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Vanguard could have changed everything !
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Member Posts: 312
Lets just Pretend that Vanguard was everything is was supposed to be.
Lets just say that Vanguard didn't have coding problems, chunking between zones, better graphics and more interesting quest, a game that had something for casual and hardcore, a good balance. Even add your own good stuff to the mix...... Lets just say everything went as planned " just pretend ". If so, I really believe this would have been another WoW, Everquest,UO,Eve, and LOTRO, possibly bigger.
With that :
I think Vanguard would have made a major impact on the short 30 day crap games that we have today. Less people would side and support short theme park, with no sociable interactions other than dynamic events.
More people would be on board with old school. In fact Old school should not even be a word. The way I see it, old school=mmo. Old school should have evolved with better graphics and interesting stuff to do. Instead DEVELOPERS COMPLETELY CHANGED THE FORMULA....Did anyone ask for this change ?....Did you ?
If Old School mmos went in the right direction and evolved properly, we would have something for the casual players mixed in with hard core. I hate to use this example but WoW sociologicaly did things right. They went into the mind of players and seen that some like hard content and others like easy...You had both in WoW ( at least in Vanilla ).
Vanguard could have changed everything....less people would put up with crap.
Comments
You need water to put out fire....
Ultima and Everquest were the polar opposites in the old days...
WoW has taken the Theampark thrown from EQ....
But the developers haven't made a sandbox game capable of taking the Sandbox Throne from Ultima Onile....
Mark my word the game that surpases WoW and knocks it off the stump will not be a theam park it will be a Sandbox!!!
UO,Shadowbane,SWG,Darkfall,MO,Wurm Online,Secretworld,GW,GW2,PotBS,LotR,Atlantica Online,WWII Online,WoT,Battlestar Galactica,Planetside2,Perpetuum,Fallen Earth,Runescape,WoW,Eve,Xsylon,Dragon Prophet, Salem
I've been saying it for nearly a decade now...
Themepark + Sandbox hybrid is the key. The perfect blend of both philosophies and designs, offering enough content and guidance to keep the point of entry low and easy enough... but with enough depth and freedom to keep the community growing strong, developing ownership and attachment.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Really?
After reading this bit, and I didn't read further, I paraphrased it down to: "Let's pretend that Vanguard was everything that every MMO since World of Warcraft has CLAIMED to be prior to release."
Most of the hyperbole and feature discussion that comes out of MMO developers prior to release is a load of rubbish. Every single one of them is guilty of it as well. They don't actually make any promises, they just discuss in vague terms what makes their version of X content/feature better than (or more innovative than) that type of content in other games, but when we get to release it just ends up being "same s**t, different game".
Seriously. It's par for the course at this point. Get over it.
No one asked you to read anything...........Your stuff just seems to be jebberish anyway !
The problem I see is that the casual playstyle has dictated the way a game is developed. People say that the older MMO's didn't have casual friendly content and that is completely absurd. In the older games all casual meant was that you progressed slower than the more average/hardcore player.
Apparently that has become something unacceptable over the years. Now casual players progress at the same rate that hardcore players would have progressed 10 years ago. Meaning the Hardcore players are progressing 10x faster than normal and making content trivial after a few weeks. Leading to casuals still feeling gated because they can't get into the endgame.
The only thing casualized development has done is shorten the lifespan an MMO has or increase the rate at which developers must churn out content. Which in the end gives us less creative content/more rushed leading to players being bored and leaving.
Things need to slow back down. Not Lineage 2 slow. But perhaps FFXI slow. It shouldn't take you a day or two to get to max level (especially with the way games are releasing endgame content with only one or two dungeons and a raid). Getting to max level should feel like an accomplishment.
Casualization has also brought about the dumbing down of content. As per a massively article yesterday, we have lost the Support/CC role in our MMO's. A role that was a huge tactful playstyle that would allow people to address content in a multitude of ways. Now CC is just a way to frustrate/excite people in PvP. CC is hardly ever if at all used in PvE anymore and it is all rolled into DPS classes. Whats next, Healers and Tanks?...Oh wait.
Why are people burning through endgame content so fast? Why does it seem like after every expansion or every new game that releases things just keep getting easier and easier. Mob AI is unintelligent. Mechanics are lazy and don't bring about anything new. Seriously, how many times are we gonna see the don't stand in the fire mechanic being used as an endgame boss mechanic that is supposed to be super difficult. Increased HP Value =/= Increased Difficulty.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
ive been also saying this in some form or another every time this issue pops up. If the majority of the gaming world wanted these games, we would be playing them.
WoW has millions of subscribers. Get over it.
How could an EQ clone with some WoW elements sprinkled on it have changed anything? How could more of the same be the future? You can't be serious!
Games like Darkfall or Mortal Online could have changed everything if they weren't of such low production quality and also PvP gank fests. I still hope that either Archeage or EQ Next will achieve what those have failed to do. There's still GW2, which changed something by kicking the hornet's nest of the endless series of WoW clones though.
My computer is better than yours.
No offense OP, but this thread is rather pointless.
Your argument basically amounts to 'pretend Vanguard was something it wasn't' followed by 'insert what you would've wanted it to be'. In which case you think it would've been the next WoW. Well, ANY game could've been the next WoW if we're comparing imaginary games that never existed.
Vanguard was what it was, it was a good game (with many issues), and it did not become the next WoW. Not even close. Furthermore, even if Vanguard were to somehow be re-released today with everything you wanted, it would still not be the next WoW.
Why? There's been numerous threads discussing this very topic on these forums alone:
- WoW's success is due to more than just how the game was made. Much more. The bulk of WoW's success came from Blizzard pulling in a LARGE OUTSIDE MARKET into the MMO genre. Something that is not really doable anymore, because the genre is already very large.
- Because of the fact above, WoW was most of this 'new market's first MMO. As such, for those people it will always be the pinacle of MMOs. Just as for many of us, our first MMOs are 'so much better than todays games'. It's that first love phenomina, and once you get people hooked on a game, they are extremely unlikely to move on to another game, even if it is 100% better. You're brain attempts to rationalize, distort truths, and reinforce your own belief that you are indeed playing the superior game.
- WoW is the most dumbed game, and does one of the best jobs at rewarding people for minimal effort. It's the type of game where anybody can play it, and yet still feel like they are the hero. That somehow, even though a million other people are doing the same thing, their play is somehow special. These are characteristics of popular games, and it's for this reason that we see so many games throwing out achievements like candy, and dumbing down their mechanics to a toddler-like skill level. In other words, the game is the most accessible.
- Furthermore, WoW shamelessly steals ideas from it's competition. Every time a game introduces a good idea that Blizzard thinks it can assimilate into WoW, they do it. This didn't help the game become successful, but it is essentially a stop-gap that allows the game to remain successful, longer.
I could go on, but I think my point's been made. A lot of people focus on how a game is made & it's graphics when talking about whether or not a game will be successful. However, we have dozens of examples of games with both, that still fail. And none are anywhere close to as successful as WoW is right now.
The next game to be like WoW will come only when the following things happen:
1) A bulk of the playerbase stops playing MMOs (at which point it will be the game that re-introduces them to the genre)
2) Player's change their mentality about how a game should be played. (kill all the things, to get all the loot, to kill all the things....). Many of us don't realize this, but we are reinforcing the very same games we complain about having. We get all these WoW clones because we repeatedly show that we want more WoW clones. And when we get games that aren't WoW clones, we complain that they suck, don't have enough 'endgame' or 'loot', and then go on to play more WoW clones.
It's a vicious cycle, and until it breaks, we have small hopes for a next big thing. There are many new interesting games being made. MMOs are changing. We just don't seem to give a damn.
You should remove EVE from the group of possibilities, that game is a complete sandbox situated in 1 virtual world, the othe rgames you describe - including Vanguard- are themepark MMOs based on separate server with the same 'worlds' on them.
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
There is no question that Vanguard was the Last Mohican - I mean last MMORPG
When Vanguard failed - they could have just put the key into the door of this site, and close it forever.
It was the end of the generation , end of a concept that EQ created.
And after that , all was simply ride downhill.
GW2 is probably the ultimate slap in the face of Vanguard.
To this day I am sad for it.
Dont know how many of you were on mmorpg.com in Vanguard days. But the amount of hate and arguments was something this site never seen since. And you know this site seen it a lot.
It was obvious a chance was missed, that would never come again...
The millions of players who play GW2 disagree with you. As well as the multi-millions who play all the other MMORPGs that aren't Vanguard.
Vanguard failed not only because of poor production quality (bugs, lag, need a monster computer to run it) but also because its whole design was obsolete, and because for people who wanted an EQ clone raid end game, WoW did it better 3 years earlier too. Add to this an arrogant lead developer with his head so stuck in his own bottom that he didn't realize his concept was going to tank badly, and you have Vanguard.
Vanguard had no chance against WoW, and no chance either against LOTRO which was released a couple of months later and which was a MUCH better "EQ/WoW clone" game too.
My computer is better than yours.
I am not saying GW2 is bad
Just that its anti-thesis of Vanguard
Which is in my opinion a good thing. We had our fill of EQ and then EQ/WoW clones. About time some AAA developers try different things, even if it doesn't please everyone. And yeah, Vanguard was just another of those clones.
This is a bit like those people who like to drive collection cars. A few may enjoy maintaining a 1960's Ford Mustang, and feeding it with the 20+ liters of gas per 100km it needs, but most adult, mature and realistic people realize the design is obsolete, and that those cars are ecological and financial disasters.
My computer is better than yours.
No, the player base didn't change, at least not in the way you describe. You started MMO gaming at a time in your life when you had more free time. I was already much older and had far less time than you so I set aside what I could and focused on the aspects of older titles and skipped the others.
Time marches on, you no longer have the free time you did, but since my children grew up I now have much more free time so am looking for more time consuming content.
Also, a new generation has stepped in behind you to take your former slot and they have as much time as you ever did and can devote the time required.
10-12 years ago, there was a large number of people who would not play these games due to their time consuming virtual world designs, and what really changed is the game designs themselves to draw them into the market since they actually were the larger segment as WOW proved so that's what every AAA developer has been chasing since.
Back to Vanguard. It really was a reinvention of EQ 1, so I don't see it as the game changer the OP does, it's success might have drawn a few more dev's into creating more alternate versions of it, but WOW was the big dog in the room and it's features are what appealed to a far greater percentage of the market and even in VG was almost perfect, it would not have appealed to this new casual player base that Blizzard managed to unlock.
"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
GW2 is way more like WoW than EQ was. I think that is where your premise falls apart. GW2 is a soft clone of WoW. EQ and WOW were really nothing alike other than being fantasy MMORPG with raids in them.
2 of the 3 have casual friendly hub based leveling. GW2 and WoW
2 of the 3 have most of the group content thrown into instances. GW2 and WoW
2 of the 3 have item only progression at max level. GW2 and WoW
2 of the 3 throw PvP into special instances. GW2 and WoW
2 of the 3 have talent tree style character builds. GW2 and WoW
2 of the 3 have very simplistic and more importantly forgiving crafting system. GW2 and WoW
2 of the 3 have sort of a cheesy sense of humor and a lot of goofy stuff thrown in. GW2 and WoW.
When I play GW2 I more or less do exactly the same things I did when I played WoW. MOve around from POI to POI and complete the little objectives and maybe queue up for a dungeon instance or PvP. EQ was more about finding out what friends were up to or finding a place I could actually solo since there weren't a ton of them. The game didn't lead you around by the nose and it certainly didn't pull you right out of the world the way the WoW clones constantly do. Take the events out of GW2 and I'd call it a hard clone of WoW. Since they mixed up how combat works some and added the events it is more of soft clone.
Anyone who played (or like me, still plays) both GW2 and WoW knows that what you posted it complete nonsense. GW2's design is totally different from WoW, both in the leveling and in the end game aspects. WoW is an EQ clone with quests slapped on it, same end game (raid grind based). Several of the original WoW developers were actually coming from EQ.
My computer is better than yours.
I have played all 3 heavily and I completely disagree with you. You seem fixated on the raid aspects and I'm looking more at how the full games function. A huge part of it is the hub based leveling, the casual friendly aspects and the instancing. These create the same core game. If you ask me what WoW did to change the core of the MMORPG it is exactly those things and those are all carried over into GW2 and did not exist in EQ.
You didn't have to raid for an end game in EQ either and you certainly don't have to in WoW where you can get gear thrown at you from heroics or PvP. All GW2 did was replace the raids with large scale mob events.
There all the same family of game
EQ-WoW-Vanguard-GW-GW2 Tired and sick of this family I much prefer,
UO- SWG (Pre NGE)-Eve-Wurm Alas we need a AAA developer to bring out a good sandbox!!!
UO,Shadowbane,SWG,Darkfall,MO,Wurm Online,Secretworld,GW,GW2,PotBS,LotR,Atlantica Online,WWII Online,WoT,Battlestar Galactica,Planetside2,Perpetuum,Fallen Earth,Runescape,WoW,Eve,Xsylon,Dragon Prophet, Salem
Thank god all companies don't have the same mindset as you or everyone would be forced to play what "you" and others think is the "right game". Personally I detest GW2....hate it.
So your answer is to shutdown all games that don't have a million+ players as they are like old mom and pop shops. It is this type of mindset in general I don't care for. Whatever, play what you like and don't try and force your views or opinions on me cause I don't agree with them and a game doesn't have to be new and most popular for me to like it.
Some people haven't given up on these games you know, just sayin.
Well sure if you want to talk the really broad sandbox vs theme park categories.
I'd go more
EQ - Vanguard
WoW - EQ2 - LOTRO - GW2
UO - AC - Eve - Ryzom
etc. There are different families of theme parks. Those that really hold your hand and have very clearly designated rides to go on and those that promote you just sort of finding the rides on your own. WoW is the start of those that really show you where the rides are and that are willing to pull you out of the park to enjoy the rides. EQ and Vanguard always kept you in the park and let you find the rides yourself.
I would actually play both
GW2 is excellent because it does not need much investment. In fact its the fastest starting MMO. Did you know that ?
You can be in mids of playing some 20 seconds after you press the icon on your desktop.
But than it can get very shallow.
Sometimes you need something more binding, with more consequences and rewards.
Than you could have played Vanguard.
That's far from what he said!!! Pretty darn sure he says and I will highlight it in his post. Many of use are sick of theamparks, sick of instancing, sick of quests, we want to see something different!!!!
UO,Shadowbane,SWG,Darkfall,MO,Wurm Online,Secretworld,GW,GW2,PotBS,LotR,Atlantica Online,WWII Online,WoT,Battlestar Galactica,Planetside2,Perpetuum,Fallen Earth,Runescape,WoW,Eve,Xsylon,Dragon Prophet, Salem
Nice to see someone with decent reading comprehension around here for a change.
Thanks for that.
GW2 is not the "end of it all" and definitely has quite a few flaws, but it IS something DIFFERENT. It's not just another WoW clone like Vanguard, LOTRO, Rift, etc...
That's why I play both WoW and GW2. Because both games are really totally different takes on the theme park model.
My computer is better than yours.
I will only say one word for the highlighted part: LOL.
There's definitely more things to do in both WoW and GW2 than in EQ at end game.
And GW2 didn't replace anything, it simply suppressed the "end game grind". You don't suddenly completely change the way you play the game when you hit 80 in GW2.
And saying that GW2 is "hub based leveling" only proves one thing. That you played GW2 like a WoW clone, and you did it wrong. GW2 is a theme park, yes, but not even remotely close from being "hub based".
My computer is better than yours.
Vanguard was always intended to be a *niche* mmo
Aradune on FOH forums - i added the emphasis
http://web.archive.org/web/20070609181848/http://www.fohguild.org/forums/mmorpg-general-discussion/18145-sigil-defines-core-gamers-re-vanguard-6.html
Does our core gamer = WoW's casual gamer? I don't have their internal data, obviously, but I doubt it. Our core gamer is someone who plays 2-4 hours every night, occasionally spending a full day or so raiding, but who is normally focussed on challenging group oriented gameplay. The casual and raid gamer will indeed have content for them, but the core gamer is our focus. So also is creating a more challenging and longer term game -- a home.
I do know the average EQ player earlier on (launch->Velious) and it is their playstyle and time commitment whom we are targeting primarily.
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