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What i see
faceinc
Member Posts: 7
Hello,
First of all i would like to state that i do not play vanguard currently. I do however have a serious interest in the game. I first started following vanguard and its hype and progress around 3 years ago as a vested curiosity. I reigned from the days of EQ and its wonders and downfalls and really initially started following the games progress to see if the downfall of EQ was because of Sony or because of Brad himself. I would like to state that i have never and will never own or play a game from the day its released. I think its mostly because i always have a game that im playing and its not real easy to break away from an environment and friendships in an instant. This being said, i have been cruising the forums and soaking in as much of the reviews and backlash as i can. What follows is my views on vanguard, some theories and some fact that most who havent been following this game, or games designed by the devs, would know or take into account.
EQ, do i really need to say more? In the beginning it was a pretty decent game. The world was new and awe-inspiring for its time. The players who devoted time to this game had good support and a friendly and often seen staff at the helm. Verant did so many things right i couldnt and wont name them all. People who hear me talk about the "old" days often ask.....So there wasnt bugs or glitches, everything ran smooth?..... No, bugs, glitches, and crashes occured. Nothing ever runs perfect. Every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, does still apply to the gaming world. Still EQ progressed and grew to ultimately encompass most of the gamers currently playing online games in one way or another. Then Brad left Verant and EQ to pursue other opportunities. The game began to spiral into the pit it is currently still spiraling down. I still stayed with EQ through several more expansions in hopes that the game would rebound.
Brad and company as they are now called, forms Sigil and starts work on a new MMORPG called vanguard. I was, at first, speechless. Brad is not god. I do not worship brad. I do however recognize that the man was at the forefront of one of the most revolutionary games of our time. My interest grew and grew as time passed. I signed up for beta (knowing this would be a nextgen game and my cpu was pathetically too slow) and was never allowed in. I hold no grudge over this as im the cheapskate who wouldnt upgrade at the time.
Sigil is thinking ahead and recognizing that they will need a backer for marketing. Sigil joins in an agreement with microsoft. Beta testing begins with microsoft as its publishing company. Microsoft and Sigil apparently have a varying vision for the game and part ways. To this i say good. I'm sorry if this offends some but i think it came down to microsofts way or sigils way and im glad sigil held its ground.
Sony becomes the publishing entity for vanguard. Oh no, here we go again. This is also part of the reason i have yet to buy the game. Sony ceased to exist to me after what they did to EQ. I still however continue to read the forums and reviews about vanguard.
My thoughts on this broad sort-of timeline that ive laid out is this. Sigil and microsoft part ways because microsoft wants sigil to make a game that is less complex and easier to pickup and run with quickly like current popular titles today. Sigil knows how to be cutting edge and clearly wants to stick to their vision. microsoft is more worried about funneling their funds through charities to save good old bill some tax dollars and backs out. Sorry i like taking shots at bill gates its so easy. Brad and other members of sigil have strong ties still to company heads at sony and that is how the sony/sigil relationship is forged yet again.
All i can say is i would like to see more reviews with less opinion. I as a potential vanguard gamer dont care if you got nerfed and want to complain and pick at a game to make a bad review so that you feel beter. I also dont want to hear that you like flowers and teddybears and this game roxursox. explain pro's and con's in a simple manner without personal bias or opinion. At this point just because sony is behind the game also, i dont think it will make a diffrence in the outcome. I believe sony tried a powermove and gave sigil and ultimatum. Release this game to the public or give us more control in the process or we cut off funds. I would have released too.
Give me your thoughts on this if you take the time to read it through. I will be purchasing the game regardless of the horrible reviews ive read. In the same respect untill someone can give a non vanboi review i wont get my hopes up on the good things ive heard also.
EQ -70sk,70clr
DaoC- didnt make it past lvl 10
Archlord-lvl7 booorrrring
WoW- 60war,60priest, 70rogue
Comments
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
Last I saw there are something like 120+ reviews out posted by 'professional/semi-professional' reviewers out there now. Go search those - check in on a few of the multi-review sites like, but not limited to, www.metacritic.com and then - if you want to - come back to the boards and you to can post the only thing that exists on these boards - another opinion!
Welcome to mmorpg.com by the way.
The Vanguard community hasn't really seemed to wrap their noggins around the idea that people are going to dislike certain games, and they are going to post as such on the net at large. In my opinion they are what will be the implosion of the game vs appealing to a mass audience once they get their client sorted. No one wants to play with a bunch of propagandist card carrying company men, but gamers are very forgiving if a game works out their kinks to unveil a positive online experience. See Everquest 2 launch vs present if you don't believe me. EQ2 is produced by the evil empire SOE, yet it is still one of the highest ranked games on this site, and is constantly praised for it's outstanding playerbase. Can those in Vanguard say the same about their piers in game? So far, I would say they are by and far inferior, and that is not sigil or soe's fault.
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
AH this was my fault...
What i was meaning by less opinion was not including game mechanics or game experience. I was referring to opinions like " they should have made the crafting system like swg" and or " this game is EQ with diffrent graphics". Those are just examples off the top of my head as i am not going to go cut and paste or quote a thread directly as i dont like to flame.
Secondly im sorry if my first post seemed to be too advanced for a new mmorpg member. I do alot of essay style writing and sometimes i get carried away. I also if i offended someone by inadvertently cut down someone's writing skills im sorry. My writing skills are not all that great, my editor says im the master of the run-on sentence and have no real form :P.
My post was to try and draw out a straight forward Pro vs Con post. So that the public as a whole can have an easy template to base their judgements off of, and or know what they are getting into ahead of time.
Last but not least as i see from responses. I understand it is easier just to buy the game and try it out. I seem to have always been the type that likes to research and get to the bottom of things before i dive in, personality flaw i guess.
Anyway thanks for the feedback ive recieved so far. Hope to hear from more of you on this.
EQ -70sk,70clr
DaoC- didnt make it past lvl 10
Archlord-lvl7 booorrrring
WoW- 60war,60priest, 70rogue
PROs:
- great graphics, very crisp and realistic (except for character models, some are just too plain, not that bad but not great either)
- lots of races
- lots of classes
- HUGE world
- unscripted, which means you can do whatever and however, no1 is putting invisible walls or making u walk in a line surrounded by mountains so u dont walk off the path. This "not holding your hand and do what the f&*k you want" attitude is a great relief from other heavily scripted games.
- brutal and tough world, some races (particularily evil ones) have to work to gain favor with the other people.
- great group oriented game, with limited soloing. You wont get to 50 in a week here.
- tangible and complex crafting
- tangible and complex diplomacy
- fairly fast paced combat that requires your attention with many skills/spells/songs/abilities
CONs:
- hardware demanding. your celeron will burn up trying to show the intro screen.
- weak storyline
- requires advanced tweaking to increase performance for not-top-of-the-line machines
- choppy animations at times (combat, spells, etc)
- a lot of content is missing and/or is being tweaked
- game was released too early, had lots of bugs. Depending on your system config and luck, you may not experience many game breaking bugs (I didnt) or you may exprience many. most of the bugs are cosmetic or mildly nanoying at best.
- some of the recent changes (crafting/diplomacy) did not improve the latter but rather made it less fun and more random. In crafting complication randomness makes it feel like a game of dice rather then a carefully planned session and same with diplomacy, some low level diplomats are impossible to beat while high level ones are easily beatable.
- static world, not enough NPC interaction. NPCs look like statues.
Those are just a few pros and cons off my head.. im falling asleep so i might post more stuff tommorow.
I am the type of player where I like to do everything and anything from time to time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor - pre-WW2 genocide.
I like pie !
I dunno, people seem to like my Vanguard review. Perhaps you'd care to read it.
My Vanguard Review
Wow, that was some rant chief. Back in my day we walked through a foot of snow 5 miles to play Everquest.
I tried to play LotRO this week and I just logged out after like 5 minutes. It's such an amazing looking game and on highest quality graphics with 16x AA it still moves like whale crap in an ice flow, but Vanguard is just so damn gritty. It's addictively difficult. And I'm not talking about levelling curve. I'm talking about wanderers, aggro range, mob placement, 6 different ranges of mob difficulty for each level. As well as other endless variables that are situationally and chronologically dependant.
Out of all the MMO's right now I would say only EQ2 even has something close to what I get from Vanguard. It's a huge persistant world with much danger and strife. And plenty of loot. It gets better all the time and I was hooked 4 months before release anyway. One thing I will say is I only get to play 14 hours a week so with my altoholism I don't power level like some people. Perhaps that is a partial source of my enjoyment of the game. By the time I get somewhere on one of my toons, the area/mobs/quests are all fixed. My highest toon so far is 15 and I have a full 8 characters of various levels.
Anyways, if you can't afford to buy the game without making some sacrifices then don't get it. If you can then do. It will test any system on the planet btw.
Yeah fully agree, yours was excelent to read and very honost, i meself tried to make one but unfortunaly my written skills aswell my English arn't that great so my post was pretty messy as English isn't my native language and i was just trying to express myself in how i felt in Vanguard, but people seemd more concurend about my written style then what i tried to express (my English written style sort of sucks:P i will not deny that, good thing don't need that written style in my line of business or country where i life, bad thing is that sites like these don't have much room for people that don't have a A-grade for English and just want to try to express themselfs.
Teala again i will say very nice review and definitly worth the read, wished i could writte like that but can't and not really needed, just have to temper myself in not to writte to much, but even then people might react on spelling instead of what is being said.