vanguard-saga-of-heroes posts

One of the major forces behind the launch of the MMO EverQuest has announced he is returning to making games. Brad McQuaid has announced on his personal blog site that he is now a co-founder of a new but unnamed game developer in San Diego. McQuaid says that the company will be working on casual and social games but, "At some point we will also return to developing MMOs." The company is now hiring as well.

McQuaid was the co-designer and producer for the original EverQuest. After its launch he left Everquest's developer in 2002 to become a co-founder in Sigil Games. At his new company he helped to create another fantasy MMO, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The game launched in early 2007 but the launch had significant issues. Just a few months after the game's launch Vanguard and Sigil Games were bought by McQuaid's former employer Sony Online. McQuaid decided at that point to leave game development entirely until now. His web site states he took time off for "hobbies and to spend time with friends and family."

[Via Massively]

Valve has announced that it is now offering a number of games from publisher Sony Online Entertainment. The games include the complete collections for both Everquest and Everquest II along with Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Pirates of the Burning Sea. Those last two games, along with Everquest: Secrets of Faydwer and Everquest II: Rise of Kunark are being offered with a 10 percent discount for the next 10 days via Steam.

Also, Valve's regular weekend sales deal for their Steam service continues as the digital download service offers up yet another game at a huge discount. This time the game is the PC version of Rainbow Six Vegas 2, the 2008 released tactical shooter and the latest game in Ubisoft's long running Tom Clancy branded series.

If you like your shooting of terrorist to be mixed with the "what happens here, stays here" lifestyle you can download Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for just $9.99 this weekend. That's a 50 percent cut from its normal $19.99 price.

It's not exactly a shock that some MMO games will be holding special Halloween themed events this month but Sony Online Entertainment decided to go all out and have almost all of their MMO titles have some kind of Halloween related event (Planetside seems to be the only game in Sony Online's line up to not be participating).

A couple of examples; Star Wars Galaxies will be holding something called the Galactic Moon Festival from now until Nov. 7 that will have "Sith-o-lanterns" (hehe) among the spooky stuff around the Galactic Empire. The Matrix Online will have events that will allow players to fight off zombies and risk getting infected. The collectible card game Legends of Norrath will also have a special Halloween senario this month. So if you are too old for trick-or-treating, at least you can stay at home and trick a lot of other folks online.

Remember Vanguard: Saga of Heroes? Sure you do. It's that fantasy MMO from Sigil Games, formed by some of the folks who helped develop Everquest. Oh well, there was the issue of the game being completely not ready for release when it actually shipped to stores in January 2007. By spring 2007, Sony Online had purchased Sigil Games and Vanguard and took over the game's development.

This week Vanguard is scheduled to get a major update that seems to be designed to bring in new players to the game. The update will add a new starting area for new players (the Isle of Dawn) along with a revamp of the male and female character models and most importantly "thousands of bug fixes". Indeed the patch notes are said to take up 12 pages. Wow.

The fifth update for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is now available, which adds new features, class updates, and performance fixes to the game.

Chief among the new additions are racial mounts. According to the Vanguard website, the mounts "can be attained at levels 30 and 50 after you have gained the required faction and number of platinum coins." In terms of class updates, the Vanguard website states that "Blood Mages and Psionicists have received a lot of developer attention," with many broken abilities now functioning properly.

Consult the updates section of the Vanguard site for specific Game Update 5 info, and log on to Vanguard to apply the new patch.