[quote="Brad McQuaid"]
“SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind.”

What does that mean? It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently but not as well as we hoped...So the bottom line is that SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard – our relationship is going to become even tighter – much tighter. At this point I can’t say much more than that.

Does this mean an acquisition? I can’t say at this point.

Does this mean more or less people at Sigil? I can’t say at this point.

Does this mean management changes at Sigil? I can’t say at this point.

I *can* say that regardless of the turn out, SOE knows that Sigil has the experience and vision necessary to run Vanguard and therefore a major change in that area is extremely unlikely and would be foolish on their part.

What it does mean at this point is that both companies agree that we need more of SOE’s involvement if Vanguard is going to continue to get the support it needs to both continue to be worked on and improved and debugged and optimized....

In summary, there are arguably a lot of people who by mid to end of this year in the MMOG gamespace for whom Vanguard could potentially be very attractive. What the game needs is a re-launch of sorts, including targeted marketing campaigns, an all-around successful move by gamers to the next generation of hardware, continued good word of mouth ‘viral’ marketing by those who are already playing, enjoying, and re-subscribing. And all of this could and should ramp up by the end of the year, all the while the Vanguard team is putting in more content, the live team filling out high level content as well as adding to areas of the game’s vast seamless world which are a bit empty....

“SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad. Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community. We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future. The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind.”

So what does that mean again? Again, I apologize for not being able to go into details and it’s the details that need to be worked out. But I think it’s safe to say that both Sigil and SOE see the potential of a mind blowing game by the end of the year. What’s needed, bottom line, is some time, and how to get that time is what’s being worked out. And so I still see a 500k+ game, I was just off by a year for a variety of reasons, some under my control, many not. And I think SOE sees this as well. To pull it off however, requires a funded and supported Sigil and a well marketed Vanguard with these different target audiences identified and solid plan on how to reach them all, and then a solid execution of said plan, hitting them hard, pushing these ‘WoW everywhere’ point of purchase materials from the front to the very back.. In the meantime, the Vanguard that was launched in early 2007 continues to move forward, with much of what I’ve talked about patched in over time, and the rest in the first expansion (or re-launch, or whatever we all agree upon in terms of product and service placement). Bottom line, Vanguard continues to march forward, a solid and fun game today, and an even better one tomorrow. More ‘state of the game’ posts by me, a regularly updated [url=http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/inTheWorks.vm][u]"In the Works"[/u][/url].

And whatever kind of increased partnership between Sigil and SOE is necessary to make this vision a reality. And again, as for what that means exactly, more on that later ™.[/quote]

[size=7]Information pulled from TenTonHammer[/size]