He ran H1Z1 both versions into the ground too. It took the hiring of major AAA dev's to turn them ships around and ALOT of time, they basically had to remake a whole new game both versions! and 1 is going through a major major overhaul.Is this true? Why would anyone hire Smed who had a one hit wonder and then ran it into the ground even with Sony bailouts. Every single thing he did since EQ was a disaster. He destroyed SWG, they made a piece of shit sequel to EQ, they started lots of games and wasted money on them and most of them made it to release, some where completely terrible, they bought Vanguard and ran that into the ground too. He is the worst.
It had 100,000 people in the first month. Admittedly most of them bailed because of technical problems though, but that game could have easily been turned into something that had a small but loyal fanbase like EQ/EQ2. They did most of the changes that needed to be done, but it took them 5 years and then they closed it. That's why he is a terrible manager. They also made changes to that game that were truly terrible and ruined the experience.Pretty sure Vanguard was always ground level, if not below it.
It had 100,000 people in the first month. Admittedly most of them bailed because of technical problems though, but that game could have easily been turned into something that had a small but loyal fanbase like EQ/EQ2. They did most of the changes that needed to be done, but it took them 5 years and then they closed it. That's why he is a terrible manager. They also made changes to that game that were truly terrible and ruined the experience.
Yes you dolt. It's his vision and he was the leader.VG was good - is poor programming Brad's fault? The 'vision' behind the game was solid.
VG was good - is poor programming Brad's fault? The 'vision' behind the game was solid.
Yes you dolt. It's his vision and he was the leader.
Yep classes were good and unique. Combat was solid, cast when running was a cool idea. The world, what was finished, had charm. It just was unfinished and the chunking was bad. Dungeons were solid, it was servicable, but had tons of problems too. If they could of eeked out another year of financing to finish it it could of been way better. Its still being emulated so it must of had some impact on a few people.
I would put this game in the realm of shadowbane. Good ideas just clunky on the boarder of being broken.
I will never forget the thread on the VG alpha forums where they were polling to see how long it should take to kill a trash mob.
There was not a single poll option for under 2 minutes. For a standard, out in the wild, run of the mill, xp trash mob. I think the highest voted option was like 8 minutes or some shit.
This was in a game where, at the time, mobs only had a regular attack and a kick that would stun you for .5 seconds. That was it. Nothing cast spells, nothing had special attacks or debuffs. Just auto attack and the occasional stun.
8 minutes of that.
Every goddamn mob.
They were so out of touch it wasn't even funny. Not just Brad but the echo chamber of idiots that kept posting such shitty ideas.
If they could of eeked out another year of financing to finish it it could of been way better.
No. That would have gone up Brad's nose at the time and nothing would have been better with the game. It would have been wasted financials. Hell, he would even admit that at this point I would bet.
Have to remember here, Sigil imploded before this game launched. People were having affairs on their wives in the office, Brad was talking about a mystery pirate island which didn't exist and was in a drug induced delusional frame of mind and in a bad spot (Sounds like he is a lot better now, so that's awesome)... About the only thing you would have seen with more money and time would have been A&E showing up at the office for a free for all Intervention Mini Series with an early explosion of Swapsmut.
"John Smedley hired by Amazon to produce MMOs" reads basically like "Hillary Clinton hired by Target to produce Porn."
Excitement-killing in every possible way.