Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Release
DarthMind
Member Posts: 14
What's the deal with Beta not advancing faster, it's been..three years :P Any thoughts on acutal release? X-Mas?
Comments
One more beta stage to go(stage 3), then their open beta(stage 4).
An optimist would say summer. A realist would say Fall/Winter. Either or, its shaping up to be sometime in 2006.
Game list on this site says Q4 2006.
No annoying animated GIF here!
While I really want to play this game, I really want the game to be as good as it can be so I hope they take their sweet time and don't release it till 2007 if that's what they need to stick to their vision. My bet is that it will be ready for my birthday in september.
I would like to know just cause i wanna give Roma Victor a whirl, but only if it doesnt interreupt the Vanguard release =p
OK, this is just wild guessing....
Scenario 1
Beta 3 starts shortly after E3.
Beta 3 planned for June, July and August. Problems crop up (don't they always) and it is extended one more month. September.
Open Beta October -- very short.
Game releases November ... errr ... *throws a dart* second Tuesday of November.
~~~
Scenario 2
Beta 3 starts in May. Goes swimmingly to July. MMORPG Gods smile upon the game and all goes well. Devs say game is good to go in September.
~~~
Scenario 3
Beta 3 starts in May or June but has a bunch of problems. By October Beta 3 begins to wind up. Devs decide on short open beta stress test. Stress test has a bunch of problems. They get the game into shape for release and decide to market the game for the Christmas season.
~~~
Scenario 4
SkyNet becomes self aware and then sends back the Terminator to kill Sarah Connor. We all die and no more MMORPGs.
~ Ancient Membership ~
Hard to believe.
The game was meant to be released this year between spring and summer, at least that's what it looked like 1 year ago.
Plus Microsoft is already approaching retailers like EBgames, giving an ETA for the 11th of july, which confirm the initial rumors.
Truth is that the game will unlikely be released for that date, it will probably pushed back to november in time for Xmas.
I don't think that the game will be released in 2007.
Sigil already missed a deadline, and it is unlikely that Microsoft will allow Vanguard to miss another one.
A possible guess it is what happened with WoW, where Vivendi forced Blizzard to release the game anyway, even if it wasn't ready.
But I might be wrong, we would have more news after the E3. Let's wait and see what happens.
I agree with your sentiment, but it has unfortunately been shown time and again that if a dev of a game in development (or even of a patch for an existing game) so much as hints at a time-frame, they will be bashed and blasted by portions of the community if it doesn't come out exactly within that rough guess. They are essentially damned if they do and damned if they don't. I would go the same route myself in that scenario.
As for the person making the reference to the WoW beta by way of comparison - VSoH is, thankfully, nothing like WoW - and WoW for the first year was a walking illustration of a failure to implement (unless you are satisfied by their point and click depth of play). If VSoH takes a year and a half in beta, it will be time well spent Im sure, but there will still be bugs, its inevitable. Did you play WoW at release? If you did, then you know that the first Year was full of catch-up on things that should have been ready to go when it went gold..Im sure any game can choose to utilize a minimized time frame of a beta cycle, and when they do it is reflected in release, as such having far more to catch up on than a game that was more thoroughly tested at the expense of getting revenues incomming sooner.
While I greatly look forward to VSoH being released, Im not a die hard VSoH fan (though yes, I am an admitted WoW hater having been there and done that), but I tend to think there is a valid reason for it not being rushed to shelves. I hope they take the time they need to make it the best it can be at release, lots of opinions are formed off that state. You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Blizzard also had help from FoH's Furor and Afterlife's Thott. SOE screwed it's player base enough to piss off the best and they jumped ship for the next decent game. Vanguard won't have this advantage, game is to "old school" and not interesting enough.
Well lets face it - we're almost certain that if the game comes out before dec 2006 it will have a lot of issues to deal with game-wise.
Thats what I kind of filtered out from the official forums and here.
So I suggest we get used to it and start playing Oblivion/ Gothic 3 or other fantasy based games in the meantime
Just my 2 cents.
There are a number of differences between Vanguard's development and that of WoW.
1. WoW did a lot of its beta testing with paid internal testers long before they opened beta which is one reason why WoW's beta only lasted 7 months. Vanguard is doing the opposite by starting beta a lot earlier in development.
2. You are right WoW's dev team i s huge compared to that of EQ2's or Sigil. Bizzard spent $75 millon developing WoW. Other companies cannot compete with the number of devs and money WoW has. Brad gave a great audio interview discussing how much bigger WoW's development budget is than other games about 3-4 weeks ago.
3. Vanguard is not a cookie cutter game. They are trying to implement many complex unique ideas in their core systems of Crafting, Diplomacy and Combat. Doing so will require a lot the game to be in testing a lot longer than other games. Most games take over a year of beta. I would be suprised if Vanguard takes less than 1.5 years in beta. Most likely ti will be closer to 2 years.
If Vanguard is released in 2007 ot will be in development about as long as WoW. Vanguard will be 4 years old this summer. I would disagree with many of the implications that it is behind schedule rather it looks like it will be released right on time somewhere close to 5 years of development time.
I honestly believe that the reason VSoH release is being pushed back from this summer is because they don't want to release the game at the same time as WoW's expansion. If you look at the dates that have been said before always Vanguard has been said to be released after the date of wow's expansion. The Burning Crusade was initially schedule for last Christmas and Vanguard for March, then the expansion moved to march 2006 and then VSoH was for Summer...now the expansion is set for October and Vanguard for Holiday season 2006 if not next year 2007.
Releasing a new game in the same date as WoW's expansion would be imo suicidal, or at least a really big risk. As someone said before, VSoH will not have the advantage WoW had (in terms of players without a game) because of what SOE did to their player base. And releasing a game under that kind of competition would be harsh. Add to that, the fact that no PvP has been announced "officially" for release and that is the weak point for Vanguard.
I also believe that Blizzard is expecting to kill every possible competitor this year with the expansion: not only Vanguard but also 3-4 other games that are being announced that seem to be really good new games. That would give them the the advantage for at least another 2 years in the market.
Dunno, just my 2 cents on this.
are you in the beta atm ?
I agree with you mostly, but WoW didn't let the public know of it's existence until fairly close to the release date, I would say within a year before it released... No one was chomping at the bit like we are for Vanguard for WoW, simply because Blizzard is a polished company that doesn't have to rely upon shifty tactics like teasing people FOR OVER 4 YEARS!!!
If Vanguard devs were smart, they would have kept the ENTIRE development process under wraps, hell, even keep the name hidden like Blizzard did... But no, they insist on dragging a fanbase through multiple years of 'wait and see' nonsense... It is ridiculous, and is the biggest bone I have to pick with the MMO genre...
If your game isn't going to be ready for 5 years, then shut yer trap and get to work on it... Don't expect a shower of rose petals just for a couple of 'good ideas' and spare us the 'inside looks' into development process and the 'previews'... Look at all these games like RV, PotBS and etc... Multiple years in development, multiple delayed releases, yet their fanbases (don't know how you can call it a fanbase for a nonexistent product!) makes up the excuses for the devs now... What a crapshoot...
Dis-ordur I agree with you that companies should keep the game secret til the game is at least half done.
Unfortunately thit is not what's happen in the mmorpg industry, and that includes WoW.
WoW has been uncovered few years before its release, it didn't sprung off out of the blue.
It was consistently the most hyped game for at least 2 years in this site.
Public beta alone lasted 8 months.
Vanguard has started to be hyped 1 year ago, not 5 years ago (impossible since they started developing the game at the endo of the year 2002).
It's been in developement since 2002-03, that's true, but for the first 3 years it wasn't really known at all.
Only few peeps like myself are following this game since the beginning, most of the new fans had joined 1 year ago.
Vanguard hype has been spread by word of mouth rather than the by big PR juggernaut that involved the prelaunch of WoW, and the reason why people expect a lot from this game, it s because it has lots of features that have been ignored by almost every game that came out after EQ.
I can remember the millions thread about WoW vs EQ2, they are still fresh in my mind, I can't remember anything like that since Doom vs Half Life.
Therefore I really don't know what the fuss is all about regarding Vanguard.
And by the way Warhammer online, which is just in early alpha stage, is more hyped than Vanguard at the moment..............a game we don't know nothing about yet, except that it is part of a franchise with lots of followers.
But that's how hype works.