Vanguard Faces The FiringSquad

Posted by Draedus in Vanguard News, Vanguard Interviews

We are all wondering will “Vanguard : Saga of Heroes” be strong enough make a mark on the already crowded MMORPG genre? FiringSquad got some answers from Sigil Games community manager Nick Parkinson.

VanguardMMORPG reviews the interview highlights below, but you can read the entire interview at FiringSquad.com

Vanguard Mounts & Flying Mounts
FiringSquad brings up one element that will stand out as unique in Vanguard - Mounts. Unique in that there are lots of variations from horses & unicorns, to hell hounds & battle cats, to boats & who knows what else. Perhaps most unique are the flying mounts that are not restricted to a set of flight paths but allow free travel.

Nick Parkinson indicates that mounts will play an intregal part in the gameplay of Vanguard from as early as level 9 or 10
“The size of the world is immense and players are going to want some way to keep travel time at a reasonable level…you’ll be able to get your first horse pretty early on…constant upgrades…are available after that…”

Vanguard’s Visual style & depth of game play.
Nick Parkinson goes on to outline 2 other significant elements that help set Vanguard apart from the other MMORPG’s out there.

“I think two things will separate us from the crowd. First, our visual style – the late master fantasy artist Keith Parkinson served as art director at Sigil until he passed on in late 2005. He established the look of Vanguard through the eyes of a painter and as a result, it feels much more alive and organic – much like an oil painting.

Depth of game play is the other big thing. There’s just so much to do. Gameplay is broken into three separate spheres. Two of them, adventuring and crafting, should be familiar to most players. But the third, diplomacy, is something that’s pretty new to the MMOG genre…”

Vanguard using a highly modified version of the Unreal engine
Vanguard uses the Unreal engine, but Nick Parkinson outlines that numerous updates, revisions, alterations & refinements have been made by the Sigil team to make the FPS engine work for this MMORPG.

“We’re constantly working with the guys over at Epic…making tweaks and adjustments…Our graphics engine is more of a hybrid at this point…We licensed the Unreal engine…we’ve had to make a lot of modifications…to make it into an MMOG engine that will fill Vanguard’s needs.”

Sigil’s Partnership with Microsoft
FiringSquad starts off with a few questions about the split-up of Sigil & Microsoft that ended with Sigil buying back the rights to Vanguard and moving on to SOE (Sony Online Entertainment).

Brad McQuad answered these questions with…

“We remain good friends with the folks at Microsoft and look forward to creating a AAA MMOG for them, even though it will be a 3rd party Windows game now, and not a first party. We had some differences, but the biggest catalyst here was that we found the opportunity to buy the publishing rights back, which is good for Sigil no matter what else did or didn’t happen.

Like I have been saying, this gives us even more (perhaps even unprecedented with a game this far along and this big) control, a chance to be a co-publisher, and to all around have more influence on how Vanguard turns out. Even were things perfect (and things are never perfect), it was an opportunity that couldn’t be passed up on.

So we are still a 3rd party windows title and an important MMOG for Microsoft from a platform perspective — short term as an XP game and long term as a game that is perfect for highlighting and taking advantage of what Vista will offer users. Vanguard is a perfect game, again thinking long term, to take advantage of Vista’s more entertainment-centric approach, increased use of graphics and tools for game developers. Online gaming is also very important for Vista.

Lastly, Vanguard screams for a native 64 bit client at some point because of its seamless world. When the time comes for a 64 bit client, when graphics cards are even more powerful but also cheaper, when RAM prices go down, etc. we will be able to access more than 2 gigs with a 64 bit client and then load up a huge amount of the world at one time. Right now you can see 4+ km in the game — which creates views and an immersiveness that MMOG gamers love. With a 64bit client and a lot of RAM, we will be able to load up much more of the world at one time and the way we have architected the engine ahead of time, knowing where technology, operating systems, etc. are going to go in the future, it will be very easy to create vistas in the game (pardon the pun) where you could see 10, 15, maybe even more km. So the switch from being a first to third party windows title still helps Microsoft out, especially longer term with Vista. This is one of the key reasons they were fine with our asking them if we could exit from the deal if we found funding to do so.

In addition to that, I know its such an overdone PR line to say that we’re still good friends with all the folks up there but it’s the honest truth. There’s a lot of good people up at Microsoft who put a lot of hard work into Vanguard and want to see it succeed just as much as we do.” - (Brad’s response quoted in its entirety from the FiringSquad interview)

Sigil’s Partnership with SOE
Nick Parkinson goes on to explain why Sigil chose SOE

“…the simple answer is because for what we need they’re the best at, plain and simple…SOE will be handling distribution, data center operations (hosting the game, etc), technical (not in-game) support and will be helping us a lot with marketing. All areas where SOE really shines…logistically they make a lot of sense too. They’re just down the road from us here in San Diego and a lot of us have worked with them before, so we’re already familiar with one another…”

Vanguard prepared for evolving MMORPG market
Vanguard has been in development for several years and the MMORPG market has changed significantly during that time. FiringSquad wonders about intimidation Sigil might be feeling entering a field that has expanded so much?

Nick Parkinson turns that around by suggestiong that these changes just make it all the better.

“It is more excitement really. The biggest change…has been the size of the market. There’s so many more people playing online games now…”

Vanguard release date?
Finally FiringSquad asks about “what we’re all anticipating When can we expect the game to launch its beta test and when is Vanguard’s official launch scheduled?”

Nick Parkinson responds

“We’ve been in closed beta for a while now actually and are quickly nearing Phase 4 – which will see a lot of new people be brought in to help test the game. As for a launch date, all we can really say at this point is Q1, 2007.”

Thanks to the guys over at FiringSquad.com for posting the interview - you can read the entire Vanguard MMORPG interview at

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