I am excited about about the upcoming patch and Update 2. We already know that it is going to provide a rested experience feature, so that you can obtain rested experience if you are not able to play everyday.
To be sure:
Yes. All classes can solo to max level. The world provides an array of solo, small group content.
Edit on June 29th: it is a small group oriented game, so duos, trios, and quads work best. (But with a Necro, Druid, Shaman, or a Pscionist you could probably reach max level without ever having to group).
Yes. The upcoming server mergers will help with population for grouping and growing guilds. (the game was released unfinished, so many quit until the game is finished. The game was buggy, laggy at release so many also quit. The game still started with way too many servers because the world is so enormous!)
No. It is not a forced-raiding game.
No. It is not a forced-grouping game.
Yes. The world is that massive. Exploration is always fun and interesting!
I wanted to give some screenshots, as the review did not have very many:
This review was obviously written with a strong anti-Vanguard bias. I don't say this because I am some kind of Vanbois or anything. I really think the review person went out of her way to point out negatives while downplaying the positive aspects of the game. It was NOT a BALANCED review.
Nothing like proving yourself wrong by rabidly defending a game.
Truly I would like to see these 30 page reviews people keep telling us about. I read many gaming magazines. Rarely do I see more than 2 pages devoted to a single review, and most of those pages are pictures. I read many gaming websites. Rarely do I see long reviews, unless they are innundated with pictures. Most of the information could be contained on 1 or 2 pages.
Please, tell me where you read these amazing, novel length reviews you people are always talking about. I would like to see them for myself.
Agent_X7 AKA J Star [/URL] Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
Yes the performance of the game is really bad, as one person said the Lag is not bad if you are away from crowds but in town it is a nightmare, unless this game is optimized properly it is unplayable. Because of the lag it is just too annoying to play for long or short periods of time. It is to bad because the game has some decent gameplay to it.
Alright, i been reading a lot about this game. I am looking for a good mmorpg, to keep me busy till either AOC comes out or War comes out. I tried Lotro..... i could not stay with it. This game looks good, seems like fun, but I 'm so baffled by all the negative things i read about it, and then people protecting it. Seems this is a good game, that just got caught up in politics of the creators. And it needs to be updated some. Something that seems it will be fixed over time. My question is, it worth going out buying the game and spending $15 a month on it for next 3-6 months, or will i play it for a month and drop it just like Lotro?? LoL
These threads stop being fun when it starts to feel hostile. People should chill a little and remember that we're talking about a game. No ones life is on the line here.
I think that some are being a little to hard on Taera. Her play style sounds very much like my own. I think that it would speak to the typical MMOer. Kind of casual, but not entirely. I personally play often, but I play casually. I don't really dive head long and invest a portion of myself to the game. The things I look for when I'm playing an MMO, Taera poiinted out nicely. I'll try a little crafting, but regardless of it's gameplay, I'm not really going to get into it. I adventure, and that's what I'll spend 99% of my time playing the game doing. It's the most important part of the game. It that isn't going to keep people playing, then it doesn't really matter how good the crafting or diplomacy is.
If you're a casual type gamer, and you don't play MMO's to craft, then the crafting may not please you. Most people that don't craft, don't care, and most people, I think, don't craft.
I got the impression from the review that Taera tried crafting, but didn't really get into it; in fact she said crafting really isn't her thing.. She is also very right. Crafting and diplomacy are very subjective. I personally, have no idea what crafters find fun. Every crafting system feels the same to me. I stand in one spot clicking buttons while I watch some progress bar. Woohoo. Fun.
Diplomacy is just a card game. You may like it, you may not. There really isn't much that I could see that needs to be said about it. Everyone knows how it works by now. Every review I've read about diplomacy has felt like an overview of how it works. We don't really need another one of those do we? How many people are going to log into VG JUST to be a diplomat? Really now, if the gameplay isn't fun for them, are they going to continue playing just for the card game? If you can't get past the gameplay, then does it really matter?
Harvesting. I'm a harvester. It's my thing for some reason. But if the adventuring isn't fun then I'm not going to run around and click nodes. I can do that in any MMO for the most part. So why not do it in one that has good gameplay. I see absolutely no reason for a review about harvesting. Everyone already has an opinion on what it's like to harvest. It's no dif. in VG.
It is fair however, for us to expect to see some brief overview of all of the features in the game, but as a typical MMOer it's not really important.
Normally I would want to know about PvP. It's PvP, then adventuring, then harvesting. But PvP is very subjective. It's like crafting. It can be mentioned, but I don't think it can really be reviewed. You're either hardcore, casual, or no PvP at all. I don't think you can really write a review of VG PvP that isn't slanted towards one of them player types.
It's unfortunate that VG has no purpose for PvP at the moment. I dont' even care about balanced PvP. As long as I can kill other players I'm happy. If I can't kill another player in game then it doesn't matter how fun the adventuring is, and if the game only has senceless killing of other players then PvP isn't fun. Money drops are nice, but not enough; I mean this in every sence it could be applied.
I would have liked to see some XP gain from killing other players. I don't care that it encourages people to kill each other; in fact, that's exactly why I want. I would rather be killed by another player because I have worth then to be killed for nothing. The only game that has plenty of PvP (for me), rewards killing other players (and penalty for being killed), fun adventuring, and usefull harvesting is EQ2.
If VG gives more reason to kill other players, and more players to kill, then I'll be more active. As is, I'll just peak in every now and then for fun.
This review was obviously written with a strong anti-Vanguard bias. I don't say this because I am some kind of Vanbois or anything. I really think the review person went out of her way to point out negatives while downplaying the positive aspects of the game. It was NOT a BALANCED review.
Nothing like proving yourself wrong by rabidly defending a game.
Truly I would like to see these 30 page reviews people keep telling us about. I read many gaming magazines. Rarely do I see more than 2 pages devoted to a single review, and most of those pages are pictures. I read many gaming websites. Rarely do I see long reviews, unless they are innundated with pictures. Most of the information could be contained on 1 or 2 pages.
Please, tell me where you read these amazing, novel length reviews you people are always talking about. I would like to see them for myself.
Where did " 30 pages " come from? Did I say I wanted a 30 page review? I think not.
After a 6 month wait...something more than a 300 word review that talked about ..roughly 20% of game would have been nice though.
At least a review that would touch on ALL aspects of the game.
AND...why are my posts being deleted ??
I am not flaming anyone...using foul or vulgar words ...staying on topic. What gives?
First of all, the review on the game was accurate and pinpoints the main problems VG has. The score is to the point as well, might be a little generous however.
Thamoris, as a matter of fact you should be happy the review was not longer, because there would have been much more cons waiting of being mentioned than pros.
I have to state it again, as I did in another thread. The countless fixes they have done to the game short after launch should not go as a pro, because it does not speak for the developer. It just tells us that a sloppy coded unfinished game has been released, so why should this go as a plus for the game? This is just beyond all logical thinking. This comes from a guy, who reported about 80 bugs after the game was released, because I care about the worlds I play in. I am aware of the fact that a game never stops evolving, however the high amount of issues the game has is not acceptable to be a "paid service of entertainment", because that's what those games are in the end. Just that we love a game, can't leave us totally uncritical and blind for the flaws. This game did not see any significant QA, probably because the QA department was heavily understaffed.
I know a whole lot about what a good QA means, as I earn my money with it, and VG did not witness proper QA, period.
I can tell you why this is the case, because until now every single bit of content update the devs brought in was actually intended to be in the release version. Don't you feel fooled that you play a game and after a while the whole game changes, massive additions to class skill trees are made? New quest lines are implemented and old are revamped/redesigned heavily? You don't notice that everything above level 40 is a simple faction grind with little bits of lore tossed in between, where you have to solve a simple riddle or two? Faction grinds are there to give the dev team time to implement stuff, they are nothing more and nothing less. The formula is to keep the player base busy with something. And sorry, if the item I can get through one simple kill has equal or almost equal quality to the one I get through countless hours of faction grinding then there is something very wrong. This all adds to my point that it is/was not well thought through. And no, I am not a loot focussed player, I play to get things done, but the risk/reward-ratio is one of the most important things for a MMORPG, because it stands and falls with it.
Take the whole swamp area with it's three factions as an example. This is actually the only place where the faction grind makes sense to me, because it is imbedded into the game. Places like the Temple of Tehatamani (spelling?, sorry) or Rahz Inkur have just an artificially created faction race to extent the time needed to finish this places. On the other hand let's mention a positive example of how it can be done: The Wardship of the Sleeping Moon. Yes, yes faction involved as well, but it is naturally imbedded into the quest line so you never feel like you are grinding. I discovered all this as a member of a fix playing group, night by night going through this massive armor quest line, and it was a whole lot of fun. But wait, this is lvl 30-40 content. This is where the game shines.
Good review. I like the game, but I am not doing anything in it until they merge the servers. Went back to Eq2, and with Kunark coming out, might stay there. Depending if it brings back those old EQ1 Kunark memories.
First of all, the review on the game was accurate and pinpoints the main problems VG has. The score is to the point as well, might be a little generous however. Thamoris, as a matter of fact you should be happy the review was not longer, because there would have been much more cons waiting of being mentioned than pros. I have to state it again, as I did in another thread. The countless fixes they have done to the game short after launch should not go as a pro, because it does not speak for the developer. It just tells us that a sloppy coded unfinished game has been released, so why should this go as a plus for the game? This is just beyond all logical thinking. This comes from a guy, who reported about 80 bugs after the game was released, because I care about the worlds I play in. I am aware of the fact that a game never stops evolving, however the high amount of issues the game has is not acceptable to be a "paid service of entertainment", because that's what those games are in the end. Just that we love a game, can't leave us totally uncritical and blind for the flaws. This game did not see any significant QA, probably because the QA department was heavily understaffed. I know a whole lot about what a good QA means, as I earn my money with it, and VG did not witness proper QA, period. I can tell you why this is the case, because until now every single bit of content update the devs brought in was actually intended to be in the release version. Don't you feel fooled that you play a game and after a while the whole game changes, massive additions to class skill trees are made? New quest lines are implemented and old are revamped/redesigned heavily? You don't notice that everything above level 40 is a simple faction grind with little bits of lore tossed in between, where you have to solve a simple riddle or two? Faction grinds are there to give the dev team time to implement stuff, they are nothing more and nothing less. The formula is to keep the player base busy with something. And sorry, if the item I can get through one simple kill has equal or almost equal quality to the one I get through countless hours of faction grinding then there is something very wrong. This all adds to my point that it is/was not well thought through. And no, I am not a loot focussed player, I play to get things done, but the risk/reward-ratio is one of the most important things for a MMORPG, because it stands and falls with it. Take the whole swamp area with it's three factions as an example. This is actually the only place where the faction grind makes sense to me, because it is imbedded into the game. Places like the Temple of Tehatamani (spelling?, sorry) or Rahz Inkur have just an artificially created faction race to extent the time needed to finish this places. On the other hand let's mention a positive example of how it can be done: The Wardship of the Sleeping Moon. Yes, yes faction involved as well, but it is naturally imbedded into the quest line so you never feel like you are grinding. I discovered all this as a member of a fix playing group, night by night going through this massive armor quest line, and it was a whole lot of fun. But wait, this is lvl 30-40 content. This is where the game shines.
1) WoW comes to mind. A mage today in WoW is not the same as it was at release. WoW completely redid the class trees of every class in the game prior to the release of TBC. Before that they made changes to the class trees for the sake of balance.
But then, VG doesn't have class trees. If you mean to say that massive changes to each class, then you are only partially right. Since release my druid has seen very little change. There was a patch that upped his damage some, but nothing I would call a nerf. WoW on the other hand has been altering the classes for the past 2 years. Every update seems to change something in some classes, and not by a little. My mage took a hit on damage, had the way they used mana altered. My hunter, well he's not the same toon I started playing 2 years ago; not even close. Every class is like that in WoW. How do you justify a complaint against a NEW game that has to balance, just like EVERY game that comes out, when games that are several years old continue to do the exact same thing.
2) New quest lines are added? I pay 15 dollars a month to play an MMO, I DEMAND new content. Why would I pay to play the same game for months on end, not getting anything more then I could get from a free to play single player game. New quest lines isn't a bad thing; especially if those quests were supposed to be there. MMO's change old quest lines as well. Sometimes a quest line may not be fun, or the quest reward may not be suited to the quest. Not sure how you argue this one either. Almost every MMO goes through this.
3) Faction grinding? Yeah, so like the number one MMO out right now is one giant faction grind Faction grinding exists in MANY MMO's; not just VG. WoW had a lot of senceless faction grinding as well. Why would you grind rep with the wildhammer dwarves (think that's there name)? At one point grinding AD rep was pointless; then they added the rewards for it. In fact, I think WoW beats every game on the market with the number of factions you grind rep for. I just don't get the complaining about faction grinding in VG, as if it's the only game that has you doing it.
A review is nothing more then a single persons opinion of the game. Is that opinion worth more or less then anyone elses? I think not; so why all the hate over a silly review.
Man, the reviewer really bent over backwards ( and forwards, and sideways ) to try and Not make it sound TOO negative. What kills it for me is the stability issues - people falling off ships due to lag is an ancient EQ1 bug !
I refuse to play any mmog that has server-side lag issues (latency, freezing, popping, warping, synch issues, etc.).
There is Absolutely NO Excuse these days for lag - fast latency-free client server game code is no longer a mystery, it's been solved for many years yet some companies still refuse to implement appropriate solutions.
It seems like Vanguard may the last of the standard " Traditional Gameplay " mmogs ala EQ and AC.
MMORPG.com Community Manager, Laura Genender, takes a look at the world of Telon in her review of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Explaining Vanguard inevitably leads to explaining Vanguard's community. So, let's just start with it: yes, the game and the forums/fansites that support it are plagued with 'Fanbois' vs 'Haters' - the most heated faction warfare I have ever witnessed. Here, though, the rule of 'vocal minority' is in effect, and if you stay off of the forums and out of general chat, the majority of players are quiet and friendly (if you're not on a PvP server!). According to unconfirmed sources like MMOGData.com, the Vanguard community is shrinking: what at launch had featured around 200k subscribers was down below 50k by May of '07. The PvP and Roleplay server populations are still rather steady, but the "normal servers" are practically ghost towns. When I created a character to explore one of those servers, I ran into another newbie who boldly stated "you're the 3rd person I've seen so far!"
This review really doesn't mean much since they've had 6 months to patch and fix it. Is it this website's policy to only review games after the devs have had a chance to fix their mistakes? Is that fair to the people that were looking for a review here when VG was released? Does mmorpg.com have this kind of review policy for other games or was VG treated differently? Whats the reason you people waited so long to write a review?
The most fair way to review and comment on a game is to review it when its released and then write an update of sorts a few months later. I wonder what VG's rating would have been when it was released?
actualy...the review is worse than that
Review person seemed to have been reviewing more on the way the game WAS rather than the what the game is NOW.
Review and opinions on performance were based on what they were a couple months ago while the opinions on quests and such seemed current. The remarks on the low player populations are current as well though effort could have been made to explain some of this due to the massive size of the world which exaggerates the issue greatly.
The review is not so much inaccurate as she does not tell the whole story or paint the full picture. It's called...lying by ommision. Since many on these boards consider a mmorpg review to be at least semi - professional....that is not acceptable. Particularly when one considers the high profile nature of the game...be it good or bad. Review should have been ALOT more detailed and ALOT more effort should have been made to tell the WHOLE story.
It just seems too convienent if ya ask me.
Convienent and generalized and late reviews like that just scream ...hidden agenda!
I think I made it fairly clear in the review what performance problems DID happen, and what are STILL happening - i.e. doors still lag me, and I still fall off my boat from lag. Black screens of death? Not so much anymore, but it was part of the game's launch history.
As for population - I TOTALLY agree that a big part of it is world size - when you have dozens of starting cities, even 50 new players leaves the newbie areas barren and lonely. This is, though, a flaw of the game - I think that merging the servers will help a lot on this. If I handed you a cup full of sand, and a sandbox with one cup of sand in it, you'd probably call the cup full and the sandbox empty, despite the same quantities. I don't think this is an omission really.
Originally posted by Tnice
Strange review and late. Not only that but bizarre that it is recommended to the "casual" Gamer. That is bizarre beyond words. If VG is anything, it is not casual friendly.
I don't know what to tell ya - I'm a fairly hardcore gamer, and the only way I really enjoyed VG was 10 hours a week at my absolute peak. Again, though, I was a very solo friendly class.
Originally posted by ivan50265
Vanguard will be one of those games we will all watch to see if they can get it together. I give it another six months and it should be in good shape I just wonder if it will be too late. SOE really needs to start looking at the quality of their products on release this is getting old from them.
Totally agreed, Ivan; I'm not shelving this one just yet, in hopes that it might pull it together. No, don't attack me - I'm not saying it will! I'm just saying I hope
Laura "Taera" Genender Community Manager MMORPG.com
The author was fair and accurate. The game is fun but does have some problems. I am confident that SOE will address those issues. Moreover, the author is right about the serious lack of end-game content. All we know is that SOE is developing some raid content.
You can find a couple of reviews I did here in the forums that were better thought and more complete than this " official " review.
That are way more biased than the MMORPG.com one, the other way around.
Yep. Thamoris' review is totally whitewashing all the crap inside Vanguard and playing it down as minor issues. It is almost right up there with Brad's hype. Vanguard's issues are wide and varied and can't be resolved with just bug fixes.
There is a big difference between a well designed game with bugs and a lousy game. Vanguard falls into the latter category. Almost every other game on the left sidebar is better than Vanguard.
I think the writer of this review tried very hard to be objective. I don't quarrel with the premises, just the conclusions drawn from them. To me, assuming the truth of everything said in the review, it totals up to this game being crap (which it is). It is also crap for a lot of reasons not discussed in the review.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Hi just letting all you Vanguard haters out there know Vanguard rocks!! Have been playing online games and rpg's since the first apple computer came out , cut my teeth on seirra's game's and have been in most north america mmorpg beta's and played most games that have been released since 1980's ,been so long that my memory is getting dim about what came first The realm from seirra or leasure suit larry , anyways to get to my point vanguard is a evolution of games eq1 eq2 some starwars thrown in and some of every game that has come out in the last 20 years,sure the hardware that is required to run game is huge but the desiner had huge dreams and he got burned by being forced to release early and lost his dreams to the company that forced him to release (wounder if that was the plan all along?)anyways most games that I have played had start up problems and vanguard is no different with the new patches coming and content being added this game outshines any out there ie boats,houses, flying mounts,cloaks my personal pet pev against eq1 lol and many more things that need to be discovered by going off the path so come out play the game leave your negativity at the sign in page you will be supprised at how the game draws you in and makes you want to play . forgive the spelling mistakes and the grammer typing with two fingers is hard and don't know what a spell checker is too old I guess.and no don't work for soe lol.
I wonder if there is the best MMO in the market, and i think it'll be the refuge for classic MMORPG'ers when the games become more and more casual and/or elpy-killing pvp-bunnyhopping ala WoW but deeper in the follow the white bunny hole, thats the market's tendency lately.
I hope SOE fixes the problems with such a great game, and we'll have a Giant.
As for crafting...the diplomacy and crafting systems are very subjective in VG, and I mainly focused my review on adventuring. I enjoy diplomacy but the higher end diplomacy isn't in the game yet; crafting has never been my thing, and continues to not be my thing in VG.
No offense Laura, but don't you think it would have been more fair then to give the review assignment to someone who was willing to experience and review as much of the game as possible, instead of just the parts that are their "thing"?
It is a bit unfair to your readers to ignore a (large?) portion of the game in your review just because you don't like that particular segment. We're not talking here about bias -- everyone has some -- but to my mind it's simply a refusal to do the job put before you. I've never played Vanguard, but were I trying to make that decision I now would have to wonder what else, good or bad, was ignored in the game because the reviewer was unwilling to be as thorough as she should have been.
On the other hand, I am not paying anything to read the reviews here, so I take it all with a grain of salt.
I would say that what the review covered was mostly fair but it was slanted to the adventuring sphere only and left a lot out.
First off the Adrid mace she referred to was in the Tomb of Lord Tsang and that is going to be a grouping area only unless you are way too high to even use the mace (there are four different weapons and a focus by the way in that dungeon). The Inquisitor and Berzerker were never planned for launch and this was known a long time before. No where was it even implied that they would be in 'shortly after launch'. This is also true for the Alchemist trade skill (which was not mentioned).
Second, she mentioned not liking the starter diplomacy quest for her town and that was it. Each town has their own series of quests and each has a very different flavor to it (I highly recommend the Dark Elf and Dwarf Quests). After these quests you then have Civic Diplomacy where Diplomats can set flags in a town that (a) gives them more diplomacy cards to play (b) gives buffs that help crafters (c) gives buffs that help adventurers. Not to mention all of the hundreds of diplomacy quests and higher end content that is available.
Third, there was no mention of crafting at all. No mention of the various crafting quests that are there beyond the writs. No mention on how higher tier rare recipes are really rare (about a 3% chance of getting one from a five item grade a work order). Not everyone will have a tier 3 and up rare recipe and those who do either worked hard for it or worked hard enough to purchase one off the broker.
So yes there is less than appropriate high end content at the moment and , at the moment, no raiding content. This will change though. And those players who rush to the end, ie skip the majority of the content that is out there, will be disappointed. But then those players are always disappointed becasue there is never enough for them fast enough.
Take time to experience all aspects of the game and do not rush to the end and you will find it is a fun game. Also two of the major issues (performance and CTD) were greatly mitigated with the latest patch. It is not perfect and there is still a lot of room for improvement but it is getting better.
I quit Vanguard after playing it for about 2-3 months. The game has a lot going for it and I loved many features.
Pro's-
best class selection I've ever seen. I loved and still miss the classes in vanguard
good graphics if you have the system to handle it
good group mechanics
tons of dungeons to choose from at low and mid levels
huge world
great crafting system if it wasnt for bugs
diplomacy was neat, especially if you like learning the lore
healer classes that kick ass! every healer can solo with ease and deal good damage.. think shadow priest and ret paladin, but you can heal as well as anybody.
Con's-
bugs, bugs, bugs (not as many as many people claim, but still enough to irritate even me at times)
poor performance even with a good system
very high system requirements
landscapes could be a little more varied
not near enough high level content, but that could be added if that was the only problem
I am anti insta-travel, but travel in Vanguard was just a time sink, not adventurous, and resulted in many crashes when crossing zone lines. Traveling as a group was impossible as you would lose at least one person every time you changed regions.
I quit out of boredom (no MMO has been able to keep my interest for the past year and a half), and the fact that everyone I played with left because of bugs and performance... and boredom I suppose.
I often think of going back later when there is more content and less bugs, but I'm not sure the game will ever recover. I hope sony recovers this as well as they did EQ2, I think that was just as bad when it was new, just in different ways.
Grymm MMO addict in recovery! EQ,SWG preCU,L2,EQ2,GW,CoH/CoV,V:SOH, Aion,AoC,TR,WAR,EVE,BP,RIFT,WoW and others... no more!
Display Tab 1: The file nv4_disp.dll is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer.
Ok, above u see my system ,, i have 2 7900gt/gto's,
Anyways, ive been playing vanguard since beta, and since eq1, i havent played a mmo consistantly, except for this one, heres my thoughts.
1. if u think vanguard runs like crap currently , u really should try and play it after i post this, if u have close to, if not a better system then i do, i get 50 frames a sec on balanced, settings. i get no lag, except when going thru khal, etc (i.e. large cities), and even then its hardly any.
2. The group mechanics are great ( IN MY OPINION) i mean , i honestly have a blast crawling thru a dungeon , or just trying to get somewhere i havent been yet. there is content for groups of 2, 3, 4, and 6. and yes even solo content,, would be very very slow in lvling but if u wanted to u could solo prob all the way to 40 maybe 50 ,, im only 31 atm.
3. classes, ,,, so far everyclass ive played i liked, except for the shaman but thats just me so
4. peeps (ingame) very helpful, if im lost or being retarded and forget how to read, i ask a question , they anwser
5. i had some really good stuff i was gonna put in this post and just lost it all.
6 i played today from 8 am to 12 midnight, and i didnt crash not once,, so they fixed that,, yesterday was a diff story though..
I just wanted to voice my opionion on this, i usually dont post and just read for enjoyment, but all these retards who never played the game, voiceing there opionions off of other opinions , just dont make any sense this post prob doesnt make any since either but atleast ive played the dang game.
Oh and if your reading this forum to find out , if u should buy the game or not,, go buy it,, decide for yourself, i cant say , yeah youll love it, or yeah dude youll play it for 20000000 hrs and youll think its the greatest since sliced bread. , if i did i would set u up for failure, it would raise your uber hype lvl to kill vanguard, ,, not everyone played eq, and some did , some loved it some hated it, it wasnt for everyone and it was for some, lol, did i mention that im drunk.. anyways, im enjoying myself and i hope i get flamed for this post
First, do you mean that performance on your system used to be bad in Vanguard and it just got great, or do you mean that your system always ran it well? I have an e6300 C2Duo processor, 4 gig of RAM, an 8800GTS with 660 RAM on it, and run Win XP s.p.2. and the performance in Vanguard left something to be desired. I never got stutter lag, but the hitching was terrible... of course this was months ago. Also, last I heard Vanguard still didnt support dual vid cards so unless that has changed you are actually running on just one of those two cards.
Second, you said you are in the level 30-40 range, have you ever been up to or near the level cap? I think the content is quite good up through level 35 or 40, the problem as I understand it is after that there is very little to do, especially at end-game. I myself only played up into the mid thirties so I never experienced the lack of content myself.
If the performance problems are fixed or get fixed, and the team can move on to adding content Vanguard will be a fairly decent MMO and will be worth playing if you are looking for something new. The most important thing to realize is that Vanguard is not the "revolutionary" MMO we expected, its just another run of the mill MMO with a couple of new features and a ton of dungeons to explore.
I suggest waiting untill we hear Vanguard is truly fixed before trying the game out. Most people who try it while its still playing like a beta will not go back later.
Grymm MMO addict in recovery! EQ,SWG preCU,L2,EQ2,GW,CoH/CoV,V:SOH, Aion,AoC,TR,WAR,EVE,BP,RIFT,WoW and others... no more!
Ok, im sober now hehe, yes the performance with this last patch increased prob by 50 percent,,
I have a couple of questions for you.
First, do you mean that performance on your system used to be bad in Vanguard and it just got great, or do you mean that your system always ran it well? I have an e6300 C2Duo processor, 4 gig of RAM, an 8800GTS with 660 RAM on it, and run Win XP s.p.2. and the performance in Vanguard left something to be desired. I never got stutter lag, but the hitching was terrible... of course this was months ago. Also, last I heard Vanguard still didnt support dual vid cards so unless that has changed you are actually running on just one of those two cards.
Second, you said you are in the level 30-40 range, have you ever been up to or near the level cap? I think the content is quite good up through level 35 or 40, the problem as I understand it is after that there is very little to do, especially at end-game. I myself only played up into the mid thirties so I never experienced the lack of content myself.
If the performance problems are fixed or get fixed, and the team can move on to adding content Vanguard will be a fairly decent MMO and will be worth playing if you are looking for something new. The most important thing to realize is that Vanguard is not the "revolutionary" MMO we expected, its just another run of the mill MMO with a couple of new features and a ton of dungeons to explore.
I suggest waiting untill we hear Vanguard is truly fixed before trying the game out. Most people who try it while its still playing like a beta will not go back later.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ive used the Evga, or E brand of cards, and i have to say BFG i got better performance i dont know what is different or if anything is,, just letting you know,, and your right a couple months ago it was a pain to play vanguard. and i dont get any hitching in most cases any longer.
As far as vanguard supporting dual video cards, if u go into the vgclient.ini file, theres a option there something like DualVGA=false set that to true, and make sure u enable it in your OS. and as far as end game content,, i was curious just to c how many 50s were on ,, well first i did a who all 50, and got over 40 uses online, wouldnt display anymore, then i did by class most cases were 10+ each class, some classes were more. and they have added some content , to what extent,, i dont know ill let u know.
I think it would be a good time for a re-review of this game. Much has changed since the pretty bad launch. The game is starting to come into its own and I think it deserves another look by the staff.
Comments
I am excited about about the upcoming patch and Update 2. We already know that it is going to provide a rested experience feature, so that you can obtain rested experience if you are not able to play everyday.
To be sure:
Yes. All classes can solo to max level. The world provides an array of solo, small group content.
Edit on June 29th: it is a small group oriented game, so duos, trios, and quads work best. (But with a Necro, Druid, Shaman, or a Pscionist you could probably reach max level without ever having to group).
Yes. The upcoming server mergers will help with population for grouping and growing guilds. (the game was released unfinished, so many quit until the game is finished. The game was buggy, laggy at release so many also quit. The game still started with way too many servers because the world is so enormous!)
No. It is not a forced-raiding game.
No. It is not a forced-grouping game.
Yes. The world is that massive. Exploration is always fun and interesting!
I wanted to give some screenshots, as the review did not have very many:
A nice view: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/View.jpg
Group in Thelessan: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/Hell.jpg
Named in a Dungeon: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/fullpartyv.%20named.jpg
Frog attack!: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/frogattack.jpg
Bug attack!: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/Bugattack.jpg
The infamous: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/InfamousGaku.jpg
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Nothing like proving yourself wrong by rabidly defending a game.
Truly I would like to see these 30 page reviews people keep telling us about. I read many gaming magazines. Rarely do I see more than 2 pages devoted to a single review, and most of those pages are pictures. I read many gaming websites. Rarely do I see long reviews, unless they are innundated with pictures. Most of the information could be contained on 1 or 2 pages.
Please, tell me where you read these amazing, novel length reviews you people are always talking about. I would like to see them for myself.
Agent_X7 AKA J Star
[/URL]
Notice: The views expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of MMORPG.com or its management.
Yes the performance of the game is really bad, as one person said the Lag is not bad if you are away from crowds but in town it is a nightmare, unless this game is optimized properly it is unplayable. Because of the lag it is just too annoying to play for long or short periods of time. It is to bad because the game has some decent gameplay to it.
Alright, i been reading a lot about this game. I am looking for a good mmorpg, to keep me busy till either AOC comes out or War comes out. I tried Lotro..... i could not stay with it. This game looks good, seems like fun, but I 'm so baffled by all the negative things i read about it, and then people protecting it. Seems this is a good game, that just got caught up in politics of the creators. And it needs to be updated some. Something that seems it will be fixed over time. My question is, it worth going out buying the game and spending $15 a month on it for next 3-6 months, or will i play it for a month and drop it just like Lotro?? LoL
Taught no quitting, and no Retreat
These threads stop being fun when it starts to feel hostile. People should chill a little and remember that we're talking about a game. No ones life is on the line here.
I think that some are being a little to hard on Taera. Her play style sounds very much like my own. I think that it would speak to the typical MMOer. Kind of casual, but not entirely. I personally play often, but I play casually. I don't really dive head long and invest a portion of myself to the game. The things I look for when I'm playing an MMO, Taera poiinted out nicely. I'll try a little crafting, but regardless of it's gameplay, I'm not really going to get into it. I adventure, and that's what I'll spend 99% of my time playing the game doing. It's the most important part of the game. It that isn't going to keep people playing, then it doesn't really matter how good the crafting or diplomacy is.
If you're a casual type gamer, and you don't play MMO's to craft, then the crafting may not please you. Most people that don't craft, don't care, and most people, I think, don't craft.
I got the impression from the review that Taera tried crafting, but didn't really get into it; in fact she said crafting really isn't her thing.. She is also very right. Crafting and diplomacy are very subjective. I personally, have no idea what crafters find fun. Every crafting system feels the same to me. I stand in one spot clicking buttons while I watch some progress bar. Woohoo. Fun.
Diplomacy is just a card game. You may like it, you may not. There really isn't much that I could see that needs to be said about it. Everyone knows how it works by now. Every review I've read about diplomacy has felt like an overview of how it works. We don't really need another one of those do we? How many people are going to log into VG JUST to be a diplomat? Really now, if the gameplay isn't fun for them, are they going to continue playing just for the card game? If you can't get past the gameplay, then does it really matter?
Harvesting. I'm a harvester. It's my thing for some reason. But if the adventuring isn't fun then I'm not going to run around and click nodes. I can do that in any MMO for the most part. So why not do it in one that has good gameplay. I see absolutely no reason for a review about harvesting. Everyone already has an opinion on what it's like to harvest. It's no dif. in VG.
It is fair however, for us to expect to see some brief overview of all of the features in the game, but as a typical MMOer it's not really important.
Normally I would want to know about PvP. It's PvP, then adventuring, then harvesting. But PvP is very subjective. It's like crafting. It can be mentioned, but I don't think it can really be reviewed. You're either hardcore, casual, or no PvP at all. I don't think you can really write a review of VG PvP that isn't slanted towards one of them player types.
It's unfortunate that VG has no purpose for PvP at the moment. I dont' even care about balanced PvP. As long as I can kill other players I'm happy. If I can't kill another player in game then it doesn't matter how fun the adventuring is, and if the game only has senceless killing of other players then PvP isn't fun. Money drops are nice, but not enough; I mean this in every sence it could be applied.
I would have liked to see some XP gain from killing other players. I don't care that it encourages people to kill each other; in fact, that's exactly why I want. I would rather be killed by another player because I have worth then to be killed for nothing. The only game that has plenty of PvP (for me), rewards killing other players (and penalty for being killed), fun adventuring, and usefull harvesting is EQ2.
If VG gives more reason to kill other players, and more players to kill, then I'll be more active. As is, I'll just peak in every now and then for fun.
Wish Darkfall would release.
Nothing like proving yourself wrong by rabidly defending a game.
Truly I would like to see these 30 page reviews people keep telling us about. I read many gaming magazines. Rarely do I see more than 2 pages devoted to a single review, and most of those pages are pictures. I read many gaming websites. Rarely do I see long reviews, unless they are innundated with pictures. Most of the information could be contained on 1 or 2 pages.
Please, tell me where you read these amazing, novel length reviews you people are always talking about. I would like to see them for myself.
Where did " 30 pages " come from? Did I say I wanted a 30 page review? I think not.
After a 6 month wait...something more than a 300 word review that talked about ..roughly 20% of game would have been nice though.
At least a review that would touch on ALL aspects of the game.
AND...why are my posts being deleted ??
I am not flaming anyone...using foul or vulgar words ...staying on topic. What gives?
You can find a couple of reviews I did here in the forums that were better thought and more complete than this " official " review.
That are way more biased than the MMORPG.com one, the other way around.
First of all, the review on the game was accurate and pinpoints the main problems VG has. The score is to the point as well, might be a little generous however.
Thamoris, as a matter of fact you should be happy the review was not longer, because there would have been much more cons waiting of being mentioned than pros.
I have to state it again, as I did in another thread. The countless fixes they have done to the game short after launch should not go as a pro, because it does not speak for the developer. It just tells us that a sloppy coded unfinished game has been released, so why should this go as a plus for the game? This is just beyond all logical thinking. This comes from a guy, who reported about 80 bugs after the game was released, because I care about the worlds I play in. I am aware of the fact that a game never stops evolving, however the high amount of issues the game has is not acceptable to be a "paid service of entertainment", because that's what those games are in the end. Just that we love a game, can't leave us totally uncritical and blind for the flaws. This game did not see any significant QA, probably because the QA department was heavily understaffed.
I know a whole lot about what a good QA means, as I earn my money with it, and VG did not witness proper QA, period.
I can tell you why this is the case, because until now every single bit of content update the devs brought in was actually intended to be in the release version. Don't you feel fooled that you play a game and after a while the whole game changes, massive additions to class skill trees are made? New quest lines are implemented and old are revamped/redesigned heavily? You don't notice that everything above level 40 is a simple faction grind with little bits of lore tossed in between, where you have to solve a simple riddle or two? Faction grinds are there to give the dev team time to implement stuff, they are nothing more and nothing less. The formula is to keep the player base busy with something. And sorry, if the item I can get through one simple kill has equal or almost equal quality to the one I get through countless hours of faction grinding then there is something very wrong. This all adds to my point that it is/was not well thought through. And no, I am not a loot focussed player, I play to get things done, but the risk/reward-ratio is one of the most important things for a MMORPG, because it stands and falls with it.
Take the whole swamp area with it's three factions as an example. This is actually the only place where the faction grind makes sense to me, because it is imbedded into the game. Places like the Temple of Tehatamani (spelling?, sorry) or Rahz Inkur have just an artificially created faction race to extent the time needed to finish this places. On the other hand let's mention a positive example of how it can be done: The Wardship of the Sleeping Moon. Yes, yes faction involved as well, but it is naturally imbedded into the quest line so you never feel like you are grinding. I discovered all this as a member of a fix playing group, night by night going through this massive armor quest line, and it was a whole lot of fun. But wait, this is lvl 30-40 content. This is where the game shines.
Good review. I like the game, but I am not doing anything in it until they merge the servers. Went back to Eq2, and with Kunark coming out, might stay there. Depending if it brings back those old EQ1 Kunark memories.
But Vanguard is a good game, just incomplete.
But then, VG doesn't have class trees. If you mean to say that massive changes to each class, then you are only partially right. Since release my druid has seen very little change. There was a patch that upped his damage some, but nothing I would call a nerf. WoW on the other hand has been altering the classes for the past 2 years. Every update seems to change something in some classes, and not by a little. My mage took a hit on damage, had the way they used mana altered. My hunter, well he's not the same toon I started playing 2 years ago; not even close. Every class is like that in WoW. How do you justify a complaint against a NEW game that has to balance, just like EVERY game that comes out, when games that are several years old continue to do the exact same thing.
2) New quest lines are added? I pay 15 dollars a month to play an MMO, I DEMAND new content. Why would I pay to play the same game for months on end, not getting anything more then I could get from a free to play single player game. New quest lines isn't a bad thing; especially if those quests were supposed to be there. MMO's change old quest lines as well. Sometimes a quest line may not be fun, or the quest reward may not be suited to the quest. Not sure how you argue this one either. Almost every MMO goes through this.
3) Faction grinding? Yeah, so like the number one MMO out right now is one giant faction grind Faction grinding exists in MANY MMO's; not just VG. WoW had a lot of senceless faction grinding as well. Why would you grind rep with the wildhammer dwarves (think that's there name)? At one point grinding AD rep was pointless; then they added the rewards for it. In fact, I think WoW beats every game on the market with the number of factions you grind rep for. I just don't get the complaining about faction grinding in VG, as if it's the only game that has you doing it.
A review is nothing more then a single persons opinion of the game. Is that opinion worth more or less then anyone elses? I think not; so why all the hate over a silly review.
Wish Darkfall would release.
Man, the reviewer really bent over backwards ( and forwards, and sideways ) to try and Not make it sound TOO negative. What kills it for me is the stability issues - people falling off ships due to lag is an ancient EQ1 bug !
I refuse to play any mmog that has server-side lag issues (latency, freezing, popping, warping, synch issues, etc.).
There is Absolutely NO Excuse these days for lag - fast latency-free client server game code is no longer a mystery, it's been solved for many years yet some companies still refuse to implement appropriate solutions.
It seems like Vanguard may the last of the standard " Traditional Gameplay " mmogs ala EQ and AC.
Read the whole review here.
This review really doesn't mean much since they've had 6 months to patch and fix it. Is it this website's policy to only review games after the devs have had a chance to fix their mistakes? Is that fair to the people that were looking for a review here when VG was released? Does mmorpg.com have this kind of review policy for other games or was VG treated differently? Whats the reason you people waited so long to write a review?The most fair way to review and comment on a game is to review it when its released and then write an update of sorts a few months later. I wonder what VG's rating would have been when it was released?
actualy...the review is worse than that
Review person seemed to have been reviewing more on the way the game WAS rather than the what the game is NOW.
Review and opinions on performance were based on what they were a couple months ago while the opinions on quests and such seemed current. The remarks on the low player populations are current as well though effort could have been made to explain some of this due to the massive size of the world which exaggerates the issue greatly.
The review is not so much inaccurate as she does not tell the whole story or paint the full picture. It's called...lying by ommision. Since many on these boards consider a mmorpg review to be at least semi - professional....that is not acceptable. Particularly when one considers the high profile nature of the game...be it good or bad. Review should have been ALOT more detailed and ALOT more effort should have been made to tell the WHOLE story.
It just seems too convienent if ya ask me.
Convienent and generalized and late reviews like that just scream ...hidden agenda!
I think I made it fairly clear in the review what performance problems DID happen, and what are STILL happening - i.e. doors still lag me, and I still fall off my boat from lag. Black screens of death? Not so much anymore, but it was part of the game's launch history.
As for population - I TOTALLY agree that a big part of it is world size - when you have dozens of starting cities, even 50 new players leaves the newbie areas barren and lonely. This is, though, a flaw of the game - I think that merging the servers will help a lot on this. If I handed you a cup full of sand, and a sandbox with one cup of sand in it, you'd probably call the cup full and the sandbox empty, despite the same quantities. I don't think this is an omission really.
I don't know what to tell ya - I'm a fairly hardcore gamer, and the only way I really enjoyed VG was 10 hours a week at my absolute peak. Again, though, I was a very solo friendly class.
Totally agreed, Ivan; I'm not shelving this one just yet, in hopes that it might pull it together. No, don't attack me - I'm not saying it will! I'm just saying I hopeLaura "Taera" Genender
Community Manager
MMORPG.com
Yeah just like SOE fixed SWG.
<imgsrc="http://files1.guildlaunch.net/guild/library/86975/Black_Fire.jpg">;
<ahref="http://profile.xfire.com/aetiuslonginus"><img src="http://miniprofile.xfire.com/bg/sh/type/2/aetiuslonginus.png"; width="450" height="34" /></a>
That are way more biased than the MMORPG.com one, the other way around.
Yep. Thamoris' review is totally whitewashing all the crap inside Vanguard and playing it down as minor issues. It is almost right up there with Brad's hype. Vanguard's issues are wide and varied and can't be resolved with just bug fixes.
There is a big difference between a well designed game with bugs and a lousy game. Vanguard falls into the latter category. Almost every other game on the left sidebar is better than Vanguard.
This game is a joke.
I think the writer of this review tried very hard to be objective. I don't quarrel with the premises, just the conclusions drawn from them. To me, assuming the truth of everything said in the review, it totals up to this game being crap (which it is). It is also crap for a lot of reasons not discussed in the review.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Hi just letting all you Vanguard haters out there know Vanguard rocks!! Have been playing online games and rpg's since the first apple computer came out , cut my teeth on seirra's game's and have been in most north america mmorpg beta's and played most games that have been released since 1980's ,been so long that my memory is getting dim about what came first The realm from seirra or leasure suit larry , anyways to get to my point vanguard is a evolution of games eq1 eq2 some starwars thrown in and some of every game that has come out in the last 20 years,sure the hardware that is required to run game is huge but the desiner had huge dreams and he got burned by being forced to release early and lost his dreams to the company that forced him to release (wounder if that was the plan all along?)anyways most games that I have played had start up problems and vanguard is no different with the new patches coming and content being added this game outshines any out there ie boats,houses, flying mounts,cloaks my personal pet pev against eq1 lol and many more things that need to be discovered by going off the path so come out play the game leave your negativity at the sign in page you will be supprised at how the game draws you in and makes you want to play . forgive the spelling mistakes and the grammer typing with two fingers is hard and don't know what a spell checker is too old I guess.and no don't work for soe lol.
I wonder if there is the best MMO in the market, and i think it'll be the refuge for classic MMORPG'ers when the games become more and more casual and/or elpy-killing pvp-bunnyhopping ala WoW but deeper in the follow the white bunny hole, thats the market's tendency lately.
I hope SOE fixes the problems with such a great game, and we'll have a Giant.
It is a question of fangs.
No offense Laura, but don't you think it would have been more fair then to give the review assignment to someone who was willing to experience and review as much of the game as possible, instead of just the parts that are their "thing"?
It is a bit unfair to your readers to ignore a (large?) portion of the game in your review just because you don't like that particular segment. We're not talking here about bias -- everyone has some -- but to my mind it's simply a refusal to do the job put before you. I've never played Vanguard, but were I trying to make that decision I now would have to wonder what else, good or bad, was ignored in the game because the reviewer was unwilling to be as thorough as she should have been.
On the other hand, I am not paying anything to read the reviews here, so I take it all with a grain of salt.
I would say that what the review covered was mostly fair but it was slanted to the adventuring sphere only and left a lot out.
First off the Adrid mace she referred to was in the Tomb of Lord Tsang and that is going to be a grouping area only unless you are way too high to even use the mace (there are four different weapons and a focus by the way in that dungeon). The Inquisitor and Berzerker were never planned for launch and this was known a long time before. No where was it even implied that they would be in 'shortly after launch'. This is also true for the Alchemist trade skill (which was not mentioned).
Second, she mentioned not liking the starter diplomacy quest for her town and that was it. Each town has their own series of quests and each has a very different flavor to it (I highly recommend the Dark Elf and Dwarf Quests). After these quests you then have Civic Diplomacy where Diplomats can set flags in a town that (a) gives them more diplomacy cards to play (b) gives buffs that help crafters (c) gives buffs that help adventurers. Not to mention all of the hundreds of diplomacy quests and higher end content that is available.
Third, there was no mention of crafting at all. No mention of the various crafting quests that are there beyond the writs. No mention on how higher tier rare recipes are really rare (about a 3% chance of getting one from a five item grade a work order). Not everyone will have a tier 3 and up rare recipe and those who do either worked hard for it or worked hard enough to purchase one off the broker.
So yes there is less than appropriate high end content at the moment and , at the moment, no raiding content. This will change though. And those players who rush to the end, ie skip the majority of the content that is out there, will be disappointed. But then those players are always disappointed becasue there is never enough for them fast enough.
Take time to experience all aspects of the game and do not rush to the end and you will find it is a fun game. Also two of the major issues (performance and CTD) were greatly mitigated with the latest patch. It is not perfect and there is still a lot of room for improvement but it is getting better.
I quit Vanguard after playing it for about 2-3 months. The game has a lot going for it and I loved many features.
Pro's-
best class selection I've ever seen. I loved and still miss the classes in vanguard
good graphics if you have the system to handle it
good group mechanics
tons of dungeons to choose from at low and mid levels
huge world
great crafting system if it wasnt for bugs
diplomacy was neat, especially if you like learning the lore
healer classes that kick ass! every healer can solo with ease and deal good damage.. think shadow priest and ret paladin, but you can heal as well as anybody.
Con's-
bugs, bugs, bugs (not as many as many people claim, but still enough to irritate even me at times)
poor performance even with a good system
very high system requirements
landscapes could be a little more varied
not near enough high level content, but that could be added if that was the only problem
I am anti insta-travel, but travel in Vanguard was just a time sink, not adventurous, and resulted in many crashes when crossing zone lines. Traveling as a group was impossible as you would lose at least one person every time you changed regions.
I quit out of boredom (no MMO has been able to keep my interest for the past year and a half), and the fact that everyone I played with left because of bugs and performance... and boredom I suppose.
I often think of going back later when there is more content and less bugs, but I'm not sure the game will ever recover. I hope sony recovers this as well as they did EQ2, I think that was just as bad when it was new, just in different ways.
Grymm
MMO addict in recovery!
EQ,SWG preCU,L2,EQ2,GW,CoH/CoV,V:SOH,
Aion,AoC,TR,WAR,EVE,BP,RIFT,WoW and others... no more!
system Information
------------------
Time of this report: 7/7/2007, 00:14:32
Machine name: LOAF
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Unknow
System Model: Unknow
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 263MB used, 3676MB available
Windows Dir: C:WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode
------------
DxDiag Notes
------------
DirectX Files Tab: No problems found.
Display Tab 1: The file nv4_disp.dll is not digitally signed, which means that it has not been tested by Microsoft's Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL). You may be able to get a WHQL logo'd driver from the hardware manufacturer.
Sound Tab 1: No problems found.
Music Tab: No problems found.
Input Tab: No problems found.
Network Tab: No problems found.
--------------------
DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (n/a)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (n/a)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)
---------------
Display Devices
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Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT/GTO
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 7900 GT/GTO
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: EnumPCIVEN_10DE&DEV_0291&SUBSYS_201819F1&REV_A1
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1280 x 1024 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: ViewSonic VX924
Monitor Max Res: 1280,1024
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.9424 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 4/19/2007 13:26:00, 4543616 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: No
WHQL Date Stamp: None
VDD: n/a
Ok, above u see my system ,, i have 2 7900gt/gto's,
Anyways, ive been playing vanguard since beta, and since eq1, i havent played a mmo consistantly, except for this one, heres my thoughts.
1. if u think vanguard runs like crap currently , u really should try and play it after i post this, if u have close to, if not a better system then i do, i get 50 frames a sec on balanced, settings. i get no lag, except when going thru khal, etc (i.e. large cities), and even then its hardly any.
2. The group mechanics are great ( IN MY OPINION) i mean , i honestly have a blast crawling thru a dungeon , or just trying to get somewhere i havent been yet. there is content for groups of 2, 3, 4, and 6. and yes even solo content,, would be very very slow in lvling but if u wanted to u could solo prob all the way to 40 maybe 50 ,, im only 31 atm.
3. classes, ,,, so far everyclass ive played i liked, except for the shaman but thats just me so
4. peeps (ingame) very helpful, if im lost or being retarded and forget how to read, i ask a question , they anwser
5. i had some really good stuff i was gonna put in this post and just lost it all.
6 i played today from 8 am to 12 midnight, and i didnt crash not once,, so they fixed that,, yesterday was a diff story though..
I just wanted to voice my opionion on this, i usually dont post and just read for enjoyment, but all these retards who never played the game, voiceing there opionions off of other opinions , just dont make any sense this post prob doesnt make any since either but atleast ive played the dang game.
Oh and if your reading this forum to find out , if u should buy the game or not,, go buy it,, decide for yourself, i cant say , yeah youll love it, or yeah dude youll play it for 20000000 hrs and youll think its the greatest since sliced bread. , if i did i would set u up for failure, it would raise your uber hype lvl to kill vanguard, ,, not everyone played eq, and some did , some loved it some hated it, it wasnt for everyone and it was for some, lol, did i mention that im drunk.. anyways, im enjoying myself and i hope i get flamed for this post
Loafkill,
I have a couple of questions for you.
First, do you mean that performance on your system used to be bad in Vanguard and it just got great, or do you mean that your system always ran it well? I have an e6300 C2Duo processor, 4 gig of RAM, an 8800GTS with 660 RAM on it, and run Win XP s.p.2. and the performance in Vanguard left something to be desired. I never got stutter lag, but the hitching was terrible... of course this was months ago. Also, last I heard Vanguard still didnt support dual vid cards so unless that has changed you are actually running on just one of those two cards.
Second, you said you are in the level 30-40 range, have you ever been up to or near the level cap? I think the content is quite good up through level 35 or 40, the problem as I understand it is after that there is very little to do, especially at end-game. I myself only played up into the mid thirties so I never experienced the lack of content myself.
If the performance problems are fixed or get fixed, and the team can move on to adding content Vanguard will be a fairly decent MMO and will be worth playing if you are looking for something new. The most important thing to realize is that Vanguard is not the "revolutionary" MMO we expected, its just another run of the mill MMO with a couple of new features and a ton of dungeons to explore.
I suggest waiting untill we hear Vanguard is truly fixed before trying the game out. Most people who try it while its still playing like a beta will not go back later.
Grymm
MMO addict in recovery!
EQ,SWG preCU,L2,EQ2,GW,CoH/CoV,V:SOH,
Aion,AoC,TR,WAR,EVE,BP,RIFT,WoW and others... no more!
Ok, im sober now hehe, yes the performance with this last patch increased prob by 50 percent,,
I have a couple of questions for you.
First, do you mean that performance on your system used to be bad in Vanguard and it just got great, or do you mean that your system always ran it well? I have an e6300 C2Duo processor, 4 gig of RAM, an 8800GTS with 660 RAM on it, and run Win XP s.p.2. and the performance in Vanguard left something to be desired. I never got stutter lag, but the hitching was terrible... of course this was months ago. Also, last I heard Vanguard still didnt support dual vid cards so unless that has changed you are actually running on just one of those two cards.
Second, you said you are in the level 30-40 range, have you ever been up to or near the level cap? I think the content is quite good up through level 35 or 40, the problem as I understand it is after that there is very little to do, especially at end-game. I myself only played up into the mid thirties so I never experienced the lack of content myself.
If the performance problems are fixed or get fixed, and the team can move on to adding content Vanguard will be a fairly decent MMO and will be worth playing if you are looking for something new. The most important thing to realize is that Vanguard is not the "revolutionary" MMO we expected, its just another run of the mill MMO with a couple of new features and a ton of dungeons to explore.
I suggest waiting untill we hear Vanguard is truly fixed before trying the game out. Most people who try it while its still playing like a beta will not go back later.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ive used the Evga, or E brand of cards, and i have to say BFG i got better performance i dont know what is different or if anything is,, just letting you know,, and your right a couple months ago it was a pain to play vanguard. and i dont get any hitching in most cases any longer.
As far as vanguard supporting dual video cards, if u go into the vgclient.ini file, theres a option there something like DualVGA=false set that to true, and make sure u enable it in your OS. and as far as end game content,, i was curious just to c how many 50s were on ,, well first i did a who all 50, and got over 40 uses online, wouldnt display anymore, then i did by class most cases were 10+ each class, some classes were more. and they have added some content , to what extent,, i dont know ill let u know.
I think it would be a good time for a re-review of this game. Much has changed since the pretty bad launch. The game is starting to come into its own and I think it deserves another look by the staff.