Sony Buys Sigil

[Caelum]

http://www.soepress.com/release.asp?i=111
http://www.joystiq.com/2007/05/16/so...v-sigil-games/

Smedleys words on it

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

[WickedAngel]

I pity the players of Vanguard.

[Codesage]

countdown to players being teleported into space....

[DigitalMocking]

Originally Posted by WickedAngel

I pity the players of Vanguard.

I pitied them after playing the beta, nothing has changed much.

Its not a good game. Its got lots of ideas, but no overall art and play direction. Just a bunch of nerds sitting around saying "hey, this would be cool if it was in our game" instead of deciding how the game as a whole would play.

[ChaosPhoenix]

Originally Posted by WickedAngel

I pity the players of Vanguard.

SOE is actually their best hope.

http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561

Read, Ex-Sigil employee gives the dirt on MS and Sigil just being so insanely stupid, it's amazing the game came out at all.

[DigitalMocking]

Originally Posted by ChaosPhoenix

SOE is actually their best hope.

http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561

Read, Ex-Sigil employee gives the dirt on MS and Sigil just being so insanely stupid, it's amazing the game came out at all.

wow, that's damning on so many levels.

[Efflixi]

Originally Posted by ChaosPhoenix

SOE is actually their best hope.

http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561

Read, Ex-Sigil employee gives the dirt on MS and Sigil just being so insanely stupid, it's amazing the game came out at all.

Holy shit, no wonder the game failed miserably!

[Darklight Adept]

Originally Posted by Efflixi

Holy shit, no wonder the game failed miserably!

yeah, considering how little they responded to the player base during alpha/beta, this came as no surprise to me.

I was more amazed by how little that article differed from what I had thought happened in my mind. That SOE was nearly completely hands-off until the buyout shocked me though. The way the game was going down the shitter during beta I thought SOE would have had more to do with that.

[DigitalMocking]

Originally Posted by Darklight Adept

yeah, considering how little they responded to the player base during alpha/beta, this came as no surprise to me.

I was more amazed by how little that article differed from what I had thought happened in my mind. That SOE was nearly completely hands-off until the buyout shocked me though. The way the game was going down the shitter during beta I thought SOE would have had more to do with that.

Brad's an asshole, he's been an egotistical asshole since EQ and nothing has changed. I'm sure he lied, cheated and did whatever he could to make sony believe they didn't need to step in.

Worst part is, after meeting him at a few EQ cons early on, he really believes his own hype.

I feel bad for those who liked vanguard, wanted to play it, or believed in anything they were told along the way. The game is basically dead now, its just a matter of time before SOE has to shut it down.

[ytzombe]

CompUSA had the collectors edition of Vanguard for $20 and even then I turned it down.

I wonder if it is worth it to go back to Star Wars Galaxies.

[DigitalMocking]

Originally Posted by ytzombe

CompUSA had the collectors edition of Vanguard for $20 and even then I turned it down.

I wonder if it is worth it to go back to Star Wars Galaxies.

1) good call on turning it down.
2) No. That's another dead franchise, but LucasArts has been footing the bills for a while, I don't think they want the game to die.

[Darklight Adept]

Originally Posted by DigitalMocking

Brad's an asshole, he's been an egotistical asshole since EQ and nothing has changed. I'm sure he lied, cheated and did whatever he could to make sony believe they didn't need to step in.

Worst part is, after meeting him at a few EQ cons early on, he really believes his own hype.

I feel bad for those who liked vanguard, wanted to play it, or believed in anything they were told along the way. The game is basically dead now, its just a matter of time before SOE has to shut it down.

Yeah, it's a shame they spent so much effort publicizing and hyping the game instead of, you know, working on it, and making it live up to the hype. although, as I told CP, the thing about only having one QA guy made perfect sense. I can imagine how stressed out that guy must have been It is no wonder they couldn't squash bugs very well in beta.

[ytzombe]

Originally Posted by DigitalMocking

1) good call on turning it down.
2) No. That's another dead franchise, but LucasArts has been footing the bills for a while, I don't think they want the game to die.

thats a shame, SWG could have been great, but oh well.

[Darklight Adept]

Originally Posted by ytzombe

thats a shame, SWG could have been great, but oh well.

SWG Comes out, mostly incomplete. LucasArts tries to overhaul it with SWG 2.0, and Fails. so SOE tries to Overhaul it with SWG 3.0 and fails.

No one realized that the game was always a lot of fail, and should never have been released

[poodlehat]

knowing sony, this is not a good thing