SOE and Vanguard

[lognoronon]

Wonder how things are going to pan out with this.

http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/e...message.id=236

As long as this stay's true, I don't care much... Looks like they are just using SOE for the things they have more experiance with (hosting and billing mainly). I could care less where the servers are aslong as SOE has no hands in the development of the game.

Sigil assumes greater control of marketing and PR, while maintaining responsibility for game development, community relations, media relations, customer support, and quality assurance.

This also works out for my plan to return to EQ1 since I can just get the Station Access and have vanguards added into it once it goes live!

Found this one the Vangaurd Forums...

As everyone can see some big news was recently released. This is a FAQ to inform people of what happened, and to help shed some light on the situation. Here is a link to the Official Press release. http://www.sigilgames.com/sonypressrelease.html

Why did Sigil and Microsoft break their contract?
Sigil orignally had Microsoft as their Publisher. In this partnership Sigil was responsible for creating the game, and meeting deadlines. One of these was to have the game shipped in June of 2006. Sigil, maintaining their stance on shipping what they said the game would be, was not able to make this deadline. Microsoft put pressure on them to ship it anyway. Sigil decided to buy back the Publication rights for vanguard from Microsoft. This enabled them to have complete control over their game once again.

Why did they choose Sony Online Entertainment (SoE)?
Sony has sucessfully marketed more MMO's than any other company out there at the moment. They have MANY ways to market their products, and will use them to market vanguard. Keep in mind what i state here. How many people know of EQ, how many people know of SWG? This is marketing. SoE has no control over what happens in the game. They are responsible for getting people to sign up. Sigil is repsonisble for making them want to stay. You can not compare Vanguard to the SoE Games, because SoE is able to change them, in this case they will NOT have any impact on the way the game works. Please keep that in mind when reading others complaints.

Does this mean Sony will be calling the shots now?
Absolutly not. Sigil actually has more control of their game now, than they ever did. They purchased their Publication rights, which lets them control every aspect of their game. SoE is just doing the PR and Advertising for the game. They of course get paid a nice chunk of money for this. SoE has NO control over what happens with Vanguard. This allows the Sigil team to do what they do best.

Why does this benifit me?
Chances are that Sony will eventually offer vanguard on the Station All Acess Pass. This means you can play any of the SoE games, as well as vanguard for one low fee ($24.99).

Sigil just Backstabed us!
No not really. In fact what they did was to make the game better for everyone. Microsoft did have some control over the way the game was made. Now sigil has TOTAL control over how it is made, when expansions will be realeased, etc.

I dont like SoE.
SoE is the company you love to hate. However, SoE has no control over vanguard so you have nothing to worry about. vanguard is still vanguard. In fact vanguard is now more than what it was going to be.

Kinda gets my hopes up. Theres one thing you can't deny, SOE markets their titles great... How many people tried SWG and EQ2? Tons, they didn't stay because those games were utter **** later on thanks to SOE but if the game is good? Tons of subscribers!

[lognoronon]

Well I love EQ2 since I think it's a far better casual game than WOW is but that's a whole other discusion. I was deadset against checking out Vanguard prior as you know by some of my posts but.....if it's going to be included in the station pass then I might reconsider checking it out. I currently get the station pass anyway for EQ1 and EQ2.

Yeah, I just signed up for Station Pass since I will be playing EQ1 and Vangaurds... maybe I should reinstalled EQ2 now, LOL.