Vanguard: Beta Screenshots Leaked

[TStorm]

I'm actually with some of the posters Ralf talked about. I remember early EQ, and I remember some of the most stupid and insanely boring game mechanics they built in and absolutey inflexibly refused to consider changing. Remember having to sit there and stare at your spellbook and nothing else if you wanted to get mana back quickly? How fucking retarded is a game mechanic that forces you to, you know, actually *NOT* look at the graphics you spent millions on? /boggle

Remember having to group to get binds? Remember only a few classes being able to actually solo? Remember hours-long corpse recoveries? Those weren't fun, they were annoying and frustrating. How "fun" was it for those SoV people to spend what, 12-14 hours of dying repeatedly just to get their corpses back from Fear?

It took Brad LEAVING SOE/Verant before the game really got its improvements. And, when you think about it, what DID he produce anyway? He took a DIKUmud and set it to 3D graphics. That's it. Hell, I remember a huge thread where one of the original DIKU developers was all set to sue him for violating the "make no profit" portion of the DIKU license, as it was widely believed that EQ's core code was taken straight from those text-based DIKUs. Literally, speaking as someone who helped run a major DIKUmud, huge sections of gameplay ideas were directly ripped off of DIKUmuds, and Brad was a big-time DIKUmud player. Hell, DIKus started out really early, too, years before EQ ever existed. I played a DIKU as early as 1991, actually.

-Arlos

Isn't that was EQ was all about though? Bridging the gap from text based rpg's to a true 3d based experience. The innovation was not on the idea but actually making the jump and running with the Lore...

[Captain Insano]

Everquest was a huge leap forward for this genre of games. Going from text based to a graphical interface was huge.

What I don't agree with is how everyone equates McQuaid to some design god. Under his reign EQ fucking sucked and it didn't improve much at all. The annoyance factor with EQ in its first two years was off the fucking charts.

When he finally left things did get a lot better.

So do I think this same clown can make another game to top EQ in today's industry given his track record for ignoring the sound minded portion of the public that might play his game? Hell no.

VG will be ass. Mark my words.

[Arlos]

See, though, Tstorm, there's a big difference between designing an entire game from scratch, and taking an existing game and bolting a set of 3D graphics onto it. There was actually a fair amount of discussion among some of the larger MUDs of the time (and some threads on rec.games.mud.diku) from people wanting to introduce graphics to MUDs, as it was the logical next step. The universal limitation everyone there had, though, was they were trying to work with the DIKU code and license, which meant no for-profit use.

What Brad did is went and got a company started, got funding, and went ahead and had them build the code from the ground up so as to be free from the DIKU license. For that he is rightfully applauded, as the resulting game, as completed, was an evolutioniary leap forward. That doesn't mean the design behind it was. Literally, the class structure, the spells, class skills, etc. were pretty much exactly like they were on DIKUs. That's why I believe they had so many different classes. RPGs of the time had the usual smaller set, while the various DIKUmud sites had expanded class lists dramatically, as selling features to get people to come play there.

I would have a much much higher regard for Brad's status as a "design visionary" if MUDs had not existed and he'd still produced Everquest.

-Arlos

[Naethyn]

In my opinion everquest is the greatest game ever made. I have put more time and effort into it than any other entertainment.

[Reynaldo]

See, alot of the stuff Arlos is saying is annoying and bad, I feel was necessary and good design. Maybe not the most fun, but it added character to the game. If you added exactly that back into a MMO these days though, it would be poor design.

The trick is if you can find the balance between necessary building block "evils" with the innovations. It's like taking Geometry class in high school. They teach you this convoluted, annoying ass crap that takes an hour to do one problem, then the next day show you how to do it in 30 seconds.

For instance, corpse recovery: In EQ right now, there is no challenge because you can just pay someone an obscenely cheap amount of plat to get your corpse. What the balance should be, is charging an insanely HIGH amount for that. And if you can't afford it, you can "pay" the summoner by giving a level worth of xp. Now, motivation is back in to play smarter and not die. So if your raid loses their corpses in PoFear, you can A) get help, or B) break the guild bank / take xp hits recovering.

As far as the game sucking when Brad was there. I agree it was rocky early on, but it was pointed in a great direction with kunark/velious, then took 4 huge dumps almost back to back to back after he left (luclin, ykesha, ldon, GoD). PoP was great gameplay, but stupid design killing off all your building block gods. It had recently turned around for the better again up until my time to play vanished several months ago.

[Lyion]

I agree a little, but you are trivializing the revolutionary jump EQ was in MMO gaming. Which is ironic since you are essentially playing a game that is a clone of EQ, after playing years of EQ, as am I.

I played and helped develop Diku MUDS, and while you can see the history, it ain't EQ. It's like insulting the first car designer saying he just stole his ideas from the horse and buggy. While accurate, it's a missed analogy, IMO.

The question is will Mcquaid turn into the next John Romero, a one trick guy who rode the coattails of others to greatness, but is a one trick pony.

[Arlos]

Lyion, don't you remember the huge flap in EQs early days, where one of the DIKU developers was preparing a lawsuit because the gameplay of EQ was so incredibly similar to that of DIKU? There was a huge blowup about it, brad even came out and posted that there was no DIKU code inside EQ, but due to the similarities in gameplay, no one believed him. They finally ended up flying the DIKU developer out to San Diego and let him look through the source code.

Turned out Brad was telling the truth, and it all died away, but the gameplay was really just that close, that lawsuits were being threatened over the similarities, and just about everyone believed that EQ was using DIKU code.

Notice, I didn't disagree that EQ was an evolutionary leap over MUDs. It was. But, the people that should be credited with that leap are the ones who actually developed the 3D engine and figured out the code of how to bolt that 3D engine on top of the pre-existing gameplay elements. Last I checked (and I could be wrong) Brad isn't a coder, and there's nothing particularly revolutionary about saying "Hey! Lets make a 3D MUD!" any more than it was revolutionary about someone saying "Hey! Lets put a engine on a buggy instead of a horse!". IMPLEMENTATION of the idea was the revolutionary part. Your analogy fails because that initial designer was the equivalent of the coders for EQ.

I still fail to understand what "immersiveness" factor making people stare at their spellbook generated. As for dying, I'm all for a death penalty, and WOWs may be somewhat too lenient, but the EQ-style which forced people to spend hours and days sometimes trying to get their corpses back, while they ran around naked... that was just plain silly. If gameplay elements would be bad design now, that means they were bad design then, too.

-

[Harrison]

Somewhat too lenient?

[Reynaldo]

What I mean is from a $$$ standpoint. Obviously it was good design then for EQ because it sucked in tons of subscribers and raked in alot of dough.

MMOs now are based around easier gameplay and less harsh consequences. It's a paradigm shift and it would be hard to go back to that hard nosed of an approach and still retain a customer base, based on what customers are used to now. Which is why I feel Vanguard has to tip-toe that line to reel in the original-eq fanbois as well as take any kind of share from WOW.

[Lyion]

I agree with some of your points, Arlos, but I still don't think you give Brad his due.

Brad was the game designer, Arlos. He deserves a good portion of the credit. Its like saying a general who planned the fight doesn't deserve any credit, only the troops fighting do.

[Tikker]

I still fail to understand what "immersiveness" factor making people stare at their spellbook generated. As for dying, I'm all for a death penalty, and WOWs may be somewhat too lenient, but the EQ-style which forced people to spend hours and days sometimes trying to get their corpses back, while they ran around naked... that was just plain silly. If gameplay elements would be bad design now, that means they were bad design then, too.

-

death penalties forced you to play smart

not WoW style retarded chimp


and EQ was developed long after UO, which was the true revolutionary game

95% of what was promoted as a strength of EQ, was a correlation to what Mcquaid didn't like about UO

[Muglack]

UO was developed way after the Realm which was the first true Graphical MMO. It came out in 94 and still has subscribers today.

[Captain Insano]

Alot of good posts here but I think the core issue has been diluted by debating semantics.

Should Brad be given credit for EQ? Yes.

Is the current state of EQ in some respects dumbed down too much? Yes.

Should Vanguard be difficult? Yah I think it should.

But the question is can Brad and crew create the next great MMO under his guidance in today's market?

I doubt it. EQ was fundamentally ripped off from MUD's. So how much did Brad really actually create?

Another aspect of EQ's success was that it was the first of its kind. It didn't matter how shitty or annoying it was, people continued to play because they had no other choice. Brad and his dev team wholeheartedly ignored the playbase for the longest time in fixing design flaws and game mechanics.

EQ really didn't start unfucking itself until DAoC and the competition started mounting. Even then it took years.

You see, this time around they can't have those problems. If the game sucks at launch they MIGHT have six months tops to get it golden before all hope is lost and it becomes the next Matrix Online.

I just don't see it happening. The screenshots, the player feedback and the lack of direction and innovation I have seen thus far won't turn VG into much of anything worth a damn.

[Tossica]

This game will kick ass only because you all think it will suck.

[Muglack]

Yah, that notion has held true for Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, Star Wars: Galaxies, Asheron's Call, Asheron's Call 2, and The Matrix: Online. Why wouldn't it be true for Vanguard?

[Harrison]

The matrix online literally didn't last a full hour on my hard drive

[Tikker]

The thing that EQ had(and vanguard has as well) compared to a lot of the other games is scale~

in WoW, everything feels normal size to smallish

where inEQ everything seemed insanely large

think about how long it took to get thru all of neriak

you could spend hours there, where as 15 minutes for the biggest city in WoW

I think Vanguard will help replace that feeling of doing EPIC things, unlike wow

[Menlaan]

I'm surprised at all of the EQ only got better after Brad left stuff. What was everyone's favorite expansion? Velious, right?

I'm definitely more pessimistic than I was originally, and I wish there were more fan stories to counteract the negatives; but I'm going to wait until I actually play to make my decision.

[Tikker]

I'm surprised at all of the EQ only got better after Brad left stuff. What was everyone's favorite expansion? Velious, right?

I'm definitely more pessimistic than I was originally, and I wish there were more fan stories to counteract the negatives; but I'm going to wait until I actually play to make my decision.

for me it was Original EQ and Kunark

Each zone had some sort of epic story line attached to it

Kunark imo was by far the best expansion
amazing zones for every level
by far the best end zone dungeon in EQ history(although ToV was cool too)

I dunno, EQ really got watered down after Brad and co left
some of the shitty stuff got fixed, but at the same time, some of the less popular stuff that made you appreciate the good stuff was removed as well

there is no good, in the absence of evil, etc etc

[Reynaldo]

I'm definitely more pessimistic than I was originally, and I wish there were more fan stories to counteract the negatives; but I'm going to wait until I actually play to make my decision.

I have about as much faith in beta testers as I do politicians.

[Zanchief]

The thing that EQ had(and vanguard has as well) compared to a lot of the other games is scale~

in WoW, everything feels normal size to smallish

where inEQ everything seemed insanely large

think about how long it took to get thru all of neriak

you could spend hours there, where as 15 minutes for the biggest city in WoW

I think Vanguard will help replace that feeling of doing EPIC things, unlike wow

That's not really true at all. Each "zone" in WoW is about the same size as orignial EQ zones, most are bigger. Ogrimmar and Ironforge are as big or bigger than Queynos and Freeport. The only difference is EQ zones were impossible to navigate because everything looked the same because their designers sucked. WoW zones are intuitive and have unique looking land marks so you don't get lost all the time.

WoW trumps EQ in just about every single aspect except slow lvling. Which, to most, is not a feature.

[Tikker]

That's not really true at all. Each "zone" in WoW is about the same size as orignial EQ zones, most are bigger. Ogrimmar and Ironforge are as big or bigger than Queynos and Freeport. The only difference is EQ zones were impossible to navigate because everything looked the same because their designers sucked. WoW zones are intuitive and have unique looking land marks so you don't get lost all the time.

WoW trumps EQ in just about every single aspect except slow lvling. Which, to most, is not a feature.

the zones don't feel as big tho

buildings in WoW don't have the feel of size that buildings in EQ did

same with the mobs

[Zanchief]

Completely disagree.

Name one mob in Unrest that's as epic as the boss' in Shadowfang keep, especially the final boss.

EQ was a grind. You had to kill the same mobs over and over again at the same spot with the same puller for HOURS to get anything done. In WoW you actually DO something to lvl. You do quests or do dungeons and the exp just happens as a consequence. That's what’s great about it. I tried to play EQ after playing WoW and it was such a choir. After about 30 or so bears and having gotten less then half a lvl I realised this just wasn't as good as I remember it.

Nostalgia is the only thing EQ has over WoW.

[Narrock]

Completely disagree.

Name one mob in Unrest that's as epic as the boss' in Shadowfang keep, especially the final boss.

EQ was a grind. You had to kill the same mobs over and over again at the same spot with the same puller for HOURS to get anything done. In WoW you actually DO something to lvl. You do quests or do dungeons and the exp just happens as a consequence. That's what’s great about it. I tried to play EQ after playing WoW and it was such a choir. After about 30 or so bears and having gotten less then half a lvl I realised this just wasn't as good as I remember it.

Nostalgia is the only thing EQ has over WoW.

Wow, I agree with Zanchump about something.

[Naethyn]

The major thing vg has going for it is no instances.