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

A nice part of a non-"action combat," GCD, tab-targeting game is that you can basically test a bulk of your class/ability system as a tabletop system and identify shit that's not pulling its weight there. D% rolls like a man!

Arden said:

Sigil used SOE as a publisher and as a result it made some things difficult.

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Not true at all, the Sony deal came with zero strings and access to more resources. There was literally no downside for Sigil as far as development is concerned.

Denaut said:

Not true at all, the Sony deal came with zero strings and access to more resources. There was literally no downside for Sigil as far as development is concerned.

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Never said the problems were development related. There were several problems from an operational perspective, though. SOE handled customer payment and getting important information from them was a constant roadblock. I don't remember all the issues (it's been a decade), but one of the biggest was getting subscriber info in order to ban gold farmers/spammers.

We could get IP info on our own, but we learned very quickly that IP info doesn't mean much with Internet cafes and a virtually limitless supply of free "trial" accounts. What we needed was to be able to link the spammer accounts with a specific credit card, but SOE wouldn't assist with that.

That was just one of the issues (there were several). Again, it doesn't matter because I don't think Sigil had much of a choice. But self-publishing is easier now than it was back in the VG days. The fewer third-party companies they have to involve the better.

Denaut said:

Not true at all, the Sony deal came with zero strings and access to more resources. There was literally no downside for Sigil as far as development is concerned.

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Other than the obvious releasing too soon... or was that not part of the agreement ?

Denaut said:

Not true at all, the Sony deal came with zero strings and access to more resources. There was literally no downside for Sigil as far as development is concerned.

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False. Anyone who played the game in beta before SOE and then at launch can see how drastically it changed to be more about accessibility, in line with EQ2/WoW (the stated Smedley mmo philosophy of the time). A few months in, it was converted into a full blown themepark with quest progression, a watered down death penalty, fast travel and much of what we did not want to see in Vanguard.

That was not a Sigil design, so there were strings in there somewhere.

Arden said:

We could get IP info on our own, but we learned very quickly that IP info doesn't mean much with Internet cafes and a virtually limitless supply of free "trial" accounts. What we needed was to be able to link the spammer accounts with a specific credit card, but SOE wouldn't assist with that.

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Eh, that just seems like a small process issues, it certainly wasn't worth the cost and annoyance of having to build and run the entire system internally.

shabushabu said:

Other than the obvious releasing too soon... or was that not part of the agreement ?

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The SOE deal gave the game more time, not less. It might not have even come out without it.

Dullahan said:

False. Anyone who played the game in beta before SOE and then at launch can see how drastically it changed to be more about accessibility, in line with EQ2/WoW (the stated Smedley mmo philosophy of the time). A few months in, it was converted into a full blown themepark with quest progression, a watered down death penalty, fast travel and much of what we did not want to see in Vanguard.

That was not a Sigil design, so there were strings in there somewhere.

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You couldn't be more wrong. That was 100% completely internal and most of those changes were made before the Sony deal.

Denaut said:

You couldn't be more wrong. That was 100% completely internal and most of those changes were made before the Sony deal.

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Nope. Their original involvement, even before the deal, was most definitely contingent upon Sigil shifting their design to line up with SOE's. If you don't realize that, you clearly did not play the early game or it's beta phases. The idea that they independently abandoned their original vision in the last 6 months of development makes no sense.

I'm not going to pretend I know all of the details, but there was a night and day transition that began to occur right after Microsoft dropped out as publisher and they began negotiation with SOE.

Dullahan said:

Nope. Their original involvement, even before the deal, was most definitely contingent upon Sigil shifting their design to line up with SOE's. If you don't realize that, you clearly did not play the early game or it's beta phases.

I'm not going to pretend I know all of the details, but there was a night and day transition that began to occur right after Microsoft dropped out as publisher and they began negotiation with SOE.

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You not only don't have all the details, you don't have anything. This isn't an opinion, I am telling you how it happened.

Denaut said:

You not only don't have all the details, you don't have anything. This isn't an opinion, I am telling you how it happened.

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Cool story bro. Sigil just up and decided at the last minute to change their game to a themepark, and that had nothing to do with trying to appeal to or negotiate with SOE and/or other investors. Right.

Dullahan said:

Cool story bro. Sigil just up and decided at the last minute to change their game to a themepark, and that had nothing to do with trying to appeal to or negotiate with SOE and/or other investors. Right.

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Firstly it didn't happen at the last minute, secondly it didn't go full theme park (dungeons weren't instances for example). The changes you are referring to were implemented over the last year and a half or so of production.

It began happening when msft was still paying the bills and those decisions were made completely internally by people with 0 involvement in anything business related.

Denaut said:

Firstly it didn't happen at the last minute, secondly it didn't go full theme park (dungeons weren't instances for example). The changes you are referring to were implemented over the last year and a half or so of production.

It began happening when msft was still paying the bills and those decisions were made completely internally.

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You have a poor memory. The themepark aspects I'm referring to were all post-Microsoft and after SOE got involved. There was no quest progression in the beta even a year prior to launch. I don't think they had even quests past level 20 at launch. There was no weak death penalty. The rifts were locked and did not allow fast travel anywhere by anyone at any level like they did later on. Even your ability to solo was changed drastically in late development.

None of those things were in alignment with the game they pitched us. Most of them were added months before launch, or came post-launch.

Didn't Denaut actually work for Sigil on Vanguard, or am I misremembering?

Dullahan bro, you aren't wrong in what happened, but you have the timeline a little off. I think Denault is confused too, though.

The changes you are talking about (turning the game into a theme park and bringing it more in line with EQ2 etc) are absolutely related to SOE- Because they primarily occurred after the IP was transfered from Sigil to SOE.

Nothing that happened before May 2007 (the transfer) was SOE's "fault." Like I stated, there were some negatives to using them to publish, but if anything, SOE provided a lifeline to Sigil to keep the game on life support.

And yeah Denault and I both worked for Sigil.

Arden said:

Because they primarily occurred after the IP was transfered from Sigil to SOE.

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No, they didn't. The changes were in the works long before that and were absolutely driven from the bottom up, they did not come from the top down. It took time for them to get into public Betas, but they were in the works for many months prior to that. There was that initial beta that was an abysmal failure, then a period of time where very little happened to the beta but shit tons of stuff was going on in development builds.

Once again, these changes did not come from Sony.

We must have different definitions of what "turning the game into a theme park and bringing it in line with EQ 2" means.

Arden said:

We must have different definitions of what "turning the game into a theme park and bringing it in line with EQ 2" means.

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If you mean the quests system, and you worked there, then you should know it was added for a bunch of reasons. You should also remember that it was conceived of and pushed through (with much arguing with management) by the content designerss themselves because it made the process of creating content significantly better and faster, while also providing a way for players to actually find the content that was there. The introduction of that system drastically improved not only content creation but player retention as well... by a ton.