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Originally Posted by UnchainedAcolyte  I consider part of his success good ideas, especially early on. |
Comments like these are what bring people out to flame idiots like you. Good ideas? The number one problem that Vanguard had in development was the slew of *horrible* design ideas that Sigil held onto for an extended period of time despite literally hundreds of posts by fans expressing their concerns. Finally (though far too late in the process) they were forced to make significant changes to some of the core elements of the game because they couldn't even get enough beta testers to log in and play due to the fact that it sucked balls and *was not fun*.
Yet here you are singing its praises, completely oblivious to the history of the design process Sigil stumbled through and oblivious to the plethora of mistakes that Sigil made at almost every turn that resulted in this game becoming the flop that it is. And make no mistake - with subscribers teetering below 100k and the actual world population dipping below 50k it is a monumental flop. It is utterly laughable that anyone who has followed this game for an extended period of time (as most of us have) can think it is the least bit successful. I'm sure there are people who enjoy it but you know what - MOST of the people who bought it didn't and are no longer playing it. The second month churn for VG was very significant. March box sales for the game didn't even top 20k. That is not one person's opinion of the game, that is a fact.
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Originally Posted by UnchainedAcolyte I also consider part of it to be luck (and SOE bailouts - If I were him I'd be embarrassed already) and right place/right time. That can be said for many. |
Luck was EQ. Or more accurately, good timing. It didn't matter that the game was full of terrible design choices or buggy code or shitty mechanics - we gamers at the time were starving and the first fruit that came along tasted sweeter than anything we'd ever had before despite it's rancid core. That time was also the blossoming of the internet as a communication tool and for most of us, EQ provided the very first place where we met
large numbers of like-minded people. Of course we liked it - it made our misenthropic lives more bearable and less weird.
The other thing that fucking kills me is when people (and Brad especially) talk about the longevity of EQ as evidence of his genius and he completely and utterly forgets that the reason it has had such longevity is that most of the bullshit mechanics and bad designs he implemented in the original were removed after he jumped ship. It isn't nearly the same game today as it was years ago and if it were, it would have folded ages ago.
