Vanguard: Saga of Heroes: Game Update - It's Been a Long Road

I agree, Vanguard has the best dungeons.

Dungeon crawl and grouping, is what makes VG so good, a PvEers paradise.

EQ1 had some very cool dungeons and VG just takes on that experience and improves on it.

Whilst you can solo, you can raid, by far grouping is the most fun and most rewarding in any game, VG excells at it.

All of that is well and good, but they need to relaunch it, and SOE needs to put more devs on the team. I absolutely adore the game, but unlike EQ2 with its consistent updates & expansions, Vanguard doesn't get looked at very often. I thought when I returned last, that it would be a terrible game, and I was so incredibly wrong. The game ran perfectly fine, on max on my machine, and it was gorgeous.

But due to its somewhat small player-base, even on Seradon, the cities feel like empty holes in the game, which threw me.

I think, with all the work they say they've put into the game, they need a relaunch, with incentives to new players. They need a larger dev team & they need to advertise.

This game, whether SOE likes it or not, could theoretically beat out EQ2's population if the game is given a chance at a comeback.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this game. I love it. I just wish they'd (SOE) put more effort into it.

Originally posted by Splinki

All of that is well and good, but they need to relaunch it, and SOE needs to put more devs on the team. I absolutely adore the game, but unlike EQ2 with its consistent updates & expansions, Vanguard doesn't get looked at very often. I thought when I returned last, that it would be a terrible game, and I was so incredibly wrong. The game ran perfectly fine, on max on my machine, and it was gorgeous.

But due to its somewhat small player-base, even on Seradon, the cities feel like empty holes in the game, which threw me.

I think, with all the work they say they've put into the game, they need a relaunch, with incentives to new players. They need a larger dev team & they need to advertise.

This game, whether SOE likes it or not, could theoretically beat out EQ2's population if the game is given a chance at a comeback.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this game. I love it. I just wish they'd (SOE) put more effort into it.

they have already "relaunched" the game.. from another interview with Salim "Silius"..

mmorpgfocus.com/forum/showthread.php

MMORPGFOCUS.COM TEAM: We recently put up an article about Vanguard talking about how the game is in such a good, polished condition now that it almost deserves a relaunch. Do you think Sony will put some extra resources behind marketing the game again now that it’s really improved?

Salim Grant: Well, what a lot of people don’t realize about Vanguard is that we actually did do a relaunch. When Isle of Dawn came out, we did a relatively large marketing push, considering the game budget. After that, I think in January it was, we got Fileplanet for seven days front page. We had banner ads for a couple weeks. Obviously we’re on steam. There’s been a lot of marketing for Vanguard given a small budget. Unfortunately, some people just don’t see it. I mean, Fileplanet has four million plus people looking at their pages and we got a decent amount of traffic coming from that. Doing another relaunch, I don’t know if it would happen anytime soon if it does. I don’t know. Sony treats us well and we’re a part of the family. They do what they can for us but obviously Sony has other horses in the stable it has to take care of and every horse has to kind of fend for itself in the end. If it makes this much money and that much money has to go to things like staff and things like that…

So from what Silius says Vanguard isnt making enough money to do ANOTHER relaunch.

Originally posted by Splinki

All of that is well and good, but they need to relaunch it, and SOE needs to put more devs on the team. I absolutely adore the game, but unlike EQ2 with its consistent updates & expansions, Vanguard doesn't get looked at very often. I thought when I returned last, that it would be a terrible game, and I was so incredibly wrong. The game ran perfectly fine, on max on my machine, and it was gorgeous.

But due to its somewhat small player-base, even on Seradon, the cities feel like empty holes in the game, which threw me.

I think, with all the work they say they've put into the game, they need a relaunch, with incentives to new players. They need a larger dev team & they need to advertise.

This game, whether SOE likes it or not, could theoretically beat out EQ2's population if the game is given a chance at a comeback.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this game. I love it. I just wish they'd (SOE) put more effort into it.

agreed, i liked my free month return trial, but the game felt so empty compared to before, i ended up soloing the whole time, which got boring.  Then i died in the middle of a dungaoun and forgot about the whole corpse run thing lol. they really need to do some sort of "relaunch" thing, where they let vets in again, as well as the general public and advertise it right.

Originally posted by Splinki

All of that is well and good, but they need to relaunch it, and SOE needs to put more devs on the team. I absolutely adore the game, but unlike EQ2 with its consistent updates & expansions, Vanguard doesn't get looked at very often. I thought when I returned last, that it would be a terrible game, and I was so incredibly wrong. The game ran perfectly fine, on max on my machine, and it was gorgeous.

But due to its somewhat small player-base, even on Seradon, the cities feel like empty holes in the game, which threw me.

I think, with all the work they say they've put into the game, they need a relaunch, with incentives to new players. They need a larger dev team & they need to advertise.

This game, whether SOE likes it or not, could theoretically beat out EQ2's population if the game is given a chance at a comeback.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this game. I love it. I just wish they'd (SOE) put more effort into it.

QFT--a relaunch and a little money would actually be positive for Sony... I just wish they would....

Originally posted by Splinki

All of that is well and good, but they need to relaunch it, and SOE needs to put more devs on the team. I absolutely adore the game, but unlike EQ2 with its consistent updates & expansions, Vanguard doesn't get looked at very often. I thought when I returned last, that it would be a terrible game, and I was so incredibly wrong. The game ran perfectly fine, on max on my machine, and it was gorgeous.

But due to its somewhat small player-base, even on Seradon, the cities feel like empty holes in the game, which threw me.

I think, with all the work they say they've put into the game, they need a relaunch, with incentives to new players. They need a larger dev team & they need to advertise.

This game, whether SOE likes it or not, could theoretically beat out EQ2's population if the game is given a chance at a comeback.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this game. I love it. I just wish they'd (SOE) put more effort into it.

I read one of the saying that they did do a relaunch of sorts with the Isle of Dawn, given their resources. I think what you mean is that they need to relaunch it as if it was a brand new game. I would say that would be the best thing.

However, given that they said their budget is proportional to their players, they do what they can.

My thought is that players need to support this game and hopefully it will grow slowly. Sort of like Eve.

I tried Vanguard when it was launched but wasn't really interested in it. Just wanted to see what it was about. Though I didn't have a huge difficulty running it, there were obviously a lot of bugs. Now, the game runs rather well, still a bit creaky here and there because of the huge world. But WOW! I have never been so impressed with a world as I am with Vanguard's. It really is amazing. And the more I play the more I want to play. I even want to make alts which is usually not my style.

Though it won't be my main game (as Aion is really more my style) I have made a decision that I will always have a Vanguard account. Even if I need to attend to other things and can't play much. It simply is a game worth supporting. The sense of exploration of vast lands is incredible. If one has a bit of patience for some bugs here and there and really likes a sense of old school game play, and can either be proactive with finding a guild or is a solo player, then they really should try Vanguard.

It won't hold your hand. You will die. You will explore and then be chased down and if you like that type of thing, a bit of danger here and there then it really is an enjoyable game.

Yesterday I learned about Hilsbury Manor. I decided to go there while waiting for the Girlfriend to come over. What a blast. It is a bit dangerous for my lvl 23 Dread Knight but it is doable. At least some of the outer grounds. All I wanted to do was try to get inside, even if I perished. It was one of the few times in playing a game that i was a bit sorry that the Girlfriend was coming over as i was extremely intrigued and wanted to press on.

Vanguard is filled with those types of moments. When you look and discover a cave and just have to know what is in there. I've spent some time the last few days fighting Lizard men and some sort of Lizard occultists on some of the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen in a game. Only to do some exploring and see this amazing tower. Renting a Wyvern I flew over and realized that they it was inhabited by some pretty tough cyclopses which I needed for a quest. 

I have to say that I am having a blast. The game truly gives the quintessential dungeon crawl.

If players can have some patience and just accept the game for what it is and not lament that Sony is not throwing huge resources into the game then I think they can have a great time.

 I was thinking about giving this a try again.  I played a few months of beta before launch, and even with the issues, I could see the potential.  My preferred style of play is not to group all that often, and that is my biggest road block, but I played the original EQ in beta and a few years of release, so I understand what and why it is the way it is :)

One pool of players that might be a good target are some of the more hard core players that are coming off WoW and trying LotRO (which I play and love and have a lifetime with, but am looking for a break), and not finding enough dungeon crawling.  There are also those who have played the past two years and are feeling burned out, especially after MoM was released, and they feel the game changed drastically.  I think they should figure out a way to get the attention of those folks.

As for me, I may just break out the old credit card and fire it up again :)

sadly, this comes a little late. Vanguard was the MMORPG I had most fun with besides good old EQ1. Even if they have fixed a lot of bugs, there's still so much that doesn't work. Just a few days ago I received a free month from SOE to log back in and have a look at the changes.

So still nothing of the Alternate Achivements (which were originally promised at launch date and then really promised to be included within the first 3 months), still a lot of the same old graphics bugs. Even though I upgraded my computer in the meantime Vanguard doesn't perform any better for me and I still can't see tree's or bushes in the Halfling starting area.

And my guess is that Sartok is dead for sure. It was a very nice experience being in one of the top guilds on this FFA PvP Server but with a playerbase of 200 or what it is nowadays you can't expect people to come back to the game.

Well I'm moving on but still with tears in my eyes when I watch this Video from Games Convention 2006 when they showed video footage of flying dragons which everyone should be able to fly everywhere. They promised it for release and the release was promised for Winter 06 - we all know what happened. Vanguard did really die because of false promises and false advertising. I remember people crying in the forums - oh no this game is gonna be so hard it's gonna have corpse runs again, I want WoW easy game. Well I don't really remember having to corpse run in Vanguard since it was never in the game, not even in beta (I was alpha tester and still have screenshots over a period of 2 years). Similiar to what happened to Vista - bad PR managed to fail a good (or at least not bad) product.

This game has had more than enough time to grow and be accepted.

Relaunch is a waste.

Vanguard is really behind the curve now in visuals, playability, and the population is too small to make any more effort.

SOE needs to focus on it's moneymakers. EQ, EQ2, Free Realms. They just keep Vanguard as a Station Pass incentive anyways.

Let VG go, concentrate on their current stable of good games, and their future titles that look very good actually.

Say goodbye to VG as it is already dead.

Originally posted by asfaraslarry

 I was thinking about giving this a try again.  I played a few months of beta before launch, and even with the issues, I could see the potential.  My preferred style of play is not to group all that often, and that is my biggest road block, but I played the original EQ in beta and a few years of release, so I understand what and why it is the way it is :)

One pool of players that might be a good target are some of the more hard core players that are coming off WoW and trying LotRO (which I play and love and have a lifetime with, but am looking for a break), and not finding enough dungeon crawling.  There are also those who have played the past two years and are feeling burned out, especially after MoM was released, and they feel the game changed drastically.  I think they should figure out a way to get the attention of those folks.

As for me, I may just break out the old credit card and fire it up again :)

If your style of play is not to group that often then seriously... this game is for you. It will be hard and at times you will have to be either very careful or do content that is a little bit lower for your level but as my style of play is not to group often, I have been having the best time.

If you find you have some performance issues then look at the threads that help you optimize your performance. Esepcially if you have a Nvidea card. Using the Nvidea control panel, adding vanguard and making some tweaks made a huge difference for me. Just have some patience for odd bugs here and there and you will be fine.

Or you could do what my wife and I did......We bought Secrets of Faydwer for 5 dollars on Newegg and go back to EQ which gets updates and support. :)

Originally posted by Zeppelin4

Or you could do what my wife and I did......We bought Secrets of Faydwer for 5 dollars on Newegg and go back to EQ which gets updates and support. :)

Secrets of Faydwer?  Do you mean EQ2 or the original EQ?  Sorry....I'm just unclear which one you meant.

Great article, I enjoyed reading it.

As a new player to VG, I must say how much it surprised me. The only things I had heard were about how bad the launch was and had written the game off entirely. When they came out with Isle of Dawn and the free trial, being bored with EVE, I gave it a go and found an amazingly rich world with things to explore and challenges to overcome around every corner.

However, I was soloing in my free time and not really knowing where to find groups, I started to feel much like other posters here, that the world was lonely and empty, and so I gave up on it because soloing got too hard.

Forward to about a month ago and I was really becoming dissatisfied with EVE's complete lack of content, and noticed my VG account had been activated again.

Well this time I found a good grouping area and was invited to a guild that focuses on helping new players. What a difference a guild makes in this game! There are lots of new players, but also lots of vets that use the guild to find groups for their alts, so the mix of players is really great.

Anyway, finding a regular group to level with makes a world of difference. the entire game is really geared towards grouping, so finding a group to play with, or even someone to point you to where players are grouping is really the key to getting all you can out of this game.

Originally posted by openedge1

This game has had more than enough time to grow and be accepted.

Relaunch is a waste.

Vanguard is really behind the curve now in visuals, playability, and the population is too small to make any more effort.

SOE needs to focus on it's moneymakers. EQ, EQ2, Free Realms. They just keep Vanguard as a Station Pass incentive anyways.

Let VG go, concentrate on their current stable of good games, and their future titles that look very good actually.

Say goodbye to VG as it is already dead.

I agree. This game is never going to make a come back and as newer games come out its situation will get even worse. SOE would be foolish to waste any more time and money on it.

Besides I recently started up the trial of EQ2 again and its a much better game. The landscapes certainly arent as good as Vanguards but the SOGA character models in EQ2 are very well done as opposed to Vanguards which just look really stupid. Maybe if Vanguards dev team remade their hideous character models then my opinion of their game might improve. The contrast between the beatiful landscapes and the ugly badly made character models was always very jarring for me.......which is strange because a lot of the monster models looked rather good.

Also the "seamless open world" which seems to get used as a big selling point for the game was a big turn off for me and also lots of other potential players too as it just simply means that a lot of time is spent in Vanguard travelling. That doesnt make the gameplay any more interesting. In fact all of this "freedom" only served to expose how lifeless these mmos actually are as opposed to being immersed in the game world. So you can travel to that mountain off in the far distance......errrmm.....great. Whats on it? Some more mobs standing around waiting to be killed. Woopy!

Originally posted by neonwire

Originally posted by openedge1

This game has had more than enough time to grow and be accepted.

Relaunch is a waste.

Vanguard is really behind the curve now in visuals, playability, and the population is too small to make any more effort.

SOE needs to focus on it's moneymakers. EQ, EQ2, Free Realms. They just keep Vanguard as a Station Pass incentive anyways.

Let VG go, concentrate on their current stable of good games, and their future titles that look very good actually.

Say goodbye to VG as it is already dead.

 

I agree. This game is never going to make a come back and as newer games come out its situation will get even worse. SOE would be foolish to waste any more time and money on it.

Besides I recently started up the trial of EQ2 again and its a much better game. The landscapes certainly arent as good as Vanguards but the SOGA character models in EQ2 are very well done as opposed to Vanguards which just look really stupid. Maybe if Vanguards dev team remade their hideous character models then my opinion of their game might improve. The contrast between the beatiful landscapes and the ugly badly made character models was always very jarring for me.......which is strange because a lot of the monster models looked rather good.

Also the "seamless open world" which seems to get used as a big selling point for the game was a big turn off for me and also lots of other potential players too as it just simply means that a lot of time is spent in Vanguard travelling. That doesnt make the gameplay any more interesting. In fact all of this "freedom" only served to expose how lifeless these mmos actually are as opposed to being immersed in the game world. So you can travel to that mountain off in the far distance......errrmm.....great. Whats on it? Some more mobs standing around waiting to be killed. Woopy!

I think this had the exact opposite effect for me. I felt like I was playing in a world as opposed a game where you can only enter certain areas if you were on the appropriate quest. But since this game is a bit of a throwback, people will either like it or hate it.

I like being able to go to that hill and find a new leveling area. or find that I'm outmatched and have to run for my life.

I had an experience where it was late at night (or more like 1:30 am) and I headed toward what I thought was a castle. Though I noticed things were a bit run down I didn't really pay enough attention, just walked my horse to the door and opened it. Suddenly I saw npc's running toward me and thought "hey, what a nice touch to have greeters at the castle". Then I realized they were zombie skeleton things and were more than 10 lvls above me. That's when i ran. I was completely, for lack of a better word, delighted at that mistake.

The game feels very different from EQ2 and LOTRO. I have the EQ2 game up for comparison and though I could go on as to why EQ2 is a good game, it's also a rather goofy game. It has a bit too much of the whimsical for my taste.

I would say that I have agreed with you about Vanguard's models but the more I play the more I sort of see the logic in them. I don't think they are any worse than LOTRO's models. Which also suffers from the beautiful world/odd avatar syndrome.

I say cudos to all the work they did on VG but unfortunately,it's just too late

Originally posted by Ngeldu5t

I say cudos to all the work they did on VG but unfortunately,it's just too late

It's not too late if you just want to log in and have some fun. However, I really don't think this game would ever have been a huge thing because of its game design.

~sigh~ i played VG for a year, loved it in spite of the bugs, but the bugs drove us away until they 'fixed' it...... got a free month, went to play, my maps were broken because i had old UI stuff... threw it out, and now the game crashes at launch requiring a full uninstall / reinstall.... not feeling that ambitious yet. next free month i will. maybe.

I honestly think that if  Vanguard made an expansion and packaged it together with the original game and actually did some advertising that it would help. But it would be a gamble that i doubt SOE is willing to take at this point. They have multiple games with low sub bases and i don't see them doing anything outside of EQ2 to raise there bases atm.

I had thought about trying out this game a couple of months back, but if the population isnt very good then i may hold back on playing. The game looked promising too.

Originally posted by Krayzjoel

I had thought about trying out this game a couple of months back, but if the population isnt very good then i may hold back on playing. The game looked promising too.

 

I would say that if you are the type of player who wants to be in a game that has a lot of hustle and bustle, akin to Stormreach in WoW or hte 21st hall in the mines of Moria in LOTRO, then Vanguard is probably not for you. You either have to be proactive and join one of the many guilds that cater to new players (and they exist) or you have to be one who likes to solo and make his/her own way.

Otherwise you will be dissapointed.

Originally posted by girlgeek

Originally posted by Zeppelin4

Or you could do what my wife and I did......We bought Secrets of Faydwer for 5 dollars on Newegg and go back to EQ which gets updates and support. :)

 

Secrets of Faydwer?  Do you mean EQ2 or the original EQ?  Sorry....I'm just unclear which one you meant.

The original EQ :) 

 Secrets of Fawdyer was an EQ expansion.  I believe it came out around the time EQ2 had its Kunark expansion released......

I recently jumped back into VG to check out the Isle of Dawn and must say, the game has improved vastly from a technical perspective.

I feel for the dev team here because its obvious they have a lot of talent and have put a lot of heart into the game, it shows, especially with the Isle.  I hope it continues to grow because the team could use more resources to invest in the game and marketing.

The biggest and most glaring flaw with the game in general are the missing threads.  Features and content just doesn't tie into one another.  Players can build ships and sail around - but the experience ends there.  No sea monsters, no hidden away content to discover.  Diplomacy is fun but it feels like a completely seperate mini-game.  There are no areas in the game where your diplomatic skills will enhance your adventuring experience (imagine a quest where you could either take a brute force approach or take a more diplomatic/peaceful approach).  Or better yet, gain access to an 'adventuring' quest through successful parley's with npcs.  I think if the devs start to approach content additions in this manner, and start cross pollinating these gameplay mechanics, the game could really become something special over time.

Silius is a fail. Sub numbers over the past 2 years have declined. Yeah some newbies join, but many more vets leave. They leave out of boredom and SOE/Silius' lust to chase the WOW buck while not infringing on the EQII subscribers. If he has put his heart and soul into vanguard then he is a heartless souless creature indeed. Worst lead developer and smallest development team ever. All 4 of them, wtf can they do?

I hate to so blunt, but let's be honest.  This game has been on life support for 2 years.  It's time to pull the plug.

Originally posted by Trueth

Silius is a fail. Sub numbers over the past 2 years have declined. Yeah some newbies join, but many more vets leave. They leave out of boredom and SOE/Silius' lust to chase the WOW buck while not infringing on the EQII subscribers. If he has put his heart and soul into vanguard then he is a heartless souless creature indeed. Worst lead developer and smallest development team ever. All 4 of them, wtf can they do?

 

lol the problem with this game is like most other game a la lotr ,they fail to understand one thing take the minimum computer you can use to run silkroad online and thats what you have to target your graphic etc if you set it higher and aim for usa

lol you ll end up like lotr very nice game that very few can play.and dont forget usa and canada together are what at the most 400 million

if they targeted all their game to be playable on most old asian computer avail , like guild wars did by dev it on laptop

they gain what a possible 2600 million people market say theres 20 % share of that that is gamer you get what 520 million market

lets be conservative and put it at the same pop as usa and canada put together close to 400 million

lol if i was a game maker i would design my game on pentium 1 laptop lol just to make sure the max 3d setting i use can be played on asian market computer

but then i must be wrong because vanguard ,aoc,war all used very fancy graphic setting that almost no asian market can play even if those game became f2p asian just couldnt play them period

wait the 3 games i mentioned are all dying maybe i wasnt so wrong after all lol

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

the framerates increased for me dramatically when i logged back in, but it seems like theres a LOT of hitching now...i can run at a good 60fps  but then the game locks up randomly....seeems they solved one problem, only to introduce another on in it's place.

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

mm your not the only one i got a 512 mb 8800gt  nvidia graphic card its fairly new it should run this game fairly easy lol not really i would need a 2.5 inch casio handheld screen to run this game smoothly if it had as mutch player as guild wars ,imagine if it had 10 million player  the game would run at a hasty 1 frame per minute 

Originally posted by Katilla

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

 

the framerates increased for me dramatically when i logged back in, but it seems like theres a LOT of hitching now...i can run at a good 60fps  but then the game locks up randomly....seeems they solved one problem, only to introduce another on in it's place.

If you have an Nvidea Card you can mitigate this. It will still happen but less frequently.

From another thread, see the bold:

Originally posted by Margulis

Originally posted by Nizur

From what I've read, VG is harsh on hard drives, but you've got a pretty beefy one. Way beefier than mine and I'm rarely seeing hitching. I'm assuming you've defragged the drive?

Also, you've got an nVidia card, so you've probably got the nVidia control panel. I nearly doubled my FPS again tonight despite turning on AA by adding VG under Manage 3D Settings. I'm not sure if you've got 1 or 2 displays. I have two and noticed that the default setting was Multiple Display Performance mode. I switched that to Single Display performance mode. I also switched Threaded optimization to On.

Those settings are only for VG, not default settings. YMMV, but it's worth a try.

I also messed around with LOD settings and LightComplexity in my vgclient.ini file some more.

EDIT: BTW, what's your connection? Cable? DSL? Are you using a router? Firewall?

Hey hey! I seem to have made some progress here. Did some 3d setting modifications including the threaded optimization and single display performance and it is running MUCH better now. I'm still gettting some hitching when entering a new town or something but after the inital hitching it runs smooth, and out in the field hitching is pretty minimal. It's playable now at least so hooray!

I'm on seradon with character Margulis by the way if anyone is interested in a new friend in game.

Since you use Nvidia try increasing your max pre-rendered frames setting to 5 or 6 that should help to further smooth things out.

I think it would only make a come back if it turned Free to Play, like DDO.

this game will never come back , they say things are fixed but they lie , i still crash when i cross their "no zone " lines in kojan , their classes for pvp are still unbalanced and the game is boring ......... however if people came back to it , i would play everyday lol yea i'm a fool like that .......

I get a kick out of where he says you can play this now on a low end computer at high settings!  I have a good computer and there is plenty of hitching even at 40fps?  granted when the game first came oout it was like a slide show but sony needs to get rid of that hitching to be a viable game.  Good game with subpar performance

VG is a mistake SOE just seems to refuse to admit.  It was billed as EQ 1.5 and being developped by Sigil, who was out of money... i.e. threat of cutting into their subs... zero.  They should have let it die there and stayed fixed on EQ/EQ2 for their fanstasy MMOs.  VG isn't terrible it just isn't as good as EQ2/LotRo/WAR/AoC/WoW in the fantasy genre.  SOE has enough competition outside without worrying about internal competition.

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

Upgrade your computer.  It runs fine on mine.

People trying to run this game on their computer they bought from Dell 6 years ago to do desktop applications and then complaining about how it runs too slow really crack me up.

They made a game for you folks who don't buy/build gaming rigs.  It's called World of Warcraft.  Try it out.  But don't take away from the group of us who have no problem building new computers and demanding games for them.  We're a market too.  And we expect more than just an exploded Easter egg splattered onto visible triangles for graphics.

Originally posted by dirtyside

this game will never come back , they say things are fixed but they lie , i still crash when i cross their "no zone " lines in kojan , their classes for pvp are still unbalanced and the game is boring ......... however if people came back to it , i would play everyday lol yea i'm a fool like that .......

I was kind of thinking the same thing.  Fixed????  I dunno.

I still cannot see rain or weather effects when I play.  You'd think that would be fixed after 2 YEARS!!!  

Play it before you condem it, you don't crash when you cross the zone lines, you never bloody did the problem is your end not theirs.  I've played VG on several widely different machines and crashed maybe twice in my entire 2 year history while crossing the chunk lines. 

The game is solid and instead of stereotyping and giving this forum false information based on what you've heard or sall 2 years ago is just flat out annoying.

Originally posted by Solude

VG is a mistake SOE just seems to refuse to admit.  It was billed as EQ 1.5 and being developped by Sigil, who was out of money... i.e. threat of cutting into their subs... zero.  They should have let it die there and stayed fixed on EQ/EQ2 for their fanstasy MMOs.  VG isn't terrible it just isn't as good as EQ2/LotRo/WAR/AoC/WoW in the fantasy genre.  SOE has enough competition outside without worrying about internal competition.

You need to qualify such statements as being your personal opinion.  I play VG and think it is everymuch as good as the games you list.

Originally posted by porgie

Originally posted by dirtyside

this game will never come back , they say things are fixed but they lie , i still crash when i cross their "no zone " lines in kojan , their classes for pvp are still unbalanced and the game is boring ......... however if people came back to it , i would play everyday lol yea i'm a fool like that .......

I was kind of thinking the same thing.  Fixed????  I dunno.

I still cannot see rain or weather effects when I play.  You'd think that would be fixed after 2 YEARS!!!  

If I remember correctly, this is only a problem if you're running Vistas, and they are working on it.  I'm sure this has a much lower priority than other issues they have worked on, such as performance.

Originally posted by ajm563

I hate to so blunt, but let's be honest.  This game has been on life support for 2 years.  It's time to pull the plug.

You're not being blunt, you're being arrogant.  What gives you the right to decide to pull the plug on a game you don't play?  Those of us who do play find it enjoyable or we wouldn't continue playing.  And if/when the plug is pulled, it will be the decision of SOE, not you.
 

Originally posted by Ionselon

Originally posted by porgie

Originally posted by dirtyside

this game will never come back , they say things are fixed but they lie , i still crash when i cross their "no zone " lines in kojan , their classes for pvp are still unbalanced and the game is boring ......... however if people came back to it , i would play everyday lol yea i'm a fool like that .......

I was kind of thinking the same thing.  Fixed????  I dunno.

I still cannot see rain or weather effects when I play.  You'd think that would be fixed after 2 YEARS!!!  

 

If I remember correctly, this is only a problem if you're running Vistas, and they are working on it.  I'm sure this has a much lower priority than other issues they have worked on, such as performance.

Only Vista?  Vista has been out for a long time now.  Windows 7 comes out in October.  And it is an issue on Windows 7 as well.

Not as many people bought Vista as was anticipated because of the bad rap it got from the get go.  But Windows 7 has been getting a lot of positive promotion.  More people are going to be buying into Windows 7 is my guess, so this is going to be a problem on even more peoples machines than before.

I'm just saying, a 2 year old problem that hasn't been fixed is pretty telling.  It shows that they have a very small staff that is not giving this game much attention any more to let something like this still slide.  Immersion is one of the greatest goals in an MMO, and weather is one of the most immersive effects you can add to a game.  Not having this working also might point to some greater problems under the hood.

Originally posted by porgie

Originally posted by Ionselon

Originally posted by porgie

Originally posted by dirtyside

this game will never come back , they say things are fixed but they lie , i still crash when i cross their "no zone " lines in kojan , their classes for pvp are still unbalanced and the game is boring ......... however if people came back to it , i would play everyday lol yea i'm a fool like that .......

I was kind of thinking the same thing.  Fixed????  I dunno.

I still cannot see rain or weather effects when I play.  You'd think that would be fixed after 2 YEARS!!!  

 

If I remember correctly, this is only a problem if you're running Vistas, and they are working on it.  I'm sure this has a much lower priority than other issues they have worked on, such as performance.

Only Vista?  Vista has been out for a long time now.  Windows 7 comes out in October.  And it is an issue on Windows 7 as well.

Not as many people bought Vista as was anticipated because of the bad rap it got from the get go.  But Windows 7 has been getting a lot of positive promotion.  More people are going to be buying into Windows 7 is my guess, so this is going to be a problem on even more peoples machines than before.

I'm just saying, a 2 year old problem that hasn't been fixed is pretty telling.  It shows that they have a very small staff that is not giving this game much attention any more to let something like this still slide.  Immersion is one of the greatest goals in an MMO, and weather is one of the most immersive effects you can add to a game.  Not having this working also might point to some greater problems under the hood.

I haven't tried Win7 yet, so I don't know if it will be a problem or not.  I'm not sure it's fair to say the dev team isn't giving a lot of attention to the game.  A small team with a limited budget can only accomplish so much.  Personally, I'm just happy with how far they have come in spite of the limitations placed on them.

I agree with you on having an immersive environment.  It definitely adds to the play experience, although I can remember wishing it wouldn't rain so much in Qeynos Hills in EQ!

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Katilla

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

 

the framerates increased for me dramatically when i logged back in, but it seems like theres a LOT of hitching now...i can run at a good 60fps  but then the game locks up randomly....seeems they solved one problem, only to introduce another on in it's place.

 

If you have an Nvidea Card you can mitigate this. It will still happen but less frequently.

 

From another thread, see the bold:

Originally posted by Margulis

Originally posted by Nizur

From what I've read, VG is harsh on hard drives, but you've got a pretty beefy one. Way beefier than mine and I'm rarely seeing hitching. I'm assuming you've defragged the drive?

Also, you've got an nVidia card, so you've probably got the nVidia control panel. I nearly doubled my FPS again tonight despite turning on AA by adding VG under Manage 3D Settings. I'm not sure if you've got 1 or 2 displays. I have two and noticed that the default setting was Multiple Display Performance mode. I switched that to Single Display performance mode. I also switched Threaded optimization to On.

Those settings are only for VG, not default settings. YMMV, but it's worth a try.

I also messed around with LOD settings and LightComplexity in my vgclient.ini file some more.

EDIT: BTW, what's your connection? Cable? DSL? Are you using a router? Firewall?

 

Hey hey! I seem to have made some progress here. Did some 3d setting modifications including the threaded optimization and single display performance and it is running MUCH better now. I'm still gettting some hitching when entering a new town or something but after the inital hitching it runs smooth, and out in the field hitching is pretty minimal. It's playable now at least so hooray!

I'm on seradon with character Margulis by the way if anyone is interested in a new friend in game.

Since you use Nvidia try increasing your max pre-rendered frames setting to 5 or 6 that should help to further smooth things out.

mm,ty for info ,but im not very good with computer does vanguard have an auto detect auto optimize like guild wars ,it would help me a lot because from what you write theres a lot of setting you mentioned i wouldnt even know where to look let alone play with those

that one issue i have with all game in general !

how come all game maker dont  furnish an auto detect auto optimise button

hell even in guild wars i had to go in menu sub-menu gees i had to go so deep it take an engineering diploma in computer just to play a freaking game couldnt the pc game maker put an auto adjust button at the start before you go ingame or anything

i might buy a wii just for that reason ,pc game doesnt play out of the box and game maker expect you to understand what aa means or what directx is or where  and all the whats not !

men im so not computer literate am i the only one that want simple plug and play game like the rest of my computer?

am i asking to much ?when i ask an auto -detect ,auto adjust buton, in a very obvious place not hidden where i got to ask microsoft teck support to help me find that setting or what it does

Originally posted by porgie

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

Upgrade your computer.  It runs fine on mine.

People trying to run this game on their computer they bought from Dell 6 years ago to do desktop applications and then complaining about how it runs too slow really crack me up.

 

You make a lot of assumptions.  Is this typically how your thought process works?

They made a game for you folks who don't buy/build gaming rigs.  It's called World of Warcraft.  Try it out.  But don't take away from the group of us who have no problem building new computers and demanding games for them.  We're a market too.  And we expect more than just an exploded Easter egg splattered onto visible triangles for graphics.

 

I like the  paragraph above because it proceeds from a false assumption,  yet you still felt the need to let us know how you build gaming rigs and you are a part of some 'elite' gaming group.  You're just some silly man/boy flexing his bannana brain muscles on the forum playground.   You may impress someone, but not this one.

Originally posted by metalcore

I agree, Vanguard has the best dungeons.

And terrain, and cities, and travel, and music....

It is only a few very specific yet very significant things that fail to draw me back in. Certainly neither of those are among them.

Damn it. Thinking of Vanguard makes me so sad. I'll miss you, Sigil.

EDIT: Terrana, It is easy to make Porgie's assumptions when so many so often complain about 'poor performance' being a fault of a game when they are obviously not equipped to run it as they wish to, then to go on a tirade about how not everyone has supercomputers or some nonsense like that. I sympathize with him.

The point I see is that if you are running a computer that is reasonably equipped for the game in question and you are experiencing performance less than what you should be, it is wise to investigate the matter before pinning it on the game, particularly if you are in a minority amidst those with similar builds. Whereas if it is, in fact, a matter of inferior hardware, there is definitely no justification for complaint.

Population seems to be doing good.

Originally posted by Terranah

Originally posted by porgie

Originally posted by Terranah

I have a free trial so I decided to give it another shot.  Atleast for me it still runs like crap, and I can only imagine the crappy performance that would ensue if I was in a full group.  If performance is subpar forget it.

Upgrade your computer.  It runs fine on mine.

People trying to run this game on their computer they bought from Dell 6 years ago to do desktop applications and then complaining about how it runs too slow really crack me up.

 

You make a lot of assumptions.  Is this typically how your thought process works?

They made a game for you folks who don't buy/build gaming rigs.  It's called World of Warcraft.  Try it out.  But don't take away from the group of us who have no problem building new computers and demanding games for them.  We're a market too.  And we expect more than just an exploded Easter egg splattered onto visible triangles for graphics.

 

I like the  paragraph above because it proceeds from a false assumption,  yet you still felt the need to let us know how you build gaming rigs and you are a part of some 'elite' gaming group.  You're just some silly man/boy flexing his bannana brain muscles on the forum playground.   You may impress someone, but not this one.

 

 

So you counter my "assumptions" with.... 
wait for it....

ASSUMPTIONS!    

And btw, banana's are good for you.  Potassium is essential in the firing of those brain neurons.  So calling me a banana brain I take as complimentary. 
Man/boy?  Yeah, I guess that's true.  I like to play and be goofy still. 
Weeee!!!  

I've never been as excited about this game's future as I am now.  I'm really looking forward to all the new stuff in the works, plus working on all the new stuff that has just been released.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by neonwire

Originally posted by openedge1

This game has had more than enough time to grow and be accepted.

Relaunch is a waste.

Vanguard is really behind the curve now in visuals, playability, and the population is too small to make any more effort.

SOE needs to focus on it's moneymakers. EQ, EQ2, Free Realms. They just keep Vanguard as a Station Pass incentive anyways.

Let VG go, concentrate on their current stable of good games, and their future titles that look very good actually.

Say goodbye to VG as it is already dead.

 

I agree. This game is never going to make a come back and as newer games come out its situation will get even worse. SOE would be foolish to waste any more time and money on it.

Besides I recently started up the trial of EQ2 again and its a much better game. The landscapes certainly arent as good as Vanguards but the SOGA character models in EQ2 are very well done as opposed to Vanguards which just look really stupid. Maybe if Vanguards dev team remade their hideous character models then my opinion of their game might improve. The contrast between the beatiful landscapes and the ugly badly made character models was always very jarring for me.......which is strange because a lot of the monster models looked rather good.

Also the "seamless open world" which seems to get used as a big selling point for the game was a big turn off for me and also lots of other potential players too as it just simply means that a lot of time is spent in Vanguard travelling. That doesnt make the gameplay any more interesting. In fact all of this "freedom" only served to expose how lifeless these mmos actually are as opposed to being immersed in the game world. So you can travel to that mountain off in the far distance......errrmm.....great. Whats on it? Some more mobs standing around waiting to be killed. Woopy!

 

I think this had the exact opposite effect for me. I felt like I was playing in a world as opposed a game where you can only enter certain areas if you were on the appropriate quest. But since this game is a bit of a throwback, people will either like it or hate it.

I like being able to go to that hill and find a new leveling area. or find that I'm outmatched and have to run for my life.

I had an experience where it was late at night (or more like 1:30 am) and I headed toward what I thought was a castle. Though I noticed things were a bit run down I didn't really pay enough attention, just walked my horse to the door and opened it. Suddenly I saw npc's running toward me and thought "hey, what a nice touch to have greeters at the castle". Then I realized they were zombie skeleton things and were more than 10 lvls above me. That's when i ran. I was completely, for lack of a better word, delighted at that mistake.

The game feels very different from EQ2 and LOTRO. I have the EQ2 game up for comparison and though I could go on as to why EQ2 is a good game, it's also a rather goofy game. It has a bit too much of the whimsical for my taste.

I would say that I have agreed with you about Vanguard's models but the more I play the more I sort of see the logic in them. I don't think they are any worse than LOTRO's models. Which also suffers from the beautiful world/odd avatar syndrome.

Ah yes I know the place. I flew over that castle and decided to go lower to take a look.......then my griffon vanished from under me and I fell into the undead waiting below. Who knows maybe they have invisible stretchy arms.

The thing is this isnt anything new and I didnt find it particularly awe inspiring. You can wander into high level areas in other mmos too and (shockingly enough) you will find yourself running away from mobs higher level than you. This has been happening in the earliest mmos. The only difference is that in VG the player is free to attempt most areas in the game at their leisure rather then being shepharded about like in most mmos.....except your still really being guided because the level restrictions are still actually there. Its still a themepark game afterall. Thats not a bad thing by the way......except for the fact that VG tries to enhance the illusion of it being a big open world by allowing the player to see for miles. For me personally all that really did was allow me to confirm that for miles and miles around me there was nothing to see as nothing was happening as its just a static gameworld that never changes. 3D landscape covered with lots of static (or nearly static) mobs waiting around in their pre-programmed areas for the players to come farm them.

If however interesting things happened occasionally in the game "world", such as a very rare and powerful dragon spawning once in a while on a random mountain top and swooping down to terrorise settlements then yeah there might be some point to being able to see for miles. Players would be able to tack the dragon back to its lair or see where it is flying from. Or armies of monsters might occasionally form up and march across the land so players on griffons could fly up high and track their movements.

But nothing like this ever happens because its a static mmo......just like every other static mmo. Removing the barriers between the zones doesnt really change this.

Vanguard isnt actually a terrible game though. I came back to play it for a while several months ago and I was pleasantly surprised by how much it has improved from its nightmarishly bad launch. It does a number of things quite well. It still felt like it was cobbled together rather badly though (eg diplomacy & crafting "spheres" are nothing more than repetitive side games) and after a few weeks it just started to lose its appeal. It just seemed really lifeless to me.

.....but thats ok because there are other games (and better ones on the horizon) to play and things to do! Oh and I agree with what you said about EQ2 being too whimsical and goofy as well. To be honest I dont really think thats a great game either. I'm just playing it every now and again as it seems to be the best the mmo genre has to offer right now.....which is pretty sad really. These games companies seem to be pretty bad at creating decent gameworlds. They always appear to me as though they were thought up by very young children. They also may as well just do away with all the choices they give us for what races we want to play as it never seems to have any relevance in the game. Elf, dwarf, goblin, troll, ogre, dark elf.......who cares? They all end up playing alongside each other anyway despite the supposed background of the games setting. I created a dwarf in VG and yet the trial isle is based on feudal japan. Whats that got to do with my dwarf?!.....and all the other races I saw running around. The same applies to EQ2 as well. Trolls adventuring alongside halflings, dark elves having tea parties with dwarves. Thats not a gameworld. Thats a mess. They could actually do interesting stuff with the different races/factions but instead the games are always designed from the perspective of ONE race - the player (shrug).

But ah well our choices are limited when it comes to mmos, despite the fact that there seem to be so many of them (which is odd really). I hate to say it but WoW seems to be one of the few mmos where your race actually has relevance in the game world. No dwarfs being best mates with Orcs in that game.

.......and no I wont go back to wow. Thanks for the suggestion in advance (not aimed at you Sovrath)

 I disagree about Vanguard SOH being the "hard" mode game that they are making it out to be to pull in the EQ fans. It was in the beginning but the developers have made drastic changes to the point it is just as easy or easier than WoW. I left the game when they dumbed it down and took a lot of the unique flavour in the game. They drastically changed grouping and all kinds of game mechanics. In my opinion the Vanguard that exists now isn't the original vision of the Everquest successor. It is more like a WoW clone now. 

I forgot to mention they added RMT to the game. YUCK. Vanguard is dead to me, I left and never looked back.

I recently picked up on Vanguard again after playing 3 months or so at launch. I rolled up a character on the PvP server..... It is a ghost town. Many times I am the only one in the zone for long periods of time. The players in the server chat channels say there are about 60-100 players there.
The world is very nicely done,with good graphics etc, but my machine freezes quite often just running through unpopulated zones,something I would expect from an area that had a lot of players.
My machine is decent,core2 duo E6600 2.6 Ghz,4 gb ram,8800GTS 320,SATA Hd, DSL, Win XpPro, so it is really frustrating to be experiencing the level of stuttering that I am.
I guess I will try the PvE server to try and get in a group and see how the performance is before I sign on for another month.

"I'm very proud of my team," said Salim. "We've put our heart and soul into this game. We've managed to fix a lot of older bugs and yet managed to release content for free. In May, we released the Halls of the Pantheon and at the same time raised the level cap for adventurers and crafters to 55 with all related content for those levels." Salim compared the Halls of the Pantheon to the Temple of Solusek Ro in the original EverQuest. Players will find quests for their class armors and will be sent to the far reaches of Telon for these quests.

Proud? You shouldn't be. What producer raises the lvl cap without releasing a new adventuring zone with content to make the lvling from 50-55 an interesting, challenging, and exciting experience. Nope. Instead, you made the lvl 50-55 a horrendous grind that players are quiting over.

The game was released unfinished and it still is. Nothing has changed. Did you finish Kojan? Did you release the Bezerker and Inquisitor classes that were cut? Did you build upon the races and different factions to give them meaning? Did you expand upon PVP to make it an interesting game option for a player? Did you give boats any usefullness? etc. You have done nothing of consequence besides turning VG into a watered  down version of EQ2.

14.99 monthly sub for a game that will never see an expansion or regular game updates is a real deal.

Originally posted by zab101

"I'm very proud of my team," said Salim. "We've put our heart and soul into this game. We've managed to fix a lot of older bugs and yet managed to release content for free. In May, we released the Halls of the Pantheon and at the same time raised the level cap for adventurers and crafters to 55 with all related content for those levels." Salim compared the Halls of the Pantheon to the Temple of Solusek Ro in the original EverQuest. Players will find quests for their class armors and will be sent to the far reaches of Telon for these quests.

 

Proud? You shouldn't be. What producer raises the lvl cap without releasing a new adventuring zone with content to make the lvling from 50-55 an interesting, challenging, and exciting experience. Nope. Instead, you made the lvl 50-55 a horrendous grind that players are quiting over.

The game was released unfinished and it still is. Nothing has changed. Did you finish Kojan? Did you release the Bezerker and Inquisitor classes that were cut? Did you build upon the races and different factions to give them meaning? Did you expand upon PVP to make it an interesting game option for a player? Did you give boats any usefullness? etc. You have done nothing of consequence besides turning VG into a watered  down version of EQ2.

14.99 monthly sub for a game that will never see an expansion or regular game updates is a real deal.

 

I don't mind a game not constantly changing and updating. I kind of like that actually. I really dislike the feeling the devs have that MMOs need to constantly change into something different. In Everquest for an example the first 2 expansions were a nice addition to the game. They didn't drastically change anything just added more of the same great design that was there in the beginning. With more and more expansions EQ turned into something away from it's original design, into a pile of garbage. World of Warcraft did the same but earlier and they constantly are changing thing worse than EQ did. It is horrible. Games need to stick to their vision.

Other than all that I agree, Vanguard was changed into a pile of garbage. They tried to change into WoW. Every game doesn't need to be that game. I quit with all the changes. Sony tried to change EQ2 into WoW also and now it is a clone with an item shop tack on. Avoiding that one like the plague.

Originally posted by drbaltazar

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

If you have an Nvidea Card you can mitigate this. It will still happen but less frequently.

 

From another thread, see the bold:

Originally posted by Margulis

Originally posted by Nizur

From what I've read, VG is harsh on hard drives, but you've got a pretty beefy one. Way beefier than mine and I'm rarely seeing hitching. I'm assuming you've defragged the drive?

Also, you've got an nVidia card, so you've probably got the nVidia control panel. I nearly doubled my FPS again tonight despite turning on AA by adding VG under Manage 3D Settings. I'm not sure if you've got 1 or 2 displays. I have two and noticed that the default setting was Multiple Display Performance mode. I switched that to Single Display performance mode. I also switched Threaded optimization to On.

Those settings are only for VG, not default settings. YMMV, but it's worth a try.

I also messed around with LOD settings and LightComplexity in my vgclient.ini file some more.

EDIT: BTW, what's your connection? Cable? DSL? Are you using a router? Firewall?

 

Hey hey! I seem to have made some progress here. Did some 3d setting modifications including the threaded optimization and single display performance and it is running MUCH better now. I'm still gettting some hitching when entering a new town or something but after the inital hitching it runs smooth, and out in the field hitching is pretty minimal. It's playable now at least so hooray!

I'm on seradon with character Margulis by the way if anyone is interested in a new friend in game.

Since you use Nvidia try increasing your max pre-rendered frames setting to 5 or 6 that should help to further smooth things out.

 

mm,ty for info ,but im not very good with computer does vanguard have an auto detect auto optimize like guild wars ,it would help me a lot because from what you write theres a lot of setting you mentioned i wouldnt even know where to look let alone play with those

that one issue i have with all game in general !

how come all game maker dont  furnish an auto detect auto optimise button

hell even in guild wars i had to go in menu sub-menu gees i had to go so deep it take an engineering diploma in computer just to play a freaking game couldnt the pc game maker put an auto adjust button at the start before you go ingame or anything

i might buy a wii just for that reason ,pc game doesnt play out of the box and game maker expect you to understand what aa means or what directx is or where  and all the whats not !

men im so not computer literate am i the only one that want simple plug and play game like the rest of my computer?

am i asking to much ?when i ask an auto -detect ,auto adjust buton, in a very obvious place not hidden where i got to ask microsoft teck support to help me find that setting or what it does

No it doesn't but no worries, it's not hard.

There is most likely (if you have the Nvidea software installed,) a little green Nvidea icon on the lower right of your task bar (lower right of your screen). click on it and you will see a list of options. One of them is Nvidia control panel. choose it.

The control panel comes up and you will see a list of options on the left. One of them is manage 3d settings. Choose it and you will see the window on the right with Manage 3d settings.

Select a program to customize and you should see vanguard.

Then scroll down and you will see the option "maximum pre-rendered frames. I set mine to 6.

Scroll down a bit further and you will see "threaded optimization" (this one helped the chunking over the chunk lines quite a bit  though still not vanished completely). Set it to on.

Then see if that helps.

Originally posted by neonwire

Originally posted by Sovrath

 

I think this had the exact opposite effect for me. I felt like I was playing in a world as opposed a game where you can only enter certain areas if you were on the appropriate quest. But since this game is a bit of a throwback, people will either like it or hate it.

I like being able to go to that hill and find a new leveling area. or find that I'm outmatched and have to run for my life.

I had an experience where it was late at night (or more like 1:30 am) and I headed toward what I thought was a castle. Though I noticed things were a bit run down I didn't really pay enough attention, just walked my horse to the door and opened it. Suddenly I saw npc's running toward me and thought "hey, what a nice touch to have greeters at the castle". Then I realized they were zombie skeleton things and were more than 10 lvls above me. That's when i ran. I was completely, for lack of a better word, delighted at that mistake.

The game feels very different from EQ2 and LOTRO. I have the EQ2 game up for comparison and though I could go on as to why EQ2 is a good game, it's also a rather goofy game. It has a bit too much of the whimsical for my taste.

I would say that I have agreed with you about Vanguard's models but the more I play the more I sort of see the logic in them. I don't think they are any worse than LOTRO's models. Which also suffers from the beautiful world/odd avatar syndrome.

 

The thing is this isnt anything new and I didnt find it particularly awe inspiring. You can wander into high level areas in other mmos too and (shockingly enough) you will find yourself running away from mobs higher level than you. This has been happening in the earliest mmos. The only difference is that in VG the player is free to attempt most areas in the game at their leisure rather then being shepharded about like in most mmos.....except your still really being guided because the level restrictions are still actually there. Its still a themepark game afterall. Thats not a bad thing by the way......except for the fact that VG tries to enhance the illusion of it being a big open world by allowing the player to see for miles. For me personally all that really did was allow me to confirm that for miles and miles around me there was nothing to see as nothing was happening as its just a static gameworld that never changes. 3D landscape covered with lots of static (or nearly static) mobs waiting around in their pre-programmed areas for the players to come farm them.

Well, a few things.

Though this is not different from a lot of earlier mmo's, it is significanlty different for me. My first mmo was lineage 2 and I played it as my main game (only tring other games to see what they were like) for 4 years. The world for L2 is large but other than large areas for grinding, there is not a lot to really see.

I remember trying to enter a building and realized it was a prop. A lot of buildings in the countryside are props.

One can explore but there aren't a lot of subtle things to revel in. My biggest thrill was stumbling on the sea of spores. This is not to say there aren't great places but there aren't really a lot of hidden gems to be found.

As far as Vanguard's empty world, it depends on taste. I find all sorts of towers, caves and what have you. For me I just enjoy seeing what's inside. Sometimes I get quests.

Yes, Vanguard has a lot of mobs waiting to be killed but it is to be expected. It is a throwback game. A retro game. If you've alreayd been there and done that then of course I wouldn't suggest the game. But for people who have plaed games like L2 or even WoW... or heck, even EQ 2, it does have a differnet feel.

My playtime tonight was exceptionally fun. yesterday, I went to check out hilsbury manor but didn't have a lot of time. So today I went to see if I could find a quest for the place and instead found one where an ambassador's daughter was missing. I was sent to another quest giver and she told me where to look. I Spent a bit of time trying to find the place the daugher was noted to be. Found her locket or some such thing. Was then told that the spiders probably dragged her into a cave and I should go back and kill many too many spiders so I can take their fangs and the quest giver could make a saw.  well, 20. Still I'm pretty immune to grinding from L2 so I did it. Was given the saw and found the cave.

Made my way back and rescued someone who was webbed up. Then found a dead person and then someone who begged to be killed but asked me to find his wife at the tower. I then find the girl, and fight my way back to the quest giver.

The tower is next to her and lo and behold the (now) dead person's wife. I turn in that quest and then the guard next to her sends me to the lower town because a mad princess witch (or whatever ) has taken stormwynd keep and is donig nasty things.

I return the girl, head down, take the keep's guards out, collect the princess's head and take out her small entourage and head back. I am then told that I need to go see a vampire slayer. Ok.. I have time...

I find him (south of hilsbury manor) and am told there is a monastary with some evil going on. I take the "kill her minions", collect the amulets, take the head matron's "head" quests and, er... "head there".

I then fight my way inside this monastery and have to spend time searching rooms for this head evil matron. I clear everything out and can't understand  why I cant' find her. then I notice the stairs that lead into the cold dark ground. I make my way down winding marble steps but have to go into first person mode because of the tight quarters. I fight my way down and then find a large crypt like room with fog and all the signs that this is a group of vampires. I slay everyone, fight the matron, take her head (a lot of head taking in this game) and make my way back to the vampire killer.  I am then given a quest to go into hilsbury manor and find someone who is hiding in there in a secret room. Hilsbury manor is filled with vampires and other baddies...

This is FAR different than the L2 "hey, let's just find a field and grind until our eyes bleed" scenario. It is also a bit different from my LOTRO play though I tend to just explore the LOTRO world and not worry too much what I do and don't do.

Point being, not one time tonight did I look at my xp bar or see if I was getting the most xp for my effort I just played the game. I got into the small stories behind the quests and it was very much a fun evening.

So for people who haven't experienced this type of thing, who haven't been in a game where you can stumble on things only to be given quests because of your exploration, then I highly recommend it.

You see, I don't see vanguard as an open empty world. I see it as a world. it takes time to get places. I'm not just being told to go to the next town over and though it is the next town over, it takes 2 minutes to do so. In Vanguard It takes a quite bit because it really is the next town over. There is a sense of a greater space. And as I'm heading to whereever I will then see a tower or cave or something that catches my attnetion... hmmm perhaps that town can wait... this is exactly why I started playing mmo's. I wanted the morrowind "I'm leaving Sedya Neen and what the heck is that door doing, sticking out of the rock in the distance "feeling. This is somethign I have not gotten from mmo's.

It takes some patience because of the small bugs and of course as I said, it's retro gameplay, but for those people who are tired of LOTRO or WoW or even asian grinders, and are willing to lose themselves within the stage that vanguard sets, then I think it is worth it.

erg.. that was a long post! sorry ; )

Seriously in this day and age you cant fail at launch in an MMO..You just can't...VG failed and failed badly..After 2 years its even worst if thats possible. Towns are in desolation there isn't even a point to be in one. Character models are jokes compared to anything in the 90s for crying out loud. Even the new patch looked like intern work..yes you suck if you helped with those character models. Korean MMOs had more character customization rofl.... If you coded one line in this game epic fail.........kill this one server game already its sucks, it lacks content, it lacks potential and it lacks a game.......... noone would play this if it was free I can bet money on this

Even with all of the bug fixes I still think it's one of the buggiest p2p mmos on the market, if not the buggiest.  Just my opinion.

Originally posted by Margulis

Even with all of the bug fixes I still think it's one of the buggiest p2p mmos on the market, if not the buggiest.  Just my opinion.

I agree. heck Even Silius the Game Director/lead developer agrees. He said many times that the code is fubar and the reason why many Long standing bugs cant and will never be fixed.

I played VG and stopped before they raised the levelcap. I simply couldnt see how they put out enough content for additional 5 levels. The game is awesome, I love it. If there would be good support I wouldnt have left. Its the only game I played so far where I had the feeling of some big badass open world where I can go and adventure like I want.

I started at VG launch some woodelf and I remember making screenshots like mad because it was beautiful, I cursed like mad because I got always lost in the damn trees. I put some effort into it to get the VG soundtrack as its the best until AoC released, leveled in some months to 44 where the game stopped existing content wise, left in disgust cursing McQuaid as I somehow felt getting ripped from something awesome. I came back 1 year later to find a lot better game with working endcontent, still too much bugs,  way to few dev support,  missing population (Halgar). The performance is still below average (extremly harddrive and cpu dependant) and anyone who thinks that running WoW with 80++fps will give him good fps in VG will be in for some bad surprise.

So I went to LotR and played there for a month. The game bored me. There is nothing wrong with the game, but it kinda lacks highlights. I found me always comparing something to VG and honestly I found the VG counterpart better. Every freaking (instanced) dungeon went like: someone invites some level 50 guy, which wipes out all the threats, get questupdates, done. A joke compared to VG dungeoncrawls at similar levels. But I dont want to bash LotR, its a good game, it was my expectations which were too high I guess. At least the game has good population and good dev support and you can make very beautiful screenshots. Performance is better too.

So I went to Aion China after some short intermezzo with L2 (what a horrible HORRIBLE game). And safe to say this will be THE 2009 mmorpg release for NA/EU. Insane polish, insane performance, insane audio, good graphics, good gameplay so far. It will blow some large hit to WAR, AoC and probably WoW populations and it deserves it. If the endcontent is not totally broken or missing it will be good.

Nonetheless... its basics are simple. Youre leveling like on rails until you reach the Abyss, where the 2 races clash in each other. The replayability is very low. The classes are pretty generic (compared to VG or LotR ones) but probably thats because to help balancing pvp wise. The landscape, which is so nice, feels small compared to VG, the visible range is way to short for my taste. Everything seems packed, every mob and location is needed, there is no way for me to say, fuck this, I now go... north! Simply north and look what I will find there. I dont have this option, I cant go and explore north.

So Im reading this thread here now and it makes me sad. VG an awesome game which will slowly wither away in time. Its like watching some ancient castle and admiring the buildings, the giant thick, sturdy walls and imaging people fighting on walls, rams trying to break through the wooden gate. Impressive but a thing of the past. Thats kinda like VG. An impressive game at launch, even nowadays, but its getting slowly old and Sonys lifesupport will make sure that the so much needed ressources wont be available. I wouldnt be surprised if windows 7 will be a big problem for VG and devs.

Anyway, VG is cheap to get now and its worth every cent.

 Good to see such articles appear on the site. Maybe more people try this game, it deserves more attention

it won't this website is composed of people with an old man mindset, it sucked then therefor it must suck now kind of deal. 

Thank you for this article. I think for this type of gameplay, only VG is left, which is very sad given the fact that there are so many mmo out there...

I just hope there will be more outposts in this huge land, which is what i love, but abit too empty....

Anyway, all the best to Sigil...

 I think the biggest problem for Vanguard is the character models and sound. World graphics can’t be beat by anyone, period. But most MMOs get judged from the start and guess what is the first thing you do?

Originally posted by openedge1

This game has had more than enough time to grow and be accepted.

Relaunch is a waste.

Vanguard is really behind the curve now in visuals, playability, and the population is too small to make any more effort.

SOE needs to focus on it's moneymakers. EQ, EQ2, Free Realms. They just keep Vanguard as a Station Pass incentive anyways.

Let VG go, concentrate on their current stable of good games, and their future titles that look very good actually.

Say goodbye to VG as it is already dead.

Are you serious? hahaha!

....

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

I totally agree...

I also believe these failing MMO's are failing even more by continueing to charge the standard $14.99 a month despite the fact that the game is not feature complete. Vanguard (which I bought at launch, played for a month, and cancelled) is selling at BestBuy for $10. How can they justify a $14.99/mo subscription on a game that costs less than that. If anything $4.99/mo would be more reasonable and would probably bring people back in droves.

There is only a handful of MMO's that I would consider at $14.99. Vanguard is definately not one of them. I loved the crafting (EQ2 style) but I was put off by purple rock textures among other problems.

Re-launch, more marketing or whatever they do will not likely result in revitalizing this game.  I'm afraid that most people are not looking for another EverQuest rehash.  Let alone dealing with yet another MMO with a grouping and raiding focus.  People are learning from solo friendly games that socializing is just as popular in those games minus the headaches of forced grouping in games like EQ or Vanguard.

 I have not played VG in a while. I really love the way the world was designed. I would like to try it again. I am just worried that SOE will shut it down. I think this game still has potential. A ton of potential.   

Vanguard is by far the best MMO around at the moment. The ONLY issue is the lack of population and lack of a faction-based PvP server (Not FFA). Although the population is to blame for not having a server of that type!

The game had a bad launch, but it's great in its current state. I prefer skill-based games to level-based but with Vanguard I don't really care because it's fun from level 1. As opposed to WoW, which isn't fun until level 40 or 50 or so (in my opinion)

Originally posted by shad0w99

Vanguard is by far the best MMO around at the moment. The ONLY issue is the lack of population and lack of a faction-based PvP server (Not FFA). Although the population is to blame for not having a server of that type!

 

Hey, guy who doesn' know WTF he is talking about. All the PVP servers were merged into the FFA Server - The playerbase was not consulted. The playerbase did however ask that team pvp be kept, NOT FFA.

The reason SOE gave us FFA only is because it's the easiest form of PVP to maintain. There are no rules, and therefore its the perfect excuse to not actually have to do anything with it. Where as Team PVP would have issues with race/class restrictions leading to an OP side.

Next time don't post. kthx.

After two years of bug fixes, this game is more than just playable, it's fun!

I've been playing on and off since release (release was catastrophic) and have noticed positive changes since release.  I still run into small or big graphical anomolies, but nothing that ultimately effects or hinders gameplay.

This game truly is centered around group play, which is the type of game I enjoy playing.  I hate single-player MMOs.  In the past few months I've noticed an increase in population, which allows the game to truly shine.

Honestly, this game can only get better, because it was released at its worse.

I've been following this game since the last beta they had. At launch I bought the game because I thought that "beta" really meant "beta". But no, they released a beta on disc, and I was really disappointed because of it. I played one month and cancelled right away.

After about a year I reactivated my account to see if the game was any good. They fixed a lot, but I'd still rather play Final Fantasy XI over Vanguard during that time. So I played one month, and cancelled again.

A half year later I reactivated my account yet again to see if the game went in the right direction. Again, lots of fixes, but still not up to my expectations for a game with a monthly subscription.

After that I still followed the game a little, and especially because of the upcoming character models update. As Silius (head developer team) said in an interview: "OMG, they look so awesome". My expectations for the new character models were a little too high I suppose... Eventually they released almost the very same models, with minimal adjustments. To be honest, it was REALLY hilarious! After that happened I didn't believed a word that came from Sony and their developers. They are complete jokes and can't be taken seriously. Not then, not now, not ever. For over two years these rediculous developers have been making promise after promise, and only a couple of them have been realised.

It's a real shame though, because the vision behind the game was fantastic. Too bad they were so dumb and almost destroyed it all. Over 30 million dollar down the drain, broken hearts, broken gameplay, broken promises, broken company... I really liked all the ideas, and some even were really nicely implemented into the game. But in the end it tried to please too many people on too many fronts, and that's were the game, and the companies behind it, have failed.

I'm not even going to play the game if they give me a lifetime subscription for free. It may be better than before, but I have far too many bad memories in my head that would still destroy the new experience. As they say in FFXI: [No Thanks]!

Originally posted by Ionselon

Originally posted by Solude

VG is a mistake SOE just seems to refuse to admit.  It was billed as EQ 1.5 and being developped by Sigil, who was out of money... i.e. threat of cutting into their subs... zero.  They should have let it die there and stayed fixed on EQ/EQ2 for their fanstasy MMOs.  VG isn't terrible it just isn't as good as EQ2/LotRo/WAR/AoC/WoW in the fantasy genre.  SOE has enough competition outside without worrying about internal competition.

 

You need to qualify such statements as being your personal opinion.  I play VG and think it is everymuch as good as the games you list.

In my opinion WAR and WoW aren't games I ever intend to play again.  AoC is the game I really really want them to get solid and LotRO and EQ2 are the games that compete for my fantasy dollar.  Both don't compete with CoX though for group based fun.  That's my opinion, the original post was popular opinion based on sales and retention.

---

Originally posted by Trueth

---

Originally posted by shad0w99

Vanguard is by far the best MMO around at the moment. The ONLY issue is the lack of population and lack of a faction-based PvP server (Not FFA). Although the population is to blame for not having a server of that type!
 

---

 
Hey, guy who doesn' know WTF he is talking about. All the PVP servers were merged into the FFA Server - The playerbase was not consulted. The playerbase did however ask that team pvp be kept, NOT FFA.
The reason SOE gave us FFA only is because it's the easiest form of PVP to maintain. There are no rules, and therefore its the perfect excuse to not actually have to do anything with it. Where as Team PVP would have issues with race/class restrictions leading to an OP side.
Next time don't post. kthx.

---

Hey! Guy who can't comprehend written English!

I didn't say the playerbase was to blame for there only being a FFA server. I said the population is to blame. I'm well aware there used to be a team PvP server. The reason it disappeared, along with a couple of others, was because the population wasn't large enough to justify having multiple PvP servers. Had the population not declined there would still be a team PvP server. Thus, the population (or lack thereof) is to blame for having only one PvP server.

Next time read carefully

kthxbye.

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

---

---

 

I didn't say the playerbase was to blame for there only being a FFA server. I said the population is to blame.

Had the population not declined there would still be a team PvP server.

I'll just quote you to accentuate how lost you really are. 

Lemme guess, next you'll tell us the game is still buggy with poor performance because the population didn't support it properly, and had the players embraced the concept of viral marketing Vanguard would be a smash hit!

Try knowing something next time.

And before you get your Malibu Barbi panties all tangled up, try reading all 75 pages of /signed - Then you'll know.

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

---

Originally posted by Trueth

---

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

Vanguard is by far the best MMO around at the moment. The ONLY issue is the lack of population and lack of a faction-based PvP server (Not FFA). Although the population is to blame for not having a server of that type!
 

---

 
Hey, guy who doesn' know WTF he is talking about. All the PVP servers were merged into the FFA Server - The playerbase was not consulted. The playerbase did however ask that team pvp be kept, NOT FFA.
The reason SOE gave us FFA only is because it's the easiest form of PVP to maintain. There are no rules, and therefore its the perfect excuse to not actually have to do anything with it. Where as Team PVP would have issues with race/class restrictions leading to an OP side.
Next time don't post. kthx.

---

 

Hey! Guy who can't comprehend written English!

I didn't say the playerbase was to blame for there only being a FFA server. I said the population is to blame. I'm well aware there used to be a team PvP server. The reason it disappeared, along with a couple of others, was because the population wasn't large enough to justify having multiple PvP servers. Had the population not declined there would still be a team PvP server. Thus, the population (or lack thereof) is to blame for having only one PvP server.

Next time read carefully

kthxbye.

mm yep and its not just this p2p game almost all p2p game are slowly loosing player

i speak to my friend and they mostly tell me

hey mike why dont you come to m,d,y  f2p game instead

its not just a trend f2p game are getting more player now because their game is on par with p2p and dont forget

one thing

if z player doesnt like either saga .and he would rater play twelves sky

he can wothout crying because he just shelled 50 $ at ebgame for a game that doesnt fit his flavor of the month

that is whats becoming the main factor

because in a year of play the cost for f2p and p2p is about the same

but the initial cost like the first day you play is a lot bigger in p2p then in f2p

thats why p2p model is slowly loosing ground

(only wow still does good the rest are trickleing out of p2p mmo)

Originally posted by Trueth

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

---

---

 

I didn't say the playerbase was to blame for there only being a FFA server. I said the population is to blame.

Had the population not declined there would still be a team PvP server.

 

I'll just quote you to accentuate how lost you really are. 

Lemme guess, next you'll tell us the game is still buggy with poor performance because the population didn't support it properly, and had the players embraced the concept of viral marketing Vanguard would be a smash hit!

Try knowing something next time.

 

And before you get your Malibu Barbi panties all tangled up, try reading all 75 pages of /signed - Then you'll know.

 

 

 

I want to see those Malibu Barbie panties all tangled up.

Pics or it never happened! 

Originally posted by Trueth

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

---

---

 

I didn't say the playerbase was to blame for there only being a FFA server. I said the population is to blame.

Had the population not declined there would still be a team PvP server.

 

I'll just quote you to accentuate how lost you really are. 

Lemme guess, next you'll tell us the game is still buggy with poor performance because the population didn't support it properly, and had the players embraced the concept of viral marketing Vanguard would be a smash hit!

Try knowing something next time.

 

And before you get your Malibu Barbi panties all tangled up, try reading all 75 pages of /signed - Then you'll know.

 

 

 

School----> that way
 

After launch of VG i stayed back like after launch of AoC. Now i play AoC with a lot of players who played since launch and it looks the game is going through the right way. Much more palyers in last months. And much more after new patch. Yes a lot of players are sad from this update, but .... that is normal in a way of big changes like in this.

I hope the VG will have the same. I kept this game back, because it failed on launch too and i still wait. But it looks that they will have problems to make this game mor epopulated. Like u said they want to relaunch it and release some relay big change update, what will take an attention of potential players. I hope one day it will go :)

I cant understand, why a lot of players dont like older games and still looking forward for new releases. If i can say ... now is AoC another game, VG looks much better than was in release. The same was in EQ2 ... EQ2 is one of the content most full games ever and how its around new palyers comunity? Dead... ye, why they all want to go into new games and throwing that games back. Yes im looking forward to play SWTOR, may be Mortal Online etc. .. but why to say i wait for this games i will not play old crap ... damn, why? ... when something will be launched, yes, it can bee good, it can be great, but still ... after a few years it will be much and much better... but a lot of these palyers who waited for these new titles will not see it, because they will be in another noe games in these times. I dont understand, how can be fun for most MMO player to be "Launch tester / Late beta testers" of much release games ....

---

Originally posted by Trueth

---

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

---

---

 
I didn't say the playerbase was to blame for there only being a FFA server. I said the population is to blame.
Had the population not declined there would still be a team PvP server.

---

 
I'll just quote you to accentuate how lost you really are. 
Lemme guess, next you'll tell us the game is still buggy with poor performance because the population didn't support it properly, and had the players embraced the concept of viral marketing Vanguard would be a smash hit!
Try knowing something next time.
 
And before you get your Malibu Barbi panties all tangled up, try reading all 75 pages of /signed - Then you'll know.
 
 
 

---

And why do you think it was they needed to merge the PvP servers in the first place? Why would any company merge servers for that matter?

Judging by your previous posts it appears I have to spell things out for you. Otherwise I would leave my reply as rhetorical questions for you to work out for yourself.

The answer is... They needed to merge the PvP servers because a lot of people quit the game. It's all very well you showing me a petition signed by all the Team PvP players but had SOE retained what they would consider a reasonable playerbase (and by that I mean size, not quality) the Team PvP server would not have been merged in the first place.

Why they went with a FFA server as opposed to a Team PvP server despite a lot of people asking for it is a totally different matter.

I see many have different feelings on all aspects of this MMORPG.

Mine?  I feel it is still ahead of the curve.  It's still "The PS3 of the MMORPG world".

But now that many bugs and problems are taken care of, and the terrific careers and crafting system in game.

I am going back to this wonderful world to fully explore it:)

Originally posted by shad0w99

 

Yap Yap...

---

Keep changing your story, you might eventually get it right. But until then you should just put on your big girl panties and let the people who know, have a conversation.

As to why there is an FFA server and no Team server - I told you already, but you probably missed it in your rush to gush stupid.

-

"The reason SOE gave us FFA only (despite a 75 page vote) is because it's the easiest form of PVP to maintain. There are no rules, and therefore its the perfect excuse to not actually have to do anything with it. Where as Team PVP would have issues with race/class restrictions leading to an OP side (and player complaints/issues that could make the server unplayable)."

Listen, lady, because I can only say it so many times - Try knowing something next time.

You want to know what we want? More players! It may sound nice to say "come back!" but it's not that easy. You want my opinion (doubt it, but I'll tell you anyways)? It's simple:

Edit some storyline, rename a few places, add some nostalgia and call it EVERQUEST 3 with a catch subtitle with the word "vanguard" in it!   The capabilities and gfx of it are still of next-gen and can get away with it.

Completely repackage it, give it a different name, add a major content package to it and voila.

Now would be the perfect time to ramp up the Vanguard Dev team and relaunch this game.  The landscape is completely barren for a massive "world" type fantasy mmo.  WoW never was filling for people wanting a MMO with massive depth.  EQ2 did ok for a while, but the way it was designed made it too limited for continued growth, and it is now barely hanging on by a thread with the rats ready to jump the ship at any time.  LoTRO is extremely niche due to it's predetermined expansion path and lore.  There are absolutely no PVE games of note coming in the near future and Vanguard is still more than good enough to position itself to be ready to capture the wandering masses.  But many won't play it (myself included), as noone wants to invest the time required to get into a game like Vanguard when they know there is no hope of ever seeing expansions in the future.

But SoE won't do this... They will continue to stubbornly hang onto their flagship titles in SW online, EQ 1 & 2, and Free Realms.  With some real effort put into development on this game there is huge potential for it to dominate the high fantasy market at this time.

Originally posted by Trueth

Originally posted by shad0w99

Vanguard is by far the best MMO around at the moment. The ONLY issue is the lack of population and lack of a faction-based PvP server (Not FFA). Although the population is to blame for not having a server of that type!

 

 

Hey, guy who doesn' know WTF he is talking about. All the PVP servers were merged into the FFA Server - The playerbase was not consulted. The playerbase did however ask that team pvp be kept, NOT FFA.

The reason SOE gave us FFA only is because it's the easiest form of PVP to maintain. There are no rules, and therefore its the perfect excuse to not actually have to do anything with it. Where as Team PVP would have issues with race/class restrictions leading to an OP side.

Next time don't post. kthx.

after reading this It ´s my duty to give this game a second chance ,downloading  right and now :]

Originally posted by metalcore

I agree, Vanguard has the best dungeons.

Dungeon crawl and grouping, is what makes VG so good, a PvEers paradise.

EQ1 had some very cool dungeons and VG just takes on that experience and improves on it.

Whilst you can solo, you can raid, by far grouping is the most fun and most rewarding in any game, VG excells at it.

out of the top 5 instances/dungeons i have experianced in MMO's, 3 are from Vanguard.

I was searching around the web to see if Vanguard was still alive and came upon this forum.

I believe Vanguard to be one of the best current medieval MMO out there today. Currently I am playing WoW (world of warcraft), its a decent game, its not what allot of people comment it to be. For having played MMO's for over ten years now I kinda have a little experience and believe I can honestly say that Vanguard is better than any other MMO I have played.

The other day while playing WoW, I was talking to someone I was grouped with in a random dungeon event.  mentioned to him how bad the graphics in WoW is. So I went ahead and made some comparisons with Vanguard to EQ to WoW. First off I told this groupie that WoW uses almost all 2D graphics same like EQ did back in '01, while Vanguard has 3D graphics. He asks me what is 2D graphics? I said well I consider 2D graphics is when you have a tree and it only has two sides. You can run to one said and on the way to the other side the tree is just a sliver on your screen, while Vanguard's trees and mountains and rivers all are like real life.

I then went on to say how there classes are all messed up. He asked me how do I figure that? I told him this is the only game (wow) where a main Tank can be the main healer or can be a main dps'er that I know of. He says thats how it should be, so I then ask him who he thinks should be the highest dps'er in the game. He tells me a shaman or a paladin or maybe a hunter.  I later looked it up he was right, there were arguments on shaman and paladin being the highest dps'er, too bad the pure classes like rogues and mages who are suppose to be the real dps'ers aren't even on the list. If I remember correctly thats not how it works in Vanguard.

I later continued telling him how the crafting in WoW sucks, that if a person wants to just do tailoring and not mess with any PvE'ing he cant do that. In WoW you have to be a certain lvl to be a certain lvl in your crafting. I told him thats not how it works in Vanguard.

He then starts to brag that WoW has the best dungeon tactics and game play. I say, yes WoW has some good dungeon game play, a team needs to step out of fire, move or hide behind a rock, run to one spot or run away from the monster,  but it always comes down to your gearscore (GS) and your dps'ers. If your dps suck, you will loose the fight, if your gearscore suck you will loose the fight doesn't matter if you did everything correctly. I said in EQ and Vanguard almost everyone can have sucky gear as long as you know the tactics you can progress.

So I ended that convo with him thinking. But he was still brainwashed that WoW is the best game out there.

I just wished that Sony/Vanguard team would like relaunch, and not make a little Isle of Dawn relaunch type of deal. I mean advertise on TV, show what you got. Have Mr. T say that WoW sucks and everyone should try Vanguard. Even use the old EQ tv advertisement and just change the name to Vanguard. Although now knowing how Japanese companies operate, I dont think that Vanguard would ever get what it deserves.

So I am getting sick and tired of playing WoW, like a few people commented about WoW "there shouldn't be a reason why people should have to play a terrible game".

So you logged in WOW just to bash it with random players and when they refused to buy into your Vanguard is better then WOW immature bull crap you labeled them as brainwashed? what were you expecting after this? you sir are a troublemaker trying to stir pot of flames for no reason.

You are in no way helping to make Vanguard more appealing to other players.

Sorry Shastra I dont understand what your getting at.

I am currently playing WoW... been playing WoW since October of last year. I have two lvl 80 charachters (highest lvl on WoW), my GS on my main is over 3k in wow-heroes (farely good score). I really didn't log unto WoW just to find a poor kid and bash on WoW.

I just did a comparison between WoW and EQ and Vanguard. There really isn't much bull crap there that I can see. Wow uses 2D, uses its own D&D rules, has terrible crafting. If that is bashing then I apologize if you are offended by the truth.

Also if saying what I see does not make Vanguard more appealing, oh well... I just say it how I see it.

Originally posted by Gilthasan

Sorry Shastra I dont understand what your getting at.

I am currently playing WoW... been playing WoW since October of last year. I have two lvl 80 charachters (highest lvl on WoW), my GS on my main is over 3k in wow-heroes (farely good score). I really didn't log unto WoW just to find a poor kid and bash on WoW.

I just did a comparison between WoW and EQ and Vanguard. There really isn't much bull crap there that I can see. Wow uses 2D, uses its own D&D rules, has terrible crafting. If that is bashing then I apologize if you are offended by the truth.

Also if saying what I see does not make Vanguard more appealing, oh well... I just say it how I see it.

I am not offended by anything you say because there is no truth in your statment just personal opinions. You are making comparisons where there are no comparisons to be made. You can't understand a simple thing that different people like different things. You prefer vanguard more..good for you but insulting others for enjoying  WOW and labeling them as brainwashed is not helping your case.

The argument was started buy you so i see you as someone who is desperate to advertise Vanguard to random players by any means necessary. Discuss Vanguard on its own positive and negative instead of comparing it with WOW (everyone does that and its boring and annoying) that way maybe you can generate some interest. Your approach is wrong and just childish. My game is better then your pissing contests are for kids not mature people.

Well, before i go back to see what this game has become, i'll wait for a free comeback trial. I will then maybe take it up and see if 1.mobs no longer warp 200 feet from you when fighting them. 2.characters no longer change their look when logging in from what you had made. 3.the weather (primarily snow) can be turned off and no longer shows when inside a cave/building or whatever. 4.most quests are actually working instead of 1 in 5. 5.there are actually players there playing rather than nobody around to talk/help/get to know. There are probably alot more bugs i had not mentioned from when i last played and last gave it a trial shot (that lasted 5 log-ins and about 3 hrs) before giving up but it has been over a year now, hell maybe even 2, but badness still leaves a nasty taste in ones mouth for quite along time, that one would be reluctant to pay for a month without first see'ing if it is worth it.

If there has been any comeback trials recently then i have not heard or received any e-mail notifications on it and yes i still have the same e-mail, but mostly these (from my experiance) dont bother being sent out to the EU player base anyways.

Originally posted by Shastra

Originally posted by Gilthasan

Sorry Shastra I dont understand what your getting at.

I am currently playing WoW... been playing WoW since October of last year. I have two lvl 80 charachters (highest lvl on WoW), my GS on my main is over 3k in wow-heroes (farely good score). I really didn't log unto WoW just to find a poor kid and bash on WoW.

I just did a comparison between WoW and EQ and Vanguard. There really isn't much bull crap there that I can see. Wow uses 2D, uses its own D&D rules, has terrible crafting. If that is bashing then I apologize if you are offended by the truth.

Also if saying what I see does not make Vanguard more appealing, oh well... I just say it how I see it.

I am not offended by anything you say because there is no truth in your statment just personal opinions. You are making comparisons where there are no comparisons to be made. You can't understand a simple thing that different people like different things. You prefer vanguard more..good for you but insulting others for enjoying  WOW and labeling them as brainwashed is not helping your case.

The argument was started buy you so i see you as someone who is desperate to advertise Vanguard to random players by any means necessary. Discuss Vanguard on its own positive and negative instead of comparing it with WOW (everyone does that and its boring and annoying) that way maybe you can generate some interest. Your approach is wrong and just childish. My game is better then your pissing contests are for kids not mature people.

 Well theres a little problem here, I didn't state any personal opinions. I mentioned all facts, Wow does use 2D, WoW does use its own D&D rules, you do need to be lvl 80 to have your crafting at lvl 450 in WoW. So I do understand people like different things, but when people comment that WoW has the best graphics of any game out there, when people comment that WoW crafting is the best out there, when people comment that the classes is the best out there, when people comment that WoW is best out there then I say people have been brainwashed... ok I guess brainwashed is a little too much. I would say inexperienced and uninformed instead of brainwashed.

BTW... if you want to call me childish and an immature person, you should learn how to spell, my six year old spells better than you do.

Now Shastra you should follow Manestream's approach, he offered facts and showed why a person shouldn't play Vanguard. I on the other hand showed why a person shouldn't play WoW. So by directly assaulting my comment and calling me names and saying something I am not doing is some what wrong or how you say it 'childish'.

Really? commenting on my spellings? is that they best you got, Yah i spelled two words wrong does that make you feel better now? sorry but when you resort to such cheap tactics it shows you already lost the argument.

Also i am not the one starting vanguard rocks and wow sucks arguments with random players. I enjoy what i play, if i stop enjoying i move on rather than trying to put others down with so called facts. Like someone said on these forums. Good game needs no defense and bad game has no defense. So the way you are trying to promote Vanguard will only annoy people more and not make them come to join you (isn't that what this game needs? more players) your approach is whole wrong and makes vanguard look even worse and desperate.

Now go ahead and comment on my spelling skills all you like, i am done arguing with you.

Nice, I figured you would go after that one sentence rather than the other two paragraphs mentioning how WoW differs from Vanguard. I now know what I am dealing with.

Shastra you need to go back and read the posts I have written in the past day about WoW and Vanguard and there differences. What I have mentioned is that WoW is a decent game, its no "best MMO out there" like so many people have said. If you notice when I said Vanguard is the best "medieval MMO game" out there I didn't say the best of all but I put it in a catagory, unlike many WoW players do not rather, put all MMO's in the same league as WoW.

I believe Star Trek, Star Wars Rebellion, Eve should not be generalized under the same category as WoW, btw I have played those three too. Maybe WoW, Vanguard, Conan, Warhammer, EQ, EQII are in the same category, btw I have played all those six games I just mentioned too. Saying that I have played all those games (and those are just a hand full I have tried out, except for Star Trek I have maxed those games out too) I think I have the right to say that Vanguard is the best of those six Medieval types or better said D&D based games. Shastra can you say the same?

I think the issue here is Shastra you probably have only played WoW and maybe one or two other MMO's. So if you re-read my post I said the big problem is that WoW players are inexperienced and unknowledgable about other MMO's. The big reason why they are like that is because games like Vanguard are surpressed by the big companies (Sony), hence why I said "now that I know how Japanese companies operate". 

What vanguard needs is a good PR department, one that can put that game out and be noticed. Then it would have a shot.

If all palyer that talk so god of vanguard did some pr for it. like put upp baners etc it my have i shans.beuse soe whont do aniting ever for pr the game.