Aradune Returns to EQlive

[Nubben]

So apparently Brad McQuaid has been brought back to work on EQlive for the first time in 12 years. As someone who still follows live to a certain extent, even though I only play on it a few times a year, I think this is awesome news. Not really sure how much control they are giving him or anything like that, all he has said so far is that he is working on new content (zones) and that he has been leveling a pally solo to get a feel for the game. He also finally admitted that they lied about the Fiery Avenger quest being in at the beginning. Anyway, I figured this would be interesting news to the P1999 community as well, so I decided to share.

Hello all,

Well, I’m back... back on EverQuest after 12 Years! When I was given the opportunity to return to the team it was something I just had to do! I started playing right away and got a paladin into his mid-30s. I found, in addition to all of the great new features and UI elements, that the game, at its core, was still very much the EQ I was involved with. In fact, some of my first work as a game designer on the team will be working on areas that have been alluded to since launch. I can’t say more than that, of course, but I’m sure you can imagine how exciting this is for me.

I’ll also be on the boards, so if you guys have any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to ask. That said, I’m still absorbing a lot of info over here, getting a grasp on all of the content and features that have been added to the game over the last decade -- so please do cut me a little slack J

-Brad McQuaid / Aradune Mithara

Here is his thread on EQlive which is all I've read about him being back so far.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq/index.php?threads/12-years-i-feel-so-old.4319/

[Kagatob]

After the way he jumped ship on VSoH leaving the community AND development team in SoE's hands, I'd be weary about anything else he would decide to be involved in.

[Tecmos Deception]

Still the same game.

That's rich :)

[47shadesofgay]

Steps to making EQ profitable:

1. Take EQMac code, port it to PC's
2. Fix bugs in code
3. Spin up legit classic EQ servers, charge $19.99 a month subs
4. Shutdown all other servers
5. ???
6. Profit

Nobody cares about new EQ content. Your older game has a larger playerbase than whatever you call the new game. Quit catering to the new crowd, and start making money.

[achtung]

Maybe, for a small microtransaction fee, your EQ character will now be able to slam H all day long while making long rambling posts on message boards.

[renegadeofunk]

Buncha negative nancy's ITT

[Captain Faceplant]

Oh how the mighty have fallen.

[Tiggles]

Hope he's doing stuff for eqnext

[Visual]

After the way he jumped ship on VSoH

That game was so bad

[Rhambuk]

how many donations would we need to get him on the p99 staff, not that our staff isnt way better but no more of this waybackmachine. Just ask the man who made it

[Atennu]

Is he the guy who walked out with the code up up to luclin? That sony said was gone forever and thats why they couldnt remake a true classic server?

[Swish]

Vanguard had so much potential, as soon as the SOE banner descended over it - it was shelved to try and push EQ2, which was and is a terrible game. Keep your ogre wizards and wood elf shadowknights.... lol, so bad. I thought Blizzard butchered Warcraft lore enough, but SOE just threw shit out of the window with any race/any class.

[heartbrand]

Holy fuck are you really trying to pin EQ2's issues on race/class and not its awful combat, too many classes, abandonment of the zones we knew and loved, non existent raiding, locked combat etc etc until the EoF expac?

[Swish]

Oh I could go on...how about trying their hardest to make it run only on the highest spec PCs? When Burning Crusade was released for WoW I had a brief stint trying to get EQ2 to load. Slow and sluggish was the only way I could play - my comp just couldn't handle the specs required.

Meanwhile, people in China on terrible spec PCs were running WoW no problems.

EQ2 took too many risks, changed too much, and like you say...the combat wasn't great either. Vanguard would have wiped the floor with it if they'd spent the time/effort putting the bugs right.

[SirAlvarex]

Having played both EQ2 and Vanguard at launch, Vanguard was so horribly broken it was insane. Boring combat, no end game, crashing zones/servers, no sense of direction all claimed a game that had some beautiful vistas and some nice promise. But the character models and execution was flawed.

EQ2 was much more interesting at release, albeit I had a halfway decent computer at the time. The raiding scene was boring, since it was basically hitting up the same instances each week for barely upgraded loot.

Combat was subpar up until GU13, but that happened after like 3 months of release. That's when they changed it so that soloing was possible.

I just think that the consensus of Vanguard gets clouded because it's always "the game we all thought we could have." It's easy to create an ideal. But they failed to execute it. And SOE actually did try to save Vanguard. They get too much of a bad wrap for "destroying vanguard and everquest" when they always owned Everquest and put money into Vanguard to make it actually playable.

[Fianna]

Aronir said: ↑

“Okay, so I think it's finally time to answer the great question that has plagued mankind since the dawn of the game: how did the original Fiery Avenger quest actually work?”

That was a mess up on our part and I take the blame. The first quest involved talking to several sphinx and figuring out their riddles. This was begun, but then devs were distracted with other priorities. So you couldn't finish the quest (or even get far on it), but we announced it worked. When later we realized it didn't work, we ended up throwing the whole initial quest idea out and put a quest in that actually worked. This was, unfortunately, some time later.

This happening was not something we were proud of, so we never talked about it. :( Also my mistake.

-Brad




Interesting, the original FA quest involved some sphinxes with riddles. I bet that is what those sphinx in Rathe Mts were supposed to be for!

[Briscoe]

Thousands of unsolved quests!

[Drayc]

Well let's see here I don't know all the details but here are some things I was part of.

During the Dev of Vanguard I was working as program manager for a website called File planet which was handling a lot of mmo betas.... we were working on Vanguard... through Microsoft who was publishing the game and allowing the Dev of the game to take its time... they wanted it polished.

Now something happened I don't know.. Microsoft was spending too much with no return possibly... again I don't know.. but next thing I know... I'm no longer dealing with Microsoft... I'm dealing with SoE and we are going into open beta phases right away... with launch soon...

I truely feel Vanguards downfall was SoEs complete fault...


Heau-
Drayc-

[webrunner5]

Wow, Interesting stuff.

[SirAlvarex]

Interesting, the original FA quest involved some sphinxes with riddles. I bet that is what those sphinx in Rathe Mts were supposed to be for!

Finally an explanation to those weirdos. I always wondered why they were there.

Makes me wonder what other oddities throughout EQ are parts of unfinished quests.

[Seredoc]

I was in Beta on Vanguard, and yeah the drama was that microsoft had been pushing for Brad and Co. to speed things up or set a definite time table. Well then SOE comes in and says "COme back to us cuz you know how we work and will give you more money in the end than M$ will if you work on our timetable". So everything switched over and we went from beta 1 to beta 4 in a month. Newbie zones were broken, quest mobs were kos to quest givings, there were horrible mis-cons when trying to fight in...well, anywhere. And to kick it all off, with all these bugs they go forward and announce a release date.

So to recap, we're submitting logs to get stuff fixed in newbie zones, not even mentioning the(pardon my "french") shitstorm that was mid range or high lvl content fixes, when we get a message basically saying that they're going to be releasing in 3 to 8 weeks. So a month and a half, to fix the entire level range of mobs. Plus quests. Plus terrain. Not to mention adding content for the six or so number of newbie area that had 4 mobs in them for 100 people to fight over.

SoE is trash gaming, EQnext can be better than original eq and I will not play it because SoE should go out of business.

[Gadwen]

I heard he was brought in as the lead cosmetic item designer for the EQ Next game shop.

[SirAlvarex]

I was in Beta on Vanguard, and yeah the drama was that microsoft had been pushing for Brad and Co. to speed things up or set a definite time table. Well then SOE comes in and says "COme back to us cuz you know how we work and will give you more money in the end than M$ will if you work on our timetable". So everything switched over and we went from beta 1 to beta 4 in a month. Newbie zones were broken, quest mobs were kos to quest givings, there were horrible mis-cons when trying to fight in...well, anywhere. And to kick it all off, with all these bugs they go forward and announce a release date.

So to recap, we're submitting logs to get stuff fixed in newbie zones, not even mentioning the(pardon my "french") shitstorm that was mid range or high lvl content fixes, when we get a message basically saying that they're going to be releasing in 3 to 8 weeks. So a month and a half, to fix the entire level range of mobs. Plus quests. Plus terrain. Not to mention adding content for the six or so number of newbie area that had 4 mobs in them for 100 people to fight over.

SoE is trash gaming, EQnext can be better than original eq and I will not play it because SoE should go out of business.

That still sounds to me like a company had two different publishers, and couldn't come to an agreement on a set timetable for release. Yes, SoE could have taken faith in Vanguard and let it bleed money for another year. Instead it sounds like they gave the team money when Microsoft was pulling out. I highly doubt the Vanguard team signed a contract with SoE thinking they'd give them more than a few months for a release.

That might be the view from players, and I get that. But having been a developer/IT guy, it really sounds like Vanguard suffered from some really bad development.

If you google "Why Vanguard Failed" you'll see links to interviews all stating that basically Brad sucked as a manager, and that there was a lack of directions/support for the devs. And that SoE pretty much was completely hands-off except for stating "we want a game out" and lent them some developer support. This link (http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561), whether it's valid or not (although it does line up with a blog post Brad himself made a few years ago detailing the same events) makes it sound like it was just the team itself to blame, not SoE.

[Pend]

Lot of opinions, and conspiracy theories about VG, and everyone has their own take on it. Here's mine as the technical lead behind VG's most famous, visited, and extensive fansite during the game's production.

Microsoft pulled the plug not only on Vanguard, but other internal-to-Microsoft MMO projects that were late stage as well as a result of some restructuring and consolidation that they initiated in their games division early 2006. Up until then, the MS producer handling Vanguard was committing to see the project through to polished completion, funding wise, where Sigil was controlling the reigns. But yes, VG was pushing the bounds of acceptability a bit, pushing the release out and over-budget. The scale of the game was massive, though.

A credit to the Sigil team that created the foundation, many of the ambitions for VG were, in my mind, ultimately largely achieved, which almost no other MMO even today has achieved:

Totally free-flying mounts that didn't create undue advantage vs. game design (game was designed with them in mind).
Very distinct adventuring classes, where the play action/style is very different.
A crafting system that rivaled the adventuring system in sophistication.
Even a third complete game play system (diplomacy) that rivaled crafting or adventuring.
Completely seamless world--no "zoning" (even going indoor<->outdoor) anywhere, except when teleporting.
Functioning player-made/controlled boats.
Player-made housing and guild structures.
Music system that gradually changed the music as you traveled to new areas rather than abrupt changes.
Almost entirely hand-crafted custom content. Hard-pressed to find "copy/paste" content in the art design, except where necessary (things like trees, etc.).
No "fake doors". Every door visible was openable. Every window was "see through" from both interior and exterior. Every building was enterable.
etc.


But the MS restructuring was an incidental business decision that had nothing directly to do with VG. VG ended up on the chopping block.

It's all but public knowledge that McQuaid and Smedley are friends. If you've got a company with 150 employees and spent 4 years on a game with a year (or two) left to go and suddenly lose funding, what would you do? McQuaid went to Smedley for a bailout and a bailout is what he got, but with strings attached. SOE and Sigil signed a deal to co-publish the game, McQuaid having just bought the rights to it from Microsoft.

The last year of the game's development is where, I think most would agree, you saw the most fleshing out of the game's features/content/technologies, etc. There's a reason for that, a result of some shuffling that occurred in the roles and responsibilities within the Producer org inside Sigil.

But yeah, one year wasn't enough time to finish it off from that point. SOE is not as committed as Microsoft was to see the game to a polished state before release. SOE, which is their infamous [i]modus operandi on all of their games to date, stood rigidly firm on the expected launch date, game readiness be damned. And launch they did, just under a year later on Jan 2007.

A mere three months after launch, SOE deemed the project a failure and yanked funding. Sigil went bankrupt (don't think they got as far as Chap 11), so, McQuaid and Butler sold their company and its assets to SOE wholly. SOE fired half the Sigil staff on the spot, moved much of the remaining staff to other projects, and left VG floundering. They put very little if anything into fixing the game or marketing it at first (and put almost nothing comparatively into marketing the game at or pre-launch, IMO).

So here's where I agree/disagree with some of the above posters. VG did have management problems (IMO) up until the SOE co-publishing deal--variety of reasons which I won't get into. I think most of the current implementation of the game was done in the last year of its development. But a large share of the problem in its launch state also comes from MS backing out abruptly, and SOE coming in. Smedley is a business guy through and through, and I think he quickly felt that he'd been handed a raw deal and treated VG that way when what it really needed was additional investment for, say, another 6 months (they eventually did, but not until much later) BEFORE launching it. But as I said, SOE's M.O. is launch first, ask questions later.

I was relatively close to the Sigil development team during the game's production and that's the way I remember it playing out.

Sigil was founded in Jan 2002. That means from founding the company to launch, it was a 5 year project. But you don't start out with 150 employees overnight. Sigil didn't have funding until May '02 when they signed with Microsoft. So let's give them the first year as a new company to sort things out. That means VG was a 4 year project, and still managed to produce all of those revolutions in MMO game design (albeit buggy). Not bad, IMO.

[Pend]

Forgot to add a bit to tie this back into the OP of this thread. I have some personal issues with McQuaid regarding how he treated us as a fansite right around VG launch timeframe. But I also think he really does share responsibility for why EQ classic was the way it was (which you all are enjoying again thanks to P99). And he had remarkable vision for VG. And I think he's an asset to the EQlive team, in whatever capacity. He's a great designer, just perhaps not a great manager of people to the level needed to run an entire company or execute a large-scale software project from the top. So, it's great to see him active again and part of me would rather he have said that he's involved in EQnext instead of the aging EQlive.

[maximum]

how many donations would we need to get him on the p99 staff...

Click the ads.

[Loli Pops]

Intredasting.

[Swish]

(Pend's post on Vanguard)

Interesting read.

[Nubben]

Very nice read, thanks for sharing. It really makes me want to give Vanguard a try. I did download it a few months ago and created a FTP account but I only played for about a half hour. At that point I had too much going on to really get into a new MMO, but I still have it installed on my computer. Is it playable at all in short sessions (30 minutes to 2 hours or so) as a casual player?

[Yinikren]

I loved Vanguard, bugs and all, it was simple a fantastic adventure and a visually appealing game. I am sure you could run about and explore in smaller time sessions, there are those porting stones now for travel but the world is still huge.

[Clark]

Having played both EQ2 and Vanguard at launch, Vanguard was so horribly broken it was insane. Boring combat, no end game, crashing zones/servers, no sense of direction all claimed a game that had some beautiful vistas and some nice promise. But the character models and execution was flawed.

EQ2 was much more interesting at release, albeit I had a halfway decent computer at the time. The raiding scene was boring, since it was basically hitting up the same instances each week for barely upgraded loot.

Combat was subpar up until GU13, but that happened after like 3 months of release. That's when they changed it so that soloing was possible.

I just think that the consensus of Vanguard gets clouded because it's always "the game we all thought we could have." It's easy to create an ideal. But they failed to execute it. And SOE actually did try to save Vanguard. They get too much of a bad wrap for "destroying vanguard and everquest" when they always owned Everquest and put money into Vanguard to make it actually playable.


that makes me glad I never tried it

[Bodeanicus]

That game was so bad

No, it was unfinished.

[webrunner5]

Unfinished true. But the graphics were just first rate.

[RelivingNorrath]

No, it was unfinished.

^^

I agree. The game is bad =/= the game was unfinished. It's interesting how many people can't seem to appreciate the difference.

I will say though, the decisions they made concerning the character models (identical human bodies w/ animal heads, universal animations for every race, etc.) was a mistake that I'm not sure they could have recovered from. So much of the game's character and potential was lost to that one horrible design decision.

Just my personal opinion.

[SCB]

http://i.imgur.com/h5P6RLS.gif

This just made that thread for me.

[Deverell]

I also think he really does share responsibility for why EQ classic was the way it was

While true, it also has to be said that he basically copy-pasted almost every EQ concept from a MUD called Sojourn where he played and got the inspiration for EQ. The races and classes are basically identical, the world is very similar, the types of gameplay are the same, and the spell and skill system was pretty similar as well. The only thing that was truly unique and innovative about EQ was actually the concept of aggro and tanking. Sojourn just had mobs periodically switch targets at random and then the tank had to use a skill called rescue to get the mob back. Everquest made the process much more dynamic and organic, and it came to be the foundation of combat gameplay.

[aresprophet]

I loved Vanguard, bugs and all, it was simple a fantastic adventure and a visually appealing game. I am sure you could run about and explore in smaller time sessions, there are those porting stones now for travel but the world is still huge.

It was a fantastic 80% of a game

Pretty much everything was 80% of the way there. Plenty of content up through 40, little after. Tons of interesting crafting stuff, but not enough crafting quests to shake up the grind. Unique classes that were fun to play, but not enough balancing. Interesting stats with lots of potential, but not enough variety on gear. Ridiculously fun Diplomacy minigame, but its impact on crafting/adventuring was minimal. Cool player housing, but housing areas felt like they were hastily thrown in. Awesome flying mounts and player-helmed ships, but the world was just too spread out even with them. Gorgeously-detailed world, but a lot of empty areas. And so on, and so on

Another 12-18 months in development before launch and it would have been a different story. It had some awesome ideas, and was a great game for about 80% of the time you played it.

[Anesthia]

Brad got off drugs 10 years too late and the "Vision" is out of his control. Best wishes, but I hope his ranger gets camped on red. :)

[Danth]

"Cool player housing"

I have to disagree on this point; Vanguard's player houses were little more than virtual dollhouses. If you want to see interesting player houses, check out Runescape.

I liked Vanguard for what it was and considered myself to have had my money's worth from it. That being said, the game should have been much more than it was. Of all the many failed MMOG's out there, Vanguard probably stings the most since it was one of the last online role-playing games designed as a world, not as a theme park.

Melee combat was pretty good in beta before Sigil listened to the Warcraft-Whiners (ie, those people who complain about anything that isn't exactly the same as it is in WoW) and doubled the key spam rate. After that it became way too spammy and contributed to why I unsubscribed about 6 months after launch; my fingers just couldn't tolerate the key spam anymore.

I don't think of Everquest as a masterpiece of design; instead I figure it was a lucky accident. I don't think the folks running it really knew what made it a success. I figure that's why it got worse over time instead of better.

Danth

[Xiki101]

Lot of opinions, and conspiracy theories about VG, and everyone has their own take on it. Here's mine as the technical lead behind VG's most famous, visited, and extensive fansite during the game's production.

Microsoft pulled the plug not only on Vanguard, but other internal-to-Microsoft MMO projects that were late stage as well as a result of some restructuring and consolidation that they initiated in their games division early 2006. Up until then, the MS producer handling Vanguard was committing to see the project through to polished completion, funding wise, where Sigil was controlling the reigns. But yes, VG was pushing the bounds of acceptability a bit, pushing the release out and over-budget. The scale of the game was massive, though.

A credit to the Sigil team that created the foundation, many of the ambitions for VG were, in my mind, ultimately largely achieved, which almost no other MMO even today has achieved:

Totally free-flying mounts that didn't create undue advantage vs. game design (game was designed with them in mind).
Very distinct adventuring classes, where the play action/style is very different.
A crafting system that rivaled the adventuring system in sophistication.
Even a third complete game play system (diplomacy) that rivaled crafting or adventuring.
Completely seamless world--no "zoning" (even going indoor<->outdoor) anywhere, except when teleporting.
Functioning player-made/controlled boats.
Player-made housing and guild structures.
Music system that gradually changed the music as you traveled to new areas rather than abrupt changes.
Almost entirely hand-crafted custom content. Hard-pressed to find "copy/paste" content in the art design, except where necessary (things like trees, etc.).
No "fake doors". Every door visible was openable. Every window was "see through" from both interior and exterior. Every building was enterable.
etc.


But the MS restructuring was an incidental business decision that had nothing directly to do with VG. VG ended up on the chopping block.

It's all but public knowledge that McQuaid and Smedley are friends. If you've got a company with 150 employees and spent 4 years on a game with a year (or two) left to go and suddenly lose funding, what would you do? McQuaid went to Smedley for a bailout and a bailout is what he got, but with strings attached. SOE and Sigil signed a deal to co-publish the game, McQuaid having just bought the rights to it from Microsoft.

The last year of the game's development is where, I think most would agree, you saw the most fleshing out of the game's features/content/technologies, etc. There's a reason for that, a result of some shuffling that occurred in the roles and responsibilities within the Producer org inside Sigil.

But yeah, one year wasn't enough time to finish it off from that point. SOE is not as committed as Microsoft was to see the game to a polished state before release. SOE, which is their infamous [i]modus operandi on all of their games to date, stood rigidly firm on the expected launch date, game readiness be damned. And launch they did, just under a year later on Jan 2007.

A mere three months after launch, SOE deemed the project a failure and yanked funding. Sigil went bankrupt (don't think they got as far as Chap 11), so, McQuaid and Butler sold their company and its assets to SOE wholly. SOE fired half the Sigil staff on the spot, moved much of the remaining staff to other projects, and left VG floundering. They put very little if anything into fixing the game or marketing it at first (and put almost nothing comparatively into marketing the game at or pre-launch, IMO).

So here's where I agree/disagree with some of the above posters. VG did have management problems (IMO) up until the SOE co-publishing deal--variety of reasons which I won't get into. I think most of the current implementation of the game was done in the last year of its development. But a large share of the problem in its launch state also comes from MS backing out abruptly, and SOE coming in. Smedley is a business guy through and through, and I think he quickly felt that he'd been handed a raw deal and treated VG that way when what it really needed was additional investment for, say, another 6 months (they eventually did, but not until much later) BEFORE launching it. But as I said, SOE's M.O. is launch first, ask questions later.

I was relatively close to the Sigil development team during the game's production and that's the way I remember it playing out.

Sigil was founded in Jan 2002. That means from founding the company to launch, it was a 5 year project. But you don't start out with 150 employees overnight. Sigil didn't have funding until May '02 when they signed with Microsoft. So let's give them the first year as a new company to sort things out. That means VG was a 4 year project, and still managed to produce all of those revolutions in MMO game design (albeit buggy). Not bad, IMO.

Well said sir. Myself was a true Vanguard raider and played hardcore up until free to play. This game was buggy as can be but a few hundred of us saw past that and truly believed in the vision of Vanguard. Although working on a small crew with lack of funding, They did manage to give out what I feel was the best raid content I ever played. It took months to defeat every major boss and gear out your guildies. During this time I also raided in W.o.W which was a joke(except their first expansion was decent raid content). after their first raid dungeon, Raid progression kind of took a wierd turn giving us only overland raid bosses instead of raid dungeons.

I left Vanguard during free to play not because I was upset it was going free to play, but because I simply played Vanguard till I couldnt play no more. I am happy to see that free to play community is loving the game compared to when this game launched the communtiy wanted heads to roll and they did.

[koros]

Since he seems to be willing to provide information (at least on the FA quest), can someone w/ forum access ask him about the Glowing black stone and if there is/was a related quest?

What about the Holy Partisan of Underfoot or the original Greenmist quest? I'm sure most/all were broken, but there absolutely has to be quests that "work" but have missing steps/dialogue. I'd love to see some of these discovered.

[koros]

Also, Wand of the Burning Dead remains unsolved, but the item was linked way back when, so either a GM made it or someone at some point figured out how to combine the blackened wand and blackened sapphire:

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=13236
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=13237
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=13238

[Hollywood]

how many donations would we need to get him on the p99 staff, not that our staff isnt way better but no more of this waybackmachine. Just ask the man who made it

I'm really surprised he hasn't (that we're aware of..) been in touch with (or maybe he has) the P99 staff.

Then again if he was, I suspect a lot of things would be fixed and we'd be on Velious so..

Very nice read, thanks for sharing. It really makes me want to give Vanguard a try. I did download it a few months ago and created a FTP account but I only played for about a half hour. At that point I had too much going on to really get into a new MMO, but I still have it installed on my computer. Is it playable at all in short sessions (30 minutes to 2 hours or so) as a casual player?

You can most certainly get into the swing of things within a few hours. As for whether you can jump on for half an hour and log off feeling a sense of accomplishment - no, it's still got an old school style flavor/system.
If it's any reference, it's very much like EQII. If you can give Vanguard a week or so, you may really be into it and start to notice the variances that make it a bit better than EQII.

Should you be looking for the more in and out style for casual players, Guild Wars 2 would be better.

[sulpher01]

After the way he jumped ship on VSoH leaving the community AND development team in SoE's hands, I'd be weary about anything else he would decide to be involved in.

^^ This exactly... he fucked that game over so hard...

[Droog007]

I don't think of Everquest as a masterpiece of design; instead I figure it was a lucky accident. I don't think the folks running it really knew what made it a success. I figure that's why it got worse over time instead of better.

Danth

TW;NS (truer words never spoken)