KK

Some more of Brad:

“I believe I said it needed 200k-300k to be successful, and that I hoped to see 500k after the game was out 1 year, which would make it very profitable. So far we are in the mid 150s which is less than I would have hoped, but still good and still growing.

I have said we released 2-3 months early and that releasing near BC was a mistake, but there was nothing we could do about it. That doesn’t mean we were perfect in our development — we made mistakes — I talked about in the NYT about how hard it was to manage and organize a team of 100 people when we were used to to EQ 1 (which had about 25 people). So yes, it was harder to schedule and remain as focused and efficient. We also had the switch from MSFT to SOE which slowed us down and caused us to start beta too early.

We also made the mistake of releasing a little early in terms of tech, e.g. we had hoped that computers would be cheaper that could run Vanguard by the time we launched. Time will fix this, but it is hurting us short term. In 20/20 hindsight we probably should have gone a bit lower tech and made a smaller world. But we really felt strongly from the very beginning that part of immersiveness in next gen MMOG was being seamless where you could travel wherever you wanted to, fly anywhere, be able to load any object in the world anywhere in the world, etc. Again, I think longer term as tech is increasing so rapidly, a lot of these problems will go away and having a seamless world with no instancing, ships and flying mounts, etc. will pay off.

I will apolgize for all of the above and the buck stops here. I won’t, however, apologize for the team: they worked their asses off and continue to and truly believe in the game (as do I). That said, while I apologize for the mistakes, some of which we made and some of which were out of our hands, we also got the opportunity to make a very ambitious game, the game of our dreams, and were a start-up company that got a 30M+ budget, which is basically unheard of. So while VG does indeed have some issues, I know a lot of people are having fun with it, and a lot more will have fun with it in the future and call it a home. I am also proud to have been part of such an awesome team and to have been able to launch a second MMOG (not something a lot of people can say they have done). So, again, I do apologize for the shortcomings, but am also proud of the game and its potential, and am confident that while it is a successful game now (certainly not a WoW, but not a D&D online either) it will gain momentum as tech catches up, people tire of BC, etc. And also as we through both expansions and the live team add more really cool features to the game over the next year.

Also things like teleporters, experience rates, better LFG tools, etc. are all being looked at and you will see changes soon. I don’t have the details yet, but we are listening and the game will get better and the areas where we messed up (large world, but too hard to find a group, etc.) will be addressed. - Brad McQuaid”

I believe the lack luster acceptance is much less about the crap that’s being spouted and more about, people don’t want to pay for beta. I’m sorry, gaming has evolved and there are way too many options to pay for Vanguard in it’s current condition. Hell, I can play actual betas for free and am, before I’ll pay for Vanguard. And yet it’s not exactly about the money. For me it’s the presumption that I would or even should pay for a game in the condition that Vanguard released in. Not gonna happen.

I was hoping he would take Scott Hartman’s example and lay low until Vanguard showed more improvements. I find it funny because I think Brad’s honesty is bad marketing for Vanguard, he really crushed a lot of expectations he set so high, there is a tinge of irony when he talks about bad marketing. I left out a bunch of his recent posts on improving Vanguard that solidify my thoughts, (check out his recent post history) but I thought these two were worth noting for rss readers.

Even if Vanguard drastically improves like EverQuestII did, I don’t think it will see 250k subscribers after the year. In fact, I think subs will drop down under 100k. Launch is critical and with other exciting mmogs releasing soon Vanguard will fizzle into obscurity.

Huh?

Lots of words, very little in content. The main point is that he complains that Vanguard had bad marketing and that bad marketing was the cause for the game not doing all that well. Which isn’t really the point.

I believe he is honest and what he says isn’t “wrong”, but I doubt Vanguard is going to have a bright future.