Vanguard E3 Coverage

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Designz

So Gamespot usually doesn't post release dates unless they are official? 7/11/06 - is this before SOE or after?

I've never seen an accurate release date on Gamespot ever....

And rumormilling of a friend in Vanguard beta who chatted with Brad "face to face" in game stated that MS was trying to bump up release to Summer - might be that Gamespot got that date from MS and that's what inspired him asking them to let him buy it back out from them.

[Aradune Mithara]

Originally Posted by WarderX

Is this the same artist as the inside cover art of Kunark and Velious?

If not, please tell me someone else sees this as a rip off, lol

Before Keith passed away, but when it was obvious he wasn't going to be able to paint the cover, he let us know that he wanted Donato http://www.donatoart.com/ to do the art for the box.

What Donato did was and is amazing. He painted a large piece, of which the left section is used for the front of the box (just like Keith did with EQ). But what he did was paint the left side more in Keith's style, in homage to Keith, and then the painting blends nicely to his style as you move to the right.

Normally an artist won't do this -- if you ask them to paint in another person's style, they're not to interested. But this was a special case, something in homage to Keith, and Donato pulled it of even better than my wildest dreams.

Also, if you look at the front cover and see a character you don't recognize there... that's Keith, immortalized on the front of Vanguard's box.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Cad

How many of us of the appropriate age DIDNT begin gaming with an Atari 2600? Jesus christ I probably had 100 catridges. It's a flavor page just a "hey meet the team" type of thing, not their resumes. Assuming they played atari as a child, never touched games again, now they're designers is a dumb assumption.

Nod, hell look at Brad's own... clip out the back half of it and you have "Here's a guy that played paper and pen RPG's and got inspired to get into PC versions by Ultima 2"... which although Ultima 2 was a great game, it's a tad primitive much like all those other games Utnayan is weakly trying to condemn.

And honestly, to play devil's advocate a little and say maybe Utnayan is right (it's a stretch but still) and they did have little experience beyond what's quoted there - if you're trying to break free of the existing mold to a genre, isn't it sensible to avoid an abundance of people with a history in the genre?

Lose, Lose either way you look at it Utnayan - drop the nonsensical weak argument...

Just like the reason you started looking at them in the first place (me mentioning that alot of the team was brought on within the last two years - contrary to your allusions they were full steam for four years)

[Aradune Mithara]

Originally Posted by Soygen

It worked for WoW.

And it worked for EQ 1 under my watch.

[Falcontest]

Screens look great to me. I'm still hoping the game is going to be good, but I will wait for infos closer to release, or maybe even try it, before I write it off.

As far as gaming experience for the people making vanguard, how many people here were guilded in EQ with someone now at Sigil? I was guilded with at least one person, and he's not an associate game designer, he has been there from the ground up. He was a pretty hard core player, and got feedback first hand on what people liked and didn't like in EQ/MMO's. If the game has all the problems that some are saying, I think they know it. They got some extra time to pull it off now, and I'm still hoping they come through.

[findar]

am i the only one who gets really irked when textures/edges blend so that objects look alien? im not saying do cell shading with huge black lines around everything, but i look around my room and i can see where objects cut off and bend to form new angles. a lot of time in "newer" mmo's i look at objects and i cant because of how textures are designed.

for refrence...

[Big W Powah!]

I wouldn't suggest upgrading your computer solely for VG.

As it stands, if you need to upgrade for VG, you'll need to upgrade for future games anyways..if thats the case, I'd suggest upgrading anyways.


If your job requires any kind of computer work--its a good excuse. (I know it was my excuse, for upgrading, heh..)

[holymight]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Wonder who paid the bill on that one. Microsoft or SOE.

Popularity is decided by the number of visists a game gets, not by the gamespot crew.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Aradune Mithara

And it worked for EQ 1 under my watch.

Vex Thal? No loot done on warders? Plane of Mischief completed 3 months after release of Velious? Broken VP Key quest?

While I want to thank you for confirming the good' ol boys approach in your hiring technique, it didn't "work" in EQ1. Because frankly, at any given time, I would venture to say roughly 10% of the game was broken, bugged, or simply not functioning.

If you are talking quest designers and dungeon layout, you know as well as I do who you can thank for that. Capozzi and Burke. Who are no longer with your company.

I will say I was a little harsh in my posting about your associate game designers. But for Christ sake, they do not even have QA experience. Some of the most experienced people making your MMORPG in dealing with the most important aspects have GM/Live experience with Monolith, or were advisors for Thief.

And if everyone is so confident, I would like to know why there are still no in game videos showing combat? Crafting? I am guessing because those major systems are going through a massive overhaul to make them fun. If that is the case, fantastic news. But let people know about it.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Vaclav

And honestly, to play devil's advocate a little and say maybe Utnayan is right (it's a stretch but still) and they did have little experience beyond what's quoted there - if you're trying to break free of the existing mold to a genre, isn't it sensible to avoid an abundance of people with a history in the genre?

Then you would have a game that breaks away from the mold.

I would like for you to even show me the cracks.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Then you would have a game that breaks away from the mold.

I would like for you to even show me the cracks.

Unless you have a financial interest in seeing the game succeed or are a beta tester such that your feedback is desired, stfu until open beta when we can all check it out and either deem it a pile of shit or something breaking away from the mold. Passing judgement on a game based on closed beta/alpha/whatever feedback from annoyed testers is asinine.

[Vaclav]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

And if everyone is so confident, I would like to know why there are still no in game videos showing combat? Crafting? I am guessing because those major systems are going through a massive overhaul to make them fun. If that is the case, fantastic news. But let people know about it.

If everyone is so confident in the WoW expansion then where is all the concrete information on Jewelcrafting and Socketing? Why are there ambigious set bonuses from the sets releasing in just a few weeks? Why are there no combat demos of the new races to show their animations?

I guess all those are major bonuses to the expansion (or patch 1.11 as the case may be) and they're going through major overhauls to make them fun.

If that's the case, it's fantastic news and Blizzard should let us know about it.

(It's a really obnoxious negative post style you use Utnayan, and by disecting rather minor parts of something you can really apply it to anything - I'll apply it to politics later if I get bored)

[nyx]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

Tigole and Furor? Two people that pretty much designed EQ and told SOE what to do when they didn't have a clue. I'll take that experience over someone who decided their passion in life was to make MMORPG's after playing Star Wars Galaxies for 30 minutes.

'Utnayan', is that French for retard?

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Cad

Unless you have a financial interest in seeing the game succeed or are a beta tester such that your feedback is desired, stfu until open beta when we can all check it out and either deem it a pile of shit or something breaking away from the mold. Passing judgement on a game based on closed beta/alpha/whatever feedback from annoyed testers is asinine.

And so is stifiling those testers so they cannot speak about solid game mechanics that should never have to be revamped this late in the game, while the hype machine builds without any recourse, and spin deflected left and right about real reasons why Microsoft dropped the game 4 years after development.

It's already been said, and I'll say it again. You can pass judgement on a game 4 years into development. If this is all they have come up with after this amount of time, where beta testers do not even want to log in to tedious and idiotic game design, terrible quest plots, borish combat, retarded crafting designs; while at the same time hiding all that behind an NDA because the people in charge know full well their design isn't popular but it is too late to do anything about it now so they need to make sure box sales stay high by spinning everything under the sun -- then let people say whatever they would like to to make sure history doesn't keep repeating itself.

I guess all those are major bonuses to the expansion (or patch 1.11 as the case may be) and they're going through major overhauls to make them fun.

Let me know when it takes 5 people to harvest a piece of wood from a tree in WoW, and I'll tell them they need a major overhaul as well.

[Zistrix]

More shots!