I wanted to made this into an entry myself, but slacking as always it ends up as a comment here. First interesting thing is the origin of this text. It was first published by McQuaid in this FoH forum entry about the non-existing communication between Sigil and it's players. Just like Blizzard, Sigil prohibits it's staff to post in forums like FoHs. As usual this topic turned into "why V sucks/rules" and McQuaid came out of the closet with this one.

Most interesting information out of this for me are the details and the conclusion. V nearing a "200k player base" is the first official number. V having a 30M $ budget is interesting too. I actually expected it to have less, aroud 20M was my guess. 30M with not even 200k after 3 months is a real bad performance, worse than people expected. Reading that EQ was build with a 8M $ budget is also 1st class information such a high amount of money for such an early MMO is pretty suprising if you ask me.

What we can learn from this text is, that designers are just that. Designers turning into an CEO/producer kinda type doesn't work well, that's why we can expect big from Warhammer in the hands of EA's producers. Love them or hate them, but at least EA gets the business right and will not be forced to crush into the biggest behemoth rival cause the money runs out. They will position their product with care. Reading this McQuaid text increases my faith in the upcoming Warhammer MMO to really compete with WoW. You need a really solid business background to compete in this market today.
 

biggest problems of Vanguard are performance, underpopulated servers

mmhhh...
performance get worse as population grows (needing more cpu/server power). But if you get bad performance with under utilized servers.... that's even worse

Or do they mean that there's some servers with performance problems and others that are underpopulated? (unbalanced population among different realms)?
 

This isn't related to the post, but I thought you might find this interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6526851.stm
 

Brad (and Koster, as well) both made the same mistake. They attributed their success to some hidden insight about mmorpg design, when it was actually more about the fact that UO and EQ were the only real options, 8 years ago.

Give players a choice, and the majority will always choose a more casual friendly ruleset, with a pk switch.

SWG and VG are both failures because Raph and Brad didn't understand (and maybe still don't) that the era of power gaming is over.

Gamers are looking for a game, and not substitute for life.

Or, at least most aren't.

And let's not be surprised over this. Tons of people predicted that VG would flop.
 

Brad: Marketing. There are two groups of ex-EQ 1, UO, DAoC, etc. players out there: the ones that look back fondly on the years they put into EQ 1 and those who don't -- either they're upset or, more often, they simply have had their lives change and they don't have the time to play another EQ 1. So when they heard about Vanguard and all of the EQ 1 people working on it they didn't even give it a chance -- they simply assumed Vanguard would be as hard core as EQ 1 (when it absolutely isn't). We totally underestimated that second group, and I think if we had got the message out that Vanguard was not just another EQ with all of its time sinks, tedium, leveling times, necessary raiding, need for contiguous time commitments, and somehow got that message clearly and strongly through to that second group we would have launched more strongly.

That is such BS. SG went out of their way to position themselves as a mmorpg for EQ die hards. Brad spewed endless post about the "vision".

I stopped caring out VG the day it was revealed that banks wouldn't be universal. That told me all I needed to know about VG.

Was that decision ever reversed? It wouldn't have mattered. The damage had already been done.

VG isn't failing because ex EQ players misunderstood what SG was shooting for. VG is failing, because ex EQ players listened very carefully to what Brad was saying, and flat out rejected his ideas on game design.

God, I wish someone out there had saved all of Brad's lengthy VG essays, so they could call him on his spin.
 

this is so true
That is one of the biggest things WoW taught us, the importance of polish, AI, general accessibility, etc.

but he is being naive again.
Blizzard didn't invent anything.
RTS, Hack'N'Slash, MMORPGs were on the market already before Blizzard entered it. What do they do (i'm oversimplifying things now), put on a nice UI and sell it.

i have "tried" a lot of mmorpgs, but when i start the game up i have play, not getting annoyed by the crappy not user-friendly interface.

i mean, you start in wow, you move and you see a BIG yellow !, bang you have your quest and your on the way.

no matter how good or great a game is, the first 5 minutes will break it or not.

My experience with Vanguard.
The initial phase:
Wow, looks nice, interesting background (EQ etc.)

The Installing phase:
hmm, it's a bit long. oh well, i get a cup of coffee. finally, i can start. loading....checking files....updating files....restarting....checking files again....updating files....chekcing files...WTF i want to play....ah i can enter the world.

The playing of the game.
Hmm, i walk strange.
where do i find the minimap.
hey i used to buy stuff from that dude, but not anymore..
hmm, i crash multiple times.
i have the feeling it's not smooth.
 

Give players a choice, and the majority will always choose a more casual friendly ruleset, with a pk switch.

SWG and VG are both failures because Raph and Brad didn't understand (and maybe still don't) that the era of power gaming is over.

Gamers are looking for a game, and not substitute for life.

Or, at least most aren't.

And let's not be surprised over this. Tons of people predicted that VG would flop.

I think this is true to an extent, but falls short of the real issue that Vanguard had. There are plenty of us who would be willing to embrace the 'vision' so to speak, and who still fondly remember CRs and the grind. However, they spent money on crap. In teh end they didn't produce the hard, beautiful, amazing game they promised...

They produced a needlessly obtuse, complex, graphiclly poor, under-developed piece of crap.

So the casual players that have joined the MMORPG community due to the success of WoW were never their target audienc, and their target audience played in Beta and said, "WTF is this shit, you want me to pay for this hunk of junk?"

Trust me, they would have ahd good success if they actually produced a solid game. It would not have won the WoW war, because they were pitching to a different fanbase, but they simply pitched a bad product.
 

While I am not a fan of corpse funs or grinding, I would agree with Cyndre on the problems with Vanguard. Probably a fair amount of nice ideas and a some bad ones, but overall execution is less than what one should expect from a major title.

I am a bit surprised that they may have as many as 200K players. They will need some serious work to repair the impression they have made on many.
Going break-even on the project as a whole may take a few years, but is probably doable.
With all of the new titles in the pipeline in this genre this year, I think they might be in for a tough time, unless many of the other games also screw up to some extent.
 

I am a bit surprised that they may have as many as 200K players.

Ya, I call BS on that. I'd like to see that number broken down a bit more...

200K boxes sold? 200K subscriptions since launch? 200K active, current subscriptions?

Its easy to toss around a number without explaining the root of your stat. Its like saying my Blog has 10,000 readers, because my site meter shows that many hits.
 

I played vanguard for the trial period that it came with. I did enjoy it and notice that the patches they released GREATLY improved the core problems I was having. However on a scale of 1-10, I would uneasily give VG a 6-7ish... mainly because if the mass dissapointment it has caused for everyone who plays it. It obviously was not ready to be released.... it feels like a beta- of a beta release with the many issues it had.

One of the poor marks this game recieved in reviews is that it is just to confusing learning the linear progression of the game... supposedly the hack'n'slash spere is the most difficult, but in hindsight it seemed to be the easiest (quests and mobs usually arent that hard to find/follow). I would give the game alot of credit for having open pvp, a good setup for faction based pvp (with poor execution, mainly because of LACK OF PEOPLE PLAYING) and what really could save VG is that the graphics, it does looks awsome with all the customization to your chars.

Now I wouldnt expect it to be a better game than WoW, but I originally was hoping it would offer something different than WoW gameplay wise. It does have the card playing part (diplomacy/parlays) that is sophisticated and fun but for being a massively multiplayer online game, doesnt feel like your ever going to ge your $15/month cost for... because it feels like a single player game from the beginning. The classes are not cookie cutter copies from other mmo's which is a nice change, but then again from a group-playing point of view, nobody knows what other classes re capable of... which is a negative aspect for the most part.


I will check on VG in a few months once they fix all the retarded bugs and gameplay issues and bring the game uptu par. Until then hopefully the die-hards will drag the game along and improve it enough to be a playabl egame.
 

Brad needs to wake up. He always try to go against the trend and ends up hitting himself in the nuts.

Blizzard already spelt out the keys to a successful mmog but Brad said no, we will go hardcore and no instancing... that's stupidity.

Brad also like to give promises he cannot keep. I remember he promised housing before Everquest was launched, which was one of the main reasons I played EQ. But where's the damn house?