Sony Online Entertainment in Talks with Sigil Games

[Dr.Finger]

Acquisition mania! Catch it!

From NextGen (http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5402&Itemid=2). Sony Online Entertainment has confirmed to Next-Gen that the company is “in talks” with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes developer Sigil Games, although it’s unclear if an acquisition will come from the discussions.

An official forum post by Vanguard: Saga of Heroes executive producer Brad McQuaid stated, “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." McQuaid goes on to detail some of the struggles in bringing Vanguard to market and how crowded the MMO market is right now.

Vanguard can't be doing too well since I barely ever hear about it

[TheFlyingOrc]

Vanguard can't be doing too well since I barely ever hear about it
CONFIRMED!

[Heretic Machine]

...Well, I thought Vanguard was killed before launching, I must be wrong though. That impression should speak for how well it is doing.

[Acidpoptart]

I never looked into the game much, but one of my friends had been looking forward to this game for ages. He played the beta, felt like it still needed work, wanted to kill someone when SOE became the publisher, and decided the game was not ready for retail and quit. This guy was OBSESSED with Vanguard, and so if he stopped caring, I am sure many others felt the same way.

[CaptStu]

Will this acquisition move PS3s? If not, it doesn't matter.

[Arthen]

an MMO built for the hardcore... yeah.. that is what the world needs.

[Joestar]

Will this acquisition move PS3s? If not, it doesn't matter.

...Why? It's still an acquisition that involves games, an MMO for that matter. As far as I know, this is evilavatar.com, not an Xbox360 vs Ps3 forum :P.

[ninjadan]

an MMO built for the hardcore... yeah.. that is what the world needs.

Isn't that already called EVE-Online?

[Abednigo]

Will this acquisition move PS3s? If not, it doesn't matter.

This is Sony Online Entertainment, the Everquest folks. It has nothing to do with the PS3. Possibly being under the SOE umbrella though, that's probably worse for them. ;)

But the real "struggle" with the MMO market is WoW. It's too big. 8 million subscribers last I heard. That's insane. Nothing can compete with that. Every new MMO is compared to WoW. If it's a good game, it might help. If not, "It's not as good as WoW."

[CaptStu]

...Why? It's still an acquisition that involves games, an MMO for that matter. As far as I know, this is evilavatar.com, not an Xbox360 vs Ps3 forum :P.

Games? Sure. Games people play? Maybe not.

Hey, I'm just looking out for Sony's best interest. ;)

[CaptStu]

This is Sony Online Entertainment, the Everquest folks. It has nothing to do with the PS3. This is probably worse for them though. ;)

You would think that they would want to start seeing their PC games on their console. Wouldn't it make sense? Provide an additional revenue stream? And more ammunition in the console wars?

[drakkarim]

vanguard is just another example of ego before common sense. seems to be happening in the sony camp lately (as in the last couple of years).

[Bone]

I guess the beta hurt them, but I'm playing the full game and it's a blast. The developer is supporting us nicely with timely patches, without nerfing things unless their implementation was broken in the first place. Each class is getting more polished with each revision. More importantly, the GMs are present in the game and the devs listen to what WE want, not making arbitrary changes (hello Star Wars Galaxies).

It's not the simplified MMORPG of WoW, instead there is a full-fledged RPG with a learning curve that some people may not like. You can't go AFK for long and expect not to die. You have to work with your team, know your class well, and educate others about your class, or your group will wipe. It's a challenge that I enjoy.

For me, it's like playing a deeper version of Oblivion, only with lots of other people. And there are a lot of people playing it- I guess we're all under the radar. But I encourage you guys to get a buddy pass from someone and check out the full version of this game.

[Kweli]

It will be a sad day if SoE takes over Vanguard... considering they mess-up all other MMORPG's they have touched

[Roc Ingersol]

Is Vanguard even done yet? I mean... I know they're charging people already, but is it done?

I don't think WoW was its problem. VG was never going to attract anyone who was even remotely happy with WoW. VG's problem was more with the huge scope, under-delivered, designed to a hardcore roleplayer but built to require a hefty rig and/or some under-the-hood settings tweaks (things that aren't synonymous with hardcore roleplayers the way they are with hardcore action gamers). Any other title with half those problems would get yanked. It's impressive that it even exists.

[Bone]

I don't know any MMORPG that was "done" two months after launch. As far as I can tell, they all undergo major balancing changes, class changes, etc. In this case, it's actually going smoothly.

Or do you mean "is it playable yet?". In that case, I'm on my old rig I built for BF2, an AMD XP 3200+ (32 bit, single core!) with 2 GB RAM and a Nvidia 6800 GS. It runs well at medium settings, and still looks good. It could look better with more modern hardware, sure, but everything except my video card was purchased late 2002!

Anyway- yes, it is a more hardcore RPG than WoW. That is precisely the draw for me. As far as performance tweaks, I havent modified any game property files except to install a custom GUI as most people do in Oblivion or other RPGs.

[LeadBetter]

McQuaid goes on to detail some of the struggles in bringing Vanguard to market and how crowded the MMO market is right now.

All this McQuaid talk makes me want to go feed my McKuato some McNuggets....and a smint.

[DjinniMan]

All this McQuaid talk makes me want to go feed my McKuato some McNuggets....and a smint.

I LOLed!

Did you see the SNL skit with the twin Kuatos? Hilarious!

[Serapth]

I guess the beta hurt them, but I'm playing the full game and it's a blast. The developer is supporting us nicely with timely patches, without nerfing things unless their implementation was broken in the first place. Each class is getting more polished with each revision. More importantly, the GMs are present in the game and the devs listen to what WE want, not making arbitrary changes (hello Star Wars Galaxies).

It's not the simplified MMORPG of WoW, instead there is a full-fledged RPG with a learning curve that some people may not like. You can't go AFK for long and expect not to die. You have to work with your team, know your class well, and educate others about your class, or your group will wipe. It's a challenge that I enjoy.

For me, it's like playing a deeper version of Oblivion, only with lots of other people. And there are a lot of people playing it- I guess we're all under the radar. But I encourage you guys to get a buddy pass from someone and check out the full version of this game.


How does this buddy pass thing work?

[LeadBetter]

I LOLed!

Did you see the SNL skit with the twin Kuatos? Hilarious!
Yeah, that was funny...."Either of you Quaids got a smint!?"

[Thenetcase]

For me, it's like playing a deeper version of Oblivion, only with lots of other people. And there are a lot of people playing it- I guess we're all under the radar. But I encourage you guys to get a buddy pass from someone and check out the full version of this game.

So how much is SOE paying you to say stuff like that?
This game in NO way resembles Oblivion. It SUCKS. After months and months of anticipating it and really working hard at beta testing it, I realized that they weren't really fixing the game or polishing it. It's come a ways since beta, but last time I played it (about two weeks ago) it still SUCKED big time.

I am really disappointed with it.. it could have been a great game but as it stands now, it's hard to understand how they are even selling it.

Just my two cents,
-TNC-

[zrikz]

It has changed quite a bit since release. I play now and there have been vast improvements, especially for travel. Although it still needs a bit of work it is fun for me to play. The SOE-Vanguard thing has been talked about since early last week between the players(at least my guild) and we highly doubt that it will effect the game at all.

[Trazzlo the Magnificant]

It has changed quite a bit since release. I play now and there have been vast improvements, especially for travel. Although it still needs a bit of work it is fun for me to play. The SOE-Vanguard thing has been talked about since early last week between the players(at least my guild) and we highly doubt that it will effect the game at all.
Yeah, sort of like it never changed after SOE bought out Verant; it became about smaller expansions put out more often combined with less support. Same old story now again too, but lets hope it works out better.

For me, I always assume SOE will take over, and decide what it really needs is to only have one class. That class really needs light sabers, and RPG is another word for FPS.

We played EQ for ages, but it really did lose it's vision. It became a formula. There are times when we really want to play again, but it takes so little time to get bored. We tried Vanguard during Beta, and while we liked some things it really was the same old thing but with much, much higher hardware requirements.

I think it is because we are tired of the genre. Tired of the minor differences between the games for gameplay. We are looking for something new, but everything so far looks like a rehash. So, we end up not playing MMO's at all any more, and we also don't miss them.

[Bone]

So how much is SOE paying you to say stuff like that?Please see my record for bashing Sony when they deserve it- like my PSP that is better as a homebrew device than a gaming system, or their PS3 that is way too expensive for what it offers, or for their rootkit, or their hubris... I'm certainly not afraid to give Sony a good rogering.


This game in NO way resembles Oblivion. It SUCKS.That's your opinion, and mine is that it resembles Oblivion in the sense that there are compelling, epic quest lines as well as a HUGE open world with multiple continents.

To say "it SUCKS" without any real argument behind it, I don't feel like you've made your case. For one, you need to make it to level 10 before your character specializes, and that's when the game mechanics start to really present themselves. Since the game itself has a learning curve, I like that they've made levels 1-10 a training zone where you can still group but can easily solo yourself to level 10 while learning the feel and mechanics of the game.

After level 10, you start to see the need for other classes (people!) to balance your strengths and weaknesses against. It becomes much harder to solo the higher you level, so groups become the norm (and pickup groups routinely hang out near the better quest areas).

Look, I don't need to convince anyone, but I saw a lot of negative posts here. Many of them seemed based on very short or early impressions of the game (or worse, based on someone else's opinion, quoted as fact). In my gaming community we keep inviting our friends to play this and they all invariably get hooked on it. That's been my experience. I also hooked my wife into it, which makes it easier to explain away the loss of four hours of time in the evening :)

[HonestIago]

How does this buddy pass thing work?


Just get in touch with somebody in the Vanguard forum - with their purchases they got a set number of buddy codes (special edition had like 20, I believe to remember) and they give you a serial which will allow you a free trial for 10 days (correct me if I am wrong about the time limit) and afterwards you decide to stay or leave (which I would put some money on).

It is a MMORPG, a standard one, nothing special about it, nothing special about any of these - if you do not get attached to any of the scenarios they offer, you should stay away from the very crude and basic gameplay which is deliver and/or destroy.

MMORPG are just in their beginning stages and before companies feel the financial need (aka lack of paying customers) to create something new, the gaming style will not change.

[Chaos Machine]

I guess the beta hurt them, but I'm playing the full game and it's a blast. The developer is supporting us nicely with timely patches, without nerfing things unless their implementation was broken in the first place. Each class is getting more polished with each revision. More importantly, the GMs are present in the game and the devs listen to what WE want, not making arbitrary changes (hello Star Wars Galaxies).

It's not the simplified MMORPG of WoW, instead there is a full-fledged RPG with a learning curve that some people may not like. You can't go AFK for long and expect not to die. You have to work with your team, know your class well, and educate others about your class, or your group will wipe. It's a challenge that I enjoy.

For me, it's like playing a deeper version of Oblivion, only with lots of other people. And there are a lot of people playing it- I guess we're all under the radar. But I encourage you guys to get a buddy pass from someone and check out the full version of this game.


so basically what you are saying is that you are paying to beta test a game?


i was in beta for this game for nearly a year heres my thoughts after stupidly buying it anyway shortly after launch.

1.) The graphics engine is terribly unoptimized(it still runs like shit for how it looks)

2.) There is no cohesive art direction in the game. it has no visual flair at all instead relying on parallax maps and fancy shaders to do all the work for em.

3.) it trys to be too many things at once. they spent way too much time on frivolous things like the diplomacy system and crafting when they should have been hammering out solid game mechanics.

4.) combat is way too slow, the grind is too long, and its abhorrence of solo content has doomed any appeal to casual players.

5.) netcode blows, I thought eq netcode was bad with all the character warping around... this one is the fucking champ.

6.) Boring world... its got miles and miles of nothing in between cities and dungeons.

7.) wins award for the most terrible use of mocap animation bar none. seriously, if weapons arent clipping through my body on every attack swing, i instead make myself look like a spastic crack addict whenever im casting spells.

its my understanding that there is under 50k active subscribers atm with them selling about 250k copies. that is a TERRIBLE turnover rate, im willing to bet even anarchy online didnt suffer from such a huge drop off of their player base from launch.

the funny thing is that whenever a beta tester would bring these topics up brad's rabid fanboy squad of zealots(or as i like to call them "the visionites") would derail the thread and turn it into a massive flamewar. whats even more entertaining was that sigil actually LISTENED to these idiots when making game design decisions(its pretty bad when you have so little design direction that you start taking advice from beta testers about core game features and stuff).


when it came close to launch time i predicted that vanguard would do poorly in sales and they would eventually sell it to sony and move on to another project leaving them to clean up the mess. this is what happened with everquest though not due to poor sales though. they just got bored with it and sold it off at the final stages of production on the luclin expansion. (which was partly the reason why it was so fucking buggy that first 6 months of its launch)

side note...grats me on 100th post.

[Bone]

so basically what you are saying is that you are paying to beta test a game?That's not what I said at all. I said that at this point they are patching things that didn't work, balance-wise. This isn't specific to MMOs, I can name just about any multiplayer game, anywhere, that has had to do this (and usually derived benefits from it). They aren't knee-jerk nerfing stuff, but are trying to keep things fair while also maintaining unique aspects of certain classes and items. I appreciate that the devs are doing that.

You say it's stupid to listen to the beta testers- um.. isn't that what beta testing is for, in a large game like this? Some gameplay clearly needs to evolve and emerge over time, and in an MMO, that means asking the beta testers what worked and what didn't. Maybe I'm crazy.

As for crafting and diplomacy- a lot of people are playing those arcs, and enjoying them. I'm glad that sort of diversity was included. The diplomacy needs work in my opinion; however, I also haven't leveled up much in diplomacy so I don't understand the mechanics enough to comment on them.

I could go through your post point by point, but they are just opinions. I disagree- and since I enjoy the game, that's all I care about at this point. I've been hooked since a week before launch and just watched things get better and better.

If your 50,000 subscribers for 250,000 games purchased is correct, though, I agree- that looks bad. I wonder if Sony wants to acquire it just to put a bullet in its head?

[Lothair]

This reminds me of a quote I heard a while back about the Kmart-Sears merger: "It's like taking two drunks who can barely walk, tying them together, and saying they're twice as able to run a race."

[Sandman]

I was going to maybe give this game a shot a year or so after release, but if SOE has complete control over it by then it'll be as dead to me as any other SOE game.

[Derella]

I wonder if Sony wants to acquire it just to put a bullet in its head?
Probably not. They are still running the Matrix Online, and it only has a couple thousand subscribers.

[S1n1star]

The only thing that pisses me off about this is it means Ego McQaid will still get to make games. I really wish Sony would have left him to twist in the wind so he could fade into obscurity where he belongs. Fuck Smedly for giving him a damn safety net.

[KingGorilla]

an MMO built for the hardcore... yeah.. that is what the world needs.
Well...it IS needed and would be successful, but Vanguard ain't it. They already nerfed the game, and rleased a build that only a synical man would call a final beta. The base concept of Vanguarg was solid-hardcore MMO(Your UO, EQ) style players are not happy with WoW and will play something more hardcore. That truth still exists.

[Retrievil]

1.) The graphics engine is terribly unoptimized(it still runs like shit for how it looks)

2.) There is no cohesive art direction in the game. it has no visual flair at all instead relying on parallax maps and fancy shaders to do all the work for em.

3.) it trys to be too many things at once. they spent way too much time on frivolous things like the diplomacy system and crafting when they should have been hammering out solid game mechanics.

4.) combat is way too slow, the grind is too long, and its abhorrence of solo content has doomed any appeal to casual players.

5.) netcode blows, I thought eq netcode was bad with all the character warping around... this one is the fucking champ.

6.) Boring world... its got miles and miles of nothing in between cities and dungeons.

7.) wins award for the most terrible use of mocap animation bar none. seriously, if weapons arent clipping through my body on every attack swing, i instead make myself look like a spastic crack addict whenever im casting spells.

its my understanding that there is under 50k active subscribers atm with them selling about 250k copies. that is a TERRIBLE turnover rate, im willing to bet even anarchy online didnt suffer from such a huge drop off of their player base from launch.

I totally agree with your points and will add more.

I am an EQ diehard. I've played just about every mmorpg there is, including a year in WoW, but nothing was as good as the original EQ (imo). Keeping that in mind, I was so stoked for this game. Me and a few friends, some people I know from work all bought copies and went right at it. It's not bad for the first 12 levels or so. Unfortunately, after that, the wheels fall off.

The level 30+ content is either non-existant, or totally fucked. There are a million exploits. My whole guild was decked out in rare armours and weapons, made with mats from what was supposed to be a one time per person quest. The pvp is ridiculously unbalanced.

The zones ... what the fuck. I mean even EQ1 made it so that your pet survived zoning. In Vanguard, my pet poofed almost every time I crossed one of the 'segment' lines. That is if he's not already off somewhere due to the horrendous pathing.

The story ... pfft. There isnt one. At all. Well maybe there is, but it's not reflected in the game. In EQ1, you zoned into Nek Forest, you knew it was a bad place, and Neriak was exactly what you would expect from Dark Elves. Twisty passages, bars, etc. Even with Voodoo1 quality graphics, it was impressive. Vanguard's 'Neriak' is basically a round pit, with a few (4) square rooms running off it, with the NPCS all standing around the walls. It's pathetic.

Needless to say we've all cancelled our accounts. I can easily believe the 250,000 sold, 50,000 subscribers. That's 1 subscriber for every 5 copies sold. We bought 8 copies and none of us are playing anymore. I really, really wanted to like Vanguard, but its just not possible.

[Chaos Machine]

That's not what I said at all. I said that at this point they are patching things that didn't work, balance-wise. This isn't specific to MMOs, I can name just about any multiplayer game, anywhere, that has had to do this (and usually derived benefits from it). They aren't knee-jerk nerfing stuff, but are trying to keep things fair while also maintaining unique aspects of certain classes and items. I appreciate that the devs are doing that.

You say it's stupid to listen to the beta testers- um.. isn't that what beta testing is for, in a large game like this? Some gameplay clearly needs to evolve and emerge over time, and in an MMO, that means asking the beta testers what worked and what didn't. Maybe I'm crazy.

As for crafting and diplomacy- a lot of people are playing those arcs, and enjoying them. I'm glad that sort of diversity was included. The diplomacy needs work in my opinion; however, I also haven't leveled up much in diplomacy so I don't understand the mechanics enough to comment on them.

I could go through your post point by point, but they are just opinions. I disagree- and since I enjoy the game, that's all I care about at this point. I've been hooked since a week before launch and just watched things get better and better.

If your 50,000 subscribers for 250,000 games purchased is correct, though, I agree- that looks bad. I wonder if Sony wants to acquire it just to put a bullet in its head?

when your game is broken on release, that means it should have never came out of beta, the funds dried up and they decided to let you be the guinea pig and pay for it.

When you let your beta testers design the game for you, you end up with no direction. too many people giving their opinions = everything sucks. theres a difference between going to your beta testers for balance issues to tweak your game to perfection, and outright relying them to essentially design the game for you.

In wow beta, everything WORKED from at least beta 2 on(the limit of my experience) save for balance issues, and classes without all their abilities fleshed out like the druid and hunter. Warriors could tank, priests could heal, mages could dps and cc, paladins did their hybrid thing, then they gradually introduced the hybrids. but all the core concepts of each of the classes were implemented already and functioned when they were released to the testers, this was not the case with vanguard. it took nearly 6 months of beta in order to get the netcode in a state where more than 50 people could be on the server at once without chunks crashing or insane memory leaks and crashes when more than 1 person was in your presence.

I also was a diehard eq player, i ended up quitting around the release of GoD due to my guild being invited to wow beta, since then ive never looked back. I still like "hardcore" games but vanguard seems to purposely frustrate the player in order to make you value any accomplishment you make in the game. this can work in small doses like an exp penalty on death or reagent loss on combine failures for crafting. but things like travel should not be an arduous procedure.

unfortunately i worry that future mmo developers will think that the vanguard fiasco is basically proof that they need to dumb their games down so that ricky retard the 13 year old pimple faced l337 skillz player can enjoy their game.

nowadays im looking at warhammer online, age of conan, and tabula rasa. but each for different reasons and none of them look like they are going to have any compelling pve raid content instead focusing on different niches.

[Hellstorm]

Well SOE has to do something considering all the leads on DCU quit in the last two weeks.

[Ilinx]

Just to add my two-pennies' worth. I bought Vanguard when it came out as I wanted a new MMO play - I got bored of WoW. I never played EQ and wasn't in the Vanguard beta or anything.

The lack of optimisation in the graphics engine is what really killed it for me. I can put up with a few bugs in the gameplay as they don't really bother me too much, but it was pretty much unplayable on my system. I don't have a hugely powerful graphics card (7600GS) but the rest is fairly respectable and it still chugged along at 15FPS on anything but the very lowest settings.

Conversely Lord of the Rings Online which I'm now playing runs at nearly full spec without batting an eye.

I believe that the best time to play an MMO is right at the time it goes to retail as everyone is pretty much in the same boat and working things out together. I would go back to Vanguard but only if they pulled the whole thing and started it again - clearly an impossibility at this stage. If Sigil/SOE want to breathe life back into Vanguard, they'll need to fix the engine first, then make a serious effort to help new players get into it, but that will probably upset existing hardcore gamers. The result - Vanguard has probably sunk already.

[S1n1star]

Well SOE has to do something considering all the leads on DCU quit in the last two weeks.

:eek: Sources??