What needs to be discussed is Advertisement, Marketing,  and Hype :

I love Vanguard but I hate SOE.  Infact I hate SOE so much that I like to give Sigil all the credit for a great game.  SOE made the Trial Island, and added the Hunters league quest line and fixed some bugs.

BUT SOE will never put a penny into advertisement unless they are coming out with an expansion.

SOE likes to use a trick of releasing a new expansion and making there games SEEM AS IF THEY ARE BRAND NEW RELEASES.  Many are waiting for a big Vanguard patch, and yes they may get one this time but it's not SOE's style to fix old content.  They never  fixed old content in EQ2.  They just let it sit and release more paid stuff.  I would like to give old EQ1 a shot, but I cant because the starting areas are still from the 80's.  Blizzard updated WoW several times in it's vanilla WoW days years before it's first expansion was released.  And everyone is scratching there head as to why WoW came out ahead.  Even Dark Age of Camelot received updates. Their graphics look up to date.

Think real hard.  What kind of hype is Vanguard getting :

Their seems to be player hype building for Vanguard here on mmorpg.com ( were doing it ) no thanks to SOE.  That's because if your here on this site your most likely a hard core mmo player, and realizing that all other mmo's suck or were burnt on our favorites.

No advertisement and Vanguard being a group orientated game is what's keeping Vanguards population low.  Most never stay because of how hard the game can get mostly after level 20.  The month of July, 30 people in, 30 people out.  It's how Vanguard always was.  I have news for everyone that EQ2 was no better. I know I used to play EQ2 a lot and went out of my way to do population counts there too.  Infact I was obsessed with it.  Same thing 30 players in 30 players out.  SOE seems to be ok with that !

Some would say " what your crazy, EQ2 had 20k players " I say " bull ".  I would create level one characters on the more popular servers and at prime times they never had more that a few hundred players on at any given time.  YES I was that obsessed with populations.

I love Vanguard, I'm trying to do my part by offering countless topics here on how to make and find friends, how to get groups together by sending tells, and using the SOCIAL PANEL > ADVANCED FIND feature.  My experience with Vanguard is always great because of this.  I have lots of people to play Vanguard with every time I come back.  All this while SOE just sits there doing nothing !!!!

well its beaten to death but having soe in the boat again was the beginning of the end for Vanguard:

massive forum exodus

massive canceled pre orders

and begin of dumbing down the game. Soe has an abyssmal customer support service comparable to well..GoA. Vanguard should be bought up by Ncsoft. I mean, what point does SoE have in keeping the game? They arent interested in it, they just sabotaged it because of Everrquest 2 so why not sell it and make some additional money?

Originally posted by DerWotan

well its beaten to death but having soe in the boat again was the beginning of the end for Vanguard:

massive forum exodus

massive canceled pre orders

and begin of dumbing down the game. Soe has an abyssmal customer support service comparable to well..GoA. Vanguard should be bought up by Ncsoft. I mean, what point does SoE have in keeping the game? They arent interested in it, they just sabotaged it because of Everrquest 2 so why not sell it and make some additional money?

I hardly doubt any other company would even want to touch Vanguard. it hardly generated any interest in other companies when SOE bought it. As far as dumbing down the game. In its original state Vanguard completely tanked. it had lots of features which community hated. What you call dumbing down i call streamlineing content to get more subs. After all it is a business and how do you expect a company to sink more money in developing a game when it is getting none? it is like a vicious cycle. In its original state the game fails to attract more players, changes are made to attract more players and still players refuse to playt it 'because it is being dumbed down'. 

My suggestion. Let it Go!

Giving money to Smedley and SOE is only going to bring you pain. I liked the original Vanguard despite its flaws. When SOE bought it I knew that was it for me.

I am not really concerned about the SOE hate or Smed hate I like Vanguard have for a long while. It is what it is. Plenty of other games out there if you dont like or want to support this one.

I played in Beta and there were problems with the game engine but problems were to be expected in Beta.  I understand the game is better shape now.  Problem is alot of things Sony has done are inexcusable.  I won't even buy their electronic hardware or things from any of their other divisions out of principle. 

The day SOH is sold to another company I will buy it.  Never will until then. 

Instead of trying to get people to play this game as SOE you would be doing better with your efforts imo if you found an SOE executive email and convinced them to sell SOH to someone else.   Not saying it would work but it would be a more likely productive use of your efforts.

Originally posted by DerWotan

 I mean, what point does SoE have in keeping the game? They arent interested in it, they just sabotaged it because of Everrquest 2 so why not sell it and make some additional money?

Because, even though it had a rough launch, and with the proper owner and updates, Vanguard could/would be a great threat to the EQ franchise.  So yeah SOE is just sitting on it, letting it rot.  

What I don't get is why some of the gaming community are so excited about the meager patch for VSoH a few weeks back.  Its been 2yrs since their last one, and yeah there are supposedly more coming, but seriously people, don't get excited again.  This is SOE we're talking about...you're just goign to get burned again.

I wouldn't be surprised if this slight interest in VSoH has everything to do with them losing SWG.   They won't have that one to trash anymore, so lets go thrash VSoH again, but at first lets make it look like we're gonna fix stuff...

I strongly doubt NC Soft would even do remotely something like Vanguard.

Looking at Lineage, Guild Wars and Aion, I see:

- Small game world (compared to Vanguard, anyway)

- Weird looking Manga races in L2, even worse random ones with funny names in GW2 (Aion only had elves with wings)

- Simplistic game concept

- Asian style MMO (very dependent upon community)

- PvP centered

- Very simple rulesystem esp in GW (just 8 buttons available)

- Very trivialistic crafting

- Uh ... thats about it.

Vanguard however is the PvE god of MMOs. Extremely large gameworld, realistic looks of characters, 19 races, soloing well possible (compared to L2, anyway), very complex and detailed combat system, a lot of abilities on each class, excellent complex raiding, ...

I strongly doubt NC Soft would touch Vanguard with a footpole.

Originally posted by Chilliesauce

Originally posted by DerWotan

well its beaten to death but having soe in the boat again was the beginning of the end for Vanguard:

massive forum exodus

massive canceled pre orders

and begin of dumbing down the game. Soe has an abyssmal customer support service comparable to well..GoA. Vanguard should be bought up by Ncsoft. I mean, what point does SoE have in keeping the game? They arent interested in it, they just sabotaged it because of Everrquest 2 so why not sell it and make some additional money?

I hardly doubt any other company would even want to touch Vanguard. it hardly generated any interest in other companies when SOE bought it. As far as dumbing down the game. In its original state Vanguard completely tanked. it had lots of features which community hated. What you call dumbing down i call streamlineing content to get more subs. After all it is a business and how do you expect a company to sink more money in developing a game when it is getting none? it is like a vicious cycle. In its original state the game fails to attract more players, changes are made to attract more players and still players refuse to playt it 'because it is being dumbed down'. 

Very true, VG deserves to die based on what was delivered during launch.

And without SOE the game would have crashed and burned under 6months, god I love the irony.

And yes, SOE did invest time and money into new content, but I cant really blame them for not bothering all that much after the efford they DID put into the game without any return for it.

Gues haters just need to hate for the sake of hating.

The problem is that VG would be nothing without SOE. SIGIL had many great ideas but they had the worst programmers ever, Star vault and Aventurine are lauging at them.

It took SOE 2 years fixing the mess. If they would have waited with releasing the game until they actually fixed it the game wouold be a lot larger today, that is true. And the fact that patches have been rare and no expansions have been release doesn't help either.

SOE could have done a lot more for Vanguard, and I suspect that they didn't because it would have taken players from EQ2 instead, but the whole mess is at least SIGILs fault as well.

But I don't agree that EQ2 have as few players as VG, it have more servers and I saw a lot more players in EQ2 than in VG.

VG should never released in the shape it did, that was what started the death spiral. When players quit SOE fired people and that lead to fewer patches which in turn made players leave...

The sad thing is that if Brad just had the wits to hire in a single good lead programer the whole problem would never existed in the first plaze. It is his fault as much as it is Smedleys.

And it is too bad because VG is actually a rather good game. I hope they at least use the good ideas for EQ3.

Originally posted by DerWotan

well its beaten to death but having soe in the boat again was the beginning of the end for Vanguard:

massive forum exodus

massive canceled pre orders

and begin of dumbing down the game. Soe has an abyssmal customer support service comparable to well..GoA. Vanguard should be bought up by Ncsoft. I mean, what point does SoE have in keeping the game? They arent interested in it, they just sabotaged it because of Everrquest 2 so why not sell it and make some additional money?

 LOL! Excuse me?

When the game launched it was 100% fully owned by Sigil Entertainment. SOE was only responsible for distribution of the game boxes.

Sigil was fully responsible for the state the game was in when it launched! Sigil was fully responsbile that the game tanked at launch!

SOE didn't take over until months after launch, when the mass exodus had already happened and Sigil went bankrupt.

Brad begged his old friend Smedley to take over his employees and the game, before Sigil closed it's doors.

The remainder of staff together with experienced SOE devs that were added tried to fix the game extensively in the first year. Which they did!

The performance a year later was incredible compared to abysmal it was at launch (virtually unplayable for most, hence the mass exodus).

They also fixed a hell lot of bugs and added a ton of content and features that was missing at launch.

The whole "dumbing down" didn't begin until a year later, when subs were still low and people weren't willing to come back.

So they tried to reduce and remove elements from the game that were frustrating and tedious for a lot of people.

But alas.... it was already too late.  They at least kept a small base of diehard fans sticking to the game through and through.

Hence, why they now start working on the game again (now SWG gets shut down and devs being freed up from that game).

So please. We can hate SOE (and John Smedley in particular). But at least get your facts straight!

I agree Vanguard is a great pve mmo and has given me a couple of good years.

Blaming SOE hmm not sure on that one, they fixed so many bugs in the begining and gave us all the end game content as in raiding zones,raiding over land mobs as well as filling in many empty areas for no extra cost,i could name many more things they implemented in game.

I am back playing Vanguard atm, waiting for a half decent mmo to be released, am so tired of these pvpve 2 to 6 month waist of times.

Here's hoping Archage lives up to the hype.

The op is being a little misleading here,because IF Vanguard was suddenly instilled with 1 million subs,i am sure they would get some serious love.Wow is not ahead for any reason other than marketing hype and followers.On release Eq2 was miles the better game than Wow and if you consider the amount of money made off of Wow,i'd say eq2 is still miles the better game.Lesser games have installed updated textures/graphics,games that make tons less than Blizzard,so don't go misleading anyone to think Blizzard gives back to the peope that make them millions.

As for Vanguard,it is of course Sigil's game,but really you can blame the people for it failing and  not being improved.

A VERY simple example,look at Eve,it was released as a pile of rubbish,not one single aspect of the design cried out saying "look at the effort we put into this game".Eve didn't put out even half the effort Sigil did,yet they supported Eve and nobody supported Sigil.

These two games [Eve/VG] are perfect to compare because BOTH games almost never made it out.Sigil was at an end no money and same for Eve.The bottom line is that if the people really want a game to succeed,they will allow it to do so ,for no other reason ,than they can.We will see the same thing with SWTOR and GW2,these games might be far inferior to VG,but they are choosing to support those games,because they can and WANT to.

If VG had of created some superficial gaming reason ,example a rank system for pvp or something to let players brag,it could have probably survived.This era of MMORPG gaming is what i call the "ME ME ,look at ME era" and Sigil's game did not offer that.Eve has it's Rank.pvp bragging rights,so it has that superficial reason to belong,it's not about that game,it's about the individual within it's corps.