McQuaid continues with his Vanguard post-mortem

[Okaria]

Brad McQuaid was one of the legendary designers behind the original EverQuest, and the Executive Producer of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes after co-founding Sigil Games in 2002. As you may recall, a lot of ugliness went down with Vanguard's launch, and the now infamous SOE acquisition of Sigil in 2007. Brad has never been particularly bashful about discussing the whole ordeal, and today he continues the journey on his blog with part 4 of his "post-mortem" of the game.

We wanted a huge world at launch. We knew we were going up against other MMOs that were already out there, several with expansions already released. Also, with our goals of a seamless world and a view that went on for miles we knew the size of the world would be key. We also wanted to lay out the majority of the world, including what would be released as expansions.

The game designers used map making software and produced this huge world. It was crazy big, although it was hard to tell exactly how big because we were just looking at a map. We hadn’t tried to create any of the world in-game yet. The art team needed time as did the graphics engine (taking the Unreal 2.5 engine and making it seamless world capable took some time). We then decided on three major continents, Thestra, Qalia, and Kojan, and then what races would start out where.

We knew that those three large land masses would accommodate a lot of people. Travel time could be an issue, so we made sure we’d offer vehicles at a relatively low level (we used the term vehicles loosely and to include horses, ships, etc.). On message boards and in the FAQ I let people know about the size and, although we were not fans of teleporters, I posted that they may be needed to some extent and that we’d determine that in beta testing.

This led to two major errors.

The article continues on his blog. You can also go back and read parts 3, 2 and 1.

[Hengist]

I still get angry reading his drivel, and feel that folks should always have a little perspective.

F13 Interview w/ex-Sigil Employee


F13 McQuaid Interview

[nolifeking]

I tell you what, that game still has the class/character that I have enjoyed out of any mmo. I had a goblin bloodmage who was totally kick ass and tons of fun to play. The mechanics for that class were fantastic. However, after about the 4th dungeon where I walked through endless tunnels hunting named spiders and struggling to find groups I realized it just stopped being fun. It was sad for me, because it had so very much potential =(. I still miss that character.

[Dragonmonk]

That game was great and if the population was there i would jump back in a heart beat but sadly SEO has dropped the dev team down to 5 members, moved there lead programmer to EQ and moved the Director to there new game that has not been announced yet... all this spells doom for VG and i am not holding my breath for a resurgance anytime soon