I resubed to VG this month.  And I can't belive it, the game has given me that magical feeling of adventure I've been craving for so Long that i almost forgot what it even was.  The sceenery on max settings is great and lush, the classes are amazing, and the community is by far the best community I've ever seen.

It just makes me sad thinking how this game could be if SOE supported it, advertised a bit,  and really got the word out.  This game just seems like a huge sleeper, with endless potential that is just going to waste.

 It's time has passed, the world moved on and so did the general community.

To bad, the game had potencial, true, but SOE wasted it, and now its just to late

The only chance there is that SoE will start pumping money into advertisment for Vanguard is when Everquest 2 would just suddenly die and shut down its server. Since Soe owns both and these both games are in direct competition, promoting Vanguard would only initially serve to steal players from Everquest 1 and 2.

The guy above me s correct. Vanguards only hope would be if it was sold to another company.

Or perhaps if it lowered it's monthly coast to like $9.99 or went F2P with a cash shop similar to but not exactly like DDO's

I always thought a real money auction house in a mmo would be sweet, and the company could charge a tax to use it.

example you sell 10 leather hides for 50 cents company tax of 5 cents you gain 45 cents.(just a quick example of what I mean)

Originally posted by Happyburp

The guy above me s correct. Vanguards only hope would be if it was sold to another company.

Or perhaps if it lowered it's monthly coast to like $9.99 or went F2P with a cash shop similar to but not exactly like DDO's

 

I always thought a real money auction house in a mmo would be sweet, and the company could charge a tax to use it.

example you sell 10 leather hides for 50 cents company tax of 5 cents you gain 45 cents.(just a quick example of what I mean)

Such a MMO already exist

It's called Entropia

www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/category/218

You have to put things in perspective. When's the last time you saw a WoW ad right here on MMORPG.com? Or on GameSpot, 1up or wherever else? You haven't in a long time. The same goes for EQ I and II.

Vanguard isn't being punished by SOE or anything, to treat it any other way than they do would be entirely unorthodox.

It's out, it was marketed at release appearing in major publications, it has its metacritic score, it still has a surplus of copies being sold for less than shipping on Amazon, it has a free trial, it appears at SOE's yearly conferences, and it's had many "come back" opened account periods.

What more can they do? Vanguard is not a secret. It's been exposed to the greater MMORPG market in every way imaginable. All marketing does is create exposure, since that's already been accomplished, there's nothing to say about Vanguard except the greater playerbase of the MMO market did not want to play it. Their reasons could be anything from prefering to play other MMOs, to simply having tried Vanguard before and disliked it.

Vanguard is what it is. If you like it, awesome. But you'll have to accept the issues it has when it comes to population and development team size.

 Believe it or not, a lot of people have tried Vanguard.  The free trial has been available for quite some time, and VG's best chance was getting ex-VG players back.  Sepher is right, people know about Vanguard.   The problem still is that people are not liking everything they see, so they don't stick around long enough for anybody to notice any population increase.  That's the sad truth that most people don't want to hear, but it's still the truth.

Look at how the free trial island seems populated, often you find plenty of people trying the game out.  But how many of them translate into real monthly accounts, and how many of them stay around for longer than a month or two at a time?   Vanguard missed the boat when Sigil/Brad didn't deliver a finished product.   Vanguard then got ran over by a bus when Brad sold the company to SOE and SOE chopped the dev team down to a handful of developers.

Vanguard is what it is today, if you like it, good keep playing.  If not, then look elsewhere.  Just realize there's only so much you can do for a game almost 3 years old.  Any sort of revitalization usually occur within a year.  Unfortunately Vanguard was just that much unfinished that it really took them almost 2 years to implement what normal MMO's have and fix all the engine problems.  There's almost no chance at all SOE will spend any extra money to advertise Vanguard.  They don't even advertise their 10-year old flagship product Everquest.  Things won't change unless Vanguard is sold off to another company, or SOE management gets a big overhaul.

I disagree,it is strictly a numbers game,the population is too small,this is why people do not stick around.The others are just trial runners,that had no intention of staying anyhow.

The only time you get a mass influx of new players is at launch,so SOE would have to pull off a miracle to get enough players to join.I would say 20 k in subs,that would be enough to fill up two servers,i have no idea how many servers they are running?

how many ways are there to get 20k players join all at once?Is there even 20k players serious about joining another game?I mean if you try to draw players from WOW or AION,or any other game that they can just run back to,your chances of keeping them are slim.

So you need large numbers,you need dedicated players from those numbers and you need a VERY good reason.The game itself is a good reason,but if you look around ,game quality seems to be low on the list of qualifications.

I could steal some ideas i have seen form other games.First off create a new expansion and advertise it well in advance.Make this expansion level 1+ content so it caters to new players.Copy what EQ2 did and make this new expansion offer great rewards from quests and drops.Offer an in game special "new release" gear set.Make that set a level 25 set,so players need to stick around to actually use it,but it gives them something to look forward to.

Create a PET system similar to SRO,you raise it up and it kills with you,and ages.Create maybe an item mall to help pay for the project by selling pets that auto loot,again a SRO feature.

Introduce some new game mechanics,i leave that up to their creative minds as my pizza guy is here i have to go lol. :D

The problem with your ideas is when you mentioned "expansion".  Expansions cost money and takes up lots of dev resources, and that's something SOE won't do for Vanguard.  You then mentioned "advertise", that's a second no-no for SOE.  So back to the drawing board

Originally posted by Thillian

The only chance there is that SoE will start pumping money into advertisment for Vanguard is when Everquest 2 would just suddenly die and shut down its server. Since Soe owns both and these both games are in direct competition, promoting Vanguard would only initially serve to steal players from Everquest 1 and 2.

Then SOE should promote the all-access pass they offer...

Silius did his job. He killed EQII's only competitor.