Monthly Archives: May 2007

Vanguard, Sigil and The Vision

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I don’t want to say I called it early, but I did call it. And early.

Batshit crazy, uh huh, uh huh

(source post, where I blew my first Vanguard beta application cuz I was screwing around and prematurely submitted.)

Anyways, this week, all the speculation about what to do with a problem like Vanguard was resolved when it was assimilated into the Sony Online collective.

Don’t take my word for it. Let the reblogs do the talking:

f13.net — superlative job on nailing this story:

The Short and Morbid Tale of Sigil Games Online — The blood bath at Sigil Games Online when those, sans-parachutes, were shoved out of the plane. Figuratively.

Also, The Long and Morbid Tale of Sigil Games Online: Interview Edition — an interview with a freshly-fired Sigil Games employee. Interesting and engaging, but it really needs more swearing. I’d be swearing. And bitter. And probably drunk.

And there’s more! The Hub of All Blame: A Postmortem — a phone interview with McQuaid, including some pretty good gossip, but again, not nearly enough swearing. Or, presumably, drinking.

(An aside, anyone else getting a Yoko Ono vibe about the situation over there?)

Krones, of Plaguelands, wrote some sizzling commentary that I enjoyed (includes swearing):

Sigil collapses like a house of cards

Official: SOE scoops up Vanguard and about half of Sigil’s former staff — SOE’s Smedley announces the changes afoot for Vanguard.

Ex-Vanguard dev throws it down in a tell-all interview

Bonus! details from Grouchy Gamer: Brad McQuaid Abandoned Vanguard, Sigil — includes swearing and bitterness.

Lots of entertaining reading.

My favorite part was using a lackey to fire everyone. That’s sooo messed up.

LOTRO Lorebook

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Lorebook home - LOTRO LorebookWhile I love the idea of the newly beta’d Lord of the Rings Online Lorebook — basically, a LOTRO wiki with game info of all flavors — and I love the idea that the lorebook will be editable by players in the future, (though I KNOW that will be a nightmare to manage and police), but, … isn’t the home page a little too WoWish?

I realize that aged parchment has to be yellowed or weathered in some way, but I would have steered clear of Bright! Gold! parchment and maybe gone for browner aging or the palest of yellows. The metal borders add to the Warcraft feel too, although they’re using something similar on the LOTRO main page and I’m not getting the same vibe.

If it was me, I’d be a little sensitive to the WoW-clone wisecracks and I’d make sure the look was unique enough so I could say, “what in the hell are you people talking about?”

Banished from Middle Earth

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This is possibly Lord of the Rings Online’s first big controversy: Turbine is handing out unfounded bans. How fun! (cuz it’s not me.)

Sheeba of the Gladden server wrote:

A member of my kinship was just banned for an unfounded accusation of powerleveling because he is 49. I myself am 48, as are many others at this point. This is a person I play with on ventrilo and know that he isn’t powerleveling or a gold farmer etc. Many people are getting handed these perma bans for no reason.

… and several other banned players climb aboard and relate their stories.

There’s no official word yet on what’s up, just speculation at this point, but wouldn’t it be great if Turbine was banning high level players because they were concerned about the players’ health? Something like, “We’re worried that you’re exhibiting an unhealthy fascination with our game. Also, you’re overusing our resources. $10 or $15 a month for 24/7 play is unreasonable. Thanks for playing! Have a good life.”

Financially speaking, a game house’s profit margin on a casual player subscription is many times that of a hardcore player, maybe the gaming companies should start booting people for playing too much. All I’d ask is that they’re honest, and entertaining, about it.

“Dear Former Subscriber,

Go outside for heaven’s sake. Also, personal hygiene is a requirement of modern society. This is not optional, as you seem to believe.

Loser.

Regards,
Soon-to-be-even-more-profitable Gaming Company”

UPDATE: Darn. Looks like Turbine is looking into this and will provide customer service, which isn’t very entertaining at all.