Vanguard E3 Coverage

[Hachima]

Originally Posted by redjunkopera

There are no plans to have a centralized search feature that I've read about. It will be like SWG w/o the bazaar feature to search vendors.

I don't want a centralized search feature, I know a lot of folks would like to see a return to EC tunnel/face-to-face trading.

Yeah, I'd love to watch spam scolling at 100 lines per second... Not

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by gilbertgbert

One thing though, have most people in the world lost the knowledge of when and how to use 'to' or 'too'? That article had problems, Brad has it really bad and I notice it everywhere!!

/petpeeve

Improper use of "then" and "than" drives me nuts heheh.

Whether Ut was owned or not by Brad, means little to me. I'm a "show me" guy. Piecing together what I have seen so far in clips, in NDA violations, and forum replies by Brad and others, pretty much leads me to the conclusion that we are being con'd. And make no mistake, when MILLIONS are at stake the spin, hype etc will go wild.

It is very simple, DO NOT BUY the product unless it has been on the market for a few months and you have read the reviews from those suckers who bought early. To do otherwise simply encourages companies to continue to publish half-finished, poorly designed products knowing that the consumer is gullible enough to support it financially for awhile.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Soygen

So now McQuaid is lieing for the sake of a dollar on a game that isn't for sale nor is anyone paying to play? Yeah, ok. Crazy.

Soygen if you don't think it is possible for people to LIE when MILLIONS of dollars are at stake you seriously need to do a reality check. This is not to say that Brad is, but this is certainly not ignoring the possiblity either.

[Regime]

Dunno why but UT reminds me of Kevin Spacey in Seven.

[Skars]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

Soygen if you don't think it is possible for people to LIE when MILLIONS of dollars are at stake you seriously need to do a reality check. This is not to say that Brad is, but this is certainly not ignoring the possiblity either.

If Brad was lying about stuff 6 months before release he would be a very dumb man.

It's not like he is bullshitting to get the initial sales, that is a long way away, all lying at this stage is doing is going to get people to call bullshit on lies and wreck his credibility later on or after release.

Not that he will/won't lie about stuff to get the initial sales, I don't know but I don't see the benefit of lying about stuff at THIS stage.

I don't think he's going to be lying atm but you have to consider the source. He sees where the game is at a lot more than any of us and also he knows the people making it and it's his "baby". So it's hard to be objective but he can also see behind the curtain shrug.

[ElGallo]

Originally Posted by redjunkopera

I think most of us who are waiting with baited breath for VG are praying for a game that will make a return a game with depth... combat with skill.

I'm struggling to think of a game that required less skill than EverQuest and coming up empty. The first screen of missile comand on the Atari 2600? Nah. Maybe Duke Nukem on "Daddy Can I Play" difficulty? Not. The first mob you kill as a naked noob in WoW? Nope. Playing video tic-tac-toe against a retarded 3 year old? Not really. All of that is rocket science compared to "hit my CH macro every 24 seconds." Unless you think "staying awake despite the mind-crushing boredom" is a crucial video game skill. The fact that people could effectively six-box tells you everything you need to know about skill in EverQuest.

Then again, I actually prefer EQ to EQ2. Because I'd rather joke in chat or watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force on my second box while going though some timesink than pay attention to some insultingly stupid minigame an autistic infant wouldn't find vaguely challenging.

If you want timesinks, just give me a slow progress bar so I can chat or take a dump or whatever. Don't insult me with some mindlessly trivial clickfest reneki bullshit.

That, I think, is the root of most problems with EQ2's original design and, I suspect maybe, with VG's.

[Genjiro]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

It is very simple, DO NOT BUY the product unless it has been on the market for a few months and you have read the reviews from those suckers who bought early. To do otherwise simply encourages companies to continue to publish half-finished, poorly designed products knowing that the consumer is gullible enough to support it financially for awhile.

Or do like everyone else and drop $5 for June CGM mag with a free beta invite and play it till launch, or just wait till open beta. It's not like you won't be able to tell at that point how the game is shaping up.

[Menion]

Originally Posted by Genjiro

Or do like everyone else and drop $5 for June CGM mag with a free beta invite and play it till launch, or just wait till open beta. It's not like you won't be able to tell at that point how the game is shaping up.

That CGM code is for an open beta slot...

[Soygen]

Originally Posted by Zefah

With all of the Utnayan and Neric action in this thread, I believe it is a prime canditate for Retard Rickshaw Hall of Fame!

Nah, not enough blasting of Blizzard/WOW to get this moved. Honestly, it's far too entertaining to move this out of general at this point.

[Genjiro]

Originally Posted by Menion

That CGM code is for an open beta slot...

Not anymore.
------------

Originally Posted by Blitzburg
Didn't Brad also say that CGM beta invites would be a seperate pool that would only be invited for the final phase of beta and would not lower the chances of forum members to get into beta? And then a few days ago suggest that the next beta invites would include CGM subscribers?

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

Yes, because we found we needed enough people that we can draw from both pools. The game is huge and future beta phases will require a lot of people (more than we even initially thought).

Iirc, he said this would be starting in the days following E3.

[theawddone]

People need to realize that MMO income is based off people who stay subscribers, not just the initial sales. A lot of people have been saying this in the thread, but people keep bitching and seeming to think otherwise. If Vanguard really is a piece of crap and Brad is "lieing" to everyone, then it won't make any money because people won't continue to give them their money...

[Papillon]

Originally Posted by ElGallo

I'm struggling to think of a game that required less skill than EverQuest and coming up empty. The first screen of missile comand on the Atari 2600? Nah. Maybe Duke Nukem on "Daddy Can I Play" difficulty? Not. The first mob you kill as a naked noob in WoW? Nope. Playing video tic-tac-toe against a retarded 3 year old? Not really. All of that is rocket science compared to "hit my CH macro every 24 seconds."

That's a very common prejudice, but that doesn't make it true. Let the 3 year old handle a Raid in EQ and you know what I'm talking about.

After thousands of hours playtime you know EQ quite as well as any other computer game you would have played that much. But who the fuck will ever play thousands of hours Missle Command?

What sets EQ apart - and also apart from WoW - is, that you first need to find out where to hunt, what to hunt and how to hunt with every new level you gain. You could of course just lookup some spoiler sites before. WoW on the other hand simply takes you from one huntingground to the next, like moving on rails, without any exploration or even try and error involved. That's what made this game so boring for me.

You are partly right, if you just look at a single fight. But if you look at preperaring a first unknown raid, managing your guild, setting up websites for that, coordinating many players in game and finding out new things about every zone all the time (considering you don't spoil, or even better, the game is new and there are no spoiler sites yet), there is a hell of a lot more skill involved in EQ than in any of the other games you compared it to. And that's also where (at least for me) the fun ist.

WoW dumped that down. You just need to look for questionmarks on top of npcs and follow the white rabbit line until you are level 60. That's why WoW is much more of a grindfest to me than EQ ever was.

Hitting keys on your keyboard as fast as you can is not a skill for me. It may be possible to 6-box in EQ, and may be impossible to do that with a game like Max Payne, but if you played Max Payne for thousands of hours you could do that without even looking at the monitor and just hack on the keys. So it depends on how you define "Skill".

A single fight is not what requires skill in EQ. Especialy if it's the 37463 fight versus the same Mob to grind your way.

[Hachima]

Originally Posted by theawddone

People need to realize that MMO income is based off people who stay subscribers, not just the initial sales. A lot of people have been saying this in the thread, but people keep bitching and seeming to think otherwise. If Vanguard really is a piece of crap and Brad is "lieing" to everyone, then it won't make any money because people won't continue to give them their money...

Yeah but there is still phase 1 to think about before making income. Get enough box sales to just break even.

400k initial subscribers with 90% canceling the first month is a lot better than a small group of 20k that build up to 40k.

End result is the same number of subscribers but the 400k initial subscribers sure is a lot better.

If you are optimistic you can change the numbers from 4mil box sales down to 400k subscribers and 200k building up to 400k.

Huge bloated initial sales could mean 1-3 years of subscription fees.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Oloh

Hall of Fame?

Didn't know that you were working for the Sigil graphics department also. Got any references like winning a pre-school drawing competition?

Anyways, I am going to elaborate why I think that there is indeed a conceptual problem with the animal-type races and the generic one-size-fits-all body types.



unfortunately I could only dig up this disney stuff, but it shows what I am talking about, because disney animals are pretty good when it comes to capturing racial attributes.



As you can see, the animal-body-type relates to the area below the waist. This means that everything above could stay the way it is. All Vanguard needs for the animal-type races is a different module below the waist. That can't be too difficult to implement and the difference would be enormous.

[Papillon]

Originally Posted by Neric

As you can see, the animal-body-type relates to the area below the waist. This means that everything above could stay the way it is. All Vanguard needs for the animal-type races is a different module below the waist. That can't be too difficult to implement and the difference would be enormous.

Which would mean they have to rework every single clothing in the game to look like that. Considering that they couldn't also double the time they have to work on it, that results in having only half as much clothing in the game as it was planed.

Do that for every race and you'll end up with having just 2 generic sets of clothing for every one of them in the whole game. Welcome to Star Wars Galaxies.