromaniac angel in a hand-pulled wheeled taxicart).

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/retard-rickshaw/22693-vanguard-ss.html

The scary part? He is in an absolutely open area devoid of life and is only getting 25 fps. 

[Numtini]

They really need to tweak the EQ2 graphics, but once you get past the comm... oh wait... wrong game... (Seriously, if you showed those as the new EQ2 expansion would anyone question your honesty?)

Reading those forums is sad and amusing in a schadenfreude sort of way. It's going to be an incredible train wreck. 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.

And if that kind of pain doesn't sound appealing? Well, it's even less appealing than it sounds.

[HaemishM]

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.

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?

I'm pretty sure no one has more money than Blizzard at this point, at least not in the PC sphere. The only people that can dethrone WoW are in the console sphere. And if they can make a big-huge successful MMOG on a console, that would be a second-gen MMOG, because of the jump to a new platform.

[Broughden]

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

[Tale]

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.

[Falconeer]

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.

[Broughden]

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.

Actually I prefer the Moron Motorbike.

[Phred]

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.

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?

I think it's a pretty safe bet at this point. Who out there can dump that kind of money on development who has a reasonable chance of producing something better? M$? So far they haven't shown themselves to have much of a clue what online games are about. EA? Not bloody likely. Sony?  Smaller companies are a lot less likely to be able to attract the big investment necessary to match the time and effort put into refining a WoW-killer.

[Simond]

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.

[Falconeer]

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.

[Phred]

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.

It looks like he had the LOD distance set quite short, assuming it's tunable. I don't see any reason to doubt his claimed system specs personally. I'd bet the screenshots you've seen were done on a newer generation card than the x800 but that card isn't exactly considered slow either. He also said he was running at 1280x1024 whereas to have a screenshot approved for publication it had to be at 1600x1200. The framerates with mobs in them and combat were pretty damn slow though.

He also mentioned he had a second configuration that lowered the quality even more that he used for combat mode.

The main ugliness I saw though was the LODized textures fairly close in.

[Venkman]

It didn't look that much different at E3, except that the widescreens they were using to show the game did wonders for the UI, as is the case with most of these games.

The graphics are bland. VG stands as good example of why seamless worlds with no zoning are not the cat's meow. The style is not that inspired, seeking "realism" over WoW/GW/other stylization. The characters do look plastic as a result.

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

(and Haemish earlier).

It's not just the money. It's the resonance with a strong fanbase, having a strong lore (derivative or not, it works because the games worked), a rockstar persona and being the division of a huge multinational publisher who can leverage many partners to launch into more territories than anyone else. Oh, plus, raw talent.

I agree that right now nobody has the guts to dump that much money into an MMOG. But remember Driv3r? At last report that was something like 55-66 million. For a friggin' driving game.

The money is out there. As Haemish notes, that money is currently in consoles. But why is that a challenge anymore? I fully expect one of the bigger features of future MMOGs to be at least cross platform, if not platform independent. People mock web-based MMOGs, but that is the future for companies who don't want to toss all their eggs in one basket. And there's no reason to actually have the MMOGs play in a browser window with banner ads and a Back/Forward button.

[HRose]

I wrote it in my site a while ago and I repeat it here after the stuff posted.

Before it was all about the casual Vs hardcore debate. Now I'm seriously thinking that the hugest problem of the game will be the production value and technical quality.

Like if it is on the same level of Dark&Light, Wish and Mourning. Actually "Wish" was rather solid. I'm starting to doubt that even SOE will accept to release it.

At the end I don't even know we can blame Brad for his game design ideas in the case the game is crippled by an abysmal technical quality.

We'll be left with the doubt.