Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard?

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

We all like reading stuff like that. Someone in the know, without their corporate spin hat on, talking to us like we are real people, and not looking at us like we are dollar signs to be won.

As I said above, more of that and this would be quite the different forum.

Yeah, well as long as spin can dupe a bunch of people into buying a game on release, I wouldn't hold my breath...maybe that makes me a cynic, but I'm only going by what I see most of the time.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Hachima

The game still isn't ever going to be as easy as WoW but as a gamer that's not a problem to me.

It's already as easy as WoW, if not easier, it's just more time consuming (for now).

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

It's already as easy as WoW, if not easier, it's just more time consuming (for now).

Yeah, MMOs generally have little to do with skill...90% time invested. (with a few exceptions...mostly raids)

[Hachima]

Originally Posted by The Hiram Key

If you are talking about the Conquest stuff, I was under the impression they were using the bridge to summon aggroed clerics underneath where the mobs couldnt get at them (for a second) and the COHing them to 2 feet away to clear agro.

Can anyone clarify ?

No, that's wrong. It could of been X axis instead of Z. Point was to avoid the AE by standing behind a wall. AEs didn't go though walls but heals did. Same way healers stood behind the wall for Nagafen/Vox to avoid Fear/AEs. The bridge was just a wall from the AE.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Kendrick

You're making the assumption that WoW was ever viewed as direct competition. Same general market, yes, same clientele, not necessarily. And going after the biggest possible market at the expense of all else isn't always a good idea.

That concept seems to escape a lot of people for some reason. Not a dig on you, not a snub on WoW, just stating a fact.

You're also making the assumption that the day WoW released, we INSTANTLY knew it would have 8 million subs and decent retention. All we knew was that a lot of boxes were sold...meaningful retention numbers take time, so add another 6 months to a year to "reaction time" at a minimum.

Anecdotal evidence is a poor thing to use when considering revamping an entire game concept, and anecdotes were all we had until mid-late 2005, and even then/now it was unclear what the churn rate was for WoW, etc.

Not to mention WoW wasn't/isn't perfect, for every idea some say we should have "borrowed" from WoW, there's somebody else that hates it. Can't please everybody, so sometimes it's good to try to pick those you CAN please and stick with it as much as possible.

And finally, we were making a game we wanted to play long-term. Money is great, but anyone besides a few CEO's who think they're going to get rich from making an MMO is in the wrong line of work.

I should mention that Brad was ALREADY rich, but he never planned on EQ making him rich, he and others just wanted to make the game they wanted to play, and Vanguard was just another shot at that goal.

So, Step 3 was never the biggest step in our plan, and we thought we had some pretty fun ideas for what to do with the underwear in Step 2.

Well, I never exactly thought Sigil should do a complete 180. Think about it. You said yourself that early on, Sigil was looking at a gamespace of 5-600k. WoW doubled that figure INSIDE OF 6 months, no less than a year-and-a-half PRIOR to Vanguards launch. Of course it should have been viewed as "direct competition". It should have been expected that WoW was getting at least "some" percentage of the previously existing numbers.

And i'm not assuming Sigil knew the potential of WoW at its launch. But within at least a 6 month period, there should have had at least "some" inkling that the potential was there for it to screw up Vanguard's earlier projections. After a year it should have been blatantly obvious. Especially when the growth became so consistant.

I remember all the Sir Bruce/Brad McQuaid commentary on the OVF. Like him or not, hes usually pretty reliable in his projections. Its why he gets the respect he does in the mmo genre. So it wasn't just the constant bickering of rabid WoW/Vanbois that should have given an indication. The genre was speaking pretty loudly and clearly. Even many who had been vehemently defending Vanguards ideals for years were voicing thier concerns before the OVF shut down.

All the warning signs were there. And they were far from "anecdotal". When your own fans are starting to cast thier doubts, its time to rethink things yourself. Because after all, its THEM you should be making the game for.

Again I submit, I really hope Sigil can turn this mess around. Because i'd like to think that Vanguard could become the game I always thought I would enjoy.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Kendrick

. . . .

And finally, we were making a game we wanted to play long-term. . . . .

And that says it all in a nutshell. And that's why it fails, because the large current market of today doesn't want to play that game.

[Utnayan]

Originally Posted by Kendrick

6 months my ass, it was mid December when the proper data was pushed over...days, not months after release. Furor, Nino, et all were in the zone just as soon as they got a key, and key drops for a few people were easy enough...once again, days.

Data being pushed DAYS after release? People were not even IN sleeper's tomb killing warders until months after release. Christ, AL didn't even get their first warder kill until April 1st, and guess what they got? A fucking cloth cap. MoTG was around Feb. Primal was dropping from that. But that is 2 months AFTER the release date of 12-5-2000.

I fessed up to the cloth caps stunt in person at the San Diego Fan Faire, and via email or ingame long before that. It was no great secret. They were left in because they were meant to be left in. Joke in poor taste? Probably. Mistake? Probably. Sign of unfinished content? No.

With that said, and if that is the case, why the hell wasn't anyone else honest about it? Ester the tester going on record saying that cloth caps dropping was working as intended. Abashi doing the same. Then of course her flipping the fuck out when they gained access to PoM and than having the balls to say THAT zone was working as intended? Why the God Damn lies to begin with? You finally admit, the first ever admission here, that PoM was NOT finished on release. Yet, that didn't stop everyone in the community related aspects of the field to keep saying that quests were just not figured out yet, while people spun their wheels for 3 months and you, nor anyone else, did one damn thing to stop it so those players could concentrate on shit that worked. Why the cover up?

The old data had a giant human model (the default when the engine couldn't find the model listed), the correct data had a the same model Yelinak used, and it wasn't until January that Milo Cooper decided to build a unique model for the Sleeper...that new model was NOT part of the original plan but it sure was cool, and I was more than happy to use it.

I understand that. What I find hilarious though is that the 4th warder was buffed to fuck and back during that process to artificially break the encounter. Hachima just told you you definitely have your facts wrong on the way Conquest was banned. The script was fucking 5 months out, and this once in a lifetime server event to reward the top players, was a disaster of idiocy. I can understand how this may not be able to be tested because you can never simulate a live server load and that can fuck your code up easily (and make bugs hard to find) but give me a break here. It just so happens that the joke you pulled "Cloth caps" was also the default loot drop when there wasn't a loot table finished.

Zones crashing just happened because there were 50 gazillion people deciding to watch what was happening when Kerafyrm went on a rampage. That was not good, but it doesn't mean ST wasn't finished, it meant that EQ had and always had issues with player counts in a zone.

Oh Christ come on. No one even knew what the hell was going on or what was going to happen when Conquest killed that 4th warder. No one was watching unless it was half of SOE in /hideme. 3 zones crashed, with their normal population, all wondering what the fuck was going on. Maybe later you could have used this excuse -- but it was poorly tested and thrown together at the last minute from my chair...

Wanna know what the Sleeper script did? It sent Kerafyrm on a rampage though ST for 20 minutes, caused a shout to the world that Nag, Vox, a few RoS dragons, Jalidar, etc were listening for, and prompted them to say a few lines of text. When Kerafyrm depopped in ST, he moved on to Skyshrine to rampage there for a bit, and then was gone, ostensibly to chase after Veeshan herself, perhaps to return one day. After that, a new dataset was manually triggered for ST that didn't include the Warders.

I understand that. When it went off the first time, SolB crashed. Skyshrine crashed. A naked human poofed from ST, and nothing else happened.

That was it, the entire grand plan, and it worked as long as nobody dicked with the triggers. EQ's trigger system was incredibly clunky back then, most triggers were basically invisible NPC's that shouted invisible text that other NPC's would listen for and react to, and a few things could be triggered on the death of an NPC. If a GM was dicking around in the zone and killed a trigger, or if for some reason the servers hiccuped and a trigger didn't spawn, the whole chain could collapse...that was a problem for more than just the ST script.

Is that what happened with this first script then?

It was egregious, high profile, and was trivializing content that others were actually working hard to do legit. And it wasn't all Z-axis, there were other loopholes being exploited to pull that off as well. Banning them wasn't me, I simply pointed out what they were doing to Jeff Butler, after getting a phone call from a GM that had been watching them that evening.

And it seems Hachima has another story for you.

Had it been up to me, I'd have stripped them of the Warder gear they had, reset the zone, and told them to watch the bullshit. The Dain shit was handled differently, and if I recall, the designer of that zone didn't make it a point to inform management that his content was being exploited, he just tried numerous fixes. Grieg's exploits happened after I left, I have no idea how that was handled, though GE was my zone.

So it was up to the designer of the zone to determine what was an exploit? Meaning one exploit in one zone (Pureply subjective) could be fine in another zone, which would leave everyone wondering how the hell anything was handled. Correct?

I THINK a GM took it upon himself/herself to perma-kill the 4th warder until the Conquest thing was figured out. I know nothing of the Warder data being changed, if it was, it didn't happen while I was there.

No. They just made it unkillable with an artificial cockblock. Which was then used again with keying for SoL and Vex Thal by breaking the key quest with the Maiden's eye drop being non existant -- then again with an artificial rathe cockblock because plane of time wasn't finished. And on, and on... and on.

Luclin was an unfinished pile of poo, my work included, because we didn't have the time to finish it, we were all strung out from working too many hours, etc. No real defense on that one, other than it was a combination of errors, once again not some attempt to defraud the consumer.

I appreciate your honesty here, but I think you can agree with me that releasing this in the state it was in WAS defrauding the customer. Correct? And then they did this again with Planes of Power - and it soon became the business model - and now McQuaid has taken it with him with Vanguard - thinking it is just fine and dandy to release something so horrid into the market. I cannot even imagine what MMORPG's would be like if this bullshit would stop.

He gave a shit, we all gave a shit (with the possible exception of some marketing department people, but take that with a grain of salt, EVERYONE hated SOE's marketing and their 'tude and mandates).

That's why I have changed my tune a little on Smedley. He has shown he does give a shit. EoF was a good expansion too, so hopefully things will turn around.

PoM? That zone was not finished, and wasn't supposed to be entered by players until it was, until somebody leaked the way to get in. The employee in charge of that zone had moved to another team, and the replacement employee ended up being let go a few months later for non-performance in general, if that matters at all to you. Everyone else was just too busy working on their own zones to spend any time trying to fix "somebody else's problem", and we'd already been down that route with ToFS and Siren's in Velious.

I figured that was the case with ToFS too. I remember the keying not being done past the wedding and I was stuck there until they decided to push the finish. With that said, why the hell wasn't anything said to the people that were trying to play in a zone that was obviously NOT done, but told time and time again it WAS finished, but no one had figured it out yet? Finally from an official source we have another admission (And I thank you for that) that this zone was a clusterfuck. All they had to do was say that it was not finished and to not waste their time playing in it. Yet, that didn't stop ester from saying more bullshit again. If she was just the mouthpiece, who was the one filling her with shit? McQuaid?

PoP? No fucking clue, I left before that expansion was more than a concept name.

Almost as bad as SOL. Except this time it took 6 months for them to finish Plane of Time.

[Hachima]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

It's already as easy as WoW, if not easier, it's just more time consuming (for now).

Maybe to you but not for some people. My wife has a lvl 30 something in WoW that she has made on her own. She is not a gamer at all though. I still have to help her figure out how to play a Blue-Ray in the PS3 sometimes..that's how much she doesn't play games. There is no way she could progress that much in Vanguard though.

That's just an example of 1 sub WoW will get (and is still active) that Vanguard will never get. I know parents that are 40+ years old and in the same situation. They aren't gamers, I doubt they would have fun in Vanguard either. They have mid level chars in WoW though after several years of messing around and they are fine with that.

If you put this same players in Vanguard they would struggle. They would have a hard time figuring out where to go for content. In WoW they can just follow a quest or two, find the zone meant for their level and stay there. You are required to explore and travel around a lot more in Vangaurd if you want to progress.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by Maxxius

And that says it all in a nutshell. And that's why it fails, because the large current market of today doesn't want to play that game.

I disagree with this. I think its very important that devs are making a game that they want to play. Is it going to be the best for marketing and making money? Perhaps not. I do feel that its going to produce a superior quality game when the people behind it have a desire to make the game for reasons other than their wallets. When it starts getting personal is when you can see more quality.

[Rayne]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

I disagree with this. I think its very important that devs are making a game that they want to play. Is it going to be the best for marketing and making money? Perhaps not. I do feel that its going to produce a superior quality game when the people behind it have a desire to make the game for reasons other than their wallets. When it starts getting personal is when you can see more quality.

I agree. But sometimes, sacrifices need to be made. Problem is, they were made on the wrong end.

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

I disagree with this. I think its very important that devs are making a game that they want to play. Is it going to be the best for marketing and making money? Perhaps not. I do feel that its going to produce a superior quality game when the people behind it have a desire to make the game for reasons other than their wallets. When it starts getting personal is when you can see more quality.

Well if you're using VG as an example I can only say that quality's a subjective thing. And Maxxius has a point...if it's not something the public wants to play, it won't matter if the devs care or not. Ideally, we'd see a combination of market desire and dev involvement, but that doesn't come along all that often.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Utnayan

. . . .
why the hell wasn't anything said to the people that were trying to play in a zone that was obviously NOT done, but told time and time again it WAS finished, but no one had figured it out yet? . . ..

Actually this is a very valid point. People really did get angry over the spin that constantly came out of Abashi's mouth for example (who imo is the perfect example of the Peter Principle in action). A simple "sorry gang, POM is not working atm and no eta on when it will" would have done wonders, instead of people literally wasting their time trying to figure something out that just didn't work.

That falls squarely on Brad's shoulders and no one else's. It is why I constantly call out his bullshit on this thread, because, thanks to this forum, I CAN. He pulled the BS crap in EQ and he is doing the same shit with VG, except this time the vast market isn't falling for it.

[Gaereth]

Originally Posted by Kendrick

You're making the assumption that WoW was ever viewed as direct competition. Same general market, yes, same clientele, not necessarily. And going after the biggest possible market at the expense of all else isn't always a good idea.

Your choice of wording actually reflects something that bothered me quite a bit. I don't think WOW was ever really taken seriously by Brad until it started taking over the world. Brad was extremely dismissive in quite a lot of posts about WOW for quite a long time and that in turn was reflected on the VG forums in how quite a lot of the posters spoke about WOW. He was extremely outspoken about how it wouldn't last, would be extremely short term, etc, etc.

Was this a general attitude at Sigil??

Brad made quite a few posts that didn't seem to reflect reality and seemed to be stuck in what he wanted to believe was the 'proper' way to build an MMO and as such didn't seem to want to see what WOW could teach him.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Hachima

Maybe to you but not for some people. My wife has a lvl 30 something in WoW that she has made on her own. She is not a gamer at all though. I still have to help her figure out how to play a Blue-Ray in the PS3 sometimes..that's how much she doesn't play games. There is no way she could progress that much in Vanguard though.

Couldn't or wouldn't? Just because someone may get frustrated and bored with something doesn't mean it is beyond their capacity, it just means that the product failed to deliver an enjoyable experience that encourages them to keep trying.

[Maxxius]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

I disagree with this. I think its very important that devs are making a game that they want to play. Is it going to be the best for marketing and making money? Perhaps not. I do feel that its going to produce a superior quality game when the people behind it have a desire to make the game for reasons other than their wallets. When it starts getting personal is when you can see more quality.

Not saying you shouldn't love what you are doing. But this is above all else a business, and if you don't have the pulse of the market you will simply fail. And I am sure Brad sold MS on the project with visions of high subs, not hey a few of us love this so give us 30 million bucks to make it heheh.