Originally posted by Scrogdog

Originally posted by eddieg50

 I just think its silly to quit a game that you liike because of Sony,  I play a game for the game not for the developer or manufacturer.  of course you are not going back to a restaurant if you get bad food, but your saying that vanguard gave you good food, who cares about the Matre dae when the food is great.  Now you really dont explain why  you quit , did your guild have a run in with sony?

 

You could say that. Twice in fact.

The first time was when they bought out Verant and completely trashed EQ1.

The second time was when they completely trashed SWG.

We liked VG and thought it had potential. But there was also a very buggy launch and some very strange mechanics and so forth. So, when you are in that position, and then the game is taken over by a known destroyer of games, what incentive is there to stick around? VG was a far thing from where it is today back then.

Even so, even if it could could be said that SOE did some good for VG, has Vangaurd died in the hands of SOE? Yes or no.

*twitch twitch* Argumentum ad Infinitum.  SOE Didn't buy out Verant.  SOE -is- Verant.  

I'm somewhat amused by the amount of misinformation in that TTH article to begin with.  They say that SOE acquired Sigil and Vanguard before it launched; Vanguard launched in January 2007, the parking lot incident after SOE bought out Sigil was in May 2007.  

Originally posted by Murashu

Originally posted by punkbrad7

Originally posted by Murashu

Microsoft dropped VG in May 2006 and they moved to SOE shortly after that. That was about 6 months before the January 2007 launch.

 

As a publisher.  The only hand SOE had in the development of Vanguard is after they bought it.

 

If you want to believe that SOE spent money on any game for an entire year before giving any development input, you go right ahead.

 

As soon as SOE took over as the publishers, the target audience of VG switched from the old EQ player to the "WoW player looking for something different."

I bet you believe that Verant Interactive wasn't owned by Sony before it was turned into SOE, too.

Originally posted by Murashu

Originally posted by punkbrad7

Originally posted by Murashu

Originally posted by Thillian

As others mentioned already. There is a new Everquest. And it's called Vanguard.

 

When I started beta testing Vanguard back in November 2005, I noticed many similarities to EQ, but somewhere around mid 2006 they threw those out the window in an attempt to make the game more appealing to the masses. The only thing that remained that truly reminded me of EQ were the dungeons. If they had stuck with the original design concept and made a game more like EQ instead of trying to compete with WoW, I believe they would have pleased many more players.

 

As much as I would love to play a newer game similar to the old EQ, I don't think I can ever give SOE another dime. They changed the original EQ into something most of us can't recognize today, they destroyed SWG by completely removing classes and changing the overall game play, and they rushed VG out the door incomplete while trying to make it into a WoW clone. They would have to fire the entire SOE leadership before I would attempt playing another of their games.

 

Um...you know that Vanguard was owned, produced, created, ran, by an entirely different company up until a few months after release, right? Sigil didn't sell themselves to SOE, just the game.

 

Microsoft dropped VG in May 2006 and they moved to SOE shortly after that. That was about 6 months before the January 2007 launch.

As a publisher.  The only hand SOE had in the development of Vanguard is after they bought it.

Originally posted by Murashu

Originally posted by Thillian

As others mentioned already. There is a new Everquest. And it's called Vanguard.

 

When I started beta testing Vanguard back in November 2005, I noticed many similarities to EQ, but somewhere around mid 2006 they threw those out the window in an attempt to make the game more appealing to the masses. The only thing that remained that truly reminded me of EQ were the dungeons. If they had stuck with the original design concept and made a game more like EQ instead of trying to compete with WoW, I believe they would have pleased many more players.

 

As much as I would love to play a newer game similar to the old EQ, I don't think I can ever give SOE another dime. They changed the original EQ into something most of us can't recognize today, they destroyed SWG by completely removing classes and changing the overall game play, and they rushed VG out the door incomplete while trying to make it into a WoW clone. They would have to fire the entire SOE leadership before I would attempt playing another of their games.

Um...you know that Vanguard was owned, produced, created, ran, by an entirely different company up until a few months after release, right? Sigil didn't sell themselves to SOE, just the game.

I just palmfaced.  So hard.  Sooooo hard.

Originally posted by Serrix79

If i was Blizzard i would hire him. Throw him in as a team leader on the new mmo project . Then watch the magic unfold.

 

Look BM was and still is the vision behind one of the games that revolutionized this industry as we know it. His publisher backed out on him with vanguard and he basically had no choice but to go with sony. In all fairness to BM , EQ was THE game untill sony bought out verant and took over total control of the game. So it doesnt take much to see what happened with VG. The publisher of a game really holds all the chips. I dont fault the guy for what VG was released as. I fault sony and microsoft.

 

More and more i hear people saying they miss the feel that EQ and UO gave them. It is going to take an icon in the industry to compete on a real level with what blizzard has produced. At this point in time noone can come close but that doesnt mean blizzard has the best game on the market. That just means blizzard has made the most easily adaptable game  for the widest audience range to date.

"shrug" just my thoughts"

Wait, all this arguing, and someone missed this post?

*insert standardized statement about how Sony freaking OWNED VERANT.  They did not buy it out*

Originally posted by Nadia

SOE is giving these one million accts .. 200 SC

www.soepress.com/release.asp

999,999 players will receive a matching pet T-shirt for their four-legged friends, and 200 Station Cash

 

SC does not make a distinction to what game it applies to

 

so if the Op finds themselves with an extra 200 SC in the next few days

then I would agree with Op - otherwise they are probably mistaken

They're giving it to everyone.  You also have to actually join those million players and create a character for Free Realms to get it.

Originally posted by Stikato

Originally posted by Neanderthal

The number one thing that hooked people, that kept them coming back, was the pick-up-group play in well populated zones.  When you could just log in, show up in a zone, see a number of groups looking for more people, hook up with a group and have fun.

SOE completely destroyed that type of play over the years and never even understood what they were doing.  What they were doing, of course, was driving away the vast majority of their player base.

 

Great post. That is exactly why Combine was so much fun: going through old zones, which were full of people, finding PuG's to do the old content. And you just can't replicate that experience doing progression on a regular server, or even EQMac. Its a real shame that we probably won't get to do it again, especially because MMO's are so stale right now. I've tried all of the newer games, and would rather play Progression than any of them.

Yes, because watching two guilds run ramshod straight through content and open things months before anyone actually wanted it, that was great fun.  How long did Combine last? It went through how many expansions in that time? That's not what most people who played progression wanted.  I'm one of them. I left after Velious opened up because I realized it was just going to be the same crap over and over again.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by punkbrad7

Originally posted by darkaster

Loke666,

SoE Did not create the original Everquest.
Brad McQuaid with Verant Interactive did - He left Everquest in 2002 and formed Sigil games.

Next.

 

This should be added to the most common MMO misconceptions along with all the people that say SOE screwed up SWG all on its lonesome.

 

In a manner of speaking it is very true.  While Sony was still behind the scenes in funding everquest, they were not really hands on with the project in any similar manner as they are now.  It wasn't until after everquest proved to be a run away success that you start seeing SOE on any of the boxes or in any way being involved in the game.  If I am correct, the first box with SOE on it is luclin. 

Once soe drove brad and the creative team out of everquest there is a very marked time in the history of the game.  A time when most players will note as drastically changed direction for the game (post scar of velious expansion).  SOE didn't take creative contol until after that point when they gifted their first turd on the everquest world with luclin.  Yay cat people from the moon.

 

So yes, one can say sony (even soe) was involved in creating everquest, but the truth is that they just funded it and the verant/989 team did all the work.  SOE as a division wasn't even formed until everquest was already under development.

SOE Didn't have to take creative control, because SOE -is- Verant Interactive. They acquired Verant (which is a misnomer, since Verant Interactive had always been a part of Sony, first as SISA, then as 989 Studios.) in April 2000.  Before Scars of Velious.  Brad McQuaid wasn't even in charge before that.  Even more interesting to note, is that John Smedley, the guy who so many people hate, was the one who originally thought up Everquest.  Way back when he only ran SISA.  Go figure.

Originally posted by darkaster

Loke666,

SoE Did not create the original Everquest.
Brad McQuaid with Verant Interactive did - He left Everquest in 2002 and formed Sigil games.

Next.

This should be added to the most common MMO misconceptions along with all the people that say SOE screwed up SWG all on its lonesome.

Tanks anyone? :D

Originally posted by geldonyetich

Funny enough, it's harder to find a game that has no elves than it is a game that has beastmen, and harder still to find a game that has the later but not the former.

Running down the top rated games right now...

Lord of the Rings Online?  No, Legolas is invited.  Atlantica Online?   No, The Atlanticans pretty much are elves.  Warhammer Online?  No, Games Workship Elf adaptation quite present.

Ah - Chronicles of Spellborn has this big-hooved demon race and no elves, there's one...

EVE Online?  Kinda - Sci-Fi, of course, is a whole different creature.   Granted, this game is spreadsheets in space, I can't advise it.

EverQuest II? No, pretty much same as LOTRO or Warhammer Online.  Wizard 101?  Never tried it - from what I gather it's essentially Harry Potter Online, take it or leave it.  Vanguard?  Same as EverQuest, LOTRO, Warhammer.  Dark Age of Camelot? Same.

Guild Wars - No beasts, but no elves either.

City of Heroes - No official elves, but you can tweak your character to look like an elf.  You can be a pretty dang convincing beast here.

So, overall, going down the top 15 or so, we've got a few contenders there.

Personally, if I were you, I'd go City of Heroes because nowhere else are you going to be able to roll up a beast guy who can rip boulders out of the ground and toss it at enemies.

Although, Everquest & Everquest 2 (Iksar, Vah-Shir, Kerra, Froglocks) have beastmen races :) Vanguard has Foxes, Wolves, and Cats as races.

Dark Ages of Camelot has the Minotaurs. 

I don't know who it was that said EVE...I love EVE with every fiber of my body.  It's only pitfall for me is that I lost my account info and the email that it came with, and I refuse to start over when I had so many skills that took months to train.

As for worst MMO...

Its a hard choice.  WoW is at the top of my list.  I beta'd the game.  I played the game for about a month after release.  All of my friends play it, and coming from a background of EQ, DAoC, and Ultima Online, it was the most boring experience I've ever had.