Death of a Game: Vanguard - Saga of Heroes
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- The story of the troubled Vanguard Saga of Heroes.
Tom the Editor strikes again (thanks.)
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#DOAG
RIP Brad :(
What a loss
This game was SO glitchy when launched, i was there from beta day 1.
But it had something magical, it had a special potential i cant explain.
I remember downloading the beta, and when I loaded it up the first time I realized that my PC had no hope in hell of being able to run it :'(
because they managed to f up the game from beta to live. I was in the final beta phase was a good game then the released and a bunch of stuff was changed for the worse from beta to release it made no damn sense
I started beta 2 when druids could shapeshift into trees. I miss the crafting & diplomacy the most. I loved making ships.
One of my favourite bugs of all time is that you could walk around in login screen/character creator
Agreed. I played since beta - super buggy but for some reason I really liked the game. I could only imagine if it could have been executed well it would have been amazing.
The open world of Vanguard was so massive and unique. Its something really missing in modern MMO's.
I agree. It was amazing. I wish when games like this shut down they would come up with some way to allow the players to go on playing it. Let player's run their own community servers, etc.
@@daemonthorn5888 loads of games have private servers
And empty.
don't forget that.. it was massive, unique, and empty. Like.. half the continent not being populated, entire area with nothing but generic tank-and-spank mob left there to grind, miles and miles and miles of empty space between point of interest...
kind of like EQ1 , really.
Probably too massive…. At least to start with.
These videos are TV quality documentaries on the history of the mmorpg. I love geeking out to them. Thanks.
That's what I am shooting for, so I am glad you got that impression. Thanks for the support.
nerdSlayer If only broadcast news did as much research as you did. You'd make a really good reporter.
Yeah, it's like if G4TV were still around, and actually still had programing ABOUT VIDEO GAMES and not Cops reruns LOL!
@@nerdSlayerstudioss James is definitely correct. the quality of your videos as well as the deep research and presentation of facts. Its excellent man.
2
The best memories I have of Everquest involves exploring. I remember seeing high lvl mobs in lower lvl zones. It didn't feel like there was a linear path to max lvl. It was all about the journey to the top rather than getting to the top as fast as possible. I hope Pantheon can deliver on being Everquest like. I like mmo's today but I would love a remake/remodel of a classic game like Everquest.
Maybe it's just nostalgia.
Iron Tusk it's not nostalgia. The journey should be the focus of a roleplaying game, not getting to max level so that you can "finally start playing the game". And that has been sorely lacking in much of any games lately. A game that makes the journey important would absolutely clean up in today's market, just because of people that want that journey and are sick of the same-ol', same-ol' that RPGs have become at this point.
I don't know how to implement it, but making scalling being able to participate at endgame content at low levels would reduce the need to rush a lot.
I would highly recommend the Vanguard Saga of Heroes Emulator to anyone who is missing Vanguard. While there is no crafting added so far, the devs are adding lots of new quests to each zone daily. It's definitely a game that gets you in the right mood and prepares you for Pantheon (if you are interested in the old-school type of MMORPGs). The only thing missing are the players right now.
I'm playing on it now enjoying it wishing there were more people on it and very much looking forward to Pantheon
A side note side comment the video publisher while I do appreciate his honesty about friends responsibility I think I can sense in him a I don't think he understands EverQuest fans not really I played every class when wow came out and I watched half my server leave like wow now what 20 years later I think if we could interview all those people we'd find out that they left that game to play that game and then they let left this game to play that game and then they left that game to play this game EverQuest fans don't game hop ever request players vanguard players and Pantheon players.. I miss fear reds okay I think porch recoveries should be a part of the game
Should it take 8 hours to do a corporate recovery no but challenge and tough are what make the game fun .. if you can solo a game, what the f*** is the point in playing it??? :p
Damn. VG was my first MMO. Played from launch till after Shores of Darkness? Ground like 6 classes (bard, shaman, pally, dk, sorc, disc) to 50 and 2 to 55. I've played other MMOs, but nothing captured the grittiness and raw feeling of VG. Rift was the closest to capturing that feeling, but they succumbed to the F2P trend.
I played all classes but 2 to 55, the other two were 54 Bloodmage, 53 Paladin.
breh we need death of a game: toontown online
Truer words have never been spoken.
Toontown.
yes
Toontown Rewritten's doing pretty great btw. If you all didn't know about it, you should check it out, they've come a long way in bringing the game back.
this needs to happen
nerdSlayer have a lot of material to work with nowadays when MOBA games like Overwatch, Paladins, League of Legends, DotA and like that are dominant and few people are interested in MMORPGs like it used to be back then.
Nah, there are a few major MMOs other than WoW. GW2, ESO and most notably FFXIV all come to mind.
Problem is that there are only a few new MMOs coming out, and most of the ones that have come out have failed utterly to gain a proper following. BDO is the first one in ages to actually succeed, in spite of the negative reviews it gets because apparently the endgame is extremely, extremely grindy.
Hopefully games like Camelot Unchained or Crowfall will cause an upset, if only to secure a home for a certain niche.
Guess why. People are tired of MMOs because most of them are just for "the quick bucks". Shitton of items you can buy in Cash-Shops, nearly no real endgame content without grinding for years or spending cash on the game. And even if you decide to put money into it you most likely only get a chance for something (Lootboxes for Mounts/Pets/Whatever), chances to upgrade your equipment without the fear of failing and destroying/downgrading your weapon, etc.
There are only a few MMOs where you can't buy any "real" advantages like Guild Wars 2 & WoW e.g.
People are just tired. MMOs nowadays beside a few exceptions prodive nothing then endless, meaningless grind which you can avoid/make it a lot easier by pumping cash into it without good stories or original elements that makes this exactly MMO different than any other MMO. Note that I said that there are exceptions but my statement is true to most MMOs.
Well arguably many people that used to play MMOs in their students years simply don't have time to invest into them anymore. There is MUCH bigger competition and even not MMO games are competing, there are DOTAs, you've got multiplayers that are meant to be played for very long time either competitive (WoT etc.) or cooperative (Warframe). Not even mentioning mobile gaming that's pretty big nowadays. Those were not around when first MMOs emerged.... I guess MMOs are thing of the past.... until someone comes up with VR MMO and after that humanity is doomed :D
Overwatch is a team-based FPS.
Not a MOBA.
Pete Has MOBA elements. 4 cooldown based abilites, 1 being an ultimate?
Man, the mechanics of the Bard class in this game are still unmatched. Such a great game, oh well.
I played this game for a year and a half from launch. The game had SO much potential. I remember some amazing moments just walking into parts of the continent that had no created content that still had a ton of design work into them. It made it feel far more like an actual world. It just went further and further down hill as things went.
I still miss my Goblin Necromancer Ognar. :(
I'm amazed by the quality of these videos nerdSlayer! Whenever I feel tired I always turn them on, even old episodes. They are so interesting and relaxing. Thank you very much for your hard work, it's very much appreciated. And you found a great, unique format!
Thank you for putting this one together. Vanguard was the first MMORPG I played. I joined when Isle of Dawn launched, and it pretty much changed my life in a good way. While I never got past level 19 in the open world, I hit level 32 or so in the crafting sphere, and there are a lot of aspects of the Vanguard crafting that I look at when judging crafting in newer games. Never could get a computer system that got rid of the "hitching" that many experienced with their frame rate. It was sad to see it die, but I have many great memories.
This one is going to be tough to watch.. :(
I played a bard to lv 50 and it was an amazing experience. Amazing class for grouping. I didn’t quit because of reasons mentioned here... at least not directly. Rather indirectly, because I simply had no one to play with (probably because of reasons you mentioned) and bard was a group focused class. Some of my best MMO grouping memories came from this game, so I have to fight the tears from forming when I watch this video.
During the closing of this game Vanguard, when I worked at SOE in support, the GMs invited us on to enjoy the server shutdown. They moved us to an unfinished town and had a dance party "GM Gravy" for life.
Seriously these videos are incredible. Well thought out, and almost always on point with every detail. You have a talent in making documentaries.
I will never forget my journey on the river qua on a small sloop. Took me about 7 sessions of roleplaying with other players spanning an entire real life week. Travelling in Vanguard was such an amazing experience ... three giant seamless continents and lots of secrets and aventures to be found.
I remember being in game, playing, the day the closure of the server was announced. I was so devastated by the news that I just stood there in the safe corner of the dungeon I was in and for hours didn't really do anything at all other than chat with some people. I finally logged out and felt really crushed, never to return back to it while it was still left running for a few months.
I met up with friends, explorers, who loved to explore the abandoned, incomplete, or even intentionally inaccessible areas. We would find ways to wiggle through barriers and blocks to break into the areas that were not meant for players to enter. Some of those dungeons were even populated with mobs, others were just beautiful areas to explore and witness for ourselves. I still have some of my screenshots from those times. This game was an amazing experience, world, community, and a part of my life that I still look back on fondly after all these years. Real experiences I had with real people, it doesn't matter that the world we were in wasn't real. To all the friends I made and lost contact with I miss you guys and the fun we had. I went by many names, but the character names I remember using was Buterfly, Christine, and Fidget. I would always adorn my LFG message with a rose, too. ~',~{@
I made a lot of great friends on this game as well. Had so much fun playing it. I miss it more than I even miss EQ in it's glory days. If I could have one time of my gaming years back it would be when Vanguard was polished and playing well and there was still a little bit of a population left to enjoy it. Raiding in the Pantheon getting the T3 gear. Doing overland raids, building guild halls with my crafters. So much fun. So much depth and so great. I truly miss it.
Death of Firefall next/soon?
Was firefall ever big enough to rate a death of a game? I remember a few youtubers I followed showing some videos of it, then nothing.
I still want my $200 back from funding Firefall.
200?!
Yup, Commander pack for $100 and $100 before that. Never even got the extras that was supposed to come with the Commander pack either. Not that it matters now the game is abandoned and they are working on a damn mobile game.
Not sure what exactly you are talking about. I googled this EM8ER thing, the link it sent me to, in order to verify my Firefall founders pack, is a dead link. And it's common knowledge that Firefall project was abandoned and they are moving to a mobile game and said to be offering stuff for us who backed Firefall. But it's a MOBILE game, and there is nothing massive about any Mobile game. I absolutely despise them and did not pay in to support development of a mobile game.
I loved this game. It was terrible in some ways, but there was SO much about it that was amazing. It wasn't an MMO that was essentially a single-player RPG with MMO end game. A few classes couldn't be solo'd, like Rogues. It also had the best class, evar: Blood Mage.
Thanks for reviewing my favorite coulda-been, lost love, nerdSlayer.
You're not lying. Blood Mage was amazing with the defensive targeting Vanguard had. Set your targets and go to town. I couldn't play my shadow priest in WoW without thinking how much better it would be if SPriest worked like BMage. I'm hoping Pantheon straight up rips Blood Mage off for the Dire Lord class. :P
Blood mage was cool, I played the Psionicist. It had some of the most dominating CC ever. Some group content could be run without a tank because of the CC abilities.
I always thought the Psion was the coolest class concept. I only got mine to mid 20's but the idea that you were a mentalist manipulating time and space to crush your enemies was so novel, so sciency. My memory is sketchy but I remember something about phasing, it was essentially a sleep or a slow, but the description and idea was you were shifting them into another time dimension or something like that. So cool. I think they even had their own chat channel? Ah, time to dl the emu I think.
They had their own chat channel, which was cool from a lore standpoint, pointless mostly in game. You could send them to another dimension or time, then when they came back they took damage or something. My favorite was a spell where it would create a a mirror of you which would basically be like a tank, and they would attack it, while you and your group could kill them.
Ahh I miss this game. I played a Phoenix Shaman healer. Mainly crafted, as that was my thing. I put a lot of time into it and just hearing the music brings back all sorts of great memories.
A playable beta of Pantheon by the end of 2017. It is nearly the end of 2022 and there is still not an Alpha.
Best crafting system I have ever seen in an MMORPG. The diplomacy system was almost fleshed out...was also very cool. Class design was solid too. There were tons of dungeons and the game had ships, flying mounts, and a strong group emphasis. But the game had so many problems on launch it was never able to take off. System requirements were simply too high for most players at launch including myself at the time. Falling thru the world was common, the chunk system was terrible (you had to see it to believe it). Vanguard suffered from scope creep so severely it wasn't ready in time for Microsoft and that is really what killed it. It was forced to launch early under SOE and of course all the bugs/glitches/unfinished content really hurt the launch. Brad was simply too ambitious with the project. It looks like he learned his lessons from it with Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen but only time will tell.
I liked Vanguard a lot and also backed Pantheon. I hope Pantheon does well, lessons have been learned from previous mistakes and they are able to develop the game as long as needed before going live. The most recent update has shown a huge jump in visuals.
Vanguard was amazingly good and "deep", and while Pantheon clearly takes a lot of its ideas from Vanguard, the limited skill bar system just kills my interest in it. I've played 40-50 MMOs since 1999 and I've never seen the limited skill bar done well in anything that wasn't just a fast paced PvP arena type game like Guild Wars. It just dumbs down combat to nothing but repetitive rotation spamming.. :(
@Gnawer Shreth, limited Skill bar system, what do you mean with that?
If you compare it to Vanguard (or whatever game with a similar system you prefer. Lotro, WoW etc) Pantheon will have a tiny hotbar.
In Vanguard your (the player, not the character) skill determines how well you handle all your skills, how quickly you react to a changes situation and cast a situational skill etc. because *all* of your skills are available to you at any time. You can have them all on hotbars even if you don't use them that often or whatever. That's where actual player skill comes into things. That's what you can practice, get better at etc. and what can set a decent and a good healer (or whatever) apart, actual player skill. There are very few of those things in MMOs as it is an Pantheon seem to want to get rid of the last one.
In Pantheon you have a smaller hotbar so you have to "prepare" your hotbar in advance when you go out hunting or whatever. Almost like a deck of cards in a a card game.
While the preparation phase might appeal to somebody, all it has ever done in other games with a similar system is result in cookie cutter builds. Someone does the math and posts a "Best meta build for Paladin!" (or whatever class you prefer) on the forum and from then on *EVERY* Paladin is expected to use "The Best" build if he wants to get invited for group runs, raids etc.
That means you end up with *every* Paladin being a carbon copy of every other Paladin. There's no room for your player skill to have a big effect when you only have like 8 skills or whatever you use. You won't have those situational skills available as they won't be in your hotbar, so if you see a low level guy struggling you won't be able to heal him and save his day unless you happened to have the heal slotted at the time.
If something goes wrong on a group hunt you won't be able to use your own personal skill and awareness to quickly adapt to a situation gone bad, because the skills required to adapt are not on your hotbar. When you have that few hotbar slots you'll obviously only slot the ones you *know* you'll be using, so there's zero room for player skill or adaptation to a changing environment. You'd have to exit combat and find a place to prepare first before being able to use any other skills than the pre-slotted ones.
I see what you are trying to say but it doesnt make much sense. We don't know how many skill will actually be allowed onto the bar, how those skills actually work or how the various other systems in play work with the las. Also this game is designed after everquest and vanguard. In those games having a limited number of spells at a time was actually part of the charm and why both are remembered fondly especially since a lot of the stuff you learned wasnt just by buying it from a trainer but finding it out in the world.
I loved the game, I miss it :( I don't know Pantheon though. Googling now.
I loved this game and had many hours put into it at a time in my life when a lot of things were changing...will never forget my unicorn mount that you had to do that epic quest to get.
Sound mix is SOOO much better now, there's a couple of points where the music is on the loud side compared to the speaking but nowhere near as much as in many older vids, good job
Death of a game: Aion ...
I like how you point out Brad McQuaids issues in this and mentioned Pantheon. It's now nearly October 2019, and Pantheon is still nowhere close to beta. A lot of people at this point are even dubious if it's ever going to come out. Another McQuaid special it looks like.
I was just about to look that up, thanks.
Shit. Maybe it's because he's dead.
you have to be very nooby in the mmo scene to think pantheon is a fail. todays massive mmos or even non-mmos take more than a couple years of development especially when crowdfunded. if you follow the progress youll see everything is just fine and coming together. if pantheon isnt released in 2024 or 2025 THEN i think it takes too long. before that its totally fine imo
@@MatziUndSo You have to be nooby in understanding anything about budgets and economics to not understand why a lot of people are having issues with Pantheon. They have stated recently that they are not fully funded to release, so with some of the progress they have made they could end up in the same situation as Vanguard and end up releasing an unfinished project because they ran of money. Not to mention, it's not been just a couple of years, we are looking at over 6 so far before we've even hit a BETA.
Also, Good job replying to a nearly year old comment.
How many MMO's have you made tough guy? He had a love of the genre and tried to make games and worlds that people would love to be in. A good MMO DOES take many many years to make. Blizzard has all of the money in the world and a huge team and they still take YEARS to make a game. Vanguards problems were on the technical side, not the creative.
You missed out a key factor in the deterioration of Brad McQuaid - a factor that is already in the public domain. Specifically, he had an opioid addiction that, at its worse, saw him trying to steal prescription medication from his co-workers.
Chunking, haha. That is a what I remember. You would finally group up, and someone would not cross a chunk/boundary line and that player would drop. This would bug the group, so everyone had to relog. This could happen every few minutes. It was known in beta (I was in the beta) and never resolved.
Do you plan on doing a video on Dark Age of Camelot?
And Asheron's Call and Anarchy Online! All 3 of those need a video and they all released within a couple years of each other.
I loved DAoC. Buggy, messy and the UI was the stuff of nightmares, but it was so immersive.
Asheron's Call deserves a revival. Not a sequal, but a graphical overhaul and keep the entirety of the gameplay mechanics as they were. The reason why I stopped playing AC was because after I tried newer MMORPGs with their easier controls and better graphics, it was really hard to go back to it. But man did I love the skill system.
Its not dead
JacobinRobspierre eh, just because the game servers are still up and running, the amount of people actually on those servers...it's been dead for a few years sadly. DAOC was my first 3D MMORPG, and it has a special spot in my heart, but it really is dead.
I would just like to add that Vanguard had player ships/sailing, one of the best fishing systems, and the absolute best bard buff song system of any MMO I've ever played. Also, it's weather system was dynamic and roaming across the continents. You could see the dark clouds rolling in from a distance before it got to you.
A video on Fallen Earth would interesting to see. The game was hyped and marketed as the love child of Fallout 3 and Mad Max (but online and of course with their own lore), but the game was such a travesty that it flopped really really really hard, despite people dying to play such a game for years.
I would love to hear this too, i played Fallen Earth for a little while, never got to high levels but really liked the concept. That game had some nice ideas but the gameplay was kinda "meh", weapons didn't really have impact and enemy respawning was way too fast.
Pantheon will be in beta by 2030 for sure.
omg i loved Vanguard. It could have been sooooo good. RIP VG :(
Even in this video you can see how awesome the world was. It was so well done artistically. I really hope Pantheon works out.
Played Vanguard from day 1 until a few months after the "Isle of Dawn" incredibly cool game with alot of unique aspects...but yeah, also alot of trouble =(
R.I.P Vanguard.
Thanks for crediting your video sources. I appreciate you using my content in this video (I used to go by Granitethewolf). I played from Launch to sunset on Vanguard My video was a pure passion project....
A couple days ago I just got my pre-alpha key for Pantheon. Lets hope it all works out for pantheon!
I also have my photos of the day the sunset happened still. The game may have been broken to a degree, but its charm was incredibly strong.
Many amazing adventures and awesome memories, i really miss Vanguard, miss all my old friends and the hours of fun we had together! Shadow & Order PVP Sartok
Man, I was so excited for this before it came out, didn't stick with it for very long after launch though, was playing a monk. Also, the editing and audio balance on this series is improving with every video. Well done on doing your research. Keep up the good work.
Your productivity is off the roof! Which is good, because this series is my drug and I would die from the withdrawal effects otherwise.
I hope YT didn't demonetize you bro.
Vanguard was amazing to play. I loved that game. It was so much fun to explore in that game. And the world was both beautiful and dangerous.
You really do great vids and deserve a ton more subs! keep on the good work! every death of a game from you is enjoying and easy to follow from start to finish. you really got talent!
Sigh this was one of my first MMOs I played, and loved this game. They had 3 spheres which involved Adventuring, Crafting, and Diplomacy. Diplomacy was my all time favorite sphere because it allowed you to buff cities giving you buffs. I do remember the most frustrating aspect was factions. If you wanted to visit a city, you would either have to do a lot of grinding on quests, crafting, and even diplomacy. If you were a Dark Elf, you were not able to enter a wood elf realm unless you changed your factions. If memory serves me, there were times that once you increase a faction, your other factions would decrease as well. Diplomacy was a very great way to increase your factions allowing your to visit other cities.
Watching this in 2022 and reading all the comments for Pantheon backers from 3+ years ago D:
Seriously man, these videos are fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to create them!
One of the key developers of Vanguard, I forget his name, was a rather notorious developer who worked on the MMO Earth and Beyond. The guy was a complete asshole on the forums and really had it out for one of the classes, actually admitting he would nerf it just out of spite and because he didn't like it.
man i love this videos.
thank you so much for all this work and time you put in this series.
I loved this game. I hated the engine but I love the feel of the world. SOE managed it poorly after launch by trying to make travel trivial and adding in stuff ripped from WoW.
This game had the best crafting in any game I've ever played. Diplomacy was unique. Beta was some of my best experiences in MMO gaming despite technical difficulties of the engine and horrible bugs.
Thank you for putting the music in the video. Those songs brought me back.
2 things you didn't discuss however were the infamous parking lot mass firing and McQuaid's supposed drug problem. You even read from the ex-Sigil employee interview but skipped those parts.
VG was such a great game. I still remember launch day.
Fall nostalgia brought me to this video i put off watching for years since i was kinda part of this game or almost. MY FIRST job out of college with my game design degree was set to be with Sigil games. I even got set up for flyout and in person interveiw...but Sony bought the company and I was told there was a hiring freeze. Now with what seems like a life times worth of hindesight i know its was not that big a loss for me but i still think game better managed had ideas that could revitalize the genre. The class abilies working with combo buffs and debuffs is still something i have not seen elsewhere and was part of my intial desire to work with the company. Thank you for making this video so its existance is not forgotten.
My guild and I were part of the launch of this game, we were very hyped. But I had never seen such a disastrous launch in my time and quickly saw the writing on the wall. I left within a week and didn't look back.
This could really turn it around for Vanguard.
Fun Fact: Under John Smedly, SOE/Daybreak was involved in bringing 30 MMO games to the market. All but 4 MMOs (EQ 1, EQ 2, PlanetSide, DCU Online) were either shut down (20 shut down), 1 cancelled and rest were sold to other publishers.
This guys track record of bringing down games, is unmatched.
One of my favorite quests at launch was for dark elves at the end of a zone chunk. People often failed it because it summoned a swarm of things, skeletons if I remember. They also had problems despawning. A lot of other people would enter the chunk from the other direction and die to the skeletons before they loaded in fully. Vanguard was an amazing game of bugs where you could macro spells together to where my blood mage would counter spell, crit spell, use a wand in his inventory, melee, then cast a spell with a single push of a button and it was all instant.
Great work, as always!
Just something I noticed, but I noticed that in the last few videos, this one included, it seems like there's more personal feelings and sentiment added into the video to justify some part of the game's history. It might be something to be mindful of.
That's on purpose. I am very objective by nature, to a fault. I don't want my videos to come across as lacking personality, and/or not being able to show some of my opinions more adequately. So the format stays the same, I just have been injecting more personality into the videos. But fear not, I still have tons of evidence presented and won't ever change that.
I co-founded the guild Carnage on what came to be the only pvp server. The game was fine on a high end pc.
Our problem was there was little content at the end game, and when we choked the entrances of the one end level zone, we quickly out geared other guild.
No good pve or pvp left lead to us all leaving
I think Brad wanted to implement all his ideas in a single go, and that was the problem, along with other points you've mentioned. It would be better to add part of your ideas and then add others in the patches/expansions that will follow, that's at least how I see it.
Bruh
We need a death of a game: Club penguin
Very good man,as usual.Start watching as soon as got notification.I could watch them all day long,but I know it take ages to get it done.Ta
First day of playing Vanguard I got stuck in a chair. I sent in ticket after ticket to support and was never set free. Vanguard now is stuck on my game shelf to never be set free. Karma is a bitch...
I still to this day believe SOE purposefully sabotaged Vanguard. The game was nowhere to be found on their website when I first played it. I had to find it through Google to be able to download it. They wanted it to die.
This was my favorite MMO ever. It had issues, for sure. But it's potential was enormous. I loved the character classes. They were so unique, to me, at least. There was one class, called something like, a Psionicist, or something. Their spells had very cool effects. And the world just felt so open and alive. Hidden caves with temples in them, etc. I don't know how to describe the feeling of wonder I got from this game. It's a damn shame it got shut done. I'd love to see someone that cares about it, buy it, and bring it back to life.
Suggestion: would love to see a video of the failure of Curt Shillings 38 studios game
I would like that too - Kingdoms of Amalur was awesome... and i would have loved to play Copernicus
Patrick I still want that game to be backwards compatible.
I guess the state of Rhode Island owns the rights tho, so that may be a Problem.
+roskelld but bioware Montreal got shut down though
Stumbled across this channel. Looking forward to watching some more videos. Great content :)
I started with your CoH DoaG and I have watched every one since, this is one of my favorite shows now.
Here even 15 years later Vanguard still has so much potential that it could easily get a whole new life through the emulator (and it actually seems to be going faster and faster in that very direction). It is, by far, the best game ever created, in my humble opinion.
Second best bard class ever, this game was so amazing. I miss it.
nerdSlayer
Above all, Performance was the end all be all reason. The other two was that it was released far too early (which lends credence to your particulars about the team/publishers etc) and because the world was far too expansive without a way to easily travel through it. Not only did performance prevent many new players from sticking around, those who did also had little to no real end game. That did come later but it created a stunted playerbase.
As someone who helped Beta test Everquest in 98/99 I said I would never get into another game with Brad McQuaid again after Vanguard, but regarding Pantheon, he seems to have learned a lot of his lessons, to include taking blame as he did with the Kickstarter. He said it was entirely his fault as he made the choice far too early in the development process to begin the kickstarter. He has also given chief management control to Chris Perkins which covers for that one weakness he has while he remains as creative and procurement director. It sounded good as I read through Visionary Realms charter and structure but I forever remain skeptical. It's a good stance to maintain.
I decided to become interested however and the reason why I ignored my previous stance was because something I realized after 22 years experience in this area was that MMO's take on a new dynamic every ten years. In 1999-2009, you had the EQ/WOW design with regard to the way the world feels, how close the community was, how combat was communicated and performed, etc. After 2009 and largly within 2010, MMO's took on a Dynasty Warriors 4+ feel where they were more MMOAAGs (Massively Multi-player Online Action Adventure Game), a term I coined back in 2011. The dynamic worked well and garnered a lot of attention because it was hugely different and allowed for the branch into the Console demographic. This of course created an over-simplification of these games in the process.
The problem is, MMO's at this point saturated the market and they all started to feel the same. They ran together. Add to that, the community felt more instanced and less personable. The community feel was gone. After almost ten years of this MMO type people are starting to give up on the monotony entirely.
The problem is, nothing stands out. Literally nothing. Bless and other games like it are rehashed with the same MMOAAG dynamic revisiting the same old formula of the last 8+ years. Games like ESO have largely been the leader in this game type but even they are now stale as players are said to only log in and cue up in dungeon finder to replay the same dungeons without having to explore, or go anywhere. It's all based on speed instead of strategy and tactics and everything and everyone is relegated to numbers, values and performance. You also have every player who is themselves a one-man army. Almost everything is soloable and there's no real danger. You don't feel like a real team in a group where each member using their specialties makes the impossible, possible.
There's nothing new that's looking to come along which is why players now are revisiting older games through emulators. In the absence of something new, people return to the old and the old is new again. This is in part why people still to this day enjoy something like P&P Dungeons & Dragons or older style RPG's in a new era like with Divinity: Original Sin as a means to relive the experience of Baulders Gate.
While I don't expect Pantheon or any game like it to ever be hugely successful like WoW or ESO as it's meant to be a niche game, it'll have a dedicated population and for a reason. So we don't have to bounce around the same MMO of the last 8-10 years every 8-15 months all the while never being able to create a stable or close community. Wonder is dead and it seems the only way to bring it back is through giving us the magic that made the games feel as though they did. Combat dynamics that allow for 1st person view with a huge sprawling world to remove the now standard 3rd person 3/4th angle top down view where all you see is your character and the ground most of the time. The next is a close community where grouping is required for meaningful content and where roles are specialized allowing for real teamwork.
There will be those who bounce around the MMOAAG's and stream because of the action and fast paced bling, but this is something else entirely and I'm willing to give Brad one last chance. However, as I said above, I will forever remain skeptical because if this doesn't work, MMO's for all intents and purposes would then be dead, played by a continuously revolving playerbase of zombies who move from MMO to MMO treating it as a single-player game populated with other players.
The world was massive and zoneless and that was awesome. The class system was the best ever. Everyone I met loved their class dearly. With something like sixteen different classes and 3 variations on each, that says a lot.
The problem I saw was that lag was enormous during late beta and even after rollout. A few months later they had fixed this and the game was magnificent. Sadly, you only get one chance at a first impression and most gamers are anything but willing to forgive and try again once they've decided to move on. THAT is what killed the game. It never got a chance due to the initial lag.
There was one key aspect, VG was completely revamped, when they moved from MSG to SOE.
And I mean COMPLETELY. Every single mechanic was changed. One of the continents was almost completely removed.
And that's the major reason, why it was so bugged at the launch.
Do you have any proof this sounds really interesting.
I was one of the first Exemplars in the game. I loved the diplomacy. I was already tired of grinding mobs by that point. So sad this didnt last longer.
Either you forgot to mention or I missed it. Another very unique and interesting aspect in Vanguard was you could become like a Mayor of a town. Or maybe it was your guild. If Mayer you could set stats for how the town functioned, who it was friendly to, what guilds were enemies of the town, etc. It was a really deep system and I think the Diplomacy fed into that system too.
I love these type of videos and i thank the Recommend tab to bring me here.
Brad was heavily involved with creating Pantheo: Rise of the Fallen before he died. They are finishing the game and is expected to be in alpha in 2023
You should do star wars the old republic, its an amazing game but the player count seems to be pretty low.
A low population to be sure but Bioware still creates content for the game fairly regularly so I wouldn't call it dead.
I still saw plenty of people when I last tried it a few months ago, also they still have quite a few more then 1 server running.
It is still played with new content coming. But with the direction most SW games are going to don't see it going on to much longer. He should definitely cover it when it happens however.
SWTOR is not what I call an amazing game. Coming from someone who has 50 hours on 2 chars.
Far from a good game
I was just thinking 'Damn, nothing new to watch on RUclips', and boom, here you are!
I remember, as his graphic system was to some extent innovative. You saw everything far away as if it were a 2D postcard that was gaining detail that when you were approaching until at a certain distance, the 2D elements began to be generated as if they had always been 3D (something impossible to withstand for the computers of the time with that level of detail. Unfortunately, of my group of friends, only I embarked on the Vanguard and that limited me too much. But I do dedicate myself to explore the wolrd as a tourist.
Can you do death of a game on Free Realms? I remember playing it as a kid but I do wonder how it failed so badly
Love the quality of these videos man. Keep it up!
Vanguard could have been something great. It was fun and had fresh idea's sadly they didn't ever fix the game and it is the only mmo I was sad to quit playing. I still remember my fire bird Shaman and kicking butt. I wish they could have found a way to make this one work. I never could stand World of Warcraft. WoW just sucked when it was compared to MMO's like DAoC and Vanguard could have destroyed it too, if they could have found a way to finish and fix their game.
I agree. Vanguards Bard class was the single most amazing class I've ever played. So diverse and so much fun. Vanguard had a LOT going for it despite all of it flaws. Really was nice and polished by the end though. There wasn't many bugs in it that I can remember once it shut down. It had just endured so much negativity over the years it was unable to overcome it.
I love these they are great. Thank you for your hard work. Keep it up bub.
RIP Brad, what an absolute Titan of gaming. Absolute mastermind behind Everquest. That title changed everything.
Why did he pass away does anyone know?
This was one of the good ones. Pantheon deserves more visibility :/
Vanguard's Blood Mage was one of the most fun classes I've played. It still wasn't enough to actually play the game past it's beta. EQ1 I never really payed, because I was into UO and EQ2 was running like sh*t and had too many loading screens.
Btw Microsoft had Asheron's Call 1 (never played) and 2 (only the beta) but this was before Vanguard and with mild success.
First video I watch of yours, and wooow...incredibly well done!
14:40 Everquest 2 was not launched to be more like WoW at all, it was released BEFORE WoW. WoW however was launched because of EQ1, even the developers say that in documentaries. I was part of the Beta team for Vanguard : SoH, and despite the bugs it was very playable right from day 1 and I had a mid-range PC at the time.
This was one I've been looking forward to and hoping you would do. The game would have been great if it wasn't for the technical issues. I played it until it shut down, but the raiding scene died almost a year before that and hardly any new players for years with a lack of performance and bugs improvements meant it had to shut down. The three good things we can take away from this game is: The classes, A focus on hard content and the crafting system. Still the best crafting system I experienced in a MMO. IMO Brad has a huge fault in the death of this game and while he is working on Pantheon, I still pledged $350 for Pantheon, because I miss that kind of world and I took my chances on the game.
This videos are great. A thought came to mind. New MMOs that come into play maybe you can tell what its doing right and things they could do to succeed vs already being dead.
I played this game since day 1. Had a maxed out sorcerer. I actually miss the game. Bard songs killed it. Hard to run on high end pcs killed it...there was a bard glitch that made a song freeze you in place and also kill you....i remember this game so much I could pick it up right now and not skip a beat.
You can't deny the beauty of the world design, it was truly awe inspiring. It's a shame I never got a chance to explore this world. I started late and only got to lvl 10.
I'm a simple man. Nerdslayer puts up a video, I press like. There are very few people I watch that consistently put up high quality and interesting content. I would not be averse to the content being expanded to more categories of games that transcended their expectations and became staples of their respective genres (KOTOR), or games that bombed so horrendously that they themselves became a rating on the chart synonymous with 0/10 (No Man's Sky). Obviously those two games are public spotlight games that need less explaining than other lesser known games. Either way, keep following your passion Nerdslayer.
I played this alot during release, thank you for this video, game me alot of flashbacks
My go to comment about this game across the years.
"Vanguard: Saga of Heros is the best game that nobody ever played."
Everquest is the the rich grandpa of the MMORPG genre. Its direct heir was Everquest II but it had the bastard "spiritual successor" line with Vanguard and now Pantheon. I guess the spiritual successor of a spiritual successor would be a "spiritual lineage", but that's like saying that you should make the CEO of the company the kid from the maid and current CEO, not that CEO's real child who went to business school and in currently working for the company.
Dec 2, 2020 There IS an EMU....still under construction but you can play it...to about 30-40. A lot of stuff is up...a lot of stuff doesnt. There are special GM type options you can use.
I did the Unicorn Quest in 2018....got to about 35 via quest lines and hit the end.
Worth playing
5K+ hours playing Vanguard I can confirm the sentiment of this video. IMO if Vanguard had launched with the polish of other titles and a better engine we might all be still playing it today. RIP
Thanks for this video and yes even though Vanguard was crippled with issues, the game is still among my favorite last played MMORPG.
This game was fantastic and had a lot of new ideas that was a first for MMO's. If this had come out now they could have saved it / fixed it with a free to play model...but back in this era MMO's getting just left to die was very common. I remember the technical and performance issues...it probably needed about just 1 more year of development.
"playable by the end of the year" their site is still talking about pre-alpha sessions in 2022 lmao
Great vids dude. Might I recommend death of Shadowbane? One of the earliest pvp mmos.
Scootaloo Gamer He did it!