Interview: Sigil Games on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes & Widescreen Gaming

A bit over 18 months ago, Brad McQuaid (aka "Aradune Mithara") stopped by the forum to say that he had gotten Vanguard: Saga of Heroes to run on his Dell 2405. You may recognize Brad's name, as he and Jeff Butler (also at Sigil) were two of the visionaries and programmers for the original Everquest.

Thinking I had nothing to lose, I asked about getting an interview with Sigil, about Vanguard, and widescreen gaming. Brad agreed, and I delivered a lengthy interview. Unfortunately they were entering their first closed beta, and then there was E3, and then the change in publishers. Never giving up the dream, I cut the interview down and kept bugging their Community Manager about getting the interview.

Just a few days ago we received the interview back from Ryan Elam, Director of Technology at Sigil Games, and April Jones, PR Manager. I'm still waiting on screenshots, but I thought I'd go ahead and post the interview. To discuss the interview, or Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, hit this thread over on the forums.

For additional coverage of this upcoming MMORPG check out: IGN, Gamespot, 1up.com, MMORPG.com, or GameZone, as well as the Official Vanguard:SOH Site. A million thanks to Jeff, Ryan, and April for making this happen. In the grand scheme of gaming websites, the WSGF is still small fish, and glad to be given the opportunity for this interview. They've all been amazing to work with, and here's hoping the finished game is as great as they are.

Widescreen Gaming

What are your overall thoughts on widescreen? What do you see as the major benefits, and the major shortcomings of widescreen? Do these answers change when you switch “hats” from gamer, to producer, to programmer, to artist, to CEO?

Ryan Elam: I think widescreen offers, if you’ll excuse the term, a more cinematic experience for a gamer. Widescreen is certainly a friend of the MMOG game designer, certainly more so than for a first-person shooter. In an FPS, intensity comes in part from a narrow field of view, which promotes that ‘enemy out of nowhere’ feel. In an MMOG, widescreen offers us the ability to grant the users a panoramic view of a landscape that our artists have spent so much time on, and further since an MMOG is at least in part a ‘role playing’ game, you feel more immersed as a ‘movie hero’ if your screen actually LOOKS like you’re in a movie. I think the various things that we DO to take advantage of widescreen change depending on the hat you wear, whether it be producer or artist, but certainly we all agree that with an MMOG, widescreen is just simply superior in every way.

I've always heard developers and game reviewers talking about "rendering 3D worlds" and game "cameras." To me, this gives the impression that a game world is rendered and the players view is based on a "camera" that is "punched into" the game world. I've always thought that the screen resolution either, changed the "size of the lens," (providing a larger view) or possibly changed the "quality of the lens" (increasing detail). If this were the case, it would seem that widescreen support shouldn't be that difficult. All the developer would need to do is offer a 2nd "lens option," with a widescreen formatting. Am I completely off base here? If so, how?

Ryan Elam: You are correct! With almost no exception, 3D programs use the mathematical equivalent of a ‘pinhole camera’, one with an infinitely small aperture. Converting a game to widescreen is actually quite simple, and any game maker who is making a PC game is going to already have everything in his engine that he needs to support widescreen. You can think of the typical ‘camera’ as having a completely adjustable aspect ratio. The same math that allows us to render at 1280x1024 or 1024x768 is used to render at 1600x900 or 1920x1080. The only real difference is the number of pixels and a larger ‘viewport’ which would cause more things to be rendered, but programmers don’t really have to take extra steps to account for such a change.

Developing Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

The MMO market is fairly mature at this point, with the “Third Generation” currently being developed or deployed. Several high profile titles carry a specific differentiating characteristic such as genre (COH, Auto Assault) or charging no fee (Guild Wars). How do you see Vanguard differentiating itself from the other fantasy MMO titles?

April Jones: There are several areas where Vanguard differs from other MMOs currently available. One of the exciting differences in Vanguard is that players can explore the world of Telon with complete freedom on the back of a flying dragon, or on their war horse – all player controlled, not on rails. If you’d rather travel the seas, you can get your own ship and either sail around your home continent or take a deep sea ship across the waters to visit another land. We have a real-time weather system so expect that wind direction and strength will affect your navigation.

We are also taking a different approach with player housing. In Vanguard you can own an actual house that you can see in the distance as you ride home from a day spent adventuring. This isn’t an instanced area with dozens of other people lining up to enter the same door – it is a place that exists in the world and you can decorate it to your heart’s content, even displaying trophies won in battle.

For adventuring gameplay, Vanguard takes a different approach than the current generation of MMOs. While approximately 20% of our content is dedicated to solo adventurers, and we also have expansive crafting and diplomacy spheres that can essentially be played “alone”, we feel that there are some MMOs which are missing a true “massively multiplayer” experience by tailoring most content for solo play. We understand that complaints about the early MMOs include: too much time required for a meaningful play session, groups often difficult to find, and negative “group play” experiences created by situations like loot stealing, or too much time spent camping. Many MMOs today have addressed these concerns through instancing and lots of solo gameplay.

Sigil feels that by playing in individualized instanced areas, players miss out on the excitement of being in a world with lots of other people. We have decided to implement other ways of dealing with some of the valid issues I mentioned above:

• Limited time to play: With Vanguard’s solo content, crafting, and diplomacy, we feel there will be lots of options for people who don’t have a lot of time to play or who don’t like to play often with other people. Telon will also be a very large world, so we are making mounts available around level ten. This makes it quicker for even low level folks to get where they need to be.
• Finding groups: Vanguard will have many unique ways to find and keep groups together. In addition to an expansive LFG (looking for group) system, we’re introducing what we call caravans. Let’s say I’ll be on a work trip for a week. I can choose to attach myself to my group’s caravan. When I log back in, I’ll be able to re-enter the world where I was the last time, or log back in at the nearest outpost to my group. This really speeds up the time in finding your group when you haven’t been able to play, especially if they’ve traveled a large distance while you’ve been gone.
• Loot/kill stealing and camping: We are addressing this in two key ways. One is that we have *huge* dungeons where multiple large groups can play at the same time. Second, we have implemented “encounter routes.” These will open up for your group in a variety of ways: interacting with a magical item, talking to a certain NPC, killing a specific NPC or group of NPCs. An encounter route puts you on a special group mini-quest where NPCs will spawn specifically for your group. Others nearby can see you, and could even throw a heal or buff your way if they wanted to help, but they can’t attack the mob or negatively impact your battle in any way.

We feel that communities are formed by sharing these experiences together. Witnessing another group take on a big mob, and maybe helping them out, forges friendships. We feel this is what makes MMOs exciting and this is what we want to offer in Vanguard, which is different that the direction some of the current MMOs seem to be headed.

Many recent AAA titles have grown beyond simply being “games” and into “properties.” With the detailed back-story you’re creating, and the expansive world that is being visualized, are there any plans to grow Vanguard beyond the realms of MMO, and into books or RPGs?

April Jones: We are currently in negotiations to pursue one of these ideas you mention and we’re really excited about it. Unfortunately, since it is still in discussion we can’t give any more details yet but this is a great question: watch for more news on this topic.

Gameplay in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

What is Sigil implementing in Vanguard to bring back the players who have become disillusioned with the standard “treadmill” ideology in many MMOs?

April Jones: Some people love the level grind, but we’re hearing that most really like having interesting quests and meaningful things to do that will help them advance. So, we are trying to be creative in our quests. We have a very popular newbie quest right now that involves gathering chickens with a broom, for example. We are even taking this to the crafting sphere. We have crafting “work orders”, which are like quests.

You might talk to an NPC and she’ll tell you that the city needs nails to repair the west end city wall. She’ll give you the material, you make the nails (so you “level” your crafting skill), you return the finished nails to her and get a reward. This has the added benefit of not flooding the game economy with menial items that were simply created to ‘skill-up’ – a common problem in many current MMOs. We feel ideas like this make the world more interesting and make your leveling more meaningful. There are lots of other examples, more complex and interesting, but I wanted to highlight these as creative ideas for even low level folks.

What overall purpose will players have, other than leveling a character for it’s own sake? What impact can players have on the world of Vanguard, and the story you’re creating?

April Jones: I think the crafting aspect I mentioned above would be part of that. Crafters can also make player ships and houses, so they will not only be important to players but important to the progression of adventuring as well.

We also have diplomacy though, which I mentioned is mostly a solo oriented sphere. The skills of a diplomat will be needed by adventurers though. It might be that a group can’t get access to the dungeon until they talk their way in to the gatekeeper. This makes the world seem more dynamic than just simply hack-and-slash your way through content. Brute force is very important, but it won’t always get the job done in Vanguard. I definitely think that gives players a deeper purpose in the game and a feeling that they have an impact on the world.

Note: You can have a character that is both an adventurer and a diplomat. You can also have a character that is both a crafter and an adventurer, or any combination of the three.

As a working father (with an active wife faction), my ability to stay with a group all night can easily get interrupted. How much will I be able to solo in Vanguard?

April Jones: I’m pretty sure this has been answered throughout my other answers. I would like to say that our goal is to always have something available for people to do. If you only have 30 minutes to log in, we want you to be able do to something. Maybe it’s a diplomacy run, maybe you’ll craft an important item, maybe you’ll kill a few new creatures. We want you to feel like you have meaningful things to do any time you want to play Vanguard.

Odds & Ends

I’ve purchased the CE editions of WOW and GW. I’ve really liked the soundtracks and the art books, and the in-game extras. Are there any plans for a Collector’s Edition? If so, are you leaning towards in-game extras, swag, or both?

April Jones: We are currently discussing all of these details with SOE. We have some great ideas and so do they, so it is safe to say that the collector’s edition of Vanguard will be chock-full of very cool things!

Is there one question you’ve really wanted someone to ask about Vanguard or Sigil Online? If so, what is that question, and the answer?

April Jones: The question I’ve always wanted to be asked about Vanguard, and Sigil is: "Why do you choose to buck the trend? The enormous commercial success of World of Warcraft says that there’s a market out there for instanced, soloable, alone-playing-together content – why does Sigil not choose to follow in this path when it is clearly so commercially successful?"

And the answer is rather complicated. There are lots of players out there who like to do lots of different things. Historically, many games have catered to particular niches of players. Some games are built for the traditional min-maxxer, people who like to manipulate points values to make their characters as powerful as possible; some games are built for the PvPer – Dark Age of Camelot was a solid game that executed on a great promise of PvP and what they termed Realm versus Realm. Other games have executed on a casual audience, on the alone-playing-together aspect.

We are making a game that encompasses the freedom to play as you choose. We want people to log into Vanguard and exclaim that they had always wanted a game that did X, and why has no one ever done that before, it seems so obvious that it’s a good idea. We want people to log into Vanguard and be able to play the game that they’ve wanted to play, because we are building the game that *we* want to play. And that game, that solution, must allow choice. Not all gamers are the same – but there can be a game that allows different people to enjoy the same shared experience.

We think Vanguard is that game.