Shit hits the game industry fan...

I take an extended break from blogging, and the industry falls apart in my absence. I must have been the glue holding everything together...

Well, so it could be believed if one read all of the shocked and awed accounts of the Death of Sigil and Vanguard, as if we in the shouting-class press, hadn't seen the writing on the port-o-john wall circa 2004.

Schlid was the premier source of information on the scandal, and the ensuing posts at f13 were of the highest entertainment value. Essentially every other blogger had something to say on the issue, and my links at the right would be a good place to start if you awoke this week and were taken by surprise at this news.

I did not feel any remorse. I did not feel any animosity, nor any glee at seeing this colossal failure come to its bitter end. In fact, I was so uninspired, it took me days to even work up the motivation to blog about it. You see, I had already worked through the stages of post-fanboism grief, and after years of spite, I just didn't have anything left.

I knew this time would come for quite some time now, as I am sure, did many others. I have a funny anecdote that I spoke about in my 'First Impressions' post on the Vanguard Beta forums after my first week in Beta 1. After two straight days of downloading, because the first two times I had tried, the client simply disappeared sometime during the 20 hour process, I finally loaded up my system, and sat for another four hours while it matched my client to the current version.

With the excitement that only years of fansite participation, hype and finally having a chance to test the new shiny in town, I rolled up my Goblin Necro and zoned in...

...to nothing. I was hovering 25 feet above the ground, with a few players and NPCs also hovering in a similar fashion, at the edge of a body of water. I could see smoke and a few fires on the shoreline, but I could not get to them from my levitated vantage point. After about an hour of logging out, logging back in, and bug reports, I just quit in frustration.

Later, after slogging through the forums and asking some questions, I learned that I was in fact on a large ship at the waters edge, with a small exit door supposedly in an upper level, but the ship had failed to render and I could not find the exit to begin playing the game.

My First Impressions post basically amounted to: If very experienced gamers, who have been waiting for this game for years, get frustrated and quit in the first hour they see your game, you have very real problems ahead of you. Who actually thinks this is Beta ready?

The ensuing flames and venomous insults from the gathered forum monkey population, gave me the distinct impression that Vanguard was headed for disaster. I held my tongue and kept playing, kept reporting the same bugs over and over, and getting more and more annoyed until I finally quit. During Beta 4, I re-patched and rolled another Goblin Necro just to see how things had improved, and when I loaded in, the fucking ship failed to render, and I couldn't help but wonder just what $30 million buys these days.

I made this post when the NDA was lifted, and haven't given the game another thought until now. I don't think Brad is the monster or the moron that people are painting him as. I just think he was in over his head. I know if someone gave me $30,000,000 and five years with very few deadlines and no oversight, there is a very strong possibility that I would fuck it up too. I think a lot of good people got hurt and that saddens me, but the industry has grown up a bit from all of this. As an industry, we needed a Vanguard to remind us all that having a dream does not guarantee success, and that hype does not equal playability. Perhaps studios will give more money to QA and CFOs who are there to keep the rampant creativity in check. Sounds very boring, I know, but sadly business is boring. Everyone has a thousand great ideas. Hell, I have 5 MMOs in my head right now that would blow WoW and LoTRO out of the marketplace, but I don't know the first thing about assembling a team, and making my vision a reality. And therein lies the moral of this story.

I am Vanguarded

A few days ago, I warned of an impending rant about an as of yet, unreleased MMO that has been much acclaimed during it's development. Now would be the time to click your browser back button if you would like to avoid, said rant.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has been on my proverbial MMO Watch List sense Brad McQuaid left SOE and announced he would be developing a third generation MMO with his production company, Sigil Games. For my regulars here at Existential Worlds, you know that I have a bit of a World of Warcraft addiction at the present time, but that was originally meant to be a temporary fix, while Vanguard was developed.

For me, Vanguard was to be the culmination of a long string of frustrating MMO experiences. From Neverwinter Nights on AOL, to Everquest, I had wandered the existential worlds of the MMO game space, only half satisfied with my role in them. They lacked that feeling... Tobold dubs it the Crushbone Factor, which is certainly applicable, despite the fact that it refers to EQ.

So I watched and I waiting, and finally the day arrived... my email inbox brought me tidings of my involvement in Vanguard's Beta development phase.

My first impressions were very mixed. The world was stunning in some respects and completely disappointing in others. The engine was a behemoth and I could hardly have visual setting above the bottom tier 'Highest Performance' in order to move my avatar at all. I thought to myself, this is Beta... this is why I am here. Customization, optimization, bug correction and game play evaluation... these are my quests...

After weeks of frustration, I had to walk away. It was early Beta, but I felt as though the game had been pushed to Beta too soon. I was struggling to stay involved and never once felt immersed. I felt as though I should not have been there yet, it was too raw, too empty to even test appropriately. Too 'broken' if you will, or perhaps too 'unstarted' even. So I left.

Three weeks ago, I reinstalled my client and decided to give Beta another try. Beta 4 had been announced and I felt that perhaps the progress I had been looking for would be in place and the game would be ready for testers. I logged in and found myself gaping at the same landscapes devoid of npc life, the same bugs, the game graphical failures and the same uninspired implementation of truly inspiring innovations...

I set about leveling my Cleric and once again, I felt deep disappointment at the absolute waste of wonderful innovations. They had burdened the title with a bulky and unwieldy engine, game play is choppy and modeling and animations are uninspired. Questing is bland and unoriginal. Progression is chaotic and poorly thought out, and the client continues to struggle under the press of their system requirements. I run a powerful machine and I still can't play at even the 'balanced' graphics tier without tremendous lag.

A few days later Sigil and Sony announced the January 30th release date for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and I uninstalled my beta client and walked away from the game forever. They promised a third generation MMO and produced a half finished 1.5th generation MMO in the vein of Everquest with a few bells and whistles as differentiation. They Beta'd too early and failed to address the concerns of their testers in any cognizant fashion. The progressed the Beta too fast, and placed too little emphasis on content development, instead focusing on expansive lands and a diverse feature set. They innovated conceptually and programmed poorly. They gave me high hopes, and dashed them with forceful abandon.

So now I am Vanguarded against new titles. I refuse to be spun by fancy press releases and doctored screen shots showing the absolute best a game can do. Anyone can crank up their graphics settings, snap a fancy photo and post it on the interweb... but do they have what it takes to make a truly inspired world? A world alive that simply makes you scream... I WANT TO LIVE HERE! Sigil failed in that regard. Brad's 'vision' and Brad's reality did not align properly, and SOE and Sigil are going to release a very unfinished game into a market dominated by a very polished Warcraft and a slew of great titles that are getting better with each passing content patch.

Farewell, Vanguard... The dream of you was sweet, but now I must move on.