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Nepotism and Incompetence - Sigil's Legacy
Visceral Monkey writes "In the wake of SOE's purchase of Sigil and Vanguard , there are a number of questions to be answered. The commentary site F13, purveyors of usefully cynical opinions, have a pair of fascinating interviews on the subject. The first is an anonymous discussion with a former team member, laying out the working conditions at Sigil prior to the end. The second is a talk with Brad McQuaid, one of the men behind EverQuest and the captain of the debacle that is Vanguard. Both interviews highlight the nepotism, incompetence, corruption, and evasion that were the last day of Sigil Online Games."
Whole heartedly agree..
As the article states, the thing Brad is very good at is selling and bullshit. I have seen them man in action and he can sell ice to eskimos but backing up the wind....not so much. I was not surprised by the statement of 'the dungeon was made especially to not show the flaws' for E3.
What I am really surprised by is the nepotism....seriously, rule of thumb is to keep the team seperate at all times. Hell, Brad should have known himself considering there was a few rounds of it under his hat on the EQ team (I distinctly remember a tale of a GM who got involved with the head of the CS department I believe and a whole firestorm of problems internally). If he idly stood by and let brothers, in-laws, and wives get hired, he deserves every bit of fury that the gaming public can put on him.
BTW, the dismissal is low by ANY standards. A mass trap&kill like that is total bush league...and if that douche talking about his house is the truth, the guy needs a serious schooling in 'tact' before he goes to another place.
It's pretty easy to criticize when things go wrong. But in order for something like an MMO to be completed and succeed, a tremendous number of things need to go right. And even when that happens, like with Everquest 2 (which is a fun, profitable game), you still get criticized.
Vanguard had a lot of problems, but if you actually read all the interviews, the core of their problems seems to be excess optimism. They tried to create the end-all and be-all MMO, and they didn't have what it took to succeed.
They didn't have the money or time to achieve their vision. And they didn't have the discipline to narrow their vision to fit the resources they had.
A lot of the rest of their problems seem to be less significant (or facets of the lack of discipline). You can say Brad ought to have been in the office at some events, but that doesn't make any money change hands. Employees' feelings don't make an MMO succeed. Hype doesn't make a bad game good or an over-hyped game bad. The practical things are the ones that matter.
I notice you don't mention the exp penalty for death once in this post. Did you completely miss the point of my post which was very specific, or are you deliberately ignoring it so that the concept of not liking negative progress is the same as only caring about forward progress?
... at some point you've explored everything in your level range but you don't have enough exp to move on because you died, so grinding you go.
...and then he wonders why he's not welcome in a raid guild.
No. I didn't mention it specifically, because negative xp is not the only way it can be handled. Other games have had meaningful death penalties without negative xp.
That's why in EQ you have the rare spawns that drop the loot that get camped all day, because they want that one mob to take up literally days of your time.
That's utterly naive. Yes, that's how it worked out, but not how it was originally designed. The designers never thought for a moment that the rare items were going to get camped like that... they thought the players that ended up with them would consider them a bonus.
And for what its worth, in the original EQ you didn't *NEED* those camped weapons... they were nearly insignifant boosts over much more easily obtained items, and were never 'make or break' must haves.
And was punishing you for those "unfortunate artifacts" [stupid deaths] part of the "vision"?
No. It wasn't but not throwing out the baby with the bathwater was why they were left in. EQ had issues, lots of issues... that was one of them. No question. But WoW's solution was even stupider than leaving the problems as they were.
Sorry, but especially EQ requires grinding to advance, which is why you said the penalty for death was "2 hours of monster killing". That's grinding, boyo.
No, its not. Sorry. Your wrong. 2 hours of sitting in one spot is grinding... going to the same place everyday is grinding. But monster killing is what that game was if you didn't like killing monsters EQ wasn't a good game to play. There are lots of approaches to killing monsters that don't equal grinding.
There was enough content at most level ranges to allow for several deaths. If you died incessantly and continually than the issue isn't the game, its the player.
what every EQ refugee I've spoken to has said is a great improvement.
And yet here we are... and many more like me.
That's why I'm able to take it easy when I'm leveling -- no matter what happens, I'll either go forward or not move at all, never will I go backwards.
Yeah. That's WoW in a nutshell. No matter what happens, you can't lose. Whee. Even the worst player in the world can make it to max level.... the worst player in the world WILL make it to max level
EQ was a popular unforgiving game. Eve is a popular unforgiving game. Both of them had flaws and could be improved. There is room in the market for a good unforgiving game that rewarded skill and intelligence more than simply punching in the clock and getting your dose of 'progress' like WoW does.
Brad offered the promise of making that game with Vangaurd... that is why it had the hype it did.
I sure as hell don't want to spend 2 hours killing -- even spread out over time -- just to regain what I lost due to a glitch in the game. That is the height of lame.
Everybody agrees with you on that point. OK. EVERYBODY. EQ had its share of problems... that was certainly one of them.
To stay out of the MMO minefield I will instead use racing games as an example. Grand Prix Legends on the PC and, well any racing game on the consoles.
GPL is brutal, the cars are a bitch to handle, require real skill, have full length F1 races, are fragile as hell and have random breakdowns. This means that if you make a mistake that could easily be the end of the race, if you drive the full 2 hours succesfully you can still be out by a random failure or simply running out of fuel.
Compare this to console racing games, no random failures, damage model is a health bar (no sudden death by loosing a wheel), races are at most a few minutes, the AI sucks donkey balls and you can usually easily make up a mistake and overtake all of the computer racers even if you are way behind.
Two totally different ways of doing the same game type.
Which is better? Well, for me they both got their place. Console racers on my PSP (I own a DS as well, no big consoles) for a quick fix and GPL and similar on the PC for when I am at home and got the time for them.
Driving a full race, definitly makes you more aware of the risks. Go for first and overtake the leader (well, 2nd, 3rd Oh okay, overtaking the guy with the smoking engine 5 laps behind the leader) OR play it safe and get the 2nd place points and NOT risk wrecking your car on the finishing lap.
Choose right and you win, choose wrong and 2 hours of gameplay are, wasted?
HOLD ON ONE FUCKING SECOND
What kind of player would consider those hours wasted? Are you so shallow that that you think 2 hours spend playing a game is only worth it if you the game tells you, you are a winner?
Surely it is the game itself that should be fun? Two hours racing EVEN if I crash in GPL is FUN! Every single lap. The risk of NOT finishing the race on adds to it. No victory without defeat. What is the thrill in completing Monaco in 3rd place if you didn't feel like it took all your skill and a lot of luck to do it?
I get more satisfaction from GPL then a console racer. Offcourse GPL takes more time BUT it also gives me more.
On the other hand I can't just run GPL while travelling on the train, nor would I want to loose my GPL race because the conductor asked for my ticket, a console race, well, who cares, no risk, no punishement.
So I can see your point BUT I can also see why you are absolutly wrong.
In MMORPG's the "risk" is in taking on higher level mobs, more of them and with the risk of adds. For non MMO players who are still reading, MMO's offcourse got no saves, so death cannot be as brutal and simple as in single player games. Permanent death is considered to extreme as well so avatars when they bite off more then they can chew have to be brought back into the game world. Usually a player respawns at a fixed location with some punishement (loss of XP, temporary stats decrease, equipment loss). Sometimes these punishments can be lowered by travelling back to the area of your death.
How harsh this punishement is depends on a lot of things. Some games have almost no penalty, some make you long for real death.
WoW and Everquest 1/2 for instance both asked you to go back to your place of death to lower the penalty. The difference being that in WoW you travel back as an immortal ghost who cannot be attacked or attack. A save run that is purely a time waster.
In Everquest 1/2 and Vangaurd the corpse run is done while you are alive BUT under influence of a stat punishement. In Vanguard even with your best gear missing. So you have to fight your way back in a reduced state to your death body that is probably surrounded by the same mob that killed you in the first place.
So what does this mean?
Well, lets mention another game, Star Wars Galaxies. At one point people in that game KILLED THEMSELVES to safe having to travel back to base. Suicide as a fast travel option, desirable gaming tactic OR the sign of complete and utter ruin. Discuss.
In LoTRO if you do NOT die when yo
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"What exactly is enjoyable about a game you cannot lose?"
It's not that you cannot lose, it's that you have to work to succeed. You can grind out XP and gold on easy mobs all day and be bored stiff, or you can try to solo group quests or go into dungeons that actually require a modicum of teamwork and skill to complete.
A low death penalty encourages you to take risks and do fun, challenging stuff because the only real penalty for failure is failure itself. You don't have to go do boring stuff for 2 hours to make up for the failure. You can try to do the fun stuff again, try a different strategy, or a different group of people without having to worry about being forced to go back to boring crap.
Remember the old carrot and stick thing? Death penalties are sticks. EQ had a big stick, WoW has a small one. (Insert obvious phallic joke.) Loot and bragging rights are the carrot. EQ and WoW both have pretty equivalent carrots.
A bigger stick doesn't make the carrot sweeter for most people. It's the challenge you have to overcome to get the carrot that matters there.
Bragging about how big your stick is just masochistic and every bit as shallow as the phallic equivalent.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.