| Ut, I will repeat this once more, this is idiotic. The only people who don't care and can speak up are assholes who don't mind breaking an NDA on a public board.
Developers have to be a lot more measured in their use of words, and cannot properly flame and retort - though a developer version of John Precott would be hilarious.
There are tons of players in beta - who knows why they are not playing? Technical issues perhaps? Someone on live boards noticed a switch to fileplanet, surely that will cause issues for a few people. Some people plain do not have fun with a game in beta. The vanguard public boards as well (no offense Brad) are a paragorn of stupidity, and I feel sorry for Cindy Bowens who actually has to read that gaggle of mouth breathing retards.
I have played Oblivion, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Baldur's Gate - and I still stand by my point of view. I might be alone in this, but all I want is to be able to crawl awesome looking dungeons with good friends in a flexible group make up, and improve my character. I don't care about tradeskills. I don't care about diplomacy, etc - those features mean nothing to me, but once again, I am sure others differ on this.
This is an entirely unfair fight, because you are allowed to keep throwing punches and accusations, the people who do have a mind to speak are not allowed to, and Brad cannot properly reply since every word he says is going to be used and he is going to be held for - you on the other hand are just another poster. While you do have intelligent things to say, surely you will understand how hypocritical that is? Velious itself was nearly a complete expansion at release, it was probably the most complete an expansion has ever been in a MMORPG.
After all this defending, I do want to add one thing. If, by the time the NDA is lifted and the reports of reliable people start coming in, we hear that the game is not properly tested/content is still incomplete, and the game gets released anyway, I am flat out not going to refuse to buy it. The other factor that would lead to my refusal to buy Vanguard would be LACK OF FROGLOCKS. You hear me Brad? There better be fucking froglocks, look at the dungeon design thread, everyone loves froglocks. If you want to make the game better, remove every single mob model in the game, inport the froglock model from EQ1 (including casting backflip) and replace everything in game with froglocks.
Why do I still have faith no matter what? Because I had fun in EQ, it had some fantastic content and a lot of very fun mechanics that made playing a joy. As long as 'the vision' that made a lot of elements in EQ absolutely sadistic (exp penalty for knights/races, holy trinity, meditation staring at a book, etc) gets tempered, I have no reason to believe the people who made things I enjoy totally forgot how to design an MMORPG. | 