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Vanguard Community Summit Report
Sigil Games Online opened its doors and gave full access to a motley crew of gamers. We spent a day in the office actually playing the game and speaking with the team. Even though these guys are still busting out deadlines, they took time to speak with us. The experience was awesome, the ability to walk up to someone, look over their shoulder and say “Hey, what is that!” was to sweet. Where do I begin, there is so much information.
The summit began on Thursday night with dinner with members of the Dev team. The discussion quickly moved to the games we play and have played. It was very interesting to hear that the games play and suffered through all the post-eq mmorpgs. Everything that was good & bad in those games, they experienced.
Customer Service!? What? Yes, that’s right customer service. This is just as important to gamers as the game itself. Some games have had to ban player protest, lock message boards to non-subscribers, outsource problems to a staff that has never played the game, hidden the dev staff from the player base or just outright ignored the concerns of players to push out the next expansion. A player invests a serious amount of time and money into playing a MMORPG and if they have burned by a company the bad press will get around.
Sigil has recognized that this is important and have plans to make your online experience as fun as possible. When you call tech or billing support, you call will not be answered in India but by Microsoft employees. MS has a great infrastructure for dealing with this and it will free up Sigil add their own in-house support staff. Sigil also has some crazy system that I don’t know the name of because my head is still spinning that will allow them to patch on the fly! We have all seen the horror of a patch fixing one thing and breaking 20 others. If there is a sword that sells for 2 gold that now sells for 20000 gold it will be fixed. In most games that usually means 4 hours of server downtime or even worse the problem escalates and now 2 million in bad gold is floating around the server. That can be changed instantly! This system will also allow for GM’s to be more creative with the live content they offer.
The guide system from EQ is back! Player volunteers will be able to assist players to some degree in the game. They might wield less power then they did in EQ, simply because they are volunteers and not paid staff. Rogue guides have caused a problem in the past, but that will not be the case in the game. The community is a part of the game and they welcome the player support.
I spoke with John Capozzi about the tendency of some games to shy away from banning players because they are paying customers. Long story short, they are not going to put up with any bull$@$. If a player is ruining the game for other people odds they will get the boot. The days of 1 GM policing 600 players is over. No longer will Johnny Exploit and the Griefer crew ruin your life for two weeks, if the offense is bad enough they can expect to be banned for life.
The GM system will also be a core part of customer service. There will be two types of GM for servers. There will be a more traditional Gm that will handle player problems and issues with the game. The GM staff will be very familiar with the game, they wont be automatons with canned responses and no real solution or understanding of your problem. The other type of GM for each server will be more like a DM than a GM. These GM’s will run in game events, run live quests with rewards and keep the game fresh. The game world will be active and alive.
The machine you are reading this on right now will be minimum spec for the game. That’s right, this game will be a true 3rd generation MMORPG. Now don’t get all in a titter because everything in this article could change tomorrow but... a 256 MB card will be needed if you want to turn every bell & whistle on. Don’t fret! The good thing is as time goes by the price of hardware will decrease. So the $500 card now will be $150 in 2006 and you should be able to afford the upgrade. Nvida and ATI are already working with Sigil to make sure those next-gen cards will be able to run the game flawlessly. ATI is a more friendly with their code and it seems the game will be optimized for ATI cards but will run like butter on Nvida cards as well. Since this is a 3rd generation mmorpg don’t expect to pay 2nd generation prices. Computer games are often the best value for you entertainment money, a small investment can provide hundreds of hours of fun. The $50 shelf tag and $15 a month will be a thing of the past, the percentage of cost increase is still unknown but attempting to make the baddest game in the planet is not cheap.
There will be a wide selection of races to choose from depending on your starting continent. There is a still a yet unannounced race that will be included in the game but all avatars will be humanoid. There will be a day when you can play as a wraith or a talking bear but it is not feasible just yet. Motion capture will be used for all animations and the models already look impressive. Your toon will have a mind blowing 25 loot slots!! I knew this game was item-centric but damn!! You will truly have a custom avatar, someone will be able to look at you and say “Hey,that is Bob over there”. You will not look like 50 other warriors at high level since your game play experience will vary from player to player. Now the idea of “rubicite” is a great idea, but will not control the game as it did in EQ.
The quest system is very robust. The typical “Fed Ex” or “Kill mob A in location X” needed to be changed. This idea works, but the Sigil twist is how do they make it better and more fun? Quests will work in the traditional way, you walk up to a NPC and respond to the keywords and they tell you what needs done. We were actually shown an example of the way the quest system will work. You will be given an objective but there will be different ways to complete the goal. In the quest we had, you had to save some guys son from a group of bandits. His son is being held for ransom in a camp not far from town. You have the option to guy in the camp and kill everyone, you could go to the guys sister and help her collect some trinkets to repair her family heirloom and pay off the ransom for the son or choose the third option. We snuck in the camp, killed a scout and took his clothes. Once disguised as the scout we entered the camp and decided the best way to free the son. So we killed another scout, took his clothes and went back to camp and disguised the captive son in the bandit clothes. We snuck him out of the camp and back to safety. This is not an epic quest or a high-end quest, this is just an example of how the majority of quests will work. There will be different ways to complete quests with different rewards.
Spoiler sites are good for the community and Sigil has no intentions of forcing them away, but the player will not have to rely on them so heavily. If there is a npc in the shack by the woods near the old graveyard, you will know. If you need to talk to a guy in another town, you will know. Sure you might to go Thotbott or Allakhazam but what you see there might differ from your in game experience. You could do a quest and find a completely new way to do it and receive a different reward. Your friend can do the same quest, find a different way and get something else entirely. Now lets say your friend got something better and you want it and go back to the npc. Negative. You will not be farming quests for the same old stuff until everyone has the +3 Sword of Doom. When you go back the NPC might give you a new quest or if you fail he might not want to talk to you at all. The dev team likes the idea of “epic” quests but feel they shouldn’t be a requirement. World changing quests will be in the game but will be carefully added to make sure they are done right.
The content in the game will fall under three categories: Casual, Group & Raid. This will allow for all play styles to enjoy the game. If you are a super casual player, you can slowly level your way to the top. You will not experience the group and raid content and your gear will reflect it. If you want power in the game you will have to get a group together and get out there. There will be no instancing in this game so those who get there first will be rewarded but will not have a monolpy on content. Instancing has been quick fix for overpopulation and limited content and will not be in this game. Think back to the days of Sol B, lower players fighting kobolds while a raid group is fighting the dragon in the back of the cave. That kind of environment does wonders for immersion. The days of guilds “c%@k blocking”, running past groups and zerging content on timed spawns is over. For example were shown a high level raid zone. A massive tower wizards tower of doom. There were multiple paths to the top that supported multiple groups. Raid content is not being designed with the idea of one group gets the holy grail, but several groups can receive different version of the grail.
Raid groups will be smaller and will reward more players. 70 people killing one mob to reward a few is not fun. For example, lets say there is a Dragon on top of the mountain and you want to kill it. Several things could happen depending on how you approach it. If you bring a zerg force of 50 ppl the dragon will react accordingly. He may decide to simply fly away instead of face your warrior army with 2 clerics in every group. Or he might call on his friends to help him since he is facing such overwhelming odds. A few months later when your group goes up the dragon might of laid some eggs and now there are three dragons instead of one. Or maybe after 50 kills the mountain collapses and a huge pit opens up and now you have to fight some crazed gully dwarf. The idea is to keep all content fresh. Original content will be constantly upgraded, instead of waiting 2 expansions later to upgraded old unused content it will change much sooner. There will be a full live team devoted to keep all content fresh. Guild leaders will have an entirely new system that will give them total control over guild management and will incorporate a raid system as well.
Group size will scale depending on your level. At lower levels you really don’t need 10 ppl to defeat a simple ghoul and your group size might be restricted to a smaller number of players. As you increase in level the size of groups will increase. AT lvl 25 you might need those 10 ppl to defeat a possessed ghoul and as you increase in power the group size will increase. In the group setting interdependence will be enforced. You might be able to beat casual or some group content with 4 rangers and 2 druids, but for the most part you will have to balanced groups. If a trap requires a rogue to disarm it, you group will not walk by and take 500 damage because they don’t have a rogue. They will die on the spot and continue to do so until they add a rogue to the group. You will need the best weapon and person for the job. There are several different weapon types and you will only be able to master a few. Your uber warrior will not able to win every battle simply because they wield the Sword of Doom, mobs will have many different resistance and it will effect battle. Rogues attempting to stab a stone golem will find they are not to effective so they may want to switch to a blunt weapon. Or even better if the rogue knows ahead of time they are going to be fighting golems, he will bring his hammer to the battle and not his dagger. The weapon skill system will allow you to choose your focus. If you are a rogue who prefers scimitars you can specialize in that field and get bonuses in battle when you use scimitars, but if you want to switch back to daggers you will be able to do that without losing your scimitar skill. Over time your scimitar skill will decrease while dagger skill increases, you won’t be able to master everything but you can become very proficient in your chosen field.
Every avatar will have two experience pools. A experience pool for combat and one for tradeskills. You can literally become a master tailor without every having to pick up a sword, but if you do have to pick up a sword you will not be a lvl 1 weakling because you never fought in battle. Players will have almost a 2nd game to play as they focus on their non-combat roles. The tradeskill system will have encounters just like combat. Lumberjacks will attack trees, miners will attack rocks, chefs will have to raise and kill their own chickens. Ok, no raising of livestock will be required. There will actually be content designed for groups of tradeskillers. Imagine loading up a huge caravan of wagons and going out to the woods to harvest a huge batch of wood. Each player will have to bring their tools for the job and must be active when harvesting components. Instead of a passive skill check system players must be active when doing tradeskills. Visual cues will help players swing the axe at the right time or pick the right berry. IF you are picking a fruit and you get scratched by a poisonous thorn , you might have think twice before attempting to do something you can’t. Or if you are mining rare diamonds in a rickety mineshaft, it could collapse if you don’t have the skill to extract it. Raid content will also include tradeskills. If a group needs to visit the Underground Anvil of doom to make a few swords, they will need an escort to get there.
Transportation will be in the game from the start. The world is massive and players will need to travel far and wide. Boats, horses and the like will be in the game. You can build your little dingy and sail around but lookout for pirates! Your vehicle will be a mini bank of sorts. Think of pack-mules for Dungeon Siege. You will not need to make an extra twink, just put your extra equipment on your horse instead of making a trip back to town. You will need this horse because you will not have unlimited inventory space. The game will be realistic in the sense that you can not carry around 20 swords in 8 bags. Player housing will also be included. We were shown one of the main cities on continent, a massive city that has never been seen before in any game. Every building has a purpose. If a building is standing empty, odds are you can rent that building and move in. Imagine a massive full size city with hundreds of houses , npcs and full city life. When you go to a city, it will not be just to sell loot and visit the bank, the city itself is like a dungeon. When you go to a new city you will play it, not just visit the vendors and leave.
The game has an all star cast on every level. Even the database admin is an all star, having working on EQ, SWG and other games. The team is still actively seeking out experienced industry talent and brining in few faces every few weeks. Every game you have played they have played. Often times many other mmorpgs were brought up as reference and these guys know their stuff. They want other mmorpgs to succeed but also have learned from their mistakes. I really can’t say enough about this.
Right now the game is still in alpha and beta is about 6-8 months away. The game will launch sometime in 2006 and has been in development since 2002. Microsoft has a hands off approach and this game will be Sigils game not want Microsoft wants it to be. With the recent cancellation of Mythica and their Xbox title & the sell of AC back to Turbine, this is the premier flagship mmorpg for Microsoft. There are already plans for an expansion! The future of gaming is in very good hands.
