Monsters and Memories (Project_N) - Old School Indie MMO

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Neranja

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That doesn't make him wrong. How many games, in that time period, got more funding than Vanguard, it wasn't just SWTOR. His biggest complaint was not having the money to hire enough talented programmers. No money, no talent. Followed by the scope of the game. What would Vanguard have been like with 30 more million, and a bunch of more programmers, who knows. 100 million didn't seem like a big deal at that time. It's not like Microsoft didn't have the money.
I'd like to point out that $30 million dollars was a lot of fucking money in game development at the time. For reference: Half-Life 2 cost around $40 million to make in 2004.

So there was money to hire programmers, it was just allocated to hire their buddies. Maybe leadership was arrogant to think that programmers should not earn as much money as the game designers with the "vision" do, so they couldn't find anyone decent? Maybe he didn't want to hire people from outside of established game development circles? Who knows? Brad has always been described as a guy loyal to his friends, so it is at least somewhat plausible that this was a factor to cloud his judgement.

The point I'm trying to make here is: This whole stab-in-the-back myth of how Microsoft forced them to crawl back to Smedley (of all the people) and release the game in an unfinished state is most likely just that. And no one will easily admit the full truth of their own mistakes. Which makes Jeff an unreliable source at best.

And to be fair to Microsoft, at the time they were a bit conservative in investments, as the whole IT sector was after the dotcom bubble burst. They even cancelled their Halo MMO around 2007/2008 after they sunk around $90 million dollars into it. So it is highly unlikely that it was personal.
 
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Kirun

Buzzfeed Editor
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So there was money to hire programmers, it was just allocated to hire their buddies.
Exactly. Give Brad another 30 million for Vanguard and 28 of it would've been spent on Oxy. The other 2 million would've gone to hiring the rest of his MTG buddies.
 
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ili

Blackwing Lair Raider
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Many such cases. Stuff like this used to trigger me, but this stuff happens everywhere, not just in the gaming industry. To what degree it happened at Sigil and Visionary Realms, I don't know. As always, two sides of the story. It's sucks, and I can't say that I'm not guilty of taking part in similar things in the past, with companies that I have worked for. Also, it seemed like Sony was filled with this behavior, Jeff did talk about the bonus/royalty checks stuff, and why it was bad.
 

Sithro

Molten Core Raider
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I do hope they upgrade the combat a bit. At least to the levels Vanguard was at. I'd really like to see the Blood Mage class in some form from Vanguard. Really cool class.

Actually Vanguard had really nice classes.
 
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Nemesis

Bridgeburner
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another beefy official update this weekend, and it's great to see the progress they're making!


I can't wait to log in and roll up an ogre diplomat!

Ogre_robe.gif
 
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Nirgon

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I do hope they upgrade the combat a bit. At least to the levels Vanguard was at. I'd really like to see the Blood Mage class in some form from Vanguard. Really cool class.

Actually Vanguard had really nice classes.


Yup, Brad was the man.

Glad Big Pantheon has a little brother.

Will play both.
 

Flattop

Trakanon Raider
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M&M is shaping up to be a nice retirement home for this aging community.
 
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Blitz

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This is pretty much the only existing hope for MMOs right now. Godspeed Shawn and co.
 
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Rali

Trakanon Raider
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M&M is shaping up to be a nice retirement home for this aging community.

And more likely to be released in time for our retirement, unlike another game that is still waiting to show some "rock"!
 
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