Vanguard Round 2 - Post Mortem

[slog]

Being one of those people who played lots of EQ when I was younger and have since got a familly, I can say that he's 100% right that I dismiss Vanguard without a second thought.  Any game that was targeted for the Hardcore like VG was isn't for me.

And I'm certainly not going to install that piece of shit Vista and get a new system in order to Catass my through Vanguard.

 

[Falconeer]

Brad's Wall of text critically hits you for 4352 chaos damage.
You are dead.
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Seriously, this is Serek Dmart material. Worst, actually. He is beyond imagination, he is a total joke.

[Hutch]

Lantyssa, I respectfully disagree with your last statement; if Sigil had worried even a little bit about the customer expectations set up by WoW, CoX and EQ2, as a top of my head list of 'working games', they would not be in the fix they're in. Their 'crime', if any, is the complete hubris of utterly forgetting what a customer will put up with while playing a modern MMO.

I wonder.

I mean, you're right, they should have known that the market has evolved. Players have more choices now. Blizzard et. al. have spoiled us all by finishing their MMOs before going retail. And Sigil should have taken all of this into account years ago, when they were designing their game, and not waiting till last year, when they were "beta testing" their game.

But I still wonder. At some point in the past year or two, they switched gears from "we will make the game we want" mode, to "we will make a game that will attract more subscribers" mode. And the result has been an unfinished, buggy, underperforming mess.

But what if they hadn't switched gears? What if they'd gone ahead with the game as it was originally envisioned? They would have spent the past year working on that game, making it work, finding and killing the bugs, maybe even optimizing it, and possibly adding in some more content.

I wonder if a catass cockblock game that was working, and free of bugs, and had finished content all the way to max level, wouldn't have more subscribers than the bug-ridden half-finished mess that went retail? Maybe a lot more?

Obviously we can't see how that would have turned out. But it's interesting to contemplate.

[shiznitz]

slog, as one of those who also played EQ1 pretty much every night for 18 months and then got married and had 3 kids I can report that VG is nothing like that now. Exp has been increased twice since launch and now is tolerable. If you are brand new to VG but not new to MMOGs, level 1-10 should take 10-15 hours. Level 11-20 will take 25-35 hours. These are rough guesses only and probably err on the slow side for levelling speed.

Brad's post is obviously just hope spilling from his fingers onto the keyboard. Sigil willfully (or ignorantly, hard to know which) ignored how the market had changed and built a game that would break on 90% of their target customers' machines. That decision was made 3 years ago. Then, they frittered away time that could have gone to polish the game (another lesson ignored) by adding scope, but not real scope. Just the skeletal framework for scope. Lastly, the UI is total crap.

I still play VG at all because of the grouping. Whether it is 3 vs 3/4dots or 6 vs 4/5dots, grouping is fun in VG. The problems are 1) the dungeons are quite far apart, 2) LFG tools suck, 3) population (on Hilsbury at least) is sparse. My guild has all but quit and/or taking a break from crafting burnout. The good part is that I haven't had PUG quality issues because 99% of players are from another MMOG and that CC is nice to have but not required so all you really need for a group is a melee and a healer. An offensive melee can tank if he has a few levels on the mobs.

So I am still giving the game some /play. I am not recommending it to anyone, though. I am not an endgame guy and the minute I hit 70 in EQ2 I found it harder to log in. VG fills the need to see a new world and learn my way around all over again.

[slog]

Maybe it's better now, but I don't give second chances very often (or even first chances.)  I will always prefer a game that was designed from day 1 to meet my playstyle over one that was targetted at the catass and then retrofitted when the powers that be realized no one wanted their shitty game.

[Rasix]

The defenses of this game make it seem worse than my prejudiced views of it (a first!).  Please, someone hit me with another Brad text-wall. 

[Nebu]

VG fills the need to see a new world and learn my way around all over again.

I think that is the perfect one-sentence review.  I enjoyed trying a few classes, looking around, and dabbling with crafting.  Then I left.  It was worht the box cost to play a month, but anyone expecting anything deeper is in for a disappointment. 

[Morat20]

But I still wonder. At some point in the past year or two, they switched gears from "we will make the game we want" mode, to "we will make a game that will attract more subscribers" mode. And the result has been an unfinished, buggy, underperforming mess.

But what if they hadn't switched gears? What if they'd gone ahead with the game as it was originally envisioned? They would have spent the past year working on that game, making it work, finding and killing the bugs, maybe even optimizing it, and possibly adding in some more content.

I wonder if a catass cockblock game that was working, and free of bugs, and had finished content all the way to max level, wouldn't have more subscribers than the bug-ridden half-finished mess that went retail? Maybe a lot more?

Obviously we can't see how that would have turned out. But it's interesting to contemplate.

In a word: "No".

What changed, a year or so back, was the fact that Sigil was resorting to begging Beta testers to keep playing. It turns out that their original catass game's market was so minisucle that they couldn't find enough catass beta testers to keep logging on.

They had to keep removing cockblocks just to get enough people to properly Beta the game -- it totally lacked anything that apparently anyone found "fun".

[Rithrin]

VG fills the need to see a new world and learn my way around all over again.

I think that is the perfect one-sentence review.  I enjoyed trying a few classes, looking around, and dabbling with crafting.  Then I left.  It was worht the box cost to play a month, but anyone expecting anything deeper is in for a disappointment. 

That's kind of how I felt. Ironically, even though I cancelled my account I got charged for another month anyways 

Though I bet that there's a large amount of people (myself included) that would have stuck around for a few more months if the world had a spark of life to it. And I'm talking purely art direction at this point. Wandering around through a world where small animals, fish, insects, and aquatic plants such as seaweed are mysteriously absent isn't appealing enough to make me spend time traveling to all the areas.

[Nija]

He's such a fucking dumbass. I love it.

He's talking about how high tech Vanguard is, trying to play it down as much as possible but his GLEAMING SUNLIGHT just shines through.

Meanwhile he's got idiots running around with wolf and tiger heads on human bodies. HIGH FUCKING TECH GUYS.


Hire some new coders.

[Lantyssa]

Lantyssa, I respectfully disagree with your last statement; if Sigil had worried even a little bit about the customer expectations set up by WoW, CoX and EQ2, as a top of my head list of 'working games', they would not be in the fix they're in. Their 'crime', if any, is the complete hubris of utterly forgetting what a customer will put up with while playing a modern MMO.

I said nothing about expectations.  Having a polished, working game with fun mechanics should be something every company strives for.

Trying to be WoW is not.  CoX and WoW are very different, but both are well done.

Instead they tried to be their own game, then tried to be another, and because of it didn't even get the "working" part started.  His x-factor of LoTR is far closer to WoW, and is pretty well done.  People who want the WoW experience in a new package are going to trickle there and not Vanguard.  They never will, and the harder they try to be it, the worse their game is going to get.

Being a part of SOE they would do well to remember to make the game for the customers you have and not the customers you want.  Apparently he couldn't even learn that from SWG, and it's the best lesson out there in "what not to do".

[trias_e]

I totally agree.  The game's biggest failing aside from the bugginess and lack of polish is that it tried to emulate WoW too much.

[Hutch]

But I still wonder. At some point in the past year or two, they switched gears from "we will make the game we want" mode, to "we will make a game that will attract more subscribers" mode. And the result has been an unfinished, buggy, underperforming mess.

But what if they hadn't switched gears? What if they'd gone ahead with the game as it was originally envisioned? They would have spent the past year working on that game, making it work, finding and killing the bugs, maybe even optimizing it, and possibly adding in some more content.

I wonder if a catass cockblock game that was working, and free of bugs, and had finished content all the way to max level, wouldn't have more subscribers than the bug-ridden half-finished mess that went retail? Maybe a lot more?

Obviously we can't see how that would have turned out. But it's interesting to contemplate.

In a word: "No".

What changed, a year or so back, was the fact that Sigil was resorting to begging Beta testers to keep playing. It turns out that their original catass game's market was so minisucle that they couldn't find enough catass beta testers to keep logging on.

They had to keep removing cockblocks just to get enough people to properly Beta the game -- it totally lacked anything that apparently anyone found "fun".

Fair enough. I thought that they started making changes, and then the beta testers started leaving. But, I wasn't taking notes :)

[Venkman]

But I still wonder. At some point in the past year or two, they switched gears from "we will make the game we want" mode, to "we will make a game that will attract more subscribers" mode.

SOE happened.

VG could have been a hard-mode MMO for veteran Sleeper raiders. But then:

• It could not have demanded the development budget it had;
• It would have been dropped even sooner by Microsoft; and,
• It would not have been picked up by SOE at all.

The result would either have been a game not delivered at all. The hype of what this game could have been commanded too much of a development budget dumped into art and world stuff to survive the reality of just how many people (read: not) were really interested in it. The core problem is that I don't think they ever truly evaluated just how many people bothered with hardcore-EQ1. It's like making a game all about WoW: BC raiding and expecting 25% of the players to come. No friggin' way.

VG had some pretty good ideas, and the areas that were polished were interesting and different. But it's an aggregate of completing ideas in an era of expected polish and playability without a learning curve. There's not enough people who want to put up with unplayable buggy crap to support an expensive AAA MMO anymore. Even those that used to have moved on.

[SnakeCharmer]

There's not enough people who want to put up with unplayable buggy crap to support an expensive AAA MMO anymore. Even those that used to have moved on.

/raises hand

[El Gallo]

In a word: "No".

What changed, a year or so back, was the fact that Sigil was resorting to begging Beta testers to keep playing. It turns out that their original catass game's market was so minisucle that they couldn't find enough catass beta testers to keep logging on.

They had to keep removing cockblocks just to get enough people to properly Beta the game -- it totally lacked anything that apparently anyone found "fun".

I'm not sure about that.  They had to beg testers to play because the game was an un-fun pile of shit.  I can't find the link to Potus' rant about it, but he was dead on.  The core game was just really, really unfun.  Crafting was just like EQ2's "mash the flashing icon" crafting.  Combat was also just like EQ2's "mash the flashing icon" crafting.  You had to stare at the UI 80% of the time you played, waiting to play this Simon minigame that was, in fact, the whole game.

I think there might be a decent market out there for a well-made (i.e. relatively bug free, engaging setting, no actively horrible game mechanics) catass game (by which I mean group-required, slow advancement, endgame of large, non-instanced raids).  Not huge by any means, but I think there might be a market.  Beta2-Vanguard isn't a good test for that because it was so eye-gougingly horrible.

I think there's probably a bigger market for a slower-paced, group-oriented but still instanced WoW, of course.  And even that market is a joke compared to the WoW market.

[SnakeCharmer]

I think there's probably a bigger market for a slower-paced, group-oriented but still instanced WoW, of course.  And even that market is a joke compared to the WoW market.

Is everything that isn't WoWsized in terms of sub numbers now a joke?  Or am I reading too much into what you're saying?

Is 250K or 500K now considered a failure?

[Margalis]

I think there might be a decent market out there for a well-made (i.e. relatively bug free, engaging setting, no actively horrible game mechanics) catass game (by which I mean group-required, slow advancement, endgame of large, non-instanced raids).  Not huge by any means, but I think there might be a market. 

That game is called FFXI. The whole point of that game is basically to be a better EQ and it delivers that pretty well.

[El Gallo]

I think there's probably a bigger market for a slower-paced, group-oriented but still instanced WoW, of course.  And even that market is a joke compared to the WoW market.

Is everything that isn't WoWsized in terms of sub numbers now a joke?  Or am I reading too much into what you're saying?

Is 250K or 500K now considered a failure?

I think you are reading too much in, I only meant in relative terms.  My annual salary is a joke compared to, say, Barry Bonds' salary, but I don't think I'm a failure.  At least not for that reason 

[Simond]

I think there's probably a bigger market for a slower-paced, group-oriented but still instanced WoW, of course.  And even that market is a joke compared to the WoW market.

Is everything that isn't WoWsized in terms of sub numbers now a joke?  Or am I reading too much into what you're saying?

Is 250K or 500K now considered a failure?

Depends on how much money was spent developing it, among other things.

[Raguel]

Anyone have a link to the proposed rogue content that didn't make it to release? IIRC it sounded like something I suggested to some dev team but I don't recall posting it on the VG boards. I'm curious to find out how far they got, and what issues they ran into.

[Venkman]

I think there's probably a bigger market for a slower-paced, group-oriented but still instanced WoW, of course.  And even that market is a joke compared to the WoW market.

Is everything that isn't WoWsized in terms of sub numbers now a joke?  Or am I reading too much into what you're saying?

Is 250K or 500K now considered a failure?

Depends on the needs of the business, how adequately it was scaled to its actual audience size, relationship variables, and so on. It's the Eve vs SWG thing: numbers that CCP could (at the time) only wish for Eve were not nearly enough for SOE to stay the course on SWG.

Almost nobody thinks in terms of WoW because almost nobody has the resources to compete in the same way. So some do a more honest assessment of their true audience size while others build completely different business models.

And none of this is new thinking. It's just that the numbers being measured have an extra zero or two from the days of EQ1 being on top.

[Rodivar]

I have to echo those who say the game was changed due large scale rejection during beta.  I was in beta 2 when the entire testing population would consist of myself and 30-50 other people on a typical night.  I didn't keep notes but right around beta 2.5 they started making changes just to get people to log into test.   The issue for early testers was that they could not find any reason to log in, other than their commitment to test.   I continued to test because I felt a responsibility to at least try.  The early combat was an ambitious attempt to break the mold but had a problem, in order to play you could not look at the game you could only watch the UI. 

The idea that they changed the game and then testers left is not accurate, if they had not changed the game even fewer people would have played, it was that bad. 

I'm not posting to bash the team, I find no joy in kicking someone while they are down but they had no choice but to change the game between Beta 2 and 3.

Not that it would have made the game better but with the condition of the game the affiliate only community program was an awful business decision.   

[Nyght]

I have to echo those who say the game was changed due large scale rejection during beta.  I was in beta 2 when the entire testing population would consist of myself and 30-50 other people on a typical night.  I didn't keep notes but right around beta 2.5 they started making changes just to get people to log into test.   The issue for early testers was that they could not find any reason to log in, other than their commitment to test.   I continued to test because I felt a responsibility to at least try.  The early combat was an ambitious attempt to break the mold but had a problem, in order to play you could not look at the game you could only watch the UI. 

The idea that they changed the game and then testers left is not accurate, if they had not changed the game even fewer people would have played, it was that bad. 

I'm not posting to bash the team, I find no joy in kicking someone while they are down but they had no choice but to change the game between Beta 2 and 3.

Not that it would have made the game better but with the condition of the game the affiliate only community program was an awful business decision.   

I think many of us felt that if they had stuck with the original 'Vision' of a hardcore game and actually finished it, they could have had a solid niche at 100k+ or so. Apparently Brad's dick was bigger then his pants and the sight of it out in the open scared many away. Happens to a lot of people and businesses that think they are somehow the source of a trend when in reality, they are just riding the wave.

[Margalis]

I'm not posting to bash the team, I find no joy in kicking someone while they are down but they had no choice but to change the game between Beta 2 and 3.

He isn't one of us! Get him!

Yes, there is some revisionist history going on already. Vanguard moved more towards WOW because it had to. Nobody liked the game in the original incarnation. Had they stuck to their guns it would have been an even bigger disaster.

I think many of us felt that if they had stuck with the original 'Vision' of a hardcore game and actually finished it, they could have had a solid niche at 100k+ or so.

There is no reason to believe that. Regardless of vision, the implementation has been a huge problem. Really no matter what the vision the implementation would have dragged it down. FFXI is already a better EQ, and Lineage 2 is already an uber-catass game. The fact that Vanguard won't run on a lot of systems doesn't help matter either. Both FFXI and Lineage 2 have better character models and run a lot better, and both are years old now.

[Falconeer]

Let's say there is room for a better FFXI then.
Too bad they screwed it up.

[Velorath]

Let's say there is room for a better FFXI then.
Too bad they screwed it up.

Well yeah, but because most of us hate grinds.  I think the point that was being made was that FFXI was already targeted at the hardcore catass that Vanguard was originally trying to appeal to, and did that job much better than Vanguard does.  I'm sure among Square's other MMO projects though, it's likely they're at least in the early planning stages of FFXI's eventual successor.

[Rodivar]

I have to echo those who say the game was changed due large scale rejection during beta.  I was in beta 2 when the entire testing population would consist of myself and 30-50 other people on a typical night.  I didn't keep notes but right around beta 2.5 they started making changes just to get people to log into test.  The issue for early testers was that they could not find any reason to log in, other than their commitment to test.   I continued to test because I felt a responsibility to at least try.  The early combat was an ambitious attempt to break the mold but had a problem, in order to play you could not look at the game you could only watch the UI. 

The idea that they changed the game and then testers left is not accurate, if they had not changed the game even fewer people would have played, it was that bad. 

I'm not posting to bash the team, I find no joy in kicking someone while they are down but they had no choice but to change the game between Beta 2 and 3.

Not that it would have made the game better but with the condition of the game the affiliate only community program was an awful business decision.   

I think many of us felt that if they had stuck with the original 'Vision' of a hardcore game and actually finished it, they could have had a solid niche at 100k+ or so. Apparently Brad's dick was bigger then his pants and the sight of it out in the open scared many away. Happens to a lot of people and businesses that think they are somehow the source of a trend when in reality, they are just riding the wave.

I appreciate your opinion but I think you are over simplifying the issue.  Most important, no one would purposely spend $30,000,000+ to create a 100k player niche game, that's like building the space shuttle to fly from Columbus to Chicago.  Why spend such an obscene amount of money on that project when others have done more spending a fraction of the money?  As a simple business reality they had no choice but change course hoping to expand their audience.  The failure of VGSOH is not a hardcore vs. easy issue, it's a design that was not fun.  Im going to assume that some number of the beta testers considered themselves hardcore mmorpg players, yet even they rejected the gameplay.  The biggest thread I remember during beta was one when all 50 players who actually logged into beta (joking) described the game as a game of Whack-A-Mole.  Only in the dreams of the development team would corpse runs, fast travel, death penalty and equipment damage be the issues which kept them awake at night.  They faced the dreaded nightmare of throwing a  $30,000,000 party and having no one come.   If after spending $30M dollars they could not get more than 50 of the thousands of players who were invited into beta to test/play the game for free, how were they going to get 200-400k to play they needed to pay down the enormous debt?

[Tannhauser]

I don't know if Vangard had a niche.  Want hardcore grinds?  Try any Korean MMO.  Want casual fun?  WoW is king.  LoTR makes it in because they have the IP.  Maybe Vanguard would be moderately successful if at least it worked on older computers.  They could have at least sold more boxes before everyone detected the stank inside.

[trias_e]

I would pay for a group-focused non-WoWalike-solo-quest-oriented its-about-the-journey-not-the-destination diku. 

Minus the fruityness of squaresoft (although, I admit I haven't tried FFXI, I've heard enough horror stories to want to avoid it, any game that deletes my characters is not one I'm going to play).

Basically an EQ without excessively punitive gameplay and without really boring combat.  A little mystery about the world, a community that is fairly close-knit due to group-focused gameplay, and maybe some form of PvP.

And I always assume that if I would pay for it, I imagine many people would.  I'm not that unique.  (well, considering WoW's sub-base, maybe I am).

[Falconeer]

My point is EQ2 came out in 1998. Then 4 years later the formula got really cloned (long griind included) and aesthetically revamped with FFXi and it still went (and is going) strong. In 2007 you are one year late on the expected and deserved new iteration of the same product, but Vanguard failed while trying to be different (not a true clone) and no new FF Online coming. As I said, a real new EQ clone could have scored big, while the ambition of capturing the magic *while* changing and *improving* it screwed Vanguard. From what I heard, should they have sticked to the original Vanguard design they'd had failed anyway, while if they have tried to simply clone EverQuest and Final Fintasy XI with better graphics they'd had scored. Hubris (ὕβρις), as someone said. Brad's full of that.

The point of Lineage 2 and the long grind is moot, cause that's not what made EverQuest interesting. It was the lots of very different zones, the dungeons, the itemization and the lore. Lineage 2 has NONE of that stuff.

[squirrel]

Mark my words, we are watching the fall of the DIKU-empire.

Don't get me wrong, WoW will continue to outperform most of Africa financially and anything they might do *cough*W.o.Starcraft*cough* will bring them up to Italy's GDP. And niche Diku's will continue to be profitable enough to exist, in some cases wildly profitable - yes I'm looking at you Korea.

But I really believe that WoW is the late roman empire of the DIKU model. Warhammer will do ok imo and LoTRO deserves to return a positive ROI, but looking at the overall gaming market DIKU as an approach is on the decline. How do I know? Because it's a commodity product  now that's attracting a gazillion copycats, and the barrier to enter has been lowered significantly. Additionally the significant fantasy IP's are accounted for, and they are the most appropriate wrappings for DIKU gameplay. Saturated market anyone? Not to say there will be no further successful DIKU's, but it's not the wild west of opportunity it was. There is no WoW II from anyone but Blizzard. And money will follow money.

So where's the money at? Consoles. Specifically, console/PC hybrid titles allowing cross-pollination of consumers. Which means that the hardcore grind to win crowd that PWNT the game when there was 400,000 players world-wide become a rounding error when assessing a market of 10 - 14 million potential consumers. Not that any title will do that - but that's the installed base they are now evaluating.

Every fantasy DIKU MMORPG released after WoW is a 'me too' effort regardless of the creative effort or inventiveness of the team involved (attributes VG didn't have in execution, hard to win that way). Even Warhammer, which I am really looking forward to, can only be viewed as the swan song of the genre. DIKU's are bound by the basic mechanics, and as many people I've spoken to about LoTRO say: "Yeah it's all-right, but why would I play that when I could play WoW if I wanted to?" (anecdotal and simplified but accurate.)

WoW has essentially achieved a network economy effect in that if you're going to play a class based DIKU casually or for PvE you just might as well play WoW, even if you don't particularly like it! Why? Because it is the safest haven for your MMORPG commitment in regards to time and return. Why do people avidly defend their MMORPG of choice, even when it's obviously crap? Because they are vested in its success through their personal commitment of resources.

WHO will be fun. LoTRO was ok in beta and I hope they get a sustainable profitable base. But overall? Times have changes - the gorilla isn't just a gorilla, it's a Caesar, and it's playing a violin.

EDIT: Spleeling

EDIT: Clarification: when I say the barrier to entry in the DIKU world has been lowered I don't mean capital costs. I mean in terms of scarcity in design and development ideas. Arguably WoW has raised the capital requirement for a DIKU MMORPG to unreasonable levels. Which is contradictory. Sue me.

[Falconeer]

Mark my words, we are watching the fall of the DIKU-empire.

Don't get me wrong, WoW will continue to outperform most of Africa financially and anything they might do *cough*W.o.Starcraft*cough* will bring them up to Italy's GDP. And niche Diku's will continue to be profitable enough to exist, in some cases wildly profitable - yes I'm looking at you Korea.

But I really believe that WoW is the late roman empire of the DIKU model. Warhammer will do ok imo and LoTRO deserves to return a positive ROI, but looking at the overall gaming market DIKU as an approach is on the decline.

Actually, I agree with you. My only doubt is about Warhammer, as I am not sure it can be qualified as a DIKU after all. I consider Conan and Warhammer as the first two major attempts at slowly moving away from the DIKU model.

[Margalis]

As I said, a real new EQ clone could have scored big, while the ambition of capturing the magic *while* changing and *improving* it screwed Vanguard.

I question whether that is really true. When EQ came out it was the only game in town, and FFXI, while not the only game in town, was still well before WOW. It is quite possible that EQ and FFXI did well because there was no real alternative that was significantly different and also stable, polished, etc.

Disco used to be popular but a new disco record today isn't going to set the world on fire. Maybe the market has just moved on. Tapes and vinyl records were popular at one point - try releasing one today.

I don't see any reason to believe that a new EQ variation would be any more than a minor success. Just because it worked at one point doesn't mean it is going to continue to work.

Talking about EQ-alike games is kind of misleading because that means a couple of different things. What the Vanguard team focused on originally was the "difficulty." No travel options, bad death penalties, etc. Interesting, varied zones is something else entirely.

None of the people I know who play FFXI are ever going to play another FFXI. It simply takes too much investment. They'll stick with FFXI until it peters out but they are never going to play another game where meeting up with your buddies is an hour-long ordeal. These people are not repeat customers - not for that style of game anyway.

That said, there is plenty of middle ground between a game like WOW and a game like FFXI for developers to explore.

[Falconeer]

Yeah Margalis, I correct myself. It couldn't have scored big (for the reasons you mention). But it could have scored OK, like say half of FFXI numbers. That is still way better than scoring trainwreck.