Originally posted by kobie173 

1. Fair enough. I'm sure if SOE had the ability to do the classic server, they likely would. I think there are at least three roadblocks preventing them from doing this (and again, this is simply from my observations and the last is pure conjecture) -- a. zero willingness to divert development resources from their upcoming games and the ones that are financially healthy, b. a lack of technical expertise among the remaining developers to make sense of the convoluted pre-CU and CU code, and c. contractual language from LucasArts preventing them from doing so.

2. I would not say that SOE does not have the ability to make smart business decisions, if by "smart" you mean "profitable." Corporations are certainly not in the business of losing money, and if Smedley's organization was flushing money down the john, he'd be replaced.

3. The topic does appear on the forums quite a bit. Sometimes it's from current players, and many more times it's from people who either can post on the free vet trials, or people who have just returned to the game. I don't think either is indicative of the general feelings of the playerbase as a whole. If there were, somehow, classic servers implemented, I would definitely play on one, as I'm sure many others would. That doesn't change the fact that a significant portion of the current players wouldn't. Now, I'm not addressing those that would be lured back by a classic server, because when we're talking about the topic's appearance (and reaction to it) on the O-boards, those players don't factor into the equation.

All my argument is is that there is a statistically significant portion of current players who have little to no interest of playing on a classic server. This is not done via polling, this is simply my observations.  So the red isn't the cornerstone of my argument, it IS my argument. It's why so many posters push back when thinly-veiled "Bring back Pre-CU" threads crop up from people who admittedly have been resubbed for a matter of days. It's why a decent chunk of the playerbase simply doesn't kowtow to being lectured to on a regular basis from people who are getting free months to come back and post while they admit on other sites that they are simply trolling for bans.  What, pray tell, did you think my argument was?

1) well said and I agree.  On top of that I would think the number 1 reason is that lucas arts has simply put their foot down to any further major changes to the game.  Soe has simply shown that they cannot manage this title and caused little more than loss of profits and negative press with each of their major initiatives.  

2) Soe is more than just mmos and I suspect mmos are the smaller portion of their actual business.  I think the sum of their business decisions can be summed up with soe going from over 1 million total subscribers a few years ago to maybe a few hundred thousand today.  If soe were a major division of sony it would get real attention, but honestly who would replace smedly if he was fired?  It isn't like soe is filled with promising young stars or has the ability to hire major talent.  They have been hemmoraging talent for years now.

3) I agree that the topic gets old, but I don't think it is limited to just a few returning players or vet trials.  I think most of the current players would enjoy the change, but no longer discuss it out of apathy or have given up on it ever happening (something I agree with).  However I think it represents what the overwhelming majority would like would like to see happen so it makes for valid disucssion as odd as that sounds.

I do understand your argument and didnt question what it was, I was simply saying it isn't a very strong arguement.  Aside from the trolling which I don't think is the majority of what goes on.  Perhaps a case of thin skin or something along those lines.

Originally posted by M1sf1t

 

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Originally posted by Thillian
Well that was the point why they bought it. So noone else could get it, improve it and compete to their precious Everquest franchise (with which is in direct competition).

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No they got it because Brad Mcquid sold it to them in order to cash out from this flop.

You have described why Brad wanted to sell the game and I think that is accurate, but not why SOE wanted to BUY the game.

I am sure every business owner would like to sell their failures, but why would a company invest in a failed project and not take measures to make sure they same failure did not repeat itself?   What purpose did their investment serve and further buying the game?  It isn't like soe made a real effort to make the game comnpetitive as a producer or a developer.

Well said Dionysus.  Nice summary of how things are going and I generally agree with you.

Soe (and others) are going to do what they think is going to make them the most money.  The problem is that that hasn't always been what is best for the customers and the health of the game.  Without speculating I think it can be seen that this management style has harmed soes games on numerous occasions and the trend of their micro transaction desires has been getting bigger and bigger with ventures into items and now locations that do affect the game. 

The one word that I think sums it up nicely is 'guess', because nothing that is happening suggests that soe has any clue to what they are doing.  They simply want to achieve something, but once again have no idea what the impact of trying to reach those goals will be.  I do not see much love for this type of thing from their players and as you pointed out, the implosion of free realms might have been the eye opener they need.

Originally posted by Dionysus187

The XP potions are basically the heaviest impacting cash shop items in the game. They have various kinds that give a short term bonus to experience gain. Ever since then though they have just been offering more appearance armor and furniture for houses, and using the delivery method for typical MMO services that any decent MMO has (character transfer, name change etc).

The 'dungeon' they offer via LoN is piss poor and ultimately has no impact on the rest of the game. I think some small amount of coin drops but you can easily get better items for your character in dungeons provided in the 'actual' game, its more for LoN lore than anything else.

You have to acknowledge that the threshold for items has been crossed with the latest addition.  It can no longer be said that potions are the only thing that affects the game.  It doesn't matter if it is possible to get better items in the game than those sold in the cash shop, because items are now being directly sold.  Not only that, but they have diverted developer time to creating cash shop only game world area.  Strange that the expansion is delayed, but they have time to create a special dungeon for the cash shop.

Downplaying the impact or quality doesn't really matter, because it sets a clear example of things to come.  There will be more items, more dungeons and who knows what else that will be accessable only by spending cash in the virtual store.   There is more impact of a cash shop than just the items for sale.  It takes developer time to create all this stuff and that is time that is no longer being spent fixing bugs, creating new content and the like for regular updates.

I personally suspect the items will be of good value to entice more people to buy virtual cards in the hopes of getting a winner. 

Just like soe would never introduce RMT into everquest in any way shape or form.   Just like soe promised to do so many things in swg, like profession updates, galactic civil war updates, blah blah.  You are playing with a two edged sword here my friend.  For everything you think is delusional easily applies to many of soes business aspects.

This isn't to say I think such a change will ever occur, because I just don't think soe has the ability to make smart business decisions and even if they did make the mistake of chosing to do something many players would enjoy, they lack the ability to execute such a plan.  

I still find it funny that we both agree how much this topic appears on the forums, but you don't seem to the correlation between it being such a frequent topic and what many players do indeed want, even the current players.  Saying that a significant portion of players are opposed to it does not really have much weight considering how few are left.   So a portion of the small minority of players who did not flee the game might oppose or not partake in an additional rule set server.  Hardly the cornerstone of a solid argument.

1) I said majority, just to emphasize how small your sample size of "significant portion" is in perspective.   My choice of word, not yours.  No matter how you slice it you are still talking about what the vast minority wants. 

2) I agree with you that it is near impossible for it to happen, but you never know.  However I don't think you need to call people delusional, because they do not agree with you, which strangely enough is something you were just complaining about people who post here.  Odd huh?

The always exists the possibility that soe could open a classic server without altering the current game one bit.  Well except I think we all know there is a good possibility that classic servers would prove to be more popular than the current game that is dying now, but I digress.

Originally posted by kobie173 

However, when someone comes back after being gone for two-plus years, proves his ignorance on at least some of the game's issues by getting simple facts wrong, and then spins into a thinly-veiled "bring back pre-CU" rant when it's plainly obvious that at least a significant portion of the playerbase clearly doesn't WANT pre-CU back, then what, pray tell, did you think was going to happen?

The mindset here still, after four years, appears to be that anyone who does not support a 100% rollback to patch 11 or whatever is a raving NGE fanboi who spanks it to a poster of John Smedley. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

You know, if the "significant portion" of the players didn't want the pre-cu back then it would not be such a constant topic of discussion on the forums.  Perhaps people have accepted it will not happen, but don't confuse that for not wanting it to happen.

Also, if the majority did not want the pre-cu game, then the majority of the players would not have left. 

Originally posted by Goatgod76

Originally posted by vladww

Don't hesitate : stick to WoW

- Vanguard could have been a great game but SOE + Silius have been busy on destroying & dumbing down the game for a while.

Typical SOE policy : Create/buy a great game, then change the dev team and turn it into a bland mess :

EQ post Luclin  = R.I.P., SWG post NGE = R.I.P., VG = R.I.P.

 

- WoW, although being snobbed by some mmorpg.com readers, is still the best theme park mmorpg around, by miles.

The content is staggering, everything is polished, everything works, and everything makes sense.

You can play it casually, you got great pvp, you got all kind of pve ( very easy up to very challenging )

Thats why so many gamers play it, and so many devs try to copy it.

 

PS : Thats a non biased opinion, as i stopped playing both and now enjoy Darkfall, which is in a league of its own

 

 

LOL!!!

It's Sigil, not Silius.

Silius, the SOE employee, producer and lead designer for vanguard, who is currently working on another game and and isn't leading the vanguard team.

I am pretty sure Vlad did not mean Sigil since they have been busy doing nothing for almost 2.5 years since they are out of business.

@original poster. 

Vanguard could have been a great game and if you are just looking for something to waste a few months playing then I do not think there is a better game on the market.  Just to run around, explore and see the sights.   The classes are really good and the world is excellent to travel around in and explore. 

Beyond that, the game might as well be closing down in a few months, which would not be a surprising if that did happen.  I don't mean to be a doom sayer, but I think everyone sees this game has been living on borrowed time for a while.

As for wow, I would wait until after patch 3.3 when you will have access to cross server groups for dungeons.  That will allow you to explore some grouping in the game as you level.  It will be pugs, so the quality of the teams you get will be all over the map.

You are in a similar time zone as all of those countries, so it is natural that you meet players from those areas during your playtime.

I have always played with people from different countries since UO times.  A good portion of my guild right now lives in Europe. 

Vanguard wasn't the only game that soe had to give a press release that they were hands off on development.  The day pirates of the burning sea announced it was partnering with soe, they had to put up a giant FAQ and seperate discussion forum in an attempt to calm down player fears that soe was going to have anything to do with the games development. 

The same thing happened when gods and heroes partnered with soe. 

Every time soe partners with someone, both companies have to immediately go into damage control, which speaks volumes about the reputation soe has. 

Originally posted by wartywarlock

are we allowed to bash this guy? I hope so hes not an mmorpg member so.. What a fucking royal twatbag. If ever it was said with meaning, it was now. DIAF, you fucking douche

I am pretty sure he is a forum member here.

This game is owned by Electronic Arts, and EA has a real fancy for shutting down MMOs.  The game has been on a rapid decline since release.  That is the reality of the situation even though Mythic is trying to right the course.

I think people could "flock" back to this game, but it would require some major work and serious marketing.  Throwing out a free trial to support whatever the latest patch was isn't going to revive the game.   I really don't think many people care what the latest patch has fixed and have simply given up on the game. 

Adding a 3rd faction would be a giant step to regaining people... again. 

Removing the tiered zone system, because it just makes 1/2 of the games content disposable.  Cut out half of the levels and make the game 1-20 by combining the removed 20 levels worth of skills, since leveling was not a strength of this game in any way.  Make T1 the 1-10 zone and T2/3/4 the world people war in.   That makes 1/2 the game world relevant again and gets people into the real action sooner.  T2 and T3 are just wasted resources.

Those are just thoughts, but something bigger than fixing a few bugs is needed.  Gaining new people isn't going to change much if the problems that caused people to leave remain unchanged.  It just populates the game with new people that will quit.

It really does smell like a bait and switch.

If one game had such an effect on the entire market that just shows how weak that market already, and still is.

Originally posted by Shohadaku

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Without Blizzard and WOW, more than HALF of this industry (including these editors on mmorpg.com) would't even have a job in this industry.

Frankly, without Blizzard, chances were big that PC gaming would be the size of a post stamp and limited to on line browser games.

So, thank you BLizzard for giving the world 5 years of World of Warcraft.

They saved the pirated PC gaming world.

 

 

There was plenty of PC gaming before WoW. I been PC gaming since my Commodore 64 in the 1980's!

WoW didn't invent, or innovate anything. They just wrapped it up in a happy meal, adding big business advertising and a nice fluffy wrapper to a polished simplistic product.

WoW neither created or ruined the PC market. It is simply just a well backed successfull product.

Unfortunatly it caught the eye of the big business vultures realizing how much cash they can milk people for with bad WoW clones.

I keep seeing people make claims that developers are making money with "wow clones", but I am not sure that is happening.  I would guess that the opposite of that is true and developers are losing money by trying to make clones or revamp their current games to be more like wow.

I have to shake my head and wonder what people are thinking sometimes.

Lets imagine wow never existed and see what the mmo world would have had to build off of.  

Everquest II releases and is king of the mmo hill, because honestly there isn't much else at the time. 

So where do developers look for their ques to what makes the biggest mmo on the market?  EQ2

Lets look at a few features of the EQ2 train wreck. 

• Shared death penatly.  Joy, not you are punished for grouping even if the person died all the way across the zone where you have zero chance of affecting the outcome.
• Zones, yes billions of loading screens.  We all love waiting around for 15 loading screens just to go from one town to the next.
• Instanced everything.  To many people in qeynos hills, don't worry there will be 3 other instances you can choose from.  Maybe your friends are in the same one as you. 
• 20 levels of generic archtypes classes with 30 more levels of 24 classes so watered down they are only seperated by a few skills, which ironicially create massive imbalance between the desirability of those classes.  The beauty of a game with 6 tank classes where 4 cannot fulfill the role of tank.  Awesome.
• /pizza, station exchange, etc. 
• Premium website access for only $2.99 a month.  Who would not be thrilled to pay for something that doesn't work most of the time or is free in other games.
• Adventure packs that do not work on release or are so horribly balanced that it destroys the community interaction, because everyone is hiding in their own little instance soloing the best experience in the game (I'm look at you splitpaw)
• Expansions that are so rushed they barely function on release.
• No pvp, who ever would want pvp in a pve game. 
• The mindset that players will accept anything on release and pay for the final year of development smacks so hard with EQ2 it isn't even funny.
• Busted graphics engine that performs so horribly no one can possibly run the game well and that is by design.
• Crafting system that was so hastily rushed into the game that many recipes cannot be used when they are purchased, because the prerequisite recipes cannot be learned for 5 more levels.  Lets not forget that instead of 1 progress bar, there are now 4!  Oh, and you can die while baking bread now.  That is gameplay design at its finest.
• Unitemized zones, massive camp fests to get access keys for special zones (that were gray to your level by the time you could actual enter them)
• Massive class/combat/quest revamps that wildly changed the game and class you have been playing for a year.
• casual "solo" friendly play that offered quest chains in the sequence of solo, solo, group, group, solo, group, group, solo, group....  Nothing says solo like having to ask for help then leave your group, then ask for help in another 10 minutes, then solo again, repeat.

I could go on, but the point is that EQ2 represented the pinnacle of mmo design and evolution of "the good old days".  Honestly I look at where the market was heading and it was not very inspiring.  The birth of wow didn't somehow remove talent and ability from other game designers.  With or without wow, those companies would still be releasing games that suck and have no business being on a shelf at a software retailer.  

Why is it that other genres have mega hits that also inspire innovation and evolution in their competition, even in the games that are clones.  Yet in the mmo world people seem to think one game forces people to play it and has removed the ability of every other company to think for themselves and do their job of making good games.  In other words, why do we work so hard to blame the failures of so many on the success of just one?

The positive:

Wows effect introduced the term 'polish' into the mmo genre.  That was something that was unheard of before and it opened a lot of eyes as to the level of quality an mmo can achieve. 

Fun first game design.  If something wasn't fun, it was either changed to be fun or it was removed. 

Wow captured the large mass of people waiting to join the mmo genre, which previous games failed to do (see above 2 points for big reasons).

The negatives:

It is going to be very difficult for any new mmo to compete with wow and have similar gameplay without filling some unanswered need in the genre.  Either innovation or targeting a specific audience.  This is assuming developers realize people do not want a wow clone. 

Other developers getting gold fever and trying to replicate the wow and not replicate blizzard how blizzard made wow.  That statement may not make sense at first glance, but it I think it is the single biggest problem in the genre right now. 

Developers wanting the riches of blizzard, but continue to follow the business practices of 1999 and not understanding how things turned sour so fast. 

Originally posted by Bagguns

WoW itself has done nothing but good things to the mmorpg world.

It's all the developers that are trying to copy WoW's formula that are doing bad things.

This sums up the entire thread even before it has been discussed. 

Originally posted by page

If I were working for SOE marketing I would be reading mmorpg all the time.

I think that only about 5% of the mmo population reads forums, but mmorpg.com is probably the most popular along with gamespot.com.  And if so you think they would catch some clues as to how to fix this game, unless they don't care.

My guess :

The marketing people read these forums, but the high level managers will not let them spend any money.  Like how many of you people have jobs where you give your boss good ideas and they just blow you off ?

SOE is notorious for not listening to their customer base.  You can almost go back every single year and find someone in a leadership role making promised of how they will change, have learned and will start listening to their customers better in the future.

However I don't think SOE have any real intentions putting real effort into vanguard when they got involved in the project.

Originally posted by Goronian

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Goronian 

Retailers are not involved in digital transactions. There is no reason for Blizzard to set the prices at digital retail this high, since, you know, it costs nothing for them at all.

 

Again, we are out of my area of knowledge, but I have heard retailers negotiate with developers over digital pricing, because it competes with them and they can order less or in some cases not order a product completely.  Similar to what is happening with certain handheld games and digital only distribution.

 

I do see your point, but again it goes back around to player demand and if people are willing to pay that price then it isn't to high.  Just like every other video game that sells for $50 and expansions for similar. 

 

 

Gamers need to get a backbone. I gon't see the price, as justified, so I refuse to pay it, simple as that. It's not even a question about WoW being "good" or "bad". WoW, simply say, does not have much more content, than other MMOs. In fact, if we go by server density, WoW has about the same server pop as other games, it's just that there's much more people on each one of them. And since I don't have RL friends who play it, nor do I think it's the best game in the genre, I have no reason to play it. Simple, isn't it?

Again, it is fine that you don't like wow enough to pay the price (or even if it was cheaper).  There is nothing wrong with that.  I completely didn't understand your point about server population in regard to volume of content, but I will just assume you are correct about whatever it is you are trying to convey.  Again, I am not saying you have to like the game or think it is worth the price. That is your opinion.

However I don't see it as something to stand up in arms about and everyone else needing to grow a backbone just to reinforce your opinion.   The consumers of the market are determining the price and people are voting with their wallets.  Not to mention there is very little in terms of competition to warcraft from other mmo companies.  That is the real problem.

So what if the game isn't brand new.  Monopoly and scrabble are not brand new games, but they command the same price as other brand new board games.  I don't think people are spineless for paying comparable prices for those games, because they enjoy them.