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

Convo_sl said:

It's amazing how things spiral out of control here. I don't disagree with booze. I disagree with you with your lack of passion statement..
They certainly underestimated what it would take to fund this kickstarter prior to its launch. It was poor judgement on their part. They certainly should be doing everything they can at this point.

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I'm not denying they have put in good work since the kickstarter opened, but you have to agree that the months before that should/would have yielded more substantial results if they wanted this as badly as they say. I guess I should say I'm seeing alot of "sudden passion" when it quickly became clear that the words 'oldschool eq' and McQuaid' are enough to get a mill or two. That in turn makes me question at what level of passion they'll work once the KS is over and they have a distant target of alpha in Dec'15 ... because living the good life for 20 months and then throwing together the alpha build in November isnt gonna work out.

I'm curious how many people were actually in the early stages of VG beta. MS was right to dump it, the game was horrible. I can't stress that enough, it was completely different from what was released, which was an ok game that ran like dogshit.

popsicledeath_sl said:

So, you're saying in what, 2 years, without the support of a major publisher/backer, and having blown their entire budget, they still managed to produce Vanguard? Not too shabby.

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I have no idea what occurred during the 4 years of M$ support, but I do remember the year before Vanguard released that Brad was a madman on boards, on forums, and trying to drum up interest. Part of me wonders if he had taken that energy and fire and ran his company that way from day one from the inside, how the game would have turned out. I'd also like to know the true story about the fake tech demos that supposedly misled MS into believing the game was further along than it was.

Anyway you slice it Vanguard was a disaster. It sold based on Brad's name, and had monstrous churn due to the numerous issues that have been brought up. It was in worse shape than most of the pay for alpha games we see on Steam. Your glass half full analogy is amusing, Popsicle. I think the amount of work put into Vanguard at the end was impressive, based on the reports we've seen. However, it should never have gotten to that point. The game should have been deep into beta at the four year mark, and not at a point were it's only chance for survival was SOE propping it up.

Denaut_sl said:

You have a thing for overweight, unkempt, unhygienic, socially awkward, pedantic, boring, smelly nerds?

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popsicledeath_sl said:

Not sure if you're now personally insulting Brad, generally talk shit about your own industry, or make a confession.

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I thought that was a pick-up line...

shabushabu_sl said:

Dood you are an established troll on this thread... your statement like many is utter garbage..

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I'm an established troll, am I? How about you go fuck yourself.

Do you even know the definition of a 'troll'? It's someone who presents logical fallacies for the sole intent of creating a negative response. I assure you, that is not my goal, and anyone with an IQ in the triple digits would probably agree with my stance on Vanguard's 'HUNDREDS OF DUNGEONS!'. Just because someone has a contrary stance to popular opinion, it does not make them a 'troll'.

I played Vanguard for years and visited a huge percentage of the available dungeon content. A huge amount of it was unimaginitive, poorly itemized, terribly populated, and flat out boring. In fact, most of the dungeon content was so poorly done, people started referring to the ones actually worth visiting as "premier" dungeons. There was nothing premier about most of them, they were just the ones that were tolerable.

Don't get me wrong, there is a small percentage (under 10%) of dungeons in Vanguard that are among the best in the industry... Unfortunately, about 60% of them are among the worst.

Skrala_sl said:

I'm curious how many people were actually in the early stages of VG beta. MS was right to dump it, the game was horrible. I can't stress that enough, it was completely different from what was released, which was an ok game that ran like dogshit.

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I actually went into my gmail history to see when I got invited into the VG Beta. It was 1/17/06, a little over a year before release, and I can confirm that the difference between what I saw after logging in that day and what was released was astronomical. It was almost like two different games. It was borderline unplayable when I first installed

popsicledeath_sl said:

Playing a dwarf? How cavalier of you.

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I would if there was a fitting class, but I cant see a dorf crusader of the holy light. Guess that puts me in the "where's mah warrior" camp

in on 800. nt

Haven't been following Wildstar for very long but can someone explain how they got away with a 7 year dev cycle?

Gecko_sl said:

Quote from Brad, taken from the comments section of his interview with Boogie2988:

"In a nutshell, our publisher was Microsoft and we had a deal with them to make a new AAA MMO.For about four years everything was going well and we were almost ready to start some early alpha testing of the game. Then there was a regime change at Microsoft, with the VP of their games devision leaving the company along with just about everyone who worked for him. The new group that was assigned to our project wasn't interested in doing an MMO. They accused us of being late and over budget. They wanted to push us out the door and launch the game one year early.

As was noted before,MS paid for this experiment for 4 years and the game wasn't even in alpha. You can argue regime change or discuss the fake tech demos, but at the end of the day they felt it was cheaper to let go of $30M than fund a game with no end in sight.

The game would not have even seen the light of day without SOE, which I still don't understand the reasoning behind. It probably would have been better for Brad if he had just shuttered Sigil as the game was terrible at release and remained a nasty pit of hitching and bugs for years afterwards.

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You mistakenly think four years to alpha for that kind of project was an unusually long time.

Irongut_sl said:

Thanks cupcake.

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You can continue with your Happy Meal Business School Background retardation if you like but again it does not seem appropriate for this thread and you are certainly not someone who should be talking about anything as it relates to the operation of a business.

Aeiouy_sl said:

You mistakenly think four years to alpha for that kind of project was an unusually long time.

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You know, with the state that vanguard was in it's fairly obvious they had some inexperienced people working on that game. That's being charitable.

There was an Xbox folder in the beta that you downloaded.

Brad got his funding claiming he was going to make a cross platform game. Don't you remember that press?

I think "regime change" refers to someone that actually asked to see how well it would run on an xbox being handed a non functional tech demo and saying, "Yeah. It would be great if you would stop stealing our money and using it to buy drugs."

It doesn't take a lot to see where the lie is here.

Aeiouy_sl said:

You mistakenly think four years to alpha for that kind of project was an unusually long time.

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It's not me, it's the people at Microsoft. Forgive me if I assume they know a bit more about software development than you and I. I think they felt there was an alpha product years earlier with the tech demos that were apparently staged.

I personally think four years of development work and not having even an alpha project is an unusually long time.

How long was Rift in development? How long was WOW in development? How long was Everquest 2 in development? Where exactly should the project have been after four years? I find it hard to believe they hadn't even started early alpha testing and you think that's acceptable.

And were back to the Vanguard part of the forum cycle.

The reason this KS is a mess is that Brad left SOE and didnt do much but come up with some ideas. (no idea what he said to Smed to get him excited). Didn't put his own money into the project to come up with a demo or concept art or anything. It amazes me that i even backed this. I think their research was Jacobs got a few mill, Garriott got a few. We should get a few. Is Brad even backing his own ideas with cash?

That being said Brad will do a video again and say "like EQ" and i can go back to being a fanboy.

Gecko_sl said:

It's not me, it's the people at Microsoft. Forgive me if I assume they know a bit more about software development than you and I. I think they felt there was an alpha product years earlier with the tech demos that were apparently staged.

I personally think four years of development work and not having even an alpha project is an unusually long time.

How long was Rift in development? How long was WOW in development? How long was Everquest 2 in development? Where exactly should the project have been after four years? I find it hard to believe they hadn't even started early alpha testing and you think that's acceptable.

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I don't think people should be defending VG. It happen, Brad is trying to move on and make things right. There are tons of questions about if he capable. I think it's valid that people ask them. Hell, he understands it too. Personally, I'm past it. I'd like to see him get a shot at redemption. I can certainly understand those who won't be on board until this game is released and they can try it for themselves.

I said it yesterday, assuming this thing hits. They will probably be right around the 800k mark. Brad and team can change some minds if they work smart and really stretch that money and progress with Pantheon.

shabushabu_sl said:

who gives a shit ... we are behind these guys for what they are trying to build, not what they look like in a picture...

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popsicledeath_sl said:

Not sure if you're now personally insulting Brad, generally talk shit about your own industry, or make a confession.

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Wow... it was a joke, a tongue-in-cheek self-deprecating joke. Nothing more.

Tough room.

Skrala_sl said:

I'm curious how many people were actually in the early stages of VG beta. MS was right to dump it, the game was horrible. I can't stress that enough, it was completely different from what was released, which was an ok game that ran like dogshit.

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From my perspective, I was in the earliest stages of Alpha, when there were only 4 chunks available to play, and the game was pretty fun even with that limited content. The combat system was completely different than what was released even for early Beta and, quite frankly, it sounds more like the system they have in mind for Pantheon. It was a good system and was very unique. I much preferred it to the more WoW like system that replaced it, but I understand their reasons for doing so. My hope is that Pantheon's combat follows the vision of the original Vanguard combat. It was really smooth. It will, however, take a lot of iteration and playing around with to get it just right for a group setting since it hasn't been done.

If you mean performance wise, I never had any real issues with performance in VG, but I had a very good system at the time and there were only about 6 people playing consistently each night, so my experiences performance wise were probably different than the early / late beta testers. I can't really speak to that.

Oloh_sl said:

The combat system was completely different than what was released even for early Beta and, quite frankly, it sounds more like the system they have in mind for Pantheon. It was a good system and was very unique. I much preferred it to the more WoW like system that replaced it, but I understand their reasons for doing so. My hope is that Pantheon's combat follows the vision of the original Vanguard combat. It was really smooth. It will, however, take a lot of iteration and playing around with to get it just right for a group setting since it hasn't been done.

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I've heard similar comments to the "original" VG combat before, contrasted with opinions that it was terrible, slow, boring combat, that was more like playing a card game or something, except you picked out 'where' your attacks landed. Or something. Noone ever really gives an explicit description of what it was, how it worked - can you fill us in?