Vanguard News

Naeya

Naeya

Cadet
Clicky
May 15, 2007 San Diego, CA – Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a global leader in the online games industry, today announced that it has completed a transaction to purchase key assets of Sigil Games Online, Inc. Through the deal, SOE now owns Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil’s tentpole property, a highly-successful massively multiplayer online game. The Sigil acquisition also builds on SOE’s successful strategy of cultivating game development studios around the world to further boost the company’s capabilities. The announcement was made by John Smedley, President, Sony Online Entertainment.
Click to expand...

Here's Smedley's announcement.

Smed said:
Hello Everyone,

Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.

We are also officially opening up forums. In the past, our deal with Sigil didn't allow for this, but as with our other games we feel this is an important part of communicating with the playerbase. You can expect a strong presence from our community team as well as the development team members. While we realize that Sigil had said they wouldn't open up general forums, at SOE we feel this hampers our efforts to communicate effectively with the players. We will continue to support the fansites in a big way, and will be contacting many of them directly to discuss what this change means. By no means do we want to lose the strong fansite support by making this change, but we do think it's important to have a forum for players to communicate directly with SOE.

A few other items I wanted to mention

1. Brad McQuaid will be consultant to SOE as a creative advisor for Vanguard. Dave Gilbertson will be the person directly responsible for the day-to-day management of both the Sigil Carlsbad office as well as Vanguard.

2. We do not plan on making any major changes to Vanguard. Any changes are going to come from the team itself. We aren't mandating any big changes to the game. We've learned a thing or two with our experiences with the NGE and don't plan on repeating mistakes from the past and not listening to the players.

3. We do plan on spending a lot of time cleaning up legacy issues with Vanguard and making sure the game's performance improves.

By way of comparison, this team is approx. the same size as the EQ2 team and I feel like that team has done an amazing job improving EQ2 since it's launch. We intend to do the same thing for Vanguard and it is our hope that the players feel like we're doing right by them.

Smed
Click to expand...
 
"2. We do not plan on making any major changes to Vanguard. Any changes are going to come from the team itself. We aren't mandating any big changes to the game. We've learned a thing or two with our experiences with the NGE and don't plan on repeating mistakes from the past and not listening to the players."

That's the first confession I've EVER heard them make in any way, shape, form, or fashion concerning SWG.
 
I think you misunderstand. Brad hasn't been sucked back into SOE. What you're reading is "Brad has been paid-off to stay the hell away from our and Sigil's offices and is nothing but a figure piece that will disappear into vapor at the end of the paid-off contract he is now under."
 
f13.net forums - f13.net - Index

An interview with a freshly-axed Sigil employee. Very interesting read. This sheds a tremendous amount of light as to what went on in the background.

In summary: creativity stifled. For the love of all that is good, Simultronics, don't do this to your employees/design team.
 
Just letting you know to take those interviews with a grain of salt.

Glip has said that that interview is a mix of fact and fiction. I'm not sure what's truth and what's not, and I'm not here to say it's all false either. I'm just saying that the fired employee was definitely miffed and seems to have embellished a bit in his/her anger.
 
OH I totally agree with you! A company that doesn't use all of their employees to their full potential is cutting its nose off to spite its face.

From what I've seen in the years I've played Simutronics games, I don't see this happening here.
 
Simutronics does not appear to have anything like the working model that Sigil did, from what few sources we have available to us.

Vanguard may survive this and be transformed into a good game, but I doubt it. I personally think it'll be pushed into the background like SWG with favor shown to the more up-and-coming projects in SOE's lineup.
 
I wouldn't believe EVERYTHING in that interview, but the no scripting language part.. I would doubt that's made up. If it's true, it's truly amazing what they accomplished.
 
I also think the one QA during the majority of the development might be true, too. That's insane.

I'm reading the comments on the f13 forum, and it's interesting to hear reactions from other companies' developers on there. There was another ex-Sigil employee posting on it, and I got to read a few snippets (pasted from another board) that Nino said.
 
I think Todd/Nino is a great guy, knows what he's doing, and has a strong devotion to the game, but I was always concerned that there wasn't more tools given to the music department and that Nino should have been strictly on the music composition. The music was decent to good, but it was chopped up and put into a pre-made program that (apparently) went with the engine, almost like a glorified MIDI sequencer. It seemed like the creativity and feel of the music was stunted as a result. If he had creative freedom and the devoted time, he might have really released a great soundtrack for the game.

As much as some people would rather turn on their favorite MP3's, I feel that music is important for the mood of the game. It shouldn't feel rigid and forced if the technology is out there to make it good.
 
/chuckle

I'm out of the loop by a day or two :smiley:

I don't really have much to say, other than it's sad. Sad for the people that put so much heart and soul into the game. I liked Elrar, I really liked Aurspex. He's the one that supplied me with the Telon calendar system that for some reason was created and sitting somewhere but wasn't ever mentioned anywhere in the game. They were responsive and helpful, really seemed to love their lore and be more than happy to share what they could.

I don't really know what to think. I liked Sigil, I'm one of the ones that got caught up in Brad's hype before beta started and was hugely let down when I saw the actual game. I gave it my all, hoping it would get better but I really don't know if it would have under Sigil. Will it under SoE? Meh, SoE is never solid one way or the other.

In New Targanor, a beautiful city that no one visited because of travel time, lag and lack of content there was a temple (the only one I know of in game). When you went through the two big doors the first thing you saw was a giant stone slab with a styalization of the Sigil symbol, the rivers meeting. The name of the place was "Sigil of Ages Past". Poignant.
 
To quote Keanu Reeves: "Whoa."

I think HBO is buying rights to this story for their next miniseries to follow Rome and The Sopranos.
 

Similar threads

Xblood
Vanguard
6 7 8
Replies
150
Views
8K
Seeria
Seeria
HJ-Navarre
Vanguard - Free Month
Replies
2
Views
670
Jaraeth
J
M
Vanguard SoH
Replies
8
Views
755
blur
blur
Back
Top