Vanguard = Waterworld of MMO's
I had a theory about Vanguard and After playing since launch I think my assessment is correct. I have since cancelled my subscription. Needless to say I am dissapointed and hope that in a year it gets better... but I am not holding my breath.
Vanguard is the WATERWORLD of MMO's.
Waterworld: HUGE budget movie that spent more on making the fraking WATER and rusting boats look good than the writing and acting any good. The premise seemed OK but the execution was terrible.
Vanguard: HUGE budget game that spent more on land mass than populating it with anything. So many bugs it gives Dark and Light a run for its money. The mechanics and promises that they offered seemed great, but so far they have delivered miles and miles of Water with a dorky guy with a pony tail in a rusty boat drinking his own urine. 
Kevin Costner = Brad McQuaid
He was great in Dances with Wolves, but someone made the mistake of thinking he could act after that so he made more movies that almost all turned out like sh*te. Same with Brad, he just may have peaked too early. I am no longer a McQuaid follower.
We need to stop supporting companies that put out half finished games.
/rant off
I guess the joy of bad games is that they can always go back and try to fix it, as long as people are still playing.
A bad movie just sits there rotting like a turd.
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very true... however, I buy bad movies for 10 bucks used at Blockbuster.. and I pay $50 for bad games that I use for coasters later on... who's the dummy now
I always hold out hope, but in this business, first impressions are everything. Not too many MMO's that have bad starts are able to recover.
I wouldn't blame Brad McQuaid completely. It really felt to me that someone at SOE took a look at Sigil's plan for the game and said "No more money unless you cater to the WoW audience..."
From following the game for a long time off and on it seemed like they for some reason switched gears and changed directions 3/4 of the way through creating the game. You started seeing weird sh*t about how VG was designed to appeal to the "core" mmo audience rather than the hardcore. Things like quest based levelling started being mentiond and little quest icons started popping up over people's heads... And while it IS possible that Sigil suddenly gave up on their "Vision" that far into production... well... If you played EQ I'm sure you remember Brad McQuaid and company being stubborn about sticking to their "vision" even to the point of being dicks about it. I dunno just seems strange to me. I know conspiracy theories are lame but it just seems odd.
On top of that you have the fact that they were basically cut off, their game was forced out, at the worst possible time for release that could occur at any point in the next two years... Seriously Blizzard releases an expansion for their games like once every half decade or so?? And you decide to compete head to head with the expansion for the most popular 3D MMO ever?? I mean they didn't see the like 2 million copies sold the first day and think "hrm maybe next week isn't the best time to push our game out the door?!". Seems ludicrous to me that this made sense to anyone. Not to mention releasing it unfinished.
Maybe I am a bit ignorant when it comes to business but I know if I had spent like 35 million making a game that I'd push pretty goddamned hard to get the remaining few million needed to finish the thing before kicking it out the door. Why screw yourself out of your investment for what is fairly minimal cash in the long run? I would think if you weighed in the fact that you could blow another 2-5 million, push back the launch 2-3 months, finish more of the game, and release a more complete product just as folks start finding themselves bored with burning crusade.. Well wouldn't it seem likely that you would have a bit more potential revenue?!
Anyway... I think the fault on the part of Brad McQuaid and co. was simply that they bit off way the hell more than they could chew. So many grand ideas kicked to the curb or dumbed down beyond recognition as this game headed towards release. Diplomacy for instance is a shadow of what it could have been. The beautiful world feels completely dead. Maybe someone should have told them that massive amounts of bump mapping wasn't going to change this? Static imobile NPCs with absolutely no personality and limited animation do not feel alive no matter how intricate their armor is. Vast landscapes with extremely detailed textures (and again more bumpmapping), while providing a nifty backdrop, don't bring a world to life when it's populated by mostly uninteresting mobs sporting combat animations that made the original mortal kombat seem "lifelike". Super realistic clouds floating overhead don't make it any easier to ignore my game freezing for 2-5 seconds every time I cross a chunk and having whatever I am fighting deaggro unless it's DOTed...
Populating the landscape with purposeless mobs Lineage2 style that have no logical reason for being near one another doesn't inspire a feeling of realistic environment... I could just be ignorant of the intricate symbiotic relationship that exists between giant wasps, lions, gazelles, hyenas, and lizard people... I'm sure that gazelles and lions enjoy each other's company and everyone knows that a 40 lb wasp is definitely fun at parties... I dunno. It could just be me...
I don't hate this game but it's certainly a bit disappointing : /
truer words have never been spoken...
If I recall from my following the game during development this started to change while still under Microsoft. Seems like maybe there was a good reason Microsoft dropped them.
As for pulling the plug/money again I think that is on the shoulders of Brad and company. They ran over budget and produced crap to boot.
I wanted this game to do well and it had some ideas that may have been good too bad it was lost in all the mess that Vanguard ended up being.
Dry land is real!
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elementsofmeaning.blogspot.com
I heard you can find the map to a better MMO on the back of a little girl.
She's a rare spawn though...
IronClad Online: PurEvil
Yeah there really isnt much to read between the lines here with Sigil and Vanguard.. it is what it is.. Microsoft dropped them and essentially wasted millions for a good reason.. it wasnt worth even another penny for them to continue funding.
There were goals that at the start simply never met Microsoft's expectations at several key "checks" along the way...part of it may be Quaid's stubbornness or perhaps he simply felt that it was the right thing to do.. I'd probably agree though that at least going down his full design goals may have resulted in a slightly more interesting game (I wouldnt play it but a certain segment might have)
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
I'm sure I am giving McQuaid and co more credit than they deserve : P I had just really hoped this game would offer something more challenging. I never really expected a 3rd gen game as they claimed. From the getgo it was just another in a long line of EQ clones (which includes WoW) with a couple of new features tacked on. I think I was just hoping that in the way WoW had managed to combine all the right elements to bring the EQ clone to the masses maybe VG could bring more challenge to the EQ clone. *shrug* This genre is full of disappointment haha.
I dunno. Clearly Vanguard is a collosal failure of epic proportions, ALREADY, but I don't blame the devs. Sony forced them to push it out the door.
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
Spore
Sony is part to blame.. but I'm not sure how Sigil can walk away scott free.. I suspect its that kind of attitude that will allow them yet another multi-million dollar budget to piss away on a half baked collection of art assets and some botched game design.
Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarter
85's face the truth you're too dumb.
http://www.myspace.com/armyofthepharaohs
Sony fault was picking this game up in the first place. While they pushed them out the door there comes a time when the money and time are gone. These are not endless resources and it is clear that Vanguard needs a lot more work none of which is the fault of Sony but rest squarely on the shoulders of the development team.
Of course. I blame every developer that tries to make Yet Another WoW™.
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
Spore
I don't blame sony at all. In another thread someone mentioned the beauty of picking up vanguard and it was that they could just add it to the SOE super package of games as another title you get if you sign up. Honestly if sony didnt throw this game a life preserver would it still even be in dev? I'm assuming sigil doesnt have the funds to keep in dev themselves or to finance a launch. I just cant blame sony for buying it up taking a look and saying to get where you want would cost us a fortune so instead your going to market to raise that fortune yourselves.
http://station-access.station.sony.com/ look the price is even at 24.99 until April 2nd maybe that was in response to the lotr offer? who knows I have no time line of events.
Yeah, if Blizzard had been "forced" by a publisher to push WoW out the door early... nevermind, I don't think that could happen in this universe. Heh.
It's not like Sigil was some green group of garage-developer kids that got snookered by a contract. There's no way they could claim "we didn't want to, but our contract forced us" and be believable. A software dev contract is a two-way street, and if they simply failed to protect themselves from being forced to ship before done, then it's still their own damn fault.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
Let's see, EQ with peak subscriptions of 400K, WoW with 8 Million. WHAT WAS SONY THINKING?
We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all.
You can't out-WoW WoW just by emulating it. Especially when your game is rushed and done on the cheap. And sucks.
NOTE: This is not a doodle bug.
Spore
I don't see how Sony is to blame here. McQuaid and Company missed numerous benchmarks with Microsoft, to the point that MS thought it was better to just take their loss and run rather than continue to fund that sinking ship.
Then the Vanguard team gets rescued from Sony and misses yet another deadline, runs out of money and throws Vanguard on the market. While I appreciate their honesty about running out of funding, I don't see why Sony should continue to throw good money after bad. They made a deal with McQuaid and he didn't deliver. Just like he didn't deliver for Microsoft.
I think the game design is the problem moreso than anything else. A punishing, hardcore MMO just doesn't have a mainstream market. If people want a harder alternative to WoW, it's already out there - EQ2. Anything harder than that is probably not commercially viable. EVE Online is about the only exception, and it made it because it's a different gameworld (Space, not Swords), a fantastic game design, a fairly small budget and a fantastic community. Even then, it took a couple of years to get to the point that it's considered a "mainstream" MMO solidly on the radar of the gaming community.
Of course, MMOs are always developing and as long as they keep the servers open, they can make changes to the game design. Perhaps they can get their engine optimized. Perhaps they can polish it up and make it appeal to a wider audience. I wouldn't bet on it, though.
I am so going to quote that out of context.
It's not that I think Sigil would have done a smash up job w/ Vanguard in any scenario. But if you've already spent 35 million on a game what is a couple million more? Even if it was a great business decision to just say to hell with it and release VG as is... Why would you do so at the same time as the WoW expansion? Someone could have made the most wonderful MMOG ever made and had a sh*tty initial sales figure launching at that time. You have an incomplete, hardware raping, bastard of an MMO competing head to head w/ Blizzard popularity and polish? Sounds a little retarded to me...
It wasn't exactly at the same time as the WoW expansion and there's also the problem games coming up behind you. LOTR for example. Maybe waiting 2-4 weeks more would help but im pretty sure SOE was aware. If anything maybe SOE had market research that indicated that there was a significant amount WoW players who were looking for a switch and didn't commit to TBC. Sure I made that up but assuming that this game would do better later is also pure speculation. If anything the sooner they could get to market and start charging those die hards a monthly fee to beta test the better for revenue.
As for sinking more money in to get to a better spot there comes a time when you need to cut your loses. The fact Microsoft dropped this game cold should be clue enough that this game wasn't a couple of bug fixes and patch's away. I don't think SOE picked this game up besides the fact it has a hardcore fanbase that might turn a profit and it already had a multi MMO subscription plan they could attach it too. The fact that SOE has no conscience and pushed this thing out might end up being the only reason it survives at all.
Working at a privately-funded startup, I can answer this one - if your paychecks bounce, and you don't have the actual money to spend, you can't spend it. Period. If you're in debt to the tune of 2 or 3 years salary and late on your payments, what are the odds that you're going to get approved for that Amex card so you can go even more in debt? Pretty slim. As jowner said, at some point, unless your name is Blizzard, you just have to release no matter how unfinished it is. You have to attempt to recoup what you can. The piper must be paid.
This is going to sound snarky, but here goes...
Why is it that you recognize the risk there and all the marketing power, research, and business acumen at Sony Online just completely missed that fact and released in ignorance? No matter what my less than friendly attitude towards anything with Sony in the name, at least I recognize they must have had a reason. I'm not going to assume that just because I have a small part of the information about a situation that's enough to make pronouncements, I don't assume I know more than Sony, Sigil, MS, Blizzard, etc. There's someone at Sony whose job it was to spend hours, maybe weeks, researching the best time to ship, considering the windows they were looking at.
"And my son, too, thinks everything is a launchpad, every bug a meal, and every sunny day a reason to take all your clothes off and roll around in the grass." - rabbit
I am sure you are right about this... somewhere someone in the almighty Sony camp is sitting surrounded by mounds of data and is laughing at all of us common folk...
Still... a couple things occurred to me. It seems curious that a month after Vanguard is added to the lineup of Sony games that they raise the price of Station Access to $25.00. It has been almost 2 years since they had added a game and the selections were beginning to look a little "long in the tooth". Especially with the utter raping and pillaging of SWG. So I wonder if they just didn't look around and pick up MS's scraps and figure it was a way to add some "value" to their lineup.
I still think it was a strange decision since in my mind most of the Vanguard demographic would be either Everquest players who were looking for the next fantasy "hardcore" offering or Everquest II players who were disappointed that EQ2 wasn't enough like EQ.
In the end I guess we shall never know. However, after this last PS3 launch you can't help but question who the hell is running Sony these days and what kind of crack they are smoking.
Aye, I guess it just seems odd to me that they would release such a high budget game with so many problems knowing that launch issues seem pretty good at killing the potential revenue of an MMO.
That's an easy one. Everyone knows that individuals on the internet with no experience in business or economics can solve all of the problems of the world's largest corporations with a few sweeping generalizations on a web forum.
Seriously though I know I am not some sort of marketing whiz. It is just strange how many mediocre/failed launches Sony seems to be accumulating. EQ2, The Matrix Online, the PSP, the PS3, Vanguard, etc.. EQ2 and The Matrix already had rather large established fanbases. The PSP and the PS3 both offer superior hardware compared to their competition w/ the precedent of the insane popularity of the PS2. VG is supposed to be the 2nd most expensive MMORPG ever created. Yet all of these have had pretty mediocre launches at best. *shrug*
I liked Waterworld.
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Hello ender, I finally made it over here from the MOG forums. Looks like some great conversation here, definitly has a smarter edge to it. Makes me want to think my posts through and post stuff that contributes and has good content.
Maybe thats what I should start doing more on MOG forums as well, if nothing else then to make me look more respectable and thus have more people visit my blog. ^^
*looks around*
Oh uh, hi everyone else. ^^ This is my first post to the GWJ forums. Looks like a great place to kick back and have a brew!
The 50 Pound Cat's MMO Adventures(!)
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I liked the idea of Waterworld. The execution left a little to be desired, though.
IronClad Online: PurEvil
While it certainly could have been far better, it could also have been far worse.
wordsmythe wrote:
Podunk on Jessica Alba wrote:
You are both right... which is exactly how I feel about Vanguard.
Howdy cownose.. yeah I love MOG but sometimes its nice to discuss stuff with people who "have jobs"
The more I think consider this analogy (instead of working like I should be), the more I like it.
I was on a 'gaming news' blackout for quite awhile, so I didn't come across Vanguard until a short time before launch. I became enamoured with what I was reading rather quickly. Since I sometimes enjoying wasting my money (but only when it comes to gaming-related matters, otherwise I'm quite the cheapskate), I signed up for a FilePlanet subscription so I could get into the beta. I pre-ordered the game via Direct2Drive so I could get in a few days earlier, with dreams of being the first to build a ship on my server. It didn't take much time in the beta to realize that the nonsense about 'next generation mmo' was exactly that, but it looked like it had the potential for fun. I managed to convince myself for awhile that I enjoyed the game. Even after following the Slashdot link to the 'anti-review' here, and being able to agree with much of the article, I was convinced that overall it was enjoyable.
Of course, before long I found that whenever I had the time to login, I would end up doing something else. Like cleaning the kitchen. Or doing some work from home. Or anything else I could do to avoid playing. Finally I had to accept the truth and give up on the game.
On the bright side, I ran into a fun little crew there and have started up LOTRO with them, hopefully that will turn out with a better ending.
private String paula = "Brillant";