…Or IS He?

Hmmm. And the plot thickens. And the question is: Who the fuck is Keith Sharward?

http://www.myspace.com/sharward

I know. An Internet nobody, like the rest of us. Just that this one is talking BS. (BTW, Ferraro beat him in that one. And a bunch of people before that).

anybody can jump on the internet fame wagon…

Hudson :
I am pretty sure that Brad is done in this industry anyway.

Still, impersonation is impersonation; if this is the case here, the real Brad McQuaid ought to make it known.

Keith’s a friend of Brad’s, who just happened to re-up the domain. Not much news here, really.

I think Keith Sharwood is just a mate of Brad McQuaid. There’s a photo of them together on his blog.

Maybe it isnt the real Brad. Or maybe he got tired of getting asked the same questions over and over again. I dont know, I just used Google-fu. Besides, cut some slack to the guy, maybe he fixed the things with his co-workers in private and/or get a girlfriend/wife/mistress or something. As ive said, i dont know, im just shooting arrows at random.

Vanguard in itself it isnt that bad, its floating enough, its just another “meh” MMO, but it works. Honestly, i dont think that an MMO will be as or more succesfull as WoW in its peak in a long time. If ever.

And being asked about the shit over and over and over again for some “game journalists” that just want to air the shit for profit or for the lulz its must be
incredible annoying. Its time to get over it. “Life, as they said, moves on”. (5 points to the ones that name the mythical videogame creature that said that).

I was wrong.

I got confirmation today that it is indeed Brad.

If I would have known I may not have been QUITE as snarky.

Oh I love the drama. The sweet sweet drama.

Apparently we love giving Brad the attention even more than he loves it.

Brad: “Hey guys, I’m still kicking around. Yeah, yeah, I know – that whole Vanguard thing kinda sucked. BTW, check it out, this is me mountain biking.”

Internet: “OMG! Brad McQuaid! ROFTCOPTER! O rly? No, not rly, he’s fake, look at the DNS n00b.”

Brad: “Yeah, I had a buddy of mine register my domain awhile back, it’s really me. You know, I’m reading some of these comments I’m getting, and I think Vanguard turned out okay after all.”

Internet: “OMG it was Brad McQuaid! Ima firin’ my laser! Pewpewpew!”

Brad: “… Why do I make games for you people again?”

I actually did go ahead and grab the vanguard trial. I liked it reasonably well in the open beta but could tell it wasn’t nearly finished, so with that experience combined with the post-release fallout I decided to avoid it for a while. It’s been a while, and so far it’s not terrible. It is at least playable now, which means I might get far enough this time to find out if it’s any good.

So he likes to ride bikes and that seemed insensitive because others lose their job?

newsflash: All execs do things that us little people can’t afford to do. Apparently, his horrific crime was mentioning it on an Internet word-posting forum!

If you hate McQuaid exactly as much as you hate every other bigwig in the gaming industry, you are being consistent. If not, its just pointless nerdraging and “I will NEVER forgive you for the Manastone nerf in 1999!” wankery.

Everyone forgot the fatal flaw behind the impersonation conspiracy: Who would WANT to pretend to be Brad McQuaid?

But now that we know it’s really him, I feel as though I have been cheated of delicious drama. Brad, please pretend to be someone else. Who knows, maybe your blogging and mmo design will improve!

I’ve never played any of Brad McQuaid’s games, but I think Geld is correct when he says that McQuaid was pretty much a victim by that stage, not stepping outside his office and letting the other guys run the company by proxy. This is the premise of a tragedy, not a revenge fantasy.

You add on top of that the much-maligned “vision”. I’d rather have game designer who have them but fail to bring them to life instead of WoW copycats who just want to make money by being as unimaginative as possible and tapping into the lowest-common-denominator-market.

@Triforcer
Actually I am consistent throughout every industry.

@Raad
Amen. Damn executives.

About the “vision”, its just the believe that a game needs to be a piece of art, not just pasting things around, you need a base (a solid, detailed one) of what the game is supoused to be. And, finally, Microsoft (the guys that put the money) decided to put all their resources in the console wars, not in the MMO wars. Just as simple. And despite that, Vanguard works.

Vetarnias :I think Geld is correct when he says that McQuaid was pretty much a victim by that stage, not stepping outside his office and letting the other guys run the company by proxy.

Is that not being a “victim” but rather incompetent?

VG was pretty cool in open beta. But then 4 people could play it once it released. Now there are maybe 3 people who play it and they’re all max level. So even if you do give the trial a go, you wont run into a single person, and by the time you solo your way to max level the game will have a month left before it gets put down. Or somethin like that.

@Gx1080

The Vision(tm) as a work of art… If you like your “art” to come up to you and kick you in the balls numerous times if you don’t happen to “enjoy” the art as the artist demands it be enjoyed. Even if you do like the Vision “as it was intended”, you still get kicked in the balls regardless because…. well, its in the Vision(tm).

Brad McQuaid got lucky being the first to copy dikumud into a 3D client. Nothing more. For all his pretensions of being a “Game God”, Vanguard totally exposed the Emperor had no clothes to begin with.

So we’ve switched to dumping on EverQuest now.

You know, all things said and done about EverQuest, it wasn’t such a bad game – at least if you take into account it being 10 years old and forgive it for being an atrocious grind. You can’t sell 14 expansions – and counting – for a genuinely bad game.

Nor did McQuaid and co behind EverQuest simply garner fame from doing a Dikumud cut and paste job in creating EverQuest. First, because EverQuest wasn’t the first 3D Dikumud out there – look at Meridian 59. Second, because making the transition from 2D to 3D isn’t that easy — you have to invent some game mechanics for it to work. If EverQuest had any big advantage of being a first, it would simply be that it had SOE behind it to promote it. It’s a really interesting sign that so many clones failed to steal EverQuest’s thunder for years.

The important thing to consider is that whole new game mechanics were invented that you don’t see prior to EverQuest’s main predecessor. A lot of the vernacular we use in MMORPGs was made popular through EverQuest – tanking, conning, pulling, raids, ect. Before EverQuest, the concept of the “holy trinity” (Tank, Healer, DPS) was not nearly as solid. The idea of having class specific niches (something only your class could do that would be in demand by teams) emerged as a major gameplay component – perhaps out of trying to satisfy everybody complaining on the message boards.

It’s really easy to look back at EverQuest and see things you could do better, but you can do the same thing about any of the firsts in MMORPGs. EverQuest was largely in the same boat as Ultima Online in the early decisions they made… all things considered, they fared a lot better.

Vanguard was a pity though. They bit off more than they could chew, taking the game back to the drawing board a few more times than they could afford. Water under the bridge now, though.

In my take on the WoW imitation situation, it’s really a lot more to do with big budget necessity. WoW didn’t do EverQuest so much better as they did accessibly and well-refined. Then its population was largely turbocharged by Blizzard rep.

If you’re developing a game whose budget is expected to run into the millions, do you make a game that’s deep and satisfying for the veteran gamers, or do you make a game that’s made to smoothly transition a much larger casual public into a skinners’ box? The later, because the veteran gamers are outnumbered severalfold, but everybody pays the same subscription fees.

Voila: conditions are now prepped for the veteran gamers to be repeatedly draw the conclusion that the reason why games keep sucking is because people are shit.

Me, I’ve gone to the next stage. Screw the industry, if I want to make a game that interests me, I’ll just have to do it myself. There’s no money in my pockets, it’ll be a tile-based fossil on a borrowed engine, but it’ll still have better gameplay than a game whose development budget is so wildly out of proportion that they have no choice but to cater to people who aren’t gamers.

@UnSub
That was a quote from Scott that I fully agree with. Find the post and argue about it there.

Sullee :
I’m not trying to be arguementative I just don’t see much value in posts with crap like: “A lot of people blamed the fact that EverQuest failed to completely fellate them on Brad McQuaid having a “Vision ™.” mixed with revisionist history.

Neither would I.

However, I’m pretty sure you’ll find more than one definition of Holy Trinity. Just doing a quick search on Google, I see my case is supported by at least one other player, though I can see cases which support you as well.

In the wider scheme of MMOs, I suspect my definition is the more universal. This is because crowd control is often optional, but doing without DPS can be an exercise in tedium under many games’ balances. Even in EverQuest, you might be able to do without crowd control if you find a nice spot without wandering mobs, but doing without DPS s slow going

Also, I didn’t say that EverQuest invented those concepts – that would be silly – I was saying it was pivotal enough to popularize the terminology.

So, overall, this isn’t me doing revisionist history. This is you having a different (not necessarily incorrect) perspective in the first case and misinterpreting me in the later.

Brask Mumei :

geldonyetich :
A lot of people blamed the fact that EverQuest failed to completely fellate them on Brad McQuaid having a “Vision ™.”

This is what people are responding to. Such a statement is either troll bait or written by someone who didn’t play EQ in the early days when the Vision was pure.

No, that wasn’t troll bait, that was a fair theory.

I think a lot of people dislike Brad McQuaid simply because EverQuest got boring and they blamed him. Though it is a bit of an exaggeration to refer to this as “failing to completely fellate them,” the prime sentiment beneath it is true. They have taken their lack of satisfaction largely stemming from their own irrational desires and pinned it on McQuaid for failing to meet them.

Again, that’s just my theory why all this McQuaid angst is floating out there. I invite you to provide your own. (And, no, the way he didn’t personally lay off everybody when Sigil folded doesn’t count – I’m preferring to hatred that existed well before Vanguard.)

It’s less that I don’t know how to troll, and more that I abstain for moral reasons, and end up trolling inadvertently anyway because my method of thinking and/or writing is removed enough from the mainstream that the inevitable misinterpretations of those who don’t take sufficient time to think/read well enough to meet me half way will bring about a flame war over imagined differences in opinion in no time at all.

Thus, I troll without trolling. It’d be very Zen were it not so very much the fallout of ignorance born from a cross between the human condition and those who do not regard the Internet as serious business.

I’d like to say this is a uniquely me thing, but it seems to be the common reaction to anyone with more than four braincells to rub together.

I created a web page in 1996 and then a web blog in 1999 to be ignored. Not.

Brad loves the attention. He has the common sense God gave a garden slug and the work ethic of said garden slug.