I really do love what a train wreck mmo’s can be. Here is some news regarding Vanguard and the company that made the game Sigil. The first bit comes from Grouchy Gamer:

Brad McQuaid has been an absentee manager at Sigil for months. Not only has there been a leadership vacuum at Sigil, with the employees there left twisting in the wind, but I have been able to confirm that Brad hasn’t even bothered to be at the office. Since last year.

The above makes the next bit of text from F13.net seem a little clearer:

…at approximately 4:30PM today, Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot. By whom? Doesn’t seem to have been Brad McQuaid, if it was, nobody is talking.

It’s sad that miss management like this happens. There were parts of the game I enjoyed. But I’m not sad seeing how my pc that could play the game died on me. It will be entertaining to see what happens once SOE takes over.

This train wreck will have to do until those assholes making Thrones of Chaos surface again.

Edit
Looks like it’s official now.

Edit 2
The drama continues. Here is F13.net‘s interview with an ex Sigil employee and then their interview with Brad McQuaid.

I’ve never talked to someone who sells money/powerleveling for mmo’s before. So when one looked me up I of course had questions I wanted to ask.

[02:32] Brogame: HI
[02:32] Turk: hi
[02:32] Brogame: are you the webmaster of Hotelblues.com/wow/ ?
[02:33] Turk: yes
[02:33] Brogame: does your site talk about the online games, such as WOW ?
[02:34] Turk: my main site talks about all kinds of things. Including games like wow. the page your asking about is pretty much done with as it was for a guild that is now defunct
[02:36] Brogame: ok, did there have some advertising on your site about online games before ?
[02:36] Turk: just google ads
[02:36] Brogame: oh, I see

I thought it was funny that the farmer didn’t come right out and say what it was he wanted to advertise on my site. I did know in advance that this im conversation was coming as the farmer sent me an email first. So I had to ask what the farmer wanted because the dude would have beat around the bush all day.

[02:36] Turk: what are you selling?
[02:37] Brogame: we sell the game currency and leveling, we provide the best service all over the world
[02:37] Turk: I’ve never really done much with advertising
[02:37] Turk: what site do you run? that does all of this?
[02:38] Brogame: after browsing your site, we have a plan to advertising on your site, so do you accept this kind of advertising ?
[02:38] Turk: depends.
[02:38] Turk: whats your url?
[02:38] Brogame: http://www.brogame.com/
[02:39] Brogame: this is our site, we have so many old customers now, I think both of us will earn much more through this case

(more…)

I made it to level 18 in Vanguard yesterday.

I get some new stuff to play with. For starters I can heal and cure poison and disease. I also get a pet and a damage buff. I’m still enjoying the game. I figured I would have got sick of it by now.

I made level 14 the other day. I’ve played everyday since I got the game. There is something about the way it echoes back to the old days of EverQuest that really makes me like it. I only dabbled with the original EQ back in day. But I’ve heard enough stories to know I missed out on lots of fun.

Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying Vanguard so much. And that I have no complaints, other than the 20 gig install size. Sure I could complain if I spent lots of time looking for things to complain about. I’m just having to much fun playing my ranger. Which really is a change of pace for me. Stealthing around mobs and being able to take out a mob with a ranged weapon.

I’m also like the fact that the game is a little riskier than current mmorpg’s. I like that it takes forever to go from point a to point b. I like that when I die I leave a body with my gear on it. I guess I got sick of how some of these games dumbed this things down so much that it made these activities trivial. Granted it’s not as bad as EQ in the beginning. You can recall to your bind spot once an hour (in game time) and you can bind items so that they stay on you when you respawn.

I just wish I could play this one at work like I used to do with Dark Age of Camelot. The significant system specs insure that won’t happen anytime in the future. Oh well.

I picked up a retail copy of Vanguard Saga of Heroes while checking out the new Wal-Mart in my area. I’m very happy that with the additional gig of ram and the new video card that the game is actually playable now. And I’m not kidding about being playable. In the beta with only 1 gig of ram the game was horrid. I maybe got 10-20 FPS in open areas and 1-10 in huge populated areas. Now I get an average of 25-64 FPS at a resolution of 1280×1024 with settings on balanced.

I’m playing a ranger, which is a first for me. It’s a nice change of pace to have a little stealth mixed in with a little ranged combat to go with my usual melee type class I go for. It’s started to dawn on me how old school the game is with it’s death penalty. Which you here in every review of the game. They also didn’t hide the fact the game was the way it is. It’s just not something I’m used to.

I died a few times not noticing the exp I lost each time I died. Then it slowly came to my realization that I was also leaving behind items on my corpse. There is an option to bind certain equipment so it stays with you when you die. But it’s makes whatever I do a more thought out process when I start to engage in combat. Something I don’t worry about in some of the other games in the mmorpg genre. Overall I am enjoying the game. Which does surprise me.

Since I got my Xbox 360 I’ve been letting my PC gather dust. The last four games I’ve bought have been for the 360. I picked up Rainbow Six Vegas, Dead Rising, Viva Pinata, and Crackdown. The last PC game I picked up was Star Trek Legacy.

Recently there has been a few PC games that just performed poorly on my PC. Gothic 3 and Vanguard are two I can name off of the top of my head. Both of which sounds like that unless you had two gigs of ram of more you would have trouble. So last week I ordered two gigs of ram from Newegg.com. The 2 sticks of Crucial Ballistix DDR 500 (PC 4000) Ram arrived on the 20th (the same day I picked up Crackdown). I have yet to put the ram in to my PC.

I really hope going from 1 gig to 2 gigs will give me that extra punch to play some of these PC games. Specifically I want to be able to play Supreme Commander without having to worry about turning down the graphics and still getting 10-15 FPS. I realize I may need to upgrade my ATI 1600 XT at some point to really get a performance increase. I think my next purchase will be the ATI 1950 Pro before I just go and build a new PC for myself.

Sometime later today I’m going to force myself to stop playing Crackdown and I’m going to install my ram. Then all I have to do is install Gothic 3 and see if I do get a performance boost. Which may lead me to buy Vanguard. And then theres always Supreme Commander.

Crackdown is a game for the Xbox 360 that just came out. I played the demo off of Xbox Live for quite a long time. The game has the type of free form do what you want gameplay that I enjoy. The story is very thin. Your are a genetically engineered super cop who is tasked with putting an end to the three gangs of Pacific City. You are free just to tear around the city as you see fit.

There is a light rpg like system of five skills that raise in level as you go about your business of fighting the gangs in the city. Driving, Explosives, They are: Firearms, Strength, and Agility. All of the skills except Agility go up as you actually do each type of activity. Agility goes up when you find agility orbs that are scattered around the rooftop and hard to reach high up areas. Once your raise Strength and Agility a few times you start to feel like a superhero jumping around and picking up cars and tossing them at bad guys.

The graphics are worth mentioning because of the almost comic book look of the characters. It’s a blend of cell shading and realistic style graphics of other games. Below are some screens just to give you an idea of what it looks like:

Just lots of fun. It has co-op join any time just like Gears of Wars and is a perfect game to play with a friend. It is worth mentioning that Crackdown comes with an invite for the Halo 3 beta test later this year. Which I’m sure more than a few people picked it up just for the Halo 3 beta. Either way I think it is a must have for the Xbox 360.