Aradune Returns to EQlive

[Swish]

Oh I could go on...how about trying their hardest to make it run only on the highest spec PCs? When Burning Crusade was released for WoW I had a brief stint trying to get EQ2 to load. Slow and sluggish was the only way I could play - my comp just couldn't handle the specs required.

Meanwhile, people in China on terrible spec PCs were running WoW no problems.

EQ2 took too many risks, changed too much, and like you say...the combat wasn't great either. Vanguard would have wiped the floor with it if they'd spent the time/effort putting the bugs right.

[SirAlvarex]

Having played both EQ2 and Vanguard at launch, Vanguard was so horribly broken it was insane. Boring combat, no end game, crashing zones/servers, no sense of direction all claimed a game that had some beautiful vistas and some nice promise. But the character models and execution was flawed.

EQ2 was much more interesting at release, albeit I had a halfway decent computer at the time. The raiding scene was boring, since it was basically hitting up the same instances each week for barely upgraded loot.

Combat was subpar up until GU13, but that happened after like 3 months of release. That's when they changed it so that soloing was possible.

I just think that the consensus of Vanguard gets clouded because it's always "the game we all thought we could have." It's easy to create an ideal. But they failed to execute it. And SOE actually did try to save Vanguard. They get too much of a bad wrap for "destroying vanguard and everquest" when they always owned Everquest and put money into Vanguard to make it actually playable.

[Clark]

Originally Posted by SirAlvarex [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Having played both EQ2 and Vanguard at launch, Vanguard was so horribly broken it was insane. Boring combat, no end game, crashing zones/servers, no sense of direction all claimed a game that had some beautiful vistas and some nice promise. But the character models and execution was flawed.

EQ2 was much more interesting at release, albeit I had a halfway decent computer at the time. The raiding scene was boring, since it was basically hitting up the same instances each week for barely upgraded loot.

Combat was subpar up until GU13, but that happened after like 3 months of release. That's when they changed it so that soloing was possible.

I just think that the consensus of Vanguard gets clouded because it's always "the game we all thought we could have." It's easy to create an ideal. But they failed to execute it. And SOE actually did try to save Vanguard. They get too much of a bad wrap for "destroying vanguard and everquest" when they always owned Everquest and put money into Vanguard to make it actually playable.

that makes me glad I never tried it

[Fianna]

Aronir said: ↑

“Okay, so I think it's finally time to answer the great question that has plagued mankind since the dawn of the game: how did the original Fiery Avenger quest actually work?”

That was a mess up on our part and I take the blame. The first quest involved talking to several sphinx and figuring out their riddles. This was begun, but then devs were distracted with other priorities. So you couldn't finish the quest (or even get far on it), but we announced it worked. When later we realized it didn't work, we ended up throwing the whole initial quest idea out and put a quest in that actually worked. This was, unfortunately, some time later.

This happening was not something we were proud of, so we never talked about it. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] Also my mistake.

-Brad

Interesting, the original FA quest involved some sphinxes with riddles. I bet that is what those sphinx in Rathe Mts were supposed to be for!

[SirAlvarex]

Originally Posted by Fianna [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Interesting, the original FA quest involved some sphinxes with riddles. I bet that is what those sphinx in Rathe Mts were supposed to be for!

Finally an explanation to those weirdos. I always wondered why they were there.

Makes me wonder what other oddities throughout EQ are parts of unfinished quests.

[Gadwen]

I heard he was brought in as the lead cosmetic item designer for the EQ Next game shop.

[Deverell]

I also think he really does share responsibility for why EQ classic was the way it was

While true, it also has to be said that he basically copy-pasted almost every EQ concept from a MUD called Sojourn where he played and got the inspiration for EQ. The races and classes are basically identical, the world is very similar, the types of gameplay are the same, and the spell and skill system was pretty similar as well. The only thing that was truly unique and innovative about EQ was actually the concept of aggro and tanking. Sojourn just had mobs periodically switch targets at random and then the tank had to use a skill called rescue to get the mob back. Everquest made the process much more dynamic and organic, and it came to be the foundation of combat gameplay.

[Briscoe]

Thousands of unsolved quests!

[Drayc]

Well let's see here I don't know all the details but here are some things I was part of.

During the Dev of Vanguard I was working as program manager for a website called File planet which was handling a lot of mmo betas.... we were working on Vanguard... through Microsoft who was publishing the game and allowing the Dev of the game to take its time... they wanted it polished.

Now something happened I don't know.. Microsoft was spending too much with no return possibly... again I don't know.. but next thing I know... I'm no longer dealing with Microsoft... I'm dealing with SoE and we are going into open beta phases right away... with launch soon...

I truely feel Vanguards downfall was SoEs complete fault...


Heau-
Drayc-

[webrunner5]

Wow, Interesting stuff.