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GameInformer rates Vanguard
whitedelight
Member Posts: 1,544
Word for word this is their review.
"I've got nothing against Vanguard. It's an entirely competent MMORPG, and if you can find a decent group of people to play it with, it can be an absolute blast. At the same time, though, you're still jumping through a series of hoops dicatated by a game design that hails all the way back from text-based MUDs. And Vanguard doesn't pull it off with the same kind of aplomb that World of Warcraft does.
There are some cool ideas and systems here. The diplomacy minigame, for instance, provides an entertaining distraction that adds a dimension to exploring new areas. Crafting is a more complex web of interactions that you'll see in most MMOs. Much of the content does a good job of allowing players to see and interact with one another - which creates the illusion of a cohesive world much better than sequestering players in instances a la WoW - while discouraging griefing. Each class features cool mechanics for both solo and group play, and the combat is fast and entertaining.
Unfortunately, Vanguard also has its share of flaws. The sheer scale of the game world has resulted in huge tracts of land being devoid of any meaningful content. The spread-out design can make it unlikely you'll run into other players and start making social connections that make MMOs special. And the game doesn't do much to help new players over the relatively steep learning curve, which can be a barrier even to MMO vets.
If a slower paces, more complex title in the vein of Everquest is what you're looking for, Vanguard will serve you well. A lack of polish in several areas and strong competition keep this game from being particularly special, though. - Adam"
Copied word for word from the magazine. They rated is a 7.5 and the second opinion gave it a 7.75. Enjoy the read.
Comments
my favorite part was the sidebar where they say
heres the link www.gameinformer.com/NR/exeres/95A725B4-B720-4DE3-BEA7-B96DFF83AF08.htm
I miss DAoC
I miss DAoC
Now that is hilarious.
They said that about Vanguard: Saga of Heroes?? That weird lag issues and bugs that plague most MMO launches are thankfully under control here.....they were talking about Vanguard? Seriously?
Come on now....even the most severe form of Vanboism will even admit Vanguard is plagued by bugs and lag...ESPECIALLY at release. Are they serious? Whoa....and outstanding combat animations?
Are you sure they're talking about Vanguard? Vanguard does NOT have outstanding combat animations. Im sorry..they just don't.
Seems to me this review had some "outside" influence if ya know what I mean
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Combat is not fast, it has the worst animations in a long long time.
No bugs? -- this is the spot where I laughed out, and realized Brad has a hard time selling boxes, nevermind boxes
eqnext.wikia.com
EQ2 has the best animations in a MMO currently. The girly using the swords weight to swing my sword with a limp wrist swing of Vanguard doesn't compare. The I got a board stuffed down the back of my shirt so I can't bend or twist my body of Vanguard doesn't compare.
EDIT: I read this review online a few weeks ago. I thought it was funny too them commenting on the awesome animations and fast combat and lag/bug free launch. The guy must have been one of the lucky few who never runs into bugs or lags.
I'm sorry but your character doesn't even look at what they are fighting how can they call that "great battle animations"?
It sounds to me like these guys just read up on the 'good' posts about vanguard and wrote that without actually playing.
This is a gracious review as well, beta testers predicted this type of review, and tried to make suggestions on how add some fun , but only be ignored.
For the most part people have to face the fact, a lot of us ave beta tested just about everything under the sun so far and we have gone through a lot of bugs as well as any proffessional tester. Some of us have backgrounds in independent game developments, when will people stop treating us like we just got on the internet 1 minute ago ?
Just to add Turbine has been one of the few development teams that listened to a lot o things and they made changes as the testers gave suggestions, mmo developers like this are becoming rare , and I for one am glad I chose them over this cyberware opera called "Vangaurd The saga of Potential"
I like pie !
I have to agree with this. The animations in Vanguard were horrid. Boring, uninspired, and so slow that it felt like my character was trying to fight while waist deep in water. Hopefully, they'll fix them up someday.
I have to agree with this. The animations in Vanguard were horrid. Boring, uninspired, and so slow that it felt like my character was trying to fight while waist deep in water. Hopefully, they'll fix them up someday. caught me iin mid edit, but yeah , lineage 2 and ever scions of fate have more inspiring combat.
I like pie !
Performance and Lag ARE under control. They are equal to or less than the issues I encountered when I played the launch of 3 other mmos....Guild Wars, Horizons, and WoW. All three of those games had just as many if now more complications at launch than Vanguard does.
The extra ordinary attention and high expectations for Vanguard is the reason such a fuss has been made about it all. I started playing with only the expectation that I would have a massive....sandbox ish type world to build a virtual life in and have not been disappointed.
Just like my " realistic review "....some people simply can not handle anything positive being said about Vanguard. It truely is a good game and it's going to get ALOT better...pretty quickly too. A fair review imo....a tad low in the scoring but inline mostly with what I think about the game.
with that sweet Vanboi sig, I cant imagine youd say anything negative about Vanguard. After all, you went through all that time to make a nice sig to express your sheer love of the game.
I built a new system w/ all the bells and whistles, and as of 3 days ago when I cancelled my account, it ran HORRIBLY.
I dont understand why all the Vanbois have comps 10 years old that magically run Vanguard at max settings and I cant get it to stop freezing, stuttering, and crashing to desktop.
P.S. Thank you Sigil for making a game that crashes often enough to cost me lots of silver in repairs and lots of xp deaths EVERY day.
You see no problems with them? Just what are you comparing Vanguard to? All I ever compare it to is 2001-2002 DAoC, a 2.5 million dollar project made with less than 20 people. There's constant parry animations; appropriate to even 2-hand and dual wield models, block animations, evasion/dodge animations, arrows visibly piercing, the splatter of fire bolts over shields...etc.
What impresses you about Vanguard battle animations that's better than another MMO? It's not even entirely the fact that Vanguard combat looks like claymation, it's MISSING animations that should be the norm by now, and combat suffers for it.
If you ever played DAoC, you'd notice there was never much staring at icons to see if you can use them or not (not that DAoC had WoW-esque icons anyway), if you saw your character dodge, you used a dodge reactive, if he parried, you HEARD and saw it and could use an appropriate reactive. Same goes for blocking, same goes for your opening and bridging chains being animated well enough that you know if you hit, if a bladeturn caught your attack, if you were evaded (which could start a chain), so on and so on...
Why praise something as pathetic as Vanguard in this regard? I'd have no idea at ALL what was going on with my Warrior if I wasn't constantly watching the icons. Yeesh, you're easily impressed, but stop giving credit where credit is do. You may like this subpar mess and your friends as well, but at least admit they're way behind the times, first-gen quality.
Gods and Heroes are a bit overdone, they need to tone down a bit, then it will be fine.
I played Daoc, I hardly remember how the combat animations looked, but if I was impressed I think I would.
I don't think the battle animations are that bad either. I would have loved to see more blood though...
And the wow/doac effects with little hearts, and a broken sword and whatnot, the hammers falling,
I could have done without them but they don't bother me too much.
I don't praise it, but it's hardy pathetic.
with that sweet Vanboi sig, I cant imagine youd say anything negative about Vanguard. After all, you went through all that time to make a nice sig to express your sheer love of the game.
I built a new system w/ all the bells and whistles, and as of 3 days ago when I cancelled my account, it ran HORRIBLY.
I dont understand why all the Vanbois have comps 10 years old that magically run Vanguard at max settings and I cant get it to stop freezing, stuttering, and crashing to desktop.
P.S. Thank you Sigil for making a game that crashes often enough to cost me lots of silver in repairs and lots of xp deaths EVERY day.
Let me guess...you put a Nvid 8800 in....many people are having trouble with that card in game...it's not officially supported yet. I never buy the latest and greatest...I always wait till its 3rd or 4rth generation. Nothing drops value faster than cutting edge cpu hardware. Not only does one pay out the butt for such gear ...but it's yet to be tried and tested by the consumer market AND many software programs have yet to patch in the new code.....assuming you have top end equipment like you claim ...I'm not surprised.
I play on an AMD 3500, Nvid 6600 , 3gb of ram just fine with settings at a mid-range level....good graphics still and 25-30 fps average. ( less in towns of course 10-20 in towns ).
It's unfortunate that you had such issues though...don't get me wrong. You made no reference to any kind of tweaks or fixes you tried though. It's as if...you got the " killer rig" and expect everything to run perfect on it at max settings.
Its as if..you think of your PC just like you think of a console system. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to be gauranteed a perfect " plug and play " experience you should stick to playing your xbox or at least...don't play any mmorpg till 6 months after launch.
with that sweet Vanboi sig, I cant imagine youd say anything negative about Vanguard. After all, you went through all that time to make a nice sig to express your sheer love of the game.
I built a new system w/ all the bells and whistles, and as of 3 days ago when I cancelled my account, it ran HORRIBLY.
I dont understand why all the Vanbois have comps 10 years old that magically run Vanguard at max settings and I cant get it to stop freezing, stuttering, and crashing to desktop.
P.S. Thank you Sigil for making a game that crashes often enough to cost me lots of silver in repairs and lots of xp deaths EVERY day.
Let me guess...you put a Nvid 8800 in....many people are having trouble with that card in game...it's not officially supported yet. I never buy the latest and greatest...I always wait till its 3rd or 4rth generation. Nothing drops value faster than cutting edge cpu hardware. Not only does one pay out the butt for such gear ...but it's yet to be tried and tested by the consumer market AND many software programs have yet to patch in the new code.....assuming you have top end equipment like you claim ...I'm not surprised.
I play on an AMD 3500, Nvid 6600 , 3gb of ram just fine with settings at a mid-range level....good graphics still and 25-30 fps average. ( less in towns of course 10-20 in towns ).
It's unfortunate that you had such issues though...don't get me wrong. You made no reference to any kind of tweaks or fixes you tried though. It's as if...you got the " killer rig" and expect everything to run perfect on it at max settings.
Its as if..you think of your PC just like you think of a console system. It just doesn't work that way. If you want to be gauranteed a perfect " plug and play " experience you should stick to playing your xbox or at least...don't play any mmorpg till 6 months after launch.
Why would tweaking be the answer? Is it part of the hardcore experience? Is it some kinky RP thing on your behalf?In modern age, an average gamer should not have to tweak, games are plug and play. Almost all the games are plug and play, might have to set up thing in the options menu, but tweaking .ini files?
I don't mind, been doing that for all games for ages, since my rig is not the best, but comon! They messed up if tweaking is needed on the player's behalf.
So what if the 8800 is not supported??? It should be, their damned fault.
WoW had lots of lag, broken quests, and server down time for the first couple months after launch. So much so...the gave out lots and lots of free time due to servers being down so much.
I remember reading lots of posts about how players were mad that going into a major town turned the game into a slideshow...1-5 fps. So no...I am not in denial...The people forget..thats all. They will forget this drama as well here in a couple months and Vanguard will be free to grow without having to be under a microscope all the time....that's when things will really start to gain momentum.
WoW had lots of lag, broken quests, and server down time for the first couple months after launch. So much so...the gave out lots and lots of free time due to servers being down so much.
I remember reading lots of posts about how players were mad that going into a major town turned the game into a slideshow...1-5 fps. So no...I am not in denial...The people forget..thats all. They will forget this drama as well here in a couple months and Vanguard will be free to grow without having to be under a microscope all the time....that's when things will really start to gain momentum.
Were there character/item losses? Level losses due to lag/bugs/crashes? No, WoW (as much as I dislike it) had no serious polish issues. Their only problem was, that there were so many people wanting to play, they couldn't support it, so they had to bring up a lot of servers.Kind of the contrary of VG, where there are so few people, that the place oft feels empty.
T.R.