Lot of opinions, and conspiracy theories about VG, and everyone has their own take on it. Here's mine as the technical lead behind VG's most [in]famous, visited, and extensive fansite during the game's production.
Microsoft pulled the plug not only on Vanguard, but other internal-to-Microsoft MMO projects that were late stage as well as a result of some restructuring and consolidation that they initiated in their games division early 2006. Up until then, the MS producer handling Vanguard was committing to see the project through to polished completion, funding wise, where Sigil was controlling the reigns. But yes, VG was pushing the bounds of acceptability a bit, pushing the release out and over-budget. The scale of the game was massive, though.
A credit to the Sigil team that created the foundation, many of the ambitions for VG were, in my mind, ultimately largely achieved, which almost no other MMO even today has achieved:
- Totally free-flying mounts that didn't create undue advantage vs. game design (game was designed with them in mind).
- Very distinct adventuring classes, where the play action/style is very different.
- A crafting system that rivaled the adventuring system in sophistication.
- Even a third complete game play system (diplomacy) that rivaled crafting or adventuring.
- Completely seamless world--no "zoning" (even going indoor<->outdoor) anywhere, except when teleporting.
- Functioning player-made/controlled boats.
- Player-made housing and guild structures.
- Music system that gradually changed the music as you traveled to new areas rather than abrupt changes.
- Almost entirely hand-crafted custom content. Hard-pressed to find "copy/paste" content in the art design, except where necessary (things like trees, etc.).
- No "fake doors". Every door visible was openable. Every window was "see through" from both interior and exterior. Every building was enterable.
- etc.
But the MS restructuring was an incidental business decision that had nothing directly to do with VG. VG ended up on the chopping block.
It's all but public knowledge that McQuaid and Smedley are friends. If you've got a company with 150 employees and spent 4 years on a game with a year (or two) left to go and suddenly lose funding, what would you do? McQuaid went to Smedley for a bailout and a bailout is what he got, but with strings attached. SOE and Sigil signed a deal to co-publish the game, McQuaid having just bought the rights to it from Microsoft.
The last year of the game's development is where, I think most would agree, you saw the most fleshing out of the game's features/content/technologies, etc. There's a reason for that, a result of some shuffling that occurred in the roles and responsibilities within the Producer org inside Sigil.
But yeah, one year wasn't enough time to finish it off from that point. SOE is not as committed as Microsoft was to see the game to a polished state before release. SOE, which is their infamous
modus operandi on all of their games to date, stood rigidly firm on the expected launch date, game readiness be damned. And launch they did, just under a year later on Jan 2007.
A mere three months after launch, SOE deemed the project a failure and yanked funding. Sigil went bankrupt (don't think they got as far as Chap 11), so, McQuaid and Butler sold their company and its assets to SOE wholly. SOE fired half the Sigil staff on the spot, moved much of the remaining staff to other projects, and left VG floundering. They put very little if anything into fixing the game or marketing it at first (and put almost nothing comparatively into marketing the game at or pre-launch, IMO).
So here's where I agree/disagree with some of the above posters. VG did have management problems (IMO) up until the SOE co-publishing deal--variety of reasons which I won't get into. I think most of the current implementation of the game was done in the last year of its development. But a large share of the problem in its launch state also comes from MS backing out abruptly, and SOE coming in. Smedley is a business guy through and through, and I think he quickly felt that he'd been handed a raw deal and treated VG that way when what it really needed was additional investment for, say, another 6 months (they eventually did, but not until much later) BEFORE launching it. But as I said, SOE's M.O. is launch first, ask questions later.
I was relatively close to the Sigil development team during the game's production and that's the way I remember it playing out.
Sigil was founded in Jan 2002. That means from founding the company to launch, it was a 5 year project. But you don't start out with 150 employees overnight. Sigil didn't have funding until May '02 when they signed with Microsoft. So let's give them the first year as a new company to sort things out. That means VG was a 4 year project, and still managed to produce all of those revolutions in MMO game design (albeit buggy). Not bad, IMO.