Brad McQuaid Affiliate
Exclusive:

The Future of Vanguard

Reported by Ralsu




Today, Sigil
CEO Brad
"Aradune Mithara"
McQuaid released a statement in the Affiliate forums regarding the
future of Vanguard and Sigil's partnership with Sony Online
Entertainment. He asked Affiliate sites to release the news first
before his big announcement on the SOE forums tonight:

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“SOE is in
discussions with Sigil regarding the future of
Vanguard and
Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost,
our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its
community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a
healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days
will all be with that single goal in mind.”



What does that mean? It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently
but not as well as we hoped...So the bottom line is that SOE is going
to be getting more
involved with Sigil and Vanguard – our relationship is going
to become
even tighter – much tighter. At this point I can’t
say much more than
that.



Does this mean an acquisition? I can’t say at this point.



Does this mean more or less people at Sigil? I can’t say at
this point.



Does this mean management changes at Sigil? I can’t say at
this point.



I *can* say that regardless of the turn out, SOE knows that Sigil has
the experience and vision necessary to run Vanguard and therefore a
major change in that area is extremely unlikely and would be foolish on
their part.



What it does mean at this point is that both companies agree that we
need more of SOE’s involvement if Vanguard is going to
continue to get
the support it needs to both continue to be worked on and improved and
debugged and optimized....



In summary, there are arguably a lot of people who by mid to end of
this year in the MMOG gamespace for whom Vanguard could potentially be
very attractive. What the game needs is a re-launch of sorts, including
targeted marketing campaigns, an all-around successful move by gamers
to the next generation of hardware, continued good word of mouth
‘viral’ marketing by those who are already playing,
enjoying, and
re-subscribing. And all of this could and should ramp up by the end of
the year, all the while the Vanguard team is putting in more content,
the live team filling out high level content as well as adding to areas
of the game’s vast seamless world which are a bit empty....



“SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding
the future of Vanguard and
Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost,
our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its
community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a
healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days
will all be with that single goal in mind.”



So what does that mean again? Again, I apologize for not being able to
go into details and it’s the details that need to be worked
out. But I
think it’s safe to say that both Sigil and SOE see the
potential of a
mind blowing game by the end of the year. What’s needed,
bottom line,
is some time, and how to get that time is what’s being worked
out. And
so I still see a 500k+ game, I was just off by a year for a variety of
reasons, some under my control, many not. And I think SOE sees this as
well. To pull it off however, requires a funded and supported Sigil and
a well marketed Vanguard with these different target audiences
identified and solid plan on how to reach them all, and then a solid
execution of said plan, hitting them hard, pushing these ‘WoW
everywhere’ point of purchase materials from the front to the
very
back.. In the meantime, the Vanguard that was launched in early 2007
continues to move forward, with much of what I’ve talked
about patched
in over time, and the rest in the first expansion (or re-launch, or
whatever we all agree upon in terms of product and service placement).
Bottom line, Vanguard continues to march forward, a solid and fun game
today, and an even better one tomorrow. More ‘state of the
game’ posts
by me, a regularly updated " href="http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/inTheWorks.vm"
target="_blank">In
the Works".



And whatever kind of increased partnership between Sigil and SOE is
necessary to make this vision a reality. And again, as for what that
means exactly, more on that later ™. href="http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/inTheWorks.vm"
target="_blank">

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