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Vanguard - one of the most underrated MMOs around
XApotheosisX
Member Posts: 277
So I like many others laughed and scoffed at the Vanbois on this forum when the game went down in flames. However since I was bored with my current MMO and everything else that has released has sucked (AOC and WAR) I was in the market to change games.
I looked at a few games and wasn't impressed with many and i sure as hell wasn't going to play WoW ... a free trial was enough misery for me. So i diecided to look at vanguard and i was shocked to see the positive things being said about it. The more i read about the more it intrigued me, the term sandbox, in depth character advancement, the open world and intriguing classes really impressed me.
then I saw there was a free trial to the game and decide eh what the heck, its free, its a quick easy download ... whats the harm. well i must be honest i was hesitant at first some of the character races were very unsatisfying, but i wouldn't play those races anyway so it really didn't effect me. the races i would have chosen were very well done and very good looking. As i loaded into the Isle of Dawn for the first time I was very skeptical but then i was just blown away at what i saw. the graphics were amazing even this little island looked incredible and it was running fantastically on my medium/low end PC (2.1 ghz duo core 3 gigs of ram geforce 8600)
the more i played the game the more i enjoyed it, i actually felt something i haven't in a long time .... Immersion, and mind you I am not a big roleplayer ... but this game just drew me in. everything from the combat to the diplomacy was very well done and very indepth.
So i just bought the full game so i guess you can consider me a Vanboi now LOL.
Now im not saying this is a game for everyone from what i understand while you can solo its much easier if you group. but if you are looking for a Sandboxish type game with a lot of indepth and immersive gaming .. I would say give it a try ... it may surprise you. hey its a free trial ... how could it hurt!
Comments
Now if only they could bring life back to the pvp server, Id be back in a heartbeat....
I was hoping you could explain the bolded more. Sandbox and in dept character advancement tagged with Vanguard. I'm not asking to argue, rather I would like to know because i've considered playing it again. Sandbox is certainly not something i've heard attributed to the game, unless we're talking about the large map.
well what i mean by character advancement is not so much like Alternate advancement or Talent trees or anything like that (though some classes have different paths to take depending on your playstyle). I am talking more about the crafting system or the diplomacy system as alternate ways to advance your character and make your character indepth.
I am a combat guy I love fighting and killing ... however for the first time in any game i have actually found myself crafting and i am in love with the diplomacy system.
As far as the sandbox ... I just like the open world feeling of the game, being able to build a house/guild hall. flying mounts allowing me to see the ends of the world ... it actually reminds me of SWG prenge in many ways. i guess it just really depends on a persons definition of sandbox heh. like for me it doesnt feel like the themepark game (like WoW or WAR) it feels like a living world. they just have to work on the player economy now heh.
as for the person talking about PVP, not sure if you would be interested in this but they are talking about implementing some PVP/RVR aspects to PVE servers. Something like a special area in the world thats open PVP (like daocs frontiers).
I agree. Vanguard is a great game now and is worth a try. This is one of the very few, if not the only, newish game that really feels like a living world...
I truly believe if Vanguard had launched in the condition its in today it would have been hugely popular. At launch the community was very large, but so many were lost including myself because of the poor performance, bugs, and crashes.
Even with crashing and having to reboot every few hours, I still played the game for 3 months at launch, and I think thats a testament to how good the game is because I wouldn't have played any of the other MMO's today for more than a day with that kind of problem.
But Vanguard seems to be a love it or hate it game. This is so evident with people's opinions of the graphics. When I fly down the river in Qalia and see a lush forest against a mountain range, and then a desert expanse beyond the mountain range out to a glimmering ocean, I am amazed everytime and can't believe there are people who think its an ugly game. Its so immersive knowing I can fly to anything I see and that its not a canned instanced world. I can actually have a house in the world that marks my presence if when I am not logged in.
But again, many hate the look of the game. Its free to try and definitely worth a look. I've played just about everyone one of those games listed on the left and VG is currently the only one I play while waiting for Darkfall.
I revisited 7 weeks ago, Seradon server, new character got to level 12 over a period of 3 days sporadic play time and never met or saw anyone. Spoke with people higher up on chat but it felt isolated. Performance was great and other little noticable improvements were there, just no other people at the usual times I played. I did enjoy it though.
World graphics were okish in some parts, great in others however the character graphics I thought were almost as bad as lotro
I won't play a SOE game. I am confident Vanguard is slated to receive it's version of RMT in the form of a card game or other means just like all of SOE's other MMOGs have been corrupted.
Let me guess, a disgruntled ex SWG player....
Underrated??? check its official rating on mmorpg.com . . . VG:SoH is on 12th place wich in my opinion is not underrated, TBH being in first 15 places to me doesnt matter if u are 2nd or 15th . . .
Maybe u ment Overtrolled. But all that actually tried it recently know its nothing true.
Imo Vanguard is on the right track and if any of my real life mates played it i whould also
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Holy Flamin' Frost-Brand Gronk-Slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' Woundin' an' Returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-Out-Yer-Bum!! ~Planescape: Torment~
Diplomacy? you mean the card game? a (lame) card game in an MMO? You liked that? ok then I understand you liking Vanguard.
all these Vanguard representatives. Don't worry I got the game for £2.99 and I'm in the process of upgrading my comp to play it
Baa Ram Ewe
um sandbox= false.
performance issues mostly fixed= true
diplomacy = content= false
underrated= false
get to level cap before you start spouting this kind of garbage, have fun grinding crafting, because its boring as hell, go ahead and use some exp boosters while you are doing it too (brilliant).
let me say it again, this game is for people who are too soft for wow and i HATE wow. it is an EASY mode game that is very soloable. visually its "ok" you might note though that is NOT a DX10 client they use, i dont think i need to say much more about it. they need to put a server up for people who dont want easy mode, until then yea its just another SOE flop (due once again to SOE ignoring overwhelming player feedback-and no i dont play SWG).
diplomacy....some how i cant believe people see this as some kind of feature...its boring as... i would rather pluck pubes that do diplomacy quests..fkn diplomacy.. am i the only one that sees diplomacy as being added as an after thought? its a POS card game that was an easy way to boost the quest count.
Completely agree, VG has its faults, all games do but even in an imperfect form its still the best PvE on the market, by far...
I am sure many will disagree but its a personal opinion
Now playing: VG (after a long break from MMORPGS)
Played for more than a month: Darkfall online, Vanguard SOH, Everquest, Horizons, WoW, SWG, Everquest II, Eve
A good number of people who are interested in playing video games will invariably find this game despite those that are here to simply complain about the game as it was at launch.
Vanguard has really good immersive graphics with the general ambience of Eq with a modern interface and quest system. I'm glad that people are finally starting to give teh game a chance. It wont be for everyone.....
For example I think those that say Vanguards Graphics dont look pretty will never be impressed. Welcome aboard
Vanguard turned to be a great game a year after release. But it will never gain any significant popularity: gamers do not look back and do not forgive the failures. I spend a lot of time in Telon and many ppl ware resubscribing just for one month, while they ware waiting for a new game to come out. The MMO market delivers new titles every month, I often can't find a time to just try them out...
Vanguard have a chance to become something like EVE - a game with not huge, but steady and loyal player-base build on hardcore-players. But as I observe the devs are rather trying to lower the bar and make it more casual friendly, which is IMHO a mistake, because casual players jump from a one title to another, always preferring a new one over the older one.
Pray tell what changes in the last 6 months have done this or are we still beating the Sigil design to death?
Apotheosis.
I understand you, and I confess, a long time ago I had the same impression you expressed here... But after months, leveling and waiting for updates, I may tell you, it is not exacly like that.
You will realize soon that Diplomacy is totally unfinished and start to loose sense and content pretty soon, you will realize adventure content is thin, the large World create an illusion of a large and full of content game, but it is just an illusion..
You probably will face a couple of new bad decisions from the Devs, the impression that the game will never expand will grow in you and you probably will get the feeling Vanguard is almost dead in the development area.
Are you ok to pay for a game that will never get really expanded like Lotro, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, Warhammer (Im sure it will be expanded), AoC (it has plans for an expansion) etc ? Im saying this because a MMO is not like a single player game, we usually play a MMO for a long time and as we pay every month we hope for a MMO to grow, improve and expand.
Are you ok with the fact that devs almost forgot about Diplomacy and there is not even an artist and a animatior in the small Vanguard´s development crew?
Are you ok with silly decisions as portals, new characters that are uglier and simple than the initial beta characters, bop(bop was a joke when one of the main features of Vanguard is Freedom) etc?
Are you ok with the fact that some dungeons and zones still incomplete after almost 2 years? And by incomplete I mean totally unfinished like in an alpha state MMO.
If you are ok with that you will probably be ok with Vanguard, but I would wait a couple of months before you start to call yourself a vanboi.
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part 1 of your rant:
No, you're just impatient. If you had taken the time to read for 10 minutes before you invested so much time into making lvl 50 characters you would see that SOE basically had you on a paid - to -- play beta and even gave you free Eq2 time while they worked on putting in basic things like a scripting engine and oh, i dunno , omptimizing an 18 gig beta client.
Go read whats in the works, read back 6 months what theyve done with this game.
Stop basing the game on your experience if its not current....we have a trial island now, the place is not empty. Its starting to fill up despite these attempts to derail the growth of this community. People would be best served to all go give it a shot rather than base it on the game as it was 4 months ago. In Vanguard development terms it may have been a light year.
The second part of your rant, well its just a rant....I find plenty to do and I don't share in your experience.
You only get one chance to make a first impression... Those that would be willing to put that first impression aside 'eventually' will have to buy a handful of expansions when they do
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
The problem with Vanguard when I played it (early 07) was the lack of population. That was over a year ago...I can't imagine how barren the game is now.
What I think they should do is condense the servers to 1 or 2 pve, and 1 pvp. That would at least give a decent pop to what servers they'd have because whats an MMO if you have no one to play it with?
The sleeper awakes...and rides his dirtbike to the mall.
No OP, enjoying the game doesn't make you a 'Vanboi", but if you start replying to forum posts like Rekindle, then you'll know you've stepped across the line.
And even if the game doesn't expand much (or at all), its probably big enough to keep busy and have fun for at least 6 mo. or so, which is perfectly fine.
Where you'll get in trouble is if you follow the line of thinking that all MMO's that you play must provide 1, 2 or more years of entertainment and content, or they're not worth playing.
They don't. You can enjoy them for what they have now, and move on to another one later.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I agree with you Kyleran.
If someone is looking for a couple of months of fun and gameplay, Vanguard can be really good, but for a 1 year plus experience, like you can have in Everquest2, Lineage2,Guild Wars (with expansions), EvE, WoW, Lotro and maybe War and AoC after one or two expansions (that will come) ,Vanguard is not the game...
A game doesnt need to have a huge lifetime in content and expansions to be good, but for a MMO, this for sure will count for a good or medium rate, this is why I dont belive Vanguard is underrated.
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