My thoughts; Vanguard

Kuanshu

Hello all,

     I would like to point out that I only participated in the closed beta test of Vanguard. If you desire to flame me more power to ya; I have simply contemplated this game and its future.

I live in Iowa and the weather is consistently getting worse and in the coming months this Midwest state can turn into the Great White North. I do sometimes wonder about all this Global Warming talk, because it seems the winters here have softened up quite a bit. Alas, I usually like to occupy some of my time in my toasty abode participating in a decent mmorpg of some sort.

I contemplated either returning to LOTRO (mainly my GFs request as she really enjoyed it as her first mmorpg and she really wanted to experience more) and after having done it all in that game I know I could not PL and twink a toon the way I had done before and would most likely participate in Monster Play as a Creep. She would of course enjoy picking a new class (she was a champ before) and sprucing up her own home (now that they have housing) and playing casually, as would I. I guess I am mainly curious as to what is going to be a part of the Book 12 update (the supposed Character Customization update; Month of the Burglar and Guardian, etc...) which will most likely unfold around xmas.

I had also contemplated participating in Vanguard and took the time to read through some of the threads on this forum and on Vanguards Official Forums. Trying to seperate fact from fiction, truth from lies, etc...was not an easy task but I believe I may have actually caught a glipse of players honestly expressing themselves, concerning the state of the game.

I really wanted Vanguard to succeed and had followed it and other games for a time after I quit playing WoW. I seriously wanted to see a true sequel to Everquest (my first "really enjoyable" mmorpg). I watched my roommate play EQ2 and knew it fell wayyyy short of capturing players as had its predecessor. Vanguard held such promise and I am sure many felt the same as I did. After I secured a beta tester spot and participated in the beta version of the game I immediately experienced alot of problems playing the game. Being a long time mmorpg player and beta tester of many well known titles I had no problem perservering and overcoming many obstacles that simply influenced others to move on. I ended up quitting beta during its closed phase simply because of my disgust at how the game was not only mishandled during its development phase but how it was ultimately mismanaged and should have been held back for more development but "they" insisted on keeping their release date. FOOLS

I guess I had always wondered if the game had actually improved and ended up being worthwhile. Vanguard had ships, flying mounts, underwater swimming, unique crafting setup, etc...many things which I had actually enjoyed in beta. So much more then LOTRO currently has, yet LOTRO runs so smoothly and has the foundation of its lore, it simply succeeds. It would suck to see millions of dollars of development, marketing, etc... only to see Vanguard flop; but I really feel that is going to ultimately occur if SOE does not totally revamp and reintroduce the failing title to survive amongst this ever competitive market of MMOGs. Will SOE do this or simply let it wither away?

After I had went read through some of the threads on this forum and the Official Vanguard forums I see the game is still struggling. There still is the some of the same issues that were in closed beta still plagueing players and some new problems as well(That alone should be a big sign in itself). Sure the game still has its faithful following, but players are leaving daily and some are willing to give it a go again. I believe those who are willing to give it a go again simply do so because there is nothing else worthwhile to them at this time.

Pirates of the Burning Sea, Age of Conan, and Warhammer Online are titles that I am following at this time and if 2 out of 3 of those titles succeed they will take a lions share of the player base biding their time waiting for something new, interesting, and fun.

SOE is behind Pirates of the Burning Sea and still maintains EQ1 & EQ2. They might as well package EQ1 & 2 and Vanguard together and have one subscription fee at the rate things seem to be going. They are a massive company so they will do what they wish...

Ultimately, its up to us to figure out who we wish to place our money on.

Meanwhile, I am going to give it at least one more month before I decide.

JagerMichael

As to the current state of  Vangaurd, yes some of the issues are still there. However, a lot of the issues have been handled in we're one phase into a major update that is addressing a lot of those issues. Already after phase one the performance and stability of the game is a lot better. It's estimated that phases two and three will be released within the coming weeks and after that they'll be adding some end game content.

As for SOE and their library of games, they already have an "all for one" subscription fee. It's called the station pass and it goes for $30 a month. You get access to all of their games including EQ, EQ2, SWG, Vanguard, MxO, PotBS and others.

boojiboy

I lived in Knoxville, IA for a bit... now I'm back in Minnesota.  Yes, MMORPG season is almost here!

I hope you like what you see when you return to VG.  I didn't play beta, but I've played since launch.  There have been many improvements, optimizations and bug fixes.  It'll probably feel like a new game to you.

Orphes

I don't know really, with saying behind and their game about Potbs.