I must say Reklaw, you seem to have a bigger probelm reading other peoples Opinions, since you always feel the need to come and attack anyone that say something you disagree with.. you can never keep a discussion going, but always start straight off the bat with insults. Maybe talk less and think more huh? Look yourself in the mirror the next time, then say the exact same thing.
I must say Reklaw, you seem to have a bigger probelm reading other peoples Opinions, since you always feel the need to come and attack anyone that say something you disagree with.. you can never keep a discussion going, but always start straight off the bat with insults. Maybe talk less and think more huh? Look yourself in the mirror the next time, then say the exact same thing.
Maybe if people could read they would not see it as a attack But i know m8 its perfectly alright for other people to be negative towards others and i know i can't do that to them aswell
I must say, as a VG player since the public beta and pre-order early access at launch I can partially understand why this game gets so much anti-hype, hate and general bad press. But really, the amount of people who have played the game up to say level 10, or never even played it at all yet still hate it and so vocally warn people off amazes me.
The idiots a few pages earlier who claim to have multiple level 50 "maxed out" characters made me laugh. Anyone with half a brain understood what they were buying when VG launched, if you didn't then it's your own fault for rushing through a minimal amount of content to "win". No MMO should start at the level cap, they all start at one. An MMO that doesn't work like that is a failure, putting continued pressure on the developers to keep the bleeding edge of the population happy with new raid content and "uber lewtz". Where this idea that raiding and end-game content is the be all and end all of MMO gaming came from, is beyond me. This game has more content than I've seen in most MMOs, if you don't RUSH your way through the game you're in for a treat. If you're willing to look for it, you will find it.
Performance is a difficult issue. But personally I can say I really don't think it's that bad as most people will say. The CTD issues have pretty much completely disappeared since launch, and performance is much better (for me at least). The next few patches are bringing in new cache optimisations, PC model optimisations and texture memory fixes, all of which promise further improvement. Really when you look at the size of this game, and the detail in the majority of the world it's no wonder that your Dell "Xtreme" rig suffers so badly.
Most people who have perfomance issues are the type of user who has a pre-built rig that's full of spyware, random applications and just general crap that will slow pretty much anything down, especially a memory intensive game like VG. I run a fairly average mainstream rig and run VG at acceptable rates (usually 20-35FPS) on balanced to high quality settings (I tweak most things myself). My specs below if anyone cares.
AMD64 X2 (DualCore) 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz
2Gb Corsair "Value" DDR RAM (my major bottleneck)
Plantronics USP DSP Headset (love it)
2x ATI x1600XT 256Mb DDR3 (crossfire is useless)
The problem I have with this review is it gives an unfair and unappealing view of this game. The review doesn't even mention grouping, they managed to get to 30 without playing through any of the major dungeons? That's a real shame. They don't really mention how much fun the combat is either, the reaction system makes each class very much a different experience with a lot of really fun features like chain moves, combos, finishing moves, counterspells... I could go on.
Really this game is for the MMO player who looks after their PC (and thus can expect to run VG just fine) and enjoys grouping, exploring and a slower pace of gameplay than most other games. I'll try and summerise why I think Vanguard is worth playing:
Exploration : Horses, unicorns, shadowhounds, boats, flying mounts... No invisible walls or instancing, an epic world to get lost in.
Engaging Combat : Yes it's not Conan, it's not realtime swordplay but it is one of the most engaging traditional MMO combat systems, with unique and well thought out classes.
True Dungeon Crawling : Play though Temple of Dailuk, Ruins of Trengal Keep, Vol Tuniel or any of the othe major dungeons in the game and you'll understand what VG brings to the table. These places are big enough for several groups to be working through the questlines and content without it getting annoying (well, not too often anyway, the first weeks on Gelenia were a bit mad)
Loads of Gear : Loot is plentiful, varied and fun to collect/hunt for. There are loads of armor quest-lines and dropped sets to collect.
Atmosphere : Played DAoC in to the early hours? Loved the atmosphere created by the epic landscapes and music? Vanguard has this, no other MMO really has the same feeling of size and expanse as VG does today.
I forgot to mention diplomacy and crafting, while they may not be for everyone they both have a very loyal following of players, especially diplomacy, so there must be something there that appeals to people (I hear the lore is actually quite in-depth and interesting, I haven't "dipped" much myself).
There really are too many reasons for me to try and list and I've realised that's it's probably pointless to do so since the flaming is about to start. Yes I am a noob, a faggot, a masochistic vanboi. Whatever you want to hurl at me. To those of you reading these pages in the interest of seeing what Vanguard might be like ; wait for the trial or just give it a go for the free month, make up your own mind instead of following the moronic crowd! FLAME ON!!!
MMORPG.com Community Manager, Laura Genender, takes a look at the world of Telon in her review of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Explaining Vanguard inevitably leads to explaining Vanguard's community. So, let's just start with it: yes, the game and the forums/fansites that support it are plagued with 'Fanbois' vs 'Haters' - the most heated faction warfare I have ever witnessed. Here, though, the rule of 'vocal minority' is in effect, and if you stay off of the forums and out of general chat, the majority of players are quiet and friendly (if you're not on a PvP server!). According to unconfirmed sources like MMOGData.com, the Vanguard community is shrinking: what at launch had featured around 200k subscribers was down below 50k by May of '07. The PvP and Roleplay server populations are still rather steady, but the "normal servers" are practically ghost towns. When I created a character to explore one of those servers, I ran into another newbie who boldly stated "you're the 3rd person I've seen so far!"
This review really doesn't mean much since they've had 6 months to patch and fix it. Is it this website's policy to only review games after the devs have had a chance to fix their mistakes? Is that fair to the people that were looking for a review here when VG was released? Does mmorpg.com have this kind of review policy for other games or was VG treated differently? Whats the reason you people waited so long to write a review?
The most fair way to review and comment on a game is to review it when its released and then write an update of sorts a few months later. I wonder what VG's rating would have been when it was released?
actualy...the review is worse than that
Review person seemed to have been reviewing more on the way the game WAS rather than the what the game is NOW.
Review and opinions on performance were based on what they were a couple months ago while the opinions on quests and such seemed current. The remarks on the low player populations are current as well though effort could have been made to explain some of this due to the massive size of the world which exaggerates the issue greatly.
The review is not so much inaccurate as she does not tell the whole story or paint the full picture. It's called...lying by ommision. Since many on these boards consider a mmorpg review to be at least semi - professional....that is not acceptable. Particularly when one considers the high profile nature of the game...be it good or bad. Review should have been ALOT more detailed and ALOT more effort should have been made to tell the WHOLE story.
It just seems too convienent if ya ask me.
Convienent and generalized and late reviews like that just scream ...hidden agenda!
What, pray tell, would our hidden agenda be? The reason for the late review has already been explained. The original reviewer - for whatever reason - found they couldn't complete the review. Others were asked to step up, and in the end Laura ended up doing it. Is that not clear enough?
Sigil steps up to the plate, digs in, and swings! It's a miss! Oh, Sigil dropped the bat on the umps head! And here's number 19, SOE to pinch-hit, taking Sigil's place at the plate... Boo! Hiss! Cry the fans.
I'd have given the whole game a 3 or 4 at best. With polished releases like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings Online on the market, VG doesn't even meet the criteria to be called average. Do I hate it? No, I played for a while and found things to like. Do I think it was released broken? Hell yes, and that's not acceptable.
I agree...the game is unfinished , BUT...the world is so big ...
should have been the topic of this story. Never before have I.. no wait, let me just put it this way. Let's say Vanguard is a Car you're looking at buying, Laura Genender is selling it toy you. The car is broken, unpainted, has no motor, the body is rusted through, the floor is falling out, the gasline leaks, there are no tires, so forget about moving it off the lot. Nobody wants the car, BUT
Laura will tell you this:
It's ugly, but it's pretty on the inside. It's broken, but it still impresses me. It has no motor but just imagine how it might sound if it had one. No tires, but if I blow you you really hard you can pretend you're moving with the wind tossing your hair. It's gaslines leak, but if you get a good air freshener you won't notice the smell.
Let's face the cold facts, Laura is predisposed to selling the MMO as it is, because it is what it is, unredeemable, incomplete, sloppy and so ripe with problems that it belongs in the nearest junkyard. But an MMO focused site wants to make advertising dollars and so they make proper bedmates.
If you want a VALID statement or review of the game listen to the community thats playing the game, read their posts, listen to their complaints and praises.
It seems quite ironic that this 'hardcore' game is recommended by the reviewer to casuals and further more he warns hardcore players off. I'm confused....but obviously not as confused as the jolly green ranger. I do wonder if the reviewer has another agenda (get people to play the game he seems to be enjoying before it goes down the pan).
Ya, not to mention saying VG has a 'twist' on clerics, then goes on to describe what clerics have and always were meant to be (at least, if you put things in D&D perspective 30+ -some-odd-years-old). Just because clerics in VG aren't like priests in WoW does not make VG creative.
Good review, at least from someone who beta-tested the game (me that is). I really wanted to read an "unbiased" review of the current state of the game. Saddened to see the problems people have been complaining about are still there, and that development/content/fixes are slowing down, as opposed to the opposite. I'd give the game a try again, but hearing about empty towns and the lack of development or, progress, makes me want to sit this one out and see what happens. I'm jumped into games that I loved, like Horizons, when it was a sinking ship... well, I guess it was a sinking ship from the get-go, if you follow the history of this tragic game.
Still waiting for a game I can mostly solo, and explore, explore, and explore some more. I loved and hated EQ I for so many reasons, one love being the sheer volume of land, and number of dungeons to explore. Games now, especially the free/item-mall Asian clone crap, are all about mindless pk-ing, immature players, and 0 exploration. Most don't even have a single dungeon to explore.
I beta tested LOTR (and soooo many others), but after initially liking it, I hit a certain level where quests and such were impossible to finish without being FORCED to group. Some people liked that about it. Not me. As a player, I shouldn't be FORCED to do anything I don't want to do, especially when solo content was great at lower levels.
My problem with groups? Easy. Unskilled players, the group NOT playing as a group, people spending 30 mins to find a group, then saying the have to go eat lunch with their grandma (true story) and quitting the group.. ya know, like your only tank or healer, then back to the drawing board. I haven't found a good group in a game (talking about 10 different games AT LEAST) in ages. People have real lives to deal with, as do I, being a father of 3 children, and even I can't dedicate hours to a group of strangers (but I'm still the last person to break up and leave a group).
In GW, I did almost every mission with NPCs. Yeah, almost ALL of them. There were a couple that were impossible to do without real people though. My garbage groups failed so many missions because the 12 year olds in my group couldn't follow a simple command, and would run off from the group and kill themselves or just log off with no explanation. I lost hours having to re-do mission after mission due to bad groups.
I gotta admit, this post was really funny. Yeah, it's sad that the reviewers/writers here can't be totally unbiased like they should be. I even said it was unbiased in my earlier post to this thread, but then I read your post. Oh well. At least the users/players of these games can be 100% honest and people are allowed to comment on these "reviews".
Originally posted by phaylen
Laura Genenders Lips meet SOE's Ass should have been the topic of this story. Never before have I.. no wait, let me just put it this way. Let's say Vanguard is a Car you're looking at buying, Laura Genender is selling it toy you. The car is broken, unpainted, has no motor, the body is rusted through, the floor is falling out, the gasline leaks, there are no tires, so forget about moving it off the lot. Nobody wants the car, BUT Laura will tell you this: It's ugly, but it's pretty on the inside. It's broken, but it still impresses me. It has no motor but just imagine how it might sound if it had one. No tires, but if I blow you you really hard you can pretend you're moving with the wind tossing your hair. It's gaslines leak, but if you get a good air freshener you won't notice the smell. Let's face the cold facts, Laura is predisposed to selling the MMO as it is, because it is what it is, unredeemable, incomplete, sloppy and so ripe with problems that it belongs in the nearest junkyard. But an MMO focused site wants to make advertising dollars and so they make proper bedmates. If you want a VALID statement or review of the game listen to the community thats playing the game, read their posts, listen to their complaints and praises. This "article" was simply salesmanship.
Laura Genenders Lips meet SOE's Ass should have been the topic of this story. Never before have I.. no wait, let me just put it this way. Let's say Vanguard is a Car you're looking at buying, Laura Genender is selling it toy you. The car is broken, unpainted, has no motor, the body is rusted through, the floor is falling out, the gasline leaks, there are no tires, so forget about moving it off the lot. Nobody wants the car, BUT Laura will tell you this: It's ugly, but it's pretty on the inside. It's broken, but it still impresses me. It has no motor but just imagine how it might sound if it had one. No tires, but if I blow you you really hard you can pretend you're moving with the wind tossing your hair. It's gaslines leak, but if you get a good air freshener you won't notice the smell. Let's face the cold facts, Laura is predisposed to selling the MMO as it is, because it is what it is, unredeemable, incomplete, sloppy and so ripe with problems that it belongs in the nearest junkyard. But an MMO focused site wants to make advertising dollars and so they make proper bedmates. If you want a VALID statement or review of the game listen to the community thats playing the game, read their posts, listen to their complaints and praises. This "article" was simply salesmanship.
From what I understand, Laura is playing and enjoying the game.
The review I read was certainly not a sales pitch. Negative aspects of the game were brought up and written about beside aspects of the game that she enjoyed. Just because you don't agree or even because you strongly disagree, doesn't mean that the writer had some kind of hidden agenda.
You can disagree with the review as much as you like, we encourage that. However, attacking the author (or any other memebr of this site) will not be tolerated.
I agree with this review totally, BUT at this point EQ2 does everything Vanguard tries to do but 100% better. EQ2 is currently the best MMO on the market, I dont care how many WoW fanboys may be here. Vanguard is "ok" but it needs time in the oven. I cant wait till they merge servers, right now this game is a ghost land
I also wanted to say, its not just poor advertising and bad word of mouth online hurting the popularity of this game. I recently went into two of our local EBgames and asked for store clerks opinions on Vanguard and it was pretty much blasted. They tried to steer me towards EQ II, World of Warcraft or if I was willing to wait, WarHammer Online. I did the same thing with the local Best Buy and got the same results. So at least in my area, people are being told its not a good game by the store clerks. I will say, that one of the clerks in one of the EBgames and the guy in Best Buy both said they hadn't played it, but they heard from a lot of people that did play it, that it sucked. Again, bad word of mouth, but this time in the real world instead of the virtual world. This goes to show you, bad word of mouth goes a LONG LONG LONG way.
I didn't get a sales pitch feel from the review, and I think comparing Laura to a used car salesman selling an obvious lemon is a bit unfair. The game is playable and not the complete lemon people make it out to be. Obviously people DO play the game and some are even having fun with it. I'm not implying it's without its problems though.
I'm not sure Laura was the proper person to do the review though because she obviously likes to solo more than group and doesn't care for other avenues like harvesting, crafting and diplomacy which play an important role in Vanguard. For example, did you know you can have a harvesting party, much like an adventuring party that yields greater rewards? No more competing for nodes, it makes more sense to group them. Did you know acts of diplomacy can trigger events that effect everyone within a region or open quest lines otherwise unobtainable? Diplomacy is actually a very fun game within a game once you figure it out. As for crafting, did you also know you can build a ship, not a puny little canoe, but a big ole frigate you can sail around on? It's not easy, and it probably requires help, but it's an amazing little something you can do.
Laura probably didn't write about these things because maybe she didn't do these things, which is fair enough, but the consequence of that is the article becomes less of a review and more personal opinion on the game, like a blog. This is informative and valuable in it's own right, as I value peoples opinion usually more than reviews anyway. But I think it's fair to say that perhaps someone willing to explore all the game's avenues a bit more might have made for a more informative review.
All that said, I think Vanguard was released a year too early. It obviously needs more development and time to allow technology to catch up to it a bit on the hardware side of things -- or at lease be more mainstream and affordable. But underneath all the current problems, lies an incredible game with huge potential, and I think Sony sees that too (otherwise why further waste money and resources on it). It just happened to be a little too ambitious for a start-up group like Sigil to see through to the end. It's difficult to say whether Vanguard will ever be a commercial success, but I applaud SoE for giving it a go, because I really would like to someday play Vanguard as it was intended to be.
I had a talk with Brad (the guy behind vanguard) over one of the forums, he pretty much said it was regrettible because the fanboys were killing his game, scaring off new people who are seeing what its like.
You're right.
Thamoris talks and acts like an exalted cult guru whose only pupose in life is to spread the word of his newfound "religion" and have us all embrace his mishapen defective crippled mangled monstrous deity...
He really scares me.
LOL
ok cool, so I'm not the only one that sees him as a wacko
This is one of the better reviews I have read about this game. It's fairly honest and touches on some good points. I had been one of those people that seriously looked forward to Vsoh...Until I learned of it's many faults. I simply don't agree to this concept of releasing a game half finished and making the consumer be a paying beta tester. So instead I went and subscribed to Eq2. True it's a SoE game but it fills my needs in a mmorph.....For now until a new mmorph comes out being released complete.
One of the things that concerns me the most about VG was bought up plain and clear by the reviewer. She said that one of Vanguard's biggest problems is that it fails to be the game that it was supposed to have been. I mean let's take grouping for example. From day 1 Sigil said how grouping was going to be the main focus in VG and that players would be expected to group to accomplish things. I mean this is a Massively Multiplayer Online game for starters.
So you get into the game and how much grouping is there really (and I mean outside tightly knit guild confines)? The reviewer even states that she was able to solo effectively, and, from her words, suggests that this is possible into the 20s and 30s. Why is a game that ultimately leads to soloing being classed as Massively Multiplayer? That's a huge problem for me. It totally goes againstw hat they always said the game was going to be.
That is a big reason for the shrinkage in player base. I know players who have excitedly followed this game since 2004 and 2005 that didn't even play because so many of the great ideas that were bounded around prior to launch were dropped in favour of simplification and appeasing the WoW crowd. Then the WoW-type players left because the game tried to do things the 'new' way and failed miserably because it still wanted to be a hardcore title.
To sum up in one sentence; Vanguards biggest problem is it tries to be too much. You could even encompass that Sigil went for too big a scope than they were able to handle; but bad management is as a big a reason for that as is incompetency.
I'm also glad that the reviewer mentioned the lore. From the game's size and scope the game would be assumed to have amples and oodles of lore. It was another reason I followed this game so intently since 2004. There were to be Gods, stories, famous characters. I got into game and found a little bit of present story lore in the newbie diplomacy quests, but outside of that it was all so vague; passing comments here and there. You never were able to choose a God to worship and after all Sigil's hype about the complexity of Vanguard that was a huge failing point for me.
I have been playing EQ2 lately and that game is how lore should be. Everyday I find half a dozen new pieces of lore to read and I am loving it. I have just chosen Tunare as my God and learnt about the history of the Dwarven Ringmail Tunic and then I find a bookseller with the history of all the races. EQ2 could be a terrible, terrible game in most aspects but still rivet me with its lore content. Thing is it is actually a rather good game in all other aspects.
Given time then SOE can probably turn VG around and make it a good game. Problem is I don't think I will play again because I know they will always be trying to do too many different things to keep too many types of gamers happy. Sigil wowed people like me with promises of difficult, challenging and engrossing content. With ideas of ship travel and contrasting player controlled economies. Of having to to explore to find quests and to think about what you were going to do within challenging and tactical combat. Sigil gave up on the players that picked up Vanguard when it was just a child and followed it with glee. We hyped it to the unbelievers and told everyone what a great and original game it was going to be. Then they said to us, 'sod you', in favour of pleasing the casual crowd.
Vanguard is not the game it ever promised to be. They tried to please too many people and pleased relatively few.
I must say, as a VG player since the public beta and pre-order early access at launch I can partially understand why this game gets so much anti-hype, hate and general bad press. But really, the amount of people who have played the game up to say level 10, or never even played it at all yet still hate it and so vocally warn people off amazes me. The idiots a few pages earlier who claim to have multiple level 50 "maxed out" characters made me laugh. Anyone with half a brain understood what they were buying when VG launched, if you didn't then it's your own fault for rushing through a minimal amount of content to "win". No MMO should start at the level cap, they all start at one. An MMO that doesn't work like that is a failure, putting continued pressure on the developers to keep the bleeding edge of the population happy with new raid content and "uber lewtz". Where this idea that raiding and end-game content is the be all and end all of MMO gaming came from, is beyond me. This game has more content than I've seen in most MMOs, if you don't RUSH your way through the game you're in for a treat. If you're willing to look for it, you will find it. Performance is a difficult issue. But personally I can say I really don't think it's that bad as most people will say. The CTD issues have pretty much completely disappeared since launch, and performance is much better (for me at least). The next few patches are bringing in new cache optimisations, PC model optimisations and texture memory fixes, all of which promise further improvement. Really when you look at the size of this game, and the detail in the majority of the world it's no wonder that your Dell "Xtreme" rig suffers so badly. Most people who have perfomance issues are the type of user who has a pre-built rig that's full of spyware, random applications and just general crap that will slow pretty much anything down, especially a memory intensive game like VG. I run a fairly average mainstream rig and run VG at acceptable rates (usually 20-35FPS) on balanced to high quality settings (I tweak most things myself). My specs below if anyone cares. AMD64 X2 (DualCore) 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz
2Gb Corsair "Value" DDR RAM (my major bottleneck)
Plantronics USP DSP Headset (love it)
2x ATI x1600XT 256Mb DDR3 (crossfire is useless) The problem I have with this review is it gives an unfair and unappealing view of this game. The review doesn't even mention grouping, they managed to get to 30 without playing through any of the major dungeons? That's a real shame. They don't really mention how much fun the combat is either, the reaction system makes each class very much a different experience with a lot of really fun features like chain moves, combos, finishing moves, counterspells... I could go on. Really this game is for the MMO player who looks after their PC (and thus can expect to run VG just fine) and enjoys grouping, exploring and a slower pace of gameplay than most other games. I'll try and summerise why I think Vanguard is worth playing:
Exploration : Horses, unicorns, shadowhounds, boats, flying mounts... No invisible walls or instancing, an epic world to get lost in. Engaging Combat : Yes it's not Conan, it's not realtime swordplay but it is one of the most engaging traditional MMO combat systems, with unique and well thought out classes. True Dungeon Crawling : Play though Temple of Dailuk, Ruins of Trengal Keep, Vol Tuniel or any of the othe major dungeons in the game and you'll understand what VG brings to the table. These places are big enough for several groups to be working through the questlines and content without it getting annoying (well, not too often anyway, the first weeks on Gelenia were a bit mad) Loads of Gear : Loot is plentiful, varied and fun to collect/hunt for. There are loads of armor quest-lines and dropped sets to collect. Atmosphere : Played DAoC in to the early hours? Loved the atmosphere created by the epic landscapes and music? Vanguard has this, no other MMO really has the same feeling of size and expanse as VG does today.
I forgot to mention diplomacy and crafting, while they may not be for everyone they both have a very loyal following of players, especially diplomacy, so there must be something there that appeals to people (I hear the lore is actually quite in-depth and interesting, I haven't "dipped" much myself). There really are too many reasons for me to try and list and I've realised that's it's probably pointless to do so since the flaming is about to start. Yes I am a noob, a faggot, a masochistic vanboi. Whatever you want to hurl at me. To those of you reading these pages in the interest of seeing what Vanguard might be like ; wait for the trial or just give it a go for the free month, make up your own mind instead of following the moronic crowd! FLAME ON!!! Calren Eldelmar - Paladin of Daedalus - Gelenia
Well written !
This is your average Vanguard player. Even if you don't agree with what he says know that people like this are the majority of the players in the game ( from my experience )
Thank you for taking the time to post such a well written and thought out post. Perhaps you should go on staff here and write reviews. Your simple post was better written and more accurate that Laura's review.
I also wanted to say, its not just poor advertising and bad word of mouth online hurting the popularity of this game. I recently went into two of our local EBgames and asked for store clerks opinions on Vanguard and it was pretty much blasted. They tried to steer me towards EQ II, World of Warcraft or if I was willing to wait, WarHammer Online. I did the same thing with the local Best Buy and got the same results. So at least in my area, people are being told its not a good game by the store clerks. I will say, that one of the clerks in one of the EBgames and the guy in Best Buy both said they hadn't played it, but they heard from a lot of people that did play it, that it sucked. Again, bad word of mouth, but this time in the real world instead of the virtual world. This goes to show you, bad word of mouth goes a LONG LONG LONG way.
EB games and Gamestop ( same company now ) both are cheese. I should know..I used to manage a Gamestop store. They are 95% console oriented. A vast majority of the employees there don't know squat about cpu games and even less about mmorpg's.
My wife went in and asked for the latest Guild Wars game and they had no idea which one it was. I'm sure experiences will vary as alot of that depends on Area Managers doing their job to hire the right managers...but still. That should have been a no brainer for someone who gets paid to know games.
I must say, as a VG player since the public beta and pre-order early access at launch I can partially understand why this game gets so much anti-hype, hate and general bad press. But really, the amount of people who have played the game up to say level 10, or never even played it at all yet still hate it and so vocally warn people off amazes me. The idiots a few pages earlier who claim to have multiple level 50 "maxed out" characters made me laugh. Anyone with half a brain understood what they were buying when VG launched, if you didn't then it's your own fault for rushing through a minimal amount of content to "win". No MMO should start at the level cap, they all start at one. An MMO that doesn't work like that is a failure, putting continued pressure on the developers to keep the bleeding edge of the population happy with new raid content and "uber lewtz". Where this idea that raiding and end-game content is the be all and end all of MMO gaming came from, is beyond me. This game has more content than I've seen in most MMOs, if you don't RUSH your way through the game you're in for a treat. If you're willing to look for it, you will find it. Performance is a difficult issue. But personally I can say I really don't think it's that bad as most people will say. The CTD issues have pretty much completely disappeared since launch, and performance is much better (for me at least). The next few patches are bringing in new cache optimisations, PC model optimisations and texture memory fixes, all of which promise further improvement. Really when you look at the size of this game, and the detail in the majority of the world it's no wonder that your Dell "Xtreme" rig suffers so badly. Most people who have perfomance issues are the type of user who has a pre-built rig that's full of spyware, random applications and just general crap that will slow pretty much anything down, especially a memory intensive game like VG. I run a fairly average mainstream rig and run VG at acceptable rates (usually 20-35FPS) on balanced to high quality settings (I tweak most things myself). My specs below if anyone cares. AMD64 X2 (DualCore) 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz
2Gb Corsair "Value" DDR RAM (my major bottleneck)
Plantronics USP DSP Headset (love it)
2x ATI x1600XT 256Mb DDR3 (crossfire is useless) The problem I have with this review is it gives an unfair and unappealing view of this game. The review doesn't even mention grouping, they managed to get to 30 without playing through any of the major dungeons? That's a real shame. They don't really mention how much fun the combat is either, the reaction system makes each class very much a different experience with a lot of really fun features like chain moves, combos, finishing moves, counterspells... I could go on. Really this game is for the MMO player who looks after their PC (and thus can expect to run VG just fine) and enjoys grouping, exploring and a slower pace of gameplay than most other games. I'll try and summerise why I think Vanguard is worth playing:
Exploration : Horses, unicorns, shadowhounds, boats, flying mounts... No invisible walls or instancing, an epic world to get lost in. Engaging Combat : Yes it's not Conan, it's not realtime swordplay but it is one of the most engaging traditional MMO combat systems, with unique and well thought out classes. True Dungeon Crawling : Play though Temple of Dailuk, Ruins of Trengal Keep, Vol Tuniel or any of the othe major dungeons in the game and you'll understand what VG brings to the table. These places are big enough for several groups to be working through the questlines and content without it getting annoying (well, not too often anyway, the first weeks on Gelenia were a bit mad) Loads of Gear : Loot is plentiful, varied and fun to collect/hunt for. There are loads of armor quest-lines and dropped sets to collect. Atmosphere : Played DAoC in to the early hours? Loved the atmosphere created by the epic landscapes and music? Vanguard has this, no other MMO really has the same feeling of size and expanse as VG does today.
I forgot to mention diplomacy and crafting, while they may not be for everyone they both have a very loyal following of players, especially diplomacy, so there must be something there that appeals to people (I hear the lore is actually quite in-depth and interesting, I haven't "dipped" much myself). There really are too many reasons for me to try and list and I've realised that's it's probably pointless to do so since the flaming is about to start. Yes I am a noob, a faggot, a masochistic vanboi. Whatever you want to hurl at me. To those of you reading these pages in the interest of seeing what Vanguard might be like ; wait for the trial or just give it a go for the free month, make up your own mind instead of following the moronic crowd! FLAME ON!!! Calren Eldelmar - Paladin of Daedalus - Gelenia
Well written !
This is your average Vanguard player. Even if you don't agree with what he says know that people like this are the majority of the players in the game ( from my experience )
Thank you for taking the time to post such a well written and thought out post. Perhaps you should go on staff here and write reviews. Your simple post was better written and more accurate that Laura's review.
You sir...suck less than the rest !
I agree this is a much more thought out and complete review, much better then the staffer did.
A MMO is like life. It is something to cherish and enjoy upon in it journey. So why race to the end of it. In life at the end you die.
Well to address the performance of the game, I have a AMD 3200 with 2gb of memory and a nvidia 6600gt. Obviously a pretty middle of the road system. I have run, EQ2, Wow, Lotro, Eve, tried a host of the asian grindfests, all run at high graphics settings with no problems at all. My gaming system has very little in the startup beyond basic virus protection.
Yet, trying to run this game at even low graphics settings makes me feel like I am walking underwater half the time. I just resuscribed in May because a friend told me it was much better. Yes it was better that I remember at release, but still unplayable.
So it still is a big issue. I hope the upcoming changes address it, I might look at the game again, but probably not.
Oh for the record, AC beat Vanguard to the punch when it comes to big worlds and they actually had a lot more content at release.
His post was far more disconcerting than yours. Don't apologize... anyone who can't form a complete sentence even with abbreviated words (UR?) isn't in a position to criticize anyone.
I haven't, and probably won't try Vanguard for a long time. I had many friends leave the game we were playing to give VG a try, based on the promises - promises that for the most part were not ready at launch and still aren't, as this review mentions.
Poo-poo on unfinished game releases.
There is one thing that I dislike greatly and have heard in more than one place:
"For example, VG rethought the Cleric class: instead of being an exercise in heal-and-sit-and-stand-and-heal, the VG Cleric is a powerful meleer, and is expected to help in combat."
No, no they did not. They might be the first to put the idea into practic in an MMO (not necessarily true either), but they didn't 'rethink' it. Let's go back to the late 1970's and dust off our old D&D books, shall we? Heck, let's go with an example I was alive for - 2nd Edition AD&D or even the 3.x D&D of more recent days - where your cleric has always been a mace wielder who can wear heavier armor and back up a fighter in melee!
Comments
I must say Reklaw, you seem to have a bigger probelm reading other peoples Opinions, since you always feel the need to come and attack anyone that say something you disagree with.. you can never keep a discussion going, but always start straight off the bat with insults. Maybe talk less and think more huh? Look yourself in the mirror the next time, then say the exact same thing.
___________________________________________________
Anatomy of a Fanboi
This is you.
Maybe if people could read they would not see it as a attack
But i know m8 its perfectly alright for other people to be negative towards others and i know i can't do that to them aswell
I must say, as a VG player since the public beta and pre-order early access at launch I can partially understand why this game gets so much anti-hype, hate and general bad press. But really, the amount of people who have played the game up to say level 10, or never even played it at all yet still hate it and so vocally warn people off amazes me.
The idiots a few pages earlier who claim to have multiple level 50 "maxed out" characters made me laugh. Anyone with half a brain understood what they were buying when VG launched, if you didn't then it's your own fault for rushing through a minimal amount of content to "win". No MMO should start at the level cap, they all start at one. An MMO that doesn't work like that is a failure, putting continued pressure on the developers to keep the bleeding edge of the population happy with new raid content and "uber lewtz". Where this idea that raiding and end-game content is the be all and end all of MMO gaming came from, is beyond me. This game has more content than I've seen in most MMOs, if you don't RUSH your way through the game you're in for a treat. If you're willing to look for it, you will find it.
Performance is a difficult issue. But personally I can say I really don't think it's that bad as most people will say. The CTD issues have pretty much completely disappeared since launch, and performance is much better (for me at least). The next few patches are bringing in new cache optimisations, PC model optimisations and texture memory fixes, all of which promise further improvement. Really when you look at the size of this game, and the detail in the majority of the world it's no wonder that your Dell "Xtreme" rig suffers so badly.
Most people who have perfomance issues are the type of user who has a pre-built rig that's full of spyware, random applications and just general crap that will slow pretty much anything down, especially a memory intensive game like VG. I run a fairly average mainstream rig and run VG at acceptable rates (usually 20-35FPS) on balanced to high quality settings (I tweak most things myself). My specs below if anyone cares.
AMD64 X2 (DualCore) 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz
2Gb Corsair "Value" DDR RAM (my major bottleneck)
Plantronics USP DSP Headset (love it)
2x ATI x1600XT 256Mb DDR3 (crossfire is useless)
The problem I have with this review is it gives an unfair and unappealing view of this game. The review doesn't even mention grouping, they managed to get to 30 without playing through any of the major dungeons? That's a real shame. They don't really mention how much fun the combat is either, the reaction system makes each class very much a different experience with a lot of really fun features like chain moves, combos, finishing moves, counterspells... I could go on.
Really this game is for the MMO player who looks after their PC (and thus can expect to run VG just fine) and enjoys grouping, exploring and a slower pace of gameplay than most other games. I'll try and summerise why I think Vanguard is worth playing:
I forgot to mention diplomacy and crafting, while they may not be for everyone they both have a very loyal following of players, especially diplomacy, so there must be something there that appeals to people (I hear the lore is actually quite in-depth and interesting, I haven't "dipped" much myself).
There really are too many reasons for me to try and list and I've realised that's it's probably pointless to do so since the flaming is about to start. Yes I am a noob, a faggot, a masochistic vanboi. Whatever you want to hurl at me. To those of you reading these pages in the interest of seeing what Vanguard might be like ; wait for the trial or just give it a go for the free month, make up your own mind instead of following the moronic crowd!
FLAME ON!!!
Calren Eldelmar - Paladin of Daedalus - Gelenia
Read the whole review here.
This review really doesn't mean much since they've had 6 months to patch and fix it. Is it this website's policy to only review games after the devs have had a chance to fix their mistakes? Is that fair to the people that were looking for a review here when VG was released? Does mmorpg.com have this kind of review policy for other games or was VG treated differently? Whats the reason you people waited so long to write a review?The most fair way to review and comment on a game is to review it when its released and then write an update of sorts a few months later. I wonder what VG's rating would have been when it was released?
actualy...the review is worse than that
Review person seemed to have been reviewing more on the way the game WAS rather than the what the game is NOW.
Review and opinions on performance were based on what they were a couple months ago while the opinions on quests and such seemed current. The remarks on the low player populations are current as well though effort could have been made to explain some of this due to the massive size of the world which exaggerates the issue greatly.
The review is not so much inaccurate as she does not tell the whole story or paint the full picture. It's called...lying by ommision. Since many on these boards consider a mmorpg review to be at least semi - professional....that is not acceptable. Particularly when one considers the high profile nature of the game...be it good or bad. Review should have been ALOT more detailed and ALOT more effort should have been made to tell the WHOLE story.
It just seems too convienent if ya ask me.
Convienent and generalized and late reviews like that just scream ...hidden agenda!
What, pray tell, would our hidden agenda be? The reason for the late review has already been explained. The original reviewer - for whatever reason - found they couldn't complete the review. Others were asked to step up, and in the end Laura ended up doing it. Is that not clear enough?Sigil steps up to the plate, digs in, and swings! It's a miss! Oh, Sigil dropped the bat on the umps head! And here's number 19, SOE to pinch-hit, taking Sigil's place at the plate...
Boo! Hiss! Cry the fans.
I'd have given the whole game a 3 or 4 at best. With polished releases like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings Online on the market, VG doesn't even meet the criteria to be called average. Do I hate it? No, I played for a while and found things to like. Do I think it was released broken? Hell yes, and that's not acceptable.
I agree...the game is unfinished , BUT...the world is so big ...
So was Dark and Light......
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MMORPG.com Spotlight Blog Writer
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Laura Genenders Lips meet SOE's Ass
should have been the topic of this story. Never before have I.. no wait, let me just put it this way. Let's say Vanguard is a Car you're looking at buying, Laura Genender is selling it toy you. The car is broken, unpainted, has no motor, the body is rusted through, the floor is falling out, the gasline leaks, there are no tires, so forget about moving it off the lot. Nobody wants the car, BUT
Laura will tell you this:
It's ugly, but it's pretty on the inside. It's broken, but it still impresses me. It has no motor but just imagine how it might sound if it had one. No tires, but if I blow you you really hard you can pretend you're moving with the wind tossing your hair. It's gaslines leak, but if you get a good air freshener you won't notice the smell.
Let's face the cold facts, Laura is predisposed to selling the MMO as it is, because it is what it is, unredeemable, incomplete, sloppy and so ripe with problems that it belongs in the nearest junkyard. But an MMO focused site wants to make advertising dollars and so they make proper bedmates.
If you want a VALID statement or review of the game listen to the community thats playing the game, read their posts, listen to their complaints and praises.
This "article" was simply salesmanship.
At least the review was interesting...
Good review, at least from someone who beta-tested the game (me that is). I really wanted to read an "unbiased" review of the current state of the game. Saddened to see the problems people have been complaining about are still there, and that development/content/fixes are slowing down, as opposed to the opposite. I'd give the game a try again, but hearing about empty towns and the lack of development or, progress, makes me want to sit this one out and see what happens. I'm jumped into games that I loved, like Horizons, when it was a sinking ship... well, I guess it was a sinking ship from the get-go, if you follow the history of this tragic game.
Still waiting for a game I can mostly solo, and explore, explore, and explore some more. I loved and hated EQ I for so many reasons, one love being the sheer volume of land, and number of dungeons to explore. Games now, especially the free/item-mall Asian clone crap, are all about mindless pk-ing, immature players, and 0 exploration. Most don't even have a single dungeon to explore.
I beta tested LOTR (and soooo many others), but after initially liking it, I hit a certain level where quests and such were impossible to finish without being FORCED to group. Some people liked that about it. Not me. As a player, I shouldn't be FORCED to do anything I don't want to do, especially when solo content was great at lower levels.
My problem with groups? Easy. Unskilled players, the group NOT playing as a group, people spending 30 mins to find a group, then saying the have to go eat lunch with their grandma (true story) and quitting the group.. ya know, like your only tank or healer, then back to the drawing board. I haven't found a good group in a game (talking about 10 different games AT LEAST) in ages. People have real lives to deal with, as do I, being a father of 3 children, and even I can't dedicate hours to a group of strangers (but I'm still the last person to break up and leave a group).
In GW, I did almost every mission with NPCs. Yeah, almost ALL of them. There were a couple that were impossible to do without real people though. My garbage groups failed so many missions because the 12 year olds in my group couldn't follow a simple command, and would run off from the group and kill themselves or just log off with no explanation. I lost hours having to re-do mission after mission due to bad groups.
From what I understand, Laura is playing and enjoying the game.
The review I read was certainly not a sales pitch. Negative aspects of the game were brought up and written about beside aspects of the game that she enjoyed. Just because you don't agree or even because you strongly disagree, doesn't mean that the writer had some kind of hidden agenda.
You can disagree with the review as much as you like, we encourage that. However, attacking the author (or any other memebr of this site) will not be tolerated.
Hope that clears things up
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
I agree with this review totally, BUT at this point EQ2 does everything Vanguard tries to do but 100% better. EQ2 is currently the best MMO on the market, I dont care how many WoW fanboys may be here. Vanguard is "ok" but it needs time in the oven. I cant wait till they merge servers, right now this game is a ghost land
I also wanted to say, its not just poor advertising and bad word of mouth online hurting the popularity of this game. I recently went into two of our local EBgames and asked for store clerks opinions on Vanguard and it was pretty much blasted. They tried to steer me towards EQ II, World of Warcraft or if I was willing to wait, WarHammer Online. I did the same thing with the local Best Buy and got the same results. So at least in my area, people are being told its not a good game by the store clerks. I will say, that one of the clerks in one of the EBgames and the guy in Best Buy both said they hadn't played it, but they heard from a lot of people that did play it, that it sucked. Again, bad word of mouth, but this time in the real world instead of the virtual world. This goes to show you, bad word of mouth goes a LONG LONG LONG way.
I didn't get a sales pitch feel from the review, and I think comparing Laura to a used car salesman selling an obvious lemon is a bit unfair. The game is playable and not the complete lemon people make it out to be. Obviously people DO play the game and some are even having fun with it. I'm not implying it's without its problems though.
I'm not sure Laura was the proper person to do the review though because she obviously likes to solo more than group and doesn't care for other avenues like harvesting, crafting and diplomacy which play an important role in Vanguard. For example, did you know you can have a harvesting party, much like an adventuring party that yields greater rewards? No more competing for nodes, it makes more sense to group them. Did you know acts of diplomacy can trigger events that effect everyone within a region or open quest lines otherwise unobtainable? Diplomacy is actually a very fun game within a game once you figure it out. As for crafting, did you also know you can build a ship, not a puny little canoe, but a big ole frigate you can sail around on? It's not easy, and it probably requires help, but it's an amazing little something you can do.
Laura probably didn't write about these things because maybe she didn't do these things, which is fair enough, but the consequence of that is the article becomes less of a review and more personal opinion on the game, like a blog. This is informative and valuable in it's own right, as I value peoples opinion usually more than reviews anyway. But I think it's fair to say that perhaps someone willing to explore all the game's avenues a bit more might have made for a more informative review.
All that said, I think Vanguard was released a year too early. It obviously needs more development and time to allow technology to catch up to it a bit on the hardware side of things -- or at lease be more mainstream and affordable. But underneath all the current problems, lies an incredible game with huge potential, and I think Sony sees that too (otherwise why further waste money and resources on it). It just happened to be a little too ambitious for a start-up group like Sigil to see through to the end. It's difficult to say whether Vanguard will ever be a commercial success, but I applaud SoE for giving it a go, because I really would like to someday play Vanguard as it was intended to be.
No tires, but if I blow you you really hard
WTF! DUDE! REVIEW UR WRITING NEXT TIME. Their seriously are kids on this, like .e
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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz
Which is why you have, "I was raised on the dairy...BITCH" by your name?
Thamoris talks and acts like an exalted cult guru whose only pupose in life is to spread the word of his newfound "religion" and have us all embrace his mishapen defective crippled mangled monstrous deity...
He really scares me.
LOL
ok cool, so I'm not the only one that sees him as a wacko
This is one of the better reviews I have read about this game. It's fairly honest and touches on some good points. I had been one of those people that seriously looked forward to Vsoh...Until I learned of it's many faults. I simply don't agree to this concept of releasing a game half finished and making the consumer be a paying beta tester. So instead I went and subscribed to Eq2. True it's a SoE game but it fills my needs in a mmorph.....For now until a new mmorph comes out being released complete.
I look forward to future reviews!
hahahhahahah. good point. didnt notice it till you said it. lol
i actually rofl'd
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Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz
One of the things that concerns me the most about VG was bought up plain and clear by the reviewer. She said that one of Vanguard's biggest problems is that it fails to be the game that it was supposed to have been. I mean let's take grouping for example. From day 1 Sigil said how grouping was going to be the main focus in VG and that players would be expected to group to accomplish things. I mean this is a Massively Multiplayer Online game for starters.
So you get into the game and how much grouping is there really (and I mean outside tightly knit guild confines)? The reviewer even states that she was able to solo effectively, and, from her words, suggests that this is possible into the 20s and 30s. Why is a game that ultimately leads to soloing being classed as Massively Multiplayer? That's a huge problem for me. It totally goes againstw hat they always said the game was going to be.
That is a big reason for the shrinkage in player base. I know players who have excitedly followed this game since 2004 and 2005 that didn't even play because so many of the great ideas that were bounded around prior to launch were dropped in favour of simplification and appeasing the WoW crowd. Then the WoW-type players left because the game tried to do things the 'new' way and failed miserably because it still wanted to be a hardcore title.
To sum up in one sentence; Vanguards biggest problem is it tries to be too much. You could even encompass that Sigil went for too big a scope than they were able to handle; but bad management is as a big a reason for that as is incompetency.
I'm also glad that the reviewer mentioned the lore. From the game's size and scope the game would be assumed to have amples and oodles of lore. It was another reason I followed this game so intently since 2004. There were to be Gods, stories, famous characters. I got into game and found a little bit of present story lore in the newbie diplomacy quests, but outside of that it was all so vague; passing comments here and there. You never were able to choose a God to worship and after all Sigil's hype about the complexity of Vanguard that was a huge failing point for me.
I have been playing EQ2 lately and that game is how lore should be. Everyday I find half a dozen new pieces of lore to read and I am loving it. I have just chosen Tunare as my God and learnt about the history of the Dwarven Ringmail Tunic and then I find a bookseller with the history of all the races. EQ2 could be a terrible, terrible game in most aspects but still rivet me with its lore content. Thing is it is actually a rather good game in all other aspects.
Given time then SOE can probably turn VG around and make it a good game. Problem is I don't think I will play again because I know they will always be trying to do too many different things to keep too many types of gamers happy. Sigil wowed people like me with promises of difficult, challenging and engrossing content. With ideas of ship travel and contrasting player controlled economies. Of having to to explore to find quests and to think about what you were going to do within challenging and tactical combat. Sigil gave up on the players that picked up Vanguard when it was just a child and followed it with glee. We hyped it to the unbelievers and told everyone what a great and original game it was going to be. Then they said to us, 'sod you', in favour of pleasing the casual crowd.
Vanguard is not the game it ever promised to be. They tried to please too many people and pleased relatively few.
.
This is your average Vanguard player. Even if you don't agree with what he says know that people like this are the majority of the players in the game ( from my experience )
Thank you for taking the time to post such a well written and thought out post. Perhaps you should go on staff here and write reviews. Your simple post was better written and more accurate that Laura's review.
You sir...suck less than the rest !
EB games and Gamestop ( same company now ) both are cheese. I should know..I used to manage a Gamestop store. They are 95% console oriented. A vast majority of the employees there don't know squat about cpu games and even less about mmorpg's.
My wife went in and asked for the latest Guild Wars game and they had no idea which one it was. I'm sure experiences will vary as alot of that depends on Area Managers doing their job to hire the right managers...but still. That should have been a no brainer for someone who gets paid to know games.
This is your average Vanguard player. Even if you don't agree with what he says know that people like this are the majority of the players in the game ( from my experience )
Thank you for taking the time to post such a well written and thought out post. Perhaps you should go on staff here and write reviews. Your simple post was better written and more accurate that Laura's review.
You sir...suck less than the rest !
I agree this is a much more thought out and complete review, much better then the staffer did.
A MMO is like life. It is something to cherish and enjoy upon in it journey. So why race to the end of it. In life at the end you die.
Well to address the performance of the game, I have a AMD 3200 with 2gb of memory and a nvidia 6600gt. Obviously a pretty middle of the road system. I have run, EQ2, Wow, Lotro, Eve, tried a host of the asian grindfests, all run at high graphics settings with no problems at all. My gaming system has very little in the startup beyond basic virus protection.
Yet, trying to run this game at even low graphics settings makes me feel like I am walking underwater half the time. I just resuscribed in May because a friend told me it was much better. Yes it was better that I remember at release, but still unplayable.
So it still is a big issue. I hope the upcoming changes address it, I might look at the game again, but probably not.
Oh for the record, AC beat Vanguard to the punch when it comes to big worlds and they actually had a lot more content at release.
I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode, where I woke up and people forgot what crap Vanguard was, and it was an actual debate topic.
Good review right one the money. end of story, let's wait for some new game to suck okay ?
His post was far more disconcerting than yours. Don't apologize... anyone who can't form a complete sentence even with abbreviated words (UR?) isn't in a position to criticize anyone.
I haven't, and probably won't try Vanguard for a long time. I had many friends leave the game we were playing to give VG a try, based on the promises - promises that for the most part were not ready at launch and still aren't, as this review mentions.
Poo-poo on unfinished game releases.
There is one thing that I dislike greatly and have heard in more than one place:
"For example, VG rethought the Cleric class: instead of being an exercise in heal-and-sit-and-stand-and-heal, the VG Cleric is a powerful meleer, and is expected to help in combat."
No, no they did not. They might be the first to put the idea into practic in an MMO (not necessarily true either), but they didn't 'rethink' it. Let's go back to the late 1970's and dust off our old D&D books, shall we? Heck, let's go with an example I was alive for - 2nd Edition AD&D or even the 3.x D&D of more recent days - where your cleric has always been a mace wielder who can wear heavier armor and back up a fighter in melee!