Take "Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines" : Programmed by "Troika Games" (R.I.P.), released in 2004.
And in 2011, April 14, the fanpatch 7.4 got released. So even that game gets still fixed. And they cannot even fix the game engine (which would be kind of a huge help btw).
Likewise, Vanguard getting still fixed would be great.
Vanguard is dead. No patches in 2 years. No players. EQ2 has more content than VG and EQ2 is definitely not dead unlike VG. I am not sure if that game even has 1k players ;D
The OP is either a troll or he's delusional ^^^
But for my tastes EQ2 is a horrible game. Well, some good things but if for some reason Vanguard was discontinued and they offered me a special deal on EQ2 I wouldn't take it.
and there are players in Vanguard, just not a huge amount.
Not having patches and further development tends to put people off on games which is a shame because Vaguard's world is exceptional. But again "to my tastes".
Still if a person hasn't played Vanguard then "yes" it doesn't need content patches. Not until a player gets to the end of what he/she wants to do.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
The purpose of the post was to cover the three points. We all know each one HOWEVER NONE OF THEM ARE VALID ANYMORE :
1) Launch-era hard feelings- It's all purely an on going three year hate feeling some can't get over. And by saying that and I can only guess without doing some major research back in Vanguard mmorpg.com post that it's the same posters over and over again. This is most likely not the majority, but a select group here with a vendetta of hate.
2) The lack of development- Yes, were getting no updates. I feel as if this should only be a small pill to swallow. ITS ALREADY A FULL GAME, WITH ONLY MINOR BUGS. The game is already bigger than FF11 and 5x larger than FF14, Champions Online, Warhammer, Age of Conan, City of Heros, DAOC, Rift,SWG, and most every game on the list of about 100 mmo's. Bugs and coding is for the most fixed. It has no more bugs than EQ2, and If you have computer problems, they can easly be over come by changing from " Balanced " to " High Performance ".
3) Low population- This is the least problem of all !!!!........Yes it is !!!!.......I've made countless topics here on mmorpg.com about the low population.
Every mmo gives you a Social Panel.....For some odd reason no one uses them for it's intended purpose TO FIND PEOPLE. Why is this so hard to understand and use ? No one ever uses it. You can search the entire game of vanguard, and any other mmo by level and class. Need a level 22 healer ? Click on the Social Panel >Find> Advanced find. Type in 20-24 >Healer drop down box > Search.........Bam.... Your now looking at 9 healers of what your looking for. Ask with a /tell if they would like to come with your group. Just be nice. I've been doing this in mmo's for three years, 70% of them come.
People are amazed at how fast I can get a group together, and I tell them. I'm trying to spread the word on easy solution of a built in feature of any mmo. YET No one on mmorpg.com can understand. My only guess could be that people come to this site to act Superior and to tell people what to do instead of learning something.
Vanguard's low population can have advantages as people are looking for friends, even Vets. Vanguards community is by far the best of any other mmo, and I've played most all of them. Why am I sticking up for Vanguard ?...Because it's the only game that does not suck !
If your points were things that "we all know" are not valid anymore, then you would not have any need to make a post restating those issues.
1)
I disagree here and I think many many many people have given the game second, third, fourth... chances. Just look at the trial island and it was clear to see there have always been a number of people trying the game. The fact that population has not grown as a result of that suggests there are other reasons people did not stay.
However, the problem with vanguard does not lie with players. Just because the games population has almost completely vanished doesn't mean people have not given the game a chance.
2)
No development is a huge problem and not some small pill that people don't want to swallow. MMOs are time investments and they almost exclusively revolve around progression. Lets be honest, vanguard has a rather clear start and end point that is never going to change. There is a point where players will complete something and the credits might as well start scrolling.
Sure there is plenty of content to reroll alts and little things here and there to dink around with, but at that point it really isn't some fully fleshed out game anymore. It is just going back to complete some things that might have been skipped over.
Without the possibility of continual advancement, adventure or new things to do people see a very limited game. Even if that potential is not realized through an expansion, but just the possibility that an expansion is coming is usually enough for people to get into something. Vanguard doesn't have that. It is a dead end game right now.
Any problem that a player encounters will never get fixed. Any roadblock reached will never get opened. The end game is exactly that, the end and it isn't even completed.
I'm sorry, but once again the problem with vanguard is not the players. Lack of development is a very huge problem and for you to even suggest it is minor shows how disingenuous your topic is.
3)
The social panel is useless if you are just running around playing. You can't ask someone to come run around the area you are in just so you can see people. Just so you can have one of those spontanious moments that happen in many other games where you randomly bump into someone. Maybe they come by at the last second to save you from losing a combat encounter. Maybe they are on the same quest you are on and you decide to work together. Any number of situations come to mind where the world of the game presents its own social setting. That is something a social tool cannot replace and it is at best an artificial setting when it does achieve that.
Again, the problem of Vanguard is not the fault of the players. It simply doesn't have enough players to create a "world". Most of the games beauty and potential is lost, because there are not enough people to fill the world.
I really appreciate your passion for the game, because it really could be something great, but enough of trying to put the faults of vanguard (or any other game) onto those who do not play it.
EQ2 's Maps suck, Zoning suck, Coding sucks, Classes are extremely unbalanced, even to the point that every mmo on the list has better balanced classes. Finish a 1-10 level area and try and figure out where to go next. EQ2 has this goofy system where you run out on a dock and ring some kind of bell so you can get a drop down box with a list of zones. OK now that you have a list of zones, what one do you pick ? Ask in open chat ? Sure and get a smart remark back like " we have another noob here ".
My experience of the EQ2 community on 2 servers is great, and I have never been answered for asking in chat for advice like this. People have always been hugely helpfulto me, even to the point of running me as a stranger through raid instances that I havent seen when they have done with it ages ago and don't even want loot rights.
You don't get the hate for VG? I am not sure there is all that much hate. IMO people don't play VG through hate- they don't play it through sadness and uncertainty.
Vanguard is a truly asweome game and I miss it immensely, our whole guild misses it. But the fact is, after 3 years the game did run out of content. So for the veterans who would love to come back SoE would simply have to invest in developing some sort of expansion and I'm sorry to say, I don't think they will do that.
After the re-launch there was a big influx of people. Free makes people forget really quickly i guess. Most people complained about there being no real pvp and no development. This game will never be popular again. Stop your crusade and just enjoy the game for what it is. The community is great already no reason to rage.
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
It's not really complicated. Infact I'm even making it more of a complicated issue more than it needs to be.
The bottom line :
Vanguard is a full game, x10 as compared to most every other mmo on the list.
It has some bugs, In a four hour play session you may have one or so discouraging minute. You may kill a monster and it may still be standing after its dead. One out of 200 quest may be broken. You may have to re-group your team because the loot stopped working.........Were talking about once in 4 hours......I found the exact type of problems and as often in EQ2, yet people brush them off in that game.
Low population IS A PROBLEM, I'll give the haters that. However it can easily be over come buy using the game features that are built in the game like the Social panel.
SOE is famous for not fixing there games.
I'M SORRY BUT THEY DON'T, EQ2 is a twisted up mess, more so than Vanguard. They have the same type of bugs as they use the same type of coding as Vanguard. By twisted I'm talking about meshing about what, 8 or so expansions together? EQ2 has zoning problem's that are bad in its original game. Yet there expansions intensifies this issue by far, making the game much more complicated for the noob.
I feel bad for the Vets like Boojiboy, and there Guilds that loved the game soooo much that they played for years and eventually ran out of content......I could agree that SOE sucks they really do. I don't give them any credit for Vanguard they did not make this game. They made it playable and that's it, but they could have done more. I wish the President of the United States and the Supreme Cort would get together and strip SOE of there games, they should not own any of them. But until them Vanguard is the best they own ( no credit to SOE ).
Vanguard is one of the only game left that is deep and feels like a way of life. WoW was good but they screwed that up.
They obviously don't care about this game so why should I pay a monthly sub for it? I already bought the box, I subbed to this game for over a years worth of time. So, $50 for the box, $180 in sub fees. They should be giving me this game free for life if they are never going to add anything. I already put my money where my heart was with this game and they gave nothing back.
Bad company is bad. Until there is some EMU server out there or SOE finally sells the game to a publisher who will work on it, I cannot support this game.
They obviously don't care about this game so why should I pay a monthly sub for it? I already bought the box, I subbed to this game for over a years worth of time. So, $50 for the box, $180 in sub fees. They should be giving me this game free for life if they are never going to add anything. I already put my money where my heart was with this game and they gave nothing back.
Bad company is bad. Until there is some EMU server out there or SOE finally sells the game to a publisher who will work on it, I cannot support this game.
Sony is never gonna sell the game to anyone its to much of a threat to there main gmae eq2.
" Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Those Who Would Threaten It " MAGA
On daily basis i read a lot of insane things on forums but this one takes the cake. A MMO doesn't need updates, expansions and patches? so its not already bad enough that OP is asking for it to get even worse? This has to be one of the worst defense post for Vanguard so far.
Sony is never gonna sell the game to anyone its to much of a threat to there main gmae eq2.
That might be a luxury SOE had when they were rolling in money, but in light of their recent and sizable downsizing they might not be allowed to do that anymore.
The situation might have to play out a little longer, but it is a posibility.
Sony is never gonna sell the game to anyone its to much of a threat to there main gmae eq2.
That might be a luxury SOE had when they were rolling in money, but in light of their recent and sizable downsizing they might not be allowed to do that anymore.
The situation might have to play out a little longer, but it is a posibility.
In my opion they already know how good the game is and are trying to kill it. ie no support
" Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Those Who Would Threaten It " MAGA
MMOs don't need expansions but they do need updating, and that pretty often.
Paying the same monthly fees for VG as you do for EQ2 or Wow is not fair because of that, SOE have very small costs but still charge full price.
If they lowered the fees to 5 bucks or so fine, but for 15 bucks I demand at least 4 acceptable updates every year, and I don't think that is too much to ask for, almost every single MMO out there actually give you that.
SOE need to either make the game F2P ASAP or rework and relaunch the game. And they really need to update it.
Oddly enough the actual game launch shows a more recent update of April 2010 version 2680 than they show on the official website. It REALLY seems like SOE is just hoping this game dies.
As for updating I have mixed feelings about how necessary it is to enjoying a game. If the game has sufficient content then adding new content is unnecessary. Take WoW where new content usually just meant that earlier content was now pointless. Often the content added is stuff I wouldn't end up doing anything with either, like raiding or pvp content. A game with the content that Vanguard has could entertain a player (assuming they enjoy the game and the world) for a couple years. But updating as in fixing problems, add new items, holidays stuff, events and things like that are always important towards the feeling that the game is thriving.
However it IS a hard pill to swallow that you pay the same for this game as you do for a game where you know things will get fixed and there is the promise of new stuff to keep you interested for even longer. Why players accept paying a monthly fee is because of the promise of development and that the developers will attempt to keep us engaged and enjoying the game for years to come and the notion that what is a little buggy or annoying now will probably eventually be fixed or changed. For me I am back to Vanguard for now and probably for the long haul. It's a little grating to pay a full subscription price, but then I enjoy it much more than I ever enjoyed other games which were getting plenty of updates.
Vanguard has 5x more content than 90% of all other mmo's. I can't stress enough how bad I hate SOE, you would think they would only charge like $5 just to keep the servers running.
BUT it's still a great game ( I consider it the best, but that's an opinion ). Better than any other crap that's out there.
Vanguard has 5x more content than 90% of all other mmo's. I can't stress enough how bad I hate SOE, you would think they would only charge like $5 just to keep the servers running.
BUT it's still a great game ( I consider it the best, but that's an opinion ). Better than any other crap that's out there.
This is very true. You could jump into Vanguard with a guild and have a couple years of content ahead of you. Vanguard probably has more like 10x the content of a MMO such as Rift. So if SoE wants veteran players back, yes, they'd have to offer something new... like finishing Stirhaad as the next APW-style raid zone. But for a new player there is more content than you can imagine.
EQ2 is the sameway (Mind numbing, crazy amounts of content that craps all over every other MMO), and they actually pay attention to it.
Both are pretty viable for a guild or team of bros to move in on and stay busy for a long, long time.
But in the end, you're still giving $oE money - and that's bad.
I have to agree Razeron,
EQ2 is the same way ( mind numbing crazy amounts of content ). I guess I was a little hard in my original post saying how bad EQ2 is. I guess I was trying to stress that Vanguard's bugs are not as bad as the Haters make it out to be and I was using EQ2 as a comparison.
In reading your post I realize that there are VERY FEW MMO'S THAT ARE REALLY A WAY OF LIFE. A HEAL TY WAY OF LIFE ?... Not really ! ..... but that is how MMOS ARE TO BE DESIGNED.
Here is a list of MMO's that a full games, that can be considered a way of life. Feel free to add a game if I'm missing something, and I'll refrain from giving my opinion on game play as that is personal preference :
**MMO's that fall short on a way of life ( Not talking about quality )
Warhammer, FF14, Aion, AOC, Champions Online, DC Universe, Rift. And all other mmo's on the list.
If your like me, you see over 100 mmo's on the list here at mmorpg.com. CLOSE TO ALL OF THEM are toys that are half made and are considered one month novelties. The list is really short or real mmo's. We are in bad times, I almost feel sorry for developers with cost, time constraints, competition and marketing.......But facts are facts. MMO's are really few and far between.
Everyone is waiting for Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR and praying for a full game rich in content FROM THE START.
Until then we have 9 or so Real MMO's.
I find Vanguard is by far the best, since Blizzard destroyed WoW, but thats my opinion.
Vanguard has 5x more content than 90% of all other mmo's. I can't stress enough how bad I hate SOE, you would think they would only charge like $5 just to keep the servers running.
BUT it's still a great game ( I consider it the best, but that's an opinion ). Better than any other crap that's out there.
The things is still: If I play EQ2 I get even more content and steady updates for exactly the same sum.
SOE needs to lower the price for VG if they don't intend to update it, anything else is highway robbery.
I can agree that a game can get to a point where it is fun for years without updates, fine. But I can't agree that it should cost the same as a game that cost many time the running cost because you actually have people working to improve it.
I'm not sure the subscription fee is what keeps the game from hitting its possible potential. Right now vanguard is free for 45 days to basically anyone who has ever had an SOE account.
What the game really needs is some sort of relaunch with a solid commitment from SOE that it will get some development. Having a game that could easily shut down any moment and not surprise anyone isn't a very strong sales point for a game. Contrary to this entire thread I don't think many players want to invest time in a game that they believe doesn't have a future.
That has been the biggest problem of vanguard for most of its life. It could be so much more though.
I'm not sure the subscription fee is what keeps the game from hitting its possible potential. Right now vanguard is free for 45 days to basically anyone who has ever had an SOE account.
What the game really needs is some sort of relaunch with a solid commitment from SOE that it will get some development. Having a game that could easily shut down any moment and not surprise anyone isn't a very strong sales point for a game. Contrary to this entire thread I don't think many players want to invest time in a game that they believe doesn't have a future.
That has been the biggest problem of vanguard for most of its life. It could be so much more though.
You are right it is not about the money. i use station pass and i have access to all SOE games and yet i never log in to Vanguard. When i have such well supported games like EQ2 and SWG why would i bother playing Vanguard which has zero content patches or updates? if i know that this game has some future i will surely spend my time playing it, otherwise no thank you.
Problem is Vanguard is an oxymoron for SOE - a game they wished never existed because it competes with their "flagship" EQ2 but they own it anyway as a result of a kind of accident. From a business perspective I can't understand why they bought it, other than as a way to protect EQ2 from the competition and to get Brad back in-house, perhaps so he could consult on other games too.
SOE clearly never had any interest in investing in Vanguard. All they did was keep it alive and make it playable with a few extra bits and pieces. I guess they did the minimum required to break even on their purchase, but it seems hard to say they ever tried to make it into something great.
Yes it's a great game but I have difficulty playing it for 2 reasons. 1) I hate paying away a monthly sub for pretty much nothing. I agree with others that the price should be $5 a month or something to pay to keep the server running. 2) The wasted potential makes me sad and I hate to spend time in the game and constantly realise what it could have been.
To me the greatest crime against Vanguard was not the business ineptitude of its creator, or the dismal launch, but that no one nurtured it afterwards. If SOE had invested, polished and perfected we could have had a great MMO on our hands today.
Comments
Err ... ANY game needs patches.
Take "Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines" : Programmed by "Troika Games" (R.I.P.), released in 2004.
And in 2011, April 14, the fanpatch 7.4 got released. So even that game gets still fixed. And they cannot even fix the game engine (which would be kind of a huge help btw).
Likewise, Vanguard getting still fixed would be great.
P.s.: In case you are interested in getting the newest fanpatch to Bloodlines, they are announced here: http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/vampire-tm-bloodlines-47/
But for my tastes EQ2 is a horrible game. Well, some good things but if for some reason Vanguard was discontinued and they offered me a special deal on EQ2 I wouldn't take it.
and there are players in Vanguard, just not a huge amount.
Not having patches and further development tends to put people off on games which is a shame because Vaguard's world is exceptional. But again "to my tastes".
Still if a person hasn't played Vanguard then "yes" it doesn't need content patches. Not until a player gets to the end of what he/she wants to do.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If your points were things that "we all know" are not valid anymore, then you would not have any need to make a post restating those issues.
1)
I disagree here and I think many many many people have given the game second, third, fourth... chances. Just look at the trial island and it was clear to see there have always been a number of people trying the game. The fact that population has not grown as a result of that suggests there are other reasons people did not stay.
However, the problem with vanguard does not lie with players. Just because the games population has almost completely vanished doesn't mean people have not given the game a chance.
2)
No development is a huge problem and not some small pill that people don't want to swallow. MMOs are time investments and they almost exclusively revolve around progression. Lets be honest, vanguard has a rather clear start and end point that is never going to change. There is a point where players will complete something and the credits might as well start scrolling.
Sure there is plenty of content to reroll alts and little things here and there to dink around with, but at that point it really isn't some fully fleshed out game anymore. It is just going back to complete some things that might have been skipped over.
Without the possibility of continual advancement, adventure or new things to do people see a very limited game. Even if that potential is not realized through an expansion, but just the possibility that an expansion is coming is usually enough for people to get into something. Vanguard doesn't have that. It is a dead end game right now.
Any problem that a player encounters will never get fixed. Any roadblock reached will never get opened. The end game is exactly that, the end and it isn't even completed.
I'm sorry, but once again the problem with vanguard is not the players. Lack of development is a very huge problem and for you to even suggest it is minor shows how disingenuous your topic is.
3)
The social panel is useless if you are just running around playing. You can't ask someone to come run around the area you are in just so you can see people. Just so you can have one of those spontanious moments that happen in many other games where you randomly bump into someone. Maybe they come by at the last second to save you from losing a combat encounter. Maybe they are on the same quest you are on and you decide to work together. Any number of situations come to mind where the world of the game presents its own social setting. That is something a social tool cannot replace and it is at best an artificial setting when it does achieve that.
Again, the problem of Vanguard is not the fault of the players. It simply doesn't have enough players to create a "world". Most of the games beauty and potential is lost, because there are not enough people to fill the world.
I really appreciate your passion for the game, because it really could be something great, but enough of trying to put the faults of vanguard (or any other game) onto those who do not play it.
Vanguard is a truly asweome game and I miss it immensely, our whole guild misses it. But the fact is, after 3 years the game did run out of content. So for the veterans who would love to come back SoE would simply have to invest in developing some sort of expansion and I'm sorry to say, I don't think they will do that.
After the re-launch there was a big influx of people. Free makes people forget really quickly i guess. Most people complained about there being no real pvp and no development. This game will never be popular again. Stop your crusade and just enjoy the game for what it is. The community is great already no reason to rage.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
It's not really complicated. Infact I'm even making it more of a complicated issue more than it needs to be.
The bottom line :
Vanguard is a full game, x10 as compared to most every other mmo on the list.
It has some bugs, In a four hour play session you may have one or so discouraging minute. You may kill a monster and it may still be standing after its dead. One out of 200 quest may be broken. You may have to re-group your team because the loot stopped working.........Were talking about once in 4 hours......I found the exact type of problems and as often in EQ2, yet people brush them off in that game.
Low population IS A PROBLEM, I'll give the haters that. However it can easily be over come buy using the game features that are built in the game like the Social panel.
SOE is famous for not fixing there games.
I'M SORRY BUT THEY DON'T, EQ2 is a twisted up mess, more so than Vanguard. They have the same type of bugs as they use the same type of coding as Vanguard. By twisted I'm talking about meshing about what, 8 or so expansions together? EQ2 has zoning problem's that are bad in its original game. Yet there expansions intensifies this issue by far, making the game much more complicated for the noob.
I feel bad for the Vets like Boojiboy, and there Guilds that loved the game soooo much that they played for years and eventually ran out of content......I could agree that SOE sucks they really do. I don't give them any credit for Vanguard they did not make this game. They made it playable and that's it, but they could have done more. I wish the President of the United States and the Supreme Cort would get together and strip SOE of there games, they should not own any of them. But until them Vanguard is the best they own ( no credit to SOE ).
Vanguard is one of the only game left that is deep and feels like a way of life. WoW was good but they screwed that up.
Build 2640 Notes - December 9, 2009
That was the last update...
They obviously don't care about this game so why should I pay a monthly sub for it? I already bought the box, I subbed to this game for over a years worth of time. So, $50 for the box, $180 in sub fees. They should be giving me this game free for life if they are never going to add anything. I already put my money where my heart was with this game and they gave nothing back.
Bad company is bad. Until there is some EMU server out there or SOE finally sells the game to a publisher who will work on it, I cannot support this game.
Sony is never gonna sell the game to anyone its to much of a threat to there main gmae eq2.
MAGA
I think Sony shutting down SOE is a more likely scenario. Then maybe...
On daily basis i read a lot of insane things on forums but this one takes the cake. A MMO doesn't need updates, expansions and patches? so its not already bad enough that OP is asking for it to get even worse? This has to be one of the worst defense post for Vanguard so far.
That might be a luxury SOE had when they were rolling in money, but in light of their recent and sizable downsizing they might not be allowed to do that anymore.
The situation might have to play out a little longer, but it is a posibility.
In my opion they already know how good the game is and are trying to kill it. ie no support
MAGA
MMOs don't need expansions but they do need updating, and that pretty often.
Paying the same monthly fees for VG as you do for EQ2 or Wow is not fair because of that, SOE have very small costs but still charge full price.
If they lowered the fees to 5 bucks or so fine, but for 15 bucks I demand at least 4 acceptable updates every year, and I don't think that is too much to ask for, almost every single MMO out there actually give you that.
SOE need to either make the game F2P ASAP or rework and relaunch the game. And they really need to update it.
Oddly enough the actual game launch shows a more recent update of April 2010 version 2680 than they show on the official website. It REALLY seems like SOE is just hoping this game dies.
As for updating I have mixed feelings about how necessary it is to enjoying a game. If the game has sufficient content then adding new content is unnecessary. Take WoW where new content usually just meant that earlier content was now pointless. Often the content added is stuff I wouldn't end up doing anything with either, like raiding or pvp content. A game with the content that Vanguard has could entertain a player (assuming they enjoy the game and the world) for a couple years. But updating as in fixing problems, add new items, holidays stuff, events and things like that are always important towards the feeling that the game is thriving.
However it IS a hard pill to swallow that you pay the same for this game as you do for a game where you know things will get fixed and there is the promise of new stuff to keep you interested for even longer. Why players accept paying a monthly fee is because of the promise of development and that the developers will attempt to keep us engaged and enjoying the game for years to come and the notion that what is a little buggy or annoying now will probably eventually be fixed or changed. For me I am back to Vanguard for now and probably for the long haul. It's a little grating to pay a full subscription price, but then I enjoy it much more than I ever enjoyed other games which were getting plenty of updates.
Vanguard has 5x more content than 90% of all other mmo's. I can't stress enough how bad I hate SOE, you would think they would only charge like $5 just to keep the servers running.
BUT it's still a great game ( I consider it the best, but that's an opinion ). Better than any other crap that's out there.
This is very true. You could jump into Vanguard with a guild and have a couple years of content ahead of you. Vanguard probably has more like 10x the content of a MMO such as Rift. So if SoE wants veteran players back, yes, they'd have to offer something new... like finishing Stirhaad as the next APW-style raid zone. But for a new player there is more content than you can imagine.
EQ2 is the sameway (Mind numbing, crazy amounts of content that craps all over every other MMO), and they actually pay attention to it.
Both are pretty viable for a guild or team of bros to move in on and stay busy for a long, long time.
But in the end, you're still giving $oE money - and that's bad.
I have to agree Razeron,
EQ2 is the same way ( mind numbing crazy amounts of content ). I guess I was a little hard in my original post saying how bad EQ2 is. I guess I was trying to stress that Vanguard's bugs are not as bad as the Haters make it out to be and I was using EQ2 as a comparison.
In reading your post I realize that there are VERY FEW MMO'S THAT ARE REALLY A WAY OF LIFE. A HEAL TY WAY OF LIFE ?... Not really ! ..... but that is how MMOS ARE TO BE DESIGNED.
Here is a list of MMO's that a full games, that can be considered a way of life. Feel free to add a game if I'm missing something, and I'll refrain from giving my opinion on game play as that is personal preference :
**Full way of life ( what an mmo should be )
WoW, EQ2, Vanguard, EVE, LOTRO, EQ1, D&D Online, FF 11, Guild Wars 1,Star Wars Galaxies, maybe City of Heroes, DAOC, Lineage, UO.
**MMO's that fall short on a way of life ( Not talking about quality )
Warhammer, FF14, Aion, AOC, Champions Online, DC Universe, Rift. And all other mmo's on the list.
If your like me, you see over 100 mmo's on the list here at mmorpg.com. CLOSE TO ALL OF THEM are toys that are half made and are considered one month novelties. The list is really short or real mmo's. We are in bad times, I almost feel sorry for developers with cost, time constraints, competition and marketing.......But facts are facts. MMO's are really few and far between.
Everyone is waiting for Guild Wars 2 and SWTOR and praying for a full game rich in content FROM THE START.
Until then we have 9 or so Real MMO's.
I find Vanguard is by far the best, since Blizzard destroyed WoW, but thats my opinion.
The things is still: If I play EQ2 I get even more content and steady updates for exactly the same sum.
SOE needs to lower the price for VG if they don't intend to update it, anything else is highway robbery.
I can agree that a game can get to a point where it is fun for years without updates, fine. But I can't agree that it should cost the same as a game that cost many time the running cost because you actually have people working to improve it.
All things Op mentioned maybe right . Some maybe not. All those though concern classes and pve .
What about pvp? Op forgot to mention. Is there rated bg or rated arenas ranking ladder system?
Can a guild build its settelement and defend it against threats from other guilds/ enemy races?
Hows world pvp working nowdays in Vg?
It would be interesting to see what a $9.99 monthly charge would do for Vanguard.
Never happen, though.
I'm not sure the subscription fee is what keeps the game from hitting its possible potential. Right now vanguard is free for 45 days to basically anyone who has ever had an SOE account.
What the game really needs is some sort of relaunch with a solid commitment from SOE that it will get some development. Having a game that could easily shut down any moment and not surprise anyone isn't a very strong sales point for a game. Contrary to this entire thread I don't think many players want to invest time in a game that they believe doesn't have a future.
That has been the biggest problem of vanguard for most of its life. It could be so much more though.
You are right it is not about the money. i use station pass and i have access to all SOE games and yet i never log in to Vanguard. When i have such well supported games like EQ2 and SWG why would i bother playing Vanguard which has zero content patches or updates? if i know that this game has some future i will surely spend my time playing it, otherwise no thank you.
Problem is Vanguard is an oxymoron for SOE - a game they wished never existed because it competes with their "flagship" EQ2 but they own it anyway as a result of a kind of accident. From a business perspective I can't understand why they bought it, other than as a way to protect EQ2 from the competition and to get Brad back in-house, perhaps so he could consult on other games too.
SOE clearly never had any interest in investing in Vanguard. All they did was keep it alive and make it playable with a few extra bits and pieces. I guess they did the minimum required to break even on their purchase, but it seems hard to say they ever tried to make it into something great.
Yes it's a great game but I have difficulty playing it for 2 reasons. 1) I hate paying away a monthly sub for pretty much nothing. I agree with others that the price should be $5 a month or something to pay to keep the server running. 2) The wasted potential makes me sad and I hate to spend time in the game and constantly realise what it could have been.
To me the greatest crime against Vanguard was not the business ineptitude of its creator, or the dismal launch, but that no one nurtured it afterwards. If SOE had invested, polished and perfected we could have had a great MMO on our hands today.