Of course there are people that enjoy Vanguard. I am very sad i am not one of them. Well, i read the minimum hardware requirements on the box and bought it.
In my opinion Vanguard is a well designed Game but with very bad implementation. Perfomance in Vanguard should be the top concern of Sigil.
Maybe ESRB should also start rating Perfomance of released games among with it's usual ratings. There is no legal way to protect people that meet the minimum requirements of a game, spend a 50 and finally struggle to have 10 fps in crowded areas. Yes i can spend 50 dollars to buy another game but i can't afford money to online experiments.
I just had to turn on the frame rate counter at the character creation screen and find out that the engine was trying it's best to produce about 24 fps at top rendering quality. I did not have to log into the game to test that and if a character surounded by 4 columns is asking "too much of the engine" as Mr Brad mentioned then perhaps the engine needs redesigning which i think it is imposible to accomplish since vanguard is released.
It is very sad that a game of this magnitude, Perhaps the first of the new generation of mmos, is suffering from such perfomance issues. A hudge world to explore, different playing paths , Many ways to customize your avatar, everything seems perfect but actually is destroyed by an engine that took so many years to test and develop.
I am afraid that Sigil is waiting for a miracle, for the prices of hardware to drop. But i think that's impossible, Windows Vista is now released, an expensive and hardware demanding operating system will not cause new designed hardware prices to drop but rise.
Well at least i tried to play just the "free" month. Good luck to you all.
Of course there are people that enjoy Vanguard. I am very sad i am not one of them. Well, i read the minimum hardware requirements on the box and bought it. In my opinion Vanguard is a well designed Game but with very bad implementation. Perfomance in Vanguard should be the top concern of Sigil. Maybe ESRB should also start rating Perfomance of released games among with it's usual ratings. There is no legal way to protect people that meet the minimum requirements of a game, spend a 50 and finally struggle to have 10 fps in crowded areas. Yes i can spend 50 dollars to buy another game but i can't afford money to online experiments. I just had to turn on the frame rate counter at the character creation screen and find out that the engine was trying it's best to produce about 24 fps at top rendering quality. I did not have to log into the game to test that and if a character surounded by 4 columns is asking "too much of the engine" as Mr Brad mentioned then perhaps the engine needs redesigning which i think it is imposible to accomplish since vanguard is released. It is very sad that a game of this magnitude, Perhaps the first of the new generation of mmos, is suffering from such perfomance issues. A hudge world to explore, different playing paths , Many ways to customize your avatar, everything seems perfect but actually is destroyed by an engine that took so many years to test and develop. I am afraid that Sigil is waiting for a miracle, for the prices of hardware to drop. But i think that's impossible, Windows Vista is now released, an expensive and hardware demanding operating system will not cause new designed hardware prices to drop but rise. Well at least i tried to play just the "free" month. Good luck to you all.
Play any game out there with the minimum specs listed on the box and you will be playing at the lowest setting they have thats a give in
Now i have 3 computers with vanguard on it ones the absolute best you can buy plays vanguard with every setting maxed on highest quality at 1920x1200 on a 24 inch dell widescreen and i have two low end machines that both can play the game one a AMD 3200, 2 gigs of ram and a x850 xt runs the game on highest quality with some of the option turned down at 1280 x1024 and my last machine is so old i dont even remember whats in it but forsure 1 gig of ram and a 9600 pro and it even runs the game on the lowest settings lol though it lags bad and cities are a no go just had to see if it would
Of course there are people that enjoy Vanguard. I am very sad i am not one of them. Well, i read the minimum hardware requirements on the box and bought it. In my opinion Vanguard is a well designed Game but with very bad implementation. Perfomance in Vanguard should be the top concern of Sigil. Maybe ESRB should also start rating Perfomance of released games among with it's usual ratings. There is no legal way to protect people that meet the minimum requirements of a game, spend a 50 and finally struggle to have 10 fps in crowded areas. Yes i can spend 50 dollars to buy another game but i can't afford money to online experiments. I just had to turn on the frame rate counter at the character creation screen and find out that the engine was trying it's best to produce about 24 fps at top rendering quality. I did not have to log into the game to test that and if a character surounded by 4 columns is asking "too much of the engine" as Mr Brad mentioned then perhaps the engine needs redesigning which i think it is imposible to accomplish since vanguard is released. It is very sad that a game of this magnitude, Perhaps the first of the new generation of mmos, is suffering from such perfomance issues. A hudge world to explore, different playing paths , Many ways to customize your avatar, everything seems perfect but actually is destroyed by an engine that took so many years to test and develop. I am afraid that Sigil is waiting for a miracle, for the prices of hardware to drop. But i think that's impossible, Windows Vista is now released, an expensive and hardware demanding operating system will not cause new designed hardware prices to drop but rise. Well at least i tried to play just the "free" month. Good luck to you all.
Play any game out there with the minimum specs listed on the box and you will be playing at the lowest setting they have thats a give in
Now i have 3 computers with vanguard on it ones the absolute best you can buy plays vanguard with every setting maxed on highest quality at 1920x1200 on a 24 inch dell widescreen and i have two low end machines that both can play the game one a AMD 3200, 2 gigs of ram and a x850 xt runs the game on highest quality with some of the option turned down at 1280 x1024 and my last machine is so old i dont even remember whats in it but forsure 1 gig of ram and a 9600 pro and it even runs the game on the lowest settings lol though it lags bad and cities are a no go just had to see if it would
Actually i played the game with the lowest settings but even then it was completely unplayable. If Sigil wants to "fill" Vanguard's servers with people that spend money every time a new hardware is released , then perhaps Sigil should make the world much smaller.
If Games are designed with elite hardware specifications in mind, then in a few years time we should not be able to play anything. Lately there is an effort from hardware and software companies to raise the bar of demands so we pay a lot for products that in other circumstances we could afford at much lower prices.
Edsel dealer ad stated the obvious "It died, you know"
Ford announced the end of the Edsel program on Thursday, November 19, 1959. However, cars continued being produced until late in November, with the final tally at 2,848 1960 models.
On Friday November 20th, United Press International's (UPI) wire service reported that book values for used Edsels had decreased by as much as $400 [approximately $2800 in 2006 dollars](based on condition and age) immediately following the Ford press release. In some newspaper markets, dealers scrambled to renegotiate newspaper advertising contracts involving the 1960 Edsel models, while others dropped the name from their dealership's advertising "slugs". Ford issued a statement that it would distribute coupons to consumers that purchased 1960 models (and carry over 1959 models) prior to the announcement valued at $300 to $400 towards the purchase of new Ford products to offset the decreased values. The company also issued credits to dealers for stock unsold, or received, following the announcement.
There is no single reason why the Edsel failed, and failed so spectacularly. Popular culture often faults the car’s styling. Consumer Reports cited poor workmanship. Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of Corporate America’s failure to understand the nature of the American consumer. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford’s Executive offices. According to author and Edsel scholar Jan Deutsch, the Edsel was "the wrong car at the wrong time."
For its final model year, Ford promoted the now single series Edsel Ranger as "new, nifty, and thrifty" before pulling the plug on the Edsel in November 1959.
The Edsel is most famous for being a marketing disaster. Indeed, the name "Edsel" came to be synonymous with commercial failure, and similar ill-fated products have often been colloquially referred to as "Edsels." Since it was such a debacle, it provided a case study for marketers on how not to market a product. The main reason why the Edsel's failure is so famous was that it flopped despite Ford’s investment of $400,000,000 into its development.
The pre-release advertising campaign touted the car as having "...more YOU ideas" and the teaser advertisements in magazines only revealed glimpses of the car through a highly-blurred lens or wrapped in paper or under tarps. Edsels were shipped to the dealerships undercover and remained wrapped on the dealer lots.
I feel like the only non-old timer on this post... I've tried to get into this game sooooo hard ( I accidently bought the 6month >< !!) and its just not happening. I'd be willing to go back to WoW to mindlessly kill 14 year olds. It was one of the joys in my life...but being a broke-ass college student I can't really afford to get a new MMO subscription going until I start working in the summer. BLEH GIVE ME MONEY OLD-TIMERS!
I thought one of the main ideas with the VG world was that the world would be what the players made it, thus the lack of lore and so-called immersion. If that makes the game fun can be discussed however.
Hello all my fellow gamers, I also am in agreement with the performace issues of the game, which are bar-none not acceptable in any genre of gaming, but more so of an MMORPG. I bought a new super computer for this game, which has a Dual-Core Proc, 2 GIGS high speed Ram, 2 HHD's running in Raid 0, and a Gefore 8800 GTS ( Not totally super, but for me it damn sure is )! When I pump the graphics up to Highest, and run into Anghram, It makes me for freakin Mad, that I want to.. Well It makes me very freakin mad, and I shouldnt tell you all what I would like to do to... Never mind. But to see my FPS Drop to turtle screwing speed tears me a new one!!! The game DOES look fantasic, and is very immersive in that respect, but to have such a damned drop in FPS is just screwy as hell. I am actually hoping the Frame Rate is some programming/server issues on their side. I was hoping it wasnt my computer. EQ2 runs fine...other games run fine with little issue but this game...sucks up the power. I often remember the days when the EQ1 expansion "Shadows of Luclin" came out how my computer was sputtering along...I was wondering if this was the same case. I dont know. Ive upgraded video cards but it dosnt seem to help the FPS bottom line...and I need that smoothness. Now on to what I do like about the game, which sure is NOT the questing aspect, but of how truely HUGE the world is. And the Flying mounts, and the boats. I love exploring in an MMORPG, and this game really opens that option up for me. I do not own a boat, or have a flying mount atm, but I truely find those to elements of the game truely intriguing!! I also feel this game has a huge potential for being a truely great game, if it is given enough time. I hope, I really do hope. But I do understand the negative aspects this game brings about, which have been listed in lenght and detail in past posts. I just wanted to put in my thoughts as well. Take care all, Eubel : server : Gelenia Heres Hoping for more Solo content, More Meaningful quests, More Story and a revised coding of the game engine!!! Quest design is something that is hard to fix...you could add something like LOTRO instance single player quests but MMO designers really have not made any advancements in this area. Dynamic quests? Possible but no other MMO has done this yet. As far as quests (and I know a lot will not agree) they are on par with many other games...get this, do that, pick this... I know we are tired of it...
WoW is a better spirtiual sucessor to Everquest than anything produced by SoE or Sigil.
Something inside me rolled over and died when I read this from the OPs post....
But, you do make valid points on several areas. Like EQ2 which had a rough start, VG won't hit its prime for awhile I'm afraid.
Actually this statement was definitely valid.
Blizzard didn't develop WoW from scratch.
They took EverQuest and methodically analized each part of the game and improved them in regards to player's wishes. It's well known that several former EQ players participated in the development of WoW, i'd bet that several blizzard employees played EQ too and only rejoiced at the chance to improved over whta they played themselves.
-> crowded dungeons, hazardous item gains, spawn camping >>>>> answer = instancing, bosses always up and always drop more than 2 items
-> travelling is fun the first time but boring the second >>>>> asnwer = griffin/bats/wyverns flightpaths only works when discovered by walking to it
-> grinding mobs for hours sitting in one spot is boring >>>>> create dummy quests to hide the fact you are repeateadly killing mobs
-> no mounts >>>> mounts
-> crafting is boring and you loose items when failing a combine>>>>>> make the act of crafting irrelevant (click, create) and only money and time spent factors in creating quality items
-> death is annoying because not only are you penalized but you can loose an incredible amount of time just recovring your corpse >>>> answer = dying in wow only means looçsing 5 to 10 minutes running back to your corpse, and a small money cost.
The list goes on and on and on... i'd also add that the best implementation of a clas in WoW is the Mage, which is everything the EQ Wizard wished he had been: mobility, power, varied cool spells (thinking about blink and ice nova)
Really, WoW IS the true spiritual successor to EQ1. it took EQ as a base and improved every single element of it, removing the tedium and adding the fun.
My addiction History: >> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore >> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual >> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Really, WoW IS the true spiritual successor to EQ1. it took EQ as a base and improved every single element of it, removing the tedium and adding the fun.
Excellent post, Omega3.
I think WoW is a brilliant game in so many ways. However, I could not get into it. Nevertheless, developers would be very wise to learn from WoW as the developers of WoW learned from EQ.
A useful point that many many people seem to forget is that role-playing games don't need anything in particular to be "fun" if the people in them are happy to make the best of what they have.
"MMORPG" has the words "role playing" in it; if you have ever played systemless roleplaying you might appreciate that irrespective of the system you can have a huge amount of fun, or perhaps in Vanguard's case despite the system you can have a lot of fun (give me chat bubbles any day, looking down to see who said what is really bad after UO, pre-NGE SWG and WoW).
Oddly enough crafting in Vanguard is so boring and tedious that on the server I play on it is really drawing out roleplayers: in character conversations are definitely a welcome relief to breaking the monotony, and they can even be a lot of fun too. The one thing that Vanguard did get right was that crafting is not time-sensitive: if you want to pause and type in the craft channel, you can, it's not going to tick to the next craft event until you do something. Don't even get me started on things wrong with crafting, such as getting recipies that you cannot possibly make until you have added some five craft levels or more, or that a tailor apparently cannot make any crafting clothing to wear, instead you just get those really useful tailor-WO loot items like +45 blacksmithing apron.
Obviously theres some things about wow I dont like. But If I look at this market the games that are released to cater to the 'core gamer" - WoW has done a good job of this while other titles trip over their own feet sometimes.
I really thought that Vanguard would be another spirirtual successor to EQ. I was one of thousands of people who wanted to play teh game but I loose by default because I dont like 2 fps and poor performance.
Given the stark differences in vision between wow and VG I speculated (with myself) that perhaps part of the the reason I like WoW is because I connect with the former Eq Developers working on the WoW project more than I connect with the EQ developers working on the Vanguard project.
In turn it led me to question who actually implemented teh ideas I LIKED about Eq. I'll never know for absoulte certain, but I suspect some of the present WoW brain power that was former EQ probably implemented a lot of teh ideas i liked about that Eq.
I follwed VG for awhile and was pretty excited about what the game had to offer. I honestly havent played since beta (the actual beta not the release) but I remember thinking the game really needed another 6 months to a year of development. It was an unpolished buggy mess in beta but then I figured they would develop it more before it launched. I was in a early LOTRO beta and it was awful. They polished it up rather nicely though and look at it now. Like the game or not it is ready to go.
I think one of the things that hurts VG is Brad himself. People love to bash this guy. I havent seen this kind of animosity towards a dev since SWG. Im not saying I think Brad deserves it or he doesnt but every time he makes some kind of statement about the game these boards light up. The idea of not going with their own forums was probably one of the worst ones that Brad has made yet. Personally I think he should just hire someone to speak for the game. He doesnt do a very good job of it himself. To me he comes across as kind of a snob. He is very long winded while saying very little. Every time he posts I get the feeling the game was made for him and his personal friends not the public.. The fact that he posts on some guilds forums just cements that idea in my head. This is just my opinion.
VG has potential but time is NOT on Sigils side. Whatever they are going to do to fix the game or atleast the negative image the game has really needs to be done soon. If not this game will soon be over shadowed by the next batch of mmo's to come out.
I must agree with the OP. I gave the game an honest try, and my fifty bucks. I left City of Heroes to give it a go, hoping for something a little more. I was looking forward to hooking back up with about a dozen friends from EQ2, who I had learned through e-mail were all planning to play. They had even pre-made a teamspeak server, and we met ahead of time to discuss server selection, and class distribution, thinking we would group up shortly after character creation.
My first disappointment was being a continent away from my friends, due to our being different races. I want to play with them, not solo, and anything that delays this is a huge strike against, as far as I'm concerned. It was mildly interesting, I quickly got the hang of combat, and learned where to buy spell upgrades. I played a wizard, as I usually do in these kinds of games. I soon learned another deal breaker, getting additional agro meant almost certain death. Pathing seemed random, and given that mobs would spawn right next to me at times, I got extra agro far more than I expected. My mez spell lasted a few seconds, hardly enough time to get away, and running away never, ever, ever worked. I would run and run and run and slowly lose health as the mob attacked as I ran, and I would surely die. Annoying. Maybe its because I was a wizard, but whatever, I didn't like not having any options but certain death.
Diplomacy was interesting, at first, but it very quickly became old news, after about the 5th time having to do it (and gaining nothing from all the time spent). Crafting was still buggy in parts, but I figured it out. I also learned how mind-numbingly dull it was. There were very few real items that I could craft at low level, and nothing of any real use or value. The work order system was ok, though by the time I had done several, and had made no progress upwards, I tired of the grind and stopped. Games keep promising to make crafting fun, but so far none have succeeded. In games with loot drops, they aren't even neccessary (which is why the only one I ever put effort into was SWG's, as it was an intregal part of the economy, and had little competiton from loot drops; at least in the beggining...). So that's two huge features of the game that I wrote off by level 10.
By the time I was level 12, I realized the game had me going in a straight line. I was beggining to feel more constricted than if I had been playing a console game. The 'huge, wide open' landscape serves little purpose, but to make me walk around alot. (Unlike in SWG, for example, were from a very early level you could use the land for various commerce purposes). Yes, I know you can build houses and stuff later, but if that is closed off to me now, then its just annoying. Lots of walking. Its the Game Of Walking. Dull. And then I finally met up with some friends and we tried teaming, and the straw that broke the camel's back fell. I couldn't keep up in combat. Terrible rubberbanding, and I would lag so bad that by the time I managed to target what we were fighting, the others had already killed it. I turned graphics way down. The screen was nearly a blur and I couldn't see mobs until there were nearly on top of us, and got an improvement of about 2 fps. No thank you.
I can't play this game. I can't afford to get a new computer, CoH and EQ2 run fine on it, and those games are at least out of live-beta. So where am I now? Back playing CoH, and looking forward to Issue 9.
Comments
Of course there are people that enjoy Vanguard. I am very sad i am not one of them. Well, i read the minimum hardware requirements on the box and bought it.
In my opinion Vanguard is a well designed Game but with very bad implementation. Perfomance in Vanguard should be the top concern of Sigil.
Maybe ESRB should also start rating Perfomance of released games among with it's usual ratings. There is no legal way to protect people that meet the minimum requirements of a game, spend a 50 and finally struggle to have 10 fps in crowded areas. Yes i can spend 50 dollars to buy another game but i can't afford money to online experiments.
I just had to turn on the frame rate counter at the character creation screen and find out that the engine was trying it's best to produce about 24 fps at top rendering quality. I did not have to log into the game to test that and if a character surounded by 4 columns is asking "too much of the engine" as Mr Brad mentioned then perhaps the engine needs redesigning which i think it is imposible to accomplish since vanguard is released.
It is very sad that a game of this magnitude, Perhaps the first of the new generation of mmos, is suffering from such perfomance issues. A hudge world to explore, different playing paths , Many ways to customize your avatar, everything seems perfect but actually is destroyed by an engine that took so many years to test and develop.
I am afraid that Sigil is waiting for a miracle, for the prices of hardware to drop. But i think that's impossible, Windows Vista is now released, an expensive and hardware demanding operating system will not cause new designed hardware prices to drop but rise.
Well at least i tried to play just the "free" month. Good luck to you all.
Play any game out there with the minimum specs listed on the box and you will be playing at the lowest setting they have thats a give in
Now i have 3 computers with vanguard on it ones the absolute best you can buy plays vanguard with every setting maxed on highest quality at 1920x1200 on a 24 inch dell widescreen and i have two low end machines that both can play the game one a AMD 3200, 2 gigs of ram and a x850 xt runs the game on highest quality with some of the option turned down at 1280 x1024 and my last machine is so old i dont even remember whats in it but forsure 1 gig of ram and a 9600 pro and it even runs the game on the lowest settings lol though it lags bad and cities are a no go just had to see if it would
Play any game out there with the minimum specs listed on the box and you will be playing at the lowest setting they have thats a give in
Now i have 3 computers with vanguard on it ones the absolute best you can buy plays vanguard with every setting maxed on highest quality at 1920x1200 on a 24 inch dell widescreen and i have two low end machines that both can play the game one a AMD 3200, 2 gigs of ram and a x850 xt runs the game on highest quality with some of the option turned down at 1280 x1024 and my last machine is so old i dont even remember whats in it but forsure 1 gig of ram and a 9600 pro and it even runs the game on the lowest settings lol though it lags bad and cities are a no go just had to see if it would
Actually i played the game with the lowest settings but even then it was completely unplayable. If Sigil wants to "fill" Vanguard's servers with people that spend money every time a new hardware is released , then perhaps Sigil should make the world much smaller.
If Games are designed with elite hardware specifications in mind, then in a few years time we should not be able to play anything. Lately there is an effort from hardware and software companies to raise the bar of demands so we pay a lot for products that in other circumstances we could afford at much lower prices.
Where does Sigil fit in this?
End of Edsel
Edsel dealer ad stated the obvious "It died, you know"
Ford announced the end of the Edsel program on Thursday, November 19, 1959. However, cars continued being produced until late in November, with the final tally at 2,848 1960 models.
On Friday November 20th, United Press International's (UPI) wire service reported that book values for used Edsels had decreased by as much as $400 [approximately $2800 in 2006 dollars](based on condition and age) immediately following the Ford press release. In some newspaper markets, dealers scrambled to renegotiate newspaper advertising contracts involving the 1960 Edsel models, while others dropped the name from their dealership's advertising "slugs". Ford issued a statement that it would distribute coupons to consumers that purchased 1960 models (and carry over 1959 models) prior to the announcement valued at $300 to $400 towards the purchase of new Ford products to offset the decreased values. The company also issued credits to dealers for stock unsold, or received, following the announcement.
[edit] Edsel and its failures
There is no single reason why the Edsel failed, and failed so spectacularly. Popular culture often faults the car’s styling. Consumer Reports cited poor workmanship. Marketing experts hold the Edsel up as a supreme example of Corporate America’s failure to understand the nature of the American consumer. Business analysts cite the weak internal support for the product inside Ford’s Executive offices. According to author and Edsel scholar Jan Deutsch, the Edsel was "the wrong car at the wrong time."
[edit] "The aim was right, but the target moved"
For its final model year, Ford promoted the now single series Edsel Ranger as "new, nifty, and thrifty" before pulling the plug on the Edsel in November 1959.
The Edsel is most famous for being a marketing disaster. Indeed, the name "Edsel" came to be synonymous with commercial failure, and similar ill-fated products have often been colloquially referred to as "Edsels." Since it was such a debacle, it provided a case study for marketers on how not to market a product. The main reason why the Edsel's failure is so famous was that it flopped despite Ford’s investment of $400,000,000 into its development.
The pre-release advertising campaign touted the car as having "...more YOU ideas" and the teaser advertisements in magazines only revealed glimpses of the car through a highly-blurred lens or wrapped in paper or under tarps. Edsels were shipped to the dealerships undercover and remained wrapped on the dealer lots.
you made me laugh, not easy to do. Thanks.
Something inside me rolled over and died when I read this from the OPs post....
But, you do make valid points on several areas. Like EQ2 which had a rough start, VG won't hit its prime for awhile I'm afraid.
Actually this statement was definitely valid.Blizzard didn't develop WoW from scratch.
They took EverQuest and methodically analized each part of the game and improved them in regards to player's wishes. It's well known that several former EQ players participated in the development of WoW, i'd bet that several blizzard employees played EQ too and only rejoiced at the chance to improved over whta they played themselves.
-> crowded dungeons, hazardous item gains, spawn camping >>>>> answer = instancing, bosses always up and always drop more than 2 items
-> travelling is fun the first time but boring the second >>>>> asnwer = griffin/bats/wyverns flightpaths only works when discovered by walking to it
-> grinding mobs for hours sitting in one spot is boring >>>>> create dummy quests to hide the fact you are repeateadly killing mobs
-> no mounts >>>> mounts
-> crafting is boring and you loose items when failing a combine>>>>>> make the act of crafting irrelevant (click, create) and only money and time spent factors in creating quality items
-> death is annoying because not only are you penalized but you can loose an incredible amount of time just recovring your corpse >>>> answer = dying in wow only means looçsing 5 to 10 minutes running back to your corpse, and a small money cost.
The list goes on and on and on... i'd also add that the best implementation of a clas in WoW is the Mage, which is everything the EQ Wizard wished he had been: mobility, power, varied cool spells (thinking about blink and ice nova)
Really, WoW IS the true spiritual successor to EQ1. it took EQ as a base and improved every single element of it, removing the tedium and adding the fun.
My addiction History:
>> EQ1 2000-2004 - Shaman/Bard/Wizard/Monk - nolife raid-whore
>> WoW 2004-2009 + Cataclysm for 2 months - hardcore casual
>> Current status : done with MMO, too old for that crap.
Excellent post, Omega3.
I think WoW is a brilliant game in so many ways. However, I could not get into it. Nevertheless, developers would be very wise to learn from WoW as the developers of WoW learned from EQ.
"MMORPG" has the words "role playing" in it; if you have ever played systemless roleplaying you might appreciate that irrespective of the system you can have a huge amount of fun, or perhaps in Vanguard's case despite the system you can have a lot of fun (give me chat bubbles any day, looking down to see who said what is really bad after UO, pre-NGE SWG and WoW).
Oddly enough crafting in Vanguard is so boring and tedious that on the server I play on it is really drawing out roleplayers: in character conversations are definitely a welcome relief to breaking the monotony, and they can even be a lot of fun too. The one thing that Vanguard did get right was that crafting is not time-sensitive: if you want to pause and type in the craft channel, you can, it's not going to tick to the next craft event until you do something. Don't even get me started on things wrong with crafting, such as getting recipies that you cannot possibly make until you have added some five craft levels or more, or that a tailor apparently cannot make any crafting clothing to wear, instead you just get those really useful tailor-WO loot items like +45 blacksmithing apron.
Flute.
Obviously theres some things about wow I dont like. But If I look at this market the games that are released to cater to the 'core gamer" - WoW has done a good job of this while other titles trip over their own feet sometimes.
I really thought that Vanguard would be another spirirtual successor to EQ. I was one of thousands of people who wanted to play teh game but I loose by default because I dont like 2 fps and poor performance.
Given the stark differences in vision between wow and VG I speculated (with myself) that perhaps part of the the reason I like WoW is because I connect with the former Eq Developers working on the WoW project more than I connect with the EQ developers working on the Vanguard project.
In turn it led me to question who actually implemented teh ideas I LIKED about Eq. I'll never know for absoulte certain, but I suspect some of the present WoW brain power that was former EQ probably implemented a lot of teh ideas i liked about that Eq.
I follwed VG for awhile and was pretty excited about what the game had to offer. I honestly havent played since beta (the actual beta not the release) but I remember thinking the game really needed another 6 months to a year of development. It was an unpolished buggy mess in beta but then I figured they would develop it more before it launched. I was in a early LOTRO beta and it was awful. They polished it up rather nicely though and look at it now. Like the game or not it is ready to go.
I think one of the things that hurts VG is Brad himself. People love to bash this guy. I havent seen this kind of animosity towards a dev since SWG. Im not saying I think Brad deserves it or he doesnt but every time he makes some kind of statement about the game these boards light up. The idea of not going with their own forums was probably one of the worst ones that Brad has made yet. Personally I think he should just hire someone to speak for the game. He doesnt do a very good job of it himself. To me he comes across as kind of a snob. He is very long winded while saying very little. Every time he posts I get the feeling the game was made for him and his personal friends not the public.. The fact that he posts on some guilds forums just cements that idea in my head. This is just my opinion.
VG has potential but time is NOT on Sigils side. Whatever they are going to do to fix the game or atleast the negative image the game has really needs to be done soon. If not this game will soon be over shadowed by the next batch of mmo's to come out.
I must agree with the OP. I gave the game an honest try, and my fifty bucks. I left City of Heroes to give it a go, hoping for something a little more. I was looking forward to hooking back up with about a dozen friends from EQ2, who I had learned through e-mail were all planning to play. They had even pre-made a teamspeak server, and we met ahead of time to discuss server selection, and class distribution, thinking we would group up shortly after character creation.
My first disappointment was being a continent away from my friends, due to our being different races. I want to play with them, not solo, and anything that delays this is a huge strike against, as far as I'm concerned. It was mildly interesting, I quickly got the hang of combat, and learned where to buy spell upgrades. I played a wizard, as I usually do in these kinds of games. I soon learned another deal breaker, getting additional agro meant almost certain death. Pathing seemed random, and given that mobs would spawn right next to me at times, I got extra agro far more than I expected. My mez spell lasted a few seconds, hardly enough time to get away, and running away never, ever, ever worked. I would run and run and run and slowly lose health as the mob attacked as I ran, and I would surely die. Annoying. Maybe its because I was a wizard, but whatever, I didn't like not having any options but certain death.
Diplomacy was interesting, at first, but it very quickly became old news, after about the 5th time having to do it (and gaining nothing from all the time spent). Crafting was still buggy in parts, but I figured it out. I also learned how mind-numbingly dull it was. There were very few real items that I could craft at low level, and nothing of any real use or value. The work order system was ok, though by the time I had done several, and had made no progress upwards, I tired of the grind and stopped. Games keep promising to make crafting fun, but so far none have succeeded. In games with loot drops, they aren't even neccessary (which is why the only one I ever put effort into was SWG's, as it was an intregal part of the economy, and had little competiton from loot drops; at least in the beggining...). So that's two huge features of the game that I wrote off by level 10.
By the time I was level 12, I realized the game had me going in a straight line. I was beggining to feel more constricted than if I had been playing a console game. The 'huge, wide open' landscape serves little purpose, but to make me walk around alot. (Unlike in SWG, for example, were from a very early level you could use the land for various commerce purposes). Yes, I know you can build houses and stuff later, but if that is closed off to me now, then its just annoying. Lots of walking. Its the Game Of Walking. Dull. And then I finally met up with some friends and we tried teaming, and the straw that broke the camel's back fell. I couldn't keep up in combat. Terrible rubberbanding, and I would lag so bad that by the time I managed to target what we were fighting, the others had already killed it. I turned graphics way down. The screen was nearly a blur and I couldn't see mobs until there were nearly on top of us, and got an improvement of about 2 fps. No thank you.
I can't play this game. I can't afford to get a new computer, CoH and EQ2 run fine on it, and those games are at least out of live-beta. So where am I now? Back playing CoH, and looking forward to Issue 9.