Pan'Theon: Rise' of th'e Fal'Len - #1 Thread in MMO

Am I like the only guy here who stuck VG out all the way until the end of the first raid zone (APW)?

Vitality_sl said:

Am I like the only guy here who stuck VG out all the way until the end of the first raid zone (APW)?

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You are not. I thoroughly enjoyed my time in VG despite (and in a few cases - such as with the bugivator - because of) the bugs, lag or chunking. Offensive/Defensive Target still the best MMO combat targeting design.

Bloodmage and Disciple were such good classes design wise, bard song writing, really good stuff. Too bad it was on SoE tech and got choked to death.

RobXIII_sl said:

I had a decent time, met some cool people (kind of like EQ!), and loved a few of the non-bland quest rewards like illusion items, etc. It was decent, but not whole.

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Vanguard was built like some kind of wacky museum. Elements of the game were groundbreaking (offensive/defensive targets, class design, diplomacy) but those elements were set in a framework that vacillated between haphazard and outright broken. It's like the museum had some amazing exhibits, but you were just as likely as not to get stuck in the elevator, or take a flight of stairs that lead to nowhere. On top of that, the museum was way too big for its contents, and the exhibits were scattered about in no discernible order.

That's what happens when you have so many different people working on the project with no real lead architect at the helm to pull things together. Sure, you've got some talented people who can bring some great things to the project, but you've also got completely untalented, unmotivated people that are only there because they are friends with soandso. You've also got huge parts of the project that were started by one person and then finished by someone else entirely. Not to mention, your source of funding changes halfway through the project- along with the expectations/demands of the group funding the project. Add onto all of this a mandatory deadline for completion and you've got one hell of a fucked up, wacky building/game.

What doomed Vanguard was its release date. It came out during WoW's peak. That was one of the dumbest decisions in gaming history.

supertouch_sl said:

What doomed Vanguard was its release date. It came out during WoW's peak. That was one of the dumbest decisions in gaming history.

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Especially when it needed so much more time. Smed should have never bought it if he planned on dropping it in that state. That was a total cash grab and really a betrayal to all their customers. He knew what he had. How does anyone defend Smed again??

Vitality_sl said:

Bloodmage and Disciple were such good classes design wise, bard song writing, really good stuff. Too bad it was on SoE tech and got choked to death.

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Bloodmage, disciple, and bard were the only three classes I played, and maybe thats why I remember it more fondly than most. I would have absolutely kept playing VG because the world was great, but the combination of crashes, chunking, and really awful lag combined with the exp-grind wall that popped up around level 40 made a bit hard to stick with. It's a shame, I feel without the technical shortcomings it would have been a proper EQ successor.

Convo_sl said:

Especially when it needed so much more time. Smed should have never bought it if he planned on dropping it in that state. That was a total cash grab and really a betrayal to all their customers. He knew what he had. How does anyone defend Smed again??

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FFXIV reboot has done okay, if not great. I gave up on Smed after the VG fiasco: if you're going to buy it then you also need to shut it down (excuse me; funset the original version), spend a year fixing it and then relaunch with a fanfare.

Brad is definitely shady but in a different way. He's more of an unorganized mess with a terrible preception of reality. Smed is Berny Madoff

zzeris_sl said:

I disagree. I think Brad knows exactly what he's doing. Just like Smed, he just looks out for #1. He's unorganized because he doesn't give a damn except on payday. And it's even better if he's the only guy getting paid.

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You always disagree...

Convo_sl said:

Brad is definitely shady but in a different way. He's more of an unorganized mess with a terrible preception of reality. Smed is Berny Madoff

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Yep.

@zzeris Brad is the guy in the room talking about all these great ideas (some of which are his) but who wants somebody else to do the heavy lifting - now that's normally fine, because let's face it part of being a good manager is having someone else doing the heavy lifting while making that person believe that's a good thing. Brad's problem is that he wants to incorporate every one of those "great" ideas in his projects: TL;DR he has no idea-sieve.

So he fails on the other part of being a good manager which is knowing what has to be done to complete a project and differentiating that from what would be nice to get done before completing a project and crap that can wait for an expansion.

All the ideas Brad stole from other games were actually his?

Vitality_sl said:

You mean all the ideas Brad stole from other games were his?

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Lol.

You mean all the ideas that didn't originate in whatever games you're talking about?

If we're going to go to original sources then the Estates of Tolkien and Gary Gygax should be getting money from every Fantasy C/RPG and Gygax arguably every C/RPG since he came up with the whole RPG thing. But that's not how things work so Gygax had to schlub at Cons to make extra $.

All I did was ask a question bud.

Vitality_sl said:

All I did was ask a question bud.

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Remember when this thread was funny instead of mad?