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Brad McQuaid's resume
romans612
Member Posts: 3
at least now he can say "I wasnt responsible for Age of Conan"...lol
can you put that on your resume?
Additional Information you would like us to know:
"I'm not Gaute Godager"
LOL....
Comments
I think every person in the world should be allowed to put that on their resume. Brad McQuaid's resume however will be thrown in the trash instantly, no matter what.
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"Capitalism is currently working as intended."
but if there is only one spot, and only 2 people apply for it.... Brad is a shoe in if the other person is Gaute...lol
I think most likely in that situation neither would get hired and the position would be destroyed.
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"Capitalism is currently working as intended."
What job would they be looking for?
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
I guess he is happy enough working for SOE currently.
As an ideas man/game direction, Brad had many good ideas.
As an business man, I think he should never apply again.
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
The man is a creative genius. Look at Everquest. I am serious. The game is timeless, up to about Velious. Immersion, fun, group-oriented gameplay (fostered strong, timeless communities; I still talk to old EQ friends from YEARS ago).
Management skills? I am not even going to say anything.
I think Vanguard is brilliant in many respects but incomplete and somewhat poorly implemented. When aspects such as travel get attention and the game is incompleted, it could be a masterpiece. The potential is truly there, at least in my view.
Leave the guy alone because he tried and failed and tbh if noone tried then we wouldn't get anywhere as humans. He did more to follow his dreams than anyone on these forums I bet and for that I can't knock him. I can say the game is shit and with more time and money it has potential to be good but it wont ever get there.
That is more true than alot want to recognize. It is not me that makes the game I want to play it is they who offer me their product. And noone forces me to like it.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Brad was renowned for being the vision guy. I think if you look at VG in that perspective you can see that it's an amazing game. Unfortunately while the vision is critically important so is execution. I think that execution is where Brad got in over his head. Honestly though there is nothing atypical about Brads fate in this activity. 8 or 9 out of 10 businesses fail for the exact same reason.
Businesses are started by guys with ideas. They are passionate, they have a vision and articulate it well and people believe in them. But then they are faced with running an organization to create or execute the business to create that vision. This is where many businesses die. A Vision guy is not a management guy and the two personality types are actually not compatable. This is where ego comes in to play a vision guy can certainly be smart and can get the business started but the problem is he will hate it and will eventually loose interest and the business will drift and fail.
Having worked in management for years the issues Brad had are very common. The smart move would have been to find a really good business person and have turned over running the company to that person and put your self in the position of chief visionary or something like that. I worked for a guy like that ones who did just that and things worked very well till the business guy tried to take control and the vision guy left. After a few years the company died.. You see it takes both types to really grow and make a company successful.
Brad is very articulate and passionate and he did have a great vision. If I were in this business I'd hire him in a second and build a product around him. I don't think ANYONE can deny that the visiion and potential behind vanguard are like an order of magnetude greater then any other game today. If he had a good management team and either implemented VG in parts it would have been very successful.
Now we have soe fixing the game and they are doing a good job. They have many good people that were part of sigil but honestly they are refining the vision and it is hard to say if they have a vision or what the end product will look like.
I would love to know that Brad was hard at work somewhere on a new game or even in a back room in soe providing passion and vision to teams. But I'm afraid that he probably isn't. He did have quite an ego and the whole failure with VG I'm sure hit him really hard. Rumors of drugs and things could mean he destroyed himself which is a loss to us all.
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Ethion
There's really no point in championing a person over "ideas" once it's proven that person can't execute them.
Anyone can have an idea, and I bet you all would have a tough time thinking of one idea of Brad's that you hadn't thought about when you were 14. It's not exactly a feat of genius to think about cat-people in a large world.
Genius designers are people who're able to have ideas, and then strike the most optimal medium with the technical means available. It's really the latter that counts. Brad's no Miyamoto.
Here's the thing about BRAD MCQUAD that I don't understand.
He isn't a genius first of all, but people say he is? Why? Have they measured his IQ?
Second, what was so special about EQ. I played EQ and it played like a mud with graphics, and there were many other such games out like meridian, that had a similar feel. EQ obviously did better beause it had the best graphics for that type of game. That was really the only reason it was so successful. No one played EQ and was like, wow this is hardcore at the time. People only say that now, because they are nostalgic, but that is only a handful of strawberries. The majority of EQ players said GOOD riddance when the first new big thing came out because they realized sony was trying to milk their life force and money. Unfortunately now wow has come along and made sony regret screwing over their custies when EQ came out and making it hell for them to play. AFterall, camping a spawn point for twenty five days to get some good gear really isn't that fun now is it? That's a fact btw. At one point you had to camp a spot for a month to get an item .I played eq, level 60 rogue, and I will never forget how bad sony treated us, and used Brad as a creative cruch diddle. Anyways, hope brad is dead now for all the times his name was used to justify descretions against captialism and humanity for moral and humanistic reasons not vengeance.
Where did you find the connection to IQ in what they propose Brad McQuaid to be a genius in?
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
He isn't a genius or anything. But he is a unique individual. He has a good nack of articulating a vision and creating a good game design. These are good abilities. Having an idea and being able to take it from idea to a complete vision and articulate it well enough for people to understand it in its entirty and build something that reflects it is a talent. Being able to manage finances, project schedules, personal issues, conflicts etc is a completely different skill set. That was the point I was trying to make. Frequently companies are started by people like Brad, strong ideas, strong articulation, passionate and able to get people on board with their ideas. And unfortunately the majority of these companies fail when the idea guy doesn't realize he needs the management guy to help.
A good example is to look at a Mayers Briggs personality profile. You will see that creative types who are looking at the vision are not the people to keep the organizaiton running smoothly. These traits are opposites where you are either one or the other. Understanding that is key to working with people. Anyway enough said. I just wanted to point out that the man has some strengths as should be apparent and that its sad to see him so despised...
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Ethion
He isn't a genius or anything. But he is a unique individual. He has a good nack of articulating a vision and creating a good game design. These are good abilities. Having an idea and being able to take it from idea to a complete vision and articulate it well enough for people to understand it in its entirty and build something that reflects it is a talent. Being able to manage finances, project schedules, personal issues, conflicts etc is a completely different skill set. That was the point I was trying to make. Frequently companies are started by people like Brad, strong ideas, strong articulation, passionate and able to get people on board with their ideas. And unfortunately the majority of these companies fail when the idea guy doesn't realize he needs the management guy to help.
A good example is to look at a Mayers Briggs personality profile. You will see that creative types who are looking at the vision are not the people to keep the organizaiton running smoothly. These traits are opposites where you are either one or the other. Understanding that is key to working with people. Anyway enough said. I just wanted to point out that the man has some strengths as should be apparent and that its sad to see him so despised...
There's nothing unique about Brad. There's nothing articulate about thinking of a seven year dream MMO and spamming message boards about it. People do it here in the General Forums every day.
Leaving the ability of complete execution out of the equation of an idea, one must at LEAST have an idea of how their idea is technically possible. It's not like Brad fell on his face before getting a chance to see if his ideas were good. Vanguard exists, doesn't it? He himself called it ready, didn't he? Well there you go, his brilliant idea that the MMO community disliked and shunned.
Brad's fault's aren't completely that he was a bad CEO; hell I'd go on to say that was his strong suit since he managed to form partnerships with two of the biggest publishers in the industry, secure tens of millions of dollars and hire over a hundred people; and subsist it all across a good 5-6 years.
That's excellent executive skill. It's just that people are so "into" the Vision, or rather having a visionary beyond practicality in our industry, that Brad's been fabled to be a great idea man who sucked at business.
On the contrary, he was an excellent business man to keep Sigil afloat as long as he did, AND get a product out of the door. What sank Sigil and Vanguard? It wasnt' the lack of money, lack of time and lack of resources; all things Brad secured with executive execution. It was the fact he thought of and tried to design a game that people wouldn't mind the designed, intentional inherent flaws of and most people hated.
For all the praise SOE is getting in "fixing" Vanguard, a lot of things they're doing are going against the grain of Brad's brilliant design. The addition of Riftways, the easing of experience curves, the changing of Diplomacy, the single-starting location Trial Island will bring, the instance-esque duplication of APW, the sacrificing of customization in character models.
Those are all design decisions, and only a drop in the bucket of what anyone could profess Vanguard needs, and even then the game is still with inherent flaws (non-reflective warrior, limited sources of shadow, the myth of chunking ever being completely unnoticeable, etc.).
Really, it's not like Brad created a great new story. Who'd like to see a Vanguard film adaptation? A series of novels? Who'd be happy to hear the Vanguard engine was repackaged into a new MMO? Then again some of you are crazy enough to want the latter.
Point being though, brilliant ideas are things to be envied and copied. There's nothing about Vanguard the industry will ever attempt, because it's shining features were seen as boring and bad design by the majority of gamers that tried it.
Brad is all myth and little substance. Nevermind being unable to pin-point exactly which brilliant contributions solely belong to his mind that went forth towards EQI, I've yet to see anyone state exactly what was so brilliant about Vanguard.
Brad had ideas and the courage to pursue them, that is what is admirable. So he failed; that's always a possibility when you go out and try to do anything. I'm sure brad isn't upset about it anymore or dwelling on it. I think he would regret it more had he not followed through with his ideas. Along the way he surely learned quite a bit and is probably moving onto his next big project. More people need to have the courage Mr. Q has, breaking the mold and exploring new avenues and ideas for games and any creative works for that matter. The world would turn a lot smoother if people broke out of their safe little shells more often and explored the ability of their imagination.
Midnight janitorial.
He isn't a genius or anything. But he is a unique individual. He has a good nack of articulating a vision and creating a good game design. These are good abilities. Having an idea and being able to take it from idea to a complete vision and articulate it well enough for people to understand it in its entirty and build something that reflects it is a talent. Being able to manage finances, project schedules, personal issues, conflicts etc is a completely different skill set. That was the point I was trying to make. Frequently companies are started by people like Brad, strong ideas, strong articulation, passionate and able to get people on board with their ideas. And unfortunately the majority of these companies fail when the idea guy doesn't realize he needs the management guy to help.
A good example is to look at a Mayers Briggs personality profile. You will see that creative types who are looking at the vision are not the people to keep the organizaiton running smoothly. These traits are opposites where you are either one or the other. Understanding that is key to working with people. Anyway enough said. I just wanted to point out that the man has some strengths as should be apparent and that its sad to see him so despised...
There's nothing unique about Brad. There's nothing articulate about thinking of a seven year dream MMO and spamming message boards about it. People do it here in the General Forums every day.
Leaving the ability of complete execution out of the equation of an idea, one must at LEAST have an idea of how their idea is technically possible. It's not like Brad fell on his face before getting a chance to see if his ideas were good. Vanguard exists, doesn't it? He himself called it ready, didn't he? Well there you go, his brilliant idea that the MMO community disliked and shunned.
Brad's fault's aren't completely that he was a bad CEO; hell I'd go on to say that was his strong suit since he managed to form partnerships with two of the biggest publishers in the industry, secure tens of millions of dollars and hire over a hundred people; and subsist it all across a good 5-6 years.
That's excellent executive skill. It's just that people are so "into" the Vision, or rather having a visionary beyond practicality in our industry, that Brad's been fabled to be a great idea man who sucked at business.
On the contrary, he was an excellent business man to keep Sigil afloat as long as he did, AND get a product out of the door. What sank Sigil and Vanguard? It wasnt' the lack of money, lack of time and lack of resources; all things Brad secured with executive execution. It was the fact he thought of and tried to design a game that people wouldn't mind the designed, intentional inherent flaws of and most people hated.
For all the praise SOE is getting in "fixing" Vanguard, a lot of things they're doing are going against the grain of Brad's brilliant design. The addition of Riftways, the easing of experience curves, the changing of Diplomacy, the single-starting location Trial Island will bring, the instance-esque duplication of APW, the sacrificing of customization in character models.
Those are all design decisions, and only a drop in the bucket of what anyone could profess Vanguard needs, and even then the game is still with inherent flaws (non-reflective warrior, limited sources of shadow, the myth of chunking ever being completely unnoticeable, etc.).
Really, it's not like Brad created a great new story. Who'd like to see a Vanguard film adaptation? A series of novels? Who'd be happy to hear the Vanguard engine was repackaged into a new MMO? Then again some of you are crazy enough to want the latter.
Point being though, brilliant ideas are things to be envied and copied. There's nothing about Vanguard the industry will ever attempt, because it's shining features were seen as boring and bad design by the majority of gamers that tried it.
Brad is all myth and little substance. Nevermind being unable to pin-point exactly which brilliant contributions solely belong to his mind that went forth towards EQI, I've yet to see anyone state exactly what was so brilliant about Vanguard.
Listen to her go, sounds like your a little jealous of brad. Your pathedic ive listen to you backstab Brad McQuaid every chance you get ever sence the first day i came to this site. which was to look up info on vanguard and no other reason
Whats your resume look like sepher
sepher, I think you are wrong to say that Brad wanted the things in Vanguard to go the way they did. Remember he was not present, and not celebrating, launch day?
He knew Vanguard had deep flaws in it, was incomplete, and that its performance requirements were far, far too high. He did, nevertheless, tell us to buy it anyway and upgrade our PCs; that, and his absentee-management, will always be a part of his legacy. It is so bad, you cannot get around it. 89% of success is just showing-up.
Vanguard is a game that many of us want, but the actual vision was poorly implemented; its poor implementation rests squarely with Brad because he was both setting the vision and the boss.
Edit: On paper, vanguard is one sweet game; when you log-in, your performance is bad, a lot of promises made about the game are not in there, and the world often feels empty, incomplete, and uninspiring. The good news is that progress is being made - albeit very slowly.
Vanguard could have made it if it had (1) better marketing and (2) better tech, assuming the game was completed at launch.
People want large, open worlds; people want a group-oriented game. People want dungeons that are challenging and fun. People want content and Quests that span continents. People want to customize boats and travel the great seas. People want more from MMORPGs than just logging-in, kill fifteen boars, and then handing in boar fur.
A deeper, challenging, complex, inspiring, and fun game; this requires a huge, open world, which Vanguard has as its asset.
Well just so you all know, vanguard did make it. Maybe not to Brads potential, but I playing it and Ive never had so much fun. Always something to do and believe it or not there is almost always people to do it with, at least on Seradon. I guess all of our definitions of a game making it vary.
playing: darkfall
waiting: earthrise
Yeah well, good intentions aren't worth buying. All that stuff about not being present and celebrating launch day, wasn't public knowledge on launch day. Instead he was doing interviews saying the game was ready and worth buying, even though they were launching for financial reasons.
Also, I wasn't saying he meant for bugs to be in-game, of course those aren't design intentions. Too many starting areas, flimsy PvP rulesets, ridiculous travel times; things like that which ended up getting shelved or changed by SOE were Brad's design decisions. Along with things that created performance problems like all of the mundane character customization sliders that warranted the performance hit old models caused.
And Brad didn't tell us to merely upgrade our PCs at launch, he told us that we'd have to continuously upgrade our PCs throughout the game's life. It wasn't like he expressed this apologetically, it was apart of his design to try and push a high-end graphical game no matter how impractical it was to encourage hundreds of thousands of people to always buy the latest GeForce and Radeon.
It was Brad's idea to decide the Unreal 2 engine wasn't good enough, and to screw it up by rewriting most of it. Proving scaling back performance costs wasn't on his mind post launch, he even went off fully expecting to release an expansion on the Unreal 3 engine. Compare that to the good SOE is doing in scaling back performance costs, versus Brad's genius design intentions.
Sounds to me like the performance costs were perfectly intended. Brad's never done anything but say the only thing that would fix Vanguard's problems would be upgrading our PCs. Or at least he's professed it to be the main thing.
As far as what people "want", open worlds and etc. Above all else people want fun and accessibility. The rest is optional and expendable. Vanguard lacked both for the majority, 'else people would be playing it. SOE's making moves in the right direction, but time is becoming their biggest enemy nowadays.
As much as I can't stand the guy and his cowardice over how his employees were fired among other things, there is truth to that.
Edit: I have never been a hater, lover, supporter, detractor, defender, or offender of Mr. McQuaid.
(I suppose I am a "disdainer" for people that engage in the behavior and conduct he did).
I just admire his work on Everquest 1, and many things to Vanguard.
I actually somewhat dislike the guy because I was one of the fools that actually did upgrade my computer to run Vanguard, and I was duped. He just wanted to sell enough titles to break-even and sell-out.
What kind of family or society produces a man that tells the world, "Ya, the game is not finished and has a lot of bugs [translation: it is fucked] but go buy a new PC so you can run it." This guy was on fires of heaven web pages, and others, getting people banned, suspended, censored, and so forth for telling the truth about the real condition of Vanguard at its release..
This guy, now that I had a chance to think about it, is trash. What he did to his loyal "fans," coworkers, collegues, and so forth is a serious, serious let down. Something on this level is rare when you consider incomptence, self-dealing, fluff, and betrayal (employees and fans).
make no mistake he had an enormous ego and in spite of everything thought that maybe VG would fly and he was greedy enough to want to keep controlling interest and launch the game in it's state rather then give SoE control of the game....
his actions under pressure were also rather poor....
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Ethion
Except that the vast, overwhelming majority of initial Vanguard players hated it due to performance issues and bugs. Second would be lack of high end content. The never complained about existing content, just that there wasn't enough of it. The fewest complaints around Vanguard centered on the design of the game. You can't rewrite history, the posts are here. Count the ones complaining about performance and put it next to the complaints about these supposed inherent flaws in the design.
Except that all of that customization has returned. (Or more accurately is on the test server right now).
AoC was condemned, in part to the vast amount of instancing and the lack of the feel of a 'persistant world'. However, the 'map' construction nearly mirrors the construction of EQ2 completely. However, popular opinion has never decried EQ2 for their instancing. Yes, yes, it is a complaint, but certainly not as prominent a complaint as AoC received due to its duplicate layout. Vanguard has recently received a shot in the arm from hundreds of disenfranchised AoC players simply due to the fact that they like Vanguard's pervasive world. In fact, even in the beginning, when you could find relatively few compliments about the game, the one you would come across was 'i like the big open world'. Incidently, this being one of Vanguard's greatests strengths, your petty complaint about the micro second of hitch at a chunkline seems pretty laughable compared to the complaints about the zoning in AoC. But I digress.....the point is, I believe it will be more and more difficult for mmo's to make instanced-heavy world construction. Vanguard showed that it was absolutely possible to technologically make a pervasive world for an mmo, even if their execution was less than perfect. The pervasive world will absolutely has become envied and will be copied. I would even be willing to suggest that it will become the industry standard. Now I'm sure, if this is true, you will find a rationale for how this isn't the case, at the same time mmo companies are scrambling to figure out how to make their next mmo a pervasive world like Vanguards.
Definately he became a myth, but most myths start with some substance. I do not claim Brad McQuaid the greatest game maker by any stretch. The brilliance in this guy is his ability to show us what is technilogically possible in games and to often do it first. The great deficiency in him is his inability to polish the product before it is out the door. People have stated precisely to you 1000 times why Vanguard is ground breaking. You simply do not agree. Watch, I'll show you: Vanguard is ground breaking because it was the first in the industry to extensively use a non-instanced world, when previously game developers thought this to be technologically impossible. Do you agree? No? And what is your reason? "I get a little hiccup when I cross a chunk line - I have been cheated to and lied to, this world is not pervasive!!!!!!"
See.....you can be presented with clear stated facts and refuse to see the forest for the trees.
And by the way. Do you consider Ford, Einstein, Edison, Newton, Copernicus, etc. to all be idiots and hacks? You must, seeing as how all of their major contributions were built out of others previous work and ideas, just like McQuaids. The Beatles hacked folk and put it to a rock beat. Led Zeppelin directly ripped of traditional blues and put distortion on it. Brad McQuaid took MUDs and laid 3D graphics on top of it. Get a clue man, there is nothing new under the sun and we are a species of beggars and theives. It is how we have 'advanced' our technology and knowledge from the beginning of time.
**Tangent comment: concerning riftways, consider this scenario:
Initial vision contains 'meaningful travel' to combat long distances to be covered.
Idea never implemented.
Result: vast stretches of boring distance to cover
Game released
You acquire the game.
You can:
A) leave game as is
B)Spend a year or two developing 'meaningful travel' meanwhile, leaving vast stretches of boring distance to cover in a game that is already disliked for 1000 other reasons.
C) Add riftways
Now it's your call. This is the actual scenario SOE found themselves in. You may say, 'well, I wouldn't work for SOE' or "well, if i worked for SOE I wouldn't have bought that crappy game". But those are cop-out excuses. I'm sure there were LOTS on the SOE staff LESS than thrilled about the VG acquisition. Reality is they have it. So make the choice.
Originally posted by Zorgo
Except that the vast, overwhelming majority of initial Vanguard players hated it due to performance issues and bugs. Second would be lack of high end content. The never complained about existing content, just that there wasn't enough of it. The fewest complaints around Vanguard centered on the design of the game. You can't rewrite history, the posts are here. Count the ones complaining about performance and put it next to the complaints about these supposed inherent flaws in the design.
Well think about what you're saying. Performance issues and bugs were the foremost complaint. Arent those prevalent across ALL players? Yet some stayed and endured, because they found the game fun enough despite the issues, no?
If a game is fun enough, performance issues don't become a reason to quit. Evident through WoW. Compare the hitching of Vanguard vs. freezing in a knelt position while trying to loot during WoW; and being forced to slide around everywhere waiting to crash.
'course WoW's problems, albeit more severe, disappeared much faster than Vanguard's did. Which brinsg me to my next point.
How many times have we heard..."It needs 3 more months". Every single patch that came out, performance was claimed to have improved by bounds and leaps. But even if performance had improved just a little, shouldn't "just a little" more players have stuck around after every patch? No, populations continued to drop and server mergers ensued.
With a few of the big patches afterwards, including the most recent which was after the anti-hitching fix, all box-buyers were invited back to play. Did they stay or bother to try it out? Did they remember Vanguard to be a fun game, if only it weren't for the performance issues that were now fixed? Of course not, not even one new server has opened, and the four existing suffer population problems.
So exactly what do you call Vanguard's problem if performance issues have been fixed and re-fixed? It doesn't matter if they've been totally wiped out, it matters that no performance fixes have ever had a proportional effect on retaining population, or attracting more. The downward spiral of Vanguard's subscriber count has been as stagnant as it's design...connection?
I understand everyone's gotten used to the thought of Vanguard being worth as many subscribers as WoW if only it didn't have the performance problems that it did, but that was never its only problem. It's boring for a lot of people.
---------------------------------
Except that all of that customization has returned. (Or more accurately is on the test server right now).
Yet the graphical fidelity vs. the original models remain disputed.
Me personally, I wish they'd launch with the new models at launch for performance's sake, but that would've been a good design decision.
---------------------------------
AoC was condemned, in part to the vast amount of instancing and the lack of the feel of a 'persistant world'. However, the 'map' construction nearly mirrors the construction of EQ2 completely. However, popular opinion has never decried EQ2 for their instancing. Yes, yes, it is a complaint, but certainly not as prominent a complaint as AoC received due to its duplicate layout. Vanguard has recently received a shot in the arm from hundreds of disenfranchised AoC players simply due to the fact that they like Vanguard's pervasive world. In fact, even in the beginning, when you could find relatively few compliments about the game, the one you would come across was 'i like the big open world'. Incidently, this being one of Vanguard's greatests strengths, your petty complaint about the micro second of hitch at a chunkline seems pretty laughable compared to the complaints about the zoning in AoC. But I digress.....the point is, I believe it will be more and more difficult for mmo's to make instanced-heavy world construction. Vanguard showed that it was absolutely possible to technologically make a pervasive world for an mmo, even if their execution was less than perfect. The pervasive world will absolutely has become envied and will be copied. I would even be willing to suggest that it will become the industry standard. Now I'm sure, if this is true, you will find a rationale for how this isn't the case, at the same time mmo companies are scrambling to figure out how to make their next mmo a pervasive world like Vanguards.
What we know about Vanguard and Age of Conan:
Age of Conan has sold at least 800k boxes, shipped more than a million.
Vanguard sold at least 200k boxes.
Age of Conan at one point had at least 400k subscribers.
Vanguard at one point had at least 90k sbuscribers.
If Funcom went belly-up today and pulled the plug on Age of Conan; it was already four times as popular as Vanguard ever was in the two respects that matter.
Point being, Vanguard did nothing to prove MMO gamers desire a world full of chunk zoning vs. more content packed areas separated by load screens and divided into instances.
Age of Conan though isn't the best example to use against Vanguard. I'd start with Guild Wars; criticized for being free but takes 100-200 dollars to leap into with all of its content. Yet it has over 5 million registered users. Besides WoW, CoH and DAoC, there hasn't been an MMO since UO I can say I bought enough expansions of or paid enough subscriber fees to top what I put into GW.
Though even if you do choose to discredit Guild Wars as proof of most players not caring about instancing and zoning; there's the guiding truth of World of Warcraft which I suppose should be considered the happy medium between classic open world and instancing and zoning.
Vanguard though? Nothing open world about it to me with all the chunking. I imagine it's the same for others who played and quit. Doesn't matter how big a world is on a map, or in one's mind, if the real-time result is a chunk line every minutes while travelling.
So really, I doubt "chunking" will ever make it into another game, as it was a bad design idea. And there's nothing but success stories towards even the most instance-heavy of games, whereas Vanguard will be the first and only death of an MMO attempting "chunking", which was little more than setting up loading-without-screens on the border of every zone and making 'em frequent.
---------------------------------
Definately he became a myth, but most myths start with some substance. I do not claim Brad McQuaid the greatest game maker by any stretch. The brilliance in this guy is his ability to show us what is technilogically possible in games and to often do it first. The great deficiency in him is his inability to polish the product before it is out the door. People have stated precisely to you 1000 times why Vanguard is ground breaking. You simply do not agree. Watch, I'll show you: Vanguard is ground breaking because it was the first in the industry to extensively use a non-instanced world, when previously game developers thought this to be technologically impossible. Do you agree? No? And what is your reason? "I get a little hiccup when I cross a chunk line - I have been cheated to and lied to, this world is not pervasive!!!!!!"
Define "ground-breaking", and define "technologically impossible".
Here's my go in reverse order:
"Technologically impossible" would mean it's impossible to execute in a fashion that wouldn't involve gimmicks like chunking that would come with a whole host of problems of its own.
Looks like someone badly designed such a thing though, and caused all sorts of problems; everything from a delayed ability to compete with Burning Crusades in the area of flying mounts; which was a marketing point of the day for both games, to breaking common MMO expectations like being able to keep a pet active, to larger more inherent issues like losing a host of features in the engine the game was based on in order to neuter it for this bad design decision.
"Ground-breaking" would be something so well-received, that industry figures would mimic it and players would be attracted to it. No evidence of either points with Vanguard.
Disagreeing with those two points aside, I disagree with the whole premise. I don't believe designers avoid "open worlds" because it's technologically impossible, but because they feel they can create better games with the use of instancing and zoning.
The technology is perceived as GOOD by most of the industry; proven by the millions of dollars put into it by developers and paid to the developers by customers.
From CoH's task forces, WoW's scripted raid events and even AoC's Tortage which most would agree is it's shining point; its only possible through the technology of instancing. It's a feature, not a compromise or inadequancy, it enables much while making sure players were always on the same vector really only enables all the problems of old like overcamping and training.
Nothin' ground-breaking about first-gen problems and a lack of second-gen features.
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See.....you can be presented with clear stated facts and refuse to see the forest for the trees.
Because the only green that matters is money. Or at least its the only mediating factor we can use for evidence towards one opinion or another. Brad's design decisions burned up tens of millions of it, but the consumers who were supposed to pay for what he spent tens of millions of dollars on, didn't.
Why's the fact that most of the people that bought the box, which were a paltry sum in comparison to the industry at large anyway, not matter to you when they repeatedly ignore the game? For free even, at months at a time.
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And by the way. Do you consider Ford, Einstein, Edison, Newton, Copernicus, etc. to all be idiots and hacks? You must, seeing as how all of their major contributions were built out of others previous work and ideas, just like McQuaids.
If Brad's brilliant design of chunking becomes as apart of MMOs as the Model T's use of the steering wheel on the left; you have a point.
If Diplomacy, something seriously poised as capable of rendering PvE optional, becomes a printed feature in as many MMO manuals as details of Einstein's theory of relativity in science journals, you have a point.
So on and so forth for other inventors who actually left a lasting impact. I wouldn't even equate Brad to the guy who thought up the pet rock, because I'm sure at least one company attempted that again.
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The Beatles hacked folk and put it to a rock beat. Led Zeppelin directly ripped of traditional blues and put distortion on it. Brad McQuaid took MUDs and laid 3D graphics on top of it. Get a clue man, there is nothing new under the sun and we are a species of beggars and theives. It is how we have 'advanced' our technology and knowledge from the beginning of time.
It's about EQ now? Like I've said and like you've said, there's a large amount of myth to Brad, and I'd agree that there has to be some substance. What that substance is exactly though, no one can know. So claiming he was the sole brainchild of believing it'd be cool to see 3D Graphics with MUD mechanics is part of what contributes to his myth.
Richard Garriott, Starr Long, Raph Koster, all of 'em go down as contributors towards Ultima Online. I believe people like Smedley and whomever else bare mentioning when it comes to Everquest, because all it does is add more substance and legitimacy to Brad, rather than the poising of him on a pedestal of his own which just makes him a myth.
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**Tangent comment: concerning riftways, consider this scenario:
Initial vision contains 'meaningful travel' to combat long distances to be covered.
Idea never implemented.
Result: vast stretches of boring distance to cover
Really now? The "meaningful" was never implemented, so Brad's idea of meaningful travel as a whole was never implemented, and thus he's excluded from being blamed for a large, bland wasteland?
Thats craziness. What Brad DESIGNED was that world you wander around; you'd actually rank that, which is of substance, beneath a Vision? Therein lies the trouble with crediting Brad for anything; his ideas are poised above what he actually DESIGNS as a DESIGNER.
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Game released
You acquire the game.
You can:
A) leave game as is
B)Spend a year or two developing 'meaningful travel' meanwhile, leaving vast stretches of boring distance to cover in a game that is already disliked for 1000 other reasons.
C) Add riftways
Now it's your call. This is the actual scenario SOE found themselves in. You may say, 'well, I wouldn't work for SOE' or "well, if i worked for SOE I wouldn't have bought that crappy game". But those are cop-out excuses. I'm sure there were LOTS on the SOE staff LESS than thrilled about the VG acquisition. Reality is they have it. So make the choice.
Yep, they correctly went with C) and covered up Brad's bad design decision of believing people would find an empty world fun, with the good design decision of Riftways.