Its amazing this game even got into beta in the first place. For a long time, its been surmised that there was nothing to this game other than tantalizing tidbits on Sigil's website, where the marketing release page text far outweighed the source code of the game in length. The whole game was shrouded in "secrecy" which people assumed that because nothing was coded or built, nothing was discussed about it.
Vanguard apparently wants to bring back what even EQ had to do major gymnastics to code around. Guilds spending more time finding third party programs and strategies to ensure other guilds won't progress rather than working on progression. (If you played EQ during the PoP era and were in a high end guild, it was common to make sure one or both Decorins were moved under the world to make sure nobody got flagged for Rallos Zek until the servers got rebooted.) Some people love the PvE racing, but eventually it will become an arms race of who can make the better ShowEQ, MQ2, or other third party utility. If Sigil doesn't police the game well, it may end up an item duper's paradise as well.
Instead of Sigil actually making content, they seem to want to have players fight amongst themselves to try to get through artifically created bottlenecks, as a way to not have to create new content as fast. For example, having a locked high-end raid zone, where the key only is available by killing the Grand Poobah. Of course the Grand Poobah only spawns every xxx amount of days, and this allows the zone to be itemized and built on the fly, even after release, because players are effectively locked out.
WoW is a casual game, so casual I quit playing it after getting a couple characters to 60, and finding that one Uqua plow is harder than all the WoW raiding put together. However, Blizzard engineered the game right, where player griefing is fairly difficult. WoW is a fun game. You can solo, group, raid, and pvp, and have some means of progression, even if its a faction treadmill. Blizzard also does attempt to address issues with the game. Next patch, they are adding a decent raid area.
If Sigil gives WoW fans the middle finger, who are they going to sell to? The dedicated raiders don't make up that much of the gaming population, and unless Sigil charges $200 a month, they won't be making much money from this game. This only hurts Sigil, as if there isn't a good playerbase, guilds and groups can't get a critical mass to keep raids going, and the game gets abandoned.
Of course, Sigil may be intending to sell this game to people in the East who play Lineage 2 and are used to long grinds and very stiff death penalties (In L2 death had a chance of you losing your weapon, and in that game, weapon loss basically means buying another from ebay or rerolling a new charcter.) I'm not disparaging them, they are an insanely lucrative game market, but If Sigil is intending to pitch to that crowd, they shouldn't have been touting they are "Everquest done right." Instead, maybe tout how they are better than L2.
All and all, I do have a suspicion that this MMO from Sigil was intended to be Everquest 3.
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Its amazing this game even got into beta in the first place. For a long time, its been surmised that there was nothing to this game other than tantalizing tidbits on Sigil's website, where the marketing release page text far outweighed the source code of the game in length. The whole game was shrouded in "secrecy" which people assumed that because nothing was coded or built, nothing was discussed about it.
Vanguard apparently wants to bring back what even EQ had to do major gymnastics to code around. Guilds spending more time finding third party programs and strategies to ensure other guilds won't progress rather than working on progression. (If you played EQ during the PoP era and were in a high end guild, it was common to make sure one or both Decorins were moved under the world to make sure nobody got flagged for Rallos Zek until the servers got rebooted.) Some people love the PvE racing, but eventually it will become an arms race of who can make the better ShowEQ, MQ2, or other third party utility. If Sigil doesn't police the game well, it may end up an item duper's paradise as well.
Instead of Sigil actually making content, they seem to want to have players fight amongst themselves to try to get through artifically created bottlenecks, as a way to not have to create new content as fast. For example, having a locked high-end raid zone, where the key only is available by killing the Grand Poobah. Of course the Grand Poobah only spawns every xxx amount of days, and this allows the zone to be itemized and built on the fly, even after release, because players are effectively locked out.
WoW is a casual game, so casual I quit playing it after getting a couple characters to 60, and finding that one Uqua plow is harder than all the WoW raiding put together. However, Blizzard engineered the game right, where player griefing is fairly difficult. WoW is a fun game. You can solo, group, raid, and pvp, and have some means of progression, even if its a faction treadmill. Blizzard also does attempt to address issues with the game. Next patch, they are adding a decent raid area.
If Sigil gives WoW fans the middle finger, who are they going to sell to? The dedicated raiders don't make up that much of the gaming population, and unless Sigil charges $200 a month, they won't be making much money from this game. This only hurts Sigil, as if there isn't a good playerbase, guilds and groups can't get a critical mass to keep raids going, and the game gets abandoned.
Of course, Sigil may be intending to sell this game to people in the East who play Lineage 2 and are used to long grinds and very stiff death penalties (In L2 death had a chance of you losing your weapon, and in that game, weapon loss basically means buying another from ebay or rerolling a new charcter.) I'm not disparaging them, they are an insanely lucrative game market, but If Sigil is intending to pitch to that crowd, they shouldn't have been touting they are "Everquest done right." Instead, maybe tout how they are better than L2.
All and all, I do have a suspicion that this MMO from Sigil was intended to be Everquest 3.