Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Interview
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Q: Earlier today you spoke about EverQuest. Vanguard is a huge leap forward from EQ Live (which Brad also was part of), not only in technological terms but in terms of expectations. People are a little more savvy, and more knowledgeable about MMOs in general. How are you position Vanguard to meet the expectations of both the high-end or hardcore gamer as well as the more casual gamer?
A: Well, that's our biggest challenge. People naturally assume the extremes you are either a casual gamer or a hardcore gamer. In my opinion most people are in the middle, the core gamer. So we are really focusing on the message that our game is not a hardcore game. It has hardcore content, it has casual content but the majority of the content is core content where you can log on for an hour and have a good time. You can work eight hours on some rare item, but you can do it in two- or three-hour chunks. We realize that people who played EQ have grown up; we realize we want to attract a lot of people who play WoW (World of Warcraft) who have different expectations, different experiences. One of the benefits of being Sigil and having our background in EverQuest is the recognition, but it is a lot of the challenges that a lot of people assume that this game will be a lot of camping and hardcore. So that is one of our big efforts right now in messaging, marketing and PR is that, yes, we are more challenging and deeper and are about longevity. We hope that people, World of Warcraft players that have three of four characters at max level, and are looking for something more, we want to let them know about Vanguard. So one challenge is even letting them know, because maybe they are new players and weren't around in the EQ days, or maybe they were around and they only heard '˜oh, it is a hardcore game.' So we want to get the message out right.
