Why Vanguard Sets a Bad Precedent for MMOGs

The ever-enjoyable Gamers with Jobs has up a fascinating look at the recently released MMOG Vanguard . The article's author, Elysium, takes pains to point out that it's not a review. He didn't play the title long enough to get a firm grasp of the game; he just didn't care enough to spend the time. He outlines what makes Vanguard a bad game, and then points out that the game's creator Brad McQuaid himself has as much as admitted it was released too early. Sony Online Entertainment saved the game from bankruptcy, and released it when the schedule said to and not a moment later. In Elysium's mind, this sets up a really, really bad precedent: "Now that the game has released in its incomplete state, in a state that McQuaid himself describes as requiring patches, bug fixes and new feature implementation on par with a beta product, Sigil essentially comes to the consumer as the third investor in the process of the development cycle, and that is not just a terrible way of doing business, but an irresponsible step in the wrong direction for complicit consumers. Let me put it bluntly, if a game is not ready for retail when the money runs out find another investor or shut the doors. We are customers, and the retail end of the industry is bad enough about not supporting incomplete or inoperable products without developers and publishers assuming we are investors in the development process. Your job as the industry is to create product, and then, and only then, we buy it."

The alternative sucks worse.

[Cecil]

There have been several cases where an eagerly anticipated game ran out of capital before it was "finished" and so it simply got canned. That sucks too. I would rather have a buggy release where I *can* buy it and as such hopefully fund some future patches, eventually resulting in a complete game. Worst case scenario at least there is a possibility that the community can come up with an unofficial patch.

So no, it's not really a very bad precedent at all as far as I'm concerned.

What's to care about?

[RichPowers]

Every Vanguard preview indicates that it's the same old stuff we've seen for years - high fantasy, level grinding, questing. The screenshots look dull and uninspired. The plastic player models convey zero personality. In other words, the game will have a small fanbase but it's not going anywhere. And no, I haven't played the game because nothing about it sounds compelling. Why should I settle for a second-rate product when I have WoW, GW, or even EQII to choose from in the "fantasy/MMORPG/questing" genre? And frankly, you need a damn good product to sway people away from WoW or whatever. You're asking them to give up their time investment and spend hundreds of hours in your gaming world. Or you could innovate and create an MMO for people like me who hate the current crop of MMOs :P I read Vanguard's forums since early development and the devs had some awesome ideas. They just failed miserably in the execution. As my friend said when I showed him some Vanguard screenshots/previews: "Don't they already have 5 games just like this?"

Re:Early? Yes. Bad? No.

[Nasarius]

I admit I've never played any MMOG at the high levels (aside from UO, arguably), but it's always seemed to me that EverQuest spawned a line of games -- Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, etc -- that had essentially the same gameplay as EQ, with some tweaks and maybe a few additional features. WoW strikes me as the best of that genre, a highly-polished EverQuest. I'm trying, but I can't think of any positive features of EQ (aside from nostalgia) that are absent in WoW.

Re:Why does this sound familiar?

[KDan]

Or... the open source development manual?

Who was it who said "Release Early and Often"? Oh yes, Eric S Raymond, in the seminal The Cathedral and the Bazaar [catb.org].

Not to mention the plethora of literature about product development in other, non-software environments. All major product companies nowadays release products as fast as they can and let the customers do the "paying beta". Once the features are ironed out, they release a more polished mass-market product that has benefited from all the customer feedback.

Game development has been totally ass-backwards in terms of its development approach since forever. Games are effectively developed in giant waterfall projects which either crash and burn or do extremely well - but you only find out at the end. Unlike the poster of the original article I think it's great to see the games development processes maturing in this way towards what is the de-facto model of choice for product development in the real world. Well done Vanguard!

The results that can be expected from this shift of approach are:

• People who are keen to try stuff early can do so
• The costs of development of a game will be reduced (and hopefully the sales price too)
• The risks of developing a game will be reduced (since you'll know earlier whether the game is viable)
• Game quality will simply become better! Customer feedback will play a bigger part in shaping the game from much earlier on.
• More development shops will open as the hurdle to entry lowers
• Games which are fundamentally shit will be canned earlier
• More risk can be taken by trying something different if you're only going to invest 3 months of dev time rather than 3 years! Plus you get immediate customer feedback so you can quickly find out whether your new idea is brilliant or a dog.

There are many others... ultimately this is an extremely good move for the industry and we should be very glad of it. Perhaps with this the games industry will finally move towards the "software as a service/continuously updated product" model that is spreading far and wide in the rest of the software and meatspace industry.

Daniel

It's sad too...

[Lonin]

It's kind of sad to me, and a few others I know because this didn't have to happen. Sigil spent a LOT of money on Vanguard, not WoW money, but more than pretty much any other MMO out at the moment besides EQ2. Not only that, but they had lot's of time too, something like 5 years of development time. Unfortunately, they pissed it all away. They just made mistake after mistake that eventually lead to the current state. I was part of the most active guild in beta for a long time and most of us left about 4 months prior to launch even after putting in months of playtime on characters we knew would be deleted. It just became obvious to us, people who had big plans, tons of time and resources invested and really wanted to enjoy the game, that it was just going downhill fast. I really feel sorry for some of the developers and other Sigil employees that we got to know. Most of them joined Sigil because they expected greatness from McQuaid, he was one of the creators of Everquest after all, but instead they got screwed just like everyone else, but more so. It became pretty plain that even the devs were losing hope and enthusiasm for the project, and when that happens the game is doomed. As for Vanguard settings bad precedent, I agree, but not for the same reasons. Like someone else mentioned, MMO's releasing before they finished is nothing new and if anything Vanguard lack of success is going to further show new developers that to release an unfinished MMO these days is essentially suicide. Where I think the bad precedent comes from is that Vanguard was originally being built as the last crack at a "hardcore" MMO. Now that Vanguard is essentially a failure investors will be far less likely to put their money on another "hardcore" style MMO which is really a shame since the style of the game was not why it's failing. I don't know if we'll ever see a mainstream Everquest style MMO again, but I'm sure we're going to see a long line of WoW clones hoping to ride the coattails. Whether you like one style of game or another it's always nice to have more choices. Finally, another important thing to gather from the Vanguard release is that it will most likely be Brad McQuaid's last. He used up every ounce of fanboyism and nostalgia that he gained from Everquest and totally wasted it. He made a lot of big claims and hard-nosed statements concerning Vanguard and didn't deliver on any of them. He's truly eating his words right now as he's basically become a MMO pariah. And frankly, after seeing what he did (and didn't do) with such a promising "Vision" of Vanguard, I say good riddance.

Re:Informed customers knew it

[AugstWest]

I agree, this precedent was definitely not set by Vanguard. I played Vendetta Online for a bit, and it had issues, and ws under constant development on a day-to-day basis. It added a very nice feel to the game.

ATITD had the feeling of being in regular development as well, although it was very stable.

Don't even get me STARTED on Eve Online... There are bugs affecting everyday gameplay that have existed pretty much since launch. Every patch breaks something that previously worked, and getting acknowledgement of the bugs from the devs is like pulling teeth.

These bugs have become so commonplace that they're now part of the game, and finding exploits and utilizing them is an arms race.

So yeah, Vanguard may have been pushed out early, but it's definitely not the first game to go through it.

Re:WoW is seen by some as "EQ Lite"

[Nasarius]

I'm sure you have some good points, but both the OP and I were referring to the original EverQuest. I know nothing about EQ2.

WoW simply doesn't challenge me, and seems to attract the kind of players that I just don't like. I never seen so much childish behaviour over loot/xp as in WoW for exmaple.

Ugh. The number of morons who feel the need to speak in the general chat is amazing. I thought the RP servers might be better since they theoretically have rules, but if anything they're worse.

Just because WoW is polished does not mean everyone likes its gameplay.

I would agree that WoW makes things too easy and shallow. But judging from the sales numbers, I'm guessing *most* people don't enjoy EQ-style downtime, camping, severe XP loss + corpse retrieval, etc. There are myriad arguments to be made about handling death in a MMORPG, but I don't really want to get into that too deeply now. It is kind of interesting that WoW makes the penalty small but pointlessly tedious (a shortish invulnerable run). An EQ corpse retrieval was often difficult and resulted in many people losing hours or days of "work", but at least it involved something other than sheer boredom. I think both these penalties suck equally, and I don't have the solution.

You could serve me the finest wine ever produced and I would still NOT like wine.

Heresy! But there is an analogy to be drawn here with WoW as the cheap-but-drinkable popular beer. It also tends to attract large numbers of idiots.

Personally, I haven't really liked anything since Ultima Online started sucking. I'm kind of looking for another MMORPG to try, after getting bored with Guild Wars, but I don't see anything out there.

that is a very difficult call

[Shivetya]

One of the problem with the games that folded before release is that everyone involved can play "what release would have been like" with impunity. Too many developers promise the world and then get crushed trying to deliver it. Some suffer feature creep as the go along forever not finishing the game as intended simply because they cannot stay focues.

Its probably best they do not release, if the developer cannot be realistic before release how can we expect them to be so after? I have been in games where bugs went unchecked for a long time because the developer kept adding features. Instead of fixing what was there they got caught in the trap of new stuff is fun, who wants to work on old code.

There have a been a few games which I think were just tossed out there to see what response would be. Its easy to throw together a bunch of mock ups, its even easier to put up a webpage of things your game will have, getting it all delivered is a whole 'nuther story.

It's gameplay, not code, that's broken.

[Animats]

When you read the guy's actual review, most of the things he's complaining about are gameplay design decisions, not code defects. He's not complaining about rendering problems or bad collision detection. He's complaining about the plot and dialog being lame, and the terrain and characters being boring.

That's not a "released too early" issue. That's a bad screenplay issue.

Re:What's to care about?

[Sage Gaspar]

The draw of Vanguard is that they built a compelling fantasy world first and then put a game around it. In EQ2 or WoW (and I'm guessing GW) every area is crafted to maximize gameplay, which leads to some very artificial feeling areas. Vanguard also has some of the deepest dungeons I've seen in any MMO liberally scattered across the countryside and a lot of things for you to find just exploring. If you don't care about this sort of thing then Vanguard doesn't really have much more to offer you than any of the other things unless you like its gameplay or its "challenge" (length of grind, which is more of an e-peen thing).

Re:WoW is seen by some as "EQ Lite"

[Anonymous Coward]

No more experience penalties on death

Just cause no one has mentioned it yet....Keep in mind that Blizzard did not start making games with WOW.

The true predecessor to WOW is not Warcraft 3, but Diablo 2. In Diablo 2 you lost experience when you died. I think many game developers, as with Blizzard, think this is a good idea initially. But as you can see with WOW, they decided against it.

Having played Diablo2 way too much, it's very evident how much they learned from it in WOW. People pretend as if EQ was the first ever multiplayer fantasy game and on and on...but WOW is shockingly similar to Diablo2, with incrementally improved game mechanics and the graphics are 3D.

Re:What's to care about?

[everphilski]

WoW, GW, or even EQII

Having played all three, and the original Everquest for most of the eight years of its existance (I've been flaky the past couple... I'm now a married man with children) I will say that Vanguard has potential that none of these games have. It beats EQ2 (a lot of reviewers call Vanguard "EQ3"). Comparing it to WoW is a joke. Social interaction is much improved over any MMO I've ever played. Diplomacy is a great and interesting feature that is a game within itself. The crafting of homes and massive ships is beyond what most MMO's have promised, much less delivered.

Only reason I'm not playing it is I'm expecing my second son in a few weeks. I played the beta and enjoyed it thoroughly. I've let my other subscriptions lapse. When I have time again, I'll definitely pick up a copy.

Re:Early? Yes. Bad? No.

[C0rinthian]

Let me clarify. In the context of 'hardcore end-game raiding' the levelling is simply an obstruction. Making the levelling process take longer does not make it hard, it makes it tedious.

Your comments don't comment on the difficulty of the levelling process, but on the content that is available while you do it. You may get the same XP questing as you do killing 1000 basement rats. But the questing is far less tedious, and to many people that equates to easier.

What is boils down to is that some people think that levelling in WoW doesn't suck enough. If you're not suffering through your levels then the game is too easy. screw that. But again, the people who want it to be hard are the same people who see end-game as 'real' game, and with that being the case, who gives a rats ass how long it takes to get to max level?