Official Discussion Thread SoE Acquires Sigil Assets

[Muggi]

A fly told me bigtime performance improvements are A-#1 on SOE's to-do list.  Yay!

I feel bad for the crew at Sigil, and I have no doubt that some/most of what these interviews are saying was true.  Alot of good people lost their jobs, and honestly the keeping of Gilbertson as GM scares the hell out of me.  I hope he's under constant scrutiny by SOE.

I have more hope now than I did 2 days ago..but the buyout still cost my guild a few really good members, people that just hate SOE with a passion  

The next 4-5 weeks are really going to tell the tale for VG.  SOE HAS to come in with a vengeance and clear up a few of the major bugs while the "SOE buys Sigil" news is still hot.  They have to show people this is a major change for the better, and they have to do it RIGHT NOW.

They're already pushing VG as the "Featured Game" at Station.  If the game isn't improved quickly, bad things are going to happen.

EDIT: changed Wilkerson to Gilbertson.  Why the hell did I think of the baseball player Brad Wilkerson while I wrote this?  Hmmmmm

[Servo2k]

While I'm sure this guy is saying thing he wouldn't say a couple of days from now I would wager that most of this rings true.  Sigil seems to have the design structure of an amoeba.

While much of his statements where "factual" in that they gave numbers and the like (such as 1 person in the QA) much of it was disgruntled opinions about his bosses.   

Why put controversy around factual in your statement?  Sigil has always had a very open policy of listing all of their members on http://sigilgames.com/team.html.  Up until October QA has had 1 guy and a liason.

[tehbard]

I am saddened at the turn this game, one that I was looking forward to for quite a while, took seeing as how management was piss-poor and never had a chance. I hold no sympathies (although the loss of jobs is regrettable) for much else as business is business.

:  Of course the people in the office knew, the management were morons, etc.

What else you expect them to say?

Very saddened, come on dude - you never worked in the corporate world or something?  This is normal stuff in adult meatspace man, if you have had a decent job or two outside some backwater it should be pretty familiar sort of a thing.  When a division or company is floundering, you restructure and rock on.  You don't "stay the course" into oblivion for chrissakes.  You think things were going peachy before then do you?

"Failure" my ass.  This game will be just fine, there was a shakeup, it was needed badly, move along.

http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561

Apparently the office monkeys knew what they were doing, management just game them crap idea wise and tool wise to work with.

I am very saddened 

[Cennyan]

While much of his statements where "factual" in that they gave numbers and the like (such as 1 person in the QA) much of it was disgruntled opinions about his bosses.   

Why put controversy around factual in your statement?  Sigil has always had a very open policy of listing all of their members on http://sigilgames.com/team.html.  Up until October QA has had 1 guy and a liason.

It's like statistics man...you can make anything say what you want it to say.  They had one QA guy...ok, does that mean that the stuff didn't get QA'd?   Or does it mean that the one QA guy, along with the class leads and community members, came up with so many bugs and issues that the devs can't keep up.  I'm gonna have to go with that explanation myself.  I've discovered more bugs than I can count...I'm one man...half have not been fixed.  This tells me the problem isn't with the QA dept, it's with the number of people they have fixing the bugs.  Really, what's the point of paying 10 people to QA when you only have 3 or 4 people fixing the stuff. 

[ryoutou]

I think you should feel relieved mate.  Really I do.  Vanguard has fantastic potential for years to come, all it needs is spit and polish and a solid management team.  Its getting that.

Most of the folks I know are very pleased, we've lost far, far more people over the irritating bugs in the game and the problems than any sort of ideological issue about SOE. 
All the stuff like the one QA person is out of context, many modern development models work QA into the dev cycle rather than concentrating it into a team, yadda yadda.  Regardless, you can bet we'll have a high level of QA out of SOE.  Solid, you can bet.

I've got high hopes moving forward, so do the bulk of the gamers in our group.  Sure, the folks who hate Smed will hate Smed - but results are what matters at the end of the day and SOE can deliver.

[StrikeAnywhere]

Ex-Sigil: Both I'd imagine... and that trend continued though for another year. What people don't understand, is the game that went out the door was literally created in the last 15 months. Design worked 12-18 hour days for 9+ months.

This actually answers so many of my "why" questions... no wonder so many of their really good looking design ideas got scrapped for the vanilla game we see now. The game I started betaing in summer of last year was a totally different game to what my brother in law was testing closer to the beginning of the year. A lot of the stuff that made VG sound unique and different and provided really cool twists on the classes we already know from every other game just got phased out in favor of the tried tested and true...

[Suntsu]

Some of you guys are talking like VG only has 50 employees now.

I frankly do not think this is the case.  One thing that was said was VG will now have a similar staff to EQ2.  I dont know that figure but I will bet it is one hell of a lot more than 50.  My bet is 10X that.

Do you guys think SOE said it would buy VG yesterday then the next thing out of thier mouth was ok guys how many people do we need?

NO WAY.

They KNEW they were buying VG 6 months ago I will bet and they have a staff and a facility and broken code on all the machines already and there is already a full staff on the job.  They probably have the next two expansions already in artwork so they can milk another 40/sub out of us for new content.

You don't buy 90K in contracts paying 16/mo(1.44 Million Dollars in monthly revenue) and then figure out a budget.

This was planned and thought thru when they first inked with Brad pre-launch. 

My bet is it was a done deal then but Brad wanted to launch on his own for reasons of pride.  He was worked 5 years on it solo and wanted to launch solo.  He probably had a performance clause that would allow him to buy out but after 2 months he knew he was screwed and checked out like some of the Ex's say.  At the same time SOE knew they owned VG so they set up the back end that they needed for a smooth transition.  Brad became absentee owner because he was a lame duck and already gone.

Rest assured SOE will do everything they can to salvage the game as fast as humanly possible.  They have no intention of loosing money. 

This game may be rocky and buggy but its potential is unmatched.  Given the money and tools it will be epic.

[Warsongs]

1 thing I read in the interview with SoE President was using studios all over to code and do things.

1 of those studios caught my attention. It is in a Outsource country where tons of cheap coders are to be had.  Leads me to believe that SoE will leverage this into fixing VG.

[Zonin]

IMO this turn of events can result in 1 of 2 things.
1. SOE fixes teh problems, remarkets, and lands a solid base of 200k+ players (assuming some come back, and new ones are enticed).
2. SOE will let the game wane, squeezing as much reoccuring revenue out of it as possible until its ultimate demise (all the while hoping some of their lost EQ2 playerbase returns to play their biggest investment).

Smed alluded that they were going to go route 1. They know that VG has always attracted the SERIOUS gamers more than any other target markets in MMORPG. Its complicated, vast, diverse, and almost a niche market all to itself. It wont be the next WoW, the target age there is like 12-17 and casual player. VG is targetted at 18+ people with too much free time on their hands. Unfortunately its not a HUGE market, but it is more reliable in the longterm..to continue to subscribe, as long as content is consistently added. EQ2 is like smack in between these two markets, trying to cater to all kinds (it just cant compete with the WoW phenomenon however, as they successfully market console players out from their joysticks).

I guess what Im trying to say, is that if they take VG and dedicate it to the serious, more hardcore MMORPG type player and cater to their desires...Vanguard can be a huge success at filling that markets needs. Smaller playerbase, but more dedicated customers. If they try to do much else with it...VG will end up a conflict of intrest within SOE.

my 2cc:)

[ryoutou]

Yep.

Eve is definitely more of a competitor as far as demographics are concerned than either EQ2 or WOW.  Very different theme and gameplay,  but we are talking grown ups who want a real challenge long term with as much sandbox as possible.

And Smed seems to get that, and has already had his ass handed to him by a community once when he gimped a game.  Don't think he'll put his hand back into that garbage disposal.

[Tuladi]

http://www.f13.net/?itemid=562

interview with Brad.  enjoy

[Servo2k]

http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007/051707_johnsmedley_1.x

Interview w/ Smed.  Doesn't confirm anything other than that they fscked up SWG and won't do it here.

[eirei]

http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007/051707_johnsmedley_1.x

Interview w/ Smed.  Doesn't confirm anything other than that they fscked up SWG and won't do it here.

  I was in the beta test of SWG in it's last month before release. I was horrified they went gold with it and never played it again.

 I was in the beta test of EQ2 in its last month before its release, I bought it and stayed for 2 years on both PVE and last on PVP. I came to Vanguard next. I found a real bard again here and nothing has budged me since.

  I do miss my home in EQ2, crafting here is so boring I could cry while doing it. I am hoping for a revamp of the crafting so it is tolerable again, if not fun.