Vanguard’s Lawrence “Myrlokar” Poe Evades the Vision

Another epic Vanguard beta leak has recently surfaced and the news is unfortunate. Myrlokar is the moniker of Lawrence Poe who held a senior design position with Sigil for at least two years. Considering Vanguard is still in the crucial stages of beta development this is a tremendous loss for “the vision.” Lawrence Poe was assigned particularly to: mechanics, combat formulas, contest formulas, build the rulesets for the way spell effects scale throughout the levels, item point system, etc. Basically all the formulas and math on the design side of things — In addition to designing the spell/ability tool and the item tool.

Lawrence Poe started out in the game industry in October 1999 as a Game Master on Sony Online Entertainment’s title EverQuest. While working in that capacity, he clearly impressed and was promoted to Associate Game Designer eight months later. He was promoted to Game Designer in 2001 where he worked with the magic system until moving to the EverQuest Online Adventures team in early 2002.

Players of EverQuest came to know him as “The Spell Guy” because of his extensive work on spell balance, effects and design. He’d often take time away from his duties at SOE to get feedback to the community. Lawrence is also well know though his character Myrlokar, dubbed “Grandfather Rogue” and the set of epic armors that bear the same name.

Lawrence’s journey designing games continued in 2003 when he was hired by Sigil as a Senior Game Designer. What Lawrence is working on at Sigil is of course top-secret information, but he lists “Pathing, Balance, Spell Design, Zone Population, Magic System, Combat Formula, Class Design, Character Progression, Item Point Systems, NPC Progression” as contributions to previous games so there is no doubt that his experience will touch a broad range of systems and content.

Update: Doh, I f-ed up! Amanda Tarr, formerly a senior server programmer who retains the role as lead programmer didn’t leave and has always been employed with Sigil Games Online.

When checking Sigil’s employee page my biggest mistake was not reading the complete list of biographies. An anonymous source has come forward correcting the initial error in my original news post where I announced Amanda Poe had left Sigil Games. Amanda Poe has changed her last name to Amanda Tarr and was also promoted to Lead Programmer, I can also confirm this with the source who came forward as I recognize the biography. I assumed since Lawrence Poe was no longer employed with Sigil Games Online and Amanda Poe was no longer listed on the page that she was no longer with the company as well. Which was incorrect and a horrible assumption on my part, Amanda has always been and is still employed with Sigil Games Online.

I sincerely apologize to all parties involved for making this error. I may not be an official source for news, and my readership may be small, when I do post comments including the spread of any industry news, I always take extra measures too make sure I am informed and have factual information before posting. In cases where game developers leave a company it is difficult finding an official source of news considering in most circumstances announcements of their departures aren’t released by the game company and normally found out through back-channels.

I first discovered the news via this foh thread and quickly checked Sigil’s our team page where Lawrence Poe and his wife Amanda Poe, who held a senior server programmer position with Sigil are no longer listed confirming both are no longer employed with Sigil Games. A double whammy.

I would like to express my thanks to Lawrence for inspiring my interests in class design and responding to a few of my inquiries when he certainly didn’t have to respond. I would also like to express my gratitude and wish both Lawrence and Amanda the utmost best in their future endeavors.