It should also be noted that Silius, aka Siliem Grant (or whatever), was largely responsible for the failure that is/was Vanguard. He completely borked gameplay and rather then simply fixing the game - he pursured the WoW model.

Silius was the lead developer, fyi.

"At this point, I feel it important to note that while Vanguard was a failure in terms of both management and development, this wasn't the desired end result."

Originally posted by Trueth

It should also be noted that Silius, aka Siliem Grant (or whatever), was largely responsible for the failure that is/was Vanguard. He completely borked gameplay and rather then simply fixing the game - he pursured the WoW model.

 

Silius was the lead developer, fyi.

Silius still is the lead dev, and we are glad that they moved him out of eq2 because he was screwing up our itemization of weapons and armor so bad.   The guy is totaly clueless how to do anything original, he is all about copying somebody the work somebody else did. Now that he is back in vangaurd he is their problem now, good luck with that.

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

Originally posted by Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

   Yea in my opinion EQ succeded because there was very little competition at the time so people had to live with corpse runs and forced grouping

Originally posted by Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

Nonsense. It proved no such thing either for or against those things.

The majority of people quit the game in the first 10 levels before they'd even gotten to the point of even experiencing any of those things you cite. I was there in beta and I was there for launch, and I can tell you that the reasonsn people gave for quitting and not going back was the mountain of technical issues the game had, rendering it unplayable. Horrible performance, mobs falling through the ground, and on and on.

See, that's the problem you run into when you try to revise history and replace the actual events with your own version that better suits your narrative... There will always be people who were actually there and who actually remember what went down first-hand.

Vanguard's failing early on had nothing to do with its xp penalties or anything you cited. The reasons given, repeatedly, for why people didn't continue playing after that was because of the continued technical issues with the game, and becuase it was basically a ghost-town with so few playing in such a massive game world.

I'm not a huge fan of Vanguard myself, but I'm also not going to sit here and let someone make crap up just to push their personal agenda against a playstyle they don't like.
 

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

   Yea in my opinion EQ succeded because there was very little competition at the time so people had to live with corpse runs and forced grouping

 

It's amazing how often this argument comes up. It's wrong, every single time, for the same reason.

People are not going to continue playing and paying for a game that they aren't enjoying enough to do so, regardless of how many "other options" there are. If the game isn't fun enough to them, and none of the other options seem interesting, then they have the choice of simply not playing any of them at all. "Not having many other options" means absolutely nothing.

Everquest 1 did not succeed as much as it did for as long as it did "because there weren't many other options". It succeeded as much as it did, for as long as it did because the people playing it genuinely enjoyed playing it and wanted to continue. 

Saying "oh they only played it 'cause there weren't many options" is not a rational argument. It's an irrational attempt to dismiss and undermine the popularity the game actually had.

Originally posted by Arclan

Originally posted by Paladrink
Again please put some damn AI bots for hire ingame, this game is unplayable if you do not have people to play with and sadly even with the f2p still wont cover a 10% of the damn world as its too huge.

Agreed VG was too big and felt empty.  VG is a social failure, not a technical failure.  Game mechanics made it so players neither had time nor reason to interact.  Hindsight is 20/20.  In theory, lots of button mashing and lack of downtime sounds cool; in the implementation it was impersonal. 

I disagree on the higlighted parts.

VG is totally group oriented and many mechanics work in that direction. Anything you do in a group has bonuses, and that even includes farming for crafting materials. So, when you come across somebody farming them where you are farming too, what you do is teaming up instead of fighting for the resources. You have an insane amount of group content and tons of quests that point you to that content. Content is not instanced, so you can come across other groups while running a dungeon. Crafting is meaningful and crafters need to interact. Building things like ships or houses require many different crafters to get all the parts done.

The problem is that in a world this big you need a critical mass of players to get the feeling of a lively world, and that level population was only achieved at launch. After that, all the bugs and performance issues drove people off, but the problem was never VG mechanics not encouraging grouping.

Originally posted by TangentPoint

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

   Yea in my opinion EQ succeded because there was very little competition at the time so people had to live with corpse runs and forced grouping

 

It's amazing how often this argument comes up. It's wrong, every single time, for the same reason.

 

Not that your reasons i cut out are wrong, but there is another reason why this is wrong.

The competition was arguably stronger.

At the time of EQ's peak there were options.  DAoC was in its prime.   AC and UO were good options early on in EQ's reign, and FFXI and SWG came along when it was still growing.  So looking at EQ's peak period, from about 2001 up until EQ2/WoW launch, you always had at least 3 main competitiors in their prime.  from 2002-2004, where EQ2 was still growing, you had 3 main competitors, 2 agng old games, and stuff like AO, Earth and Beyond, AC2, EvE online.

When Rift launched in 2011 It had less current competition.  WoW was 7 years old off a massively unpopular expansion and EQ2 had seen better days.  the only game that was currently in its prime was EvE.

SWToR and GW2,along with Rift and a return to form WoW expansion, have finally given us an era where there is more competition than EQ1 had, but that wasnt the case for most of the last 5-6 years

Originally posted by TangentPoint

Originally posted by eddieg50

Originally posted by Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

   Yea in my opinion EQ succeded because there was very little competition at the time so people had to live with corpse runs and forced grouping

 

It's amazing how often this argument comes up. It's wrong, every single time, for the same reason.

 

People are not going to continue playing and paying for a game that they aren't enjoying enough to do so, regardless of how many "other options" there are. If the game isn't fun enough to them, and none of the other options seem interesting, then they have the choice of simply not playing any of them at all. "Not having many other options" means absolutely nothing.

 

Everquest 1 did not succeed as much as it did for as long as it did "because there weren't many other options". It succeeded as much as it did, for as long as it did because the people playing it genuinely enjoyed playing it and wanted to continue. 

 

Saying "oh they only played it 'cause there weren't many options" is not a rational argument. It's an irrational attempt to dismiss and undermine the popularity the game actually had.

   You could be right, but the fact is there were less options certainly compard to today.  Eq was also unique for its time and certainly had appeal,it also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine so it got great pub. my guess is that corpse runs and other annoying parts of the game people learned to live with because perhaps they did not know any better until WOW and others showed them a different way,  at that point EQ quickly faded from the scene to become a niche game

Originally posted by eddieg50

   You could be right, but the fact is there were less options certainly compard to today.  Eq was also unique for its time and certainly had appeal,it also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine so it got great pub. my guess is that corpse runs and other annoying parts of the game people learned to live with because perhaps they did not know any better until WOW and others showed them a different way,  at that point EQ quickly faded from the scene to become a niche game

Less crappy options but more 'current' and quality options.

I do think you are partially right in that a forced grouping game wouldnt go over so well in today's age, but i do think bringing back some that sting to death would go over well.  As would a game that takes a long time to level.  I think a game in the EQ model absolutely could sustain 400k subs again.

Originally posted by boojiboy
I played Vanguard from launch until 2011.  Despite the problems, it was by far the best MMO experience I've ever had with the best community I've ever experienced.  It's set the standard so high, that I can't find another MMO that I can enjoy.

I also played it at launch Enjoyed it for a couple of month, didn't have allot of bother from the bugs/issue's, but eventually mainly me growing abit tirde of fantasy gave up on the game pure based on it's fantasy theme.

But have a similar feeling like you have with Vangaurd but in my case it's SWG, it has set the bar so high that no MMORPG has even come close to the amount of content/social feature's SWG gave me.

While I can enjoy certain themepark MMORPG, it will alway's be SWG that has given me the best MMORPG experiance I ever had despite it's bugs/issue's.

Originally posted by strangiato2112

Originally posted by eddieg50

   You could be right, but the fact is there were less options certainly compard to today.  Eq was also unique for its time and certainly had appeal,it also appeared on the cover of Time Magazine so it got great pub. my guess is that corpse runs and other annoying parts of the game people learned to live with because perhaps they did not know any better until WOW and others showed them a different way,  at that point EQ quickly faded from the scene to become a niche game

Less crappy options but more 'current' and quality options.

 

I do think you are partially right in that a forced grouping game wouldnt go over so well in today's age, but i do think bringing back some that sting to death would go over well.  As would a game that takes a long time to level.  I think a game in the EQ model absolutely could sustain 400k subs again.

Taking a long time to level is not included in the 'punishment' gameplay I listed above. I am actually for lengthier levelling time, though I think many would blanch at it, unless mid level rewards were offered, or simply the levels didn't take long but there were so many the entire trip took a long time.

Providing a huge world at launch like EQ and VG is good, allowing players to level the entire time they explore that huge world is also good. (Rather than levelling up on 50% of the world and 'endgaming' on the other half.)

Originally posted by TangentPoint

Originally posted by Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.

Nonsense. It proved no such thing either for or against those things.

 

The majority of people quit the game in the first 10 levels before they'd even gotten to the point of even experiencing any of those things you cite. I was there in beta and I was there for launch, and I can tell you that the reasonsn people gave for quitting and not going back was the mountain of technical issues the game had, rendering it unplayable. Horrible performance, mobs falling through the ground, and on and on.

 

See, that's the problem you run into when you try to revise history and replace the actual events with your own version that better suits your narrative... There will always be people who were actually there and who actually remember what went down first-hand.

 

Vanguard's failing early on had nothing to do with its xp penalties or anything you cited. The reasons given, repeatedly, for why people didn't continue playing after that was because of the continued technical issues with the game, and becuase it was basically a ghost-town with so few playing in such a massive game world.

 

I'm not a huge fan of Vanguard myself, but I'm also not going to sit here and let someone make crap up just to push their personal agenda against a playstyle they don't like.
 

 

 

I find it amusing you bring up revisionist argument when you get so much wrong about early VG. As in the penalties started at level 5, which means if they played to 10 (Which took a while back then) then they were fully exposed to the PITA/Punishment aspects of VG.

Horrible performance? DDO stutters unless you have an SSD due to their terrible file management, and it has only gotten worse with all the changes and additions over the years. People still play they because they enjoy the game and what they want out of a MMO can only be found in that unique game. So Performance forcing people out of their favorite game? Pure Bunk.

Mobs falling through the world? Won't happen in the VG engine. They can get stuck in the geometry, but the floor in the VG engine is always Z axis 0, the mobs have no code going below that. If there are stairs or a cliff, then the Z axis changes to 9 being the floor for that as well.

Honestly, you get so many things wrong when you talk about early VG, makes me wonder if you were actually there. Revisiont Argument? I beleieve that only occurred to you to bring up because you were making up your arguments as you typed them.

It wasn't the harsh gameplay that drove people away from Vanguard. It was the lag, the glitches, the performance, the unfinished state of things, and the biggest one, lack of development.

Over time, SoE started cutting more and more of the interesting features from VG to make it simpler, a bit more themeparkish. Bind on pickup was added, corpse runs removed, xp penalty reduced, EE was removed, icons were added over NPC heads, sparkles for quest objectives were added.

Do you know what this resulted in? A large large percentage of the core audience of Vanguard getting upset and leaving.

SoE was barely giving any development money to Vanguard and what little it got they spent on making it like WoW. That was the final straw for most people.

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Originally posted by gordiflu

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Originally posted by Arclan

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Originally posted by Paladrink Again please put some damn AI bots for hire ingame, this game is unplayable if you do not have people to play with and sadly even with the f2p still wont cover a 10% of the damn world as its too huge.

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Agreed VG was too big and felt empty.  VG is a social failure, not a technical failure.  Game mechanics made it so players neither had time nor reason to interact.  Hindsight is 20/20.  In theory, lots of button mashing and lack of downtime sounds cool; in the implementation it was impersonal. 

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I disagree on the higlighted parts.

VG is totally group oriented and many mechanics work in that direction. Anything you do in a group has bonuses, and that even includes farming for crafting materials. So, when you come across somebody farming them where you are farming too, what you do is teaming up instead of fighting for the resources. You have an insane amount of group content and tons of quests that point you to that content. Content is not instanced, so you can come across other groups while running a dungeon. Crafting is meaningful and crafters need to interact. Building things like ships or houses require many different crafters to get all the parts done.

The problem is that in a world this big you need a critical mass of players to get the feeling of a lively world, and that level population was only achieved at launch. After that, all the bugs and performance issues drove people off, but the problem was never VG mechanics not encouraging grouping.

---

By social failure I mean that folks did not socialize...as in talk. Sure we grouped, but never had time to say more than 'incoming.'
Yes the game would crash every few hours, and once in a while I would fall through the world (which was cool, actually); sometimes the graphics were choppy even on my top-end computer, but that had no bearing on my disinterest in the game.

Vanguard is a shadow of its potential for too many reasons to list here, and every one of them is gameplay related.