[asp]

Haven't seen it as a news posting here yet so here you go:

*edit*
VNBoards has since removed this post so I can't link it, which is why it is copied into this post. Yes, I'm just that evil.

SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind.

What does that mean? It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently but not as well as we hoped. If you havent read my last long post that outlined some of the things that went wrong during development, etc., please do. So the bottom line is that SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard our relationship is going to become even tighter much tighter. At this point I cant say much more than that.

Does this mean an acquisition? I cant say at this point.

Does this mean more or less people at Sigil? I cant say at this point.

Does this mean management changes at Sigil? I cant say at this point.

I *can* say that regardless of the turn out, SOE knows that Sigil has the experience and vision necessary to run Vanguard and therefore a major change in that area is extremely unlikely and would be foolish on their part.

What it does mean at this point is that both companies agree that we need more of SOEs involvement if Vanguard is going to continue to get the support it needs to both continue to be worked on and improved and debugged and optimized. When people start getting burned out of the Warcraft expansion (pardon the pun), we need to make sure that the game is more polished and will play on lower end machines. As people continue to level up, it means that we need additional higher level content, including raid content. If we are going to change our marketing message effectively to target those who played a lot of EverQuest but who have grown up such that they have jobs, families, etc. that they cannot and will not play another EverQuest even though they enjoyed they game years ago. Weve done studies and its not atypical of an old EQ player, when they hear about Vanguard, to assume that because many of the people involved in Vanguards development worked on EQ as well, that Vanguard must simply be an EQ 3. From that point they dont even give Vanguard another look. They dont do any more research on the game. They dont go to the official sites. They dont go to the affiliate sites. Instead they think to themselves, ah well, were I younger and had my life not changed, Id give it a shot, but I just dont have the time for another EQ with better graphics right now.
And thats it they dont give Vanguard another thought EQ peaked in late 2001 at almost 500k subscribers. In its lifetime its sold over 2 million units. Putting EQ in a vacuum and thats a lot of people who played and who arent playing anymore. And the total number of subscribers didnt start going down until sometime 2002. Im also pretty sure up until its peak that the average lifespan of a player was nearing 9-23 months. And as I mentioned in my last lengthy post, this group of people who played but dont anymore could arguably be put into two sub-groups those who look back fondly at those months and even years and those who dont. I have read posts and received emails from people who claim to have played to max level and then quit very angry the I just played your game for 2 years and now I hate you emails. But realistically how big is that group? Even if it was half (boggle) the other group is still pretty big. So ignoring all of the people who have quit or who are growing bored of their current MMOG (WoW, FFXI, DAoC, etc) that need to be reached (and in a very different way, especially the WoW player), both a word of mouth and a formal marketing campaign targeting these people clearly needs to launched. These people need to know that Vanguard does have the EQ feel in many ways but that it is much more soloable than EQ was, especially the early EQ days. They need to know that you can play for short periods of time and advance. They need to know that the end game is not all about raiding into the wee hours of the night. Some subset of these people will still feel burnt out of MMOGs period, but I think theres a lot of people who havent been reached and our and others research supports that. False assumptions are being made by a lot of people. The reality is that Vanguard *is* the game most of these people are looking for it has the good they remember, but has eliminated a lot of the tedium and necessary long hours that dont fit into their lifestyle anymore.

Then there are the people who are growing weary of their current MMOG. Given how much larger the MMOG gamespace has grown since EQs zenith in 2001 (arguably 7 times as large worldwide, and at least 2-3 time as large in North America alone), we have to take advantage of this. At some point these people are going to want to start a new MMOG (especially after the WoW expansion newness has worn out, which for most of the non-hard-core would be when you really have to start raiding in the expansion). LoTR Online is an x-factor reviews from beta testers seem to indicate that the game is more casual like WoW, a small game, and that it looks really good but can run on a lower end system much better than Vanguard (just as WoW can). So at least for a time the more casual bored WoW player may migrate to LoTR Online. How sticky (e.g. how long that game will hold onto players) is unknown, but I think its safe to say that a significant percentage of the more casual bored WoW player will head to LoTR at least first, given the franchise around it. Conservatively this leaves the more hard core WoW player (which in Vanguard or EQ terms would be considered either a hard core or, more likely, a core gamer). That number, even just taking the North American and European gamer is still potentially a large one and needs to be targeted (given Vanguards high system specs, the time it will take to localize, and Blizzards name recognition and pre-existing proven marketing ability in Asia, I wouldnt count that group, although a very significant one, until 2008 or so. Targeting that group is for a future discussion).
Lastly, theres the very real issue of Vanguards system specs, even for the core and hard core gamer in North America and Europe. For a variety of reasons and mistakes on our part that I wont get into right now, Vanguard was released with system spec requirements that were too high for January 2007. Continued optimization will help to a degree, but the games big hope here is simply Moores Law and that by the second half of 2007, and certainly by the end of the year, the system spec issue will have been greatly diminished. The big problem that remains is that you still pretty much need a new system as opposed to, say, simply a new graphics card. But eventually, gamers do replace their systems. Given what Vista (especially the Ultimate edition) takes to really run, combined with other games that come out by the end of the year that really push technology, many people will be compelled to buy new systems. Unlike EQ, which was one of the first hardware only games, Vanguard needs not only a fast graphics card, but also a system with pci-express, fast memory, a fast FSB, etc. With EQ, you just needed to buy a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 the rest of your system is fine. With Vanguard, however, just plugging the fastest AGP card into your 2-3 year old system doesnt cut it. In fact, Vanguard runs pretty well on a 2 GB system with a decent pci-express video card and fast memory in a 2.6 GHz Pentium; conversely, run the game on an older AGP system, the fastest AGP card you can buy, and a 3.2 GHz CPU and youll have framerate issues. The game is simply not CPU bound, nor just graphics card bound, but rather mostly bound by the data that it needs to constantly move from the CPU to main memory to the graphics card, and then all the way back again. Its all about the various bus speeds and caches moving data around efficiently is arguably more important than processing that data on the CPU or GPU. The only fix here, again, is time. Vista (especially the Ultimate edition, which is whats being pushed to gamers) wants fast components. Direct X 10 hardware and software will help a lot, especially when there is a DX10 version of Vanguard. A native 64bit client of Vanguard will eventually help a lot too. Bottom line: by the end of 2007, a lot more people should have upgraded, especially if Microsoft succeeds with Vista and native DX 10 games. And if they really push Gaming for Windows like they did, say, the Xbox 360, the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 should be a very different landscape for PC games in general and Vanguard specifically. Was the Vanguard tech ahead of its time? Yes, and there has been a price to pay for that short term. But MMOGs ideally never end and if youve architected your engine to both push the limits of existing and near future technology as well as easily employ future technologies, then you have a game that doesnt look dated one, two, even three plus years down the road. And thats what we did with Vanguard so we feel some pain now, but if we can keep the momentum going, this decision pays off in the long run (big time).

In summary, there are arguably a lot of people who by mid to end of this year in the MMOG gamespace for whom Vanguard could potentially be very attractive. What the game needs is a re-launch of sorts, including targeted marketing campaigns, an all-around successful move by gamers to the next generation of hardware, continued good word of mouth viral marketing by those who are already playing, enjoying, and re-subscribing. And all of this could and should ramp up by the end of the year, all the while the Vanguard team is putting in more content, the live team filling out high level content as well as adding to areas of the games vast seamless world which are a bit empty. Then a re-launch towards the end of the year that includes the first expansion, one that would add RTS style city building, ship to ship combat, jousting, and a second half of the Kojanese Archipelago that makes ship travel meaningful and by meaningful I mean not tedious, rewarding exploration, with lots of new areas (both in the existing world and in the extension of the archipelago). And Im talking about some re-use of existing art, combined with new art that fits into the existing continents, and then finally some all out new stuff different styles of terrain (islands) and ocean to look at while making your journey to found a new player city while constantly being attacked by exotic sea creatures, leviathans, and other traditional members of fantasy and crypto-zoology. Not to mention pirates with canons, or other players and their ships on the PvP servers. And who knows, could be first expansion or second, but eventually you need to pull from Mesoamerican mythology, encounter empires based on Greco-roman architecture... it goes on and on, its all planned out, and Vanguard can do all of it given sufficient time. The tools have matured, both in terms of art and design, and the art process orders of magnitude more efficient because of years of Maya scripting, an in-house terrain generator that creates what you want as opposed to spitting out algorithmically generated hills and valleys, and an art team that has this process down pat for example, they were able to re-create Tursh and Leth Nurae in a fraction of time it took them to create the original, smaller, and much less interesting versions.

SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind.

So what does that mean again? Again, I apologize for not being able to go into details and its the details that need to be worked out. But I think its safe to say that both Sigil and SOE see the potential of a mind blowing game by the end of the year. Whats needed, bottom line, is some time, and how to get that time is whats being worked out. And so I still see a 500k+ game, I was just off by a year for a variety of reasons, some under my control, many not. And I think SOE sees this as well. To pull it off however, requires a funded and supported Sigil and a well marketed Vanguard with these different target audiences identified and solid plan on how to reach them all, and then a solid execution of said plan, hitting them hard, pushing these WoW everywhere point of purchase materials from the front to the very back.. In the meantime, the Vanguard that was launched in early 2007 continues to move forward, with much of what Ive talked about patched in over time, and the rest in the first expansion (or re-launch, or whatever we all agree upon in terms of product and service placement). Bottom line, Vanguard continues to march forward, a solid and fun game today, and an even better one tomorrow. More state of the game posts by me, a regularly updated In the Works . And whatever kind of increased partnership between Sigil and SOE is necessary to make this vision a reality. And again, as for what that means exactly, more on that later .

[Gaijin]

Part of Brad's post: "What it does mean at this point is that both companies agree that we need more of SOEs involvement if Vanguard is going to continue to get the support it needs to both continue to be worked on and improved and debugged and optimized. When people start getting burned out of the Warcraft expansion (pardon the pun), we need to make sure that the game is more polished and will play on lower end machines"

It's too little and way too late. Give it up before you sink more money into it.

[Thisle1234]

Nah vanguard is still one of the best MMO's ive ever played. SOE has EQ1, EQ2, and whats left of SWG to run into the ground. Im hoping if they do get involved they dont try to make it a cash cow.

What worries me is one thing. We all know SoE likes to milk games for all its money. Does this mean that all the content we should have and get will be sold to us in some sort of lame adventure/expansion pack?

I swear to god if i see a: "Such and Such adventure pack" only 7.99, all you get is access to one extra chunk and some new weapon graphics!

I will cancel.

I refuse to pay for something i should already have...

I can just see it now, 2 months from now well be seeing:

Vanguard expansion! Lost Continents you should have had at launch! 29.99! WEEEEEEE!

If any of that bullshit happens im out.

[visceral monkey]

~EDIT~ You're history. I look forward to a better Vanguard once the vanbois are jettisoned and the game gets the help it needs and maybe some official forum loving? WOOT!

~inappropriate comment removed~
fozz

[DCpunk]

Grrrr I'm not an insider so I can't see it.

[asp]

Originally Posted by DCpunk

Grrrr I'm not an insider so I can't see it.

Sorry about that, seems like they decided to block us

[DCpunk]

Who is going to be the first to point out that Brad doesn't really understand gamers and why they either quit or move on, and what their likelihood of being swayed by SOE advertising will be?

[Darkmoore]

Originally Posted by asp

Haven't seen it as a news posting here yet so here you go:

Interesting, but I just went to that posting, and the only thing on there is this:


SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind.

What does that mean? It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently but not as well as we hoped. If you havent read my last long post that outlined some of the things that went wrong during development, etc., please do. So the bottom line is that SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard our relationship is going to become even tighter much tighter. At this point I cant say much more than that.

Does this mean an acquisition? I cant say at this point.

Does this mean more or less people at Sigil? I cant say at this point.

Does this mean management changes at Sigil? I cant say at this point.

I *can* say that regardless of the turn out, SOE knows that Sigil has the experience and vision necessary to run Vanguard and therefore a major change in that area is extremely unlikely and would be foolish on their part.



So what, did you make up the rest? Give us the link dude. Are you just making shit up or what??

[asp]

So what, did you make up the rest?

Nope, no idea what they ended up doing with it since I don't have access to their paid stuff either. This is what they had though.

[Grizzlebeard]

Originally Posted by DCpunk

Who is going to be the first to point out that Brad doesn't really understand gamers and why they either quit or move on, and what their likelihood of being swayed by SOE advertising will be?

His post just makes me feel sad really. Like many I had such high expectations for the game and it's all gone to sh*t. The whole system spec thing is frankly a joke and regardless of however he spins it they completely lied to the consumer as far as the system requirements are concerned. In any other game, online or otherwise, the required specs will run the game at a reasonable pace on average settings. I pity anyone trying to run VG on the required specs, 512k RAM and 2.4 gig processor. Can I sell you some magic beans...

[Jalida]

Vanguard was released with system spec requirements that were too high for January 2007. Continued optimization will help to a degree, but the games big hope here is simply Moores Law and that by the second half of 2007, and certainly by the end of the year, the system spec issue will have been greatly diminished.

Ummm sorry but what world are you living in because it's not the same world that Im living in.

I've already got a newer computer (AMD 64X2 4600+ 3GB RAM ATi X1900 etc etc etc) and so if this is the best that VG is going to run on my new computer then bah! Vanguard is good, but it's not good enough in it's current form for me to go out and spend another thousand or so dollars to buy another computer only to find out that the game still requires more computing power and then find out in Dec 2007 that somebody comes out with a new statement that hardware growth hasn't been growing as fast as anticipated and that system spec issues will be greatly diminished by second quarter of 2008.

Someone built a game that looks really really pretty but by the time that a computer can really run VG with great performance and look really really pretty there will be another MMOG that has come out that looks just as pretty and is fresh and new.

I like VG but with these statements that keep coming out it doesn't make me want to keep paying money every month only to find out in 6 months or so that they couldn't sustain keeping the game going and have to close down the game.

Sometimes too much information is a bad thing really. He's quite verbose and somebody needs to tell him to tone it down a bit because he is NOT instilling confidence in himeself or this game at this point in time. He also forgot to mention that there are other games besides the WOW juggenaut like Lord of the Rings Online that just was officially released which is also a threat to this game and anybody officially involved (SOE, Sigil etc).

Either way, I wish them the best and will check back at a later date to see where the game has gone. Hopefully it is still around and has been greatly improved although he's saying that performance will be improved through optimizing the coding but it's not the real answer. But again I say if you can't really optimize the coding for rigs such as mine or even really high end rigs that still struggle then it's a lost cause and you should cut your losses and run, run away fast if you can't optimize the coding to make the performance good on systems such as mine (which isn't the best, but it's no sloucher either). Because theres little point playing a new game with the graphics set to "fugly" mode to get good performance, might as well go back to playing a game with pacman style graphics if they can't optimize the code enough to peform well and look good on good computers now.

Good luck to all involved.

[Obsideus]

Originally Posted by asp

Nope, no idea what they ended up doing with it since I don't have access to their paid stuff either. This is what they had though.

The news that asp posted is what we originally went with... but we decided to use some discretion and not post his entire comments to the affiliates, and summarize it. We immediately deleted our original news article, and worked up the one that is currently posted... but with such a large amount of viewers, many people were able to copy what we originally put up.

And that's fine, I believe that Brad wanted the community to see that part.. we were just unsure how much of it was to be public and how much was to be for the affiliate site administrators.

The Vanguard Vault has no paid content of any kind - don't mistake the services we offer for IGN Insider, which enables users to have an icon, use text markup on the boards, and gives them access to a single "Insider" board that is not linked with any game.

[Fingis]

The big problem that remains is that you still pretty much need a new system

Whoa! Brad wants us to buy a new pc!

LOL!

[Honor Woods]

Originally Posted by Fingis

Whoa! Brad wants us to buy a new pc!

LOL!

He has stock in Intel, maybe? Or a RAM manufacturer? Or maybe a company that makes video cards?

LOL

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Potential]

I've never seen a post in my life that used so many words to say absolutely nothing.


Sounds like the captain of the Titanic trying to convince you those aren't iceburgs ahead - just migrating whales.

[sumuji]

Vanguard had virtually no advertising to begin with, much to the confusion of lots of it's playerbase throughout beta and into retail, though I'm not sure they would have wanted all of that with the product they released to the public. I think a re-launch campaign once the kinks are worked out would actually be very significant with adequate advertising.

As far as tech goes, I run on a AMD 4800 dual core, 7900 GT, 2 gigs ram. Still a pretty decent system but hardly top of the line anymore and I run in high quality/medium res with a few more options enabled. I've seen it improve greatly since the end of beta and the only performance beef I have is hitching and the general lag around a large group of people in combat or what not. With a little more optimization it would probably run satifactory on high for people with med-high range PC's.

I'm not so sure he might be overly opimistic with thinking lots of people will grow tired of BC or LOTR and look for something new when a good portion of the players that canceled here probably went to one of those or both. The type of people that play both of these games are not the type of people that would enjoy a game like VG for the most part because it's not casual enough. And I think that's the problem with VG, they try to attract different types of players yet to the point it seems like the game has been run through the blender. We want to give you large group oriented time sinks for lewts but we'll also make travel meaningless. Like they have a identity complex. They would have been better off designing the game for hardcore or casual instead of trying for the middle.

[Nitefang]

Originally Posted by Potential

I've never seen a post in my life that used so many words to say absolutely nothing.


Sounds like the captain of the Titanic trying to convince you those aren't iceburgs ahead - just migrating whales.

Holy Wall of Text Batman!

[Pixi]

Am I the only one who finds all this sort of amusing?

I mean...seriously.

[Spry]

Originally Posted by sumuji

Vanguard had virtually no advertising to begin with, much to the confusion of lots of it's playerbase throughout beta and into retail, though I'm not sure they would have wanted all of that with the product they released to the public. I think a re-launch campaign once the kinks are worked out would actually be very significant with adequate advertising.

As far as tech goes, I run on a AMD 4800 dual core, 7900 GT, 2 gigs ram. Still a pretty decent system but hardly top of the line anymore and I run in high quality/medium res with a few more options enabled. I've seen it improve greatly since the end of beta and the only performance beef I have is hitching and the general lag around a large group of people in combat or what not. With a little more optimization it would probably run satifactory on high for people with med-high range PC's.

I'm not so sure he might be overly opimistic with thinking lots of people will grow tired of BC or LOTR and look for something new when a good portion of the players that canceled here probably went to one of those or both. The type of people that play both of these games are not the type of people that would enjoy a game like VG for the most part because it's not casual enough. And I think that's the problem with VG, they try to attract different types of players yet to the point it seems like the game has been run through the blender. We want to give you large group oriented time sinks for lewts but we'll also make travel meaningless. Like they have a identity complex. They would have been better off designing the game for hardcore or casual instead of trying for the middle.

I agree that the advertising was almost nonexsisting. Advertising would be a huge move for SOE If they want to help vanguard. There were alot of mistakes on Sigil's part that have limited subs with this game. The game is fun and huge so it can only get better...advertise get the word out!

[dirkthedwarf]

If you are willing to put it together yourself and read a small book a full computer upgrade is not that much. Pull your CD roms and SATA drives out of your old computer and add the following...

Heres what I did...took two SATA Raptors from my old fx51 and did the following

Intel motherboard with FSB over 1300 - about $120
C2 duo...get the cheapest one you can get...they overclock like all hell
I have my 1.8 ghz running at 3.5ghs with absolutely nothing extra to cool it. You can get the cheaper ones of these for 150 dollars
2gb ram for 175 dollars...
Dx10 Geforce 8800 gts 320mb ram for 250-300
price = less than 800
Believe me the picture you get for 700-800 dollars is worth it...this game was not meant to run below balanced...it looks bland and boring.

Of course then you can go buy this system on line and let someone else throw it together and charge you 1500-2000 dollars.

I built this system first of the year at that price above...and it runs near highest quality 80% of the time I am online with Framerates 60 plus...Around groups in dungeons i will lower it to high quality at times. This game hogs hardware...but really its all about bandwidth b/w the graphic cards/processors and RAM.