SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[woqqqa]

Originally Posted by Lorrac

Honestly, when I saw the thread where brad bragged about the luxurious sigil offices including the full-scale reproduction of han solo's frozen body it just came to my mind "this guy shouldn't be managing a business". There's different kinds of talents in this world and while brad is a talented man, his ain't about keeping a development house afloat. The real bad news about sigil closing are the layoffs and the permanent stain this will be on brad.

Wait a minute, how is the permanent stain on Brad a bad thing? It seems as if he's an egotistical ass with no idea whatsoever how to design a game. I can only hope this makes him persona non grata in the industry. Sympathize with the workers that were laid off, sure...but Brad? What the hell for? Even if he never works another day in his life he has plenty of cash.

[Mkopec1]

Originally Posted by Leid

Wait until some disgruntled Sigil workers spill their guts about how things ran behind the scenes.

*crosses fingers*

[Lost Ranger]

I have yet to try VG out of beta. I was going to do like EQ2 and give them a year or so to work their shit out. Now that sony has control a year or so is prob still the best option. If they pull a "eq2" then this time next year VG might be a pretty good game to waste some time on.

Id really like to see Brads statement about all of this heh. If he is even planning on making one.

[I'm Rich Bitch]

Originally Posted by Fury

So much truth to that statement.

And Brad had a lot to do with it. Most escecially by creating it with his followers, openly bashing other existing MMO's, as well as soon(ish) to be released games. And of course the famed, "This game might not be for you" catch phrase. Which quickly turned into, "Go back to WoW!", with the suble, "you pussyass wuss", behind it.

Tainted by hate, indeed.

You missed another VG phase: "It must be your rig, it is not Vanguard."

I think that this game has reached the point of no return. All they can hope for at this point is to euthanize it and put it out in a nice pasture with a peaceful view and the nice sounds of the VG soundtrack because that is the only thing worth saving in this game.

[RunningDog]

Originally Posted by Qhue

The Ice Skating combat system was, unfortunately, too good to be true. It was partly implemented into the game and then people complained bitterly that it wasn't WoWish and instead of saying "hold on its not done yet..." or better yet "shut the fuck up!" they went and shitcanned the whole concept in favor of WoWism.

All because people felt that combat wasnt fast paced enough...instead it just got REALLY dull and button mashy.


The real tragedy is that there were several very good and 3rd generationish ideas that Vanguard had and which it subsequently betrayed on the road to release.

The problem with this "betrayal of ideas" theory is that it supposes the original ideas carried through to release would have made the game more popular. The fact is they were unpopular with the majority of the beta testers, and they were the target audience.

Vanguard's whole design philosophy was flawed because Brad believed (and by recent posts still does) that many people playing WoW would somehow prefer to be playing original EQ with cutting edge graphics. What's more likely is that they would rather be playing WoW with better graphics i.e. LotRO.

[Lost Ranger]

Originally Posted by Cuppycake

Yeah you're right. I'm totally wrong, and so are all the people who agree with me. Most of the people here on these boards who talk about EQ2 don't have a 60+ character...me included, but this is what I've experienced so far with leveling a character. Its just as important to me that the leveling process has good combat as the end game. *shrug*

Regardless if you say at level 60+ it gets better...that's a long way to go with too many abilities. Its not a new brilliant revelation that I just came up with that abilities need to be merged. Its pretty common thought.

ummm... who said it gets better at 60+? I said that at the lower levels you really dont have a good idea how it works because at level 20 you can get away with being lazy and just using what you have to in order to get by. At 60+ it gets "worse" not better. You said that button mashing was our fault because its trivial.. I said you're wrong because you are. When you reach the point that content is more then "kill 10 bats for X npc" you HAVE to button mash because all your skills have purpose.

Part of me enjoys the fact that all my combat arts have a use. Its the part of me that doesnt like using 30 different skills that just whines louder

Edit: Merging some abilities is kind of a bandaid fix imo. Id like to see a complete system rework with combat chains that have some meaning. I kinda like Lotr tier system. Use X ability to unlock Y ability which will unlock Z ability. Even if you have to repeat that combo or something similar it would be more interactive and fun then pressing 1,2,3,4,5,6,c1,c2,c3,1 as quick as possible to pull off the big W.

[Theramor Laeroth]

wow..

First off, I hope all the employees from Sigil that got layed off get back on their feet quickly. Its gotta suck to be told like they were that you no longer have a job.

Secondly, I play EQ2 and have a L70 Paladin and done some raiding. It can be a button mashing experience, and even more so if your a group/raid tank (and yes as a Paladin I have on occasion) and your trying to hold aggro from "trigger happy" wizards .

Since the combat changes it has gotten better, but I have to agree that you really do need to use alot of your skills to hold/generate aggro. Alot of my skills have an aggro generating component that it helps to offset the other classes that do more damage than I do.

Also, alot of that "button mashing" is for generating "Heroic Opportunities" which I have found to be helpful at times, and more so when soloing.

Lastly, I played VG thru a good chunk of the beta and a month or so live. I had some high hopes for it, but in the end I felt that it needed several more months of beta that it didn't get. Don't get me wrong, I had alot of fun playing it, but in the end I had more fun elsewhere and couldn't wait for it to be patched.


T

[Mkopec1]

Originally Posted by RunningDog

Vanguard's whole design philosophy was flawed because Brad believed (and by recent posts still does) that many people playing WoW would somehow prefer to be playing original EQ with cutting edge graphics. What's more likely is that they would rather be playing WoW with better graphics i.e. LotRO.

But this statemrnt is in fact false. Because VG resembles WoW moreso than EQ. The only thing that really is left from the EQ days is the travel and non instance. The rest is basically WoW from the combat, to some of the harvesting bullshit.
There is nothing in VG that resembles the origional EQ design.

[Flight]

Originally Posted by Kreugen

Which actually leads to the neccessity of running loggers at all times to see if people are pulling their weight or not.

Getting into the top 5 with my shittatsic skill books and second tier dps class was a matter of pride. Even staying in the top 10 required spacing out cooldowns to take best advantage of the two dispatches. So yeah, there was SOME thought involved, but mostly it came down to "wait for dispatch notice, MASH MASH *double up* MASH MASH MASH MASH *wait*"

This also points out the negative side of parsers; I hate them.

They promote a mentality of putting out the best dps rather than doing what is better for the raid or for other people. It shouldn't be time your debuffs to make your dps epeentastic, it should be time your debuffs to be optimal for the raid.

This isn't aimed at you Kreugen, it may not have caused you to think like that, but its definitely an issue community wide.


An interesting part of VG abilities was that if you played your class to the optimal raid perfomance it would hurt your dps, for a number of classes (Warrior etc). It was obvious so often that people were after their own DPS rather than choosing this option.

[Mad Jacq]

Not surprised to hear this news. I figured I was one of the last to turn off the lights when I cancelled last month.

I sooo wanted this game to work too.

One of the biggest problems with it for me was how damned questy it was. How are you supposed to build a "community" in a game with some many multi-threaded, multi-layered, progressive, take-forever quests.

Me: "Necro LFG CIS"
Tell: "Which step you on"
Me: "Ring, part 2"
Tell: "Oh, we're beyond that already"

BTW, this didn't start with Vanguard, but it certainly helped kill it for me as they never did have the playerbase to afford cliquish progressive quests.

I was willing to overlook some other stuff (crappy bug-filled performance) in the hopes that it would get better over time (and some of it was, though slower than I would have hoped), because they did innovate in many areas.

We live and we learn. At least I no longer look back on EQ with rose colored glasses. This makes me currently MMO-less. I need to find another hobby, but I'll probably go back to following some other damned project in development.

P.S. First post. Loooooooong time lurker. Don't pick on me you assholes.

[redjunkopera]

The ideas are what generated interest in the game in the first place. If the implementation of those ideas was unappealing to the beta testers they should have figured out a way to make it work instead of scrapping all the originality out of the game.

I don't think the pre-launch following wanted EQ with better graphics, they wanted EQ with fleshed out ideas. EQ is an amalgam of dozens of half implemented ideas none of which complement each other. Flesh out those ideas, and then find creative ways to keep the fear and pain from EQ where it's necessary, and cut it out where it's not.

I see now the better way to do it would be to create a successful WoW-clone and then slowly evolve it into the next gen-EQ you want it to be.

[Cantatus]

Originally Posted by I'm Rich Bitch

You missed another VG phase: "It must be your rig, it is not Vanguard."

My favorite is still the reply Brad would give when people asked if Vanguard would be released in the shape that several EQ expansions were: "MMOGs are never finished!"

Ironically that seems to have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Arctic Circle]

Whole mess reminds me of Asheron's Call 2. Just when you think situation is bad enough and game a complite turd, there's something that makes it even worse. Funny thing is, no matter how crap the game is for the majority, there's always small group of people who think game is just about perfect or at least very fun to play. Their taste in games or what they find fun is very different then it's for majority of they players. Sometimes they can just be selfish and furiously protect what they find fun game mechanics or design decisions and other times they truely can't see why some think the game they like is crap. This would be fine if games wouldn't cost as much to develop these days as they do.

Some loved Asheron's Call 2 till the day Turbine shut down the servers. They posted long rants how they can't understand why Turbine did that. They were having fun till the end. Majority of potential players didn't have fun, just like they don't have fun in Vanguard. When Asheron's Call 2 was shut down, many said that for the sake of the industry and majority of the players, we can only hope that people who liked Asheron's Call 2 will never ever like another MMOG. I think we can say the same for Vanguard and players who have fun in Vanguard. It'll be better for the industry and majority of the players if these who like Vanguard will never ever have fun in any MMOG. Probably wishful thinking since lessons of the past are easily forgotten. There will be another David Bowman or Brad McQuaid and yet another generation of raving fanbois and we go this same thing all over again.

[Quain]

Honestly, it's kind of wrong to shit on the actual game. It clearly was released two or three months too early and was optimized for magical space computers from 2021. Bad leadership, bad planning, bad polish, pretty okay game.

It's a bit like playing WoW, but Elwynn Forest was the only finished area, and even then the itemization is shitty. Actually, it's a bit like playing WoW, but there are fourteen Elwynn Forests, the game was simply too goddamn big for the manpower and time available. It wasn't too bad for me, I didn't mind playing on highest performance and I was playing the game at a casual level so I never really ran into the brick wall that was just completely incomplete areas, but anyone can see that's a giant fuck up that will ruin your game.

With all that said, hopefully a good portion of Sigil's staff continues to work on the game and we see something decent come of it, because a lot of the gameplay features are very enjoyable and it could be a top notch game once we all have super space computers.

[I'm Rich Bitch]

Originally Posted by Mad Jacq

Not surprised to hear this news. I figured I was one of the last to turn off the lights when I cancelled last month.

I sooo wanted this game to work too.

One of the biggest problems with it for me was how damned questy it was. How are you supposed to build a "community" in a game with some many multi-threaded, multi-layered, progressive, take-forever quests.

Me: "Necro LFG CIS"
Tell: "Which step you on"
Me: "Ring, part 2"
Tell: "Oh, we're beyond that already"

BTW, this didn't start with Vanguard, but it certainly helped kill it for me as they never did have the playerbase to afford cliquish progressive quests.

I was willing to overlook some other stuff (crappy bug-filled performance) in the hopes that it would get better over time (and some of it was, though slower than I would have hoped), because they did innovate in many areas.

We live and we learn. At least I no longer look back on EQ with rose colored glasses. This makes me currently MMO-less. I need to find another hobby, but I'll probably go back to following some other damned project in development.

P.S. First post. Loooooooong time lurker. Don't pick on me you assholes.

Fucking '07er..er..ah Fucking May '07er.