Ok, that was about the last thing I expected. SOE will publish Vanguard, Microsoft is out of the picture. How the hell did that happen? Smed is probably cackling like a maniacal devil right now. I know I would if I were him. I find this surprising because from all the PR bullshit one would have thought that Sigil and MS were the perfect butt buddies.
VANGUARD: SAGA OF HEROES FINDS A NEW HOME
- Sigil Games Online and Sony Online Entertainment In Talks To Co-Publish Sigil’s Ground-Breaking New Game -May 5, 2006 – Carlsbad & San Diego, CA – Sigil Games Online and Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced that Sigil is working with Microsoft Game Studios on an arrangement to acquire the rights to its highly anticipated massively multiplayer online (MMO) game, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. These efforts have resulted in a tentative agreement for Vanguard to be co-published by both Sigil Games Online and SOE. All three companies will be showing the game at the upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) as they work closely together for a successful transition. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is scheduled to launch this winter.
“As the development process is ongoing and constantly shifting, it became clear that MGS and Sigil had varying visions and direction for the title’s development,” said Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online. “In the best interest of Vanguard, it was decided that we would buy back the publishing rights from Microsoft.”
As co-publisher of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil assumes greater control of marketing and PR, while maintaining responsibility for game development, community relations, media relations, customer support, and quality assurance. Under the terms of the agreement, SOE will provide distribution, marketing, hosting and back-end support — including billing and technical support — for the game. Additionally, SOE is tentatively planning on adding Vanguard, upon its release,to SOE’s Station Access™ subscription plan. Station Access allows players to enjoy all of SOE’s MMO titles for one low monthly price.
“We are very excited to be working with so many old friends at Sigil,” said John Smedley, president, Sony Online Entertainment. “Vanguard looks beautiful and has an incredibly rich game world. It’s the type of game that will appeal directly to SOE’s hundreds of thousands of players and should fit in perfectly with the current line-up of games available in Station Access.”
”This decision was made mutually by Sigil and Microsoft, in the best interest of the long-term goals for the title,” said Phil Spencer, General Manager at Microsoft Game Studios. “As a key Windows development partner, we will continue to work with Sigil to ensure Vanguard’s ongoing success.”
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is the next generation of massively multiplayer online games. The journey takes place in the fantasy setting of Telon, a vast and ancient world of magic, intrigue and adventure. Facing the challenges of a war torn world, the diverse people here struggle to rebuild their once great civilizations. A fragile alliance has been struck, with the lands set upon by invading forces, the races must band together to survive.
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is currently in a closed beta phase. The game will remain available via Fileplanet for existing beta testers during the transition to SOE. New information will be sent out to testers as the changeover occurs.
For more information about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes please visit www.vanguardsoh.com.
Apparently, there have been a number of minor Vanguard beta leaks over the past couple of weeks, all of them devastatingly negative. The gist is that Vanguard, in its current beta stage, is not fun, or, as one NDA breaker put it, “a pile of steaming shit”. Normally, I would simply ignore such chatter, considering that Vanguard is still beta and all. What I find troubling, though, is that some of the criticism is directed against core game mechanics, some of which I always suspected to be bad ideas, and thus reinforcing some of my own initial doubts about the game.
Ever since Reichspropagandaminister Oloh’s unintentionally hilarious combat system write-up I have had my doubts. The whole thing sounds too much like “playing the UI”. Having played healers for the largest part of my MMORPG life, I am certainly no stranger to gameplay based on the concept of reacting to user interface state changes and I learned to hate it. Having the player interact mainly with the UI makes for shitty gameplay and I was a bit shocked to find out that Sigil decided this to be the foundation of the combat system. I find it more than just a little disturbing that Vanguard’s combat system sounds eerily similar to EQ2’s insufferable crafting system.
There has been some recent developer talk about making combat “more proactive”. I take that as an acknowledgement that the basic concept stinks. Reacting to perception icons popping up in the UI by pressing a hotkey apparently isn’t fun. Duh. I wonder why it took them so long to come to that realization. I could have told them that 5 months ago, without ever playing the game. The question is whether they can fix a conceptually bad combat system by introducing proactive elements. We’ll see.
Similar to EQ2, Vanguard allegedly shares the same core mechanics across all three gameplay spheres (Combat, Diplomacy, Crafting). EQ2, of course, doesn’t have diplomacy but if you’ve ever tried crafting in EQ2, you’ll get the idea. In pratice, this probably means that crafting in Vanguard consists of pressing hotkeys in accordance to whatever icon the UI decides to flash in front of you. Diplomacy likely works like combat, just with diplomacy skills instead of combat skills. Fighting with words instead of swords.
When diplomacy was first mentioned, I wondered how they’d pull it off. It seemed like a rather complex idea that is very demanding in terms of content design. Now, if diplomacy is basically combat dressed differently then things suddenly become a whole hell of a lot clearer. Instead of attacking a NPC with “Mighty Strike” until its HP bar is depleted, you attack it with “Dirty Joke” until its diplomacy bar has filled up. That way, Sigil don’t really have to hand-tailor content for diplomacy. Makes sense but it’s also kind of pointless. I’m suspecting that diplomacy will be little more than a pointless novelty gimmick but I’d be glad to be proven wrong.
Leveling your crafting class supposedly takes as long as leveling your adventuring class and producing worthwhile items requires cooperation between interdependent crafter classes. This is another idea I think won’t work out very well in reality, for a number of reasons. The crafting issue is a complex one and I may write up something more in-depth in the near future but for now, let’s just say that I am not convinced anymore that there is room for complex, time-consuming crafting systems in adventuring-driven games.
Vanguard used to be my personal Great White Hope of the MMORPG genre but my faith in McQuaid’s game design genius has seriously faltered during the past six months. The stream of negativity from beta testers is only part of it. The more details on the game mechanics are revealed, the uneasier I’m feeling about the game. I just don’t think that some of the most basic design tenets of Vanguard are particularly good. Games are supposed to evolve away from highly UI-dependent gameplay and not revert back towards it. That’s not the kind of “3rd generation” gameplay I envision. I still kind of hope that I’m merely being overly pessimistic but my 7 years of MMORPG experience have left me with pretty dependable gut feeling on all things MMO and right now, my gut feeling tells me that there is a good chance that Vanguard’s “sekret sauce” may in fact be diarrhea.
Rotten Corpse Productions have posted a FAQ on the Exanimus website. The FAQ treats us to some miscellaneous crap that doesn’t really make me cream my pants, mainly because there is nothing of substance in there. Don’t post FAQs when you don’t have anything to say, kk, thanks.
Does Exanimus follow any kind of story?
- Yes, there is a storyline created for players that they will be able to immerse themselves in.
I’ve lost count of how many MMORPGs have promised us a storyline. It never really materialized. Virtual persistant worlds and storylines don’t seem to mix well.
What kind of gameplay can I expect?
- Exanimus is a very dark and graphic game. Players will experience a very apocalyptic world, where everything is as bad as it can get, and then some more. Players should expect to see half rotten corpses walking around and tearing apart the bodies of the living for food.
Rotten Corpse Productions would make great politicians. They answered a question that hasn’t been asked.
Can I play as a Zombie?
- Yes, players will have the ability to become part of the walking dead and experiencing the game from a zombie’s perspective. Nothing shows your friends that you care more than a big bite on the cheek.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: it’s a retarded idea. Zombies are mindless creatures, players are not. Zombie players are an oxymoron. Plus, it’s not hard to imagine the population imbalance between the two sides.
Is there PvP?
- Yes. Exact PvP details will be released at a later date.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that it will prolly be zombies vs people. Yawn. After WoW and DAoC I came to the conclusion that faction based PvP is kind of lame. People just butcher each other because they are supposed to. There is no social significance to murder, there are no social sanctions. It’s all OK because it’s us vs them. In early UO, PvP was a huge part of the social fabric of the game, odd as it may sound. There were PKs and there were Anti-PKs and there was tons of drama. Killing other players had some sort of social significance.
Is there a crafting system in Exanimus?
- Yes
Uh, well, thanks for the explication. I can’t really wrap my mind around the idea of Zombie tailors, though.
Will there be Guilds in the Game?
- Yes, there will be guilds available that players can form on both sides, Human and Zombie.
Yes, zombies forming social groups. Splendid idea, chaps. Why even bother with the whole zombie theme if you’re fully intended on fucking it up anyway?
As exciting as I may find the basic premise of a zombie MMO, as much of a disappointment pretty much all the info on Exanimus turns out to be. They have this great idea of a MMO based on the coolest thing next to pirates: zombies. Instead of taking that idea and making something great out of it, we’ll most likely get yet another conventional PvP crapfest. Why not try to create a unique blend between survival horror and MMO gameplay?
A zombie-themed MMO titled Exanimus by a company called Rotten Corpse Productions. I’m a huge sucker for everything zombie so that one has certainly grabbed my attention. The game is supposedly in pre-production. The term “pre-production”, translated from Bullshit to English, basically means that there are a bunch of guys tossing around ideas. I’m not sure if there is any point to setting up a website promoting a game at that stage of developement. It makes the whole thing look a bit suspect, to be honest. Anyway, here’s the interesting blurb from the website:
Exanimus is an online massively multiplayer game created in a world where the dead live and roam the earth eating the flesh of the living. While most of the world is dead, there are small pockets of survivors that exist in barricaded cities across the globe. Players of Exanimus will have the option of playing as a living survivor or as one of the dead roaming the earth. Exanimus will allow players to experience a MMO based in a horror genre by creating a dark and visually “intense” environment. Exanimus is expected to be rated “Mature” and not intended for anyone under the age of 18.
Dark and intense? Mature content? Pockets of survivors in barricaded cities? Sounds too good to be true. It probably is. There is one big showstopper right here: players can play as zombies. That won’t fly. What a horrible, horrible idea. This idea is so completely retarded that it will guarantee failure. Zombies are supposed to be brainless, single-minded creatures. You can maul them, you can shoot them, you can stab them, it doesn’t fucking matter, they’ll just keep coming at you. That’s what makes them scary. Zombies acting with the intellectual abilities of human players are not scary, they’re lame as hell.
If I were to develope a zombie-themed MMO, it would probably look something like this:
- Set in the near future. No medieval fantasy crap with zombie armies raised from the dead by an_evil_warlock_01. I want a gritty, depressing post-apocalyptic world with guns and derelict cities and rigged cars. No magic, no mystery crap. George R. Romero and Mad Max all the way.
- No loot in the traditional sense. Raiding the Superzombie for a Desert Eagle + 5? No, thanks. Loot is whatever the players can scavenge and salvage from the remains of civilization. The crafting system would be all about fixing stuff and improvising equipment.
- The basic theme would be survival. All player activity would be directed towards that goal, that means no going out to randomly kill zombies for phat lewts and exp. I envision dynamic mission-based gameplay centered around the idea of dealing with ressource scarcity. The need to survive should be the only reason to leave the save sanctuary of your barricaded settlement.
- No traditional character classes. The classical tank, CC, DPS roles wouldn’t make much sense here. All characters would be able to take care of themselves in basic combat. Characters would specialize and interdepend in important secondary abilities.
- No levels. Character developement would be horizontal rather than vertical. Zombie-infested L.A. won’t suddenly become significantly less dangerous just because the player spent a couple of hours EXPing.
- No combat healing. The healing mini-game has always sucked and without magic it doesn’t make any sense to begin with.
- No PvP. The remnants of humanity battling each other for Honor Points or some shit wouldn’t make much sense. I’d rather have the players cooperate to survive in a hostile world. PvP would distract from the “us vs them” theme. There would be roving bands of human bandits but not to the point at which PvP would become feasible in the context of the game world.
- Harsh penalty upon death. Harsher than anything that has ever been done before. Death must be something players truly dread or there would be no sense of danger, no atmosphere of threat, which is much more important in a post-apocalyptic zombie setting than in traditional high fantasy. A WoW style death penalty just wouldn’t be scary enough. If you want the game world to be a scary place then there must be something to be scared of.
- Player-run settlements. The game would encourage players to spread out and start their own settlements. Building, securing and developing it would be a major part of the game. Trade between settlements would be neccessary in order to acquire the ressources needed to maintain it. Running supplies and goods between settlements would be dangerous and rewarded appropriately.
- A dynamic element to the game world. As players spread out and establish settlements, the zombie population in certain areas would be diminished.
Ok, I’m rambling and full of shit but I believe such a game could have the potential to break the mold of item-driven DIKU-MUD rip-offs without degenerating into a shitty UO-style sandbox for knitting and baking pansies. I’d love to see something new, something different. Zombie MMOs, Cyberpunk, WW3 post-apocalyptic stuff, Steampunk… whatever. I’m sick of Elves and Dwarves, I’m sick of conventional game mechanics. I am sick of catass raids and items as the carrot that motivates players. I am sick of sandboxes that are devoid of content and direction. I am basically sick of everything that has ever been made into a MMORPG because I’ve done it all ad nauseam. Give me something new.
I’ve been getting into EVE Online lately, thanks to the free 14-day trial. At this point I am not even sure if EVE Online should be classified as a game. It’s a glorified spreadsheet. As a game, it sucks and I am not sure why 100k people would pay a monthly subscription fee to run a bunch of numbers in a graphical spreadsheet.
Gameplay mainly consists of, well, doing nothing. You hit the autopilot or the mining laser and then wait for a few minutes. Rinse, repeat. Sometimes a bunch of feisty pirates try to murder you. You pick your target from the overview list, lock on your weapons, pick an orbit range from a context menue and switch on your laser. Then you watch. A few minutes later, either you or the pirate is dead. The only form of interactivity in combat I have found so far is occasionally hitting your shield booster to partially replenish your shields. It’s “auto-attack” combat in its most simplicistic form. Maybe combat gets more interactive once you acquire more sophisticated equipment but I somehow doubt it would change much.
Missions work the same. You set your destination, hit the autopilot and wait. Sometimes you even get to do the combat thingy while running a mission. Excitement abound. Mining in EVE has been one of the dullest gaming experiences in my life. Collecting ressources has been boring in every single game ever made but EVE takes the cake. You autopilot to an asteroid field, you switch on the mining laser and wait until your cargo hold is full and then you head back to base to sell or you dump the ressources into a container which you can later haul back to the base. If you’re mining in more dangerous area, you get to do more “combat”, either PvE or PvP.
Whether you win or lose in combat seems to be entirely dependent on your equipment and your character’s skill. Skills are developed automatically. You select a skill and then you wait. Like the rest of the game, you actually don’t have to DO anything. You don’t even have to be online. Offline skill developement certainly solves the problems of catassers outclassing everyone else but instead of rewarding those who play the most, the system rewards those who have been paying subsciption fees for the longest. Can’t say I am particularly fond of the idea.
I called EVE Online a glorified spreadsheet. I’m not exaggerating. The graphics are just window-dressing, they don’t provide any information. You don’t even have to look at what’s happening. I’ve stopped paying attention after a few minutes. All you do is pick stuff from lists and context menus. The game would work every bit as well without any graphics. Just slap together a standard Windows UI with all the options, have some text feedback and a progress bar and you’d have a fully functional non-graphical version of EVE Online.
There must be at least something that keeps 100k people playing and paying. Beats me, but it’s probably related to the whole PvP and corporations (the EVE equivalent of guilds) thing. From what I’ve gleaned from various forums, EVE seems to have a fairly intriguing guild politics and warfare aspect. So we have this really shoddily designed, mind-numbingly boring sandbox that does at least one thing well: it provides the players with sufficient tools to entertain each other.
I’ve never been much of a fan of sandbox-type gameplay in MMOs but there are a lot of people out there who prefer it to grinding through static content. Not matter how much EVE Online sucks as a game, the game has a surprisingly large number of fans. 100k subscribers is an amazing number for a game developed by a tiny Icelandic game developer, especially considering that EVE Online isn’t high fantasy mainstream.
