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A researcher's view on Vanguard
zspawn
Member Posts: 410
Hello guys,
I recently lost my WoW account due to hacking and Blizzard for some reason did not manage to restore him fully.
Being a Black Temple raider you realise the kind of gear + money I lost. Long story short, I lost my interest in the raidcentric nature of the game and I thought It was probably time to try a new game.
So I went to my local store and bought some MMOs to try that I had noted down by browsing the forums here.
I won't get into the rest, but I'll get into Vanguard 
Ok I read alot of bad things about the game and was seriously thinking if I should even try it or not.
People complained about the game being laggy/low performance/no fun etc. etc.
I installed the game (yes it's massive at 17gb but hey - HDDs are cheap these days:P) and proceeded to update it so I could play.
That was kind of a challenge since I got over my download limit and I was restricted to 10k/sec so it took 2-3 days to update:P
I launched the game very excited and saw a massive amount of customisation for your character. Lots of races/classes/options to change the appearance.
I just chose a human monk to see the game. I felt very very dissapointed. The framerate was around 2 fps and the game would not stop loading everytime I moved. It was very very dissapointing to see that to make it slightly playable I had to reduce its graphics to smthn from 1990. I tried all the perfomance tweaks, I defragged and it sucked. BADLY.
Anyhow I was using Vista Ultimate atm and I rebooted into WinXP to see as a last hope if it makes any difference.
The game played like heaven. All maxed out with playable framerates no hiccups whatsoever. I run a AMD Athlon64 single core 4200+ with 1gb of 533Mhz ram and a GF 7600GT. It's a good PC but it could have been better
First thing I noticed is that some starting areas look really unfinished and boring (the Kurahasha ones - dunno if I spelled it right) so I still felt kind of sad. I made a giant for the fun of it and saw a completely different area much better with quests etc.
I started doing quests and found someone to group with and we played together for around 5 hours and leveled up to 8 together in one night.
I won't go into details but I'll tell you this.
YES. The game feels unfinished, lacks the polish + quality in build of a retail game.
YES. Has some compatibility / performance issues (which now I don't have I'm playing it smoothly indeed).
BUT...The game has the decent old school MMORPG feeling of questing, adventuring, exploring and crafting while doing it with other people. It can be something truly amazing if the developers don't give up on it.
It feels much more "hardcore RPG" than a kid's RPG (WoW) and it has some nice gameplay ideas. The adventuring is fast and fun atm and the EPIC feeling is really the meat in this game I think.
After trying 5 MMOs this summer (yes lots of time in my hands) and 3 years in WoW this game actually makes me wanna play more and more.
To sum it up, to those who didn't try the game yet and read about it - Don't listen to "pro", "elitist" or down right simple griefers. Try the game for yourself. You *might* find a sparkle of that epic MMO feeling you set out for in the beginning of this genre.
That's what I found for myself
(BTW I'm on the FFA PvP server if anyone wants to add me - Sarathan is the name)
Comments
Great review! Only thing I didn't like was the fact you just had to throw in the remark about kids MMO then refer to WoW. User friendly yes, new to MMO friendly yes, but kids game was not necessary. Otherwise really good review and I hope more people just give Vanguard a try for themselves!
No signature, I don't have a pen
What is slightly funny here is: If someone saying bad things about the game levelled up to 8 and said it was bad, he would be slammed like an imbellice from tons of people screaming that "he cant judge a game after 8 levels, he has not even started playing, so be quiet and stop trolling"
If a defender play 8 levels and says he likes it, its the best goshdarn review in town.
Not starting anything, I just laughed a bit at it
"This is not a game to be tossed aside lightly.
It should be thrown with great force"
Also it takes quite awhile to get to level 8 so if you don't like it the first 8 levels then your not going to like the rest of the game or want to waste the time.
Hmm..The first 10 levels of Vanguard is like any other game out there, It's soloable, it's fun and the quests are all linked and rather fast paced..
The problem comes if you believe that the rest of Vanguard would be anything NEAR the starter experience..It's not...
So..come back after 10-20 levels and tell me about the game..
/thark
Well It's not meant as a review it's meant as first impressions post
Btw referring to WoW as kid's game I'm saying it from how "safe" and "easy" it is.
It's user friendly thats all.
I will keep you posted on progress then :P
What exactly are you "researching" or researcher of?
You gave a summery of your experience and your impression of the game prefaced by your WoW background.
There is little difference in level 10-20 than level 1-10 its still soloable. The entire game is soloable and fast. You can solo 1-50 only on quests (in less than 10 days played) without ever grinding at all. One of the most dissapointing aspects of Vanguard to many people is expereince is better for solo/duop than for groups. But the game offfers gameplay for solo/small group play style and group play style. But there is little to no incentive to make full groups. The problem your most likely expereincing is the game has little to no signs or roadmarks directing players to content so many players never find the content. The content is there it just takes a bit of work or research to find it.
Nice review. I'm still on the fence about giving V:SoH a second shot. I'm probably gonna hold off until GU#3 and wait to see how things are going at that point. However, I did discover a great podcast called "Voyages of Vanguard" that you can get off itunes for free or by doing a google search by the title. Even though I don't play the game, the host's enthusiasm for the title really makes me wanna give this game another shot sometime in the future.
I worked in MMO Gaming centers and pretty much played and had to know at least the most played MMOs there to help/advice/suggest etc.
However I'm now "researching" and trying to find the most complete MMO experience for a group of people I know really well and take MMOs seriously as a hobby and worked as a guild always.
I never said I'm a professional, I'm just a lot into games and MMORPGs for the last 4 years so I'm pretty much the only one amongst the group who played more games than WoW.
I have a full GW account (all expansions) and played it extensively together with WoW (got level 70 hunter in Black Temple atm, lvl 70 shaman doing Kara/Gruul/Mag/SSC in the ALT guild, a lvl 70 PvP rogue and slowly was levelling a warrior to 70 - he's 51).
Played a lot of time and due to the nature of my previous work I had double the free time (work at an MMO cafe? Playing WoW and getting paid more like it :P)
I also invested sometime in Knights Online and Gates of Heaven 4 years ago but quit after a while to get GW + WoW.
After I stopped playing GW I tried CoH (which I liked however I was looking for something different at the time) and EVE Online which I didn't really like however I understand that the game is well developed and all, just not my kind of thing again. Tried 2moons when i felt like grinding but got boring fast.
What else..uhh...Currently I have active subscriptions in WoW, Vanguard and LotRO.
The only game I did not try (oddly enough) is EQ2. :P
It was never popular in the MMO centers I was in. Don't ask why, I dunno.
I'm trying to get a hold of a copy of it as we speak :P
Minor technicality. If you installed the game in Vista you could not have rebooted in Windows XP and played it. You would have needed to reinstall the game (all 17 gigs and do updates again) on your XP partition before you could play it.
You're wrong. Try copying over your the SOE/VG or SOE/EQ2 folders and it's entire contents from one computer to another without running the installation program. Trust me it works. The starter application for both games usually recreates links to your desktops and start menu. This is how I moved my EQ2 installation from one computer to another when I wanted to two box on a new computer. No need to go through the hassle of re-downloading or re-installing anything. The VG and EQ2 applications are not exclusive to XP or VISTA. In fact unless it requires specific *.dll's or it's a been compiled specifically for a certain cpu ( 32bit or 64bit ) from either of the OS's involved you can pretty much do the same with most pc games.
Games I've played/tried out:WAR, LOTRO, Tabula Rasa, AoC, EQ1, EQ2, WoW, Vangaurd, FFXI, D&DO, Lineage 2, Saga Of Ryzom, EvE Online, DAoC, Guild Wars,Star Wars Galaxies, Hell Gate London, Auto Assault, Grando Espada ( AKA SoTNW ), Archlord, CoV/H, Star Trek Online, APB, Champions Online, FFXIV, Rift Online, GW2.
Game(s) I Am Currently Playing:
GW2 (+LoL and BF3)
I do not know this..When I played you could only solo to aprox lvl 10 then the quests you got was small or big group quests..I guess you could hunt mobs solo, but that playstyle isn't what I refer to as "normal" so I didnt mention that..So yeah..But there is still a big diffrence after lvl 10. Atleast it was for me..
/thark
I have to say concerning level 1-10 versus later.. that while the starter areas are nicely laid out and follow a good path (and are loaded with quests) the game imo gets better after that point.
1. Classes start to get alot more unique and get more varied and useful moves.
2. Like someone said earlier the game may not guide you to content well.. but it is there and at this point it becomes alot more varied as to where you can go, with quite a few good dungeon/interesting adventure areas to hit up.
3. Once you start grouping (even if not always efficient) the game can be alot funner and atleast as the few classes I have played (primarily warrior), the group aspect is quite fun - as long as you can find groups (which hasn't been near the problem on my lv31 or lower lvs as it was before the merger... having enough free time to really get going in a group is my only problem now.. but nothing against the game jsut a busy schedule).
- And you can solo past ten, especialy till 20 or so there is quite a bit of questing content for solo (or small groups), though I beleive it does slow down someone beyond 20, it is still very possible to find good solo areas (river valley in the high 20's low 30's for instance) or that spire rock area in the 30's... just with slower exp I think it gets a bit more boring to solo and grouping is alot funner, but experienced that in any mmo I have played.
Personnally I remeber my teens and early - midish 20's most fondly from my Dwarf Warrior. Hitting up khelor's end which was quite fun, the floating magic school, Veskal's lil dungeon areas, Hilsbury Manor, Trengal Keep, CiS and a few other areas in qalia (especialy enjoyed Skawlra Rock.. which defiantly the game really doesn't led you to in any way sadly, but once you get there alot of quests (full armor set one) and just a fun place to explore!
Kalade
I worked in MMO Gaming centers and pretty much played and had to know at least the most played MMOs there to help/advice/suggest etc.
However I'm now "researching" and trying to find the most complete MMO experience for a group of people I know really well and take MMOs seriously as a hobby and worked as a guild always.
I never said I'm a professional, I'm just a lot into games and MMORPGs for the last 4 years so I'm pretty much the only one amongst the group who played more games than WoW.
I have a full GW account (all expansions) and played it extensively together with WoW (got level 70 hunter in Black Temple atm, lvl 70 shaman doing Kara/Gruul/Mag/SSC in the ALT guild, a lvl 70 PvP rogue and slowly was levelling a warrior to 70 - he's 51).
Played a lot of time and due to the nature of my previous work I had double the free time (work at an MMO cafe? Playing WoW and getting paid more like it :P)
I also invested sometime in Knights Online and Gates of Heaven 4 years ago but quit after a while to get GW + WoW.
After I stopped playing GW I tried CoH (which I liked however I was looking for something different at the time) and EVE Online which I didn't really like however I understand that the game is well developed and all, just not my kind of thing again. Tried 2moons when i felt like grinding but got boring fast.
What else..uhh...Currently I have active subscriptions in WoW, Vanguard and LotRO.
The only game I did not try (oddly enough) is EQ2. :P
It was never popular in the MMO centers I was in. Don't ask why, I dunno.
I'm trying to get a hold of a copy of it as we speak :P
Hmm..I'd say the best game for a tight group of friends that hasn't played(Important) this game yet is D&DO..But this IS only if NON of you have tried it, as the dungeons are made more like classic dungeons with traps and all and could be a very good experience for the SAME tight group of friends..
EQ2..I recomend you try it aswell, there is alot ov value for a tight group of friends in here with alot of added quests/zones with alot of group value...
/thark
have to agree with the player that said the game gets better after level 10.
i play a ranger and the game was pretty standard up untill around level 16. from then on i have to admit i am starting to feel the same addictiveness that i felt with eq at the beggining. i am also not a big fan of the easy guided quest though i have to admit so i can see how others might not like that. in eq you had to work out quests and there were not hundreds to choose from. there were a few quests available but they were big and had you going al across the world to complete them. i tend to not accept every quest in a town and try to find the outposts for quests as these seem to have you exploring more.
also after level 20 or so your character really starts to develop into his class more and stand out.
Are there still several trial passes with each retail game avail? Or is there a trial for V:SoH somewhere. I'd love to give the game a try, even if its got issues. Never considered since I didn't have a PC that could run it earlier this year, now I do.
Kemih ~ 13 Red Mage | Currently playing FFXI & LOTRO, awaiting Warhammer Online & Aion...
Minor technicality. If you installed the game in Vista you could not have rebooted in Windows XP and played it. You would have needed to reinstall the game (all 17 gigs and do updates again) on your XP partition before you could play it.
You're wrong. Try copying over your the SOE/VG or SOE/EQ2 folders and it's entire contents from one computer to another without running the installation program. Trust me it works. The starter application for both games usually recreates links to your desktops and start menu. This is how I moved my EQ2 installation from one computer to another when I wanted to two box on a new computer. No need to go through the hassle of re-downloading or re-installing anything. The VG and EQ2 applications are not exclusive to XP or VISTA. In fact unless it requires specific *.dll's or it's a been compiled specifically for a certain cpu ( 32bit or 64bit ) from either of the OS's involved you can pretty much do the same with most pc games.
I'll have to remember to try that in the future. Thanks for the info.
no free trial as of yet, but i believe theres a thingy called Trial Island released soon. This consists of an island where players can quest, group up etc. Its free i believe, but u gotta pay to play the full game obviously. Not sure when this is releases. Soon though i think
Yep I installed it in Vista but kept a dual-boot with WinXP just In case the problems were too many for games in Vista.
What I did was restart my PC boot into XP and run the launcher. It took some time working with files/checking etc. and then it just launched:)
I am still playing VG fyi guys and I only like it more the more I play it.
It might not be the most user friendly game out there in questing even however I enjoy the "randomness" of things heh.
I actually got into a mature guild right now that organises harvesting/pvp/dungeon events and all are working to build their HQ.
Some people might say its pointless etc. but I kinda like the feel of the game as it is atm.