The Countdown to
Release

An Interview
with Nick Parkinson

by Zinn

There's no doubt
that the team at Sigil Games Online, developers of Vanguard: Saga of
Heroes, are some of the busiest people in the gaming industry right
now. Despite the fact that Vanguard is poised to launch on January 30
and the team is burning the midnight oil to bring it to the masses, we
managed to capture Sigil's resident gnome, Nick "Glip the Gnome"
Parkinson, and ask him some questions about Vanguard's impending
release.





[TenTonHammer]:
When does the 3 day head start period begin? What time? If you can't
give us a time now, will we be informed before release?



[Nick
Parkinson]: Look for a press release about this to go out
very soon. We’ll be giving folks plenty of time to see it so
they can make plans to play the game.





[TTH]: Is
there or will there be a way for nervous people like myself to verify
that they registered their code correctly and will be allowed into the
3 day head start?



[NP]:
If you registered your code incorrectly it wouldn’t have been
accepted. So if it didn’t give you any errors you should be
fine. That said, if you still want to double check I’d
recommend e-mailing [email protected].
They’re swamped right now though, so it may be a little
longer than normal for them to get back to you.





[TTH]: How
will the transition from the three day head start to release work? Will
there be a break between head start and launch or can we keep playing
without sleep straight through the 30th and beyond?



[NP]:
You can keep playing straight through!





[TTH]: When
will Beta 5 end? How much time will there be between the end of beta 5
and launch?



[NP]:
Beta 5 will end on January 23rd at 11:59pm PST. The head start for
pre-orders will start not too long after that, we’ll be
getting more information out on that very soon.





[TTH]: How
is server stability and performance coming along? What should we expect
to see at release in terms of stability and performance?



[NP]:
We’re constantly working to improve both stability and
performance. Over the past week or so alone in beta you should have
seen a noticeable improvement in performance. We’ll
constantly be trying to improve performance after launch, even when
it’s at an “acceptable” level.



In terms of server stability, we’re not too worried about
that. There’s going to be some bumps along the way as there
always are but SOE has been down that road before and they know what
they are doing. They’ve been fantastic to work with in regard
to this stuff.





[TTH]: Will
we be able to set up and register accounts prior to release if we use
the digital pre-order or any other means of purchase?



[NP]:
You’ll need a copy of the game, [whether digital
download or boxed], to create a specific Vanguard account. If
you’ve got the Station All Access pass already we are
included in that.  





href="http://vanguard.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album17&id=Ca_ial_Brael_3&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> style="border: 0px solid ; float: left;" alt="Kojan"
title="Click to enlarge"
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/album17/Ca_ial_Brael_3.thumb.jpg"
hspace="2" vspace="4">[ style="font-weight: bold;">TTH]: Will guilds or
individuals be able to reserve names beforehand? If so how will that
work?



[NP]:
There currently aren’t any plans for name reservations with
the exception of the test server. The test server will be
brought up initially with characters from the beta 1 server as a thank
you for our long time testers, and we will add qualifying characters
from the newer beta servers over time as we monitor the population and
needs of the test server. Only characters created on or before January
18th will transfer to the test server and only characters that were
accessed from December 15th to present will be copied.





[TTH]: Can
you tell us the list of server names and types?



[NP]:
In addition to the servers below, we have overflow servers on standby
for when they are needed.  



8 US PVE

Thunderaxe

Woefeather

Gulgrethor

Targonor

Hilsbury

Shidreth

Flamehammer

Florendyl (RP Preferred)



1 US PVP

Tharridon



1 US alt PVP

Varking



1 EU PVE

Gelenia



1 EU PVP

Frengrot





[TTH]: Do
you all sleep?  You have been putting up at least one huge
patch everyday--sometimes two.



[NP]:
4:00 a.m. to 4:15 a.m. is designated sleep time, but sometimes if
we’re lucky we get ‘til 4:30!  Kidding
aside, that’s just the nature of the beast. We’ll
be going pretty strong for a few weeks after release as well, then once
things have calmed down we’ll probably slow things for a
little bit while folks get the chance to recharge.