Quote:
Originally Posted by WokeCat
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I remember seeing in magazines about how if you had a $6,000 NorthWest computer, the game would run amazing, but I just couldn't bring myself to squeeze the trigger.
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I had a newer, but average-quality PC and it ran Vanguard decently enough that performance was not a serious complaint. I think the issue was more a case of poor optimization and hardware/drivers: If you happened to have a system basically similar to what they did their very limited tuning for, you were okay-ish, otherwise, it was touch-and-go. A lot of folks with nominally superior computers to my own reported crippling performance issues.
I don't think Vanguard is unfairly maligned--it did have a great many problems, after all. I do think that under the mountain of problems there was a good game hidden in there. That being said, I also think there's an element of "wrong game at the wrong time." Vanguard was something of an anti-WoW trying to release right at the peak of Warcraft's popular growth phase. Even if VG had been complete and stable, I expect it would not have done all that well commercially just due to the timing.
As for McQuaid, his most important skills were on the PR and promotion side of things. He was very good at drumming up interest and corporate support, at least until Vanguard turned into a fiasco. The idea of 3D MUDs was not a new idea in the mid 90's--dang near anyone who had logged onto such games imagined sticking them in a realtime/3D environment--but not many people could convince major corporations to bankroll such a project.
Danth