Vanguard, Past and Future
Blood has been in the water for a while now, and the sharks have been speculating on what would happen to Sigil in light of Vanguard’s rickety launch and soft sales. Well, now we know.
I’ve resisted posting much of anything about Vanguard, though many times I’ve been tempted to do so. But well, since this is a turning point for the game and the people involved with it, I may as well say something. Everyone else in the blog universe has anyway.
I have to admit, I haven’t always been a Vanguard supporter. As the community manager for EQ2, I had to put up with years of people telling me how VG was going to be the real successor to EverQuest, and certain members of the Sigil team weren’t shy about promoting that point of view. But what really got to me was seeing the meaningless moniker “third gen” thrown around as if that in itself signified some great turning point in MMO design. I get it — companies need to hype their games; I just didn’t always like the way Sigil went about it. So yeah, I indulged in a certain amount of petty satisfaction when I got to watch the dance that ensued when it was announced that SOE was publishing Vanguard. What can I say? I’m human like anyone else, and I have a keen appreciation for irony.
That said, I honestly wanted to like Vanguard. I was ready for a new game and hoped that, for all the hype, the old spirit of EQ really had carried over to some degree. So I slogged through the SOE employee phase of beta, waiting for the game to turn the corner. Subsequent phases of beta went by with some significant changes, but none of the patches brought the magic I was looking for. When the game was released in the crippled state it was, I still tried to like it and hoped for good things to happen.
For me, they just didn’t. I didn’t find Vanguard fun, and if anything it drove me back to WoW and gave me an even greater appreciation for what polish means to a game. And it gave me a real sense of pride to have worked on EQ2 and been a small part of taking that game from its mediocre launch to being a really fun game.
I still have hopes for Vanguard. If EQ2 can improve, so can VG — if (and it’s a mighty important if) the right people make the right decisions. It can be done, whether or not those delighting in the announcements of the last two days want to admit it.
None of that is really important today, though. The thing that shouldn’t be lost in all of this is that, because of circumstances beyond their control, a bunch of good people lost their jobs. I’ve been laid off before (twice, actually) and it flat-out sucks. It’s one of those things that makes you feel powerless, lost, and more than a little betrayed. My best wishes go out to all those folks, who will hopefully land somewhere soon. The faceless masses on the message boards who revel in seeing companies fall apart would do well to remember that it’s real people who are affected by these things, not faceless corporations.
At the end of the day, Vanguard will go on. SOE will make a profit from it. The execs at what was Sigil in all likelihood will have other projects ahead of them. And if we’re lucky, the industry will have learned a lesson, at least for a little while.
The dream, though tarnished, will remain. And that’s a good thing.
Great post, as usual.
I’m curious… what exactly do you think of EQ2? I know you probably can’t commently candidly, but you seem to enjoy WoW more than it.
I’m not looking for a particular answer btw, I’m just curious about getting a developers point of view
Regardless of opinions, I think we can all agree that WoW is an excellent product in terms of polish and I think that it’s been one of the major factors in it’s success.
I think EQ2 was pretty close to suffering the same fate as SWG and now VG due to it’s ‘medicore’ launch (as you put it). I think out of all MMOs though, it’s probably evolved and improved the most into becoming a very enjoyable and solid game. I’m sure if EQ2 had been released now, it would’ve had a better response from the critics.
A sad day:( for the people out of jobs. Vanguard tried to please too many different types of play styles, as well as having the same problem eq2 has which is too many quests with people all on different steps.
I think it might be safe to say that in a small way, Vanguard humbled the entire MMO industry.
I’m happy to comment on EQ2, though the things I say can’t help but contain my personal bias because I was so close to the game for so long.
In my opinion, EQ2 is a deeper, richer game than WoW. I care about the story and the world, and how my character fits into both. I think it’s a beautiful game (if you can run it on settings worthy of the art, that is) with a richness to it.
WoW is a much more directed experience without a lot of the side games that EQ2 has. Crafting is simpler, there are no houses to customize, and you can’t level up your guild. WoW’s best side game is its PvP, which is a very strong component. And out of fairness, many people like the directness of its crafting.
Regardless of features, WoW is just so freaking polished. Everything from the content to the UI feels extremely cohesive and thought through. EQ2 doesn’t have that same degree of design unity, though it is far better than it was at launch.
One of the biggest things that held me back from liking WoW was the character models. I don’t care for their humans, which is the race I’m most able to identify with. As a result, I don’t feel as connected to my character as I am in EQ2. However, I think their environments and use of lighting are gorgeous.
I’m farther now in WoW than I ever have been before. I am having fun in the game and look forward to getting to the high-level game.
But when it comes down to it, I enjoy WoW but I’ll never feel passion for it. I appreciate it for what it is, and while I’ll continue to build up my character I’ll never care about the shallow story or feel a real connection to Azeroth.
Even though I’m on a break from playing EQ2, it’s the MMO I care about. Like any first love, it will always hold a special place into my heart.
But I’m a very lucky guy, because now I get to work on my next great love. That’s a very, very rare opportunity, and I appreciate it more than I can express.
I was really turned off to Vanguard long before it came out just by the attitude some of their community people had. I recall reading through their website/FAQ in the early days and the author was doing a lot of trash talking towards companies like SOE. It was in the style of “well our competitors who shall remain nameless, like to taunt you with tedium, whereas Vanguard will provide you with a real gameplay experience”. Whoever wrote it was pretty much trash talking SOE and maybe in part Blizzard. Given they were former employees of SoE, it seemed more directed at them. I did check in later and found that they had replaced this verbage with something a little more professional, which is good. I expect trash talking amongst self proclaimed uber guilds, not professional game companies.
If you’re gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. But I’m a minority in this belief. If they say “we will be doing this in a far superior way”, and disgruntled player of competition game wants to believe it, they will believe it before the game even exists.
So yeah..humble pie in the long run. Like you, i wanted to like the game. I was fascinated by some of their implementations and ideas – bards…diplomacy for instance. Given I play a bard in eq2, I can say without a doubt that it was implemented far better in Vanguard. But overall, their gameplay didn’t meet my expectations. Honestly, a big name like that has to fail at some point to advance the industry by example.
I’m glad you are having a fun time in WoW. At the very least, look at Vanguard to see why it failed, look at WoW & EQ2 to see why it’s successful in your view and use that to establish a foundation for the next great game. Being able to distill those aspects successfully and completely takes a lot of talent though.
What people sometimes fail to appreciate is that the line between greatness and failure in any art form is often immeasurably small. The elements that make one thing (movie, game, book, etc.) greater than another are often so subtle that they can’t be put into words beyond “this is just better.”
So game designers can proclaim all day long how they’ve learned lessons from the past and will do things right next time. But ultimately it comes down to consistency of execution in ways that are very very hard to define.
Looking at what went right or wrong with other games gets you part of the way there. But no matter how good you are at analyzing other games, if you can’t execute with skill and passion then all the analysis won’t do you a bit of good.
“He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.” -Niccolo Machiavelli
I can’t speak for what happened internally at Sigil anymore than any other non-employee could. Everything I would comment on is strictly Monday morning quarterbacking.
That said, if Brad is really guilty of anything here, it was reaching beyond reasonable limitations. I see this all the time at clients. I come onboard and find that what they foresee happening and what I foresee as attaintable are often two completely separate beasts. It’s often my job to speak up with issues I see in the scope or “vision”, working often as a liason between engineers and sales/marketing/business groups – speaking up to state what can and can’t be reasonably accomplished within a given time or budget.
For development companies, time is often inflexible to a great extent. Release dates are often set very far in advance for a variety of reasons, and it’s up to developers to make sure the work happens within that allotted time. Since it’s typically hard to pull in more cash resources, this leaves only two real constraints to work with: labor hours and project scope.
With companies like SOE, they often pull a combination of the two, but at least with EQ2, they seem to reign in scope hard at times. Entire dungeons or feature sets are scrapped for release dates, in order to put in the work necessary on the remaining content.
For Sigil, this didn’t seem to be as much of an option. Sure, they scaled back a bit, but did the game really need to launch with that many continents and starting areas? Did the game really need to launch with that many races and classes? Did the game really need to have that many features?
From an outsider’s point of view, it appeared that Sigil was almost afraid to touch scope to any great extent. Was this due to scope being equated to “Vision (TM)”? A wiser man than I once commented on game design that “there are no sacred cows”. With Sigil, it seems they were unable to destroy the myriad of idols that had been propped up before them by McQuaid.
There’s no denying his vision of an MMO was great indeed. He certainly painted a beautiful portrait in our minds of what such a fanciful flight could truly be like. The problem is that, like Icarus, Brad attempted to fly too high too fast with this initial release.
Five years and thirty million dollars. Even in a post-Warcraft market, that’s still a respectable amount of investment for any MMO. Yet, even with a staff of ~100 putting in inhuman hours, the project was simply too large in scope to handle. It needed to be reigned in. Cuts needed to be made earlier. Risks weren’t properly identified soon enough, and even if they were, they weren’t acted upon.
Customers are more saavy and the market is simply too diverse these days for a mediocre or substandard quality of product to be delivered for release. Games such as World of Warcraft have simply raised the bar on polish while lowering the bar for entry requirements. As Sigil’s rise and inevitable fall shows us, companies ignore these facts at their own peril.
Before you build a beautiful house, you must first construct a rock solid foundation. The more successful studios do this. You start relatively small and expand later on. You make sure your workers have the right tools for the job.
Reports coming out now indicate Sigil did not do any of this. If sources are to be believed, it would seem that Sigil started building too many parts of the house at the same time, and never managed to put the foundation in properly in the first place, all while supplying their workers with nothing better than hand tools, and giving them an unrealistic timetable to meet.
When the owners finally showed up to take the keys, they were initially excited to see what a large house was built (over and above what theyd’ intially hoped for) and then appalled to find the plumbing leaked, the shower had no pressure, there was no toilet in the master bathroom, and the roof only covered 95% of the top floor.
Sure, the workers offered to stay on and complete the repairs, but by that point, the owners had gone elsewhere to live. This was the house that McQuaid built. This was to be his legacy: he sold us on a dream home, and delivered to us a fixer-upper.
“Looking at what went right or wrong with other games gets you part of the way there. But no matter how good you are at analyzing other games, if you can’t execute with skill and passion then all the analysis won’t do you a bit of good.”
I’m by no means implying analysis is the only thing that will make a better game. In fact, i think Sigil’s analysis partially led to their downfall. They kept looking at individual things, and saying “we can make this better” and then sold it as 3rd generation. Analysis helps define the “thesis” for the paper you are writing, but only good writing and research can make it a good paper (seeing as how i think you said you were an english major, i thought you’d appreciate that geeky analogy).
“I’m by no means implying analysis is the only thing that will make a better game. In fact, i think Sigil’s analysis partially led to their downfall. They kept looking at individual things, and saying “we can make this better†and then sold it as 3rd generation.”
I’d agree with that. I’d say that’s a good way of putting it. One gets the impression (after playing) that there’s a whole lot of innovative ideas…that don’t really go together very well in any wholistic sense.
“That said, if Brad is really guilty of anything here, it was reaching beyond reasonable limitations.”
Kendricke gets it.
I usually do.
I was going to blog about this tonight, but Kendricke covered it so well, everybody ought to just read that instead
*tips hat*
Brad is guilty of not using the talent he had. Instead it appears that he and the upper management micro-managed every detail and didn’t listen to the input of the employees.
I find this very likely since I saw his early habits in EQ1.
Sorry I don’t see Brad as some great innovator. Sure he got the first real 3d mmo out there but the reason it did so well more than anything is it was the first. Brad is stuck in the past and refuses to see even things like instancing as next-gen.
All the self congratulations really is deep.
[...] 17, 2007 Posted by kendricke in Sigil, The Gaming Industry, General Game Concepts. trackback After making a comment yesterday on Moorgard’s blog, I decided to repost it here and expand upon it a [...]
“That said, if Brad is really guilty of anything here, it was reaching beyond reasonable limitations.â€
Most importantly, his own limitations. Not just the limitations of the project.