From F13.net:
…at approximately 4:30PM today, Sigil employees were told to meet outside. At which point they were terminated. On the spot. By whom? Doesn’t seem to have been Brad McQuaid, if it was, nobody is talking. But that doesn’t seem like something he’d do. But I suppose the executioner is irrelevant since most folks secretly want it to be SOE and it wasn’t. As it stands, people were told to come back tomorrow to do their paperwork and some may get hired by SOE….
This news comes to us in the wake of rumors that SOE will be buying Vanguard from Sigil. All that SOE had to say was “…an announcement is forthcoming tomorrow.” Honestly if this is real I’m curious what happened. Did the deal go through then and SOE fired the GM’s and various staff to fill the positions with their own people? Is Brad McQuaid going to abandon Vanguard and move on to his next Game? He did say that Vanguard is only the first game to come from Sigil. But honestly would you buy another game by Brad McQuaid now that you’ve seen what he’s done with Vanguard? I don’t know about any of you but I had so much invested in VG. I beta tested the game for months, I hyped it to my friends and family, I bought the collectors addition as a direct result of how great beta was… and then I was slapped in the face at release when they(Sigil) started making changes to the game completely contrary to everything they had done thus far.
Tomorrow we will see what comes of this rumor and perhaps get some insight on the future of Vanguard.
I’m intrigued to know as well… but I’m having trouble understanding why SOE would buy VG… when they have a giant puddle of success finally after 2+ years with EQ2. Crazy peoples…
Just give me Gods and Heroes and I’ll be fine, I guess.
Right now there’s a lot that can’t be said but it’s basically because if SOE is to secure the rights to Vanguard and bring in their own people, they have to buy it.
Well employees are saying goodbye on some affiliate sites. Apparently the entire community team is being let go and I assume this is because SOE will want to bring in their own people.
Looking grim for Vanguard right now.
http://www.vanguardspheres.com/forums/test-server/9710-end.html
Asquinol, Sigil Games Online, QA Tester says goodbye to the test server community on Vanguardspheres.
From http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=9105
Hello Everyone,
Today I would like to formally announce that SOE has acquired the assets of Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. As a part of this acquisition, we are bringing on approx 50 people from Sigil in order to insure that Vanguard continues to grow. SOE is dedicated to making sure that Vanguard is well taken care of and that we provide the same level of service we do for our other titles. In the near future we will come out with a publishing plan that will largely be driven by the strong player community that Vanguard has already built up. We plan on supporting Vanguard for many years to come, and you can expect many content updates as part of your subscription. Down the line we will of course be coming out with new expansion packs, but right now the focus is on making sure Vanguard is running the way it should be.
We are also officially opening up forums. In the past, our deal with Sigil didn’t allow for this, but as with our other games we fill this is an important part of communicating with the playerbase. You can expect a strong presence from our community team as well as the development team members. While we realize that Sigil had said they wouldn’t open up general forums, at SOE we fill this hampers our efforts to communicate effectively with the players. We will continue to support the fansites in a big way, and will be contacting many of them directly to discuss what this change means. By no means do we want to lose the strong fansite support by making this change, but we do think it’s important to have a forum for players to communicate directly with SOE.
A few other items I wanted to mention
1. Brad McQuaid will be consultant to SOE as a creative advisor for Vanguard. Dave Gilbertson will be the person directly responsible for the day-to-day management of both the Sigil Carlsbad office as well as Vanguard.
2. We do not plan on making any major changes to Vanguard. Any changes are going to come from the team itself. We aren’t mandating any big changes to the game. We’ve learned a thing or two with our experiences with the NGE and don’t plan on repeating mistakes from the past and not listening to the players.
3. We do plan on spending a lot of time cleaning up legacy issues with Vanguard and making sure the game’s performance improves.
By way of comparison, this team is approx. the same size as the EQ2 team and I feel like that team has done an amazing job improving EQ2 since it’s launch. We intend to do the same thing for Vanguard and it is our hope that the players feel like we’re doing right by them.
Smed
There you have it. The hope now lies on SOE to do with VG what they were able to do with EQ2. Good to know at least 50 or so people won’t be on the unemployment line tomorrow.