I love statments like "This is the best game ever, there is no denying it.!" and that's in responce to hundreds of people denying it. Blanket absolute statments make me giggle.

Originally posted by bkmmo

You know it's really funny to read all of these posts that reflect opinions based on the game now.  Why not come back in 6 months and then review it!

Ok I just wanna insert a point.

SOE purchased Vanguard to salvage a game which would have been cancled. SOE did not want to invest another 25mill into the game so they asked brad to release it. Brad could have cancled the project, or taken sony's offer and release it. So the game gets released in a few months later, people play for a few months then slander SOE for the design/art/stability/price.

I guess if SOE had as much money as Microsoft they could have let brad develop the game for another 2 years and invest millions into it, but if what you see in VG right now is the state it was in when Sony looked at it, then you'd have made the same call as them. Invest several million to try and "salvage" it, or release it and hope to work out the bugs. Sony is not in the business of making huge gambles with their money by picking up incomplete poor quality looking MMO's and rennovating them. Sony saw a way to help an ex-employee out of a sticky situation but didn't want to invest millions into it (they have their own employee's whom they need to pay). So it wasn't the most altruistic thing sony could have done but it wasn't some sort of faustian bargan where sony is cackling behind some giant oak desk eating shrimp while brad humbly tries to fix his game. Please, stop living a fairtale. If you want to say the game is bad, go ahead but blaming SOE. SOE didn't make the game, they just published it.

And don't retort with "but SOE has money they should have invested millions into fixing vanguard!" well when you have millions we'll see how quick you are to invest it all into fixing up someone elses house.

My suggestion is to write down your ideas and save them as pitch docs. You're too inexperienced to make an MMORPG, just save your good ideas and put together the game on paper first. MMO's are not made on impulse. You seem to want to be a designer, not an artist or programmer.

Wow this thread took a while to read but I agree with you compltely Lidane. I'm an Environment Artist at a game company and most of my rants to my girlfriend while I played were art related. The lack of life, the sense of world, the strange feeling that everything was a giant childrens toy, things lacked depth because they lacked shadows in the textures. Following the EQ2 route everything leaves shadows up to the engine to render, yet the engine dosn't render shadows efficantly enough, and in some cases not at all. So thing tend to look like a novices model in Maya/Max with a tiling texture on it. Not something rounded and rendered in 3D with light and shadow information.

The animations (lack of) also killed it for me, as well as the really bad voice acting. All in all the world felt huge, overblown and overgrown. There'd be a massive tree every 20 meters like clockwork and only tiny tree's between them. It really felt proceedurly generated. Why? Because nothing was tilted, when I worked on the WoW zones we learned alot of lessions on how to make the environment look real and have a sense of history. One of them is to never drop a tree down perfectly vertical (except he ashenvale goliaths). Everything had some lean or some tilt to give it a sense of growing twards the light. (I suppose Matt had no choice in Dun Morough but the bare tree's leaned).

Anyways, art talk aside. I really enjoyed your well written diary and share simmilar views and desires for a game where environment, characters and everything lends itself twards immursion and not just as a prop placed by someone who needs "Random monster camp #223" for a quest target.

Arioc Murkwood

I'm in the same boat as you. I've pretty much got to the end of EQ2, and 8 hour raids on the end-game that force me to dedicate my weekends to them don't excite me or encourage me to keep playing. So EQ2 is on hold.

WoW is more of the same with BC, so that's shelfed.

Dark Age of Camelot, I can't get over the stiff characters and animations. Just too old for me.

Vanguard:SoH, world feels cold and stiff, I have tons of reasons not to play and few to keep at it. It's like everything is huge for no reason, a world made by giants. Even a lamp is 5x the size of my character.  Anyways, too many crashes and exp losses due to bugs made me give up the ghost.

EVE Online, fun game but no real pve content, if I don't rush out and pvp nothing to do but repeat kill task missions over and over. Wish there was some engaging PvE like Asherons call. That'd keep me going.

Asherons Call: Can't get over the dated engine and clunky interface. Used to love it.

(Intert Generic Asian grindfest MMO here, free or otherwise): Click to mvoe is not my gig, I like to feel immursed in the world, have it surround me, interact with it, feel like I can look through my characters eyes and play an avatar. Not move a unit around a map like an RTS.  I can't get attached in games like guildwars and the click to moves, they feel like I'm playing diablo, not a MMO. Plus most of them lack any sense of "world" or immursion.

Yep, the well is dry and I'm lamenting my addiction :). Just nothing out there right now that interests me. Dungeon Runners is just diablo with a monthly fee. EQ2 has run out of content. Turbine crushed any faith I had in them with AC2 and DDO, so I don'thave any faith in LOTRO. Which leaves Age of Conan, and hopefully Star Trek.. till then, nothing I can do but post on MMO forums and wallow my sorrow in Mt. Dew!

Thank god I work on MMO's or I'd have the shakes from withdrawl.

Hey just wanted to suggest ArtRage 2, some of the concept guys at work have been using the free version and loved it. This is great for color comps and sketch concept pages. Even for some thumbnails. It's like 20 bucks for the full program and has alot of the cool features of Painter 9. Textures we use Photoshop, but I can see this program being good for a stylized painterly texture approach also, just need selection tools like PS.Cs2 has.