John Smedley formally announced today that Sony Online Entertainment has acquired the assets of Sigil Games, which includes Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Sigil employees were informed that their employment would be terminated, but in his announcement John Smedley said that approximately 50 of these employees would be hired on by SOE to continue working on Vanguard.

Hello Everyone,

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.

We are also officially opening up forums. In the past, our deal with Sigil didn't allow for this, but as with our other games we fill this is an important part of communicating with the playerbase. You can expect a strong presence from our community team as well as the development team members. While we realize that Sigil had said they wouldn't open up general forums, at SOE we fill this hampers our efforts to communicate effectively with the players. We will continue to support the fansites in a big way, and will be contacting many of them directly to discuss what this change means. By no means do we want to lose the strong fansite support by making this change, but we do think it's important to have a forum for players to communicate directly with SOE.

A few other items I wanted to mention

1. Brad McQuaid will be consultant to SOE as a creative advisor for Vanguard. Dave Gilbertson will be the person directly responsible for the day-to-day management of both the Sigil Carlsbad office as well as Vanguard.

2. We do not plan on making any major changes to Vanguard. Any changes are going to come from the team itself. We aren't mandating any big changes to the game. We've learned a thing or two with our experiences with the NGE and don't plan on repeating mistakes from the past and not listening to the players.

3. We do plan on spending a lot of time cleaning up legacy issues with Vanguard and making sure the game's performance improves.

Read the full announcement here.

Originally posted by coffee
Oh dear.. well things can only get better...... cant they?

Don't underestimate the power of SOE to ruin games.

Well, I decided not to play Vanguard when I first heard SOE was getting involved as I have had nothing but bad experiences with them.  So here I sit, feeling very good about my decision, and very bad for Vanguard's players.

An interesting announcement considering all the PR work that went into telling folks that Sony was just a publisher when it was plain that there was only enough rope to hang themselves...Now that the wizard behind the curtain is revealed, It will be interesting to see what direction the development takes.

I hate to say it, but Vanguard is a game that actualy needs an NGE style do-over while it's still young.

It's just not fun...people will play through lag and bugs and server crashes if a game is fun...but vanguard just isnt! Which is why people leave after the above mentioned problems arrise.

So, thanks to Brad and his dream a whole company gets destroyed and some loss their jobs? 

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Originally posted by Dreneth

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Originally posted by coffee
Oh dear.. well things can only get better...... cant they?

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Don't underestimate the power of SOE to ruin games.
Well, I decided not to play Vanguard when I first heard SOE was getting involved as I have had nothing but bad experiences with them. So here I sit, feeling very good about my decision, and very bad for Vanguard's players.

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Yeah, it's terrible that SoE got involed with Sigil/Vanguard. If they hadn't it'd probably rolling in the cash now and the customers would have a game for years to come!

More likely they'd be announcing the game was closing down in 2-3 months and going out of business.

Wow, there's one game I can throw away and never go back to.

Not a fan of SoE normally, but if they fix Vanguard like they fixed EQ2, then I might actually consider trying it.

To the annoying fanbois = I F'KIN TOLD YOU SO. NOW BEND OVER CUZ HERE COMES MY FOOT YA DUMBASS!

*ermph* ok now on to matters at hand. I'm thankful SOE took it. They needed to. I am sure brad has a good immagination, but he's not a realist. His problem is he lives in the worlds he creates. Reality doesn't accept these kinds of mistakes or is so forgiving.  To many people disliked Brad from EQ1 and now this (his what second title). I don't understand how he got his hands on such a budget, but it's beyond me. He clearly didn't have the experience to handle such a huge project.

To many people bash SOE. Yes they made mistakes, but christ who the hell doesn't? It happens folks. You guys hate them for SWG, but to bad. They made a mistake and that's how it is. Can't you see by this they've learnt from that mistake? SOE has turned a lot of shit games to mediocre or great games. EQ1 and EQ2 are still going on fairly well. Hell the EQ1 anniversy edition is a top seller at GameStop.

You guys just need to give SOE a break here. People constantly bash on them for game failures, but do you realise they primarly PUBLISH those failing games. THEN buy them out to fix them? I'm dead sure they provide council to the developers of the games, but those developers generally are stubborn little shits who only care about their "Vision" instead of the money that'll feed their families.

IMO I can't wait to see what SOE does, but it's to late for me anyway. My first impression of the game is that it purely sucks. Sense no major changes are happening to the game it self. I'm not going back. I didn't like the game period. There was no damn story. Diplomacy was just retarded as hell. Crafting is tedious as can be. Adventuring is an insane grind fest I don't want to experience anymore.

All I can really say is... I told ya so.. I saw this coming from a million miles away as soon as they signed up with SOE. Brad shouldn't have been a stubborn prick about Windows exclusive game.. and the developers shouldn't have wasted so much time. 30 million bucks and the support of microsoft. It doesn't get much better then that. MS has VERY good advertisement teams. Vanguard could have been something so much more if they'd worked efficiently and wasn't.. well..ignorant.

Anyway.. GL VG peoples. I'm going to play LOTRO this weekend once I get me paycheck =) with the upcoming titles. VG doesn't stand a chance. It's gonna get kicked back to the ground everytime it stands up. Oh well. BAD timing. Let this be a lesson to over game companies.

For those of you who think SOE did a good job with EQ2...  you seem to have missed the fact that it took them 2 years to figure out how.  SOE is horrible for the MMORPG industry, and for players who get caught in the crossfire.

Originally posted by Dreneth

For those of you who think SOE did a good job with EQ2...  you seem to have missed the fact that it took them 2 years to figure out how.  SOE is horrible for the MMORPG industry, and for players who get caught in the crossfire.

Or anyone who has to use SOE's customer service!

/shudder

Originally posted by Dreneth

For those of you who think SOE did a good job with EQ2...  you seem to have missed the fact that it took them 2 years to figure out how.  SOE is horrible for the MMORPG industry, and for players who get caught in the crossfire.

SOE was primarly a publishing company with a few devs on staff to help support the games they published. They had little experience under their belt.

They've come a long way sense then. So give them a little bit more credit.. shesh.

People hyped about Brad and his damn vision. Yet he has only developed 1 game and been IN development with like 1 other. His experience is far more limited then SOE. Yet everyone praised him like jesus... look what happened.

Get your head out of your ass people.. SOE f'ked up SWG.. big damn deal.. freaken starwars geeks got enough crap to play with anyway... they'll live.

Now we're going to have people whining about SOE as well as whining at how much they hate the game they're still subscribed to.

What it will all mean to me? Less posts to read.