These threads on this forum are pointless. You will get nothing but haters and lovers and the truth is inbetween. The game has improved since release. Go to vgplayers.com and read the patch notes going back awhile. It has some good things and some bad. A large beautivful world that is seamless where you can go anywhere. A greot combat system that gives you a lot more options and is more then just random button pushing. A diverse set of activities for players, adventuring, crafting, diplomacy, harvesting Some bad things it still hitches and while it has improved it still does bugs, there will be graphic errors, settings that cause graphic flicking, quests that don't work right and events or dungeon agro issues. starting areas while diverse and some of them damn interesting are spread thin so you won't see a lot of people. it will make you think there isn't much population and early on very hard to get a good group. One rumor I'll blast out right now The player pops on saradon are great. I did a comparison of all the top games, eq2, wow, and VG and if you are a new player VG is by far the best game to start if you want to group. I checked the low end pops on all the servers and VG is at least 2-3x any other game. And this holds up into the mid ranges. EQ2 and Wow are very top heavy and don't leave room for much else. So read some think about it try it if you like or just wait for a free trial that will probably start in 2-3 months. Or just wait for some other game but don't expect to get any good info on this forum..
VG has has 4 servers. WoW has hundreds(exaggeration) Eq2 has 22 servers. So your comparison and claim really aren't accurate. Of course VG would appear to have a healthy population because its all concentrated into 4 servers with Saradon having the highest concentration. Nice try though ethion.
Its not an exaggeration.. WoW has over 200 servers in the EU and over 250 servers in the US.. god knows how many in asia.
This is such flawed logic.
You guys seem to be implying that because WoW has millions of subscribers and VG only has 10s of 1000s, that somehow your gameplay will be effected by VG's low population.
In reality, your gameplay won't be effected at all, in anyway shape or form if the population PER SERVER is comperable.
for Example:
A typical VG server has, oh lets say 2000 people playing (using an easily digested, non-researched number for the sake of the argument).
A typical WoW server has the same, 2000 people playing it. It matters not to the individual player that WoW has 200 other servers with the same population. You will only be playing with the one server's population. So you can choose the 2000 from VG to play with, or the 2000 from WoW to play with. WoW's millions don't mean anything at all when you are put in a room with the same capacity, and that capacity is pretty much the same in either game.
But, if you want to think that the people playing on the 185 servers on WoW you never have logged onto somehow have helped you find a group on your main's server, go ahead and run with that logic.
i'm sure someone out there has spent too much time researching the exact capacity of VG's servers and WoW's, they may miss the point of this and retort by cutting down the trees because they can't see the forest.
In my opinion the game is worth playing, especially if you are looking for a bit more group oriented MMO. Sure you can solo all the way if you want (which is nice in the rare times you cant find a group), but grouping is much funner and generally more beneficial.
And whiel the number of servers and total population is probably relatively low, the server population isnt bad at all.. it can be tough to find groups in the middle of the night especially if you want a specific area (but still possible), but more than possible to find a group at more normal play times.
On top of that the bugs imo are not game breaking and the moving between chunks isnt happening all the time and is a rather quick few second slow down.
Beyond that the game has alot to explore and making new races/classes can really be fun as the classes play enough different and the starting areas are unique. And I love coming across new dungeons.. for some reason much more than in instances MMO's (like WOW or alot of EQ2 - both of which I have accounts for and play a bit).
I preferred it to lotro. lotro graphic is sure polished, but it's so banal and 'cold'. Vanguard graphic is awesome, if u tweak correctly the configuration file and use a good pc. That's just my opinion.
EDIT: all the f2p i tried have the worse graphic I've ever seen. AA, reflections, means nothing without a 'style'. VG is far better without AA than all the f2p anti-aliased around.
When I look for an mmo I first look for a beautiful world to explore and immerse myself into. Then I look for gameplay. Of course both are needed.
If I wanted only gameplay there are plenty f2p games out there with some excellent gameplay (some examples are: Perfect world is wow and more, and Shaiya has the best pvp like Lineage 2), no need to pay for this.
So, I pay for the difference: a beautiful immersive world. The problem with VG is that it has some great graphics, but it breaks everything with aliasing jaggies all over the screen. Add to this the problem that the game has no shadows apart from the trees and the toons (the game looks great at night, but during the day time it looks so bad, the sun is high but there are no shadows and full of aliasing), no water reflections and water effects... all of this breaks the immersion in the world. I am in a great world but something always feels wrong: no shadows, no reflections, jaggy lines all over...
Now, as I said, these are only a couple things.... it shouldn't be so difficulty to implement as all of this is old technology. So WTF is SOE doing ?
Then, you said Lotro is cold ? Come on. The lotro engine is at least 1 year ahead compared to VG. Up to last week I was playing with an ati x1900xt-512. This card runs even VG at max, but it's directx 9 only. Lotro is so awesomely beautiful and immersive that a couple days ago I purchased a geforce 8800GT-512 to get the directx 10 graphics to work. And now WOAW, the water and the water effects when jumping into the water, the smoke on the fire, the shadows,... Now even objects get some shadow from other objects (houses get shadows from trees and other houses... from eveything); these improved shadows completely change the perception/immersion especially in the cities, but also everywhere.
A real beauty with some great gameplay, in a world that is alive with activity. And what about VG ? A lifeless world with dead cities. The cities are great and huge, but they feel dead. NPCS don't live there... its dead (-> where are the scripted npcs to give some life to this world?).
My bottom line is this: good game play is free. We have to pay for VG, the huge immersive open world is what separates VG form free games. They are more than half way there, so why don't they polish it so it could be at the top of the best games?
Point taken, DailyBuzz. I should have been more attentive in the details.
Just after the server merge, it was widely regarded that the number was 40k. There is no evidence that the numbers have dropped since then. In fact, all the 'evidence' (admittedly heresay, conjecture and educated guessing, anecdotal) points to the population being on the rise. Ergo...it is likely greater than 40k. When the estimated population was 40k, after the server merges, it was still very difficult to find a group and even the 'popular' areas had no issues with overcamping. Looking at those same areas today, you find a huge line for Hegnarian, overcamped in RI, competition for Tet crypt/medal runs. I will give you that many of the 40k who weren't lvl 50, now are, making the upper level camps more crowded. But to counter that, the newbie to mid level areas on Qalia and Thestra now seem to be thriving as they never did before. Therefore I made the assumption that you have an almost equal population trying to reach 50. It certainly may not be 75k. But there is definately a logic to my reasoning, and not a tinfoil hat fanboi assumption. So what was the logic you used to arrive at 75k being 'impossible'? And secondarily, if my numbers are so off - why didn't you jump the 10 to 25k guy for being almost as off in the other direction? With absolutely no logic presented at all to arrive at his assumption, I might add. If you think I have an ulterior motive to my reasoning, it is only logical to assume you have the same bias in the other direction as a longtime, outspoken rejector of VG. I can with relative certainty say that 10 to 25k is impossible. It simply isn't possible that since the server mergers almost every area at every level have a greater population then they previously had. That only can indicate growth. So what is your logic to say 75k is impossible? When was the last time you logged on and how seriously were you playing? Was it more than 1 or 2 months ago? Was it for like 3 days and 3 sessions where you couldn't find a group for Tsang's? I play every day with characters ranging from 15 to 50. I think I have better grounds for making my assumptions than those who admittedly aren't playing and haven't for awhile.
First, let me say that I am not the "longtime, outspoken rejector of VG" that you brand me as being. It's true I have criticism for the game and the way it's been handled since beta, but if you look through my posts, you will find I have plenty of good things to say about the game as well. I played the game for nearly a year (more if you count the free holiday time), before canceling in September. I rolled 8 characters and all are over 20, 7 over 30, and 5 over 40, so I'm sure some players thought my friends and I were new subs each time we logged in alts as well.
Now that we've cleared that up, I think it's highly unlikely that the population is 10-25k. I seriously doubt SOE would still be working on it at all if the population had dropped that drastically. That doesn't make it impossible however. Seeing as how the only performance gains that have been delivered since I played last are the PC model revamps, I would say it's impossible to have stability with 30k players on a single server though, and that's what you'd see on Seradon and Xeth if the total pop was around 75k. Another point is the number of devs they have working on VG. If the population had doubled in the last 6 months, you would have seen more devs added to the project (instead of devs leaving and not being replaced).
Going by the nembers they launched with, they had approximately 16k players per server. The population was good at launch, and it's probably close to 16k on Serdaon and Xeth currently. Add another 10k players from Sartok and Halgar and you've got 42k. This would be my best guess for current population (until they bring more servers online). It's important to note that if the current subs are at 42k, this would show growth, as the last known reports were around 30k in mid 2007.
I preferred it to lotro. lotro graphic is sure polished, but it's so banal and 'cold'. Vanguard graphic is awesome, if u tweak correctly the configuration file and use a good pc. That's just my opinion. EDIT: all the f2p i tried have the worse graphic I've ever seen. AA, reflections, means nothing without a 'style'. VG is far better without AA than all the f2p anti-aliased around.
When I look for an mmo I first look for a beautiful world to explore and immerse myself into. Then I look for gameplay. Of course both are needed.
If I wanted only gameplay there are plenty f2p games out there with some excellent gameplay (some examples are: Perfect world is wow and more, and Shaiya has the best pvp like Lineage 2), no need to pay for this.
So, I pay for the difference: a beautiful immersive world. The problem with VG is that it has some great graphics, but it breaks everything with aliasing jaggies all over the screen. Add to this the problem that the game has no shadows apart from the trees and the toons (the game looks great at night, but during the day time it looks so bad, the sun is high but there are no shadows and full of aliasing), no water reflections and water effects... all of this breaks the immersion in the world. I am in a great world but something always feels wrong: no shadows, no reflections, jaggy lines all over...
Now, as I said, these are only a couple things.... it shouldn't be so difficulty to implement as all of this is old technology. So WTF is SOE doing ?
Then, you said Lotro is cold ? Come on. The lotro engine is at least 1 year ahead compared to VG. Up to last week I was playing with an ati x1900xt-512. This card runs even VG at max, but it's directx 9 only. Lotro is so awesomely beautiful and immersive that a couple days ago I purchased a geforce 8800GT-512 to get the directx 10 graphics to work. And now WOAW, the water and the water effects when jumping into the water, the smoke on the fire, the shadows,... Now even objects get some shadow from other objects (houses get shadows from trees and other houses... from eveything); these improved shadows completely change the perception/immersion especially in the cities, but also everywhere.
A real beauty with some great gameplay, in a world that is alive with activity. And what about VG ? A lifeless world with dead cities. The cities are great and huge, but they feel dead. NPCS don't live there... its dead (-> where are the scripted npcs to give some life to this world?).
My bottom line is this: good game play is free. We have to pay for VG, the huge immersive open world is what separates VG form free games. They are more than half way there, so why don't they polish it so it could be at the top of the best games?
Well,l this was a good reply. What I want to add is that I was mainly answering to people that said "NO NO Absolutely NO". I agree with you that the graphic can be much better, but with the average MMOs around, Vanguard is far from a bad game, even graphically, as the environment has 'some' style and most of the regions are immersive.
Lotro has a very good graphic but, as i said, it's a 'cold' graphic for my taste. Nothing special. Yes, technically they are very well done and the game is very stable, that's a good point.
I didn't said lotro is a bad game, just it doesn't fit my taste, graphically speaking and gameplay speaking. I really hated my Champion, with the animations absolutely out of sync with the abilities. Seemed to me totally out of control. Tho, lore master was a bit better.
I know what you mean with 'put more life'. I'm coming from a game where 'the living' aspect was a must, and absolutely the best I have ever seen in online games. That was the only thing I always asked before trying all the mmo i tried before jumping into VG.
It's clear that there's no MMO that has a real good AI in their world, in any way, so I was prepared to find the usual fauna and npc behaviour.
Considering i am a 'sandbox' lover, possibly with classless behaviour, I found VG better than others. Yes, there are classes, but they are versatile (the most) and fun to play. Maybe it's the single instanced world, but, despite it needs a lot of improvements, it's a good game to play.
I have no personal history about the past of VG but, for what i have read, seems the team is doing things, as the game got many improvements. Hopefully they will continue the job.
Here just some screenies from both games, taken with a medium graphic card (x1650pro 512):
I actually found it much easier to get groups in Vanguard than LOTRO.
LOTRO everyone seems more interested in soloing than group. Which is bad because at level 40 the solo content in LOTR is slim pickings.
I liked LOTRO and I liked VG
However
I can this without much doubt. Had Vanguard launched in a stable fashion and it didn't have all the performance issues it has now... it would have smashed apart all other MMO's LOTRO included and would have challenged WoW's current UNCONTESTED supremacy in the MMO market.
Why ?
Vanguard has many different ways for a character to advance and some interesting twists to the usual MMO grind. LOTRO never challenged WoW because its basically a copy of WoW. It really doesn't do anything different than WoW and is heavily quest centric. I liked LOTRO because it had a decent story line and was yes very well polished. But despite that LOTRO subscriber wise is well over 9.5 million behind WoW.
I actually found it much easier to get groups in Vanguard than LOTRO. LOTRO everyone seems more interested in soloing than group. Which is bad because at level 40 the solo content in LOTR is slim pickings. I liked LOTRO and I liked VG However I can this without much doubt. Had Vanguard launched in a stable fashion and it didn't have all the performance issues it has now... it would have smashed apart all other MMO's LOTRO included and would have challenged WoW's current UNCONTESTED supremacy in the MMO market. Why ? Vanguard has many different ways for a character to advance and some interesting twists to the usual MMO grind. LOTRO never challenged WoW because its basically a copy of WoW. It really doesn't do anything different than WoW and is heavily quest centric. I liked LOTRO because it had a decent story line and was yes very well polished. But despite that LOTRO subscriber wise is well over 9.5 million behind WoW.
Let me see if I understand this logic.
"LOTRO everyone seems more interested in soloing than grouping.Because at level 40 solo content is slim pickings."
So what your saying is at level 40 there is tons of group content and little to no solo content yes?
If so why in the world would people solo past 40 ?It would make more sense to do all the group content so you progress faster.
Also I dont care about anything in Vanguard except how horrible the player animations were and wide open huge zones with little to nothing happening to make the world feel alive."Im walking, im walking, OH a BUSH!, im walking....walking.snoreeeeezzzzz
First, let me say that I am not the "longtime, outspoken rejector of VG" that you brand me as being. It's true I have criticism for the game and the way it's been handled since beta, but if you look through my posts, you will find I have plenty of good things to say about the game as well. I played the game for nearly a year (more if you count the free holiday time), before canceling in September. I rolled 8 characters and all are over 20, 7 over 30, and 5 over 40, so I'm sure some players thought my friends and I were new subs each time we logged in alts as well.
Now that we've cleared that up, I think it's highly unlikely that the population is 10-25k. I seriously doubt SOE would still be working on it at all if the population had dropped that drastically. That doesn't make it impossible however. Seeing as how the only performance gains that have been delivered since I played last are the PC model revamps, I would say it's impossible to have stability with 30k players on a single server though, and that's what you'd see on Seradon and Xeth if the total pop was around 75k. Another point is the number of devs they have working on VG. If the population had doubled in the last 6 months, you would have seen more devs added to the project (instead of devs leaving and not being replaced).
Going by the nembers they launched with, they had approximately 16k players per server. The population was good at launch, and it's probably close to 16k on Serdaon and Xeth currently. Add another 10k players from Sartok and Halgar and you've got 42k. This would be my best guess for current population (until they bring more servers online). It's important to note that if the current subs are at 42k, this would show growth, as the last known reports were around 30k in mid 2007.
I apologize, and have edited my original post, so it doesn't look like I directed that text at you, I was mainly speaking to sepher.
But....I would say that the population is definately better and better dispersed through all content areas then it was at launch. And I don't mean Day 1, it took people a couple of weeks to find the game was near unplayable, at the beginning of the second month, I think most of the original population had left.
The newbie areas on Thestra and Qalia seem heavier to me then they did in the first few months of the game. I'm not talking the lvl 5 to 10 areas, but rather the 15 to 25 lvl areas. I think the early early game is still barren because xp is gained so fast at those levels as opposed to launch that you are through the content in usually no more than an hour, 2 max.
so I might bump that 16k up to 20k in my guess on the current population, which would lower my 75k guess to a more respectable 55 to 60ish K (seeing that the pvp server is truly a ghost town).
Comments
VG has has 4 servers. WoW has hundreds(exaggeration) Eq2 has 22 servers. So your comparison and claim really aren't accurate. Of course VG would appear to have a healthy population because its all concentrated into 4 servers with Saradon having the highest concentration. Nice try though ethion.
Its not an exaggeration.. WoW has over 200 servers in the EU and over 250 servers in the US.. god knows how many in asia.
This is such flawed logic.
You guys seem to be implying that because WoW has millions of subscribers and VG only has 10s of 1000s, that somehow your gameplay will be effected by VG's low population.
In reality, your gameplay won't be effected at all, in anyway shape or form if the population PER SERVER is comperable.
for Example:
A typical VG server has, oh lets say 2000 people playing (using an easily digested, non-researched number for the sake of the argument).
A typical WoW server has the same, 2000 people playing it. It matters not to the individual player that WoW has 200 other servers with the same population. You will only be playing with the one server's population. So you can choose the 2000 from VG to play with, or the 2000 from WoW to play with. WoW's millions don't mean anything at all when you are put in a room with the same capacity, and that capacity is pretty much the same in either game.
But, if you want to think that the people playing on the 185 servers on WoW you never have logged onto somehow have helped you find a group on your main's server, go ahead and run with that logic.
i'm sure someone out there has spent too much time researching the exact capacity of VG's servers and WoW's, they may miss the point of this and retort by cutting down the trees because they can't see the forest.
Nicely put.
In my opinion the game is worth playing, especially if you are looking for a bit more group oriented MMO. Sure you can solo all the way if you want (which is nice in the rare times you cant find a group), but grouping is much funner and generally more beneficial.
And whiel the number of servers and total population is probably relatively low, the server population isnt bad at all.. it can be tough to find groups in the middle of the night especially if you want a specific area (but still possible), but more than possible to find a group at more normal play times.
On top of that the bugs imo are not game breaking and the moving between chunks isnt happening all the time and is a rather quick few second slow down.
Beyond that the game has alot to explore and making new races/classes can really be fun as the classes play enough different and the starting areas are unique. And I love coming across new dungeons.. for some reason much more than in instances MMO's (like WOW or alot of EQ2 - both of which I have accounts for and play a bit).
Kalade
When I look for an mmo I first look for a beautiful world to explore and immerse myself into. Then I look for gameplay. Of course both are needed.
If I wanted only gameplay there are plenty f2p games out there with some excellent gameplay (some examples are: Perfect world is wow and more, and Shaiya has the best pvp like Lineage 2), no need to pay for this.
So, I pay for the difference: a beautiful immersive world. The problem with VG is that it has some great graphics, but it breaks everything with aliasing jaggies all over the screen. Add to this the problem that the game has no shadows apart from the trees and the toons (the game looks great at night, but during the day time it looks so bad, the sun is high but there are no shadows and full of aliasing), no water reflections and water effects... all of this breaks the immersion in the world. I am in a great world but something always feels wrong: no shadows, no reflections, jaggy lines all over...
Now, as I said, these are only a couple things.... it shouldn't be so difficulty to implement as all of this is old technology. So WTF is SOE doing ?
Then, you said Lotro is cold ? Come on. The lotro engine is at least 1 year ahead compared to VG. Up to last week I was playing with an ati x1900xt-512. This card runs even VG at max, but it's directx 9 only. Lotro is so awesomely beautiful and immersive that a couple days ago I purchased a geforce 8800GT-512 to get the directx 10 graphics to work. And now WOAW, the water and the water effects when jumping into the water, the smoke on the fire, the shadows,... Now even objects get some shadow from other objects (houses get shadows from trees and other houses... from eveything); these improved shadows completely change the perception/immersion especially in the cities, but also everywhere.
A real beauty with some great gameplay, in a world that is alive with activity. And what about VG ? A lifeless world with dead cities. The cities are great and huge, but they feel dead. NPCS don't live there... its dead (-> where are the scripted npcs to give some life to this world?).
My bottom line is this: good game play is free. We have to pay for VG, the huge immersive open world is what separates VG form free games. They are more than half way there, so why don't they polish it so it could be at the top of the best games?
Now that we've cleared that up, I think it's highly unlikely that the population is 10-25k. I seriously doubt SOE would still be working on it at all if the population had dropped that drastically. That doesn't make it impossible however. Seeing as how the only performance gains that have been delivered since I played last are the PC model revamps, I would say it's impossible to have stability with 30k players on a single server though, and that's what you'd see on Seradon and Xeth if the total pop was around 75k. Another point is the number of devs they have working on VG. If the population had doubled in the last 6 months, you would have seen more devs added to the project (instead of devs leaving and not being replaced).
Going by the nembers they launched with, they had approximately 16k players per server. The population was good at launch, and it's probably close to 16k on Serdaon and Xeth currently. Add another 10k players from Sartok and Halgar and you've got 42k. This would be my best guess for current population (until they bring more servers online). It's important to note that if the current subs are at 42k, this would show growth, as the last known reports were around 30k in mid 2007.
When I look for an mmo I first look for a beautiful world to explore and immerse myself into. Then I look for gameplay. Of course both are needed.
If I wanted only gameplay there are plenty f2p games out there with some excellent gameplay (some examples are: Perfect world is wow and more, and Shaiya has the best pvp like Lineage 2), no need to pay for this.
So, I pay for the difference: a beautiful immersive world. The problem with VG is that it has some great graphics, but it breaks everything with aliasing jaggies all over the screen. Add to this the problem that the game has no shadows apart from the trees and the toons (the game looks great at night, but during the day time it looks so bad, the sun is high but there are no shadows and full of aliasing), no water reflections and water effects... all of this breaks the immersion in the world. I am in a great world but something always feels wrong: no shadows, no reflections, jaggy lines all over...
Now, as I said, these are only a couple things.... it shouldn't be so difficulty to implement as all of this is old technology. So WTF is SOE doing ?
Then, you said Lotro is cold ? Come on. The lotro engine is at least 1 year ahead compared to VG. Up to last week I was playing with an ati x1900xt-512. This card runs even VG at max, but it's directx 9 only. Lotro is so awesomely beautiful and immersive that a couple days ago I purchased a geforce 8800GT-512 to get the directx 10 graphics to work. And now WOAW, the water and the water effects when jumping into the water, the smoke on the fire, the shadows,... Now even objects get some shadow from other objects (houses get shadows from trees and other houses... from eveything); these improved shadows completely change the perception/immersion especially in the cities, but also everywhere.
A real beauty with some great gameplay, in a world that is alive with activity. And what about VG ? A lifeless world with dead cities. The cities are great and huge, but they feel dead. NPCS don't live there... its dead (-> where are the scripted npcs to give some life to this world?).
My bottom line is this: good game play is free. We have to pay for VG, the huge immersive open world is what separates VG form free games. They are more than half way there, so why don't they polish it so it could be at the top of the best games?
Well,l this was a good reply. What I want to add is that I was mainly answering to people that said "NO NO Absolutely NO". I agree with you that the graphic can be much better, but with the average MMOs around, Vanguard is far from a bad game, even graphically, as the environment has 'some' style and most of the regions are immersive.
Lotro has a very good graphic but, as i said, it's a 'cold' graphic for my taste. Nothing special. Yes, technically they are very well done and the game is very stable, that's a good point.
I didn't said lotro is a bad game, just it doesn't fit my taste, graphically speaking and gameplay speaking. I really hated my Champion, with the animations absolutely out of sync with the abilities. Seemed to me totally out of control. Tho, lore master was a bit better.
I know what you mean with 'put more life'. I'm coming from a game where 'the living' aspect was a must, and absolutely the best I have ever seen in online games. That was the only thing I always asked before trying all the mmo i tried before jumping into VG.
It's clear that there's no MMO that has a real good AI in their world, in any way, so I was prepared to find the usual fauna and npc behaviour.
Considering i am a 'sandbox' lover, possibly with classless behaviour, I found VG better than others. Yes, there are classes, but they are versatile (the most) and fun to play. Maybe it's the single instanced world, but, despite it needs a lot of improvements, it's a good game to play.
I have no personal history about the past of VG but, for what i have read, seems the team is doing things, as the game got many improvements. Hopefully they will continue the job.
Here just some screenies from both games, taken with a medium graphic card (x1650pro 512):
Vanguard: s157.photobucket.com/albums/t56/Gilgameesh/Vanguard/
Lotro (few): s157.photobucket.com/albums/t56/Gilgameesh/Lotro/
Nickname registered on www.mynickname.org
I actually found it much easier to get groups in Vanguard than LOTRO.
LOTRO everyone seems more interested in soloing than group. Which is bad because at level 40 the solo content in LOTR is slim pickings.
I liked LOTRO and I liked VG
However
I can this without much doubt. Had Vanguard launched in a stable fashion and it didn't have all the performance issues it has now... it would have smashed apart all other MMO's LOTRO included and would have challenged WoW's current UNCONTESTED supremacy in the MMO market.
Why ?
Vanguard has many different ways for a character to advance and some interesting twists to the usual MMO grind. LOTRO never challenged WoW because its basically a copy of WoW. It really doesn't do anything different than WoW and is heavily quest centric. I liked LOTRO because it had a decent story line and was yes very well polished. But despite that LOTRO subscriber wise is well over 9.5 million behind WoW.
Let me see if I understand this logic.
"LOTRO everyone seems more interested in soloing than grouping.Because at level 40 solo content is slim pickings."
So what your saying is at level 40 there is tons of group content and little to no solo content yes?
If so why in the world would people solo past 40 ?It would make more sense to do all the group content so you progress faster.
Also I dont care about anything in Vanguard except how horrible the player animations were and wide open huge zones with little to nothing happening to make the world feel alive."Im walking, im walking, OH a BUSH!, im walking....walking.snoreeeeezzzzz
I apologize, and have edited my original post, so it doesn't look like I directed that text at you, I was mainly speaking to sepher.
But....I would say that the population is definately better and better dispersed through all content areas then it was at launch. And I don't mean Day 1, it took people a couple of weeks to find the game was near unplayable, at the beginning of the second month, I think most of the original population had left.
The newbie areas on Thestra and Qalia seem heavier to me then they did in the first few months of the game. I'm not talking the lvl 5 to 10 areas, but rather the 15 to 25 lvl areas. I think the early early game is still barren because xp is gained so fast at those levels as opposed to launch that you are through the content in usually no more than an hour, 2 max.
so I might bump that 16k up to 20k in my guess on the current population, which would lower my 75k guess to a more respectable 55 to 60ish K (seeing that the pvp server is truly a ghost town).