Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Major content updates to Vanguard have offered raid areas. Early in Vanguard’s raid history, the client wouldn’t really support groups bigger than 12. Then raid parties reached 18 with some success. Raids are purported to fully support 24 players from here on out. How have optimization fixes enhanced raids and your ability to design new content?

SG: Game optimization has not affected our ability to design content outside of allowing us to have 24-man raids. Multiple optimizations to server performance have reduced sluggishness when multiple raids are in a dungeon but these optimizations were not done exclusively for raids they were done to enhance the game’s performance.

On May 8, 2009, SOE revealed the Naratoz Focus of Chaos, a sort of epic weapon for the Psionicist class. What other traditional end game content will Vanguard players see? Will we be getting epic quests or alternate advancement?

SG: We are planning on releasing alternate advancement, and the epic weapons will be released with Pantheon.

In that May 8 Telonian Tribune, players also got some glimpses of Narcanos, the final boss in the Pantheon of the Ancients raid area. How has that raid encounter gone in testing? Can you give us any hints about what this boss will do that makes it challenging?

SG: Implementation of Halls of Shattered Souls has not begun as of yet, so unfortunately there are no details we can give.

A popular rumor on the web is that Vanguard is still running only because it is part of the Station Access plan, and many new gamers are reluctant to invest their time in Vanguard for fear it is not fully supported. Ten Ton Hammer’s Eric “Dalmarus” Campbell saw a very different picture at Fan Faire 2008. What can you say to alleviate fears or clear up any misinformation?

SG: I think that article clears things up. SOE supports this game very well but the company has other games and employees to worry about. We all get the attention we need, and in the end it is about the team itself and how much we want to move things forward.

As a follow-up to the previous question, a recent Ask a Dev feature released on May 6, 2009 noted that SOE will “probably never add another dev for crafting and diplomacy specifically.” Diplomacy was one of the most unique features of Vanguard. Does this statement mean that development of that feature is done or merely that there will never be a person who does nothing but diplomacy, that all developers work on all aspects of the game?

SG: We have a developer that does nothing but diplo and crafting. He does an excellent job and if we add anymore designers in the future they will not be hired to work exclusively on either of these spheres.

Finally, that same Ask a Dev feature notes that most bugs in the game are quickly corrected, but it also says “we have many other things to do and very few resources.” What else is the development team doing? Is the team working on new content for Vanguard or other games? And what does this mean for the future of Vanguard?

SG: We are a development team. We need to get content out to keep people interested. We only work on Vanguard, and when we are not fixing bugs we are working on new content or systems we would like to see in the game.