Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Interviews

A couple of new Vanguard-related interviews have hit the web – one with Sigil’s Brad McQuaid and another with SOE’s John Smedley. The interview with Brad is over at F13.net:

Q: What was the relationship in the office between Microsoft and Sigil prior to the split?

A:: As I’ve posted a number of times, there was a regime change at Microsoft where they reorganized a lot of their game studios. The people who were in charge of the Vanguard project on the Microsoft side went elsewhere and a completely new group of people were put in place. In that new group of people, the upper management side were also in charge of getting the Xbox 360 out the door. So, the PC games at the time were not receiving a lot of support and I don’t blame Microsoft for this at all. When you’ve got billions of dollars spent trying to launch a new console and millions on the PC titles, you’re gonna make sure that the Xbox 360 kicks ass – I think they did a good job of that. The lower level people were put in charge of our project were people who didn’t have any MMO experience. They had done Zoo Tycoon 1 & 2. We tried very hard to bring them up to speed and with open arms to show them the differences and similarities between developing an MMO and a single player game – the scale and things like that. That just didn’t seem to work. Previously, the people who were dealing with us committed to us – verbally – that they, Microsoft, wanted and were determined to launch a AAA Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game – and to do whatever it took to make sure that happened. While that’s not down on paper – as no company ever would put down on paper – that was our understanding. Under the new regime, that commitment, nobody remembered it.

When games like WoW were getting heavily into development and dollar amounts on games like EQ2 and WoW were becoming public – we said it would always be our understanding and agreement that we would compete with these guys. They backed down off of that and said that it was no longer their goal and at that point, the money started drying.

While the interview with John is over at Shacknews:

Q: Many players are concerned that there will be major changes made to the game, especially in regards to its “hardcore” nature. How do you plan to balance the concerns of the fans with the need to move Vanguard forward at this point?

A: Let me broadly say that there’s a perception out there that, oh, we’re going to make this into a “carebear” game, and just change it into a [World of Warcraft] clone. I have no idea where this stuff gets started. The simple reality is the team is going to make these decisions. There’s not some sort of overriding “let’s make it easier” mentality. Nothing like that. The team already has a long list of things they want to do, and they’re going to talk to the community about it. So ultimately it’s going to be the community that decides the future of Vangard’s gameplay. And if most of the players want the game to be exactly the way it is now, you know.