EQ1 was only successful because it had little to no competiton. If I released the only working teleporter in the world I bet it would be pretty popular too, no matter the faults.
Brad McQuaid admitted to pretty much all of Vangurds problems being his fault. So you can stash the fanboi attitude, even he knows he was terrible.
As it turns out there WAS a development team. And again, by McQuaids own admission and the statements of the team (the team that got called to the parking lot and fired by him), he was an absentee developer, usually on opiates.
Vanguard was NOT his game. It was his idea to make an MMO and call it 'Vanguard', probably threw in a few ideas at the beginning, but that is about it.
This is like hiring Alexander Graham Bell to work on the next smartphone.
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
What an ignorant post. Say what you will, but MMOs wouldn't be what they are today without Brad Mcquad.
Oh, so its his fault they are linear, shallow pieces of crap.
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
What an ignorant post. Say what you will, but MMOs wouldn't be what they are today without Brad Mcquad.
Your post is the ignorant one bro. The entire reason Vanguard launched so poorly can be attributed to that dumbass. They promised an enormous amount of content on release and probably could have done it had his, coke snorting piece of shit, self not decided proper developer tools were unnecessary in game development.
Speaking to "MMOs wouldn't be what they are today without Brad" Well there were three major mmos at the time of everquest, We had UO, AC, and EQ, Of the three EQ was the only one to turn in to a gear treadmill raider game and thats what mmo's are today for the most part, Thanks but no thanks brad.
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
EQ1 was only successful because it had little to no competiton.
UO, AC, DAoC, FFXI, Lineage, SWG, AO (fixed by then)
these games were all out before EQ2/WoW started EQs downfall.
It had competition, most would argue very quality games were up against it.
The time of the mmo release is the only time that matters in terms of becoming successful. Only UO was available at launch out of that group and you can add AC as it was shortly after. The rest of those games are irrelevant, completely.
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
Go back and read the developers disclaimers on this subject because it's clear you have no idea. The game was announced for the unreal 2.0 engine in 2k4 and released on unreal 2.5. Brad was the problem here don't fool yourself
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
That is not really fair, Brad is an excellent idea guy.
The problem with Sigil was that it lacked a realistic master programmer, someone like Jeff Strain that can realize the good and workable ideas and slap Brads bad ideas.
The best teams have both a dreamer and a realist, SIGIL sadly only had one of those.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
That is not fair either, SIGILs game was horrible programmed and it took SOE 2 years to fix it up to a reasonable level.
SOE aren´t exactly master programmers either but they are miles better than anyone who worked on SIGIL.
The worst thing was SIGILs decision to hire in totally incompetent programmers (my theory is that they were Brads drinking buddies), if they had good programmers from the start VG would have been a totally different game.
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
That is not really fair, Brad is an excellent idea guy.
The problem with Sigil was that it lacked a realistic master programmer, someone like Jeff Strain that can realize the good and workable ideas and slap Brads bad ideas.
The best teams have both a dreamer and a realist, SIGIL sadly only had one of those.
Can't really say Brad provided many ideas considering he wasn't there.
If all the people defending the man would like to educate themselves head on over here.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
That is not fair either, SIGILs game was horrible programmed and it took SOE 2 years to fix it up to a reasonable level.
SOE aren´t exactly master programmers either but they are miles better than anyone who worked on SIGIL.
The worst thing was SIGILs decision to hire in totally incompetent programmers (my theory is that they were Brads drinking buddies), if they had good programmers from the start VG would have been a totally different game.
Stop making assumptions we have the after action report go educate yourself or stop posting.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
That is not fair either, SIGILs game was horrible programmed and it took SOE 2 years to fix it up to a reasonable level.
SOE aren´t exactly master programmers either but they are miles better than anyone who worked on SIGIL.
The worst thing was SIGILs decision to hire in totally incompetent programmers (my theory is that they were Brads drinking buddies), if they had good programmers from the start VG would have been a totally different game.
This. people got on SoE for taking a long time to fix up VG, but what they did in 18 months is impressive when you consider they inherited a disaster. Working with shitty coding is not an easy task.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
That is not fair either, SIGILs game was horrible programmed and it took SOE 2 years to fix it up to a reasonable level.
SOE aren´t exactly master programmers either but they are miles better than anyone who worked on SIGIL.
The worst thing was SIGILs decision to hire in totally incompetent programmers (my theory is that they were Brads drinking buddies), if they had good programmers from the start VG would have been a totally different game.
Stop making assumptions we have the after action report go educate yourself or stop posting.
what he said is still accurate, even if you believe what that guy said as gospel
what I want to know, is where is shit like that about the behind the scenes at the NGE
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
It would not be good to put McQuaid into the position he had when he was CEO of Sigil, that was purely a function he should not have gotten, he's a gamedesigner and should stick with that only.
This has to be some top notch trolling by SOE. After years of giving Vanguard supporters the Big Middle Finger they announce they are bringing back... Brad McQuaid??
Ok, this game is already the greatest failure of any big MMO release in history, so I guess it can't really get any worse. And Brad does have some great ideas about how the game should be played/run... but after two years of completely ignoring the game... this is like...wtf
Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?
McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.
Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.
Other than being a bad business man and perhaps manager how is he horrible? He designed Vangaurd. If anything, most of his designs were, in my opinion, very good.
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SOE bought the game because of BM's connectiont to eq1. My guess is he had some high ranking friends in the SOE rank and file that convinced the others to bail BM out.
No SOE did not buy the game to keep it off the market. SOE could have done that without revealing they bought the code and ip. SOE would have never even hinted they did that and probably would have put in some kind of NDC to keep anyone from blabbing about the purchase. Companies do that all the time.
Vanguard never was a threat to the EQ series. If it was the game would be going like gang busters. At best IF the FTP works SOE will have a niche game on their hands like DCUO and FR. Will not have a large population. Just enough to turn a profit that's respectable enough to keep the server on.
The murder of SWG was committed by Lucas Arts, possibly by George himself. LA couldn't get past their ego's(or George's) that the ip should be greater than WOW(it isn't). My guess is LA forced SOE to do the NGE. SOE faced the revokation of the rights to the ip to do a mmorpg. I've worked in the software industry and know that the person that wants and pays for the code being written has the whip hand. My guess: the fault is 90% LA, 10% SOE. TOR bears my suspicions out that LA forced the NGE on SOE. The game is basically NGE 2.0. The same percentage applies between LA and BW.
As to BM's return: the man did help produce Evercrack. If SOE can keep him drug free and give him a reality check to his ideas, then the game might amount to something and be successful.
This has to be some top notch trolling by SOE. After years of giving Vanguard supporters the Big Middle Finger they announce they are bringing back... Brad McQuaid??
Ok, this game is already the greatest failure of any big MMO release in history, so I guess it can't really get any worse. And Brad does have some great ideas about how the game should be played/run... but after two years of completely ignoring the game... this is like...wtf
Not only did SoE bring back McQuaid, they brought back a lot of the people responsible for fixing up VG. It means they feel confident enough that after the success of EQ2 f2p that its worthwhile to make the investment, and they are obviously serious about it.
Brad Mcquaid was a horrible CEO yes, that is undeniable, but the fact that he has owned up saying that it was all his fault and shoulders the responsibility shows integrity, when truthfully alot of the issues were caused by a regime change at Microsoft and MS no longer seeing eye to eye about the game. All in all As a boss he isnt great.
As an MMO Developer, Brad is a visionary, His ideas were what made vanguard, Himself, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost were the visionaries that created the granddaddy of 3d MMO's Everquest still the most challenging and arguably the greatest mmo ever made. His Ideas were always amazing and always worth their weight in gold.
SOE did not do anything to harm Vanguard, It fixed it as well as they could and made it playable, without them, non of you people who love VG or even tried it would have ever gotten the chance.
Finally I hope they place him on the Everquest Next team as a developer, to bring his vision, and his experience with the world to forge a new one, more intricate and amazing than the original. He is an invaluable asset to SOE and they would be fools not to.
I love how everyone likes to focus on things they dont agree with or feel others did wrong, and you all throw stones thinking you are any better! He made mistakes, SOE has made mistakes, They have both learned from them, just like any other person. You all forget all the good they did, what they brought into this world, the fun and amazing things they have provided. But most of you are unreasonable and think you can do no wrong, and no matter how much good they do, you will always be butt hurt about the past, however miniscule it really was.
Comments
Brad McQuaid is a hack.
EQ1 was only successful because it had little to no competiton. If I released the only working teleporter in the world I bet it would be pretty popular too, no matter the faults.
Brad McQuaid admitted to pretty much all of Vangurds problems being his fault. So you can stash the fanboi attitude, even he knows he was terrible.
As it turns out there WAS a development team. And again, by McQuaids own admission and the statements of the team (the team that got called to the parking lot and fired by him), he was an absentee developer, usually on opiates.
Vanguard was NOT his game. It was his idea to make an MMO and call it 'Vanguard', probably threw in a few ideas at the beginning, but that is about it.
This is like hiring Alexander Graham Bell to work on the next smartphone.
Oh, so its his fault they are linear, shallow pieces of crap.
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Your post is the ignorant one bro. The entire reason Vanguard launched so poorly can be attributed to that dumbass. They promised an enormous amount of content on release and probably could have done it had his, coke snorting piece of shit, self not decided proper developer tools were unnecessary in game development.
Speaking to "MMOs wouldn't be what they are today without Brad" Well there were three major mmos at the time of everquest, We had UO, AC, and EQ, Of the three EQ was the only one to turn in to a gear treadmill raider game and thats what mmo's are today for the most part, Thanks but no thanks brad.
UO, AC, DAoC, FFXI, Lineage, SWG, AO (fixed by then)
these games were all out before EQ2/WoW started EQs downfall.
It had competition, most would argue very quality games were up against it.
WRONG! Worst thing to happen was sigil getting dumped by microsoft or whoever it was, then SOE buying and forcing the game into their engine instead of the original one. Then SOE F'd around with more of the Development like usual and that is what messed it up.
The guy hasn't been perfect but he definitly knows his stuff and how to make a challenging but fun game. SOE being involved in anything is never good news.
The time of the mmo release is the only time that matters in terms of becoming successful. Only UO was available at launch out of that group and you can add AC as it was shortly after. The rest of those games are irrelevant, completely.
Go back and read the developers disclaimers on this subject because it's clear you have no idea. The game was announced for the unreal 2.0 engine in 2k4 and released on unreal 2.5. Brad was the problem here don't fool yourself
That is not really fair, Brad is an excellent idea guy.
The problem with Sigil was that it lacked a realistic master programmer, someone like Jeff Strain that can realize the good and workable ideas and slap Brads bad ideas.
The best teams have both a dreamer and a realist, SIGIL sadly only had one of those.
That is not fair either, SIGILs game was horrible programmed and it took SOE 2 years to fix it up to a reasonable level.
SOE aren´t exactly master programmers either but they are miles better than anyone who worked on SIGIL.
The worst thing was SIGILs decision to hire in totally incompetent programmers (my theory is that they were Brads drinking buddies), if they had good programmers from the start VG would have been a totally different game.
Brad = Game designer = epic
Brad = Boss = Smedley level fail
This is a great thing as long as he's not in charge the dude is a great game designer .
Can't really say Brad provided many ideas considering he wasn't there.
If all the people defending the man would like to educate themselves head on over here.
Stop making assumptions we have the after action report go educate yourself or stop posting.
This. people got on SoE for taking a long time to fix up VG, but what they did in 18 months is impressive when you consider they inherited a disaster. Working with shitty coding is not an easy task.
what he said is still accurate, even if you believe what that guy said as gospel
what I want to know, is where is shit like that about the behind the scenes at the NGE
It would not be good to put McQuaid into the position he had when he was CEO of Sigil, that was purely a function he should not have gotten, he's a gamedesigner and should stick with that only.
You saying that's a face we can't trust?
Shame on you!
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Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
It doesn't exist because it went as planned and promptly sucked.
planned by who? this is the big secret nobody knows.
COLONEL SMEDLEY, DID YOU ORDER THE CODE RED?
If SOE ever decides to give Brad the boot I hope they take him out into the carpark to do it.
Is this real life?
This has to be some top notch trolling by SOE. After years of giving Vanguard supporters the Big Middle Finger they announce they are bringing back... Brad McQuaid??
Ok, this game is already the greatest failure of any big MMO release in history, so I guess it can't really get any worse. And Brad does have some great ideas about how the game should be played/run... but after two years of completely ignoring the game... this is like...wtf
Other than being a bad business man and perhaps manager how is he horrible? He designed Vangaurd. If anything, most of his designs were, in my opinion, very good.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
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Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
SOE bought the game because of BM's connectiont to eq1. My guess is he had some high ranking friends in the SOE rank and file that convinced the others to bail BM out.
No SOE did not buy the game to keep it off the market. SOE could have done that without revealing they bought the code and ip. SOE would have never even hinted they did that and probably would have put in some kind of NDC to keep anyone from blabbing about the purchase. Companies do that all the time.
Vanguard never was a threat to the EQ series. If it was the game would be going like gang busters. At best IF the FTP works SOE will have a niche game on their hands like DCUO and FR. Will not have a large population. Just enough to turn a profit that's respectable enough to keep the server on.
The murder of SWG was committed by Lucas Arts, possibly by George himself. LA couldn't get past their ego's(or George's) that the ip should be greater than WOW(it isn't). My guess is LA forced SOE to do the NGE. SOE faced the revokation of the rights to the ip to do a mmorpg. I've worked in the software industry and know that the person that wants and pays for the code being written has the whip hand. My guess: the fault is 90% LA, 10% SOE. TOR bears my suspicions out that LA forced the NGE on SOE. The game is basically NGE 2.0. The same percentage applies between LA and BW.
As to BM's return: the man did help produce Evercrack. If SOE can keep him drug free and give him a reality check to his ideas, then the game might amount to something and be successful.
IMO on all this.
Not only did SoE bring back McQuaid, they brought back a lot of the people responsible for fixing up VG. It means they feel confident enough that after the success of EQ2 f2p that its worthwhile to make the investment, and they are obviously serious about it.
Brad Mcquaid was a horrible CEO yes, that is undeniable, but the fact that he has owned up saying that it was all his fault and shoulders the responsibility shows integrity, when truthfully alot of the issues were caused by a regime change at Microsoft and MS no longer seeing eye to eye about the game. All in all As a boss he isnt great.
As an MMO Developer, Brad is a visionary, His ideas were what made vanguard, Himself, Steve Clover, and Bill Trost were the visionaries that created the granddaddy of 3d MMO's Everquest still the most challenging and arguably the greatest mmo ever made. His Ideas were always amazing and always worth their weight in gold.
SOE did not do anything to harm Vanguard, It fixed it as well as they could and made it playable, without them, non of you people who love VG or even tried it would have ever gotten the chance.
Finally I hope they place him on the Everquest Next team as a developer, to bring his vision, and his experience with the world to forge a new one, more intricate and amazing than the original. He is an invaluable asset to SOE and they would be fools not to.
I love how everyone likes to focus on things they dont agree with or feel others did wrong, and you all throw stones thinking you are any better! He made mistakes, SOE has made mistakes, They have both learned from them, just like any other person. You all forget all the good they did, what they brought into this world, the fun and amazing things they have provided. But most of you are unreasonable and think you can do no wrong, and no matter how much good they do, you will always be butt hurt about the past, however miniscule it really was.
Did he bring copious amounts of cocaine for everyone (alledgedly)?
I make spreadsheets at work - I don't want to make them for the games I play.