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Sony Online Entertainment Purchases Vanguard
The rumours have been around for months now, but Tuesday Sony Online Entertainment confirmed that they had purchased Vanguard and Sigil Games Online from its investors. Nearly everyone on the Sigil team was laid off with around 50% of the outfit slated to be hired back, so that work can continue on the Massively Multiplayer Online Game. The game will continue running under the auspices of SOE, as announced by company CEO John Smedley in a forum post on Tuesday. Rumours that Brad McQuaid (keeper of the Vision behind Vanguard) has not seen been in Sigil's offices since last year has only exacerbated fan reaction to this announcement. It remains to be seen if SOE can undo the damage that the last five months have done to the Saga of Heroes community, and the game itself.
The supporters of this game like to go on about "the vision" and Brad, and how that makes it good. In fact I saw one review give it an 8/10, while admitting that the game in its current state was flat out awful. The reason for the 8? Because of Brad, and that at some point it'd be good.
Without going into "the vision" or any of that stuff, the game as it stands right now simply isn't any good. Performance is its biggest problem, most people's machines simply can't play it effectively. Sorry folks, the market of people who buy new gaming rigs every six months isn't big enough to support a MMO.
Blizzard figured that out, and now they have a license to print money. Vanguard's makers didn't figure it out, and now they get a one way ticket to being dumped on Station Pass with a bunch of other games.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Then you truely haven't seen the current game. SWG was an RPG then, and probably sucked because you were a noob. It was fun when you got friends, lived in a player city, and were a master at your profession.
Now it's a role playing action game, where you'd be much more happy. You'd jump in the game and already have skills, hell you could be a jedi if you want. I think it kills the game if you don't have to earn your skills.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
"It was fun when you got friends, lived in a player city, and were a master at your profession."
Maybe... but who's going to stick around that long in a game that isn't fun?
When I think of 'Star Wars' I think of flying around in spaceships, fighting in big battles, and shagging Natalie Portman. But all I could find to do in SWG was spend thirty minutes running from one city to another doing Fedex deliveries to NPCs who often weren't even there (or wait around for ten minutes for a shuttle which ate up most of the profit and caused a big loss if the NPC wasn't there), or fight monsters that would probably kill me if I didn't run away.
As to Jedis, whoever came up with the brilliant idea of preventing the majority of players from becoming Jedis should have been sacked on the spot. I don't care what Lucas' 'vision' may be, a large fraction of people who play SWG games play them because they want to be a Jedi, and don't want to have to jump through weird unpredictable hoops just to do that; they should either have been left out of the game altogether, or made a character creation option for every player.