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What remains of Vanguard
Adamantine
Member RarePosts: 5,094
YIKES !
What remains of the best MMO of all times is a very, very, very short description of its gameplay:
" As with any MMORPG, Characters in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes are a player's avatar in the game environment. Twelve characters can be created on a regular account. At creation, the name, gender, race, and adventuring class of the character are chosen and cannot be changed later. The character's appearance is also chosen, but can be modified by the player at any time thereafter, from the character selection screen. After his or her creation, the character can start play either in the starting area of his or her chosen race or in the trial zone called the Isle of Dawn. The character also has the option of picking a crafter class and two harvester skills.[citation needed]
Solo play is possible, but, as in many MMORPGs, the classes differ in their solo performance because of the unequal distribution of crucial abilities. Typical soloing strategies, such as self-healing, kiting and fear kiting, are only available to some classes; likewise, controlling fights with crowd control, avoiding fights with stealth or invisibility, and terminating lost fights with fake death or emergency evacuation teleports is not possible for all classes. Some classes, such as the Necromancer, have more soloing options, while some others, like the Warrior, are more narrowly focused. Player vs player (PvP) was available on the Sartok FFA PvP server, in the PvP arenas, or on PvE servers using the /duel command. This aspect of gameplay has never been a priority for the SOE developers. Vanguard classes are therefore not balanced with PvP in mind, and some classes are much more capable in this regard than others. For example, the maximum damage of a single attack is restricted to 20% of a target's maximum hitpoints, but certain classes can combine multiple instant attacks, resulting in "one-shotting", or immediately killing other players in one shot with no chance for the victim to fight back.[citation needed]
The second sphere of Vanguard is Crafting, and involves creating in-game items using 'recipes' and raw materials. Crafting recipes are a set of actions that must be performed in a particular order to produce a final result. Each of these actions costs 'action points', taken from an action pool. The maximum number of action points available varies with each recipe. During the crafting process, 'complications' may arise which affect the crafting process, usually, but not always negatively. The crafter can attempt to correct complications or resume crafting and deal with the consequences or benefits of ignoring the complications. 'Diplomacy' is a concept unique to, or at least first introduced by, Vanguard. It is basically a card game inspired in style and rules by collectable card games. Diplomats can enable certain city wide 'civic' buffs and gain certain special items needed for end-game content such as Guild Houses, the Griffon Mount, and other important end-game quests. Harvesting forms a fourth, simple sphere. Characters have a general harvest skill, which controls how well one can help others with their harvest, and can choose two out of five harvest types they want to specialize in, out of the pool of Mining Metal Ore, Quarrying Stone Slabs and Gemstone Samples, Lumberjacking Wood Timbers, Skinning Leather Hides, and Reaping Cloth Bales. Rechoosing these skills is possible, but all previous progress is then lost.[citation needed]
Vanguard is set in a high fantasy
world called "Telon", unusual among MMO worlds in that it is almost
entirely persistent, with no instancing or load screens. Telon does not
have "zones" in the manner of most fantasy MMOs, but there are discrete
areas, sometimes called "chunks" which delineate content to some extent
and serve to provide general geographical reference points. The world
contains 19 playable races, many of which are drawn from or inspired by
traditional high fantasy sources such as the work of J. R. R. Tolkien and the tabletop fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
There are three "continents" on the world of Telon. Each is reachable
by direct, contiguous travel from the other continents, via air or sea,
or by NPC boat from the major ports of call. There are various ways to
travel through Telon, besides simple walking on land: by mount (horse),
by player-crafted ships, by a riftway, and by flying mounts. Vanguard players can build two houses per server per account.[citation needed]
Telon contains a large number of dungeons with a broad range of size
and theme, found in many types of locations; some are very large, and
many are above-ground structures or even outdoor adventure areas rather
than traditional subterranean catacombs as such. Although most of the
dungeon content is aimed at the 'full-group' encounter (six players)
there are numerous areas, particularly at the lower levels, designed for
solo play and small groups (2-3 players). All dungeons but one are open
"public" dungeons; there is no instancing anywhere in Telon with the exception of the Ancient Port Warehouse (APW), added to Vanguard
by SOE in late 2007. There is a total of six copies of APW, called
"shards," and any new raid force has to choose which of the six copies
to enter. Vanguard also features several overland raid encounters.[citation needed] "
And nothing is described with any accuracy.
And the various "citation needed" arent helping. Citing WHAT ? The game is GONE ! The official sites are gone. Anything official is gone. Does SOE even exist anymore ? Sigil certainly doesnt. There is nothing to cite.
Comments
Vanguard was also not the best MMO of all times but it could have been had Brad not been loopy while developing it and SoE had given it the love it deserved.
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
That game is called Asherons call and it's being emulated at a fabulous rate!
Hehe nice try though..
The AC emulator is interesting (my first mmorpg) but I'll likely be playing Project Gorgon to get my old AC feel back in a game entirely fresh and new.
You stay sassy!
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Vanguard had a very rough start and once it finally shaped into a playable game the interest of the player base was lost due to newer and already more successful mmorpgs. However, those who did play it, love it. At it's core it was a pretty good game that simply didn't catch it's audience.
Bad launches killed mmorpgs ... especially at a time when free to play, mass market salvation wasn't around to prop shit games up like today. Anarchy Online never had a massive following but it had it's rabid supporters despite one of the worst launches in mmorpg history.
Sadly we freely hear the opinions of those with no experience in what they are talking about. They are blind to the fact this thread wouldn't exist if there weren't those who loved Vanguard.
You stay sassy!
In truth, the vast majority of people asking for oldschool MMOs like Vanguard don't really want an MMO like that or they'd have played it, bad launch or not.
What would have been successful is if they expected it to be a NICHE mmo (which would have been vastly better), because that is pretty much what it is. Even people (not all, but a majority) asking for it didn't actually like it. Instead they rode in on WoW's backside and expected millions like Blizzard got...obviously not the smartest of moves.
If they expected somewhere say 50k to MAYBE 100k, I think they'd been a lot more successful. That is pretty much how much oldschool MMOs got for the most part, not millions like WoW. They expected too many people to like an oldschool style MMO.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
This was all during the old school era so I have no idea what you are going on about. Everything was niche then.
You stay sassy!
Look at Elder Scrolls Online. It was one of the worst MMOs at launch I ever played. Only Anarchy Online could be worse. They changed payment models, did One Tamriel and it massively recovered into one of the most populated MMOs out there. It ALSO had "drama" with singleplayer elder scrolls fans pissed at ESO (not all, but a lot of the hardcore singleplayer only ES fans hated the idea of ESO and thought it would ruin the chances of getting a new singleplayer elder scrolls game)...yet...despite all the hate and drama surrounding ESO...only have to glance at it to know how good its doing. And at launch most people actually didn't even like it, I remember most of my friends quit and went back to WoW.
Why did it recover? Because its what a lot of people want to play and they made good changes. Where as in Vanguard, even after launch, there were massive campaigns to get people to play...very few actually stuck with it.
Even game chat people were saying how much better it was since launch, but no one actually stuck with it. That has nothing to do with drama or a bad launch, that has to do with a game a lot of people didn't like. It was, again...a niche MMO that was advertised and hyped up to be the next WoW...but it was always far better if it was regarded as a niche MMO experience for a small (compared to main stream MMOs) target of oldschool MMO fans
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
If a customer decides a product is not good, it's incredibly difficult to convince them otherwise.
This is why the first few minutes of gameplay are usually the most polished. Some of the bigger companies will likely have people purely dedicated to crunching the numbers and optimising the first impression.
I'd imagine the vast majority of players who leave a game at launch never come back. It would be really interesting to see the numbers. If we define a "leaving" player as someone who doesn't renew their subscription, what % of people would ever return at a later point? I think it must be less than 10%, possibly a lot less than that. I would not be surprised if it was way below 1%.
On top of that, each race had its own starting area...so sorta like WoW in that regard...each race had its own story. That was pretty awesome. My favorite was probably the Dark Elves, second was the desert humans (forgot their name) which were pretty fun.
However what I liked most probably...holy heck were the cities in Vanguard amazing. The vanguard cities were huge, and actually felt like a real city. Not a tiny village like most MMOs do. They even beat GW2 cities in terms of size, depth and literally could easily get lost in cities in Vanguard lol.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
Played all the way up to the end. *sniff*
~~ postlarval ~~
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
So I unistalled and quit Vanguard again. Aside a few passionate people Vanguard has unfortunately been forgotten.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul