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And my personal opinion - first impression.
Thona
Member Posts: 7
Got the game going after a weekend of downloading :-) Finally in, played like 8 hours now total.
My impressions:
* It is stable. Could be my rig - Vista 32bit, AMD X2 3800, 2gb RAM, 7600GS graphics card. Runs 1280x1024 full screen balanced with acceptable FPS.
* Interesting enough my main performance problem during most of the time were ping times around 600ms - not blaming vanguard, but basically it made the user interface sometimes a little slow :-)
* The graphics looks great but artificial. Compared to WOW it looks less polished. Could be something with anti aliasing or so. This goes to the surrounding, but also towards the character. It is just "too sharp". Animations are not really good. I feel somehow back into old DAOC days.
* The game plays in the start like any other MMORPG. Compared to WOW it seems a little more grinding at the beinning. The quests definitly need more polishing for adventuring. WOW is a shallow grinfesat, but the quests do a better job packing that up, at least in the start.
* The games programming looks mediocre. The loading times are disturbing - why?
* The user interface is way less polished than WOW. Like the way you drop armor to wear. In WOW I would not get overlapping windows, in Vanguard I do. Then I have to sort them out manually. On top, secondary hotbars (left down) overlaps with followup attacked which appear above the normal hotbar - making it unusable. Again, this is client polishing. Same for the quest interface - in WOW It was more natural. In Vanguard I need more clicks, it seems. Just minor polish, though.
* No comment on crafting, I yet have to try that out. Never been a crafter.
* The diplomacy came is nice. The interface sucks. My main issue i torganizing the hand - I am constantly opening/closing windows. Plus the overview of which "cards" you have (when you select them) is not really an overview at all - that needsa totally different interface. I can not imagine organizing a hand out of 40+ cards at one point with that interface.
* The diplomacy missions looks nice. I really like them. My main toon is a Ranger/Diplomat, and I just realize I was running diplomacy quests only for the last hours. NICE stories there.
Overall I think that game has potential. Serious potential. I have made various characters in various races/locations just to see them, and they are nice.
Personally I think it is too much a grindfeast - hopefully they will manage to put more storyline and diversity into quests. Diplomacy quests are nice, and I have nothing against the occasional grinding quest, but WOW felt less like grinding in the missions thatn Vanguard does. I am sceptical regaridng the no intstancing - though the world is so hugh it just may work. Let's see - 28 days to go :-)
Comments
To some up Vanguard in one word and thats "potential"
Atm it's nowhere near good enough to shell out $58 (for the EU) or $45 for the USA and it's even more for the EU when compared to the $ for the retail package. Then having to shell out $15 a month or if your in the EU it's more like $18 lol.
+ I say "less is more" because i personally feel sigil has tried to take on tooo much at once and the games suffered from that. For example all them classes will be a bugger to tune up and balance.
You sum it up pretty good. It has serious potential. Let's see what they fix in the next months. I think I will just give it a try.
Btw., why does no stupid MMORPG upport dual screens? I mean, could i please get all the nice controls, inventory etc. on my SECOND SCREEN :-)
That is right on
. A game with so much potential, but very poor executed. Could be nice if Sigil could get a do-over and perhaps launch with only half the content but with less bugs and a better performance.
You'll get 1 of 2 answers from dev's:
1. It's not worth our time, we could be fixing stuff. Only a handful of people would be using it so waste of time.
2. It's coming (but never does)
Personally i argue that the 1% of people who buy the game and want to play it like this should. Also Busy fixing stuff? Shouldn't that be fixed in beta? lol.
I got VG and found it to be what I expected. It took the ease of UI and interface of WOW, the RAM hungry graphical beauty of EQ2, throw in a TON of content and a diplomacy card distraction and you have Vanguard.
No one should ever complain they are bored and have nothing to do when they are in Vanguard. You can travel just about anywhere even if you questline offers no direction. Go to a different town and there will be missions for you to partake.
Bugs are still a problem for me. Game crashes. Monsters dissappearing and unable to fight while they pound you. Diplomacy has good stories, but if you want access to more, you have to grind the civic focal areas to be able to complete your ambassadorial mission.
Crafting seems right now the best means to equip your character. Whether by design or not, it appears that even yellow armor (Rare) armor dropped by difficult monsters do not compare to crafted gear of comparable level. I suspect the design is to keep crafters in demand and mob camping to a minimum. Might be good overall design. Im at lvl 22 , so decide my credibility based on that.
As for casual playstyle, I am casual. I have a full time job, family and can only play 3 -4 hours a day at most. I am cleric so I thought getting groups would not be a problem. Interestingly enough I have been finding myself soloing a lot. I put up the LFG flag and rarely get invitations. I am in a guild, but it seems everyone wants to craft.
I give it a 7 out of 10.