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Give me the latest news from in-game plz!
os008
Member UncommonPosts: 83
Hi,
Wanted to ask everyone who's playing it now, or played for at least the last week, is the game coming together, the Quests r now working and meaningful, the bugs r squashed, is it worth playing now or should i wait for a couple of months? actually i have 1 month till my vacation is over, so i must decide today if i should buy it or just wait till July!
Another thing, is its GFX Engine better or worse than EQ2's from the artistic point of view, and from the technical point ... is it heavier or lighter?
Egyptian, 27
Former EQ2, Guild Wars player
Waiting on the next decent MMO
Currently playing ... nothing.
Comments
Before the close of the beta (tuesday), they patched one or two times a day.
Shed loads of changes have gone into the game, last but not least faction and KOS for races. I have never seen a game go through such rapid change.
There are very few broken quests or looking at it another way, there is plenty to do. 1-10 level quests are fairly straight forward, introducing the player to the game concepts. Hint: Its better to take up diplomacy as well because some mobs can actually be spoken to. Certain areas have more love than others quests wise, things on Kojan are superb at times, Thestra not bad and Qalia does need an update.
From an artistic point of view, I prefer VG to EQ2, because they have gone to great lengths to make the game feel real (for instance all the zones join up like EQ1), I must prefer it.
From a technical stand point, EQ2 has a quicker engine but then its been "live" for quite some time. Sigil have said the engine tweaks will continue but I can't see this game running on a card without Shader 2.0 stuff (Sigil said it would be very difficult to achieve at this stage).
Should you buy it? It all depends on what you expect from a game. VG will go through yet more rapid change over the next 2 months, including things like a class customisation system, raid content, more tweaks for pve balance and pvp balance etc etc.
As a game its very playable, most classes are complete, just expect a small number of abilities/spells to not work right. I never had any trouble soloing or grouping in the game.
This game is designed for people to think for themselves, there is little hand holding after 10th level, combat can be quite hard work at times, dungeons are massive. No instancing, player owned housing, mounts and boats make the game feel more immersive.
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
wait a couple of months in my oipinion, it was improving last time I logged in but it will take time
GFX engine is much heavier than EQII's, model quality and animations were being tweaked but overall they were worse than EQII's. Draw distance was much better,
I miss DAoC
Diplomacy can be used in adventuring as well, I have seen mobs that aren't agressive and have Diplomacy quest markers (if you know what I mean).
There isn't a massive amount currently but it is something they want to improve.
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
The bug squashing during the last month of beta was phenominal, more patches with more changes than most MMO's release in a year of live, there are still some bugs there, so if encountering anything that isn't 100% fine polished is a game breaker for you, then you can wait a little, but it's perfectly playable and at this rate of updating I'm quite confidant about buying right away. I don't get for example the feeling that you'll be waiting a year for battlegrounds to limp in as you were with WoW.
PvP isn't balanced, it's not really a focus of the game, some classes will pwn others, but group to group combat will be fine, because that co-operation eliminates the solo problems - if everything's balanced for decent 1v1 it usually means that class diversity is sorely missing.
World is just vast, the size of a game with years & years of expansions behind it, 19races and 15classes (and 2 more classes shortly to follow) makes it much more dynamic and interesting than other options, but really hard to pick a class or starting area you like best.
Crafting & diplomacy & harvesting are excellent and entirely divorced from your adventuring level, you can advance any sphere at it's own pace without being forced to hit boars with an axe so you can get better at blacksmithing etc.
Group play dynamics are very solid and interesting and far more tactical that other games, the implementation of healers for example is now the bar for all other MMO's.
It is much more of a sandbox type world, mounts (& later flying ones) to explore in any direction (what is that castle ontop of that mountain etc) ships to sail around, your own homes to build (maybe on a island you find who knows) - you won't be lead on a breadcrumb trail of mindless quests forever, after the lower levels you'll want to go out and explore and travel and find new areas and new quests to pickup, or just gather a group of friends and go plumb the depth of a new dungeon you've found in some corner of the world. There's a huge amount of content, vastly more than you could ever do before you outlevel most of it, anyone who says different isn't really prepared to travel or explore at all, and just expects to be lead by the hand along a linear path.
If you expect to have a draw distance of Kilometers to appreciate the world and get fired up about going out there to explore, and yet expect to have the same Frames Per Second as a First Person Shooter that's only drawing meters, and often mostly geometric (flat planed) shapes at that, then yes you may be critical. No argument that it needs a top of the line rig to run at top of the line settings, but that isn't essential if you just turn things down a bit.