Originally posted by rungard

Originally posted by Latronus

Originally posted by rungard

Originally posted by Waterlily
(mod edit)

 the fact that you can still play vanguard to this day tells me that much of the hype might actually be his "evil" status. What kind of evil bastard would bail out his former partners sinking ship? hmm. Im not saying there there werent problems and bad decisions  in the last 14 years, but im not buying the satan argument. Its a business, nothing more.

I take it that you were not a Vanguard player from day 1.  If you were you would know that Vanguard was bought not to do a former partner a favor and bail him out, but it was done to PREVENT Vanguard from taking even more players from EQ2.  It was a business decision, but it wasn't done out of the goodness of their corporate hearts.  It was done to prevent VG from become a problem for them, period.  It's only still open because they can still make some profit from it and that's it.

 honestly i have a hard time believing that. it doesnt even make sense.

What he said is substantially correct.

Smed bought the rights to Vanguard, a game that had spent at least $25 mil on development allegedly for $3 mil. (This was after McQuaid was absent for several months in the run up to launch, allegedly due to prescription drug abuse issues).

The game was 80%-85% or so complete when SOE bought it, after McQuaid's company went under and laid off 3/4 of the people working there, only retaining a small percentage to "get the game out the door". SOE paid for several more months of development.

Regretably for people that actually liked vanguard, the game still needed another 6-12 months of dev time to work well when it was released.  Many, many things were not working well or broken at launch, or missing. Also, the code was so badly optimized that the game was almost unplayable for anyone not running a top end rig, and it was that way a long while.

The threads from launch time are still in the forums here, should you care to read up on that time.

But to answer the question: Smed bought Vanguard because: 1. He did not want a "new" game in direct competiton to EQ2 (which SOE had invested a ton of money in) and 2. Vanguard was cheap to buy.

It was very clear that SOE never really cared much about Vanguard, as over the years, it went down to one or zero full time devs, from time to time, and there are or were still bugs in there from launch.

Originally posted by Burntvet

/snip

What he said is substantially correct.

Smed bought the rights to Vanguard, a game that had spent at least $25 mil on development allegedly for $3 mil. (This was after McQuaid was absent for several months in the run up to launch, allegedly due to prescription drug abuse issues).

The game was 80%-85% or so complete when SOE bought it, after McQuaid's company went under and laid off 3/4 of the people working there, only retaining a small percentage to "get the game out the door". SOE paid for several more months of development.

Regretably for people that actually liked vanguard, the game still needed another 6-12 months of dev time to work well when it was released.  Many, many things were not working well or broken at launch, or missing. Also, the code was so badly optimized that the game was almost unplayable for anyone not running a top end rig, and it was that way a long while.

The threads from launch time are still in the forums here, should you care to read up on that time.

 

But to answer the question: Smed bought Vanguard because: 1. He did not want a "new" game in direct competiton to EQ2 (which SOE had invested a ton of money in) and 2. Vanguard was cheap to buy.

It was very clear that SOE never really cared much about Vanguard, as over the years, it went down to one or zero full time devs, from time to time, and there are or were still bugs in there from launch.

Do you have proof to substantiate any of this or is this just "common knowledge"? It's one thing to play conspiracy theorist with motives which can result in a few outcomes.  If you're going to put hard numbers up though show the goods and if you're going to bring up a rumor about someone's alleged substance abuse you damn sure better have something to back it up.

Originally posted by Aelious

Originally posted by Burntvet

/snip

What he said is substantially correct.

Smed bought the rights to Vanguard, a game that had spent at least $25 mil on development allegedly for $3 mil. (This was after McQuaid was absent for several months in the run up to launch, allegedly due to prescription drug abuse issues).

The game was 80%-85% or so complete when SOE bought it, after McQuaid's company went under and laid off 3/4 of the people working there, only retaining a small percentage to "get the game out the door". SOE paid for several more months of development.

Regretably for people that actually liked vanguard, the game still needed another 6-12 months of dev time to work well when it was released.  Many, many things were not working well or broken at launch, or missing. Also, the code was so badly optimized that the game was almost unplayable for anyone not running a top end rig, and it was that way a long while.

The threads from launch time are still in the forums here, should you care to read up on that time.

 

But to answer the question: Smed bought Vanguard because: 1. He did not want a "new" game in direct competiton to EQ2 (which SOE had invested a ton of money in) and 2. Vanguard was cheap to buy.

It was very clear that SOE never really cared much about Vanguard, as over the years, it went down to one or zero full time devs, from time to time, and there are or were still bugs in there from launch.

 

Do you have proof to substantiate any of this or is this just "common knowledge"? It's one thing to play conspiracy theorist with motives which can result in a few outcomes.  If you're going to put hard numbers up though show the goods and if you're going to bring up a rumor about someone's alleged substance abuse you damn sure better have something to back it up.

Oh, please. Everyone and their brother knows Brad had his face stuffed in a pile of powder damn near the whole time he was making Vanguard. His own employees spilled the beans after Microsoft dumped Sigil's collective ass. Google is your friend. In fact, if you type "Brad McQuaid" into google, one of the auto searches that comes up before you even finsh typing is "Brad McQuaid drug abuse". lol

http://www.thegrouchygamer.com/?p=80

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/945201-post721.html

And anyone with more than two brain cells in their cranium can see that SOE did their very best to bury Vanguard as soon as they took it over after Microsoft bailed. Vanguard was a direct competitor to EQ2.; SOE removed that competition by buying the game, getting it to bare minimum standards for release,  shoveling it onto Station Pass, then gutting the dev team to less than a handful of people and letting the game rot with almost no updates for years. EQ2 being long in the tooth and EQNext being released next year is the only reason SOE decided to pull Vanguard from the virtual gutter long enough to retool the game for F2P.

Originally posted by Olgark
SOE can't make a decent sandbox game they proved it with the mess up that was SWG and their NGE patch.

And the 2nd law of thermodynamics proves that SOE must specifically repeat all failures 100% of the time.

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by Thorqemada

Its SOE - i believe it when i see it!

http://eq2wire.com/2012/10/18/soe-live-2012-welcome-reception-live-refresh-for-updates/

“I have to be honest with you. We have completely blown up the design of EverQuest Next. For the last year and a half we have been working on something we are not ready to show. Why did we blow up the design? The design was evolutionary. It was EverQuest III. It was something that was slightly better that what had come before it. IT was slightly better. What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn’t want more Kill 10 Rats quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’r delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.

What I will commit to is, at the next Fan Faire, not only will you get to see it but you will get to touch it. Most of the EQNext devs are in this room. If you get them drunk enough they might tell you. They’re led by Dave Georgeson. Terry Michaels. Vets from EQ and EQ2. We are remaking Norrath unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but you’ll recognize it. I’m sorry we don’t have anything to show for it, but I wanted to be honest with you and tell you a little bit about it. Keep the faith.”

based on that quote I believe many of you sandbox fans are going to be greatly disapointed.

He seem to be using the term "SANDBOX" as a marketing term, like many online games are starting to use "MMO" term to sell more copies, even though it may not be a MMO.

same thing happening here. Calling a Game a "SANDBOX" to score more sells.

 

Notice in this post, they also called Everquest a Sandbox... that should show you already, they have come up with their own definition of what a Sandbox really is to them and their new EQ3.

 

Clever Marketing and use of words to hype people up. I expose this kind of thing, so it doesnt just slip right past me.

 

I know most of you dont want to hear it, or even face reality. Hype is what you live off of.

So take their word on this if you please. But just make sure you remember, that you were forewarned

THIS.

Originally posted by fenistil

Originally posted by MMOExposed

Originally posted by Thorqemada

Its SOE - i believe it when i see it!

http://eq2wire.com/2012/10/18/soe-live-2012-welcome-reception-live-refresh-for-updates/

“I have to be honest with you. We have completely blown up the design of EverQuest Next. For the last year and a half we have been working on something we are not ready to show. Why did we blow up the design? The design was evolutionary. It was EverQuest III. It was something that was slightly better that what had come before it. IT was slightly better. What we are building is something that we will be very proud to call EverQuest. It will be the largest sandbox style MMO ever designed. The same exciting content delivered in a new way. Something you’ve never seen before. The MMO world has never seen before. We didn’t want more Kill 10 Rats quests. We didn’t want more of the same. If you look at the MMOs out there, they’r delivering the same content over and over again. So are we. We need to change that. When we released EverQuest, we changed the world. We want to do that again with a different type of game.

What I will commit to is, at the next Fan Faire, not only will you get to see it but you will get to touch it. Most of the EQNext devs are in this room. If you get them drunk enough they might tell you. They’re led by Dave Georgeson. Terry Michaels. Vets from EQ and EQ2. We are remaking Norrath unlike anything you’ve ever seen, but you’ll recognize it. I’m sorry we don’t have anything to show for it, but I wanted to be honest with you and tell you a little bit about it. Keep the faith.”

based on that quote I believe many of you sandbox fans are going to be greatly disapointed.

He seem to be using the term "SANDBOX" as a marketing term, like many online games are starting to use "MMO" term to sell more copies, even though it may not be a MMO.

same thing happening here. Calling a Game a "SANDBOX" to score more sells.

 

Notice in this post, they also called Everquest a Sandbox... that should show you already, they have come up with their own definition of what a Sandbox really is to them and their new EQ3.

 

Clever Marketing and use of words to hype people up. I expose this kind of thing, so it doesnt just slip right past me.

 

I know most of you dont want to hear it, or even face reality. Hype is what you live off of.

So take their word on this if you please. But just make sure you remember, that you were forewarned

THIS.

As i have said on numerous occassions since the new info, Smed said "sandbox type game" that does not mean we are going to get a total sandbox MMO. In the past he mentioned features from Vanguard and the original EQ with modern play style, that says hybrid to me.

This will be out in 2014 and will most likely have ArcheAge and Blizzards Titan as direct competition, we already know that ArcheAge is an hybrid mmo and has some great features.

Smed is not an idiot no matter what the butt hurt SOE mob say. EQ is SOE and Smed first child, he will go all out to make sure EQNext brings the vets and new players who never experianced Norrath into the fold.

Originally posted by OG_Zorvan

Originally posted by Aelious

Originally posted by Burntvet

/snip

What he said is substantially correct.

Smed bought the rights to Vanguard, a game that had spent at least $25 mil on development allegedly for $3 mil. (This was after McQuaid was absent for several months in the run up to launch, allegedly due to prescription drug abuse issues).

The game was 80%-85% or so complete when SOE bought it, after McQuaid's company went under and laid off 3/4 of the people working there, only retaining a small percentage to "get the game out the door". SOE paid for several more months of development.

Regretably for people that actually liked vanguard, the game still needed another 6-12 months of dev time to work well when it was released.  Many, many things were not working well or broken at launch, or missing. Also, the code was so badly optimized that the game was almost unplayable for anyone not running a top end rig, and it was that way a long while.

The threads from launch time are still in the forums here, should you care to read up on that time.

 

But to answer the question: Smed bought Vanguard because: 1. He did not want a "new" game in direct competiton to EQ2 (which SOE had invested a ton of money in) and 2. Vanguard was cheap to buy.

It was very clear that SOE never really cared much about Vanguard, as over the years, it went down to one or zero full time devs, from time to time, and there are or were still bugs in there from launch.

 

Do you have proof to substantiate any of this or is this just "common knowledge"? It's one thing to play conspiracy theorist with motives which can result in a few outcomes.  If you're going to put hard numbers up though show the goods and if you're going to bring up a rumor about someone's alleged substance abuse you damn sure better have something to back it up.

And anyone with more than two brain cells in their cranium can see that SOE did their very best to bury Vanguard as soon as they took it over after Microsoft bailed. Vanguard was a direct competitor to EQ2.; SOE removed that competition by buying the game, getting it to bare minimum standards for release,  shoveling it onto Station Pass, then gutting the dev team to less than a handful of people and letting the game rot with almost no updates for years. EQ2 being long in the tooth and EQNext being released next year is the only reason SOE decided to pull Vanguard from the virtual gutter long enough to retool the game for F2P.

 That doesn't even make sense.  Soe paid first spent money on the game as a publisher, then spnet money to buy the game, then spent money on a dev team and 2 years to try and repair the game.  You don't spend that kind of money and spendan time trying to fix it just to run it into the ground. 

Fact is Vanguard was never a threat to the EQ series.  After Sigl released the game (Soe did not own it on release) the game crashed hard.  At best after that it was doomed to NIche.  SoE picked it up cheap and hoped to make some small amount of money off it and have a game they could add to their other small titles.

However there comes a time when it just doesn't make any more sense to throw money at a sinking project.  Despite spending quite a bit of time and money on the game there was no increase in population

As someone else stated, "There comes a time when you've spent too much money and you are getting little to no return, you just have to stop spending more money into it. SOE not only bailed Sigil and just so it could even launch, it gave Vanguard more development time when Sigil ran out of money. Then they bought it and spent the 2 years after release staffing the game with developers, coders, programmers, graphic artists, animators, etc.. just to tweak, fix, and finish the game off.

To suggest SOE threw this game in the garbage is turning a blind eye on just how bad of a shape this game was in, and how little players it had from the very beginning and how many left the game during the first year. Again, if it was your money funding this game before and after launch, you would've dumped it a long time ago. Because nobody would be willing to operate at a loss for such a long time, only companies that can do it are like SOE with several games in their lineup that could pickup the tabs."

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by RefMinor

Originally posted by DavisFlight

 NOpe.

No no no no no. No. Nope.

Man, even the fanboys never tried to claim that one.

Yes, I am afraid they did.

After yesterday's version of poison-the-well. I am now requiring direct quotes, or it didn't happen.  Pix or it didn't happen.  Whatever.  We'll await the citation of reference.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/forums/post/4322370#4322370

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/473/view/forums/post/4322758#4322758

www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1193512-Why-hasnt-there-been-a-Sandbox-MMO-since-Ultima-Online?p=18373108&viewfull=1#

2 minutes on google gave me these, if I could be bothered I am sure i could find many more

Oh come on, a dead thread, a dead poster (who was only here for a month, more than a year ago). and a USER DELETED poster?  This is the THEY you spoke of?

Poisoning the well.

Look: If you want THEY to apply to any group at all, just search the internet for one random idjit saying something silly, and identify random idjit with some group of people you don't much like.  We get it.  It's easy, and anyone can do it. 

Sandbox is a fairly murkily defined expression; you know it's never been hard to find dozens of games its been mis-attributed to, at some point...or dozens of people who will argue what is/is not a sandbox, endlessly.

But sometimes when you have to reach this far, you may as well just not bother.

You asked for quotes, I gave you quotes, now you change your argument, it's normally best to back out gracefully at that point. Of course the threads are dead, we are talking about what people said in the past, none of the users post I linked to were deleted when I posted the quotes, I passed over a few choices ones from deleted users.

Originally posted by OG_Zorvan

Oh, please. Everyone and their brother knows

Why doesn't that "everyone knows" phrase set off the Credulous alarm {bzzzt! bzzzt!} automatically in the brains of every member of the internet generation by now?

Oh look, start typing "cell phone tower" in Google, and radiation, deaths, cancer all pop right up at the top of the list.  I'm actuallty a little disappointed that "mind control" didn't show up higher. :/

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Ripostethis
Not enough funding to make it a big theme park mmo like Everquest 2 was. Will be something like GW2 , sounds like it will suck and be boring if you are into PVE, but will be based on pvp.

Haha what? How did you reach this conclusion?

Not enough funding? SoE is one of the most successful MMO companies out there. They had the funds to develop Planetside 2's engine from scratch (and it is an AMAZING engine). And how will it be like sandbox? GW2 is the opposite of a sanbox.

And why does sandbox mean PvP? SWG was PvE oriented, as was Asheron's Call.

Christ.

Asheron's Call is my favourite MMO ever... but to call it a sandbox just because there wasn't a quest journal? No, it was/is a themepark.

Originally posted by RefMinor

You asked for quotes, I gave you quotes, now you change your argument, it's normally best to back out gracefully at that point. Of course the threads are dead, we are talking about what people said in the past, none of the users post I linked to were deleted when I posted the quotes, I passed over a few choices ones from deleted users.

It's difficult to make you understand, I guess. Your standard of evidence is (apparently) extremely low, which allows you to present to the public virtually anything (no matter how thin) that supports the assertion you've constructed.

You did indeed scrape up some...people..who actually said it.  +1 internetz, I guess.  I should know better than to underestimate the silliness of humans on forums by now.

The fact that some people still believe Everquest 1 was a sandbox, even though it's the father of all theme park MMORPGs, makes me take such announcements with a HUGE grain of salt. Even more when it comes from SoE.

We'll know soon enough I guess.

Originally posted by Icewhite

Originally posted by RefMinor

You asked for quotes, I gave you quotes, now you change your argument, it's normally best to back out gracefully at that point. Of course the threads are dead, we are talking about what people said in the past, none of the users post I linked to were deleted when I posted the quotes, I passed over a few choices ones from deleted users.

It's difficult to make you understand, I guess. Your standard of evidence is (apparently) extremely low, which allows you to present to the public virtually anything (no matter how thin) that supports the assertion you've constructed.

You did indeed scrape up some...people..who actually said it.  +1 internetz, I guess.  I should know better than to underestimate the silliness of humans on forums by now.

I said gracefully

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

The fact that some people still believe Everquest 1 was a sandbox, even though it's the father of all theme park MMORPGs, makes me take such announcements with a HUGE grain of salt. Even more when it comes from SoE.

We'll know soon enough I guess.

EQ was a hybrid, it's not what you would call the themeparks of today..ie GW2 and RIFT and WOW to name but a few. Anyway most of us know their is only one game that get's you all fluffy and that is GW2.

Shouldn't you be defending anything anti that game instead of gracing us in this forum with you huge grain of salt.

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

The fact that some people still believe Everquest 1 was a sandbox, even though it's the father of all theme park MMORPGs, makes me take such announcements with a HUGE grain of salt. Even more when it comes from SoE.

We'll know soon enough I guess.

The "father of themepark MMO" if you want to use that, was WoW. I don't believe the word themepark even existed before WoW. When WoW came out EQ was in the GoD expansion, which wasn't a themepark nor really a sandbox at the time. GoD still had no quests outside of the long progression quests like Breakdown in Commication and a few more related to the sewers. GoD was nothing like Vanilla WoW.

Some of you are either trolls or have never played EQ, I don't care though, keep claiming things you know nothing about.

Originally posted by CalmOceans

Originally posted by The_Korrigan

The fact that some people still believe Everquest 1 was a sandbox, even though it's the father of all theme park MMORPGs, makes me take such announcements with a HUGE grain of salt. Even more when it comes from SoE.

We'll know soon enough I guess.

The "father of themepark MMO" if you want to use that, was WoW. I don't believe the word themepark even existed before WoW. When WoW came out EQ was in the GoD expansion, which wasn't a themepark nor really a sandbox at the time. GoD still had no quests outside of the long progression quests like Breakdown in Commication and a few more related to the sewers. GoD was nothing like Vanilla WoW.

Some of you are either trolls or have never played EQ, I don't care though, keep claiming things you know nothing about.

+1

Mr Korrigan does not know what he is talking about, obviously never played EQ or if he has then it was not before GOD and not even before POP.

I would guess he played it VOA came out for all the knowledge he has about the game.