http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/newsArchive.vm?section=News&month=current&id=1425

Cool stuff :)

Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?

McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.

Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.

Wow that was unexpected

Too bad the Vangaurd F2P model is complete garbage

o well :(

The game never grew in popularity after SOE bought it.  Never.

If he gets back to his roots and some of the original things he planned to do it will be good stuff for VG.

Originally posted by Kost

Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?

McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.

Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.

while i get your point you do know that there wouldnt be Vangaurd without brad right?

Originally posted by Letsinod

The game never grew in popularity after SOE bought it.  Never.

If he gets back to his roots and some of the original things he planned to do it will be good stuff for VG.

It didnt really grow much popularitywhile still owned by microsoft either, and no matter how you spin it, SOE did safe the game, but Bradd should have asked SOE to step in sooner, when SOE took over things where getting fixed fast, their added content was fun. But The mess Bradd/sigil launched the game with scared too many players away.

He says he wants to add better or equivalent loot drops from bosses and monsters, but just keep in mind that F2P players are only limited to COMMON drops. So does that really help people advance their characters if they can't equip the items that drops?

Originally posted by Kost

Why on earth would anyone consider this to be good?

McQuaid was the worst thing that ever happened to Vanguard, and the game didn't start to rise in popularity until his departure and Sigil being snatched up by SOE.

Not good imho, he should have stayed wherever he was.

Sorry to correct you, but Vangaurd never 'rose' in popularity. It started big with a 3/4 dropping out in the first three months and then a slow leak from there to where it stabilized at just one notch below 'abysmal' numbers.

Oh and btw, good for Brad. I hear he needed the work.

Well he was the guy directly responsible for the failure of Vanguard. BUT if he has got his life back togheter he is probably one of the few that has the vision and guts to move Vanguard to what it always should have been. It is a unique game that should have a bigger following, lets just hope for everybodys sake that he is sucessful.

Do you have any funny stories to tell everyone about working on Vanguard?
The Vanguard team is an amazing group of people pouring their hearts and souls into this game. We're all very serious about the FTP re-launch and making sure the game is ready. That said, there's always somebody cracking a joke, especially in or near Silius's office. In fact, if you don't hear laughter coming from that direction every ten minutes or so, it almost always means he's out or somewhere else in the building.

Shouldn't it be "I loved the time I hid in my house popping pills while people who looked up to and trusted me got fired in a parking lot"  

Well hopefully him being back will be a positive for the game but the F2P matrix really needs to change before many people even think about playing the game or the dynamics of that.

Originally posted by Zorgo

Oh and btw, good for Brad. I hear he needed the work.

haha

You guys do know that SOE bought out Vanguard because it threatened their success of EQ2?

Which, in the long run didn't help much :/

Wow, this is actually very interesting news! Anyone have a date on when Vanguard will convert to F2P?

He did such a great job the first time I can see why they wanted him back.

Originally posted by stealthbr

Wow, this is actually very interesting news! Anyone have a date on when Vanguard will convert to F2P?

Late this summer it seems. And to answer another person SOE must have brought him back to show they mean business with Vanguard, hopefully they can at least attempt to make the game closer to the vision of a "real" and improved game in the true EQ1 tradition. It remains to be seen if there exist enough players  for such a game today, if they manage to fix it (and a lot is fixed already in Vanguard) but I do respect that they try.

Originally posted by FelixMajor

Originally posted by Zorgo

Oh and btw, good for Brad. I hear he needed the work.

haha

 

You guys do know that SOE bought out Vanguard because it threatened their success of EQ2?

 

Which, in the long run didn't help much :/

Do people actually believe this garbage?  When SoE bought VG it was already a failure.  Its doubtful anyone else would have bought it.  Compare VG the day SoE bought to what VG was like 18 months later.  Why spend all that money fixing it up if you only bought it as a defense?

Say what you want about Brand and his failure, but go ask Curt Schilling how hard it is to release a AAA MMO with a new company. At least Brad's game saw the light of day. Some people still do play VG ... and LOTS of people still check in to forums etc. to see if anything is brewing. I thnk that's because the game at its core has something special about it, deeper, the same way EQ did. What's the 1 commond denominator with those two games? The things that give VG its potential were creating way back in the Sigil days. The rush to release, bad management (by Sigil), lack of developement (by SOE) are the reasons for it's small player base today. I think this is great news. It's going to stir the pot for sure ... and just to speculate a tad more, EQNext ...?

PS ... someone pull up that thead where Sony celebrated their 20 year aniversay of EQ1 with all the original team, including Brad. I called it then that Brad would be back! Sukas!!!

Brad's mmorpg was swept under to support EQ2 just like Dark Age of Camelot was swept under a rug to try to "inspire" daoc gamers to flood into Warhammer (yeah, like that worked).

Glad to see him back but I hope he has grown within the past 5 or so years.  If he has the same vision for VGSoH that Dark Age of Camelot had, and Elder Scrolls will have, then maybe we will get a real RP feeling pvp game once more.

It's a big if, and I'm not worrying about it because I doubt they'd even bring back the 2 faction server let alone see why raising the bar to something more is really going to start becoming popular.

Mr. McQuaid, don't forget:  So what wil VG have to offer?

TSW = 3 faction, GW 2 = W v W v W, RIFT = a 3 faction option in a BG setting (it's a start).  So what will Brad do?  I wrote him a very nice email once, supported him, talked about how I saw his vision in VG and then of course I brought up what a DAoC influence would have offered him.  Never got a reply - guess he's busy :)

Anyway, regardless, Welcome back Aradune Mithara!

Originally posted by sylentnyte

http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/newsArchive.vm?section=News&month=current&id=1425

Cool stuff :)

There was already a thread on this here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/356333/Brad-McQuaid-is-back-according-to-Massively.html

Originally posted by Comaf

Brad's mmorpg was swept under to support EQ2 just like Dark Age of Camelot was swept under a rug to try to "inspire" daoc gamers to flood into Warhammer (yeah, like that worked).

 

Glad to see him back but I hope he has grown within the past 5 or so years.  If he has the same vision for VGSoH that Dark Age of Camelot had, and Elder Scrolls will have, then maybe we will get a real RP feeling pvp game once more.

 

It's a big if, and I'm not worrying about it because I doubt they'd even bring back the 2 faction server let alone see why raising the bar to something more is really going to start becoming popular.

 

Mr. McQuaid, don't forget:  So what wil VG have to offer?

TSW = 3 faction, GW 2 = W v W v W, RIFT = a 3 faction option in a BG setting (it's a start).  So what will Brad do?  I wrote him a very nice email once, supported him, talked about how I saw his vision in VG and then of course I brought up what a DAoC influence would have offered him.  Never got a reply - guess he's busy :)

 

Anyway, regardless, Welcome back Aradune Mithara!

Again, if they wanted to sweep it under why did they spend money trying to fix up a game that had less than 50k subs when they bought it?  What is your defense to that?

And if the devs spend one single second of time on PvP its a waste of time.  Trying to please everyone is stupid.  Stick to the games strengths.

edit: feel free to add PvP elements after the f2p conversion, but never, ever, touch one PvE ability to do so