Rumor - SOE to purchase VG?

[column]

Brad is clueless, I can't believe this is the same guy that helped shape EQ's creation and put out the best exspansion for any game ever with Kunark.

Just amazeing..

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by woqqqa

I think he's right about people getting bored with the WoW expansion, actually...but what the hell makes him think they'll choose VG to replace it? All the glowing reviews it's been getting? I agree, toss Brad and put the EQ2 game-runner (whose name escapes me just now) in charge.

Becasue there are always people who wait 4-5 even 6 months to try a mmo out. While i am not sayign it will ever reach its 500k, it could be more healthier then it is right now. I think the world lay out is damn awesome, but like i said many times before, they fucked up this release so bad that its going to sting for a while, maybe even forever.

If i didn't think the game had potential i wouldn't even bother with it. Its my style of game, I love what it has to offer. I just wish they could have released it later rather then earlier.

P.S this has nothing to do with gaming, but fuck The Miami Dolphins go into the season with Cleo Lemon starting. That is all.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by kcxiv

they fucked up this release so bad that its going to sting for a while, maybe even forever.

Ask Funcom how long it stings. My guess is, they'll tell you:

"until Vanguard launched"

[Borzak]

Brad is clueless. Here's why.

He still acts like the main problem with VG is people don't know or understand the "real" VG. Problem is they do...He acts like he can't recruit people to VG because of feelings they have toward EQ or whatever.

Maybe he should start with keeping the players they already have, or maybe even have started back in beta. How many 1,000's of beta invites played for a very short time and you would log on during beta and see 75 people at the server select screen.

VG doesn't have a marketing problem, VG is the problem. Fix the game, not the way people look at the game. Somewhere along the lines someone forgot games should be "FUN".

Can we say one hit wonder, here's hoping we've seen the last of the "vision".

[Northerner]

Wow, that post is an interesting read. Brad, I know your target for that one wasn't a technical audience but seriously, you can't start going off about system design issues and how you got boned by misapplying Moore's Law and such. Half of what you typed there is just gibberish and logical conclusions like "Vista is a resource hog, therefore people will have really great rigs that will have lots of slack to run our app" just don't make any sense at all.

I wish you the best of luck, I really do. I was hoping for years that VG would be the next great thing but let's just say I'm one of the few that didn't like it for non-performance reasons.

[kcxiv]

Shit, you ever seen region chat in Vanguard SOOOO many fucking EQ references about old mobs, items and zones. Its unreal.

[kohl]

Originally Posted by woqqqa

I think he's right about people getting bored with the WoW expansion, actually...but what the hell makes him think they'll choose VG to replace it? All the glowing reviews it's been getting? I agree, toss Brad and put the EQ2 game-runner (whose name escapes me just now) in charge.

I agree with you 100%. I think what disappointed me was that instead of saying "hey we are committed to addressing the major flaws with the game starting with X, Y and Z and here is how we are going to do it. We will make this game into something people WANT to play"... he says "well, we are going to work on making the game better and hopefully when people get tired of the current MMOs they might check us out".

Vanguard: Saga of Tablescraps

[Filthgrinder]

Originally Posted by Rayne

Ask Funcom how long it stings. My guess is, they'll tell you:

"until Vanguard launched"

I choked on fucking coffee I laughed so hard at this. Well played sir!

[column]

Hes crazy to think all of the sudden 7 milllion people are going to get tired of WOW, and honestly does he really think Blizzard won't put out another MMO when they do.

Almost every MMO that has come out has had his future set in stone by its release and its first year. If it doesnt do good the first year, it will stay that way through its entire run.

[kcxiv]

Read the post, he said he has to fix whats wrong with the game. He did not fail to mention that. People always wanna read what they want to and not what he actually says throughout the whole post

What it does mean at this point is that both companies agree that we need more of SOE’s involvement if Vanguard is going to continue to get the support it needs to both continue to be worked on and improved and debugged and optimized.

see what i mean, people didnt see this part huh? lol .

[Twobit Whore]

I read it, it basically says:

Please don't cancel while SOE takes over the bulk of operations. Keep paying for beta for the next year and when people get tired of WoW and LotRO (and I don't even realize that WAR and AoC exist, amongst others) they will all have C2Duo systems with DX10 hardware and play Vanguard with you.

How fucking ignorant can one person be... really.

[Hachima]

Man what a joke...

What does that mean? It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently but not as well as we hoped...So the bottom line is that SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard – our relationship is going to become even tighter – much tighter. At this point I can’t say much more than that.

Does this mean an acquisition? I can’t say at this point.

Does this mean more or less people at Sigil? I can’t say at this point.

Does this mean management changes at Sigil? I can’t say at this point.

Translation: Our game has massive problems and we are losing subs. We have come to the point were SOE is forcing us to let them make decisions on the game now. I will no longer be in charge but will still have some say in what goes on.

These people need to know that Vanguard does have the ‘EQ feel’ in many ways but that it is much more soloable than EQ was, especially the early EQ days. They need to know that you can play for short periods of time and advance. They need to know that the ‘end game’ is not all about raiding into the wee hours of the night. Some subset of these people will still feel burnt out of MMOGs period, but I think there’s a lot of people who haven’t been reached and our and others research supports that. False assumptions are being made by a lot of people. The reality is that Vanguard *is* the game most of these people are looking for – it has the good they remember, but has eliminated a lot of the tedium and necessary long hours that don’t fit into their lifestyle anymore.

You have got to be kidding me. What they need to know is some classes can solo and some can't do crap at all. There is no standard to what people are able to solo, unlike other solo friendly MMOs. Not that some classes aren't better than others at farming in games like WoW, but at least there aren't classes that are so far below others that they are screwed. So what you end up in VG is a world that has a bland solo aspect to it. There are a few kill x mob hubs, and that is it. If you want to go anywhere interesting you will need a group.

So at least for a time the more casual bored WoW player may migrate to LoTR Online. How sticky (e.g. how long that game will hold onto players) is unknown, but I think it’s safe to say that a significant percentage of the more casual bored WoW player will head to LoTR – at least first, given the franchise around it. Conservatively this leaves the more hard core WoW player (which in Vanguard or EQ terms would be considered either a hard core or, more likely, a core gamer).

You got that right. Your BS about being able to log on and accomplish something in a short time is funny. You better set aside a bunch of time for traveling. And you really need to at least duo to make decent progress so have fun trying to get a group together. VG has some solo hubs but they aren't anywhere near towns you log out at. LOTRO on the other hand is true in that you can log on and quickly get into some quests and make some progression. There are many hubs and you can log out and be near your content, plus access important features of the game. It is very easy to find people working on the same chapter you are. Your group will probably shortly disband after the quest but that's the whole point, you made a little progress and had some fun and you can go on your way.

I will say that VG does do a better job at building a community, because if you group up to make progress, you need to be dedicated to each other for hours. But that is why you can't make decent progress in short 1-2 hour spurts like you can in WoW or LOTRO.

Lastly, there’s the very real issue of Vanguard’s system specs,...In fact, Vanguard runs pretty well on a 2 GB system with a decent pci-express video card and fast memory in a 2.6 GHz Pentium; conversely, run the game on an older AGP system, the fastest AGP card you can buy, and a 3.2 GHz CPU and you’ll have framerate issues.

And lastly I think LOTRO once again proves where you failed. You seem to admit to, and be aware of this at least. The LOTRO engine runs so much better than VG. Not only does it run smoother but it also does a better job at representing a realistic looking environment is some aspects.

Learn to use instancing I guess, not just for the flow of the game but for graphics performance as well.

In summary, there are arguably a lot of people who by mid to end of this year in the MMOG gamespace for whom Vanguard could potentially be very attractive.

Honestly, I have no idea who you are trying to attract. It's not the solo player. It's not the raiding player. So you are trying to target someone who doesn't like to solo but doesn't want to raid. At the same time want people that can dedicate hours to dungeon crawling. The problem is that these type of people eventually want to raid and there is ZERO raid content in the game. So what you are left with is a very strange niche for your player base.

Vanguard doesn't even play that well for people with top end machines. After playing LOTRO at max settings with the high-res textures awhile, I logged back in to Vanguard and the game was so sluggish, on balanced settings too. I'm amazed I put up with it so well from level 1-50.

Even if there was raid content, playing at 3fps isn't all that appealing right now, and I have a pretty decent machine with pci-e, dual core, 2 gigs ram etc. Have fun spending 2k on a new machine and still being forced to watch the ground on high performance. That should be your marketing slogan.

[kohl]

Originally Posted by kcxiv

Read the post, he said he has to fix whats wrong with the game. He did not fail to mention that. People always wanna read what they want to and not what he actually says throughout the whole post

see what i mean, people didnt see this part huh? lol .

And thats all he said "we need to fix this game". Gee ya think? Who didn't figure that one out already? What players want to know is HOW and WHEN - and any response Brad gives to those kinds of questions is either another paragraph about how much potential VG has or what kind of neat fun stuff they might put in some day or the even more uproarious talk of expansions.

Most of all, Brad still hasn't woken up yet to reality and fessed up. He is still blaming marketing, blaming people for "not understand" the game, blaming hardware. The blame goes everywhere but his doorstep.

[r.gun]

...and history repeats itself.

Personally, I think that as long as SOE doesn't do something to really, really fuck things up that this can only be good for Vanguard. Maybe they'll breathe some new life into the game, and turn it around ala EQ2 as of late. While I feel that the game will never truly recover from the terrible launch I think that it still has potential to pull itself together and establish a solid player base. Hell, I know I have been watching the patch notes and "In the Works" page since I canceled my sub.

[Gaereth]

I see 2 people when I read Brads posts.

One is saying, "There are no Americans in Bagdag."

The other is saying, "Widescale availability of the PS3 is almost here."

-sigh- What he thinks/believes hasn't been a reality with his game since it moved into Alpha. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people tried the game in beta and said no way and told all their friends. Thousands upon thousands tried it at release and stopped playing then as well as telling all their friends again.

If it was an awesomely fun game that trapped you in its fun you couldn't beat all the jaded WOW/EQ/SWG etc, etc. players away with a stick. Its not...and people know it.