I like how you used the $ for Microsoft but left it out for SoE. Quite reversed, in my eyes.
You are right, it fits in both logos. My mistake...
But anyway, regarding the first part of your comment, there are some AAA titles coming out in 2010 that will directly challenge EQ2's reign. One of them being Heroes of Telara, which just recently hired the former lead designer from EQ2, Scott Hartsman.
If another game challenges EQ2's success, then perhaps $OE will be forced to invest in VG.
I don't like SoE's decision to back off high-end raid content and to invest more in group content. From a raiders perspective, there is nothing good in that decision. I was looking forward to HoSS, Stirhaad and AAs. On the flip-side, I can see some logic in the decision because the barrier to entry problem with Vanguard is huge.
A new player coming into the game is faced with a huge challenge if they want to get leveled up and geared up to become a raider. The first problem is that the game is very top heavy in terms of population. Lower level players have a hard time finding groups to complete various quest-lines as they level up. The world is also huge and very spread-out... a more defined path (including some of the group content announced) would provide a clearer path for new players to follow.
It's a catch 22 with the limited resources of the team. If they continue to focus on the high level raid content, then Vanguard will not grow as new players simply can't, or aren't willing, to overcome the barriers to entry. If they focus on group content throughout all the levels they alienate all the high-end players that have been working hard to become ready for HoSS.
I simply don't think VG has been able to keep new players in the game. While my friends list has been pretty stable with folks that I've know over the past 3-years it's been very apparent that new player applicants to our guild, and other guilds, simply don't stick around much. When I leveled up, I leveled up with the bulk of Vanguards population. When a new player levels up, they are often leveling alone.
This is why they added mentoring, works to get low level people upa nd also allows higher level to explore missed content
I think maybe the reason tehy held off on Raid Content is because of a small team it was taking up all the time and no sign of it being ready
By scaling back and going for this episodic content they can finally add more frequent updates and also (possibly) work throough some of that nasty bugged code they still have from launch, once the code is optimised it makes adding new stuff easier as you dont have to worry about it bugging the current content
Anyway i left just after PotA, mainly due to being unable to get a high level group and the fact my guild got on way before I got home thus leaving me to grind Diplo and crafting as no space to adventure and PUG just wasnt happening
If another game challenges EQ2's success, then perhaps $OE will be forced to invest in VG.
Soe is not going to invest in Vanguard. If that was ever the plan they would have done so the moment they purchased it, which is not what happened. Their first action was to move the best talent off the team to other soe projects. That is not something a company trying to revive a project would do. Taking away resources is not the path to fixing something and I think that made soes intentions very clear from the start.
There is no catch 22, because soe decided on a course of action years ago. When EQ2 crashes you can bet your bank that soe will not run to vanguard as some sort of chance to revive their standing in the mmo genre.
Nothing is going to revive this game and people need to come to terms with that. The lead producer leaves the game without so much as a goodbye and the current lead developer is pulled away from the game to work on some other project and there is still hope something might turn around?
Enjoy Vanguard for what it is while you can, because it is not going to rebound.
lol!soe plan never included mmo from the beginning,even everquest the first time was flatly refused
everquest team at the time 2 guy and a boss had to cuddle soe a lot to make everquest .soe was against it from the get go
soe never liked the mmo idea ,it was like that then it is still like that today,even with everquest huge success anybody would think
soe would have changed their mind espacially since one of their sub (everquest)was THE mmo game for a long while
and is still very popular,it would have even more player if soe hadnt pulled out of ebgame and national chain store
the new content supply .soe is still against mmo,if it was in their power they would supply game only for their console
it was like that back then its still like that today(back then it was playstation 1
today its playstation 3.)
eq would probably have triple or more amount of player if it was avail in chain store same with time card.
eq team will probably make a new eq3 or such and i can say they will have to fight tooth an nail and cuddle and convince the whole freaking way because the naysayer of everquest are still the same naysayer today.
no amount of success will convince them
same story for blizzard they got ton of success ,lol at activision lot of employe are hard at work trying to take over by any means necessary .the only dude having a lesh on those !"/$"/"%$? is their boss
and even him have to scare a few employe by trowing them out the the door to keep everybody inline
men activision employe are so busy trying to go in blizzard they suck at every game or endeavor they try
yep nature of thing same thing will soon happpen to arenanet.they publish guildwars2 probably have success
then ncsoft employe will be hard at work trying to get moved from ncsoft to arenanet
the fact is everybody want to be in the floating boat ,nobody want to look bad in a sinking ship
beuk!i feel like trowing up just speaking about it!
This is heartbreaking... I dont care what the haters said, Vanguard was the best game i've ever played. I loved it from the start, and thought it was atleast 10x better than EQ2. I'm gonna miss the shit outta it, but your right, I just need to except it's fate and move on. I'm going to Darkfall. It looks like Darkfall has alot of similarities to Vanguard as far as size, shape and depth. I took a few months off of Vanguard to grind my RL stats up, so I'm glad i was spared some of the pain you guys have had to go thru. I think I'll go back in and give all my gold away, give away my house & sell all my gear, take one last ride on my widow and enjoy a few more sunsets, but idk, the pain may be too much to bear...
If another game challenges EQ2's success, then perhaps $OE will be forced to invest in VG.
Soe is not going to invest in Vanguard. If that was ever the plan they would have done so the moment they purchased it, which is not what happened. Their first action was to move the best talent off the team to other soe projects. That is not something a company trying to revive a project would do. Taking away resources is not the path to fixing something and I think that made soes intentions very clear from the start.
There is no catch 22, because soe decided on a course of action years ago. When EQ2 crashes you can bet your bank that soe will not run to vanguard as some sort of chance to revive their standing in the mmo genre.
Nothing is going to revive this game and people need to come to terms with that. The lead producer leaves the game without so much as a goodbye and the current lead developer is pulled away from the game to work on some other project and there is still hope something might turn around?
Enjoy Vanguard for what it is while you can, because it is not going to rebound.
Yes.
Please enough with the conspiracy theories about SOE's "motives". Vanguard was never a challenge to EQII, even if it were and would steal players from EQII, how would SOE steal from itself? What kind of sense does it make to opt for good and worse, rather than good and better? Good and worse would somehow result in more overall subscribers than good and better? It especially doesn't make sense under the Station Pass umbrella.
There's no ill motives from SOE. There was no trickery, no deception, no lies. Never had SOE promised anything for Vanguard in the ways of an expansion, new hires, the fabled relaunch and all manners of other things people have clung to over the years. What they did do however was publicly dwindle the development team in the open, spoke years ago about purposefully reducing subscriber revenue to opt for other revenues like micropayments (Live Gamer), and sweep Vanguard into the corner of their yearly conference.
I suppose all SOE hasn't done is say blatantly "We really aren't supporting this game. Like it as is or leave." But really, they shouldn't have to say that. It should be evident. I find it nuts that there's -still- people that have faith in this game becoming anything more than what it is right now.
There's nothin' left for Vanguard except a plug pull. SOE is at the very least, considering merging down to a server or two before resorting to that, but once its down to one server with a dwindling population, what can be done?
This is heartbreaking... I dont care what the haters said, Vanguard was the best game i've ever played. I loved it from the start, and thought it was atleast 10x better than EQ2. I'm gonna miss the shit outta it, but your right, I just need to except it's fate and move on. I'm going to Darkfall. It looks like Darkfall has alot of similarities to Vanguard as far as size, shape and depth. I took a few months off of Vanguard to grind my RL stats up, so I'm glad i was spared some of the pain you guys have had to go thru. I think I'll go back in and give all my gold away, give away my house & sell all my gear, take one last ride on my widow and enjoy a few more sunsets, but idk, the pain may be too much to bear...
If you liked Vanguard, I wouldn't say Darkfall is the answer. No, not because of the PvP angle, but while the feel of the world is very old school and would probably appeal, especially the open connected world aspect, the community is full of raging manchildren and is on the whole pretty terrible. Considering Vanguard had a somewhat decent community, this is going to be a disappointing revelation after dropping $50 on the client.
SoE raised the monthly fee of station pass when they added Vanguard. They would have to lower it again if they dropped Vanguard without adding something new.
If another game challenges EQ2's success, then perhaps $OE will be forced to invest in VG.
Soe is not going to invest in Vanguard. If that was ever the plan they would have done so the moment they purchased it, which is not what happened. Their first action was to move the best talent off the team to other soe projects. That is not something a company trying to revive a project would do. Taking away resources is not the path to fixing something and I think that made soes intentions very clear from the start.
There is no catch 22, because soe decided on a course of action years ago. When EQ2 crashes you can bet your bank that soe will not run to vanguard as some sort of chance to revive their standing in the mmo genre.
Nothing is going to revive this game and people need to come to terms with that. The lead producer leaves the game without so much as a goodbye and the current lead developer is pulled away from the game to work on some other project and there is still hope something might turn around?
Enjoy Vanguard for what it is while you can, because it is not going to rebound.
Yes.
Please enough with the conspiracy theories about SOE's "motives". Vanguard was never a challenge to EQII, even if it were and would steal players from EQII, how would SOE steal from itself? What kind of sense does it make to opt for good and worse, rather than good and better? Good and worse would somehow result in more overall subscribers than good and better? It especially doesn't make sense under the Station Pass umbrella.
There's no ill motives from SOE. There was no trickery, no deception, no lies. Never had SOE promised anything for Vanguard in the ways of an expansion, new hires, the fabled relaunch and all manners of other things people have clung to over the years. What they did do however was publicly dwindle the development team in the open, spoke years ago about purposefully reducing subscriber revenue to opt for other revenues like micropayments (Live Gamer), and sweep Vanguard into the corner of their yearly conference.
I suppose all SOE hasn't done is say blatantly "We really aren't supporting this game. Like it as is or leave." But really, they shouldn't have to say that. It should be evident. I find it nuts that there's -still- people that have faith in this game becoming anything more than what it is right now.
There's nothin' left for Vanguard except a plug pull. SOE is at the very least, considering merging down to a server or two before resorting to that, but once its down to one server with a dwindling population, what can be done?
First off you are very incorrect about what SOE promised as part of their ownership of Vanguard
Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.
So yes SOE was completely full of shit to the players and made big promises.
However I think what soe did was a very smart business move for soe, but at the expense of the players and the genre. What soe must have spent on sigil is small in comparison to what they protected in their playerbase of the everquest games.
If Vanguard was a success and took any decent amount of eq/eq2s population long term (which it did take a large portion of short term), then that is a net loss for soe, because they had to split those revenues with sigil. Every EQ2 dollar that went to a sigil owned vanguard was a net loss for soe. How would a successful release of Vanguard help soe? It would not.
Once soe purchased vanguard, what incentive was there to try to make that game a success? The only crowd they can attract is their own playerbase which just spreads their communities even thinner and makes problems for healthy server populations in the everquest realms while increasing the number of developers to support a third fantasy mmo. Vanguard did not have the quality to attract players from other mmos and quality isn't exactly something soe has the time or talent to deliver.
A fully functional vanguard was never in the best interest of soe and still isn't. What soe did was smart for their business, but at the same time I do not think it is something soe should be applauded for, because overall it is very bad for the players. They get to pay full price for a game that has been sentenced to death the moment it was purchased and instead of vanguard getting a dignified and quiet death, it has been dragged through the streets so as to scare the death out of any other developer that might try to make a game with similar mechanics as this.
Call it a conspiracy theory if you want, but when the facts are examined I don't see how any other conclusion is plausible. Soe made big promises of supporting the game to the same level as their other titles, but their first action was to strip the team of its most important assets and move them to other soe projects. What happened to Vanguard is exactly what many people said would happen the moment soe got involved.
First off you are very incorrect about what SOE promised as part of their ownership of Vanguard
Link Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.
So yes SOE was completely full of shit to the players and made big promises.
However I think what soe did was a very smart business move for soe, but at the expense of the players and the genre. What soe must have spent on sigil is small in comparison to what they protected in their playerbase of the everquest games.
If Vanguard was a success and took any decent amount of eq/eq2s population long term (which it did take a large portion of short term), then that is a net loss for soe, because they had to split those revenues with sigil. Every EQ2 dollar that went to a sigil owned vanguard was a net loss for soe. How would a successful release of Vanguard help soe? It would not. Once soe purchased vanguard, what incentive was there to try to make that game a success? The only crowd they can attract is their own playerbase which just spreads their communities even thinner and makes problems for healthy server populations in the everquest realms while increasing the number of developers to support a third fantasy mmo. Vanguard did not have the quality to attract players from other mmos and quality isn't exactly something soe has the time or talent to deliver. A fully functional vanguard was never in the best interest of soe and still isn't. What soe did was smart for their business, but at the same time I do not think it is something soe should be applauded for, because overall it is very bad for the players. They get to pay full price for a game that has been sentenced to death the moment it was purchased and instead of vanguard getting a dignified and quiet death, it has been dragged through the streets so as to scare the death out of any other developer that might try to make a game with similar mechanics as this.
Call it a conspiracy theory if you want, but when the facts are examined I don't see how any other conclusion is plausible. Soe made big promises of supporting the game to the same level as their other titles, but their first action was to strip the team of its most important assets and move them to other soe projects. What happened to Vanguard is exactly what many people said would happen the moment soe got involved.
No arguments there, I'd either never seen or forgotten what Smedley said/promised. At the time I'm pretty sure all the craze was Brad's post about "relaunching", and people were clinging to that a lot more than an idea of future expansions and so on.
So SOE did break promises, and because of that those that play and expect things aren't completely at fault...but the fact remains the same that the players by now should know better.
As for whether or not SOE had any motives to -not- make Vanguard a success, yes those are conspiracy theories. Prior to acquiring Sigil, SOE was merely co-publisher. They didn't control any design decisions. So whether or not it was in their interest then to see Vanguard fail or not is inconsequential. Common sense dictates if they wanted it to fail, they wouldn't have given Sigil the money needed to keep the game afloat after Microsoft, extend it a few months during the end of beta AND lend employees during that time frame.
They also could've bought Vanguard as they did, and pulled the plug day one if eliminating competition was the true objective.
Of course SOE hasn't done anything to make Vanguard purposefully crappy. It was crappy when it was bought by them. I imagine by taking in those 50 employees, the bulk of which stayed with Vanguard until that number was halved again, they felt its subscription bleeding was at a clot or nearly there. Obviously that wasn't true and they ended up having to server merge and so on.
Alas, no matter how you spin it, it makes no sense to insinuate SOE is wasting money and time sabotaging Vanguard. If you want to kill a baby, you don't save the mother's life in the third trimester, deliver the baby yourself, and then raise the child to an analagous age a lot of MMOs don't make it to.
There's no conspiracy. If Vanguard held on to a reasonable amount of subscribers, there'd probably be an expansion. There'd be a bigger staff. But since little to no one liked the game, its in the state that its in.
SoE raised the monthly fee of station pass when they added Vanguard. They would have to lower it again if they dropped Vanguard without adding something new.
I've always thought they had a little wiggle room with that one. Mainly because Pirates was coming out at around the same time of the hike. Now that time has passed and they've already subtracted Matrix, I believe they could get away trimming Vanguard as well. Come next year with DC Universe and the Matrix this definitely won't be a consideration when it comes to whether or not to chop Vanguard.
Link Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.
So yes SOE was completely full of shit to the players and made big promises.
This would be the traditional practice of SoE as anyone who has any minimal dealing with SoE would testify.
However I think what soe did was a very smart business move for soe, but at the expense of the players and the genre. What soe must have spent on sigil is small in comparison to what they protected in their playerbase of the everquest games.
Yes, very smart move on their part. I recall hearing rumors at the time that Brad sold it for a minimal amount.
If Vanguard was a success and took any decent amount of eq/eq2s population long term (which it did take a large portion of short term), then that is a net loss for soe, because they had to split those revenues with sigil. Every EQ2 dollar that went to a sigil owned vanguard was a net loss for soe. How would a successful release of Vanguard help soe? It would not. Once soe purchased vanguard, what incentive was there to try to make that game a success? The only crowd they can attract is their own playerbase which just spreads their communities even thinner and makes problems for healthy server populations in the everquest realms while increasing the number of developers to support a third fantasy mmo. Vanguard did not have the quality to attract players from other mmos and quality isn't exactly something soe has the time or talent to deliver.
Yes, the cannibalization of their existing customer base would have been an issue for SoE.
A fully functional vanguard was never in the best interest of soe and still isn't. What soe did was smart for their business, but at the same time I do not think it is something soe should be applauded for, because overall it is very bad for the players. They get to pay full price for a game that has been sentenced to death the moment it was purchased and instead of vanguard getting a dignified and quiet death, it has been dragged through the streets so as to scare the death out of any other developer that might try to make a game with similar mechanics as this. Call it a conspiracy theory if you want, but when the facts are examined I don't see how any other conclusion is plausible. Soe made big promises of supporting the game to the same level as their other titles, but their first action was to strip the team of its most important assets and move them to other soe projects. What happened to Vanguard is exactly what many people said would happen the moment soe got involved.
Now this was a long time ago, but to try and explain my comments above and to add a caveat to the points below, this all occurred a long time ago and it's getting a bit difficult to find the articles on the net for me now :
Both Brad and Smedley were part of Verant Interactive when they started out in 1997 (? - not sure of the exact dates since this was over 10 years ago). Smedley moved to SoE and Brad continued to develop EQ. VI was part of SoE but was later sold to Brad prior to launch since SoE had considered EQ to have gone way over budget and would not be successful. SoE was of course wrong. EQ was later bought back by SoE and VI was basically scrapped as a company.
The reason I state the above is because a few years into EQ's life under SoE, Brad stepped up and said that he was going to redo EQ in the way that it should have been done, e.g. with new graphics, streamlined gameplay, better UI etc. And that the game would be called Vanguard. I remember this clearly since by that time quite a few of my guildies and friends in EQ were so sick and tired of SoE's treatment of its customers that we were already ready to quit EQ; we were literally ready to hit the "Cancel Subscription" button by that time due to the grade A manure that SoE was dishing out as customer support. We stayed with EQ since we thought that once Vanguard came out we would just jump ship. Mind you, some of my friends at the time were from EQ closed beta and were chummy with the devs of Vanguard on a personal basis so we would receive inside word every now and then about the development of Vanguard and we liked what we heard.
Then the news started to leak that Sigil was a sinking ship. When we queried, the main reason we uncovered was mainly due to the vision of the game itself that was causing problems. In short Brad really did want to make Vanguard into a perfected EQ, i.e. grade A graphics, storyline, quests, raid mechanics, class/skill/race detailed effects, etc. I recall just about everyone panicked since, at the time, this would have been very difficult to do/balance out on a technical level, not to mention that there's no such thing as perfection.
When SoE stepped in, it was due to the financial problems of Sigil and no one was under any real illusion about the outcome of Vanguard when that happened. After all, why would SoE want to sustain 3 mmorpgs' that were basically similar to each other, i.e. EQ, Vanguard and EQ2 (which was in development at the time). It would definitely make more business sense to buy out the competitor and then kill the product to minimize, or eliminate, the potential cannibalization of the existing customer base. At the same time, the product would also be readily available if something unforeseeable occurs and EQ/EQ2 should fail, i.e. Vanguard could always act as a backup product for SoE.
Vanguard was basically dead the moment Brad sold it to Smedley.
Personally, I think he vanished from the public eye because he finally realised that his uncompromising stance on his vision for Vanguard was what caused the loss not just to himself but to a whole lot of other people who believed in him. There's nothing wrong on having a dream or vision, but sometimes, one must compromise and bend to the will of reality which he was clearly not willing to do until it was too late.
That's just my 2cp worth from what my alcohol addled memory can recall from those days. Any devs from the old VI / Sigil days around that want to chip in maybe ? Lol I think your NDA would have long expired by now so you can speak your mind.
First off you are very incorrect about what SOE promised as part of their ownership of Vanguard
Link Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.
So yes SOE was completely full of shit to the players and made big promises.
However I think what soe did was a very smart business move for soe, but at the expense of the players and the genre. What soe must have spent on sigil is small in comparison to what they protected in their playerbase of the everquest games.
If Vanguard was a success and took any decent amount of eq/eq2s population long term (which it did take a large portion of short term), then that is a net loss for soe, because they had to split those revenues with sigil. Every EQ2 dollar that went to a sigil owned vanguard was a net loss for soe. How would a successful release of Vanguard help soe? It would not. Once soe purchased vanguard, what incentive was there to try to make that game a success? The only crowd they can attract is their own playerbase which just spreads their communities even thinner and makes problems for healthy server populations in the everquest realms while increasing the number of developers to support a third fantasy mmo. Vanguard did not have the quality to attract players from other mmos and quality isn't exactly something soe has the time or talent to deliver. A fully functional vanguard was never in the best interest of soe and still isn't. What soe did was smart for their business, but at the same time I do not think it is something soe should be applauded for, because overall it is very bad for the players. They get to pay full price for a game that has been sentenced to death the moment it was purchased and instead of vanguard getting a dignified and quiet death, it has been dragged through the streets so as to scare the death out of any other developer that might try to make a game with similar mechanics as this.
Call it a conspiracy theory if you want, but when the facts are examined I don't see how any other conclusion is plausible. Soe made big promises of supporting the game to the same level as their other titles, but their first action was to strip the team of its most important assets and move them to other soe projects. What happened to Vanguard is exactly what many people said would happen the moment soe got involved.
No arguments there, I'd either never seen or forgotten what Smedley said/promised. At the time I'm pretty sure all the craze was Brad's post about "relaunching", and people were clinging to that a lot more than an idea of future expansions and so on.
So SOE did break promises, and because of that those that play and expect things aren't completely at fault...but the fact remains the same that the players by now should know better.
As for whether or not SOE had any motives to -not- make Vanguard a success, yes those are conspiracy theories. Prior to acquiring Sigil, SOE was merely co-publisher. They didn't control any design decisions. So whether or not it was in their interest then to see Vanguard fail or not is inconsequential. Common sense dictates if they wanted it to fail, they wouldn't have given Sigil the money needed to keep the game afloat after Microsoft, extend it a few months during the end of beta AND lend employees during that time frame.
They also could've bought Vanguard as they did, and pulled the plug day one if eliminating competition was the true objective.
Of course SOE hasn't done anything to make Vanguard purposefully crappy. It was crappy when it was bought by them. I imagine by taking in those 50 employees, the bulk of which stayed with Vanguard until that number was halved again, they felt its subscription bleeding was at a clot or nearly there. Obviously that wasn't true and they ended up having to server merge and so on.
Alas, no matter how you spin it, it makes no sense to insinuate SOE is wasting money and time sabotaging Vanguard. If you want to kill a baby, you don't save the mother's life in the third trimester, deliver the baby yourself, and then raise the child to an analagous age a lot of MMOs don't make it to.
There's no conspiracy. If Vanguard held on to a reasonable amount of subscribers, there'd probably be an expansion. There'd be a bigger staff. But since little to no one liked the game, its in the state that its in.
I totally agree with all the hype about the mythical "relaunch" and how everyone thought that would be some salvation to the game. Other than soe talking about the publishing angle they were going to pursue, I think this was wild speculation based on Brads ramblings and anyone with a clue knew it would never happen.
As for your conspiracy claims, let me just present some things to you and you answer the question yourself as others have.
Microsoft was pulling funding from sigil for obvious reasons.
Sigil was looking for a new source of funding.
Soe invested in sigil to keep in running
Soe could not simply "kill" the project, because microsoft still owned the project.
The reason sigil was forced to release early was that soe cut funding.
Soe loaned sigil two graphic developers for a week or two right before launch. Otherwise they remained hands off and let Sigil run exactly as they did while under Microsoft.
I'm not making crazy assumption here. No black helicopters, no men in black or things of that nature. That is what happened in a nut shell. This would be the equivalent of a company investing in God and Heroes without making any changes to perpetual entertainment.
Soe held the purse strings for the lifeblood of Sigil and they could demand any terms they wanted, because Sigil had nothing to bargain with. Soe in effect could demand whatever they wanted and they chose to let things remain the same and cut funding when they chose.
Looking at that, what company in their right mind would bail out a failed project only to do nothing to resolve the issues that put it into that position? If you have an answer to that one I would love to hear it.
Just like you said, Vanguard was in bad shape when soe bought into the project. Everyone knew that, but soe invested into a game and made no changes?
Soe wasn't wasting money to sabotage Vanguard, because they didn't have to sabotage it. All soe had to do was let things run exactly as they were, cut funding when they wanted and failure was certain and that is exactly what happened. Soe did not have to spend much to prevent another company from investing and making the right changes to vanguard. A healthy vanguard was very much a threat to EQ/EQ2. I would not doubt they have made back all of their initial investment through vanguard subs and far more than that in retained everquest players.
Once vanguard folded, soe could scoop up the assets for pennies on the dollar and hire a whatever developers they liked to work on their other games, which they did. The failure of Vanguard was a win win situation for soe with very little spent.
Now if you have anything that suggests soe was spending their money wisely by reviving this project and demanding changes be made for their investment then I would love to hear it explained. If you can detail a situation where a successful vanguard was a benefit to soe (not a threat), again I would love to hear it described, but I think we both know that isn't the case.
I don't think anything I have said is untrue and soes actions (and non-actions) support everything I have said.
You call it conspiracy, but I call it looking at the available information and seeing a very plausible situation. So far you have offered nothing to refute my claims other than trying to make it look like crazy talk.
I bought this game the day it came out, and stuck with it for a while until the bugs finally got to me. I came back a few times, just to see if it had improved (and it had, quite a bit), but it never felt like something worth spending much money on. It was a great idea that just never really came to fruition. I am frankly surprised that Sony hasn't pulled the plug on this game a LONG time ago. There is no way Vanguard is profitable, and I think some credit should be given to Sony for at least trying to save it from oblivion.
I totally agree with all the hype about the mythical "relaunch" and how everyone thought that would be some salvation to the game. Other than soe talking about the publishing angle they were going to pursue, I think this was wild speculation based on Brads ramblings and anyone with a clue knew it would never happen.
As for your conspiracy claims, let me just present some things to you and you answer the question yourself as others have.
Microsoft was pulling funding from sigil for obvious reasons. Sigil was looking for a new source of funding. Soe invested in sigil to keep in running Soe could not simply "kill" the project, because microsoft still owned the project. The reason sigil was forced to release early was that soe cut funding.
Soe loaned sigil two graphic developers for a week or two right before launch. Otherwise they remained hands off and let Sigil run exactly as they did while under Microsoft.
I'm not making crazy assumption here. No black helicopters, no men in black or things of that nature. That is what happened in a nut shell. This would be the equivalent of a company investing in God and Heroes without making any changes to perpetual entertainment. Soe held the purse strings for the lifeblood of Sigil and they could demand any terms they wanted, because Sigil had nothing to bargain with. Soe in effect could demand whatever they wanted and they chose to let things remain the same and cut funding when they chose. Looking at that, what company in their right mind would bail out a failed project only to do nothing to resolve the issues that put it into that position? If you have an answer to that one I would love to hear it.
Just like you said, Vanguard was in bad shape when soe bought into the project. Everyone knew that, but soe invested into a game and made no changes? Soe wasn't wasting money to sabotage Vanguard, because they didn't have to sabotage it. All soe had to do was let things run exactly as they were, cut funding when they wanted and failure was certain and that is exactly what happened. Soe did not have to spend much to prevent another company from investing and making the right changes to vanguard. A healthy vanguard was very much a threat to EQ/EQ2. I would not doubt they have made back all of their initial investment through vanguard subs and far more than that in retained everquest players. Once vanguard folded, soe could scoop up the assets for pennies on the dollar and hire a whatever developers they liked to work on their other games, which they did. The failure of Vanguard was a win win situation for soe with very little spent.
Now if you have anything that suggests soe was spending their money wisely by reviving this project and demanding changes be made for their investment then I would love to hear it explained. If you can detail a situation where a successful vanguard was a benefit to soe (not a threat), again I would love to hear it described, but I think we both know that isn't the case. I don't think anything I have said is untrue and soes actions (and non-actions) support everything I have said. You call it conspiracy, but I call it looking at the available information and seeing a very plausible situation. So far you have offered nothing to refute my claims other than trying to make it look like crazy talk.
If you read Brad's f13 interview again you'll gather the following: 1. SOE didn't fund the purchase from Microsoft, independent investors did. 2. The co-publishing agreement occurred -after- Microsoft was bought out obviously.
So I'm not sure what you mean by "Soe could not simply "kill" the project, because microsoft still owned the project." Because when SOE became involved, Microsoft was already out of the picture and Sigil owned Vanguard.
SOE's role in the co-publishing agreement was described as: "As co-publisher of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil is in charge of marketing and PR, while maintaining responsibility for game development, community relations, media relations, customer support, and quality assurance. SOE, on the other hand, will provide distribution, marketing, hosting and back-end support -- including billing and technical support -- for the game."
Considering Brad was marketing, PR, community relations, media relations and customer support, Sigil had no responsibilities except to develop the game. Well, there was quality assurance, but we know about that one guy.
SOE on the other hand was responsible for all the heavy lifting. Manufacturing the boxes and distributing, doing the -real- marketing we can assume, hosting, the -real- support and all that jazz.
So if SOE backed out of co-publishing Vanguard, how would that not have killed it? You could argue Sigil had enough money to self-publish, but we know that isn't true given they ran out of money before even completing their one real responsibility, developing it. You could argue another publisher would've entered a co-publishing agreement, or that Sigil would've lowered their expectations and settled for being acquired by a big publisher.
All of that mess aside, what remains inexplicable about your conspiracy theory is why after SOE -did- come to own Vanguard, they decided to keep it running instead of shutting it down. Is it that they enjoy wasting money, resources and time I suppose?
You argue that Vanguard stands to cannibalize EQ and EQII population, which I still don't understand given an entity with many mouths but one stomach wouldn't care which mouth the food goes in. But assuming cannibalism was a real threat, why would SOE be fine with thousands of subscribers cannibalized when it could be 0 at the snap of a finger?
It's like you're advocating torture is swifter and more cost effective than rendering death. That its easier to shackle, feed and water a threat for years than it is to kill it. It makes no sense. If SOE's goal was to see Vanguard fail, what better failure than immediate cancellation the day Sigil was purchased?
To me, there's no grand conspiracy theory needed to explain why SOE didn't carry through on promises of treating Vanguard the same as the EQs. Vanguard continued to tank in sub counts in ways Smedley hadn't expected, period. I believe he had half of Sigil fired and took on 50 because he felt he could sustain 50 with what Vanguard was earning. Certainly 50 couldn't pumped out expansions and so on. But as subscriber counts dropped, staff sizes dropped, and over time Vanguard became this. It wasn't some huge, senseless conspiracy theory of a ploy from a start, it was simply a bad investment.
All things said, to have a point you'd have to explain why Vanguard as a threat, which I don't believe it to be to SOE, is better alive and suffering than dead. That's the center of why your argument makes no sense to me.
You argue that Vanguard stands to cannibalize EQ and EQII population, which I still don't understand given an entity with many mouths but one stomach wouldn't care which mouth the food goes in. But assuming cannibalism was a real threat, why would SOE be fine with thousands of subscribers cannibalized when it could be 0 at the snap of a finger? It's like you're advocating torture is swifter and more cost effective than rendering death. That its easier to shackle, feed and water a threat for years than it is to kill it. It makes no sense. If SOE's goal was to see Vanguard fail, what better failure than immediate cancellation the day Sigil was purchased?
Don't know what Daffid's response will be but, I used to work for a company operating multiple radio stations. We always tried to keep the cannibalization of listeners down to as minimal as possible simply because each station had its own budget and revenue targets to achieve. If a listener moved from one station to another then it would be a loss in the books of the first station which would not look good since the Board would do a review at the end of the year to see which station was profitable and which wasn't. Those which were under-performing would have their budget cut at best, and at worse would be closed. That's why cannibalization is not something a company such as SoE wants as a general rule.
At the time Vanguard was developed it was touted as the next generation of EQ; I recall reading some pr crap from Brad stating as much. IMHO, SoE kept hold of Vanguard simply because they wanted to have something to fall back on just in case EQ2 failed (at the time Vanguard and EQ2 were going head to head in terms of the next best mmorpg). For all intents and purposes, Vanguard's design was excellent...on paper. If I were sitting in Smedley's chair (and I positively hate myself for even typing that out), I would likely make the same choice, i.e. buy it out since it was at least half done, keep it on the back burner with minimal opex; If I need it I'll whip it out and work on it. If I don't, I'll just kill it somewhere down the road. Guess the end of the road is getting closer now if not already here.
To me, there's no grand conspiracy theory needed to explain why SOE didn't carry through on promises of treating Vanguard the same as the EQs. Vanguard continued to tank in sub counts in ways Smedley hadn't expected, period. I believe he had half of Sigil fired and took on 50 because he felt he could sustain 50 with what Vanguard was earning. Certainly 50 couldn't pumped out expansions and so on. But as subscriber counts dropped, staff sizes dropped, and over time Vanguard became this. It wasn't some huge, senseless conspiracy theory of a ploy from a start, it was simply a bad investment.
Don't really understand why anyone would say there's a conspiracy going on. The simple fact is that it was a straight off business transaction, i.e. Brad made the wrong choices and screwed it up - SoE jumped in based on potential commercial profitability and the elimination of a potential competitor. The product is no longer viable due to the changing market (read WoW and the shift in game play/styles) so it's just time to kill it off. Without a doubt it is more than likely that SoE has already recoup the money spent on the buy-out by now, so the only question that needs to be asked is, if you're Smedley, "Do I really want to resurrect this product at $x for an uncertain return, when the entire market seems to be moving in a different direction or will it be cheaper to just start over on something else ?"
All things said, to have a point you'd have to explain why Vanguard as a threat, which I don't believe it to be to SOE, is better alive and suffering than dead. That's the center of why your argument makes no sense to me.
Besides, imho, I believe no one was under any illusion as to what was going to happen the moment SoE touched the product. All those who were playing EQ likely just thought "Bah, why bother starting over on Vanguard when I'm just going to get the same shite from SoE as I'm getting already on EQ ? Might as well just stay or go somewhere else."
I think Brad should buy VG back. Get some funding for a team. And finish what they started. SOE purchased it for several million.
Or SOe should make it F2P, it worked fine for DDO and Vanguard would really kick games like RoM and Rappelz where it hurts.
VG is really on the last run now unless someone does something and it is sad since it is actually really good after they fixed the bugs.
Brad isn't innocent to this, his team were really lousy programmers and that is why the game never became a hit. SOE of course shouldn't have released it in the shape it was either, I don't know what they were thinking.
You argue that Vanguard stands to cannibalize EQ and EQII population, which I still don't understand given an entity with many mouths but one stomach wouldn't care which mouth the food goes in. But assuming cannibalism was a real threat, why would SOE be fine with thousands of subscribers cannibalized when it could be 0 at the snap of a finger? It's like you're advocating torture is swifter and more cost effective than rendering death. That its easier to shackle, feed and water a threat for years than it is to kill it. It makes no sense. If SOE's goal was to see Vanguard fail, what better failure than immediate cancellation the day Sigil was purchased?
Don't know what Daffid's response will be but, I used to work for a company operating multiple radio stations. We always tried to keep the cannibalization of listeners down to as minimal as possible simply because each station had its own budget and revenue targets to achieve. If a listener moved from one station to another then it would be a loss in the books of the first station which would not look good since the Board would do a review at the end of the year to see which station was profitable and which wasn't. Those which were under-performing would have their budget cut at best, and at worse would be closed. That's why cannibalization is not something a company such as SoE wants as a general rule.
At the time Vanguard was developed it was touted as the next generation of EQ; I recall reading some pr crap from Brad stating as much. IMHO, SoE kept hold of Vanguard simply because they wanted to have something to fall back on just in case EQ2 failed (at the time Vanguard and EQ2 were going head to head in terms of the next best mmorpg). For all intents and purposes, Vanguard's design was excellent...on paper. If I were sitting in Smedley's chair (and I positively hate myself for even typing that out), I would likely make the same choice, i.e. buy it out since it was at least half done, keep it on the back burner with minimal opex; If I need it I'll whip it out and work on it. If I don't, I'll just kill it somewhere down the road. Guess the end of the road is getting closer now if not already here.
To me, there's no grand conspiracy theory needed to explain why SOE didn't carry through on promises of treating Vanguard the same as the EQs. Vanguard continued to tank in sub counts in ways Smedley hadn't expected, period. I believe he had half of Sigil fired and took on 50 because he felt he could sustain 50 with what Vanguard was earning. Certainly 50 couldn't pumped out expansions and so on. But as subscriber counts dropped, staff sizes dropped, and over time Vanguard became this. It wasn't some huge, senseless conspiracy theory of a ploy from a start, it was simply a bad investment.
Don't really understand why anyone would say there's a conspiracy going on. The simple fact is that it was a straight off business transaction, i.e. Brad made the wrong choices and screwed it up - SoE jumped in based on potential commercial profitability and the elimination of a potential competitor. The product is no longer viable due to the changing market (read WoW and the shift in game play/styles) so it's just time to kill it off. Without a doubt it is more than likely that SoE has already recoup the money spent on the buy-out by now, so the only question that needs to be asked is, if you're Smedley, "Do I really want to resurrect this product at $x for an uncertain return, when the entire market seems to be moving in a different direction or will it be cheaper to just start over on something else ?"
All things said, to have a point you'd have to explain why Vanguard as a threat, which I don't believe it to be to SOE, is better alive and suffering than dead. That's the center of why your argument makes no sense to me.
Besides, imho, I believe no one was under any illusion as to what was going to happen the moment SoE touched the product. All those who were playing EQ likely just thought "Bah, why bother starting over on Vanguard when I'm just going to get the same shite from SoE as I'm getting already on EQ ? Might as well just stay or go somewhere else."
I highly doubt a company you worked at acquired and operated radio stations purposefully to under-fund, under-resource, and consequently subsist as the biggest blemish of all its kind as a strategic business decision.
Premium television is a better analogy since its per channel and subscription not impressions based. A perfect analogy since cable and satellite companies tend to offer the channels either individually, or packaged together, as with individual sub fees or Station Pass.
Now would it make any kind of sense if Time Warner were to purposefully make Cinemax crappy just so it wouldn't steal viewers from HBO?
No. There's an interest in both doing well. They're sold in a package together, marketed and listed in line-ups together. Just as Vanguard was included on Station Pass, and appears on SOE's websites with the EQs.
Again it simply makes no sense to believe SOE thinks of Vanguard as a threat...why keep it alive? Why'd they do the WinBack campaign for it which was -specifically- geared towards gaining subscribers? Why all the free months of re-opened accounts for old players? Come on now, the argument of SOE -not- wanting Vanguard to get subs for fear of cannibalism makes no sense at all.
As far as VG as a backup plan to EQII failing...highly doubtful. It's very difficult to revive a MMORPG and infact its arguably never been done. If SOE knew how to revive MMOs dependably, then they'd just revive EQII when it failed rather than switch to a more expensive to develop for, and more problematic VG. And they'd have revived all their other failing MMO properties.
The last bit I agree with. Smedley has an obvious question in his mind, but we don't know what it is. Does he still believe Vanguard can make it? Nah. Only the most hopeful would believe that. More than likely he's waiting on a circumstance unknown to us to go ahead and pull the plug. I imagine something will occur around the time The Agency or DC Universe is due release.
I think Brad should buy VG back. Get some funding for a team. And finish what they started. SOE purchased it for several million.
Or SOe should make it F2P, it worked fine for DDO and Vanguard would really kick games like RoM and Rappelz where it hurts.
VG is really on the last run now unless someone does something and it is sad since it is actually really good after they fixed the bugs.
Brad isn't innocent to this, his team were really lousy programmers and that is why the game never became a hit. SOE of course shouldn't have released it in the shape it was either, I don't know what they were thinking.
The problem with F2P MMOs is that they still need a business model.
Live Gamer if I understand it is just an auction/exchange. SOE earns something but they aren't doing direct sales nor do they have an inventory of infinite, specific items to sell to VG players. Could be wrong.
SOE would need to actually -develop- something like Turbine points, items and perks worth buying and etc. No small feat. Such content has to be steady and the equivalent to content updates.
I imagine F2P is ruled out due to the fact it means intermediary development before they could launch it. For all we know though, it could be on the backburner as a contingency plan. Afterall Smedley pledged subscriber payments would make up less and less of SOE's revenues until it was responsible for nill. So, if Vanguard were to continue, that does seem to be the path.
I have no access to SoE's business plans and all I was trying to say was that cannibalization is generally not wanted simply because each product/channel has it's own budget and targets. How SoE does their backend operations is beyond my purview and frankly I really couldn't care less about them. The radio stations were set up to make a profit individually since they were all based on format programming, e.g. Rock Vs Easy Listening. Everyone was supposed to turn a profit and not make a loss hence no cannibalization allowed. Each operated, in essence, as an individual corporate entity even though they were all controlled by 1 single company.
The examples of Cinemax & HBO both have different budgets and, as far as I know, do not operate under one single sheet. The satellite operator signs contracts with the providers to package the channels and the fees paid are based on subs for each individual channel(s). I know this for a fact since I drafted and negotiated quite a few of those contracts, even with those 2 you mentioned.
Why SoE did the win-back events ? I have no idea since I stopped reading anything about SoE past 2003 when I decided to just play the game and ignore everything else about them. But knowing how they operate, it was likely just one of those "Well, we're doing it for the rest might as well throw Vanguard in there too" kinda situation.
I also never argued that SoE feared Vanguard getting subs once it was under their control. All I was trying to say was that they likely do not want Vanguard taking existing subs from their other products if at all possible. Same as they would not be happy if EQ1 took subs from EQ2 or vice versa. The point is not to have a product 'steal' existing customers from another existing product because the bottom line in the books would be a zero increase in revenues. You want to have each product go out into the market and gain new subs.
I'm sorry but at the time when EQ2 and Vanguard were going head to head, lol EQ2 stood a very good chance of failing simply due to the fact that SoE was involved with it. Well, that was one of the main reasons anyway. It was a convoluted time but the essence was that Brad was literally going to give the old players what they wanted in terms of what EQ should be, in Vanguard plus improvements, while SoE was merely trying to rehash EQ with better graphics. At the time, if a revival was going to succeed, if EQ2 failed, it would have to be Vanguard since the popularity with the player base, at the time, was with Vanguard. This would be likely running through Smedley's head when the decision was made to buy Vanguard out.
This is of course, only my own thoughts on the matter but from the various EQ forums I was in, the various news articles I read, and the other EQ gamers I talked to, it all pointed to a general "Abandon Ship !" rally call from EQ the moment Vanguard was announced to be in development.
Comments
You are right, it fits in both logos. My mistake...
But anyway, regarding the first part of your comment, there are some AAA titles coming out in 2010 that will directly challenge EQ2's reign. One of them being Heroes of Telara, which just recently hired the former lead designer from EQ2, Scott Hartsman.
If another game challenges EQ2's success, then perhaps $OE will be forced to invest in VG.
I don't like SoE's decision to back off high-end raid content and to invest more in group content. From a raiders perspective, there is nothing good in that decision. I was looking forward to HoSS, Stirhaad and AAs. On the flip-side, I can see some logic in the decision because the barrier to entry problem with Vanguard is huge.
A new player coming into the game is faced with a huge challenge if they want to get leveled up and geared up to become a raider. The first problem is that the game is very top heavy in terms of population. Lower level players have a hard time finding groups to complete various quest-lines as they level up. The world is also huge and very spread-out... a more defined path (including some of the group content announced) would provide a clearer path for new players to follow.
It's a catch 22 with the limited resources of the team. If they continue to focus on the high level raid content, then Vanguard will not grow as new players simply can't, or aren't willing, to overcome the barriers to entry. If they focus on group content throughout all the levels they alienate all the high-end players that have been working hard to become ready for HoSS.
I simply don't think VG has been able to keep new players in the game. While my friends list has been pretty stable with folks that I've know over the past 3-years it's been very apparent that new player applicants to our guild, and other guilds, simply don't stick around much. When I leveled up, I leveled up with the bulk of Vanguards population. When a new player levels up, they are often leveling alone.
This is why they added mentoring, works to get low level people upa nd also allows higher level to explore missed content
I think maybe the reason tehy held off on Raid Content is because of a small team it was taking up all the time and no sign of it being ready
By scaling back and going for this episodic content they can finally add more frequent updates and also (possibly) work throough some of that nasty bugged code they still have from launch, once the code is optimised it makes adding new stuff easier as you dont have to worry about it bugging the current content
Anyway i left just after PotA, mainly due to being unable to get a high level group and the fact my guild got on way before I got home thus leaving me to grind Diplo and crafting as no space to adventure and PUG just wasnt happening
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/ab/Norsefire-logo.png
Soe is not going to invest in Vanguard. If that was ever the plan they would have done so the moment they purchased it, which is not what happened. Their first action was to move the best talent off the team to other soe projects. That is not something a company trying to revive a project would do. Taking away resources is not the path to fixing something and I think that made soes intentions very clear from the start.
There is no catch 22, because soe decided on a course of action years ago. When EQ2 crashes you can bet your bank that soe will not run to vanguard as some sort of chance to revive their standing in the mmo genre.
Nothing is going to revive this game and people need to come to terms with that. The lead producer leaves the game without so much as a goodbye and the current lead developer is pulled away from the game to work on some other project and there is still hope something might turn around?
Enjoy Vanguard for what it is while you can, because it is not going to rebound.
lol!soe plan never included mmo from the beginning,even everquest the first time was flatly refused
everquest team at the time 2 guy and a boss had to cuddle soe a lot to make everquest .soe was against it from the get go
soe never liked the mmo idea ,it was like that then it is still like that today,even with everquest huge success anybody would think
soe would have changed their mind espacially since one of their sub (everquest)was THE mmo game for a long while
and is still very popular,it would have even more player if soe hadnt pulled out of ebgame and national chain store
the new content supply .soe is still against mmo,if it was in their power they would supply game only for their console
it was like that back then its still like that today(back then it was playstation 1
today its playstation 3.)
eq would probably have triple or more amount of player if it was avail in chain store same with time card.
eq team will probably make a new eq3 or such and i can say they will have to fight tooth an nail and cuddle and convince the whole freaking way because the naysayer of everquest are still the same naysayer today.
no amount of success will convince them
same story for blizzard they got ton of success ,lol at activision lot of employe are hard at work trying to take over by any means necessary .the only dude having a lesh on those !"/$"/"%$? is their boss
and even him have to scare a few employe by trowing them out the the door to keep everybody inline
men activision employe are so busy trying to go in blizzard they suck at every game or endeavor they try
yep nature of thing same thing will soon happpen to arenanet.they publish guildwars2 probably have success
then ncsoft employe will be hard at work trying to get moved from ncsoft to arenanet
the fact is everybody want to be in the floating boat ,nobody want to look bad in a sinking ship
beuk!i feel like trowing up just speaking about it!
This is heartbreaking... I dont care what the haters said, Vanguard was the best game i've ever played. I loved it from the start, and thought it was atleast 10x better than EQ2. I'm gonna miss the shit outta it, but your right, I just need to except it's fate and move on. I'm going to Darkfall. It looks like Darkfall has alot of similarities to Vanguard as far as size, shape and depth. I took a few months off of Vanguard to grind my RL stats up, so I'm glad i was spared some of the pain you guys have had to go thru. I think I'll go back in and give all my gold away, give away my house & sell all my gear, take one last ride on my widow and enjoy a few more sunsets, but idk, the pain may be too much to bear...
Soe is not going to invest in Vanguard. If that was ever the plan they would have done so the moment they purchased it, which is not what happened. Their first action was to move the best talent off the team to other soe projects. That is not something a company trying to revive a project would do. Taking away resources is not the path to fixing something and I think that made soes intentions very clear from the start.
There is no catch 22, because soe decided on a course of action years ago. When EQ2 crashes you can bet your bank that soe will not run to vanguard as some sort of chance to revive their standing in the mmo genre.
Nothing is going to revive this game and people need to come to terms with that. The lead producer leaves the game without so much as a goodbye and the current lead developer is pulled away from the game to work on some other project and there is still hope something might turn around?
Enjoy Vanguard for what it is while you can, because it is not going to rebound.
Yes.
Please enough with the conspiracy theories about SOE's "motives". Vanguard was never a challenge to EQII, even if it were and would steal players from EQII, how would SOE steal from itself? What kind of sense does it make to opt for good and worse, rather than good and better? Good and worse would somehow result in more overall subscribers than good and better? It especially doesn't make sense under the Station Pass umbrella.
There's no ill motives from SOE. There was no trickery, no deception, no lies. Never had SOE promised anything for Vanguard in the ways of an expansion, new hires, the fabled relaunch and all manners of other things people have clung to over the years. What they did do however was publicly dwindle the development team in the open, spoke years ago about purposefully reducing subscriber revenue to opt for other revenues like micropayments (Live Gamer), and sweep Vanguard into the corner of their yearly conference.
I suppose all SOE hasn't done is say blatantly "We really aren't supporting this game. Like it as is or leave." But really, they shouldn't have to say that. It should be evident. I find it nuts that there's -still- people that have faith in this game becoming anything more than what it is right now.
There's nothin' left for Vanguard except a plug pull. SOE is at the very least, considering merging down to a server or two before resorting to that, but once its down to one server with a dwindling population, what can be done?
If SoE close down the servers i will buy VG.
If you liked Vanguard, I wouldn't say Darkfall is the answer. No, not because of the PvP angle, but while the feel of the world is very old school and would probably appeal, especially the open connected world aspect, the community is full of raging manchildren and is on the whole pretty terrible. Considering Vanguard had a somewhat decent community, this is going to be a disappointing revelation after dropping $50 on the client.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
i have to say its probably the best idea i saw .ask soe to sell vanguard to someone else instead of closing it or making it suffer a slow death
but then soe wont do that just in case the buyer really find a fix and turn a lemon into a lamborgini
there are lot of genious out there .and soe isnt a company to shoot their own leg
SoE raised the monthly fee of station pass when they added Vanguard. They would have to lower it again if they dropped Vanguard without adding something new.
I am thinking that VG will get unplugged around the time that the new SOE games launch. Such a shame, so much potential that will never be realized.
Soe is not going to invest in Vanguard. If that was ever the plan they would have done so the moment they purchased it, which is not what happened. Their first action was to move the best talent off the team to other soe projects. That is not something a company trying to revive a project would do. Taking away resources is not the path to fixing something and I think that made soes intentions very clear from the start.
There is no catch 22, because soe decided on a course of action years ago. When EQ2 crashes you can bet your bank that soe will not run to vanguard as some sort of chance to revive their standing in the mmo genre.
Nothing is going to revive this game and people need to come to terms with that. The lead producer leaves the game without so much as a goodbye and the current lead developer is pulled away from the game to work on some other project and there is still hope something might turn around?
Enjoy Vanguard for what it is while you can, because it is not going to rebound.
Yes.
Please enough with the conspiracy theories about SOE's "motives". Vanguard was never a challenge to EQII, even if it were and would steal players from EQII, how would SOE steal from itself? What kind of sense does it make to opt for good and worse, rather than good and better? Good and worse would somehow result in more overall subscribers than good and better? It especially doesn't make sense under the Station Pass umbrella.
There's no ill motives from SOE. There was no trickery, no deception, no lies. Never had SOE promised anything for Vanguard in the ways of an expansion, new hires, the fabled relaunch and all manners of other things people have clung to over the years. What they did do however was publicly dwindle the development team in the open, spoke years ago about purposefully reducing subscriber revenue to opt for other revenues like micropayments (Live Gamer), and sweep Vanguard into the corner of their yearly conference.
I suppose all SOE hasn't done is say blatantly "We really aren't supporting this game. Like it as is or leave." But really, they shouldn't have to say that. It should be evident. I find it nuts that there's -still- people that have faith in this game becoming anything more than what it is right now.
There's nothin' left for Vanguard except a plug pull. SOE is at the very least, considering merging down to a server or two before resorting to that, but once its down to one server with a dwindling population, what can be done?
First off you are very incorrect about what SOE promised as part of their ownership of Vanguard
Link
Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.
So yes SOE was completely full of shit to the players and made big promises.
However I think what soe did was a very smart business move for soe, but at the expense of the players and the genre. What soe must have spent on sigil is small in comparison to what they protected in their playerbase of the everquest games.
If Vanguard was a success and took any decent amount of eq/eq2s population long term (which it did take a large portion of short term), then that is a net loss for soe, because they had to split those revenues with sigil. Every EQ2 dollar that went to a sigil owned vanguard was a net loss for soe. How would a successful release of Vanguard help soe? It would not.
Once soe purchased vanguard, what incentive was there to try to make that game a success? The only crowd they can attract is their own playerbase which just spreads their communities even thinner and makes problems for healthy server populations in the everquest realms while increasing the number of developers to support a third fantasy mmo. Vanguard did not have the quality to attract players from other mmos and quality isn't exactly something soe has the time or talent to deliver.
A fully functional vanguard was never in the best interest of soe and still isn't. What soe did was smart for their business, but at the same time I do not think it is something soe should be applauded for, because overall it is very bad for the players. They get to pay full price for a game that has been sentenced to death the moment it was purchased and instead of vanguard getting a dignified and quiet death, it has been dragged through the streets so as to scare the death out of any other developer that might try to make a game with similar mechanics as this.
Call it a conspiracy theory if you want, but when the facts are examined I don't see how any other conclusion is plausible. Soe made big promises of supporting the game to the same level as their other titles, but their first action was to strip the team of its most important assets and move them to other soe projects. What happened to Vanguard is exactly what many people said would happen the moment soe got involved.
I think Brad should buy VG back. Get some funding for a team. And finish what they started. SOE purchased it for several million.
No arguments there, I'd either never seen or forgotten what Smedley said/promised. At the time I'm pretty sure all the craze was Brad's post about "relaunching", and people were clinging to that a lot more than an idea of future expansions and so on.
So SOE did break promises, and because of that those that play and expect things aren't completely at fault...but the fact remains the same that the players by now should know better.
As for whether or not SOE had any motives to -not- make Vanguard a success, yes those are conspiracy theories. Prior to acquiring Sigil, SOE was merely co-publisher. They didn't control any design decisions. So whether or not it was in their interest then to see Vanguard fail or not is inconsequential. Common sense dictates if they wanted it to fail, they wouldn't have given Sigil the money needed to keep the game afloat after Microsoft, extend it a few months during the end of beta AND lend employees during that time frame.
They also could've bought Vanguard as they did, and pulled the plug day one if eliminating competition was the true objective.
Of course SOE hasn't done anything to make Vanguard purposefully crappy. It was crappy when it was bought by them. I imagine by taking in those 50 employees, the bulk of which stayed with Vanguard until that number was halved again, they felt its subscription bleeding was at a clot or nearly there. Obviously that wasn't true and they ended up having to server merge and so on.
Alas, no matter how you spin it, it makes no sense to insinuate SOE is wasting money and time sabotaging Vanguard. If you want to kill a baby, you don't save the mother's life in the third trimester, deliver the baby yourself, and then raise the child to an analagous age a lot of MMOs don't make it to.
There's no conspiracy. If Vanguard held on to a reasonable amount of subscribers, there'd probably be an expansion. There'd be a bigger staff. But since little to no one liked the game, its in the state that its in.
I've always thought they had a little wiggle room with that one. Mainly because Pirates was coming out at around the same time of the hike. Now that time has passed and they've already subtracted Matrix, I believe they could get away trimming Vanguard as well. Come next year with DC Universe and the Matrix this definitely won't be a consideration when it comes to whether or not to chop Vanguard.
Now this was a long time ago, but to try and explain my comments above and to add a caveat to the points below, this all occurred a long time ago and it's getting a bit difficult to find the articles on the net for me now :
Both Brad and Smedley were part of Verant Interactive when they started out in 1997 (? - not sure of the exact dates since this was over 10 years ago). Smedley moved to SoE and Brad continued to develop EQ. VI was part of SoE but was later sold to Brad prior to launch since SoE had considered EQ to have gone way over budget and would not be successful. SoE was of course wrong. EQ was later bought back by SoE and VI was basically scrapped as a company.
The reason I state the above is because a few years into EQ's life under SoE, Brad stepped up and said that he was going to redo EQ in the way that it should have been done, e.g. with new graphics, streamlined gameplay, better UI etc. And that the game would be called Vanguard. I remember this clearly since by that time quite a few of my guildies and friends in EQ were so sick and tired of SoE's treatment of its customers that we were already ready to quit EQ; we were literally ready to hit the "Cancel Subscription" button by that time due to the grade A manure that SoE was dishing out as customer support. We stayed with EQ since we thought that once Vanguard came out we would just jump ship. Mind you, some of my friends at the time were from EQ closed beta and were chummy with the devs of Vanguard on a personal basis so we would receive inside word every now and then about the development of Vanguard and we liked what we heard.
Then the news started to leak that Sigil was a sinking ship. When we queried, the main reason we uncovered was mainly due to the vision of the game itself that was causing problems. In short Brad really did want to make Vanguard into a perfected EQ, i.e. grade A graphics, storyline, quests, raid mechanics, class/skill/race detailed effects, etc. I recall just about everyone panicked since, at the time, this would have been very difficult to do/balance out on a technical level, not to mention that there's no such thing as perfection.
When SoE stepped in, it was due to the financial problems of Sigil and no one was under any real illusion about the outcome of Vanguard when that happened. After all, why would SoE want to sustain 3 mmorpgs' that were basically similar to each other, i.e. EQ, Vanguard and EQ2 (which was in development at the time). It would definitely make more business sense to buy out the competitor and then kill the product to minimize, or eliminate, the potential cannibalization of the existing customer base. At the same time, the product would also be readily available if something unforeseeable occurs and EQ/EQ2 should fail, i.e. Vanguard could always act as a backup product for SoE.
Vanguard was basically dead the moment Brad sold it to Smedley.
Personally, I think he vanished from the public eye because he finally realised that his uncompromising stance on his vision for Vanguard was what caused the loss not just to himself but to a whole lot of other people who believed in him. There's nothing wrong on having a dream or vision, but sometimes, one must compromise and bend to the will of reality which he was clearly not willing to do until it was too late.
That's just my 2cp worth from what my alcohol addled memory can recall from those days. Any devs from the old VI / Sigil days around that want to chip in maybe ? Lol I think your NDA would have long expired by now so you can speak your mind.
No arguments there, I'd either never seen or forgotten what Smedley said/promised. At the time I'm pretty sure all the craze was Brad's post about "relaunching", and people were clinging to that a lot more than an idea of future expansions and so on.
So SOE did break promises, and because of that those that play and expect things aren't completely at fault...but the fact remains the same that the players by now should know better.
As for whether or not SOE had any motives to -not- make Vanguard a success, yes those are conspiracy theories. Prior to acquiring Sigil, SOE was merely co-publisher. They didn't control any design decisions. So whether or not it was in their interest then to see Vanguard fail or not is inconsequential. Common sense dictates if they wanted it to fail, they wouldn't have given Sigil the money needed to keep the game afloat after Microsoft, extend it a few months during the end of beta AND lend employees during that time frame.
They also could've bought Vanguard as they did, and pulled the plug day one if eliminating competition was the true objective.
Of course SOE hasn't done anything to make Vanguard purposefully crappy. It was crappy when it was bought by them. I imagine by taking in those 50 employees, the bulk of which stayed with Vanguard until that number was halved again, they felt its subscription bleeding was at a clot or nearly there. Obviously that wasn't true and they ended up having to server merge and so on.
Alas, no matter how you spin it, it makes no sense to insinuate SOE is wasting money and time sabotaging Vanguard. If you want to kill a baby, you don't save the mother's life in the third trimester, deliver the baby yourself, and then raise the child to an analagous age a lot of MMOs don't make it to.
There's no conspiracy. If Vanguard held on to a reasonable amount of subscribers, there'd probably be an expansion. There'd be a bigger staff. But since little to no one liked the game, its in the state that its in.
I totally agree with all the hype about the mythical "relaunch" and how everyone thought that would be some salvation to the game. Other than soe talking about the publishing angle they were going to pursue, I think this was wild speculation based on Brads ramblings and anyone with a clue knew it would never happen.
As for your conspiracy claims, let me just present some things to you and you answer the question yourself as others have.
Soe loaned sigil two graphic developers for a week or two right before launch. Otherwise they remained hands off and let Sigil run exactly as they did while under Microsoft.
I'm not making crazy assumption here. No black helicopters, no men in black or things of that nature. That is what happened in a nut shell. This would be the equivalent of a company investing in God and Heroes without making any changes to perpetual entertainment.
Soe held the purse strings for the lifeblood of Sigil and they could demand any terms they wanted, because Sigil had nothing to bargain with. Soe in effect could demand whatever they wanted and they chose to let things remain the same and cut funding when they chose.
Looking at that, what company in their right mind would bail out a failed project only to do nothing to resolve the issues that put it into that position? If you have an answer to that one I would love to hear it.
Just like you said, Vanguard was in bad shape when soe bought into the project. Everyone knew that, but soe invested into a game and made no changes?
Soe wasn't wasting money to sabotage Vanguard, because they didn't have to sabotage it. All soe had to do was let things run exactly as they were, cut funding when they wanted and failure was certain and that is exactly what happened. Soe did not have to spend much to prevent another company from investing and making the right changes to vanguard. A healthy vanguard was very much a threat to EQ/EQ2. I would not doubt they have made back all of their initial investment through vanguard subs and far more than that in retained everquest players.
Once vanguard folded, soe could scoop up the assets for pennies on the dollar and hire a whatever developers they liked to work on their other games, which they did. The failure of Vanguard was a win win situation for soe with very little spent.
Now if you have anything that suggests soe was spending their money wisely by reviving this project and demanding changes be made for their investment then I would love to hear it explained. If you can detail a situation where a successful vanguard was a benefit to soe (not a threat), again I would love to hear it described, but I think we both know that isn't the case.
I don't think anything I have said is untrue and soes actions (and non-actions) support everything I have said.
You call it conspiracy, but I call it looking at the available information and seeing a very plausible situation. So far you have offered nothing to refute my claims other than trying to make it look like crazy talk.
I bought this game the day it came out, and stuck with it for a while until the bugs finally got to me. I came back a few times, just to see if it had improved (and it had, quite a bit), but it never felt like something worth spending much money on. It was a great idea that just never really came to fruition. I am frankly surprised that Sony hasn't pulled the plug on this game a LONG time ago. There is no way Vanguard is profitable, and I think some credit should be given to Sony for at least trying to save it from oblivion.
If you read Brad's f13 interview again you'll gather the following: 1. SOE didn't fund the purchase from Microsoft, independent investors did. 2. The co-publishing agreement occurred -after- Microsoft was bought out obviously.
So I'm not sure what you mean by "Soe could not simply "kill" the project, because microsoft still owned the project." Because when SOE became involved, Microsoft was already out of the picture and Sigil owned Vanguard.
SOE's role in the co-publishing agreement was described as: "As co-publisher of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil is in charge of marketing and PR, while maintaining responsibility for game development, community relations, media relations, customer support, and quality assurance. SOE, on the other hand, will provide distribution, marketing, hosting and back-end support -- including billing and technical support -- for the game."
Considering Brad was marketing, PR, community relations, media relations and customer support, Sigil had no responsibilities except to develop the game. Well, there was quality assurance, but we know about that one guy.
SOE on the other hand was responsible for all the heavy lifting. Manufacturing the boxes and distributing, doing the -real- marketing we can assume, hosting, the -real- support and all that jazz.
So if SOE backed out of co-publishing Vanguard, how would that not have killed it? You could argue Sigil had enough money to self-publish, but we know that isn't true given they ran out of money before even completing their one real responsibility, developing it. You could argue another publisher would've entered a co-publishing agreement, or that Sigil would've lowered their expectations and settled for being acquired by a big publisher.
All of that mess aside, what remains inexplicable about your conspiracy theory is why after SOE -did- come to own Vanguard, they decided to keep it running instead of shutting it down. Is it that they enjoy wasting money, resources and time I suppose?
You argue that Vanguard stands to cannibalize EQ and EQII population, which I still don't understand given an entity with many mouths but one stomach wouldn't care which mouth the food goes in. But assuming cannibalism was a real threat, why would SOE be fine with thousands of subscribers cannibalized when it could be 0 at the snap of a finger?
It's like you're advocating torture is swifter and more cost effective than rendering death. That its easier to shackle, feed and water a threat for years than it is to kill it. It makes no sense. If SOE's goal was to see Vanguard fail, what better failure than immediate cancellation the day Sigil was purchased?
To me, there's no grand conspiracy theory needed to explain why SOE didn't carry through on promises of treating Vanguard the same as the EQs. Vanguard continued to tank in sub counts in ways Smedley hadn't expected, period. I believe he had half of Sigil fired and took on 50 because he felt he could sustain 50 with what Vanguard was earning. Certainly 50 couldn't pumped out expansions and so on. But as subscriber counts dropped, staff sizes dropped, and over time Vanguard became this. It wasn't some huge, senseless conspiracy theory of a ploy from a start, it was simply a bad investment.
All things said, to have a point you'd have to explain why Vanguard as a threat, which I don't believe it to be to SOE, is better alive and suffering than dead. That's the center of why your argument makes no sense to me.
Besides, imho, I believe no one was under any illusion as to what was going to happen the moment SoE touched the product. All those who were playing EQ likely just thought "Bah, why bother starting over on Vanguard when I'm just going to get the same shite from SoE as I'm getting already on EQ ? Might as well just stay or go somewhere else."
Or SOe should make it F2P, it worked fine for DDO and Vanguard would really kick games like RoM and Rappelz where it hurts.
VG is really on the last run now unless someone does something and it is sad since it is actually really good after they fixed the bugs.
Brad isn't innocent to this, his team were really lousy programmers and that is why the game never became a hit. SOE of course shouldn't have released it in the shape it was either, I don't know what they were thinking.
Besides, imho, I believe no one was under any illusion as to what was going to happen the moment SoE touched the product. All those who were playing EQ likely just thought "Bah, why bother starting over on Vanguard when I'm just going to get the same shite from SoE as I'm getting already on EQ ? Might as well just stay or go somewhere else."
I highly doubt a company you worked at acquired and operated radio stations purposefully to under-fund, under-resource, and consequently subsist as the biggest blemish of all its kind as a strategic business decision.
Premium television is a better analogy since its per channel and subscription not impressions based. A perfect analogy since cable and satellite companies tend to offer the channels either individually, or packaged together, as with individual sub fees or Station Pass.
Now would it make any kind of sense if Time Warner were to purposefully make Cinemax crappy just so it wouldn't steal viewers from HBO?
No. There's an interest in both doing well. They're sold in a package together, marketed and listed in line-ups together. Just as Vanguard was included on Station Pass, and appears on SOE's websites with the EQs.
Again it simply makes no sense to believe SOE thinks of Vanguard as a threat...why keep it alive? Why'd they do the WinBack campaign for it which was -specifically- geared towards gaining subscribers? Why all the free months of re-opened accounts for old players? Come on now, the argument of SOE -not- wanting Vanguard to get subs for fear of cannibalism makes no sense at all.
As far as VG as a backup plan to EQII failing...highly doubtful. It's very difficult to revive a MMORPG and infact its arguably never been done. If SOE knew how to revive MMOs dependably, then they'd just revive EQII when it failed rather than switch to a more expensive to develop for, and more problematic VG. And they'd have revived all their other failing MMO properties.
The last bit I agree with. Smedley has an obvious question in his mind, but we don't know what it is. Does he still believe Vanguard can make it? Nah. Only the most hopeful would believe that. More than likely he's waiting on a circumstance unknown to us to go ahead and pull the plug. I imagine something will occur around the time The Agency or DC Universe is due release.
Or SOe should make it F2P, it worked fine for DDO and Vanguard would really kick games like RoM and Rappelz where it hurts.
VG is really on the last run now unless someone does something and it is sad since it is actually really good after they fixed the bugs.
Brad isn't innocent to this, his team were really lousy programmers and that is why the game never became a hit. SOE of course shouldn't have released it in the shape it was either, I don't know what they were thinking.
The problem with F2P MMOs is that they still need a business model.
Live Gamer if I understand it is just an auction/exchange. SOE earns something but they aren't doing direct sales nor do they have an inventory of infinite, specific items to sell to VG players. Could be wrong.
SOE would need to actually -develop- something like Turbine points, items and perks worth buying and etc. No small feat. Such content has to be steady and the equivalent to content updates.
I imagine F2P is ruled out due to the fact it means intermediary development before they could launch it. For all we know though, it could be on the backburner as a contingency plan. Afterall Smedley pledged subscriber payments would make up less and less of SOE's revenues until it was responsible for nill. So, if Vanguard were to continue, that does seem to be the path.
I have no access to SoE's business plans and all I was trying to say was that cannibalization is generally not wanted simply because each product/channel has it's own budget and targets. How SoE does their backend operations is beyond my purview and frankly I really couldn't care less about them. The radio stations were set up to make a profit individually since they were all based on format programming, e.g. Rock Vs Easy Listening. Everyone was supposed to turn a profit and not make a loss hence no cannibalization allowed. Each operated, in essence, as an individual corporate entity even though they were all controlled by 1 single company.
The examples of Cinemax & HBO both have different budgets and, as far as I know, do not operate under one single sheet. The satellite operator signs contracts with the providers to package the channels and the fees paid are based on subs for each individual channel(s). I know this for a fact since I drafted and negotiated quite a few of those contracts, even with those 2 you mentioned.
Why SoE did the win-back events ? I have no idea since I stopped reading anything about SoE past 2003 when I decided to just play the game and ignore everything else about them. But knowing how they operate, it was likely just one of those "Well, we're doing it for the rest might as well throw Vanguard in there too" kinda situation.
I also never argued that SoE feared Vanguard getting subs once it was under their control. All I was trying to say was that they likely do not want Vanguard taking existing subs from their other products if at all possible. Same as they would not be happy if EQ1 took subs from EQ2 or vice versa. The point is not to have a product 'steal' existing customers from another existing product because the bottom line in the books would be a zero increase in revenues. You want to have each product go out into the market and gain new subs.
I'm sorry but at the time when EQ2 and Vanguard were going head to head, lol EQ2 stood a very good chance of failing simply due to the fact that SoE was involved with it. Well, that was one of the main reasons anyway. It was a convoluted time but the essence was that Brad was literally going to give the old players what they wanted in terms of what EQ should be, in Vanguard plus improvements, while SoE was merely trying to rehash EQ with better graphics. At the time, if a revival was going to succeed, if EQ2 failed, it would have to be Vanguard since the popularity with the player base, at the time, was with Vanguard. This would be likely running through Smedley's head when the decision was made to buy Vanguard out.
This is of course, only my own thoughts on the matter but from the various EQ forums I was in, the various news articles I read, and the other EQ gamers I talked to, it all pointed to a general "Abandon Ship !" rally call from EQ the moment Vanguard was announced to be in development.