As spotted by Krones, attracted by a FoH thread on, quote, “why Vanguard attracts such nerd rage”, endquote, Brad McQuaid leaves the Sigil fallout shelter and sees his shadow, which means six more months of crunch patching.
Then there’s the issue of us releasing a bit early because of us having to release when we did due to financial issues. And then there’s the fact that we released so close to the WoW expansion. That didn’t help either, at least short term. I am confident though that as people finish up with the expansion, that many WoW gamers will migrate to Vanguard. People want something new in their lives, and that includes MMOGs. WoW is a fantastic game, but Vanguard is designed with additional polish but also additional depth and freedom to experience more from a virtual world.
So while the game continues to sell well and churn is low, I think we could have done even better had we more effectively addressed what you mentioned and what I talked about above. I’m not worried — I know Vanguard is a great game and getting better every patch. But at the same time, I’m not as happy as I could be about the negativity and controversy surrounding the game, when we launched the game, etc. We will recover and get the message out, of that I am certain. And in a sense, we did know some of this would happen — again, there are those drawn to Vanguard because of our EQ heritage, but we also knew that there would be those who would be turned off by that same heritage.
More followup posts:
We had to agree to a launch date, or there would be no money to continue. This was unfortunate, but we will and are recovering. This game was expensive — probably second only to WoW, although WoW cost more than double. I don’t want to sound jealous, although I probably am to some degree to be honest, but Blizzard put $80M into development. No one else is willing or able to do that. Not Microsoft, not Sony. EA perhaps, and they’re now back in the MMOG business with the Mythic acquisition (but at the time we started Sigil, they were still in a lot of pain over Sims Online, which is rumored to have been around $25-30M — so at the time they were not interested in a game like Vanguard. And certainly not smaller publishers — they definitely don’t have that kind of money.
So I’m not upset in anyway with SOE or Microsoft — again, what they did give us in terms of funding and support is unprecedented. The vast majority of developers would kill for such a budget as we received. It’s just a financial reality that is hurting us short term a bit, but something I know we can and are recovering from. Also, launching around the same time as Burning Crusade wasn’t optimal either, but again, nothing we can’t recover from.
So, my take: Vanguard is the first object lesson in how World of Warcraft has changed the industry. You simply cannot release an incomplete MMO any more and expect users to give you time to finish. McQuaid has been nothing if not honest with his userbase and the public about why Vanguard shipped when it did – but it’s not good enough. WoW is out there on the shelves, telling everyone that the bar has been raised. And while Everquest did very well shipping incomplete product on a regular basis, Vanguard has released into a very, very different market.
Sigil may well spend the next year whipping Vanguard into the shape that it should have been on release; the problem is by that point people will have moved on. It’s a problem Dark Age of Camelot shares; since I’ve been jonesing for a PvP fix I set aside WoW for a bit and took up playing DAOC again on and off (with a, ahem, interesting forum group) and one of the things people can never get over is how fast levelling is. They remember DAOC as it shipped, not as it was changed to be. You can’t patch away that first impression.
Vanguard may well eventually reach a steady level of users, but if they had released a finished product, they would have had far more. It’s a brutal lesson that WoW teaches, and Sigil won’t be the last development team to learn it.
#1 by Random Poster on March 12th, 2007
I think what helped Blizzard is that when they finally set a final release date they quit trying to add new stuff and switched over to polishing what they DID have ready. They did it with the initial release and they did it again with BC release. After release they go back to working on the content that got cut out of release.
Now, if you’ve been running your mouth off for years about what you are going to have in your game and you end up having to cut it because it’s not working like it should, then you need to swallow your pride and take the beating you are going to receive on the forums and the like. That’s going to hurt you short term, from the guys who have been following your game forever, but long term it will help you as if what you have is highly polished it should hook in the players who are just trying the game out for the first time. That impression of what you DO have, whether it is running smoothly or buggy, is always going to outlive what the player never sees.
#2 by Ibn on March 12th, 2007
No matter how good your game gets through content updates and patches, a substantial part of the MMO community will still judge it based on how it played on launch day. I thought we all learned this from AC2, are that many devs still really not paying attention?
Heck, I’m guilty of that thinking myself, I still have an icky feeling about AO which I understand has done rather well since its original “wait we need a billing system! ah crap!” launch.
#3 by Matt Mihaly on March 12th, 2007
Scott, you wrote, “You simply cannot release an incomplete MMO any more and expect users to give you time to finish.”
I doubt that’s true at all. You’re looking at the MMO market, it seems to me, very narrowly. If you said, “You simply cannot release an incomplete Western AAA MMO that needs to splash big on launch day at retail and expect users to give you time to finish” I think you’d be spot-on.
–matt
#4 by Scott on March 12th, 2007
What’s funny is the implication that WoW was a finished MMO on launch. WoW is still a unfinished MMO as the developers teeter totter back and forth about what role each class has in the grand scheme of things.
What MMO consumers do expect now is a technically capable MMO on launch, which is what developers should be focusing on. Warcraft proves that players are more than willing to smack their head on the content ceiling for months on edge, so long as they’re actually able to consistently play the game.
Beta content is fine, just not a beta client.
#5 by scottj on March 12th, 2007
@Matt:
You know, given the comment following yours, I’m not sure I’d agree. Even an indie MMO I don’t think would do well if it had stability issues.
@Scott:
Well, by the content definition, few MMOs ever are finished, and by the balance definition, no MMO is ever finished. I think “technically capable” is a good benchmark.
#6 by Geoid on March 12th, 2007
When you play an MMO what matters is the content in the game at the time. I wager very few people quit over promised yet missing content while a much larger number quit over broken content.
#7 by Thomas Mannino on March 12th, 2007
It also didn’t help that the Burning Crusade expansion had an incredibly successful launch, technologically speaking.
#8 by downsj on March 12th, 2007
Damnit, I just started playing Rappelz, I don’t need to be tempted to start playing DAoC again. Damn you.
#9 by Random Poster on March 12th, 2007
“It also didn’t help that the Burning Crusade expansion had an incredibly successful launch, technologically speaking.”
Very true, my server didn’t even go down on release something which I believe shocked everyone on my server. Granted it got laggy but with just about everyone on our server running around in Hellfire at the time it wasn’t that bad.
As you said BC was very successful technologically speaking, where it failed IMO was well..being an expansion pack in my eyes.
Maybe i’m spoiled but I like for my expansion packs to at least add something new and different, BC failed in this department. It took what in my mind is the worst part of WoW, the faction grinding, and made it ten times worse, while adding nothing new ot the game mechanics.
Even opening up shaman/paladins didn’t add much because after level 20 you are slogging back through the exact same content you have already done (and low level content additions have been completely lacking from WoW for a very long time now).
Basically BC gave us new scenery, a handful of new mob types, and the same gear meshes the game has been using since launch(which is just pathetic).
#10 by Ryan Shwayder on March 12th, 2007
MMO Lesson #1: Do not launch an unfinished product.
You can’t get away with launching something unfinished and patching it anymore. One of the beauties for developers in the early MMO days was that you very well could launch a product in a poor state and patch it out because it was online. There’s far too much competition (and that competition is far too polished) to do this anymore.
#11 by Soulflame on March 12th, 2007
I know four people that tried Vanguard. They all cancelled during the first month.
That doesn’t bode well for the future.
#12 by Talaen on March 12th, 2007
I don’t think Vanguard is doing too poorly in terms of active subscriber base. I know just from keeping up with the various branches of my guild that it’s been bleeding people from EQ2 (mainly because a good chunk of EQ2’s population were people who wanted something a little more casual than EQ1, but not quite as casual as EQ2). I think it would have pulled more people away from WoW if it hadn’t launched at the same time as Burning Crusade. That was just really unfortunate timing.
I agree with Scott (not Lum, but the other Scott) that the single biggest thing that turns people off at launch isn’t content or balance – it’s technology. If the game doesn’t run smooth then they’ll never give it time to show them where it falls down in other areas.
#13 by Andrew Crystall on March 12th, 2007
And ironically, WoW is hardly the end word in user experience.
The patcher? Ugh! SOE has this down just right, frankly – it can update minor patches on the fly. And for EQ at least, if you only have the exe it goes and gets the entire game!
(Sure, my entire EQ experience as a game is about 5 hours and I won’t be going back, but still).
Then there’s the default UI. Uhm…
#14 by Please on March 12th, 2007
Is McQ just an asshole or a moron? (apologies for the language and semi-trollish tone)
#15 by tazelbain on March 12th, 2007
You guys underestimate the game side of polish. The tech side makes an apple, an apple. The game side of polish makes the apple shine and look more tasty than the other apples.
To quote myself about WAR taking on WOW:
We tend to talk about day 90 issues like VOIP and hyper-competitive guilds, but I feel WoW’s much vaulted “polish” is more about day 0 and day 1 issues. Does everyone would be interested in the game know about the game? Can they they get it working on their machine without any hassles? Can they grok the game enough to find something fun to do? Does it generate enough excitement that they tell their friends? This is the snowball rolling down hill WAR needs to make to follow WoW.
#16 by Jarnis on March 12th, 2007
You need those ‘Woah!’ and ‘OMG!’ moments on the first day… Preferrably on the first hour. You can create first impressions only once, and fixing those first impressions post-launch is nearly impossible.
I was already pre-spoiled by videos and screenshots of the BC, but I *still* got a whoa-moment when I went thru the dark portal on the launch night (1 minute after midnight) and took the first flightpath to Thrallmar and panned around. I also got plenty of further ‘ooo nice’ moments during the first week as we rummaged thru the levelling/5man content together with my friends.
On my first evening of Vanguard (had to play it, was assigned to review it) my only ‘Whoa!’ moment went more like ‘Whoa! How they could release something this unfinished. This would be BAD for an open beta, and they are already taking money’.
Only thing about Vanguard that even remotely impressed me was the size of the world and the draw distance of the engine – and even that was spoiled by exact same ‘as short as we can get away with’-distance where you can actually see mobs/players.
#17 by Dana on March 12th, 2007
“It’s a brutal lesson that WoW teaches, and Sigil won’t be the last development team to learn it.”
I’ll give you that “think big, design small, cut early and polish a lot” is a mantra that all developers can learn from but the ones that really have to learn it are the money men, the publisher in a most often yet worse case scenario.
As we do more MMOs we learn about how long things will take but its really silly to think that you can build one of these things in 4 years and have any real clue when the “ready date” is going to be.
If publishers aren’t going to learn it, and they probably aren’t no matter how many times we drop the ball, then we’re going to see more great arcade games like WoW. “Screw the depth, spend those months polishing and forget crafting” is a mantra we better get used too.
#18 by Abalieno on March 12th, 2007
I gladly disagree.
Vanguard’s problems are different from “lack of polish at launch”. You could have waited even another FULL YEAR and you could be sure that Vanguard would have performed even WORSE.
The launch is a false problem. Devs identify the problem with the launch itself, when the launch is important just because it purifies the game of all the bullshit devs have fed the fans.
The launch is important only because it’s the moment of the truth. The moment you bare what you worked for years and have to accept whether it is good or whether it is crap.
You can delay indefinitely this moment because you are SCARED, but this just to persist in the illusion.
Of course the market changed. People won’t play an unfinished, broken game as in the past because right now there are better alternatives. A bad game that becomes good with the time will also have an harder time winning back players. But it can happen, it happened with Eve.
The problem is that when you fail launch the reasons are far deeper than a “lack of polish”.
#19 by Abalieno on March 12th, 2007
*You can create first impressions only once.*
That’s true, but simply because first impressions represent the core of the game. And the core of the game hardly changes.
DAoC’s levelling is now faster, but still essentially boring. Mythic fixed the false problem and did nothing to address the right one.
Don’t blame the perception of the players, because they see past the curtains.
#20 by Ocotopaganini on March 12th, 2007
“Is McQ just an asshole or a moron? (apologies for the language and semi-trollish tone)”
Yes and yes.
#21 by D-0ne on March 12th, 2007
Nothing can fix a game that isn’t fun. Brad can work on V:SoH all he wants but at the games core is boredom and tedium and even worse for V:SoH is a complete lack of anything “new” to do in a MMRPG.
#22 by Andrew Crystall on March 12th, 2007
Abalieno, and Eve is a blatent exception in being slow-burn. The whys…get complex. But suffice to say I don’t think it was intentional.
#23 by perianwyr on March 12th, 2007
If Eve doesn’t think really hard about the meaning of an endgame dominated by capital ships, it’s gonna have problems again.
#24 by Abalieno on March 12th, 2007
Eve is still growing. These days growing less.
And the fact now it is growing less is because lately they are doing mistakes and are diverting their attention on stuff that is irrelevant (atmospheric flight, walking on stations and the new MMO).
Eve demonstrated that you can make a successful game WHEN the product is valid.
When a product is valid, it is ALWAYS valid. It can have troubles to “arrive”, but if it is valid it will be successful sooner or later.
Eve has 160k and I think that’s exactly what that game deserves. In the same way it didn’t deserve more than 10k when it was released. Because it was poor.
The real important point here is another. The “launch” is important NOT because of the perception the players will have of the game. But because if the launch fails then you will hardly even have the possibility to work on the game and improve it.
It’s not a matter of reputation. It’s a matter of resources and focus. A failed launch will surely won’t help a game to get more resources and focus.
#25 by Lasz on March 12th, 2007
“You can’t patch away that first impression.”
Man, truer words were never spoken. Thinking back on all of my past gaming, I find that statement to be true for every experience I can think of.
I also like it as a saying or catchphrase. Besides being true, it’s short, catchy and to the point.
Almost as effective as “people are broken”, albeit with much less emotional pull.
sorry, rambling.
Cheers,
Lasz
#26 by Erkht on March 12th, 2007
My 2 copper: Vanguard is somewhat dull and old hat.. yet:
- The water, even on my mid rig, looks like something you’d really like to dive into.. Once you’re swimming in 3rd person, at least when trying to stay on top of the water, it’s totally dumb and broken, but still..
- I’m one that gets into game music, and the music isn’t bad, actually rather nice, nothing like AO, of course, for all AO gets panned, it STILL has the best music ever put into a game (try song 21, Elysium Epic, at http://www.soundpeaks.com)..
- You could say that Diplomacy is the single thing not really seen in an MMO before.. An interesting mini-game, for the first 20 times, but after that it’s down to taste.. I do know a few that are quite addicted to it and love it..
- The other uniquish (word!) feature is having no less than, I think, 5 sets of clothing.. A set for crafting, a set for harvesting, a set for your mount, and diplomacy, and adventuring.. It could be passed off as an excuse for more catassery, but still..
- The game is definately buggy in some of the areas that matter, though I must say that regardless of reputations, I *was* helped by an in-game petition when I logged in dead *beneath* a city..
I just wish they, and 98% of the mmo’s out there, had either a skill based system ala UO, or mentoring/sidekicking as in CoH. As soon as a friend falls behind for some reason, it’s all teh suck for them and us.. Or is that Us and Them?
#27 by Freakazoid on March 12th, 2007
Also note: Having 10 years of phenominal success with single player PC games and developing a massive fanbase can also help with subscriber numbers.
Yes, WoW is the 800-pound gorilla that showed money means more polish. But I don’t think that invalidates “shitty” MMOs like Vanguard from being even remotely profitable. There is enough interest out there that even a paltry 50k subs is 500k a month on a $10.00 per month plan. No one with their head screwed on right would refuse that. Yeah, recovering development funds may take a long time, but technically as long as nothing major fucks up, you can keep an MMO going on forever (like UO and EQ1 and AC and ect.).
#28 by Apache on March 12th, 2007
no reason for the nerd rage. the beta was pretty easy to get into, and they were fairly forthright about the state it was shipping in. any rational person could’ve surmised that it wouldn’t be very polished at launch.
#29 by Mist on March 12th, 2007
Vanguard is just a miserable game. It was never designed to be fun, it was designed to be ‘realistic’ and ‘hardcore’ aka ‘frustrating’ and ‘overly complicated.’ Its not doing well because its not fun, not because its not finished.
WoW is a succcess for a bigger reason. It showed that you can make the last 10% of the game hardcore without making the first 90% a bore and a chore.
#30 by naladini on March 12th, 2007
Just how long should the “honeymoon” be for a game after its released?
IIRC, WoW was extremely unstable in the early going, but the game was fun, people played through the hurt, and now its as if people don’t remember those initial problems. Now, you can argue that those problems were due to the immediate popularity of the game, but to be perfectly honest, the average player of a MMO won’t know the difference between server stability and game polish, all they’ll notice is that they can’t seem to play when they want to.
WoW was a game that was entertaining enough for people to play through the problems. However, to say the total environment at launch was perfectly polished is a bit of a fallacy, a cry for a “return to normalcy” if you will. That being said, I agree wholeheartedly that more emphasis needs to be placed on quality, especially leading up to release. I just think the supporting analogy needs some work.
For the record, I’ve been having quite a bit of fun playing VG, especially with diplomacy. Graphics still need some work, but the game has been fun, and I’ve been fortunate not to have to fight through any frustration with it as of yet. That’s a pretty solid sign.
#31 by Ardanna on March 13th, 2007
I found this shocking:
WoW is a fantastic game, but Vanguard is designed with additional polish but also additional depth and freedom to experience more from a virtual world
Uhm no. No, no FUCK NO! One of the great things about WoW *IS* its level of polish. Sure, it had technical problems on launch as well but not the train wreck that was Vanguard. Still, it’s the little things that make you smile. The mini-Diablos, the corny jokes, the pop-references, and that stuff. WoW is extremely polished, and has a great deal of depth.
Vanguard is extremely UNpolished, there’s no sense of having place in the world. I didn’t really care about the NPCs, the problems or their quests. Yet if you go through the entire Defias storyline in Westfall including the Whoa moment when you blow the doors open in Deadmines only to see the HUGE juggernaught – impressive. Also note: shared dungeons suck, they just do. I mean…how many times did I go through rift seekers after a group or FIVE just cleared everything – whee!
I was looking for something great with Vanguard, I have a smoking machine but the memory leaks (which didn’t plague me in beta) prevented play for more than 5 minutes.
Bad news for you Brad, if you’re hoping people will come flocking once the expansion wanes you’re in for a rude awakening. There’s too much shiny new stuff, you had your chance and blew it. There’s Gods & Heroes, Conan – and you KNOW Blizzard will be cooking something up to keep their rabid fans, well, rabid. And they have the talent, know how and $$$ to do it.
Personally, I’m quite glad that consumers aren’t (generally) willing to just “suffer” through games anymore. There’s enough competition out there that there’s no need for it and I’ve always thought people shouldn’t stand for it anyway. I suspect the big casual market with all that juicy disposable income companies want don’t have the time or patience for it anyway (I sure don’t).
#32 by Hellfire on March 13th, 2007
Not to pick nits or anything, but if you’re having problems “grinding” TBC factions you must still be playing in the old world. The only tier that takes more than a passing investment is exalted, and if you make use of any of the dozens of info sites you’ll know which faction(s) are up your alley to avoid “wasted” time. I’ve had all my heroic keys (5xRevered) long before I was capable of actually killing a mob in one.
I think the playerbase of WoW DID get the difference between a poor launch and a launch that was MADE poor due to volume. The number of new servers being added during the first month in addition to the sheer volume of people *YOU COULD SEE* every second of your playtime was an easy-to-use indicator. Depending on your mood you can choose to fault Blizzard or give them a pass on capacity planning.
Given that there has never been anything like what WoW has become I choose to give them that pass on the early days. It’s the perk of being first. If someone comes along and drops a MMO with 3-4m+ subs in the first 60 days without the issues they will assume the mantle of awesome.
Semi-back on topic: Vanguard is a horrible game to play. “The game” completely squandered any and all of the positive vibe the environment generated. I missed playing a monk. Especially one that had a hojillion different visuals for killing stuff.
#33 by Engels on March 13th, 2007
What comes through in V:SoH is lack of care and attention; we’re calling it polish, but that somehow implies that something ‘unpolished’ might be good, but polish just makes it better.
I believe that the ‘polish’ we talk about in relation to WoW is simply attention to detail, and a transparent love for the work involved. The degree of carelesness and uninspired work in Vanguard should prepare a player for similar game play.
#34 by Gwaendar on March 13th, 2007
Coming from FFXI, what really made the difference in terms of first impression was the details making the world feel “real”. Simple stuff in appearance like NPCs actually killing mobs getting too close, or even more simply all the predators who would suddenly jump and kill the closest rabbit.
It gives a quality the world which helps you believe, to a point, that the world exists in itself regardless of player presence or not. Conversely, in FFXI, the fact that you could train a mob right to the city gates then die at the feet of the guardians of your own hometown without them even wincing at the blood splattered on their shiny armour totally breaks the suspension of disbelief. You get the sense of an artificial world which only animates for a short time while you pass by and then sinks back into motionless silence after you’re gone.
I couldn’t imagine playing in anything offering less than WoW does in that respect. It’s the details which matter, and WoW did that very well from day one.
#35 by Andrew Crystall on March 13th, 2007
Freakazoid, not that so much as having an existing lore and world. One establisehd entirely through games, note, so reaching to other media for a liscence isn’t necessary.
If you’re looking at a new IP MMO, consider doing a couple of more conventional games first… (or having a VERY good universe writer).
Erkht, personally I’m quite fond of the music from Total Annihilation…
#36 by Sweetmeat on March 13th, 2007
I actually really enjoyed my first week in Vanguard. Then I hit lvl 10 and my gear was all stuff I’d gotten by level 4 with none of the quests I’d gotten looking to replace it. Also I was planning to craft but they flubbed it there as well, by nerfing both crafted gear, and the ability to make said nerfed gear after the beta. Also the grind for crafting was…wow. Needing to be over lvl 20 to make lvl 10 gear and 3 hours from crafter lvl 6 to lvl 7 pretty well just turned me off of the whole game. The “we want it to be hard” thing to me just says we want you to sit here a lot longer for less gain than any other game. No thank you.
#37 by Heartless_ on March 13th, 2007
Are we still stuck in this idea that every new MMORPG survives because of the players it pulls off other games? It is horrible to think that any developer is talking about how people will come to their game only when they are done playing someone else’s game. It just shows Brad’s pure lack of understanding of the market he is trying to sell his game in. The market grew up, but Brad didn’t. He started with bad ideas and has yet to get rid of them.
WoW did a lot of things right. We all know that, and it is more than proven with their subscriber numbers, and the absolute stunning success of TBC. I will go a bit further than saying “WoW raised the bar”… I would say “WoW closed the door”. WoW’s success has closed the door on the ProgressQuest model. We will see a few try here and there, but only the smaller ones will survive. People will continue to play WoW en masse, because it really is just that good. The AAA ProgressQuest door is closed.
This is not a market that survives by leeching from other games communities. This is a market that will survive because of throughput… the more players that pass through the system. Some will stay and form a core, but most will be a blip on the time line. The core will be the early adopters and god help you if your game can’t hold them.
#38 by Swerve on March 13th, 2007
It’s funny that you don’t hear about “The Vision” anymore – has there possibly been a more ironic slogan attached to a game?
I agree with those who say more time wouldn’t have mattered. It isn’t a lack of polish that is the game’s problem – it is in fact a lack of vision – a lack of inspiration, a lack of originality.
Brad may have been at the right place in the right time to have success with EverQuest. But I think it’s become glaringly apparent that sometimes a person can luck into success once and never see it again because that was the defining factor – luck. But Ego gets in the way of true Vision I suppose.
Vanguard’s release is the Emperor finally appearing in public, revealed as the naked fool he is.
#39 by That Chip Guy on March 13th, 2007
I think VG has potential. I’m willing to give it a bit of time to grow. I’ve missed having a complex game to play, and appreciate creative leads who have erred on the side of trying too much (Brad, Raph). I can understand why others would disagree.
But Lum: Something Awful? Thought better of ya, man…
/shakes head, walks away half-mockingly mournful
#40 by Heartless_ on March 13th, 2007
Vanguard… complexity… buahahaha. Brad really has you fooled Chip Guy.
#41 by Hellfire on March 13th, 2007
Indeed. The idea that Vanguard somehow requires more skill than WoW is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelarious.
It doesn’t. At all. Ever.
VG is a difficult game in the sense that it is painful to play, not that it makes me think.
And quiet frankly if you don’t smile every single time you hit the opera house you are just plain dead inside and should delete your computerbox.
#42 by No.6 on March 13th, 2007
I don’t think BMcQ is a fool or an idiot.
However, managing a title subservient to changing publishers’ whims is very hard and VG is a testament to that fact.
The games which wow (pun not intended) people are the ones where the design proceeds to fruition unhampered by material concerns.
That happens only when a) a low- or no-budget team produces their labor of love (hardly ever in today’s market; occasionally a ‘mod’ ends up as a game); b) a ’star’ designer is given carte blanche and left alone (e.g., P. Molyneux, etc.); or c) the developing company is the publisher and can therefore do what it wants (e.g., Blizzard).
In all other cases trouble results.
And hey, VG’s launch wasn’t as bad as WW2O’s, right, and WW2O is alive and stable.
I will diplomaticize to victory…
#43 by neofit on March 14th, 2007
“I agree with those who say more time wouldn’t have mattered. It isn’t a lack of polish that is the game’s problem – it is in fact a lack of vision – a lack of inspiration, a lack of originality.”
What are you talking about? Lack of originality? Are we talking about the same game? I wonder what is your definition of “originality”? A few examples:
- A new sphere – Diplomacy. Never attempted before. It’s definitely not *polished*, yet completely new.
- A completely new crafting system. Yep, finally we don’t need to harvest for hours nor flood the market with tons of useless exp items. We can just go in with zero cash and zero harvests and start gaining crafting exp. And we have to decide whether we want to make stuff to sell and get rich or use the time to gain more exp. Again, completely unpolished, yet very original in my book.
(and “3 hours to get from lvl 6 to 7″? please. I was getting almost half a level past 20 in that time)
- Heck, even if I hate the non-instanced dungeons concept, in this day and age I’d say it is novel
.
Now, I still have unsubscribed. I don’t play for the future potential, I play to have fun right now. I couldn’t bear anymore to have my client crash every hour or after 3-4 zone/chunk changes whichever comes first, due to out of memory errors, five weeks after release. Then there is nothing more immersion-breaking graphics-wise than to see horribly jaggy fences/houses/whatever, anti-aliasing was already a must years ago afaic.
Then, as another poster above said, the game was not designed to be fun but to be frustrating. Simple minds often confuse the concepts of ‘frustrating’ and ‘difficult’, and apparently quite a few fans are delighted. Almost every little feature that has the potential to be fun has to be spoiled by a generous helping of suck.
An example. A very item-centric game like VG has a very limited banking and carrying capacity. This is very strongly felt by diplomats who need to store and carry dozens of items of clothing with various +effects and dozens of information papers (diplo loot). Sigil’s answer: we heard you; we still won’t allow containers into bank slots, but we will soon patch in a special bigger container for diplo stuff. A normal dev house would have stopped there and made a lot of diplomats happy.
But the Sigil Touch had to be added: players won’t be able to store all of their diplomacy stuff in every container, they will have to choose between diplo clothes or diplo loot (and of course only one such container can be equipped). How do I compensate for that? The way we’ve been doing it so far, by making more frequent trips to the bank and storing more on storage alts (with no sharable bank slots as in EQ2). Can I quickly swap a diplo bag full of clothes for one full of loot? Nope, since the bank can’t store non-empty containers, one will have to do the swapping item by item. Does it make the game more ‘challenging’? No, only more time consuming. Aren’t these ‘palliative activities’ immersion-breaking? IMO yes, a lot. Do I have time for that? hehe, no.
#44 by Heartless_ on March 14th, 2007
Diplomacy… new? It is an extended, branching chat tree. Hardly new. Hardly entertaining. Highly exploitable. On top of this it just adds another +foozle to chase which is far from new. It is a glorified time sink, nothing else. If you ask me… engaging conversations and plot lines should be left to real people.
New crafting… I don’t even know what to say to that comment. It is simply a different crafting system… far from new. I was playing crafting systems like VG’s back in the early 90’s in the halcyon days of MUDS.
You sir are fooled. What VG has done is make a frustrating, painful, and time-consuming game to play. It requires no more thinking than any other MMORPG on the market. It only requires more time to be wasted on meaningless tasks.
#45 by ello on March 15th, 2007
[quote]
McQuaid has been nothing if not honest with his userbase and the public about why Vanguard shipped when it did – but it’s not good enough
[/quote]
The trouble is that McQuaid was dishonest with his userbase prior to launch with his spins of it won’t release until it’s ready. His new comments are just another spin.
#46 by RvL on March 20th, 2007
Having been a member of the Vanguard beta test, in addition to numerous other early/closed MMO betas, I must say that MMO development costs less and produces far fewer critical bugs when you don’t retool your core mechanics every 2-3 months.
Brad is a jackass who can’t even remotely control his team and makes proclamations with no substance. If Vanguard fails, the reasons for it will be obvious: He refused to listen to anyone but the “hardcore,” which is a painfully small subset of game players (and the team’s refusal to listen to anyone else went so far as to ignore/wipe/lock any discussion on this subject), and he allowed his various developers to “test” complex mechanics they knew were never going to work instead of focusing on ideas that might make it into the final product.
Some of us knew what was coming when, in November of ‘06, the release date was announced and the Crafting and Harvesting mechanics were ripped out and entirely replaced.
A few more people woke up around December, when they stated that they were “beginning” to balance Adventuring (combat and loot).
The final death-knell was in late-January, when numerous new systems were introduced. Item decay being chief among them, they were concepts that should have existed since the beginning of development, or not at all. To even think for a moment that such a complex game mechanic as item decay and repair could be fully rolled out and tested in less than a month requires astonishing levels of either hubris or idiocy, and I know which one I’m leaning towards.
#47 by KovenantofEQ on March 23rd, 2007
I never played WOW, due to the fact I was a die hard Eq Fan. However Ive read tons of articles on VG , never played it. The reason being I never herd more flames on a game then VG. I haven’t herd any good things about it really. The people that do say good things IMO are people that are wanting it to be fun. Sure the appeal was Eyecandy Sweet a newgame to get hardcore on. However I don’t think I will delve into this game at all. EQ2 Only appealed to me because of the graphics really, but then I played it. They had a remap as well. I tried eq after it was already a year released and it was still unfished. I cant imagine playing Vanguard so early now anyway, by that time something New will come out. Anyway just my opinion, and Brad your gonna see what Horizons saw IMO
#48 by KovenantofEQ on March 23rd, 2007
I met eq2 on the post where it says i tried it etc, sorry