SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[Goliath]

Hope I don't offend Nino, but I didn't think Vanguard's music was that great. I thought it was very "average." I loved EQ's old music and some of the PoP stuff is amazing too.

Oh and Eve's music is retarded-good. So unique and refreshing and just pure goodness.

I think if Nino had the right people he could create some better music, but I got the feel he created alot of that stuff completely by himself with a Korg. Which I give you props for Nino, that's still pretty great.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Fury

I wonder how long until we see one of Brad's gigantic posts on this? I need to go find my secret Itzena decoder to be ready for it.

Edit: Actually, I bet they put a gag on Brad as part of the deal... Doh!

Yeah, I doubt he's going to be the mouthpiece of Vanguard any longer. He's a creative advisor to them, and that's that.

[kcxiv]

Originally Posted by Fury

I wonder how long until we see one of Brad's gigantic posts on this? I need to go find my secret Itzena decoder to be ready for it.

Edit: Actually, I bet they put a gag on Brad as part of the deal... Doh!

I think Brad put a gag order on himself.

[Fury]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

Yeah, I doubt he's going to be the mouthpiece of Vanguard any longer. He's a creative advisor to them, and that's that.

Yeah. Too bad. I was really looking forward to seeing Itzena decode it for us again.

[Cuppycake]

I read Brad's last post as a goodbye post of sorts. I'd be VERY surprised if we see any posts from him for a long time.

[Cybsled]

"By way of comparison, this team is approx. the same size as the EQ2 team"
- Smed

One can only hope it isn't the same size due to the fact it's the same team

[Twobit Whore]

Saying the VG team is the size of the EQ2 team probably isn't the best news. AFAIK the EQ2 is much smaller than the [last week's] Vanguard team. This is scaling back, not increasing the dev resources.

[Nairbog]

It's good news given the situation, it could have been much worse, and most posters were predicting it would be. It shows that VG is not being given the same treatment as say, Planetside or Matrix Online. This information puts that argument dead in the water. EQ2's team has been large enough to make forward progress at a reasonable pace, I expect VG will continue to as well.

[Sinter1]

No thanks Cyb keep Hartsman on EQ2.

The game was inherently flawed but I don't think you can lay the full blame on Brad for the current state of the game if he hasn't been there for the past 8 months. Gilbertson is a total fucking moron too. Good luck saving that sinking piece of shit.

As to SOE hiring 50+ Sigil devs... sure they did and they took the best ones and moved them onto their new project.

I wouldn't totally discredit Brad at this point. He definitely fucked up bad, however he has some decent ideas in his head that may one day make a really fucking good mmo (maybe between 2015 and 2020 when technology catches up to "The Vision"). Even if a time like that comes however, he shouldn't be let anywhere near the business side of things, and definitely shouldn't be the president or whatever of the company. Someone needs to tell him what to do, as to not waste 30 million bucks again.

Brad staying on as a consultant is basically a way of getting rid of Brad, but also saving cash as to not have to pay his most likely huge buyout fee.

[Witoubo]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

Hi, Vanguard is already a part of the Station Pass.

Exactly my point, they bought Vanguard the minute MS canceled it. Today's events are the eventuality of that deal.

[Zuuljin]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Saying the VG team is the size of the EQ2 team probably isn't the best news. AFAIK the EQ2 is much smaller than the [last week's] Vanguard team. This is scaling back, not increasing the dev resources.

I mean no disrespect to any of the former employee's who got fired in saying this, but sometimes a team can become bloated with workers, and sometimes you just need to trim the fat.

EQ2 has been doing great, putting out quality content with their "small" team. Perhaps halving the employee's over at sigil will allow those who remain to focus more on the grand scheme of the game, instead of the 1/100th tiny part they were assigned before. Throwing more people at a problem doesn't always make things run smoother and faster.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Zuuljin

I mean no disrespect to any of the former employee's who got fired in saying this, but sometimes a team can become bloated with workers, and sometimes you just need to trim the fat.

EQ2 has been doing great, putting out quality content with their "small" team. Perhaps halving the employee's over at sigil will allow those who remain to focus more on the grand scheme of the game, instead of the 1/100th tiny part they were assigned before. Throwing more people at a problem doesn't always make things run smoother and faster.

I tend to agree with you, but EQ2 has been rock-solid at the core for a year? or so now. All they have to do is make sure they don't break anything and make new stuff. Vanguard needs a complete and total overhaul/revamp. New content and expansions should be a year+ away and even talking about them is foolhardy at this point. I'm sure Smed said that just so people wouldn't think the plug was getting pulled, but still. All I can do is think about EQ releasing a broken expansion then announcing a new one before the first much-needed patch to the previous was even complete.

[Eduardo]

Originally Posted by Goliath

Hope I don't offend Nino, but I didn't think Vanguard's music was that great. I thought it was very "average." I loved EQ's old music and some of the PoP stuff is amazing too.

Oh and Eve's music is retarded-good. So unique and refreshing and just pure goodness.

I think if Nino had the right people he could create some better music, but I got the feel he created alot of that stuff completely by himself with a Korg. Which I give you props for Nino, that's still pretty great.

From what I could tell from the game credits in the back of the manual, Nino was acting as the composer AND sound designer, alone.. That is not the proper way to populate an mmo with sound content, and in that context I think Nino did the best he could. A proper sound department for an mmo should have a dedicated composer, and a minimum of one dedicated sound designer. But as I stated in another thread, the audio department is generally the 'red headed stepchild' of the games industry...

I do feel bad for all the employees that lost their jobs. But I hope Nino kept his job or was hired by SoE, because that is one less sound designer I have to compete against in this over-saturated job market (yes, I am bitter and resentful towards the politics and arbitrary class system in this industry.)

[teneran]

Originally Posted by Kreugen

VG's best gameplay was its healers - it takes a good player to effectively handle beating on the mob and healing. Tanks have deaggro and temp buffs that they can put on defenisve targets, so tanking takes quite a bit of management as well. I'm not sure if the DPS classes are any more involved than EQ2's were, though. At least you have two kinds of energy plus chained attacks.

Agreed 100%. I've played healers (as well as other classes) in Eq1 and WoW and by far VG was the most fun and was the most interesting as well. I also thought the classes in general were very interesting and enjoyed the varying and overlapping skillsets.

There are a lot of great things in VG, anyone who says the game is complete shit is either trying to be one of the cool kids or is an idiot. That said, you can't make an overall sucessful game based on the sum of some disjointed parts, no matter how good some of those parts are.

[woqqqa]

Just stumbled across this little gem. Hmmm, either someone over at Silky Venom has a damn good sense of humor, or that really is Brad's joke alt. I'm inclined to think it's not...but it wouldn't be out of character.

Originally Posted by Aradoon Mifara

...but I feel that history will vindicate me. If you want a game, I suggest Guild Wars. I was designing a world, with flying cities and underwater kingdoms like nothing you'd ever seen. Sure, we fell a bit behind schedule, and the engine needed a bit of tweaking, but we were well on our way until you non-believers, Blizzard shills, Sigil haters and various other idiots ruined the game! Spreading your lies about Vanguard all over the internet managed to kill this game in the womb, thank you very ****ing much. With just 8 or so months of subscription revenue, the game would have been profitable, and well on its way to realizing Sigil's ultimate vision for it. But no, all you whiners and haters had to rag on the game until it died. It was by far the best game out there since the original Everquest, with a huge world, immersive lore, beautiful graphics and open-ended gameplay, but you bastards had to shit on it until it died. You've all deprived the world of a great piece of art, you ****ing philistines, as well as ruined my life's work. If there's a hell, I hope you all burn in it.

Genius is destined to be misunderstood... - Silky Venom