Brad McQuaid Is Back
Scott Jennings over at Broken Toys pointed out Brad McQuaid’s new blog. Apparently he’s back in town and ready to get to it. I say ‘apparently’ because some people also reckon it’s just an elaborate hoax.
No idea who I’m talking about? Don’t care? Well, I’ll fill you in anyway 
Mr McQuaid is basically one of the the big brains behind Everquest and it’s first few expansions. In 2001, he left SOE and after a short while started his own company, Sigil, who eventually released Vanguard.
The curious thing about Brad is that he seems to have attracted a lot of negative attention in recent years, particularly over the shambles that was Vanguard. Although it’s now in a pretty decent state, Vanguard launch to a very poor reception and the result was that Sigil was downsized and bought over by SOE. This in turn resulted in a lot of negativity towards McQuaid as being not only the reason why Vanguard failed but also about how he apparently ran the company (or didn’t run it) towards the end. It seems that the whole thing resulted in a lot of unhappy employees and disgruntled gamers. There’s plenty of interviews and articles about what happened if you want to dig up long forgotten memories.
I can’t comment about any of the fervor that occurred back in 2007 because I wasn’t there (at Sigil) and don’t know anyone who was. Also, it sounds like Brad has a pretty hard time and a lot to deal with and I can emphasise with that. Being a manager and in a position of responsibility in a company is no easy job.
Personally, I admire Brad’s work on Everquest and what he’s contributed to the MMORPG genre. Without him we probably wouldn’t be playing the games we are today. Also, I admire his vision and ambition for the genre. Vanguard may have been far from perfect but I take my hat off to him for at least aspiring to make something huge and amazing. In my opinion, too many companies are playing it safe with MMOs now and don’t really want to try and experiment or push the boat out in case they end up with the next Star Wars: Galaxies or Vanguard on their hands.
I wish Brad all the best for his future and I’m honestly curious to see what he gets up to next and looking forward to checking it out whatever it may be.
Dustin Moore (17)
Tesh (12)
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Stabs (9)
Actually, “the Vision” is one of the things that I wish would die in MMOs. I’ve always wanted these MMO things to be dynamic, interesting virtual worlds. The Vision has led directly to Kaplan’s silly “cruise director” mentality for WoW, and has put the whole genre in a mental straitjacket.
@Tesh I’ve heard the term “the Vision” banded around a lot when people talk about Brad McQuaid but I never entirely sure what they mean by it. In one of Brad’s interviews he simply says:
“I think for any game, you need a vision. Either a visionary or visionaries and if you don’t have that, you kind of meander around and I don’t think you get nearly as strong of a game. Or anything. A piece of art. Anything creative. Unless there’s a strong vision. My guess is I was doing a long-winded post back in 1999.”
What’s the cruise director mentality for WoW? Would love to hear more about it.
I worked for New Gen Gamers for 2 years. My partner who headed all the podcasts(and is a living encyclopedia of Video Game, and Video Game Industry history)knows every detail of the story. I believe he talked about some of it in a previous podcast(maybe I’ll find which episode and send you the link). He was a Vanguard “fanboy”. I mean that only in a good way. He loved it, and was so happy to see Vanguard improving lately. I myself loved the trial he gave me, and bought the game. I intend to improve my graphics card and start playing it.
My friend says that while he doesn’t approve of the way Brad has acted over the years, he can empathize and thinks that Brad has unduely had it rough with the way he was treated, especially after making a game that is pretty revolutionary, and massive in scope.
Here’s a good starting point for the Cruise Director bit:
http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/?p=1592
…and I can’t seem to find what I thought I knew about “The Vision”. How embarrassing. Long and short of it, I’ve read complaints that while McQuaid’s assertion that strong art needs a strong core vision, his Vision for EverQuest led directly to the focus on endgame raiding and vertical linear DIKU progression at the cost of making living, breathing, dynamic worlds.
…and now I’m wondering where I got that idea.
Evidence seems to support it, what with EQ’s forced grouping and interminable grind, as well as the circumstantial evidence of hardcore raiders being poached from EQ to design WOW… but still, I’m not sure where I put all that together from. Lame.
Sorry, missed a phrase. That should read as a general agreement with the assertion that strong art direction and a directorial “vision” is pretty well established in the creative arts, it’s his particular vision for EQ that has caused some trouble. I don’t disagree with the need for A vision, I simply think his has been deleterious to the genre at large.
I respect his work; I really do. I just think the genre has moved past where he wanted it to go. I loved EQ, but losing XP and levels for a bad death is ridiculous. I hated it then, and I hate it now.
If he can experiment anew and come up with something as unique for tomorrow’s MMOs as EverQuest was back in the late ’90s, I’m all for it. If he wants to get back and start feeding more of the unnecessarily cumbersome mechanics back into MMOs, then I think we’re better off where WoW is leading us and where TOR looks to be taking us.
Without him we probably wouldn’t be playing the games we are today.
Perhaps not the exact same games, but some games existed before EQ, or so I’ve heard. Online games would have continued on just fine.
Tesh wrote:
…and I can’t seem to find what I thought I knew about “The Vision”.
“The Vision” was something that the players personified to be angry at. Basically, when players asked for a specific feature or why something was nerfed the developers would post something along the lines of, “We make changes based upon our vision for the game.” It’s like a parent telling a little kid they can’t do something “because I say so.” It may be true, but it’s not terribly satisfying for the person to hear over and over again.