Choose My Adventure: Off to Telon!

Krystalle Voecks — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, Polls, Vanguard, Massively Meta, Choose My Adventure

Join me as I brave my way through lands unknown in an adventure dictated entirely by you, the Massively readers! Vote for everything from game played to character creation to ultimate goal and watch it unfold in a series of posts and galleries here on the site. Then, after our two months are up, we'll do it all over again in a new game!

Well, the masses have once again spoken, and this time I'm headed off to spend the next six weeks running around in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes! I'll admit that this is one title that I've never played. At the time it was released, my computer's stats were nowhere near the level required to play it (surprise), so I gave it a pass. Since then, I've been intrigued by the world (largely due to many of the lovely One Shots I've seen on it), but I simply haven't taken the first step to check the game out. Thanks to the vote being rocked by the Vanguard community, it looks like I'm going to get that chance to see Telon after all!

Unfamiliar with Vanguard? Know all about it and would rather skip straight to this week's polls? Join me behind the break for both!

Continue reading Choose My Adventure: Off to Telon!

Choose My Adventure: Off to Telon! originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Part one of Brad McQuaid's Vanguard post-mortem

William Dobson — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EST

Filed under: Fantasy, MMO industry, Vanguard

When most people think of Vanguard, they usually remember that the game had an extremely rocky launch period. A lot of things were changed and fixed after the game was sold to Sony Online Entertainment. The original developer Sigil Games Online (headed by former SOE superstar Brad McQuaid) was also sold in this deal. McQuaid's blog welcome-page mentions that he's been on a break from the games industry since the above events in 2007, but "as of late, he's starting to get that itch again...". It was probably this itch that prompted him to start a multi-part post-mortem of his time with Vanguard at his blog.

McQuaid said that he will be addressing topics in chronological order, and part one deals with what he calls the first big mistake that Sigil made: get everything in writing.

"The first mistake that would have a serious impact later in development was the verbal agreement with Microsoft that Vanguard was to be a first rate, AAA title."

It sounds like a change at Microsoft led to a completely different level of support for Vanguard; less funding, less time, and overall a different outlook on what Vanguard was to become.

"So the moral of the story is one that should have occurred to us: get everything in writing, get it into the contract, because even a company like Microsoft can suddenly undergo significant changes to its management and teams. And when those changes do happen, you might as well be dealing with a new company - anything and everything can change, and change quickly."

Part two of the post-mortem will be dealing with the good and bad aspects of creating an all-star team, and we'll bring it to your attention when it surfaces.

Part one of Brad McQuaid's Vanguard post-mortem originally appeared on Massively on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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