Community
Many fans of the original EverQuest followed the development of Vanguard closely. Sigil opened official forums before even releasing a title, in July 2003, and was periodically revealing concept art, screenshots, and settings history and lore. Some of the artwork was created by well-known fantasy artists such as Brom, Don Maitz and the late Keith Parkinson.
Much of the community had formed around the Sigil website forums, but there were also events such as fans visiting Sigil, IRC chats, and contests. A "Community Summit" was held on October 7, 2004 that showed Vanguard to an audience from the game's own community.
For release, Sigil decided to eliminate centralized forums in favor of a controlled community structure consisting of a network of approved websites which would be regularly visited by official community liaisons, and which in theory would be granted privileged access to interviews and promotional content. There was considerable criticism of this strategy on some forums.
Upon its acquisition of Vanguard, SOE almost immediately abandoned the Sigil "controlled community" format, making vgplayers.com the central site for Vanguard support, much as is done with their other MMO titles.
Read more about this topic: Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes
Famous quotes containing the word community:
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—James P. Comer (20th century)
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—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
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—Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922)