VG - Ex-Sigil Dev 'Kendrick' Speaks Out About Vanguard : Vanguard News

An ex-Sigil dev "Kendrick" speaks out about his thoughts on what they had planned during Vanguard development, as well as the mistakes they'd made with the game. There are some interesting information about their development cycle, and what content may be coming up later in the game.

The world size at launch WAS cut down dramatically.

Plan A was to ship with Thestra, Qalia, Kojan (a much larger Kojan) as "starter" islands, 3 "intermediate" islands about 75% of the size of the starters, and one huge "advanced" continent 4x as big as a starter, and quite a few small theme islands, with a level cap of 100 on release. The starter continents would have contained 1-30 content, intermediates 30-70, the advanced 70-100, and the theme islands would vary. In addition, 5 more post-expansion continents were spec'd out that expanded on the "menace" storylines found on the starter continents (undead, djinn, ulvari, and more).

Plan B was to ship with Thestra, Qalia, a full-sized Kojan, and hopefully one or more of the intermediate islands, reserving the advanced and beyond for expansion, and cutting the level cap on release to 75. We started moving towards that in late 2003.

Plan C was same as above, but with a full sized Kojan, and the current level 50 cap. That was the 2004 plan.

Plan D is what you see now, with a downsized Kojan, and that started around 2005.

Assets (including the entire landmass) for one of the intermediate islands were built at the same time Thestra and Qalia were being constructed in 2003/2004, and I fully expect at least that island to make it into the next expansion since there was a lot of work done on it already.

For the entire time I was with Sigil, the Art department was the largest department by far. It was only at later stages, after a goodly bit of the world had been constructed, that they ramped up designer staffing.