SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[woqqqa]

No one's hyping up Nino to be anything other than a competent developer. For all intents and purposes, he seems to know what he's doing, and manages to deal honestly with the playerbase. No one thinks he's the solution to all of the game's ills, but a lot of people like the idea of having a competent person with clear ideas about the direction of the game at the helm, as opposed to some guy with a vague "Vision".

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by Braen

AND! gallenite stays with EQ2. Win!

Told you. =P

[Ender4212]

Why in the hell are they retaining Brad as a consultant?

[tad10]

Originally Posted by Flight

1. Brad McQuaid will be consultant to SOE as a creative advisor for Vanguard. Dave Gilbertson will be the person directly responsible for the day-to-day management of both the Sigil Carlsbad office as well as Vanguard.

The drama is explained.

[guanna]

i want a motherfucking refund for my collectors ed. and my 4 months sub.

i paid for a pile of shit. either that or return this game to beta, let anyone who has paid a single fucking penny to sigil be a beta tester.

thank god soe has taken the helm.

[Braen]

Originally Posted by boy-

That makes no sense, the game by in large well, sucks. Yet they're claiming that they're going to keep the same people onboard (with that same guy running it), and make 'no major changes'?

So all they've done is somewhat-kicked McQuaid off day-to-day operations, which he hasn't been doing since last year anyways, while essentially keeping the same guy in charge that was running it before.

So how exactly are they going to make this a better game?

I guess cause Brad can say something and the producer and say.. Ummm no Brad.

[kohl]

Originally Posted by Flight

Community Announcements

1. Brad McQuaid will be consultant to SOE as a creative advisor for Vanguard. Dave Gilbertson will be the person directly responsible for the day-to-day management of both the Sigil Carlsbad office as well as Vanguard.

This sounds like corporate speak for "we wanted to fire his ass, but a clause in the agreement involved some legal stipulations and a paycheck".

With any luck, Brad is gone for all intents and purposes.

[Digits]

It sickens me that McQuaid is being kept on as a consultant. What a pity that he is getting any credit outside of being a complete pud. With any luck this will be his last job in the industry. Complete mismanagement of the game is the reason that the game failed in epic fashion. The coders never had time to actually look at their work and wonder what was wrong, as it was always on to the next thing or fixing another if not completely redoing a facet of the game. Even still Sigil almost pulled it off, and if they had until May to finish the game the story would have been different. Once I saw the official release date in January I completely lost hope for the game, and simply stopped posting in shock and disgust.

There is too much work to be done on Vanguard, but SOE is the only company with any hope of pulling it off. Hopefully they will get good management on the game and actually address the key problems with the game. Great quest lines that span an entire zone ought to be a top priority, aside from the obligatory graphic and bug fixes. I still advocate that they should set the level cap to 40 and focus on making the 1-40 game round about perfect, then start whittling away at the upper end of the game.

[Cascow]

Originally Posted by kohl

This sounds like corporate speak for "we wanted to fire his ass, but a clause in the agreement involved some legal stipulations and a paycheck".

With any luck, Brad is gone for all intents and purposes.

Yup. Nearly 100% chance that this is exactly how things went down.

[Cuppycake]

Originally Posted by guanna

i want a motherfucking refund for my collectors ed. and my 4 months sub.

i paid for a pile of shit. either that or return this game to beta, let anyone who has paid a single fucking penny to sigil be a beta tester.

Wow. Those are some yellow cheerios you have.

You can't tell me that you went into this blind. We said the game sucked in beta, it was all over the boards that it wasn't ready for release. All the reviews said it was buggy (except the paid shill reviews). All the warning signs pointed to this.

If you went out and purchased the game with your hard earned money, you deserve to have lost what you spent. And the collectors edition? That's like buying a turd with gold plating on it. You spent more than you even HAD to to purchase a game that everyone warned you sucked. I think you deserve to have spent your money, especially since you gave them an additional 3 months of subscription fees that would have been better spent elsewhere.

[chaos]

Originally Posted by boy-

That makes no sense, the game by in large well, sucks. Yet they're claiming that they're going to keep the same people onboard (with that same guy running it), and make 'no major changes'?

So all they've done is somewhat-kicked McQuaid off day-to-day operations, which he hasn't been doing since last year anyways, while essentially keeping the same guy in charge that was running it before.

So how exactly are they going to make this a better game?

I read that as "We (SOE) will not be mandating changes. However, we are replacing Brad with Dave (AKA our man) and he will be mandating changes."

I could be reading this wrong.

[tad10]

If a known developer like Nino or Teclisien isn't taking over as lead designer I would actually have preferred wholesale changes at the top level. Nothing may actually change with a new unknown lead/head-guy, but at least there is the possibility of change.

[Ravensign]

Who the fuck knows what they are really up to? They said they don't want to gut the systems, but they seem to think a non-crashing version of the game as it now stands its going to be around for expansions.

Part of what fixed EQ2 was some gutting... of the subclassing systems, combat systems, death mechanic, tons of stuff, even the stat scaling systems.

Removing bugs alone is not gonna EQ2-i-tize VG.

[The Hiram Key]

Anyone who didn't believe that SOE was in control from the first day they started throwing money at Sigil is truly deaf, dumb and blind.

[Slick Willey]

Originally Posted by kohl

This sounds like corporate speak for "we wanted to fire his ass, but a clause in the agreement involved some legal stipulations and a paycheck".

With any luck, Brad is gone for all intents and purposes.

Yep. When I saw that Brad McQuaid is going to be an "external creative consultant" -- that basically means he is gone and out of the question. If they have a question about the design docs and his future expansion plans, they can get on the phone and ask him.

Anyone that allows McQuaid to develop another MMO deserves to lose their money.