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E3 Preview: Vanguard turns to Microsoft

Explaining why the move has been made, Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online said, "As the development process is ongoing and constantly shifting, it became clear that MGS and Sigil had varying visions and direction for the title's development...In the best interest of Vanguard, it was decided that we would buy back the publishing rights from Microsoft."

Read the complete article here.

Vanguard Beta in June CGM

New Screenshots @ Official Site

New Interview @ TenTonHammer

First and foremost, two questions on everyone's mind: beta invites, and the Vanguard release date. First, Vanguard has not announced a release date yet, except to say that the previous rumors of May or late spring were just that: rumors. April did want to share a few things about the beta selection process. First, Fileplanet is hosting the beta files, but you must have an official invitation in order to download the files. If you want to join the beta, there's only one thing to do: register in the forums. Invitations to apply for beta are sent out to random draws from the forum roster; it doesn't matter how long you've been registered, who your daddy is, or how many angry emails you write. What does matter is your system specs. Since the code isn't yet optimized, you'll need a pretty high end rig to have your early beta application accepted.

Crafting tidbits from Jansan

Well I work on crafting, not harvesting, but I have played harvesting so I can comment on this aspect of it. I'll leave the more in-depth questions to Avair and Jerrith.

Harvesting has undergone some changes, that's true, but it has only gotten better.

Skilled harvesters are still rewarded for their efforts, and careless harvesters will be far less efficient. If you just screw around, you won't get much out of it. If you play smart and put some effort into it, you can get some nice rewards.

There is group harvesting, harvesting skills and abilities, and a very nice system of tools and equipment.

While harvesting is and was not technically a sphere, it's very robust.

Dungeon/dropped items will not outstrip crafted items. They will be equivalant in power.

However, dropped components/parts that can be used in crafting will make better items than either adventuring or crafting.

Involving two spheres means a more powerful item.

Keep in mind, crafting will have both risk and reward.

With the disassembly we have planned:

If you fail, you could lose the item as well as not get anything out of it.

If you do well, you will get a part(s).

If you do very well...

This will be similar to the crafting process, so skilled crafters and skilled players will do better.

Vanguard Previews

Gamespot and IGN have Vanguard previews up on their site. Enjoy!

Fanguard Write-Ups

JerleMinara's write up
The Safehouse
The Safehouse (pictures)
The Safehouse (video)
Scrapper's Den
Strokke's write up
Silky Venom
Silky Venom (pictures)
Vanguard Fighters
Vanguard RP Union
Vanguard Spheres
Vanguard Spheres (pictures)
Vanguard Ten Ton Hammer
Vanguard WarCry

Interview with Den Beauvais

Whoever thought up the word "prolific" must have had Den Beauvais in mind. Den (whose nickname is "The Imaginator") is a senior artist at Vanguard. He is one of the artists who created the PC characters, plus many of the NPCs for Vanguard, and a man who thrives on work--his output is staggering. His own "highlight of the day" describes his state of mind. When I asked him what his highlight was, he replied:


"Waking up to do it all over again. When truly inspired, art has that kind of power that keeps you up late at night and wakes you first thing in the morning with a childlike excitement and curiosity that you'll never know what you'll create that day. Every day becomes exciting that way."

New Tunes!

Fanguard Registration

The San Diego Fanguard begins with a cocktail party with our team in Friday night. Saturday will include demos of Vanguard, discussions with our team members, fun activities, contests and loads of fun meeting and getting to know your fellow gamers!

We will also be conducting another "Cattle Call" and interviewing potential team members. We hired several people from the last Fanguard and will likely hire more of them as we progress in our development. If you are interested in working with us, don't miss your chance to get a face to face interview with our team! Space is limited but we will interview as many as we can fit into our schedule. If you would like to request an interview appointment, please click here.