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Thinking of buying it to test it out.
RonnyRulz
Member Posts: 479
I was thinking of forking over the $40 to test it out, but I'm still unsure.
Reading so many negative reviews on it, I don't know.
I also heard from some that the game is dead now? The populations are low???
I prefer to be on a roleplay server...are those populations dead?
Are the majority of bugs fixed?
Animations? Spell graphics? Are they finished or still unfinished?
I don't want to hear any negative reviews, because I've heard it all. I'm sure most positive reviews are silent becasue the ppl are busy playing the game.
Does anyone actually ENJOY the game, and why?
What kind of game does this cater to?
The boats, houses, multiple classes and races, huge world, and crafting all are very interesting.
Should I fork over the $40 to test the game out for the free month? If yes, why? (You can say no, but you don't have to explain and say why not.)
Or should I just go with LOTR? It seems IMO that Vanguard is more complex and less simple-minded than LOTR. LOTR seems more like a WoW clone (which is fun and good) but I would enjoy a more in-depth MMO with more to do than just grind. But... I heard VG is bad when it comes to the GRIND.
Comments
I like this game, but I will still tell you to get a Buddy Key and try it our first. It's not for everyone, but it's damn fun for some
That said, if you have any specific question, feel free to ask away
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
Well I don't really have anyone to give me a Buddy Key.
If anyone has one though, I'd love to try it out instead of gambling $40.
My email is ronnyrulz@aol.com
don't do it man - just don't
From someone who actually plays the game and doesn't make stuff up, here is the following answers to your questions:
"The population is low"
Like all MMORPGs some servers have heavy population, others have lite. EU server I am on most characters are 20-40 level. Newbies zones still have a fair share of folks. Also the servers have huge populations, 50k of cahracters on some of them, so a medium populated server is not as small as you think, plus the world is huge and there are so many zones, unless you do /who, sometimes you don't even see anyone.
"Are the majority of bugs fixed?"
The game is still very buggy and will take a few months to be super clean, some are irritating like bad agro in certain dungeons, others harmless (like the bugs when crossing zones and losing forms).
"Does anyone actually ENJOY the game, and why?"
The game is very much like EQ1, its very hard to level, it takes a long time and you have to be a very skilled player to cope. There is nothing easy about this game which I like. Most of the content past 15th level is group orientated, I rarely solo but mainly get pickup groups or guild groups every evening. Obviously with a world this huge, a lot of areas are not well populated during the day or early morning.
Why do I enjoy the game? Well its difficult, challenging, massive, the variety is amazing, I am only on one continent at the moment and have the choice of 4 dungeons (37th) to xp in, although its 15 mins ride to two of them.
The game is very extendable, has a lot of potiential, has been built for 7 years or more and you can tell.
The community is probably the best I have been in for a long while, people are friendly and helpful, cos groups share dungeons, they respect camps, train shouts are starting to emerge once again and people ressing you when your group wipes
"Animations? Spell graphics?"
Pretty good, a large variety of graphics and animations, they keep improving them. A couple seem half finished like rez but generally pretty much what you would expect from EQ1 or WoW.
If you started with EQ1, UO or DAOC, this game is definately for you. If you started on WoW, your going to find levelling hard work, if you solo a lot, its gonna be doubly as hard (group xp is much better).
Grind factor in VG isn't has bad as EQ1 but it isn't as easy as WoW, its somewhere inbetween.
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
Thx for the info. Still waitin on that buddy key though :-
Maybe someone in your guild might have one? I'm also looking for guild as well, so that's a good recruit tool :P lol
I'll ask around... again, if you have any questions, ask me away!
I will warn you, the game is VERY buggy. It's still darn fun IMO, but the bugs can be frustrating.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
Florendyl is the one RP server, and yeah it's pretty empty nowadays. Six of my eight character slots are used towards that server, so I can tell you it's pretty vacant on all corners of the map.
You can of course find some people in population hubs like main cities, but in general it suffers from all the symptoms of low population: dying guilds, shortage of groups and in general you're alone a whole lot of the time when you're out questing.
Nope.
http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/inTheWorks.vm
There's just the "Top Ten" of them, all of which that existed at launch or were actually introduced post-launch, and a majority of them having existed in beta.
So, given how long we've dealt with things like hitching, memory leaks and so on already, I wouldn't put any money on either being fixed any time soon.
Very crappy, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were intended to just be placeholders.
I judge them based on things like...lets say Necromancer's Bone Spike spell. Given the name, and the flavor text description, you'd expect maybe a sharpened bone to be thrown at your enemy. Instead you conjure some blue glitter.
Referencing Necromancer again, if you've played a game like Guild Wars where all of your minions animate in cool ways when summon; your pet simply appears on the screen in Vanguard.
So spell effects that are irrelevant to the actual spell description, and lack of anything neat at all considered, Vanguard's spell effects are subar.
As for character animations...just think of one of those PBS claymation cartoons, then imagine a fight breaking out, that's pretty much it. Sounds disparaging, but honestly, they're crappy. There's also the lack of combat animations such as seeing your character visually parry a weapon, block, evade, etc...the animations aren't telling at all in a combat situation. I believe it's bad when you're forced to look at the combat log to get all of the details.
The only enjoyment I manage to reap from Vanguard is playing with my friends. If you have a tight-knit group, there's a few things you can collectively decide to try and do...like pool resources for crafted items, buy house lots, build ships, etc. In general, things to do on the side of crafting.
As to what I like personally about Vanguard...well I don't like raid-centric games. Right now, Vanguard has no raiding at all, but that's due to a shortcoming more than a design intention. Even when that's rectified though, Vanguard is "supposed" to be group-centric even at end-game.
So, and I know this'll sting a lot of ears, I like that Vanguard's PvE is more casual and less hardcore than say, World of Warcraft's.
But really, I wouldn't play if I didn't have friends to play with. If you have some and they want to play, then it can be ok.
Casual folks who don't care about the politics behind a game, or it's popularity. People who don't have a looming suspicion of SOE dramatically changing their game in the future, and even if SOE did, they wouldn't care.
That said, the game is for anyone who likes buying potential. I have no qualms about saying there is really nothing in Vanguard that makes it worth buying Vanguard right now, simply because Sigil themselves are constantly trying to sell Vanguard based on it's future. If you like playing MMOs and constantly look forward to what patch may bring, and not mind disappointment, and you're ok with the prospect that features you really want are years into the future...Vanguard is for you.
Nope.
But LOTRO works.
Vanguard isn't an anti-thesis to the WoW formula, it follows it just as much as LOTRO does, except in a very broken way.
Ronnyrulz, could you clear up a few things for me? I see these kind of 'hey should I try out this game' posts a lot, in fact except for the poster they are always almost identical in content. But I am confused. I read through your other posts on this site and in many of them you say that you are playing or have played VG. So which is it? Why would you need to pay for the game again if you have already played? And these posts were post-beta dated. For example you posted this:
"Horrible horrible coding.
I have a high-end system ($2500+) and Vanguard still doesn't look that good. The environment may be beautiful, but that's it. The graphics are NOT worth the system specs it requires.
With all settings max I can get 20-40 FPS. With settings down a notch I can get an average of 30-35 FPS. This is pathetic, seeing as how I can run Oblivion on max settings getting amazing FPS, and I can run BF2142 getting at minimum 60 FPS and on average 60-100 FPS.
The coding of Vanguard is horrible. Just plain horrible. Whoever designed the code for this game SUCKS.
Ignoring the bugs, it still sucks in graphics IN RELATION TO the required power to run it.
Not to mention the fact there is no object draw distance!!!!!!!!!!!! Objects and NPC's "pop" into existence. That's absolutely horrendous, especially for immersion."
Also there is a post where someone asks the exact same thing as in your OP in this thread and you replied to them in a very negative way, so what gives? Why would you need a buddy key if you already purchased the game? I'm just curious as to what exactly is going on here, and I thank you in advance for your replies.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
I would of had to pay for my Vanguard: SOH subscription in 2 days. I canceled, drove to EB Games and pre-ordered LOTRO. Way better, graphics, scenery], gameplay, basically everything.
Considering the $199 lifetime membership.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
The Brave Do Not Fear The Grave
You have to remember that different people have different tastes. While you may think popcorn chicken is the greatest food ever, somebody else may think a regular slice of pizza is. Nobody is wrong or right.
Gameplay, graphics, and sound are all subjective things, look at them as nothing more than a matter of opinion.
What's the name of your guild on Florendyl?
Better yet, get me your guild name. I'll join your guild, and you show me the bustling activity. Right now I'm in-game and have been for the last three hours, and I've seen a total of one (idle) player in the Lomshir Plains at the race track. There's not a soul looking for a group in my area, and guild chat is dead for The Praxium, the guild that started the vanguardroleplayers.com community site for the server.
Do you deny that population/activity has steadily declined since release?
But again, these are all official problems addressed by Sigil. It doesn't much matter what you deny when the facts are there.
Do throw me your guild names though.
Nope.
True. The major ones are gone, but there are a toon of Chunk / Border issues, plus general play bugs. It's just reality, like the game or not.
You heard it here first, memory leak bug fixed "soon"!http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/inTheWorks.vm
There's just the "Top Ten" of them, all of which that existed at launch or were actually introduced post-launch, and a majority of them having existed in beta.
So, given how long we've dealt with things like hitching, memory leaks and so on already, I wouldn't put any money on either being fixed any time soon.
The memory leaks are a joke. That said, I believe from my interactions with the Dev's that they will be fixed soon.
Yeah, they've been "fixed" repeatedly over a few patches now. Somehow, I doubt they'll be rectified once and for all in one fell swoop just because MX13's "interactions with the Devs" assures him so.
As usual, I have to applaud you for your amazing use of examples there to support your argument. I even like how you used other competing MMOs of either the present or past to compare Vanguard's animations and spell effects to. In doing so, you prevented your arguments from seeming a tad baseless and purely opinionated, which they would've been if you relied on something like the ol' "everyone I know" type of claim.
I have no idea what you're basing your opinions on, so it makes it a little difficult to understand why you're disagreeing. Do you disagree that Dark Age of Camelot has better, more informative combat animations, and consequently, it's a shame that a 2.5 million dollar game made 6 years ago exceeds a 30 million dollar "third-gen" MMO in animation quality?
Or maybe you believe Guild Wars has less relevant spell effects than Vanguard? Or any other MMO?
It's completely fine if you absolutely love Vanguard's spell effects and animations, so long as we're in agreement that most other MMOs have done them a lot better. There's a difference between saying Vanguard is crappy, and Vanguard is crappier than other MMOs.
@sepher
Main is 'Ese'
http://www.rlmmo.com/viewtopic.php?t=1978
Guild on Florendyl is 'The Remains'
http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/guildsProfiles.vm?guildId=51539607801
I love the guild name, very appropos.
I started EQ with Kunark, DAoC at launch and UO and AC in between those two events. I played EQ from Kunark to Darkhollow, so EQ must have floated my boat.
Vanguard is not a next-gen version of EQ, it's not even current EQ. It's unplayable in its current state, and shouldn't have been released to the playing public. Unless Sigil can claim pot as a valid business expense, I can't honestly see how they managed to spend the reported $30 million on this abomination. Seriously, someone must have been smoking something to think that this was a game.
I will pay them some credit though, the static screenshots do look good. Unfortunately, the game plays like a screenshot flick book.
Landscapes do look good, but the character models are dire. The UI is a nightmare. Quests are the same as we've been doing for the last 5 years. As for code optimisation, 16 gig install -- wtf?? That's more than my EQ2 and WoW folders put together.
In all honesty, unless you can get a buddy key, have a state of the art machine, and fondness of being bored shitless, don't bother.
Over half of those characters haven't logged in since over a week ago. Most of those haven't logged in for the month of April period. Sounds like another dying guild. Especially considering some of the tad few characters that are active, are probably MX13's alts.
So nevermind, no need to leave one dead guild to join another, but point made.
LotrO
.................................
V.G.
.......................................
LotrO
who me ?
The problem with VG is its huge and there are few gathering points, most people move to the zone which the dungeon is in and wait for a group.
Cities are huge also and a lot of them have no real gathering place except if your a crafter.
Where I am grouping currently is two zones away from the nearest hub, so again you will see 20-30 people there in various buildings but most head out to the zone with the dungeon and wait there, sometime they gather outside dungeon entrances (just like old EQ1).
In the 36-40 level zone I am in, on a saturday I can do /who at any point and 40 names will appear (the max for /who to bring back). The newbie zones have 20+ during the day (as sometime I play my alt).
Considering there is 16 newbie areas across 3 continents and at my level 4 dungeons I can group in which have masses of players, although I may not see a group every 5 minutes like in other much smaller games, the servers are definately bursting with players.
As for like EQ1, camping, grinding, KOS, non instance dungeons, trains, zones, you can't really get much closer to EQ1 if you tried without reinventing it.
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 problem with VG is its huge and there are few gathering points, most people move to the zone which the dungeon is in and wait for a group.
Cities are huge also and a lot of them have no real gathering place except if your a crafter.
Where I am grouping currently is two zones away from the nearest hub, so again you will see 20-30 people there in various buildings but most head out to the zone with the dungeon and wait there, sometime they gather outside dungeon entrances (just like old EQ1).
In the 36-40 level zone I am in, on a saturday I can do /who at any point and 40 names will appear (the max for /who to bring back). The newbie zones have 20+ during the day (as sometime I play my alt).
Considering there is 16 newbie areas across 3 continents and at my level 4 dungeons I can group in which have masses of players, although I may not see a group every 5 minutes like in other much smaller games, the servers are definately bursting with players.
As for like EQ1, camping, grinding, KOS, non instance dungeons, trains, zones, you can't really get much closer to EQ1 if you tried without reinventing it.
The problem with VG is that the servers are suffering from low population, period. If you were in Open Beta, if you played at launch, you'd know what the servers are like when they're "bursting with players". It's almost as if you're saying the world somehow expanded and people thinned out. That isn't the case, people simply aren't playing anymore.True or not, server-wide activity is decreasing instead of increasing, and has been since launch?
Who's your guild anyway? It's probably full of inactive members as well.
LotrO
.................................
V.G.
.......................................
LotrO
Yeah, you provide with 3 different screenshots. The most notifable thing in LOTR is the water effect. The other graphics makes it very suitable to screenshots, not shure of the technical term, but using 2d-meshes for leaves, poppins(?), fog yeah it looks awesome on screenshots. But hey I am shure you have noticed it (the 2d mesh thing) playing the game aswell.
Dont know how they actually have done that in Vanguard, but to deny that those graphics things are better done in Vanguard, would be like to deny that Vanguard is hardware demanding. IF you would to compare them ingame.
But none of the games are 2d text adventures as of my knowledge.
I'm so broke. I can't even pay attention.
"You have the right not to be killed"
Over half of those characters haven't logged in since over a week ago. Most of those haven't logged in for the month of April period. Sounds like another dying guild. Especially considering some of the tad few characters that are active, are probably MX13's alts.
So nevermind, no need to leave one dead guild to join another, but point made.
ROFLMAO... you weren't invited...
But I'd be happy to play with you if you like. Our Guild is a group of friends from various games, but mainly from SWG. We are not large, and have no intentions to be. We're a group of friends, not a Raid Guild.
Members have left lately (some longtime friends going to LotRO), and the overall pop has dropped as well. I'd say VG has gone from about 120k subs to about 80k to 90k. That said, there are plenty of people to play with everywhere, you just need to know where to go.
Pop is opinion however. I like not seeing people when exploring in the middle of nowhere. Then again, I loved the same thing in SWG. Some people think if you're anywhere that's empty of players, the game is dead, and I don't see it that way.
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!
I'll start my own SWG... with Black Jack... and Hookers!!!
In fact, forget the SWG!!!!