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Why Vanguard Sets a Bad Precedent for MMOGs
The ever-enjoyable Gamers with Jobs has up a fascinating look at the recently released MMOG Vanguard . The article's author, Elysium, takes pains to point out that it's not a review. He didn't play the title long enough to get a firm grasp of the game; he just didn't care enough to spend the time. He outlines what makes Vanguard a bad game, and then points out that the game's creator Brad McQuaid himself has as much as admitted it was released too early. Sony Online Entertainment saved the game from bankruptcy, and released it when the schedule said to and not a moment later. In Elysium's mind, this sets up a really, really bad precedent: "Now that the game has released in its incomplete state, in a state that McQuaid himself describes as requiring patches, bug fixes and new feature implementation on par with a beta product, Sigil essentially comes to the consumer as the third investor in the process of the development cycle, and that is not just a terrible way of doing business, but an irresponsible step in the wrong direction for complicit consumers. Let me put it bluntly, if a game is not ready for retail when the money runs out find another investor or shut the doors. We are customers, and the retail end of the industry is bad enough about not supporting incomplete or inoperable products without developers and publishers assuming we are investors in the development process. Your job as the industry is to create product, and then, and only then, we buy it."
Anybody who investigated the game online knew that the game was rushed (or they did a poor job investigating). I was among those on internet forums talking about major game-wide changes being made in the final month of production. They changed how XP was awarded, they implemented item durability, and they put in flying mounts within the last 4 weeks of Beta.
Of course there were still the die-hards who dismissed these with their standard "Go back to WoW" line, but everybody knew it was true. The die-hards often commented that they knew they were going to be funding a retail Beta, but didn't care because they "believed in the vision"
So I don't think it's setting a bad precedent - the precedent was there long before Vanguard. Asheron's Call 2, Dungeons and Dragons Online, The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies... all beta'd by me, and all forced out the door too soon. It's no coincidence that they're all doing poorly, with one (AC2) dead.
World of Warcraft was not forced out the door, and in fact slipped over 2 years from its initial announced release date of Winter 2002. I beta'd WoW, and while there were still a few small bugs (and their servers were underprepared for the launch) it was polished and it shows in its subscriber numbers.
The only way we can change the precedent is by being informed customers and not buying crap when we know it's crap. The only way a company like SOE will stop rushing release dates is when they see long-term dissatisfaction outweighing short-term development costs. If they threw another $2 million into development and pushed Vanguard back a few months it would have made a world of difference, giving them subscribers for years to come. Blizzard understood this.
"Hello, Game master. I can't zone out of the starter area, and the mobs are mocking me."
God spoke to me.
Every Vanguard preview indicates that it's the same old stuff we've seen for years - high fantasy, level grinding, questing. The screenshots look dull and uninspired. The plastic player models convey zero personality. In other words, the game will have a small fanbase but it's not going anywhere. And no, I haven't played the game because nothing about it sounds compelling. Why should I settle for a second-rate product when I have WoW, GW, or even EQII to choose from in the "fantasy/MMORPG/questing" genre? And frankly, you need a damn good product to sway people away from WoW or whatever. You're asking them to give up their time investment and spend hundreds of hours in your gaming world. Or you could innovate and create an MMO for people like me who hate the current crop of MMOs :P
I read Vanguard's forums since early development and the devs had some awesome ideas. They just failed miserably in the execution.
As my friend said when I showed him some Vanguard screenshots/previews: "Don't they already have 5 games just like this?"
Who was it who said "Release Early and Often"? Oh yes, Eric S Raymond, in the seminal The Cathedral and the Bazaar.
Not to mention the plethora of literature about product development in other, non-software environments. All major product companies nowadays release products as fast as they can and let the customers do the "paying beta". Once the features are ironed out, they release a more polished mass-market product that has benefited from all the customer feedback.
Game development has been totally ass-backwards in terms of its development approach since forever. Games are effectively developed in giant waterfall projects which either crash and burn or do extremely well - but you only find out at the end. Unlike the poster of the original article I think it's great to see the games development processes maturing in this way towards what is the de-facto model of choice for product development in the real world. Well done Vanguard!
The results that can be expected from this shift of approach are:
- People who are keen to try stuff early can do so
- The costs of development of a game will be reduced (and hopefully the sales price too)
- The risks of developing a game will be reduced (since you'll know earlier whether the game is viable)
- Game quality will simply become better! Customer feedback will play a bigger part in shaping the game from much earlier on.
- More development shops will open as the hurdle to entry lowers
- Games which are fundamentally shit will be canned earlier
- More risk can be taken by trying something different if you're only going to invest 3 months of dev time rather than 3 years! Plus you get immediate customer feedback so you can quickly find out whether your new idea is brilliant or a dog.
There are many others... ultimately this is an extremely good move for the industry and we should be very glad of it. Perhaps with this the games industry will finally move towards the "software as a service/continuously updated product" model that is spreading far and wide in the rest of the software and meatspace industry.Daniel
Carpe Diem
It's kind of sad to me, and a few others I know because this didn't have to happen. Sigil spent a LOT of money on Vanguard, not WoW money, but more than pretty much any other MMO out at the moment besides EQ2. Not only that, but they had lot's of time too, something like 5 years of development time. Unfortunately, they pissed it all away. They just made mistake after mistake that eventually lead to the current state. I was part of the most active guild in beta for a long time and most of us left about 4 months prior to launch even after putting in months of playtime on characters we knew would be deleted. It just became obvious to us, people who had big plans, tons of time and resources invested and really wanted to enjoy the game, that it was just going downhill fast. I really feel sorry for some of the developers and other Sigil employees that we got to know. Most of them joined Sigil because they expected greatness from McQuaid, he was one of the creators of Everquest after all, but instead they got screwed just like everyone else, but more so. It became pretty plain that even the devs were losing hope and enthusiasm for the project, and when that happens the game is doomed. As for Vanguard settings bad precedent, I agree, but not for the same reasons. Like someone else mentioned, MMO's releasing before they finished is nothing new and if anything Vanguard lack of success is going to further show new developers that to release an unfinished MMO these days is essentially suicide. Where I think the bad precedent comes from is that Vanguard was originally being built as the last crack at a "hardcore" MMO. Now that Vanguard is essentially a failure investors will be far less likely to put their money on another "hardcore" style MMO which is really a shame since the style of the game was not why it's failing. I don't know if we'll ever see a mainstream Everquest style MMO again, but I'm sure we're going to see a long line of WoW clones hoping to ride the coattails. Whether you like one style of game or another it's always nice to have more choices. Finally, another important thing to gather from the Vanguard release is that it will most likely be Brad McQuaid's last. He used up every ounce of fanboyism and nostalgia that he gained from Everquest and totally wasted it. He made a lot of big claims and hard-nosed statements concerning Vanguard and didn't deliver on any of them. He's truly eating his words right now as he's basically become a MMO pariah. And frankly, after seeing what he did (and didn't do) with such a promising "Vision" of Vanguard, I say good riddance.
-Woad
This game was much better 25 years ago when Atari released it.
The simplest objection some have about WoW is that it is too simple. This is about taste and cannot really be argued.
One of the things is about how death is handled. SWG at one time handled it so bad that players commited suicide as a way to quickly travel back to base. This is not a good thing for a game. There should be at least some suspension of disbelief and everyone in your party jumping into a lavastream after the big fight saying, "see you later" just doesn't do it.
WoW requires you to go back to your body in an invulnerable form from a fixed point and then respawn in the immidiate area of your body. If you don't you suffer a severe hit to your stats for a period of time.
The "punishement" aspects here are obvious. Going back to your corpse is boring, if in a party it requires everyone to wait, and you better hope they wait because what ever killed you will still be there + fresh respawns.
Some people think this is too though while others think it is too weak. Both are right.
If I remember correctly (I haven't played any MMO in months and they tend to blur together) in EQ2 the punishements are slightly more severe, you respawned alive and well similar to were your ghosts spawns in WoW but with a severe hit to your stats and XP. You could lighten the punishement by recovering your "shard" from your place of death.
Think for a second about the difference between WoW and EQ2 right there. In WoW you travel back to your corpse in order to continue meaningfull play in invulenrable mode, it is nothing but a time waster. You died so you don't get to play for a few minutes. Don't die again.
In EQ2 you are back in the game again from the moment you die BUT severely reduced and now faced with the same journey as a WoW player except you are very vulnerable and now got to fight everything between you and your bleeding mangled corpse.
That is not all, your group has not only now lost a valuable member of your party (or a piece of dead weight) but now faces the choice of making their way back to the entrance to pick you up and escort you to your corpse OR going on in reduced state.
A common sight in EQ2 was to see players hitching a ride into a dungeon with later groups to get back to their group waiting inside.
Obviously therefore death is something far more severe in EQ2 then in WoW. Some people like this.
Yeah it can be seen as a waste of time but it can also be seen as a way of getting better players who actively take care of each other. Having played both of them I have noted that EQ2 groups tend to work better together then WoW. In EQ2 EVERYONE in the group shared in your XP penalty. Can you imagine WoW players trying to deal with this? (The shared XP hit was removed from EQ2, as were shard runs apparently)
There is however yet another way of doing death. SWG had an amazing concept that I think was unique. Not all enemies killed you. You had three bars, if one was reduced to zero you were knocked out. It was then up to the enemy to deliver a finishing blow. Not all critters would do that (depending on species) and even if they wanted too it was possible for them to be distracted by your team mates. This added a whole new element to the game. Now there was still the tactical option of "saving" a teammate because a lesser class of healer could recover them on the field then a death character. Any medic could revive a knocked out character while death was only reversible by a highlevel doctor.
This made it actually important to have a few points in medic as a fighter as it allowed you to recover your true medic when they got knocked out. (because of SWG design were actions causes health bar loss a hardworking medic could put themselves in a vulnerable state were a single hit could knock them out)
Needlessly complex OR intresting gameplay? It is a matter of taste. (That is to say nothing of the difference between having a dedicated action/mana bar from wich you perform your actions and having to pay for your actions with your
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Let's not forget that World of Warcraft also had its problems: the queue, the general issues in the beginning, etc. It's par for the course with games these days.
I'm a little more concerned about console games needing patches: wasn't the whole idea with console was that they were different from PCs? The same "push it early, then patch" mentality seems to be affecting consoles, too.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice