Gaereth said:
One of the things that bothers me about this whole VG release and its issues is that the main issues, the things Brad talks about as mistakes and things that will be changing, are things anyone with an ounce of sense was saying 6-8months ago.
All of those folks got brushed off, told it was beta, told we couldn"t see the whole picture, etc, etc, etc, or told to go back to WOW because perhaps this game isn"t for you. It bothers me because most of those things were brought up repeatedly everywhere. On the VG forums, in the beta forums and on damn near anywhere people could post about the game.
Its a bit like telling your kid to not put their hand on the stove because its hot. You know it will be bad if they do, you know what the outcome will be if they touch it, but you watch them continue to eye the burner with some sort of maniacal intensity that doesn"t allow them to look away. Then...they touch it and look at you with shock because...well...it was hot.
Duh.
1. 6 months isn"t enough lead time to make major fundamental changes to the architecture of the game (even had we wanted to). In a 4.5 year project, you simply can"t do something like that and make you ship date even if, like I said, you wanted to.
2. I still think, especially longer term, the decisions we made, for the most part, were the correct ones. What we will be able to do with this game, both feature-wise and in terms of using technology not just for eye-candy but also to enhance gameplay (say, use physics cards) I am confident will have been the right call in the long run, and MMOGs are all about lasting months and years. I don"t regret EQ 1 being hardware only, although it was one of the first to do so and people had to run out and buy voodoo cards.
3. Once SLI and Crossfire are implemented, better use of multi-core, and eventually dx 10, more unreal 3.0 tech, 64bit clients, etc. are all a reality, performance issues will start to really go away.
4. And again, while I and many others enjoy the game now, keep in mind we planned 5+ years in advance in terms of documentation, expansion ideas, features, using new tech, etc. So while I think there is plenty to do right now, and the game is a blast for many people, including myself, things like city building with an RTS element, mounted combat, ship combat, user generated content, our expansion/theme plans, and quite a few other plans we already have put together (and that would include areas where we fell short, like getting some sort of fellowship system in, making caravans work right, a better LFG system, more optimization, environment shadows, and much more) -- all of that, all of where we want Vanguard to evolve into, will eventually manifest itself, appeal to more people, be accessible to more people, etc. That"s why while this isn"t a WoW, I don"t think it"s a niche game either.
Our sales and our paying subscribers match and even exceed EQ 1"s in many ways at this point (1.5 months after launch). Yes, I know it"s a different world, and there are a lot more MMOG players now, but still the numbers are encouraging. The people who are enjoying Vanguard are sticking around, re-subscribing, and playing a LOT. In fact, we see players playing more often and at different times (there"s not just one peak play period like there was in EQ 1) than we have in other games.
Like I"ve posted before, I think word of mouth is really going to help us. Marketing that let"s people know this isn"t a hard core game, you don"t *have* to CR, etc. will also help. Hardware becoming faster and cheaper will help. The fact that our tools are so much more mature now means we can turn out new areas much faster, revamp areas faster, and populate faster.
No, I"m not in denial -- I read these posts here and elsewhere and see the issues. And I know the team is hard at work on these issues and doing the best that they can. But please understand that I come from making EQ 1, 2 expansion packs, and almost a third before I left SOE. I see where that game got better, less buggy, how we were able to do things in expansions we were never able to do with the initial world, etc. So my perspective is a longer term one. One usually doesn"t create an MMOG with the goal of selling a ton of units the first month. Heck, with EQ 1 we had such major problems with login server stability and bandwidth availability in San Diego, that if I recall correctly we gave a month free to our players for putting up with that rough launch. Vanguard thankfully launched a lot more smoothly and while we"ve made new mistakes, we"ve avoided many of the old ones because much of the team has gone through this before.
So I don"t want to come across as "hey, it will get better in the future -- look over there! -- just wait!". No, I"m very proud of the game right now. Rather, I just am conditioned and used to looking at the big picture and both the short and long term, and from that overall perspective, the today and the tomorrow, I remain very bullish
