SOE to Publish Vanguard

[Merusk]

Gah.. that's a horrible thought, HR.  This game HAS to release and it better be technically great.  Otherwise, we'll have to suffer the "vanguard would have rocked if they put more time into it!" arguments for the next 10 years.

[Righ]

It's not too likely though, is it? After all, they've ripped the guts out of SW:G, and left a shell of game that's broken and largely unplayable, and yet they continue to publish it. They launched the Titanic of online games in EQ2, with gigantic production costs, and less than stellar returns. They "rescued" TMO and now Vanguard. SOE is starting to become a place that unhealthy games go to die, slowly and without dignity.

[Big Gulp]

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

Wow, I think that's the best summation of SOE that I've yet seen.  Well said.

[Big Gulp]

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.

I love how Brad is spinning all of these fundamental design failures which caused people to flee the older games in droves for WoW as "features".  Likewise the talk of, "We're not trying to compete with WoW", enrages my inner robber baron.  You've got a game out there that has proven just how large the market really is, but for some reason you wouldn't want to try to hit that market?  What, do the dollars of casual gamers spend differently than the dollars from catasses?  It's really just CYA-speak for, "I don't have the resources, talent, or insight to be able to compete with WoW, so I'm hoping I can make a quick buck off of some suckers".

[Engels]

Well, to be fair, one could argue that Brad is aspiring to some artistic integrity behind the game design and doesn't want to cater to what is arguably the 'bread and circus' mentality of WoW. That said, I'll be surprised if Vanguard has a cohesive 'vision' that marks it as artistically distinct from other games.

[Chenghiz]

I think his artistic vision of Vanguard is more closely in line with whips and chains than flowers and happy rest XP.

[shiznitz]

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

[HaemishM]

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.

[Triforcer]

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.

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.

[stray]

certain people will either always or never win

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.


Also: The car analogy is horrible. If games were as homogeneous as automobiles, then we wouldn't even be playing them right now.

[Tale]

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

I find it hard to believe the hair is as intended. It's not on par with the other graphics and Sigil's official screenshots tend to have characters wearing cloaks or helmets instead.

[Phred]

certain people will either always or never win

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.

Planetside wasn't enough for you?

[stray]

Nope. It's barely persistent, and it's barely a world. It's just a big first person shooter. And not even a good one at that.

Also, by twitchy, I don't necessarily care if it's a shooter or not (which, for some reason, is what comes to most people's minds). "Twitchy" to me is more like a fighting game or a third person platformer (i.e. Ninja Gaiden or God of War).

For the most part, combat in FPS's isn't all that great to me. The hallmark of twitchy combat is controlled Defense, and FPS's barely offer that outside of jumping and strafing.

Secondly, I'm not even referring to Player vs Player necessarily. "Twitchy" PvE could be something like certain obstacles a player would meet in most platformer's these days. Say, a standard "assembly line" level, where a player has to recognize patterns and time their movements right in order to get through to the other end (instead of getting smashed by protuding spikes and stone blocks that come smashing down in front of them).

And on another PvE note:  Bosses. Standard MMORPG bosses are only "bosses" because they have a lot of hitpoints. "Twitchy" bosses work much like the obstacle levels mentioned above. Defeating one comes down to whether a player recognizes his patterns.

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).

[Righ]

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

All most of of use have been asking for is one GOOD, massive, persistant game world. If you want to add adjectives, get in line. :)

[Simond]

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).

Or...WoW's raid bosses?

Anyway, back on topic - more  breakage ninja'd from Heartless' blog comments section:

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!

Hoooleee sheeeet. Beta stage 3 (aka the beta slots from CGM or whichever mag it was) is going to be very interesting.

[stray]

Or...WoW's raid bosses?

Body blow 

WTF?


[edit]

Seriously.

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

[Miasma]

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

Heh.  "Vanboi", that's fantastic.

[Tale]

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

Heh.  "Vanboi", that's fantastic.

Yes, been fantastic in this thread/board/thing several times already.

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

Safe bet NDA breaker is in high school. Young enough to have voice breaking on consciousness, without the adult terminology for it, while worrying about nerdy dorks.

Not a vanboi, but I have no time for a me-too bandwagon of negative hype based on a schoolkid's shitty writing. The previous Heartless Gamer post was interesting.

[HaemishM]

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.

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.

I've seen innovative. When it works, it's a new game. When it doesn't, it's shit.

I've also seen "hotkey to victory" done about seventy billion times over, in varying stages of good and not. I've eaten hotkey stew for 8 years now, and I'd like a different meal, please. Maybe an open-faced hotkey sandwich. Maybe hotkey tapis. Maybe just something that isn't the same bowl of hotkey stew I've eaten for the last 8 years.

I haven't stopped eating hotkey, I'd just like my hotkey prepared in a way that's a bit different and doesn't taste like I licked the anus of a monkey.

[Falconeer]

We all know Brad McQuaid loves to talk 'n write.
Following the sharing of a little homemade (by himself) gameplay video, he answered some questions on the foh boards.

Now I would like to spotlight this post:

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/553334-post82.html

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

   
Quote:
Originally Posted by ashatumar
Question for Brad, a direct one:

Are you satisfied with the models and the animations that accompany them?

Second part:

Do you feel that the models and their animations add to or diminish the game world (environments) you've so obviously worked hard to create?

Either way, it can't be a wrong answer, but perhaps give us (the critics) some way of determining what page you're on.

As I've always said about Vanguard: You're not there yet, but I can see where you're headed -- and it's going to blow us all away.

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.

Is the guy repeating itself a mantra or it is just me?
Plus (in the final part):

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

Arguable? Discuss.

To close this Early September Brad's Digest, let me show the funniest part of the whole monster-topic, where a guy affirms that Brad didn't create EQ1. I would have paid in blood to see the look on his face while typing the answer.

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/553651-post164.html

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

Quote:
Originally Posted by Maxxius
Get your dam facts straight, Brad did not create EQ. He never did. I give him credit for finishing it and pushing it out to market when the original design team quit.

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.

.
To quote another topic (I had to choose which one to necro, that one or this one..) I'd say Vanguard is really ramping up the excitement...

[Falconeer]

More:

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

Quote:
Originally Posted by Wizerud
Actually Brad, how much of the programming did you do on EQ? I know you did most if not all of WarWizard but when did your solely programming activities decline/cease and how much if any have you done on Vanguard? Just curious more than anything.

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).

[Merusk]

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?

He's also still in denial about WoW, I see.  "It was the Blizzard name." "It's because it ran on poorer machines, it'll go flop eventually" "It's because they sold their soul.."

I just wish it'd launch so we can see what actually shakes-out.  I don't expect we'll see it next year either, though.

[El Gallo]

Deciding to go with "identical bodies with a shitload of armor/clothing" rather than "a shitload of bodies and only a couple kinds of armor/clothing" is fine.  However, once you make that decision, you should limit your playable races to those that look sensible with a human body.  What you do not do is add fox-people with fox heads popped on a human body.

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.  They should make a game together.  I'd buy it, but then again I buy everything.

[Falconeer]

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.

Gold.
Except they would heckle in private.
Publicly, they still have to smile.

[HRose]

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

Eheh, come back in a year and tell me I was wrong:

Warhammer will be more successful than Vanguard.

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

SWG didn't have "unibodies" but it did have unianimations. It looked horrible. Vanguard will have both.

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*

[Simond]

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.

[Jayce]

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.

[Miasma]

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.

[Azazel]

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.

Well, you see.. It's better to have 500k players for 5 years, then, say, 4 million for 2 years. Apparently.

And as we all know, the combination of the BC release and the Christmas season is going to blow the player sub base through the roof. Not to mention box sale $ of both WoW and BC.

[Merusk]

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.

Exactly right.  Instancing, fast travel (plane of knowledge), faster leveling, 'good' loot that you can get outside of huge raids, etc.  Those were all outside of "The Vision" and happened after he left. (Though PoK had to have been started while he was still at the helm, it was something he resisted for years prior to that, so I believe it was forced.)

[stray]

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.

[Azazel]

The thing about those early experiences is that for many (most?) of us, at least those for whom EQ was the first experience was that we simply didn't have anything to compare it to. As a result, we regularly took it up the arse without lubs and asked for more, please. And honestly, the first time around, it was fun, overall. Hence the rose-coloured glassed that the "Vanbois" wear.

Now though, there's no way I'd allow myself to be arse-reamed like that again.

Levelling in WoW though, I believe is something they managed to get right. Despite being surrounded by people who are generally new to raiding and have that "hooked by the shiney" look in their eyes when they see what <raid mob> drops, I still found the 1-55 game in WoW to be vastly more fun than "grinding at 60/endgame".

[Simond]

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.

I dare you to go post that on the official Vanguard boards!  :-D

[El Gallo]

His theory is that no instancing leads to more social interaction and community building, again a la koster.  There is something to be said for that, but a whole lot more to be said for not standing in line/KSing/etc.  Supposedly, Vanguard will have pseudo-instancing for [some/most/all] important mobs.  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.

On raids, I'm not sure it's fair to tar him with the "raid 4 lyfe" brush.  Original EQ and Kunark aren't really that raid focused.  Velious is though, but even there a single group can get pretty nice stuff.  Luclin (imo) is where the game really morphed into raidquest, and I don't know how much involvement he had in that one.

However, the "grind 4 lyfe" brush certainly is an appropriate tarring device.

[Jayce]

I guess it's no surprise to anyone that a lot of people disagree with him here... but I was wondering about his "mix single and MMOG gameplay together" comment.  If you take it as something besides an intended dis to WoW (which it undoubtedly is, but just for the sake of argument).

I can only think he is talking about the solo potential of WoW (or, said another way, the absence of forced grouping).  I don't see how that is an element of single player. There are still other people in the world to chat with/make fun of, drive-by buff, be drive-by buffed by, save from an encounter gone wrong or be saved, or to grief or be griefed by.  Interacting with other people only in the ways the world designers intended are not the only ways that count.

I suppose that Vanguard has a chance of being good in its own right, but I do see a lot of rationalization from him, and adherence to this failed "Vision" thing that EQ only recently rescued itself from.