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  1. #1

    What happened to Brad Mcquaid?

    http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g.../412151/page/1

    This is older news but Brad Mcquaid took $40k of funding for personal bills. Some say he's begging for volunteer programmers because the team quit as a result.

    Did he get nailed for embezzlement?

  2. #2
    From my knowledge he did not.
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  3. #3
    So he's getting away with misappropriation?

  4. #4
    This guy just happened upon the beginning of the MMO-addiction cash flow. Nothing he's made or has been involved has actually been good (or even finished). Obviously he's capable of something like this. He's just some guy.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by dextersmith View Post
    So he's getting away with misappropriation?
    Did anyone even charge him?
    Pokemon FC: 4425-2708-3610

    I received a day one ORAS demo code. I am a chosen one.

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by dextersmith View Post
    http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/g.../412151/page/1

    This is older news but Brad Mcquaid took $40k of funding for personal bills. Some say he's begging for volunteer programmers because the team quit as a result.

    Did he get nailed for embezzlement?
    What happened is Vanguard tanked in a major way, destroying his credibility, and he disappeared for years. Then came back to work at SOE on Vanguard/EQ for a bit before trying to get this going.

    The Kickstarter bombed because despite people being super interested in Pantheon, nobody trusts him to run a company so nobody wanted to give him money. He took a cash advance (3 months pay) out of what money they'd raised so far on their website, and his developer buddies he had on staff all bailed.

    Now he's got a purely volunteer staff and appears to be releasing images that primarily consist of stock assets purchased from stores mixed into stock environments, complete with mind bogglingly awful UI's.

    As for embezzlement, I don't think anyone has filed any criminal charges against him, or if any would even apply given I don't know how his "company" (not even sure it was a full registered company at the time) was set up or whatever agreements/contracts he may have had with his buddies.

    Quote Originally Posted by soulzek View Post
    This guy just happened upon the beginning of the MMO-addiction cash flow. Nothing he's made or has been involved has actually been good (or even finished). Obviously he's capable of something like this. He's just some guy.
    He was one of the ones that drew up the design documents for EQ1, one of the most revolutionary MMO's around. He was absolutely a big part of that (which was finished), primarily in a creative role, which he's great at.

    Vanguard could have been great had he not run Sigil into the ground, as it is easily the most ambitious MMO released in the past decade or more. Seriously, if the game had launched and been functional I would have continued to play the ever loving shit out of it.

  7. #7
    I'm shocked people would volunteer for him after that.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by dextersmith View Post
    I'm shocked people would volunteer for him after that.
    There is a "Cult of McQuaid" that exists based off his popularity from his EQ1 days. I mean, the guy is fantastically talented when it comes to designing games. A lot of what was laid out for the systems in Pantheon is awesome stuff (needing to acclimate to your environments, meaning putting on "warmer" gear with worse stats when you enter a snowy area, slowly being able to equip normal gear over time as you acclimate etc.) and it's absolutely a game that I'm interested in on a conceptual basis.

    There are just folks who are so fanatical about what he's done that they'll ignore anything and everything negative about him and the work he's done. They're kinda creepy, I've fun into some in various comments sections/forums, and they totally do strike me as "culty".

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by soulzek View Post
    This guy just happened upon the beginning of the MMO-addiction cash flow. Nothing he's made or has been involved has actually been good (or even finished). Obviously he's capable of something like this. He's just some guy.
    Brad was THE rock star of gaming in the late 90's and early 2000s. With the success of EQ people threw money at him and he started Sigil games and made one of the biggest if not the biggest flops in mmo history, Vanguard. It's all been downhill since then.

  10. #10
    I pity him. He had talent, I'll give him that. But seasons have passed, and his era of MMORPGs is no more, and volunteer work won't get you very far..

    My suggestion: he should reapply for SOE. I'm sure they'd welcoe him back with open arms.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Valyrian Stormclaw View Post
    I pity him. He had talent, I'll give him that. But seasons have passed, and his era of MMORPGs is no more, and volunteer work won't get you very far..

    My suggestion: he should reapply for SOE. I'm sure they'd welcome him back with open arms.
    It's been awhile since I read up on McQuad but didn't he already do that?

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by Valyrian Stormclaw View Post
    My suggestion: he should reapply for SOE. I'm sure they'd welcoe him back with open arms.
    They did. He came back to work on Vanguard around the time it transitioned to F2P, then I believe moved on to work on EQ1 for a bit before leaving.

    I think he may have burned up a lot of is stored up credit with Smed and the gang, though. Just a hunch.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    How would he get charged for embezzlement? It was his company, the funds were his (that other people gave him, obviously... but they did give it to him), he claimed he spent it on bills, I assume if there was any legal issue he'd have proof of what he spent it on but if it's technically his own money because of the way it was set up, he really doesn't have to show anything. That's why the developers quit on him. There was no evidence that the money was spent on anything that wasn't bills, it's not like he stole money from someone and spent it on hookers and blow. He just seems to be terrible with money and terrible at communicating with his team and let down all the people who backed him and trusted him with their funds.

    Legally if you fund a kickstarter you accept you're giving someone money and they have no legal obligation to provide you the end product unfortunately, so there's no legal theft, no crime. I don't think the dude should ever be trusted with anyone elses money but suggesting criminal charges seems a little unfounded.

  14. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Edge- View Post
    There is a "Cult of McQuaid" that exists based off his popularity from his EQ1 days. I mean, the guy is fantastically talented when it comes to designing games. A lot of what was laid out for the systems in Pantheon is awesome stuff (needing to acclimate to your environments, meaning putting on "warmer" gear with worse stats when you enter a snowy area, slowly being able to equip normal gear over time as you acclimate etc.) and it's absolutely a game that I'm interested in on a conceptual basis.

    There are just folks who are so fanatical about what he's done that they'll ignore anything and everything negative about him and the work he's done. They're kinda creepy, I've fun into some in various comments sections/forums, and they totally do strike me as "culty".
    So they just ignore other fails like Vanguard too?

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Shamanic View Post
    How would he get charged for embezzlement?
    The funding was for a game, not personal (medical) expenses.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Shamanic View Post
    Legally if you fund a kickstarter you accept you're giving someone money and they have no legal obligation to provide you the end product unfortunately, so there's no legal theft, no crime. I don't think the dude should ever be trusted with anyone elses money but suggesting criminal charges seems a little unfounded.
    Not ks, crowdfunded through the game's site.

  15. #15
    I remember him, this was him right?
    "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." Paradox of tolerance

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by dextersmith View Post
    So they just ignore other fails like Vanguard too?
    No, they just place 100% of the blame for that on Microsoft, Sony, and anyone not named Brad McQuaid.

    Quote Originally Posted by Dezerte View Post
    I remember him, this was him right?
    Yes. He's a pretty cool guy on a personal level and pretty regularly jumps in to chat with fans on various forums/comments sections. It's just the business side that's the problem : /

  17. #17
    He's the type of designer I'd want working on a team for the first wave of true VR MMOs. He seems to mainly want to design a game that's truly living in another world.

    He just can't run a company. At all.

  18. #18
    hey wow is the 21 Jump Street character named after him?

  19. #19
    Immortal SirRobin's Avatar
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    Brad's cred is in a pit of his own digging. On top of all his other screw ups, Sigil's Parking Lot Massacre was just not acceptable behavior. When why did he leave Sony a second time? If he walked out he was acting the fool again because I don't see anyone significant trusting him with anything significant ever again.
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  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by SirRobin View Post
    When why did he leave Sony a second time? If he walked out he was acting the fool again because I don't see anyone significant trusting him with anything significant ever again.
    I'm assuming he left because he wanted to make another oldschool MMO and knew that Sony wouldn't back that kind of product, especially as a subscription based MMO.

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