My opinion is still extremely mixed on Sigil and SOE’s love child, but I’m quickly becoming a fan of Brad McQuaid. As Krones and Lum pointed out early last month, he tends to be up front about the problems facing Vanguard. Simon characterized it as painfully honest, but I tend to view McQuaid’s commentary as pragmatism more than anything else.

Just today he let loose with another list of the biggest problems facing the game today, and from a certain point of view it’s a grim list: overtaxing technology, underpopulated servers, extraordinarily popular competition, and lackluster marketing. The server populations are blatantly obvious to the players, and so there’s no sense in hiding it or pussy-footing around it:

The reason we are enhancing the LFG system (other than it’s always a good idea in general) is because it’s too hard to find a group. One of the biggest reasons it’s too hard to find a group is that we were overly worried the newbie yards would be over populated the first couple of weeks post-launch that we opened with too many servers. That’s why we are working on better LFG tools, having to seriously consider overland teleports, etc. If a world at peak hours had 4-5k people on it, this wouldn’t be nearly the problem it is. 

Even though I don’t see his honesty as particularly noble, it’s still something to respect. A lot of other folks would give you a song and dance routine instead of copping to the reality of the situation; I think certain other titles could benefit from this level of honesty.

I’d specifically like to call out SWG on this one, but it’s not the folks running the game who have the problem … LucasArts. :P

Anyway, hats off to Mr. McQuaid for his forthrightness. Here’s hoping that continuing in that vein nets them good results with the users over the long run.