I really do love what a train wreck mmo’s can be. Here is some news regarding Vanguard and the company that made the game Sigil. The first bit comes from Grouchy Gamer:

Brad McQuaid has been an absentee manager at Sigil for months. Not only has there been a leadership vacuum at Sigil, with the employees there left twisting in the wind, but I have been able to confirm that Brad hasn’t even bothered to be at the office. Since last year.

The above makes the next bit of text from F13.net seem a little clearer:

…at approximately 4:30PM today, Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot. By whom? Doesn’t seem to have been Brad McQuaid, if it was, nobody is talking.

It’s sad that miss management like this happens. There were parts of the game I enjoyed. But I’m not sad seeing how my pc that could play the game died on me. It will be entertaining to see what happens once SOE takes over.

This train wreck will have to do until those assholes making Thrones of Chaos surface again.

Edit
Looks like it’s official now.

Edit 2
The drama continues. Here is F13.net‘s interview with an ex Sigil employee and then their interview with Brad McQuaid.

I made it to level 18 in Vanguard yesterday.

I get some new stuff to play with. For starters I can heal and cure poison and disease. I also get a pet and a damage buff. I’m still enjoying the game. I figured I would have got sick of it by now.

I made level 14 the other day. I’ve played everyday since I got the game. There is something about the way it echoes back to the old days of EverQuest that really makes me like it. I only dabbled with the original EQ back in day. But I’ve heard enough stories to know I missed out on lots of fun.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying Vanguard so much. And that I have no complaints, other than the 20 gig install size. Sure I could complain if I spent lots of time looking for things to complain about. I’m just having to much fun playing my ranger. Which really is a change of pace for me. Stealthing around mobs and being able to take out a mob with a ranged weapon.

I’m also like the fact that the game is a little riskier than current mmorpg’s. I like that it takes forever to go from point a to point b. I like that when I die I leave a body with my gear on it. I guess I got sick of how some of these games dumbed this things down so much that it made these activities trivial. Granted it’s not as bad as EQ in the beginning. You can recall to your bind spot once an hour (in game time) and you can bind items so that they stay on you when you respawn.

I just wish I could play this one at work like I used to do with Dark Age of Camelot. The significant system specs insure that won’t happen anytime in the future. Oh well.

I picked up a retail copy of Vanguard Saga of Heroes while checking out the new Wal-Mart in my area. I’m very happy that with the additional gig of ram and the new video card that the game is actually playable now. And I’m not kidding about being playable. In the beta with only 1 gig of ram the game was horrid. I maybe got 10-20 FPS in open areas and 1-10 in huge populated areas. Now I get an average of 25-64 FPS at a resolution of 1280×1024 with settings on balanced.

I’m playing a ranger, which is a first for me. It’s a nice change of pace to have a little stealth mixed in with a little ranged combat to go with my usual melee type class I go for. It’s started to dawn on me how old school the game is with it’s death penalty. Which you here in every review of the game. They also didn’t hide the fact the game was the way it is. It’s just not something I’m used to.

I died a few times not noticing the exp I lost each time I died. Then it slowly came to my realization that I was also leaving behind items on my corpse. There is an option to bind certain equipment so it stays with you when you die. But it’s makes whatever I do a more thought out process when I start to engage in combat. Something I don’t worry about in some of the other games in the mmorpg genre. Overall I am enjoying the game. Which does surprise me.

Beta 5 is live. With it the nda is gone. I offer up screen shots from the game. My computer is mid range I guess. It should be noted these screens are from before beta 5 and that is why it looks like my character is attacking with no weapon. He is attacking with a longsword. Beta 5 since has fixed it for some it appears. I still can not see the helmet I’m wearing. 35 shots total, these are my favorites:

The game runs like shit. It chugs and it is not playable as far as I’m concerned. I can run lots of nice looking games and for what it looks like there is no reason it should chug the way it does. It’s also not fun. Which may be from the chugging. But the world and characters just lack personality. Again this is all my opinion. But Vanguard is not the game for me. It’s going open beta here real soon. And retail by the end of the month. In it’s current form I don’t see it lasting long. Good look and good riddance.

Hurray a beta invite to Vanguard Saga of Heroes. I love beta invites.

Dear Turk,

We are delighted to extend this invitation to you to participate in the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes beta Phase 3. Below are the instructions needed to get you started on a path towards Telon. We have made the process as painless as possible.

Here are the required specs for Vanguard:

• Windows® 2000/XP
• 100% DirectX 9.0c compatible computer
• 100% DirectX compatible keyboard or input device
• Processor 2.4 GHz Intel processor or 2400+ or higher model AMD processor
• 512 MB RAM
• Vertex and Pixel shader 2.0 compatible hardware with 128MB of texture memory
• 100%DirectX compatible sound card
• 56K + Internet Connection
• 16X Speed DVD-ROM
• 20 Gigabytes Hard Drive Space

After you have completed the download of the launch pad, please open that file and run the vanguard.exe from inside the winzip file. This will create a Vanguard icon on your desktop. Run that file to begin the download of the actual beta 3 files. Please be aware that your download times may be long!

We sincerely appreciate your support and interest in Vanguard and in Sigil Games Online. We look forward to seeing you in game.

Should you experience any problems or need more clarification for any of these instructions, please contact us at customer support.

Sincerely,

The Vanguard Dev Team
Sigil Games Online, Inc.

Ug. I was excited until this bullet point:

• 20 Gigabytes Hard Drive Space

And then they go on to tell me:

Please be aware that your download times may be long!

No shit, huh? I sure hope that when this thing is done that when people buy it in stores they don’t need 20+ gigs for the install. 20 gigs is what? Four or Five dvds? That is just crazy. But I suppose that is they way of the future.

This is the first and last post I talk about Vanguard. As anything in the future is illegal as long the non disclosure agreement is active.