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Make a wish and blow out the candles: Vanguard celebrates five years
In the midst of the cold winds of January, it's the warmth of the Winter Solstice that keeps Vanguard players alive and happy. With Vanguard's fifth anniversary here at last, SOE is blowing on the coals of this simmering MMO in the hopes of raising the flames of community interest. First up is the Winter Solstice in-game event, which started on January 21st. Players can participate by locating the event NPC in New Targonor. On next Sunday, the 29th, the Vanguard CMs will be throwing an anniversary bash and handing out gifts on the Telon server starting at 1:00 p.m. EST. SOE's also throwing a Facebook contest to give away one of five in-game items. Interested parties are encouraged to head over to Vanguard's Facebook page for more information on how to enter. Massively will also be on the scene for Vanguard's fifth celebration this weekend with two special livestreams on Massively TV, so stay tuned!
Vanguard re-review finds game much improved
We cover a lot of fantasy titles here at Massively, but admittedly one game we haven't been watching as closely of late is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The game had its fair share of issues (and some drama) surrounding its launch, but it's been quite a while since Vanguard opened up its servers to MMO gamers. How much has the game improved since that time? That's a question that Stephanie Morrow from MMORPG.com hopes to answer with her Vanguard Re-Review. She writes,"A lot can change in two years, especially when you have a team of dedicated developers working on it and a community that is willing to stand by no matter what happens." Morrow looks at the current state of the game in terms of its technical merits, game play, and customer service. She also judges Vanguard in the light of the game's community that could either make or break the game. "The game would be nothing without its community. Players are passionate about the game, you can find them everywhere," she writes. Ultimately, Morrow's views on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes are positive, but she's quick to point out the title's flaws as well. If you're curious about how this title has shaped up, check out Stephanie Morrow's "Vanguard Re-Review" over at MMORPG.com.Are you currently playing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes? If so, do you feel the game has improved measurably since you began?
Vanguard gets a new community manager
It looks like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has just promoted a new Community Relations Manager by the name of Joel Sasaki, also known as Raijinn on the forums. For those of you who were more familiar with Amnerys, we are assured that she will still be around in the community.Sasaki has worked at SOE for six years and has been in the Community Relations department for half of that time. He's worked on other games like EverQuest Online Adventures and PlanetSide, where he will remain as their Community Manager as well. With Vanguard's two-year anniversary fast approaching, Sasaki says he is looking forward to the new content coming down the pipe, and interacting with Vanguard's community at large.
Vanguard free for now, for past account-holders [update]
Update: Warcry and SOE are hosting an IRC chat with developers from Vanguard tonight, giving players a chance to ask them some questions. Go here for the full details, and we will post a summary of the event later in the day.This may not be quite as good as a free lunch, but if you've had a Vanguard account in the past, Sony Online Entertainment is willing to foot the bill between the 19th of December and the 17th of January for you to try the game out again. Just to re-emphasize -- you need to have had an account for the game beforehand.The news comes from Vanguard Vault, and they picked it up from SOE's podcast. If you do choose to get back into Vanguard, you'll be able to take part in some of the holiday festivities that have been introduced in Game Update 3, as well as other updates that this patch has brought, which includes some raid content.If you have for some reason uninstalled the game already, you can download it again here.[Thanks, sevenwind]
Vanguard's much-anticipated Game Update 3 is live
The new phase of Vanguard's one-step-at-a-time Game Update 3 has gone live just in time for the holidays. The update adds a major new raiding dungeon called the Ancient Port Warehouse, two outdoor raids, and full raid functionality so players can take advantage of all this new content.Additionally, the Vanguard team has overhauled the city of Khal to paradoxically look and perform better on all PCs. There are a few other more general performance optimizations in the update as well. Finally, six new housing areas have been added, and all the holiday content (flying reindeer!) is now in the game.It's an enormous and highly anticipated update, and hopefully it's a significant step towards recovery from the game's very disappointing launch.[Thanks, Ricky!]
Sigil to have closer relationship relationship with Sony
Isn't love great? Sigil games online, makers of the semi-popular Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, have noticed that their not doing as well as they initially thought. In fact, they've come to the point that Sigil's CEO, Brad McQuaid, has admitted that Sony Online Entertainment is thinking about taking the extra step and acquiring the company. He said that in the acquisition, "SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard - our relationship is going to become even tighter - much tighter, [so that the game can] both continue to be worked on and improved and debugged and optimized."Vanguard isn't reaching mass-market appeal for a variety of reasons, says McQuaid. One is the marketing campaign -- the game doesn't require as much team effort and time as, say, Everquest. This wasn't explained very well. Also, the specs requirement were too high for early January 2007. He thinks a re-launch would be the best, with a new campaign and tweaked system. How will they do that? If Sigil gets funded and supported. Thus, the Sony Online Entertainment talks. Will we see Vanguard coming to the PS3? Who knows. We'll keep on this, since acquisitions are great.
SOE's Vanguard rushes to retail Jan. 30
SOE and Sigil have upturned some eyebrows today with the announcement that their MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes will be released on January 30; just two weeks after Blizzard drops the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion. While it seems like poor timing for any new MMO franchise to enter the market, there's also pervading doubt that Vanguard has been thoroughly beta tested. SOE has already become (somewhat) infamous for a string of ill-received alterations to its big brands, notably EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies. If Vanguard is indeed rushed, such a careless release would only deal further damage to the studio's image.
Deep Silver offers loads of new media for GC 2006
WorthPlaying has posted dozens of new screens and trailers from games that will be distributed by Deep Silver in Europe. The German publisher made these visuals available as part of their marketing efforts for this week's Games Convention 2006 in Leipzig. Among the games represented are future North American releases Gothic 3, Mage Knight Apocalypse, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, and expansion packs SpellForce 2: Dragon Storm and EverQuest II: Echoes of Faydwer.
Was Microsoft's vision for Vanguard Vista exclusive? [Update 1]
Sigil Games, developers of the upcoming MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, shocked quite a few people by announcing that they were buying the publishing rights from Microsoft so that they could co-publish the title with Sony Online Entertainment. We've already provided some speculation about what the "varying visions and direction for the title's development" between Microsoft and Sigil were, but a tipster (who asked to remain unnamed) from E3 provides another possible reason for the split. Our tipster claims to have spoken to several developers working at Sigil and at another development company that has Microsoft as a publisher -- we'd say the meat of the tip is on the same level of credibility as someone saying that the Government is tapping your phone (yes, I made a political joke -- the first comment to judge my political affiliation wins my apathy!).According to our tipster, Microsoft intended to make Vanguard a Vista-exclusive title and Sigil didn't like it. The fact that XP users wouldn't have been able to play the game (limiting the user base quite drastically) and Windows Vista's notoriously slippery release date being the obvious disadvantages of such a move on the part of Sigil. If true, the motivation for Microsoft would have been that the title would be the first MMO to take advantage of Live Anywhere, Microsoft's online games platform which blends Xbox 360, PC and mobile phone devices: more Vista sales = profit!It's credible that Microsoft wanted to use Vanguard as the first MMO to work with Live Anywhere but that Sigil didn't want its game to be Microsoft's guinea pig and therefore bought the publishing rights. With Vista around the corner, Microsoft wants to provide as much incentive for gamers to upgrade and by making big name games playable exclusively on Vista it can gain that incentive. At the very least we get a kick out of discussing the vague PR explanations of the reasons behind leaving a game's publisher during the beta stage. It's impossible for us to believe that simple, meaningless "varying visions" caused this massive, late in the game move.Update 1: Brad McQuaid (Sigil CEO, creator of MMORPG Everquest) responds by saying "false rumor", but Joystiq commentator Jack Slater cleverly rebukes: "personally I would just deny everything if I was him, as there is no legal obligation for me to tell the truth on the forums but there is likely a legal obligation to keep the reason for leaving Microsoft undisclosed." Meanwhile, Ctrl+Alt+Del daydreams about how the meeting between McQuiad, Microsoft and Sony went. Funny stuff.
