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Vanguard Beta In Trouble?

Posted by Zonk on Thu May 25, 2006 10:53 AM
from the too-hardcore-for-you dept.
Role Playing (Games)
Heartless Gamer writes to mention a blog post exploring potential problems with the Vanguard Beta. The hardcore MMOG in development by Sigil has had some rocky times of late, and it sounds like the beta testers are right up at the top of the list of problems. From the article: "To the detriment of Vanguard, they (Vanguard's community) will protest any implementation that even remotely resembles a mechanic within World of Warcraft. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. If it's something within WoW, they want it O-U-T. Likewise, if you are from WoW, they want YOU out, too. They've already succeeded in driving out many of those testers. They're long gone and I can't say I blame them." Read on for other sites' commentary on this issue.
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[+] Vanguard - Saga of Heroes Previewed 116 comments
Labyrrinth writes "The media blitz for the upcoming release of the new MMOG, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has begun with 2 independent previews at IGN and Gamespot . From the article at Gamespot 'In days of old when knights were bold, elves with pointy sticks would totally beat up on a bunch of skeletons. You may have seen online games that take place in high-fantasy worlds, but recently, these games have become much more lenient on players, so that exploring, fighting, and even falling in battle has relatively minor consequences. Not since EverQuest of 1999 (a game that was infamously punishing back then and was clearly one of the main reasons why newer games got easier) has a new massively multiplayer game tried to offer a well-thought-out, but purposely steep, challenge.'" Normally I don't think previews are noteworthy, but Vanguard has been practically a black hole of information since development began.
[+] Sigil Drops Microsoft, Publishing With SOE 43 comments
Labyrrinth writes "'As the development process is ongoing and constantly shifting, it became clear that MGS and Sigil had varying visions and direction for the title's development,' said Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online. 'In the best interest of Vanguard, it was decided that we would buy back the publishing rights from Microsoft.'" They've hooked up with Sony Online Entertainment, publishers of EQ and EQII, and Brad McQuaid's old employer. Aggro Me has commentary on this union.
Offsite: F13
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  • The not wanting WoW players I mean. I have come to deeply despise WoW players myself as a pure example of the continued dumbing down of the gaming generation. Anything hard is bad, quick returns are good. And forget about any sense of rollplay.

    But quite frankly its really stupid to hate mechanics from WoW cause some of them are REALLY very good. Worse most come from Everquest it's self, which a LOT of the hardcores hold as sacred, WoW just improved on this.

    My take. Just get rid of the bad element of beta testers. Or better yet just ignore them when you know they are making a rediculous suggestion. It's their place to find the bugs, not dictate the design of the game.

    • I tend to disagree with you Falcon. There are many parts of WoW that are tedious and hard with returns that are definetly sub par. In the late 30s when you are given dozens of travel quests and are having to walk to new areas it is definetly hard to avoid getting killed by yourself by either mob or player. (IMO PvE servers shouldn't even be in this game, but to each his own) WoW definetly hit the MMO nail on the head with less swings and with far more accuracy towards what the players wanted then any other
    • "The not wanting WoW players I mean. I have come to deeply despise WoW players myself as a pure example of the continued dumbing down of the gaming generation. Anything hard is bad, quick returns are good. And forget about any sense of rollplay."

      Good, become the polar opposite to the community you hate and become twice as obnoxious as a contrarian.

    • Re:In some ways I can understand it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2006, @12:28PM (#15403109)
      The not wanting WoW players I mean. I have come to deeply despise WoW players myself as a pure example of the continued dumbing down of the gaming generation. Anything hard is bad, quick returns are good. And forget about any sense of rollplay.

      I'm gonna have to ask you to clarify that. Define "hard". Keep in mind that "takes a long time" isn't hard, it's annoying. Something that requires skill is hard. Something that just anyone can do over a long period of time isn't hard, it's boring. The reason I ask is because you're apparently an FFXI player [slashdot.org] and the standard FFXI player seems to think WoW is "too easy" because things don't take forever.

      Quick returns are good, keeping in mind that a quick return can still be a failure. FFXI has plenty of things where you get one try every day (real time) or so. They're "hard" because you have to beat out the 20 gold farmers camping the single spawn point. Succeed in getting it, and you have a 1/20 chance of getting the drop. While that does mean that it's hard to get the drop, it's not hard due to any skill requirement. It's hard because it requires a lot of luck and time.

      Compare with WoW, where you might have a 100% chance of getting something if you complete some difficult task. There are plenty of instances in WoW where you'll have to use a large set of abilities to manage to succeed. Fail, and you can try again very quickly instead of packing up and waiting until tomorrow. That's hard, but not due to a time requirement, due to a skill requirement.

      So, please. Explain your statement. The rest of your post I agree with completely, I just want to understand why you think WoW "dumbed down" gaming. If anything, WoW is harder to play than FFXI in terms of skill - although not time.
      • I'm gonna have to ask you to clarify that. Define "hard". Keep in mind that "takes a long time" isn't hard, it's annoying. Something that requires skill is hard. Something that just anyone can do over a long period of time isn't hard, it's boring.

        That is the same crap a bunch of EQ2 players think is hard. Needing to wait days or hours in realtime for something that can be killed in 30secs isn't 'hard', it is completely assinine. Hard requires some kind of skill, not how much you can ignore real life and h
      • I agree on the time thing. The only comment I have is that in WoW sometimes "Skill" and "low latency" go hand in hand, which is all wrong for a MMOG I think, but the PvP crowd of course loves it.

        In EQ, skill was more of a strategic/tactical sort of ability, and you could be quite effective with latencies as high as 1 second as long as you were playing smart. That particular aspect of EQ I miss, and I think WoW raids suffer as a result.

        Plenty of people will weigh in on real time combat versus other mechanism

  • Can't say I blame them... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vertinox (846076) on Thursday May 25 2006, @11:03AM (#15402297)
    "To the detriment of Vanguard, they (Vanguard's community) will protest any implementation that even remotely resembles a mechanic within World of Warcraft. Good or bad, it doesn't matter. If it's something within WoW, they want it O-U-T."

    Even though WoW is fun (and addicting), if I was playing another game it would be rather annoying to see WoW with just another game engine slapped over it. If you want to play WoW, then it is already there and waiting for you.

    For those who want to play something different... Well... It would be nice to have sometehing other than the old "kill things over and over to level up to kill bigger things over and over again to level up to kill bigger things over and over again" because that is pretty much the same formula of WoW, EQ 1/2, and every other MMOG known the man these days. (SWG and UO rest in peace)

    • Re:Can't say I blame them... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dc29A (636871) on Thursday May 25 2006, @11:43AM (#15402712) Homepage
      Even though WoW is fun (and addicting), if I was playing another game it would be rather annoying to see WoW with just another game engine slapped over it. If you want to play WoW, then it is already there and waiting for you.

      Vanguard could use elements that work great in WoW and implement them with their own gameplay elements. For example, WoW has proved that instances are fun and needed. Not to mention instances allow very creative encounters and great rewards for players because the designers control everything (including the number of people involved in the instance). Take away instances and you have good old issues that plagued EQ: boring fights, retarded competition for mobs where by guilds/players camp mobs. It augments the number of support calls and it encourages griefing. Which avenue did Vanguard chose? No instances. Yes they are planning to put boss mob encounters "on demand", sort of semi instance but even then, they will never be able to make awesome and complex encounters like WoW endzones have (well minus MC). You can't have a complex scripted encounter if you can't control the number of people during the encounter (aka no instances) because guilds will "zerg" it. EQ has proved that.

      The more and more I look at Vanguard reminds me of EQ with all their faults. Lot of grinding, no instances, heaven for griefers and gold farmers. Most modern games have implemented ideas from other games, WoW is a perfect example of very little innovation but they cherry picked the stuff that worked in other game. Instances from Anarchy Online, fast paced combat from City of Heroes, PvP from DAoC, humor from ... well ok, Warcraft, and so on.

      Vanguard will be a huge flop. The designers who were responsible for the worse flaws EQ had didn't learn from their own mistakes, they are the ones designing Vanguard.
      • The more and more I look at Vanguard reminds me of EQ with all their faults. Lot of grinding, no instances, heaven for griefers and gold farmers.

        Ah... I was under the impression they were bashing anything "Grind-esque" and lumping WoW and EQ into the same branch of game play. WoW and EQ are pretty much the same to me except WoW is easier (and more fun) to play and has taken care of a great deal of problems EQ had.

        I was thinking they were scraping both for something new, but it appears by what everyone is sa

      • Re:Can't say I blame them... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AuMatar (183847) on Thursday May 25 2006, @01:10PM (#15403516)
        Exactly. Vangaurd is planning on taking everything people hated about EQ, and making it worse.

        Grinds- check. Expect a long hard grind for levels
        Farming- check. Expect to do tons of cash farming
        Camping- check. No instances, so expect either a "play nice" rule or guilds fighting for spawns
        Death penalties- check. Harsher than EQs, according to articles I've read
        Long travel times- check. No fast transport or teleports at all.

        Yup, not touching this one with a 10 foot pole.
          • They are aiming at the hardcore gamer from day 1. No suprises there.

            Instancing is a Good Thing on busy servers. I agree. However I think they are some of the more creative minds creating games right now and I'm excited to see the alternatives they are implementing. Non-instanced housing I think will be amazing, for example. Seeing housing that belongs to players in a city just makes the world that much more real and identifiable.
    • Since we're obviously discussing elements of RPG's here...why is WoW even mentioned, at all?

      The article is pretty specific that the problem is with testers that want the game to be absolutely nothing like WoW in any way shape or form...but WoW is just an RPG...how can one make an RPG with absolutely ZERO elements in common with WoW? WoW presents absolutely NOTHING original to the genre, not a god damned thing.

      Sounds to me like these people don't want an RPG, but the developer is making an RPG and trying to
  • vanguard was to be the saving grace for the worst of the community that left EQ looking for "the vision". shame they realized way too late that the "vision" is still locked away in 1999 and the vast majority of MMORPG gamers to do not want that sort of carrot on a stick type of grind.
    • Every MMORPG relies on carrot on a stick grinding, from EQ to WoW. The only exception might be things like Star Wars Galaxies, and look at how well that's doing!
      • I think Eve is very much alive and kicking and Ultima Online is shambling along it isn't mutated form. Ultima Online doesn't require massive level grinding... Perhaps casual play for 6 months and hard core for about 2-3 if you wanted to max a character out. The key feature I always liked about UO wasn't that you were constantly grinding but you could go out and do things other than level progression.

        • Re:you forgot Ultima Online and Eve (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Mente (219525) on Thursday May 25 2006, @11:34AM (#15402626)
          Yeah, I think EVE is the best at battling the grind. There are still grinds that can be done. Grind for money. Grind for standing.

          I've played many of the larger MMORPG's out there (UO, EQ1/2, SWG, WoW, and EVE). EVE is truely unique. CCP has bucked the trend in a lot of areas and almost all of them work. 1 server. Letting you know the population (which continues to go up all the time). Skills train over time, even when offline. No way to speed up the process (except learning skills that aid in the processes).

          Roleplay is a little difficult because there really isn't an Avatar running around. You are essentially your ship. But other than that, the game has a lot to offer. I jumped in late(Jan 06), years after release. However, the way everything is layed out, you don't feel completely useless unless you grind to the top. Because there is no top. You just keep learning skills. /commercialover

          • Re:you forgot Ultima Online and Eve (Score:4, Informative)

            by Alzheimers (467217) on Thursday May 25 2006, @12:59PM (#15403408)
            Roleplay is a little difficult because there really isn't an Avatar running around.

            Actually, I'd be inclined to disagree. In Eve, roleplay takes it's form in Corporation Management. So you can't pretend to be a dancing catgirl. Instead, you take a leadership role that requires the player to act the part. Be responsible, smart, and decisive. Or you can choose to be a pirate, ruthless and coldblooded. So you just wiped out someone's work for a month in thirty seconds. He should have payed the ransom.

            Interpersonal politics make a huge part of the Eve experience. From forming alliances to elbowing out rivals, the role playing element of Eve isn't dictated by the cute and fuzzy animated cartoon, but by the results your actions bring. The hand-off approach from the creators really pays off when your corp takes over a new zone to bring it's own brand of order. You *can't* script that.
    • Welcome to Maslow's Hierarchy. You may say you don't want the grind and carrot on a stick, but most players subconsciously do. The joy of virtual self actualization.

      -Rick
        • I should have clarified, most MMORPG players. And WoW is a perfect example of Maslow's hierchy. As soon as the player reaches the end game, they have acheived the most important step of self actualization. At that point, the game has deminishing returns on what it can offer players.

          Many upcoming (and some existing) games are getting more and more dynamic. With these more dynamic worlds, hitting the max out level is not always the primary goal. Sure, hitting the max level is great, but who really cares? Crea
            • "Self actualization has nothing to do with it."

              I couldn't disagree more. If you took leveling out of the game entirely, and just put everyone at level 60, the game's population would plummet.

              -Rick
  • ... because they think slow grinding and slow traveling is fun.

    Shocking, we are hearing reports of them struggling.
    • I don't think grinding is fun. At all. Just wanted to say that first. Should always be a REASON for getting experience. In EQ2, getting xp and levels (for me, anyway) is just a by-product of doing quests; I haven't yet had to grind levels like in EQ1 or (to a far lesser extent, of course) WoW.

      But what is wrong with slow leveling? Fast leveling separates friends from each other. A friend in WoW I met in my 30s just blew past me to 60 and we couldn't group again for weeks. Fast leveling means you never really
        • "MMORPGs will go into the next generation when they are able to reproduce what we have in Pencil/Paper."

          And if you can produce a working game design that does that while still supporting thousands of players, I know a few people with a lot of money to spend who would be very interested in seeing it.

        • And let me put my comment another way.

          You have three thousand people playing the same game. How many of them are going to overthrow the Iron Throne? How many princesses are out there waiting to be kidnapped? Will each and every one of them get to start a war in the Seven Kingdoms?

          The reason that online games tend to be filled with repeatable, low-impact content is because even after one group of players goes through it there will still 2,994 other people who want to keep playing the game. The reason

    • And yet there are thousands of us wishing we had made it into the closed beta.

      Vanguard will be huge. Lots of us are just biding our time waiting for its release. Quite frankly, I say its a Good Thing that they get rid of anything WoWish. The core Dev team has its roots in EQ (989 studios / verant interactive / etc). It is expected that this game will cater to the hardcore gamer, not to the casual one.
          • "Why does everything have to have 5 million customers and be a "WoW clone" to be successful?"

            I didn't say successful. I said 'huge' - your terminology. To me, 'huge' means large number of players. I would consider WoW to be 'huge'.

            'Successful' is a much more subjective word. If their goal is to make a game and sell it, they can easily 'succeed.' If their goal is to make enough money to sustain itself, but not be a major phenomenon, then they might succeed at that as well. The latter goal isn't a rare

  • Goths? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Southpaw018 (793465) * on Thursday May 25 2006, @11:16AM (#15402446) Journal
    Enter the "IT SUCKS BECAUSE IT'S POPULAR" crowd. Less than a dozen comments in this thread thus far and half of them are people who hate WoW because it's "dumbed down."

    Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad. It's not dumbed down, and if - like me - you spent hardcore-style hours raiding to get the best stuff, you'd know that.

    But no, like the guys at Vanguard, you can't get past appearance. If it's popular, it must be bad.

    • Re:Goths? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Attaturk (695988) on Thursday May 25 2006, @11:41AM (#15402691) Homepage


      Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad.

      Reality TV gets a lot of viewers - as does Fox News for that matter. McDonalds sells a lot of burgers. The Da Vinci Code book/movie/hype train is sheer nonsense yet it's taken millions already. This is not because what these ventures are doing is good per se - it's because they've been designed to reach out to the lowest common denominators in order to have a broad appeal.

      It's not dumbed down, and if - like me - you spent hardcore-style hours raiding to get the best stuff, you'd know that.

      Oh I beg your pardon - I thought you were talking about WoW but clearly I must have misunderstood.

        • Re:Goths? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by sgant (178166)
          WoW is not impressive by most veteran RPGers, by any stretch of the imagination.

          Veteran RPGer here. Started playing AD&D back in 1980...then went on to Call of Cthulhu, Morrow Project, Danger International and Fantasy Hero blah blah blah. Me and my group of friends were pretty hard core about it all, but just to have a lot of fun and laugh our asses off.

          Then I got into MMORPG's, got on to EQ a few days after it's original release. I knew from the very start it was NOTHING like role playing games. No com
    • WoW is dumbed down.

      PVE: Death is basically Zero Risk.
      PVP: Death is Zero Risk.
      Skill tree: Almost zero risk change at any time for little cost.

      Overall there is little advantage to intelligent game play. EX: 2-3x exp advancement or 2-3x PVP rank advancement.

      Now let's look at EVE:

      PVE: Death = loss of ship, 70% of gear, but no loss of implants.
      PVP: Death = loss of ship, all gear, and probably all implants. Vs. Win = 30% of players gear.
      So their is risk in death.

      Overall intelligent game play makes
    • ... it attracts your average housewife gamer (like my wife) your average high school gamer (like my brother) your average college gamer who doesn't have a lot of time(like my other brother) and people who just can't stand the thought of dying and losing XP. It is a softcore MMO. They are catering to the masses, not to the MMO purists (enter me).

      Vanguard is going to be a hardcore MMO. This news article is music to my ears. The core dev team has its roots in EQ. This game will be challenging and give you a
                • Bullshit.

                  WoW for case in point.

                  No you can't sell something that people have zero interest in, but the game is not what it is marketed as or purported to be by the company that created it.

                  The game was very carefully designed to suck you in, and require just enough of your time, to get you hooked and keep you paying that monthly fee...these decisions were absolutely NOT made by a group of people sitting around going, what is the BEST rpg we can put together given this IP. A large number of the mechanics and b
    • Listen up, guys, WoW has 5.5 million+ subscribers because what it's doing is good, not bad.

      McDonalds sells millions of burgers because the food their making is good, not bad. Anyone who wants something that takes longer than 3 seconds to cook in a microwave is obviously some sad nerd...
  • Let me see if I read this right. The forums for an online game have been overrun with loud-mouthed, small-eNis self-proclaimed board warriors who enjoy nothing quite so much as proclaiming their own superiority based on which game they play?

    And the same "I am Jack's Ass" crowd is full of people with an over inflated sense of self importantce who believe that being invited to join a beta test and asked for some constructive feedback makes their voices more important than those of people who have been developing the game for years, and they regularly hold public roasts of any member of the development team who still cares enough to attempt to communicate with them?

    I would be shocked and appalled if it weren't for the fact that this is exactly what has happened with every single game relased this century. The same arrogant twits infest every forum, loudly proclaiming that they now own the game and that those pinhead developers had better start doing things their way or else they're going to leave and take all six billion of their friends with them to whatever the next unreleased game is. The only thing that's surprising about this is that the writer says that Brad McQuaid is still trying to give them what they claim they want.

    People often wonder just why it is that game developers often don't participate in their fora or talk directly to the players, and why they are often secretive about what they are working on. This kind of thing is exactly why they do that. Having to deal with this kind of abuse on a daily basis will turn anybody into a recluse.

    • Very true. Developers have their own vision of what the game will be and until the game is produced, I for one don't think they should compromise that, no matter what a beta tester might say. Beta testers are to find bugs and usability problems. They are not to dictate story line or game mechanics. Obviously they can comment all they want, but in the end it's up to the designers to listen. Sometimes these comments make sense, other times it's just crazy. I think a wiser thing would be to have some kin
      • That's the problem here though, with the huge surge in popularity of MMOGs, it is simply impossible to test these games on the scale they were designed to operate without opening up testing to the very people that will, hopefully, buy your game in the end.

        There would simply be no way to get enough developers testing your game for enough time to be of any relative use at all, let alone get any real testing done...never mind that these developers are working too many hours on their own games at the same time.
      • Ideally, you'd have some kind of barrier between the programmers and those who wish to influence the design process. Maybe a person. Let's call that barrier person a "manager" for the sake of convenience. Let's formalize his responsibility to include filtering outside requests into a managable format for the developers, and maintaining a vision for the project. That'd be a pretty slick way to run things.

  • Inmates running the asylum. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Visceral Monkey (583103) on Thursday May 25 2006, @11:29AM (#15402582)
    The articles author is dead on. Take your average rabid Apply fanboy x10 and you've got the nut balls who make up the Vanguard community. These players have been pushed from mmorpg to mmorpg as developers quickly realize the kind of game play they worship is not what 95% of players out there want. If you even attempt to suggest changes to the way the envision the game you're in for all sorts of abuse and scorn. They see this as their "last hope" and will do anything to make sure stays that way. Alas, the result is the game supposedly sucks, badly, from what i've heard from beta testers. MS dumping it back to SOE is a sure sign they are struggling. My prediction is the game will not make it to market in it's current form.
  • My only experience is with other beta's and with other MMORPG's and while I do regonize what is being claimed here I also notice that this post is totally one sided.

    There seems to be some hatred against WoW players. I can only imagine that this is the same hatred that Counterstrike players get. I was in a beta for a couple of more realistic shooters and we had good reasons to loathe CS players. They would get their beta key and instantly demand the game be turned into a CS clone.

    If you get a post like "they should do X like they it in CS" or "this game sucks because I am good at X in CS and I suck at it in this game" then there really isn't much you can do.

    So the players who like the game as it is fight the players who want to change the game. This nothing new. Just try following a debate on language reform.

    The example of a corpse run is mentioned. Corpse run is a penalty for dying. Everquest 2 for instance punishes you with an experience debt unless you go back to where you died and reassorb your ghost. Other games leave your equipment lying out in the wild forcing you to go back to get your loot.

    It makes the game more of a challenge forcing you to think about a battle. Not just wether you can handle that boss you need for a quest but wether you will make it back out again.

    Without a corspe run you run the risk of players just using dying to get back to the city to sell their loot. Ask Star Wars Galaxies with the Trials of Obi-wan expansion. For that matter it existed before where people would kill themselves to get rid of a doctor buff that was about to run out so they could get a new one.

    Kinda ruins the atmo when you got people begging to be wiped out. "Hey you want to go hunt rancors tonight" "Sure, let me just kill myself before we head out okay?" "Eh, right".

    WoW for all its success is not everyones cup of tea and it can be disappointing to see every game try to emulate it. Again, look at SWG. It tried to WoW people and is near dead because of it.

    So yes forum discusssions can become very heated BUT there is always two sides to a story. The person comments we read in the main article claim that the hardcore resisted attempts to add WoW elements to the game. Eheh, meaning he wanted to make the game into WoW. Is he basically upset because he didn't get to mold the game into his vision?

    MMORPG's are very hard games to produce and if the designer doesn't 100% believe in what he wants to do there is the risk that he could start to believe that the tiny vocal minority on the forums somehow represents the majority. On the other hand if he ignores them he risks that they are infact the majority.

    You can't please everyone but you sure as hell can upset everyone.

    • If you get a post like "they should do X like they it in CS" (...) then there really isn't much you can do.

      But what if they should do X like they do it in CS/WoW/whatever other game you hate? What if it is a really valid suggestion, even for this different game? You should judge an idea based on its merits, not on it's origin.

      • Beta testers are there to test the game, not design it ... the designers and architects had a vision, and implemented it. They employed beta testers to stress it out and make sure it worked.
  • Maybe they should take the strategy of not listening to what the customer says, just like Nintendo (which was also suggested in the linked article). All of this "my way or the highway" from the user base is ridiculous considering it isn't their game and it isn't their work.

    The games should be made to be fun, and when it is, people will come. It seems that games nowadays are made to be a bragging grounds, fun or not. It has to be an overly difficult game that rewards time (and lots of it) to pander to the "s

  • Keep 'em out (Score:3, Informative)

    by jasonmicron (807603) on Thursday May 25 2006, @12:02PM (#15402899)
    Vanguard has been advertised as a hardcore-only game since it's inception. I actually like hell levels, grinding and slow travel. It gives me the feel that I'm actually in the world and not just playing a game. I want immersion in an MMORPG, not another game.

    There is something to be said for having to wait for 30 minutes for a boat ride from Freeport to Butcherblock with islands to visit on the way. It keeps people more inclined to explore their current environment instead of looking for the fastest way to level up and going to the appropriate zone to do that.

    I do hope the game lives up to what it is being advertised to be.

    And I'll say it one more time: THEY HAVE BEEN ADVERTISING THAT THEY DON'T WANT THE "WOW" CROWD FOR YEARS. That alone has driven up their popularity with the hardcore MMORPG gamers because honestly, very few hardcore people even PLAY WoW to begin with.
    • Revived my EQ acct to get back in the spirit before Vanguard hits. I have high hopes and I pray I am not disappointed. I agree very strongly with you. Vanguard is catering to the hardcore gamer. That's a point everyone is missing, too many people feel "success" is dictated by having the most players. "Success" is turning a profit and having happy customers that stick around to play :)
    • "That alone has driven up their popularity with the hardcore MMORPG gamers because honestly, very few hardcore people even PLAY WoW to begin with."

      That's because there are very few (but mouthy) "hardcore" players to begin with, which is why this will fail.

  • SOE is their biggest problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by WCMI92 (592436) on Thursday May 25 2006, @12:35PM (#15403187) Homepage
    SOE is the 10,000 ton boat anchor around their necks. I have two reasons to never trust a MMO that is associated with SOE in any way:

    Star Wars Galaxies Combat Upgrade
    Star Wars Galaxies New Game Experience

    It's so bad that mmorpg.com has posted a stickied "Official SOE hate thread" in the forum of every SOE game.
    • SOE is just doing the backend/billing/etc. They aren't doing the design work. That's Sigil. It is actually going to be a very good relationship, not only because the people know each other well but because Sony is pretty good at keeping servers up and online billing / game cards / etc (unlike that **other** mmo).

      (you have to remember there is a distinction between the design/engineering team and the people that do the hosting/admin stuff. Sigil is the former, SOE is the latter)

  • A Response (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ozuri (977127) on Thursday May 25 2006, @02:25PM (#15404201)
    We have a tremendous amount of respect for World of Warcraft, its success, the expansion of the gaming audience for MMOGs, and many of the elements that they incorporated or improved upon from those games that came before them. They've done this industry a great service by increasing awareness and setting a new bar for quality. As EverQuest did, as World of Warcraft did, as every game that has come out in this genre has done, we will iterate on the things that we feel were done correctly, fix the things we think were done incorrectly, and then innovate where we feel necessary -- this is a largely intuitive process, but one where our experience continues to lead us appropriately. Beta Testers are an extremely valuable resource for feedback, but they do not dictate the design of the game that we are building. That design came from Brad & Jeff and the team long ago (the much and oft touted Vision) and will be tuned and reevaluated by the team as feedback comes in -- but the game design is not, has never been, and will not be dictated by anyone other than the developer. Our Beta testers can be passionate about their opinions and they air them when appropriate, as has been requested of them. However, much like here, you take everything with a grain of salt, carefully evaluate, discard the opinions that are inflammatory or without merit, and then weigh the remainder carefully against your own understanding. The Beta is not in trouble, and the community is not the source of all negativity -- rather, they provide us a resource that is absolutely fundamental to ongoing evaluation of the content and systems we are implementing. And frankly, our daily interaction with the game provides us the most accurate perspective in evaluating the status of the game, its trajectory for launch, and its eventual likelihood of success. We're going to be fine. :) We welcome the conversation. Zack K. Director, Business Development Sigil Games Online

    • Re:Not Invented Here (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Way to RTFA.

      It's not developers that are doing this, it's the hardcore, epeen waving, fanbois that have the WoW hate-on.

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