Originally posted by Rekindle The question is Why is Vanguard un-popular ? the statements regarding present performance and the rest are complete crap. the problem is there is an inordinate number of people who complain about the game here vs. those taht play and enjoy. There arent the rampant performance issues in the game that are being said. the best thing to do is form your own opinion --- really. download the trial and give it a shot. Its just frustrating to see the game misrepresnted by people who a> do not have the current specifications to run the otpmized version of the game b> base their experience on the game as it was.
Isn't the optimized version of the game supposed to run better than the bloated unoptimized version of the game that was at release? The system requirements are the release system requirements (they never changed them), so I would expect that since the game has been fixxed and optimized that it should run better, correct?
I was one of the people who read on these forums that Vanguard was much better than it was back in the day (I had clan members from other games play it's failure at release) and we went out and wasted money to buy it because our systems exceeded the requirements.
Do not talk to me about what you "think" I should be running the game on. I care about what the box says at "Recommended System Requirements" and what I have. What I have is BETTER than the RECOMMENDED requirements so performance should not even be an issue for me or anyone with a computer setup on par with mine, whatsoever.
There is no point to what you are saying.
The game was horrible on high-spec computers on release, and still performs unacceptably on systems that are on par or greater than the the recommended requirements for many people. If that wasn't the case, there would probably be even MORE people (like, me and my roomate) playing the game RIGHT NOW instead of looking for another game to play.
Fan much?
I brought the game, I played the game - on two separate systems with specs above the on par or above the recommended requirements - and the game failed. That is not my or my computer's fault. That is Vanguard and SOE/Sigil's fault. They should have thought a bit more about those things, but failed to do so.
A bad launch crippled the game, but it would never have had a huge population since its game world is so cumbersome. The classes are nice to some degree and SOE has tried to make the game less cumbersome in some ways. But it was designed to be cumbersome and a PITA in a number of ways. It is just a fact that a large majority of people who play games don't want to have a PITA when they play. Not that they all want an "easy" game. Some do really want every thing east, but most don't. the whole Guild Wars farming debates when they have made AI changes shows this. There are simply a fairly small, but vocal, minority of people who want to destroy everything in their path and will cry foul anytime whatever method they have is messed with. They basically want mindless repeatable power. They even say so. But most people think they are silly. Most normal gamers just see no reason to be overly burdened by stuff they don't really care much about.
This was the major drawback of EQ1 and the major drawback of VG as well. And is actually inherited from many MUDs (most MUDs). And is continued in the complaints of Bartle about MMORPGs and Bartle is one of the driving factors in the original dogma that made MUDs and therefore EQ1 (since most of its RPG design was based off a particular DIKU MUD) so hidebound to the idea of burdening the players.
Everything in WoW was designed around the idea of relieving these burdens. That is why it has pulled in so many people. Many observer believe this is because of "casuals". They are partially wrong. Many hardcores hate the burdens imposed by the game as well. In fact they hate them more because they interfere with their goals. Only a certain kind of hardcore likes burden imposed by games like EQ1 and VG and those are hardcore immersion people. There really are not that many people who go to that extreme. Most people like immersion but like convenience more.
It could have pulled away a lot of EQ1 type people probably, but that would still have been like 300k at best. Which would have been ok, much better than what it has now.
It was always destined to be niche, but the bad launch really cut its population to a third of what it would have been.
Now with SOE doing a smoother starter area, they hope to grow the population. But I don't think anyone truly expects to get it to what it could have been with a good launch.
The question is Why is Vanguard un-popular ? the statements regarding present performance and the rest are complete crap. the problem is there is an inordinate number of people who complain about the game here vs. those taht play and enjoy. There arent the rampant performance issues in the game that are being said. the best thing to do is form your own opinion --- really. download the trial and give it a shot. Its just frustrating to see the game misrepresnted by people who a> do not have the current specifications to run the otpmized version of the game b> base their experience on the game as it was.
Dude, a lot of people already answered your question as to why is Vanguard is un-popular. I dont understand how you aren't seeing it. Ill repost my opinion as to why:
It is because of when it was first released.
It was owned by Sigil and the CEO, Brad McQuaid did not know what the hell he was doing. He was too busy managing an affair with the PR director and his married Asst Vice President than to lead the game in terms of financial and development direction.
Long story short, they released it way too early because they ran out of money due to poor business decisions.
It was released with bugs everywhere and anywhere. Classes were screwed up, performance issues were bad. It was just really messy. They went from 250,000 users to 20,000 users in two months and then Sigil wen tout of business, selling the game to Sony.
Brad Mcquaid got hundreds of thousand of dollars out of the deal and everyone else was fired in Sigil's parking lot on a Friday Afternoon by a 3rd party contractor that is leased out to fire people. Brad didn't even have the balls to tell the people who slaved over this game that he had to let them go and liquidate the company.
Think of it as Age of Conan but with a smaller company involved.
AND
It could be the best thing since slice bread today but MMOs have this unique thing of really pissing people off if the company/mmo takes advantage of them in the beginning.
Take Age of Conan for example. If Funcom turned that game around and made it better, it still will not have the comeback as it should simply because of the current state of affairs it is in right now.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Wow excellent thread, gives me a chance to vent lol, so smurf your on the Island still. When you get past the island and enter the real world notice how big it is...take a look at all three maps, pretty big huh, well guess what, most of that content was made in one year, by a crappy crew of Sigil employees, eventhough it does look nice, yes they were a crappy bunch, all you have to do is, google "ex sigil employees confessions" they admit it themselves.
Most of them were beginners in game making and didn't have much of a clue except for a few. I was there since day one, and ofcourse left because of performance issues. I'm sure you have read most posts about all the lag and bugs that this game had and still has. And, ofcourse you know, GU6 was released, and still some of the same bugs exist, Hitching, Lag, CHunk line problems, "what's that you say?" Chunk line problems, ohh thats because your in one big Chunk, at the isle of Dawn and havent experienced the Horrors of Chunking from one piece of land to the other, kind of like instancing, only you dont get to see a big swirly thing when you enter, its just ONE BIG SURPRISE, (grins), currently the Chunk line bug still exists, this bug happens when you jump across a chunk line and you freeze while the next chunk line loads up, meanwhile a NPC (enemy) is hacking away at you, and you can't do anything about it, when you finally load and come too guess what, "YOUR DEAD!" haha, funny, actually It's a pretty poor game, *sighs*
Still if you want some more insight into vanguard go into the MMORPG vanguard forums and take my advice, stay away from this game, you will be dissappointed
If you're reading this considering Vanguard just know one thing:
The game is misrepresented on these forums and there are more people who dont subscribe/ play vanguard issuing opinions about the game then there are people actually playing enjoying the game. I suspect partially its because the Vanguard community that supports this game was alientated from this community a while back for supporting a game that had the SOE logo on it coupled with a very poor release.
What you need to play vanguard in Sept of 2008:
A decent modern pc.
An open mind which is willing to play games and form your own conclusion despite the fact Star Wars Galaxies NGE came out.
I can sit here and exchange posts back and fourth about whether the game runs or not but that woudl be futile.
the game runs on my pc just fine. My video card is mediorce - whats king with Vanguard is a modern rig with lots of ram 2gig min to play, 4 gig to play with no issues and a vid card with PCI express specfiications.
Vanguard is not really unpopular relative to 0 players and Seradon seems to have lots of folks on at all times of the day.
Is it unpopular relative to WoW? Yes.....but the other thing you have to keep in mind is SOE JUST released the trial island after spending a whole year doing nothing but fixing the game.
currently the Chunk line bug still exists, this bug happens when you jump across a chunk line and you freeze while the next chunk line loads up, meanwhile a NPC (enemy) is hacking away at you, and you can't do anything about it, when you finally load and come too guess what, "YOUR DEAD!" haha, funny, actually It's a pretty poor game, *sighs*
again not my experience with an average pc setup.
Zoning in vanguard is memory & disk intensive.
There is a noticeable delay of about 2-5 seconds for me crossing chunk lines. one time i zoned and my rented mount despawned....that was two months ago.
Just chalk it up to karma biting SOE in the ass and move on.
SWG NGE is done get over it for the love of god.
i'm still a little upset that they canceled the A Team but ive chosen to move on.
I still dont think you understand why people get pissed over how an mmorpg screws them over. People who were in SWG before the NGE has every right to stay angry.
How would you feel playing your favorite MMO and all of the sudden 3/4 of your classes were gone and the class everyone depised because they represeneted grind afk players (Jedi) becomes a starter class. The game lost over 200K players in 90 days because of that.
Its going to be hard to move on. Plus you cannot compare A Team to this. Thats stupid. SWG is still live on servers. As long as people are being charged for the game, they have the right to voice their opinion.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Originally posted by Rekindle If you're reading this considering Vanguard just know one thing: The game is misrepresented on these forums and there are more people who dont subscribe/ play vanguard issuing opinions about the game then there are people actually playing enjoying the game. I suspect partially its because the Vanguard community that supports this game was alientated from this community a while back for supporting a game that had the SOE logo on it coupled with a very poor release. What you need to play vanguard in Sept of 2008: A decent modern pc. An open mind which is willing to play games and form your own conclusion despite the fact Star Wars Galaxies NGE came out. I can sit here and exchange posts back and fourth about whether the game runs or not but that woudl be futile. the game runs on my pc just fine. My video card is mediorce - whats king with Vanguard is a modern rig with lots of ram 2gig min to play, 4 gig to play with no issues and a vid card with PCI express specfiications. Vanguard is not really unpopular relative to 0 players and Seradon seems to have lots of folks on at all times of the day. Is it unpopular relative to WoW? Yes.....but the other thing you have to keep in mind is SOE JUST released the trial island after spending a whole year doing nothing but fixing the game. now let me don my flame suit.
No one cares about WoW.
No one mentioned WoW and that completely destroys your credibility. Why so desperate now.
No wonder this game is dead.
BTW: I created a new account with my buddy key and yea... 5FPS in Balanced Settings.
You DO know that Vanguard doesn't even come close to making your computer require 4GB of RAM right? You also know that 32-BIT OS cannot even access 4GB RAM? Only like 3.5GB or so?
Please load Vanguard, run around a bit, and then alt-tab off and look in task manager to see how much RAM it's using (RAM + Virtual Memory). By the time Vanguard is even thinking about gettin gup to 1GB of RAM used, it is crashing you to the desktop. Don't even go there.
The system requirements are accurate (the recommended), the issue with this game are the low quality textures (they look fine, but are very unoptimized and inefficient) and the crappy coding. It's okay, EQ2 has the same (self-professed, so fans can't hysterically defend it) issues too.
Sad but true... I bet Age of Conan runs better on my PC than Vanguard, and it has 3x the system requirements... If the game runs fine for you, great. I'm tired reinstalling this bloated piece of feces just to see if they made some grand improvements cause fanbois keep telling me I'm hallucinating...
Stop telling people they need better computers. My computer is more than fine, and people who have computers that surpass my rig have the same issues. I upgraded my RAM and Graphics card since I last played it, and with the new equip in I still have the same issues today. The only difference is that I can actually move around on Highest Performance - I'm not a graphics fanatic, but who wants to play outside of raids on Highest Performance?
What's next? My mom needs to double click the icon to start it on my desktop?
well i untill recently i used to play vanguard on a P4 3ghz 2g ram and radeon 1950
at the launch it was easy to LD or crash but devs made a pretty good work here and is lot of time that i have not such issues... a crash here and there happens (expecially using rifts or in a particular chunk when you get rezzed) but generally the game is pretty stable and was playable even with my old pc
model... well personally my fav where the beta models, still the GU6 put up some nice models to replace the "static ones" we had on live and for sure they are better than ones on WAR :P
the landscape of vvanguard is also very beautifull and you are free to explore it... no constrictions, no insances... you see a mountain in distance... you can climb it, you see an isle far from the coast you can get your boat and sail there
problem of vanguard is that it got a bad name due to a veeery problematic release, the game was lacky on content, unpolished, unstable... well it is not anymore the case the game have really improved and i think deserve a "second try" expecially now that thers a free trial
ah about tabbing, i have same problem (even if i had it not with my old pc lol) so can be related do the OS or something else, mass effect (who use same engine) have same problem too, i just try to not tab too much ingame... and is not even true that it always happen, today i was tabbing in and out of game to parse raid dps for example
Only thing that SWG did was make it a breeding ground for carebears who's only concern is decorating thier houses , RPing thier one click Jedi, AFK Base Busts to get to General with no risk, and make it all about PVE content and no PVP content, which by the way is centered around the GCW which is the core part of the game and actual story line, but no look at my museum of items and shinies!!!!!! Lets Role-Play the Sith-Jedi war!!!!, when Jedi are supposed to be extinct in the time line.... And now $OE even made gambling fun with thier new card game at a chance of cool new shinies!!!! Buy now!!! At 3.99$ per pack or 9.99$ A Starter Pack!!! or 99.99$ a box of digital cards!!!!! $OE.. we promote gambling to children....
If you're reading this considering Vanguard just know one thing:
The game is misrepresented on these forums and there are more people who dont subscribe/ play vanguard issuing opinions about the game then there are people actually playing enjoying the game. I suspect partially its because the Vanguard community that supports this game was alientated from this community a while back for supporting a game that had the SOE logo on it coupled with a very poor release.
What you need to play vanguard in Sept of 2008:
A decent modern pc.
An open mind which is willing to play games and form your own conclusion despite the fact Star Wars Galaxies NGE came out.
I can sit here and exchange posts back and fourth about whether the game runs or not but that woudl be futile.
the game runs on my pc just fine. My video card is mediorce - whats king with Vanguard is a modern rig with lots of ram 2gig min to play, 4 gig to play with no issues and a vid card with PCI express specfiications.
Vanguard is not really unpopular relative to 0 players and Seradon seems to have lots of folks on at all times of the day.
Is it unpopular relative to WoW? Yes.....but the other thing you have to keep in mind is SOE JUST released the trial island after spending a whole year doing nothing but fixing the game.
now let me don my flame suit.
No one cares about WoW.
No one mentioned WoW and that completely destroys your credibility. Why so desperate now.
No wonder this game is dead.
BTW: I created a new account with my buddy key and yea... 5FPS in Balanced Settings.
You DO know that Vanguard doesn't even come close to making your computer require 4GB of RAM right? You also know that 32-BIT OS cannot even access 4GB RAM? Only like 3.5GB or so?
Please load Vanguard, run around a bit, and then alt-tab off and look in task manager to see how much RAM it's using (RAM + Virtual Memory). By the time Vanguard is even thinking about gettin gup to 1GB of RAM used, it is crashing you to the desktop. Don't even go there.
The system requirements are accurate (the recommended), the issue with this game are the low quality textures (they look fine, but are very unoptimized and inefficient) and the crappy coding. It's okay, EQ2 has the same (self-professed, so fans can't hysterically defend it) issues too.
Sad but true... I bet Age of Conan runs better on my PC than Vanguard, and it has 3x the system requirements... If the game runs fine for you, great. I'm tired reinstalling this bloated piece of feces just to see if they made some grand improvements cause fanbois keep telling me I'm hallucinating...
Stop telling people they need better computers. My computer is more than fine, and people who have computers that surpass my rig have the same issues. I upgraded my RAM and Graphics card since I last played it, and with the new equip in I still have the same issues today. The only difference is that I can actually move around on Highest Performance - I'm not a graphics fanatic, but who wants to play outside of raids on Highest Performance?
What's next? My mom needs to double click the icon to start it on my desktop?
not quite sure what oyu're smoking but i sure could use some.
dont mention wow? wow destroys my credibiltiy ?
not even gonna glorify that comment with anything. Time to step out of this conversation.
Just chalk it up to karma biting SOE in the ass and move on.
SWG NGE is done get over it for the love of god.
i'm still a little upset that they canceled the A Team but ive chosen to move on.
I am over it...that's why I don't pay SOE money every month. Just because I'm over it, however, doesn't mean SOE shouldn't suffer for screwing over their players.
Sorry about your A-Team grief, though. It was a good show.
You can't lay blame for the state of the game at launch at SOE's doorstep. That is 100% Sigil(I. E.) Brads fault. The game needed another six months to a years worth of closed beta before it should have been released. But Prior to release SOE did pick up the publishing. that announcement cost them a significant number of subs right off the bat,(A good chunk of the targeted audience did not like SOE. That decision alone boded ill for the future of the game.). Same thing happened with POTBS. When launch came and we got to see just how unready it was for launch it made the decision to not stick it out till things got fixed even easier. Then SOE bought out the game and that led to another minor exodus. I was actually generous and waited to see if SOE was going to pull the same old bs dumbing down that led me to leave every other SOE Game. And yup they couldn't resist themselves, very first patch after they took over. They get credit for fixing the bugs and stabilizing the game, but they also get credit for the bS dumbing down they do too.
Why any developer would want to have SOE associated with their game in any form when that automatically loses you a small but significant segment of your target audience is beyond me. Maybe you personally have not had any issues with SOE or you may even like the stuff they do to dumb down games, but I won't touch a game that is associated with SOE with a ten foot pole.
You can't lay blame for the state of the game at launch at SOE's doorstep.
Sure you can. They own it, and they are the ones collecting money for it.
If they had any integrity, they would just give the game away, give everyone a free month to play it, and refund the purchase price of the game to anyone who bought it and cancelled within a month.
____________________________________________ im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
You can't lay blame for the state of the game at launch at SOE's doorstep.
Sure you can. They own it, and they are the ones collecting money for it.
If they had any integrity, they would just give the game away, give everyone a free month to play it, and refund the purchase price of the game to anyone who bought it and cancelled within a month.
Um dude I really really can't stand SOE, but you can't put blame for the launch on a company that had zip to do with the actually development of the game to that point. You can only blame SOE for what they did to the game after they took it over
You can't lay blame for the state of the game at launch at SOE's doorstep.
Sure you can. They own it, and they are the ones collecting money for it.
If they had any integrity, they would just give the game away, give everyone a free month to play it, and refund the purchase price of the game to anyone who bought it and cancelled within a month.
Um dude I really really can't stand SOE, but you can't put blame for the launch on a company that had zip to do with the actually development of the game to that point. You can only blame SOE for what they did to the game after they took it over
Like I said, sure you can. SOE was the publisher, and financially backed it. This game could never have been released without SOE. Selling the game to people in the condition it was in at launch was borderline fraud, just like selling an SWG expansion pack immediately before the NGE was unleashed.
After SOE acquired the full rights to the game, they continued to pawn it off on the public.
Sure they're culpable.
____________________________________________ im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
At the point where Vangaurd started tanking big time, with people leaving in droves, Sony marketing types tried a gimic: flying wyvern mount rentals. For a small fee you could try out a flying mount, a promised feature that was missing at release.
Me and my guildy were watching people take off, i said, 'no way am I getting on that death trap'.
Sure enough, when the wyvern rider hit the chunk line, he dismounted and plumited to his death. he was so high up that it took him a minute to hit the ground.
I played the insanely over powered bear shaman. Imagine a priest in WoW someone capable of healing a five man group. Now give that priest a hunter pet that can tank like crazy. I never died. The whole group would whipe except for me and my bear.
There was a bug that would aggro my bear on my fellow party members. This pally thought it was funny at first, oh how cute, she's attacking me, but then he started to complain.
maybe SOE forced the release hand because its a business and Sigil was out of development dollars? If you want ot know what really went on the info is on the internet in black and white. All bets are on the fact that SOE knew vanguard would be on life support for a year when they received it....which is why i didnt play their pay to play beta for about a year...but now its fixed up into a mighty fine game.
I find it very humerous when SOE gets depicted as some type of exclusive hostile npc whose only purpose in life is to rip off teh consumer. Learn some objectivity.
Lol every game manufacturer out there is trying to do the same thing to you yet SOE gets the bad wrap eveytime. Theres EA, Funcom, Vivendi .....yet SOE is the black sheep of them all for all time because of NGE. For get Trammel & AoS forget the Eve online and DAOC debacos of the past! but never ever forget SOE is there to make your money and make a profit in a capitalistic society! A lot of poeple are pissed off at sony for now other reason other than they have to pay taxes and that Sony logo is burnt onto their brain from that walkman they had as a kid.
I think if people are going to make a consumer decision to not buy products thats their god given democratic right. But at least make it informed and educated and not just jump on the 'stick it to the man' bandwagon because thats the trend right along side American [insert reality tv show trend here].
I guess maybe im in the minoirty but i try out games and play them based on whether they are fun or not and I lend some type of sympathetic support to the creative effort long enough to see if its for me. And if you can believe it then omfg i played wow too to see if it was any good.....and even though it wasnt for me millions of others beg to differ.
Vanguard has had a lot of negative hype from people who haven't the sweetest clue whats going on in the game past or present. A subset of this crowd is the same one that would burn down your street in a civil unrest situation because it seemed like a good idea at the moment and they saw some people that looked right doing the same thing.
Anyway, this is all a non issue because in a few months people will realize that Vanguard is indeed popular.
There shoudl be some new term coined for the herd mentality that is spawning all the hate for all games these days.
what a desensitized society - maybe we should all vote Nixon and revert back to packman....
maybe SOE forced the release hand because its a business and Sigil was out of development dollars? If you want ot know what really went on the info is on the internet in black and white. All bets are on the fact that SOE knew vanguard would be on life support for a year when they received it....
There shoudl be some new term coined for the herd mentality that is spawning all the hate for all games these days. what a desensitized society - maybe we should all vote Nixon and revert back to packman....
The first part I agree with you.
As for the last part I would heavily recommend you to read my blog on the very subject you bring up
maybe SOE forced the release hand because its a business and Sigil was out of development dollars? If you want ot know what really went on the info is on the internet in black and white. All bets are on the fact that SOE knew vanguard would be on life support for a year when they received it....which is why i didnt play their pay to play beta for about a year...but now its fixed up into a mighty fine game. I find it very humerous when SOE gets depicted as some type of exclusive hostile npc whose only purpose in life is to rip off teh consumer. Learn some objectivity. Lol every game manufacturer out there is trying to do the same thing to you yet SOE gets the bad wrap eveytime. Theres EA, Funcom, Vivendi .....yet SOE is the black sheep of them all for all time because of NGE. For get Trammel & AoS forget the Eve online and DAOC debacos of the past! but never ever forget SOE is there to make your money and make a profit in a capitalistic society! A lot of poeple are pissed off at sony for now other reason other than they have to pay taxes and that Sony logo is burnt onto their brain from that walkman they had as a kid. What happened with Eve and DAoC? As far as I know, SOE is the only major MMO company that has repeatedly and blatantly lied to its customers. Others may have puffed, or made some bad decisions. But everyone with half a brain knows to take marketing with a grain of salt, and mistakes are forgivable. I think if people are going to make a consumer decision to not buy products thats their god given democratic right. But at least make it informed and educated and not just jump on the 'stick it to the man' bandwagon because thats the trend right along side American [insert reality tv show trend here]. I guess maybe im in the minoirty but i try out games and play them based on whether they are fun or not and I lend some type of sympathetic support to the creative effort long enough to see if its for me. And if you can believe it then omfg i played wow too to see if it was any good.....and even though it wasnt for me millions of others beg to differ. How do you try out a game without first buying it if it has no real demo? The only way I would buy such a game is if it came from a reputable developer and I saw consistent, detailed reviews from objective journalists or people who I know personally, who have tried a large portion of the game content. Otherwise, you're just relying on opinions or observations based on a very small slice of what you would be buying and potentially from people with an agenda. It's a matter of trust, and SOE can't really be trusted right now, now with their track record. It doesn't mean I'll never buy another game of theirs, I'm sure I will. I'll just need a lot more proof before I buy anything from them on faith. Vanguard has had a lot of negative hype from people who haven't the sweetest clue whats going on in the game past or present. A subset of this crowd is the same one that would burn down your street in a civil unrest situation because it seemed like a good idea at the moment and they saw some people that looked right doing the same thing. There are plenty of very good games out there that don't have a lot of negative hype, other than from people who criticize features that they, as a matter of personal taste, don't like (e.g. WoW, LoTRO.) Anyway, this is all a non issue because in a few months people will realize that Vanguard is indeed popular.
There shoudl be some new term coined for the herd mentality that is spawning all the hate for all games these days. what a desensitized society - maybe we should all vote Nixon and revert back to packman....
I'm not your run of the mill SOE hater. I'm just explaining why Vanguard has failed to date and has an uphill battle going forward.
Although I think they have done some seriously sleezy things in the past that are going to make me think twice before I buy another one of their products, I don't really have anything against them overall. They may win me back as a customer some day. Right now, I'm not seeing it.
____________________________________________ im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Why Vanguard is unpopular?... well IMO its because the GAMEPLAY is actually worse now (well when I left 3 months ago) than it was at launch.
Performance aside - I say this because apart from falling through the world and the odd chunk disconnect, I was one of the few lucky ones that never really had a problem running Vanguard - I loved VG for the first 6 months. VG looks stunning (although why it never had AA beats me), the racial starting areas were all unique, I found the classes varied and fun, and I loved the fact that the world was so large. But then things started to change.
First up SOE, in its efforts to get more subscribers, decided to lower the leveling curve. Trouble is in making leveling faster they didn't make any changes to the game design, meaning you out-leveled dungeons, questlines etc, BEFORE you completed them and got the reward. ie the reward was useless --> no incentive to do the quest/dungeon. Same as crafting you outleveled crafting tiers before you got the upgrade recipes for that tier. Just bad game design.
IMo many of the changes to classes, just dumbed them down. Bloodmages (probably the most unique class in any MMO to date) became just another sit back healer. Tank classes were changed so each class tanked in a specific way ie warrior dual weld. The game was slowly loosing its sandbox appeal. BTW in what is a PvE game, why do classes have to be balanced. As long as each class is fun who really cares?
Changes to character customization was IMO a backward step (but as I said I had no real performance issues). I hated the new Khal as well
Diplomacy was great to start with, each race had a great storyline to follow. Unfortuanately the storyline quickly faded out, so the only way to increase diplomacy level was to grind. A year on and SOE still hadn't built on the storylines.
Final straw for me was GU5, I mean giant lobster things as mounts??? I mean seriously.. why and where was the lore??? Although the flying mounts I do miss... the landscape was/is breath-taking and one of the things I really miss.
But to top it all off, after playing VG for just over a year, the design team still had not fixed bugs that had been in the game since day one. eg numerous quests were still broken. Yes introduce even more mounts, but fix bugs... nah.
I could go on and on - riftways, faction, etc etc.
IMO VG has simply lost the plot, or rather it now has an identity crisis. It started as a great sandbox MMO, but then changes were made to design (to make it more casual??), yet there was no effort to fix bugs. It just doesn't know what type of game it wants to be. And really is now a very bland game.
Really all SOE had to do was fix up performance and quest bugs.
Comments
Yes, a year ago... (e.g. 1 Year Anniversary, Lol)
P.S. Anyone want a buddy key? ROFL...
I was one of the people who read on these forums that Vanguard was much better than it was back in the day (I had clan members from other games play it's failure at release) and we went out and wasted money to buy it because our systems exceeded the requirements.
Do not talk to me about what you "think" I should be running the game on. I care about what the box says at "Recommended System Requirements" and what I have. What I have is BETTER than the RECOMMENDED requirements so performance should not even be an issue for me or anyone with a computer setup on par with mine, whatsoever.
There is no point to what you are saying.
The game was horrible on high-spec computers on release, and still performs unacceptably on systems that are on par or greater than the the recommended requirements for many people. If that wasn't the case, there would probably be even MORE people (like, me and my roomate) playing the game RIGHT NOW instead of looking for another game to play.
Fan much?
I brought the game, I played the game - on two separate systems with specs above the on par or above the recommended requirements - and the game failed. That is not my or my computer's fault. That is Vanguard and SOE/Sigil's fault. They should have thought a bit more about those things, but failed to do so.
Vanguard is not bad, it's terribad.
A bad launch crippled the game, but it would never have had a huge population since its game world is so cumbersome. The classes are nice to some degree and SOE has tried to make the game less cumbersome in some ways. But it was designed to be cumbersome and a PITA in a number of ways. It is just a fact that a large majority of people who play games don't want to have a PITA when they play. Not that they all want an "easy" game. Some do really want every thing east, but most don't. the whole Guild Wars farming debates when they have made AI changes shows this. There are simply a fairly small, but vocal, minority of people who want to destroy everything in their path and will cry foul anytime whatever method they have is messed with. They basically want mindless repeatable power. They even say so. But most people think they are silly. Most normal gamers just see no reason to be overly burdened by stuff they don't really care much about.
This was the major drawback of EQ1 and the major drawback of VG as well. And is actually inherited from many MUDs (most MUDs). And is continued in the complaints of Bartle about MMORPGs and Bartle is one of the driving factors in the original dogma that made MUDs and therefore EQ1 (since most of its RPG design was based off a particular DIKU MUD) so hidebound to the idea of burdening the players.
Everything in WoW was designed around the idea of relieving these burdens. That is why it has pulled in so many people. Many observer believe this is because of "casuals". They are partially wrong. Many hardcores hate the burdens imposed by the game as well. In fact they hate them more because they interfere with their goals. Only a certain kind of hardcore likes burden imposed by games like EQ1 and VG and those are hardcore immersion people. There really are not that many people who go to that extreme. Most people like immersion but like convenience more.
It could have pulled away a lot of EQ1 type people probably, but that would still have been like 300k at best. Which would have been ok, much better than what it has now.
It was always destined to be niche, but the bad launch really cut its population to a third of what it would have been.
Now with SOE doing a smoother starter area, they hope to grow the population. But I don't think anyone truly expects to get it to what it could have been with a good launch.
Dude, a lot of people already answered your question as to why is Vanguard is un-popular. I dont understand how you aren't seeing it. Ill repost my opinion as to why:
It is because of when it was first released.
It was owned by Sigil and the CEO, Brad McQuaid did not know what the hell he was doing. He was too busy managing an affair with the PR director and his married Asst Vice President than to lead the game in terms of financial and development direction.
Long story short, they released it way too early because they ran out of money due to poor business decisions.
It was released with bugs everywhere and anywhere. Classes were screwed up, performance issues were bad. It was just really messy. They went from 250,000 users to 20,000 users in two months and then Sigil wen tout of business, selling the game to Sony.
Brad Mcquaid got hundreds of thousand of dollars out of the deal and everyone else was fired in Sigil's parking lot on a Friday Afternoon by a 3rd party contractor that is leased out to fire people. Brad didn't even have the balls to tell the people who slaved over this game that he had to let them go and liquidate the company.
Think of it as Age of Conan but with a smaller company involved.
AND
It could be the best thing since slice bread today but MMOs have this unique thing of really pissing people off if the company/mmo takes advantage of them in the beginning.
Take Age of Conan for example. If Funcom turned that game around and made it better, it still will not have the comeback as it should simply because of the current state of affairs it is in right now.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
Wow excellent thread, gives me a chance to vent lol, so smurf your on the Island still. When you get past the island and enter the real world notice how big it is...take a look at all three maps, pretty big huh, well guess what, most of that content was made in one year, by a crappy crew of Sigil employees, eventhough it does look nice, yes they were a crappy bunch, all you have to do is, google "ex sigil employees confessions" they admit it themselves.
Most of them were beginners in game making and didn't have much of a clue except for a few. I was there since day one, and ofcourse left because of performance issues. I'm sure you have read most posts about all the lag and bugs that this game had and still has. And, ofcourse you know, GU6 was released, and still some of the same bugs exist, Hitching, Lag, CHunk line problems, "what's that you say?" Chunk line problems, ohh thats because your in one big Chunk, at the isle of Dawn and havent experienced the Horrors of Chunking from one piece of land to the other, kind of like instancing, only you dont get to see a big swirly thing when you enter, its just ONE BIG SURPRISE, (grins), currently the Chunk line bug still exists, this bug happens when you jump across a chunk line and you freeze while the next chunk line loads up, meanwhile a NPC (enemy) is hacking away at you, and you can't do anything about it, when you finally load and come too guess what, "YOUR DEAD!" haha, funny, actually It's a pretty poor game, *sighs*
Still if you want some more insight into vanguard go into the MMORPG vanguard forums and take my advice, stay away from this game, you will be dissappointed
Because this game sucks, plain and simple. They promised everything and delivered nothing.
Btw, I didn't read through this thread, sorry, so I have no idea what other ppl answered.
Just chalk it up to karma biting SOE in the ass and move on.
If you're reading this considering Vanguard just know one thing:
The game is misrepresented on these forums and there are more people who dont subscribe/ play vanguard issuing opinions about the game then there are people actually playing enjoying the game. I suspect partially its because the Vanguard community that supports this game was alientated from this community a while back for supporting a game that had the SOE logo on it coupled with a very poor release.
What you need to play vanguard in Sept of 2008:
A decent modern pc.
An open mind which is willing to play games and form your own conclusion despite the fact Star Wars Galaxies NGE came out.
I can sit here and exchange posts back and fourth about whether the game runs or not but that woudl be futile.
the game runs on my pc just fine. My video card is mediorce - whats king with Vanguard is a modern rig with lots of ram 2gig min to play, 4 gig to play with no issues and a vid card with PCI express specfiications.
Vanguard is not really unpopular relative to 0 players and Seradon seems to have lots of folks on at all times of the day.
Is it unpopular relative to WoW? Yes.....but the other thing you have to keep in mind is SOE JUST released the trial island after spending a whole year doing nothing but fixing the game.
now let me don my flame suit.
again not my experience with an average pc setup.
Zoning in vanguard is memory & disk intensive.
There is a noticeable delay of about 2-5 seconds for me crossing chunk lines. one time i zoned and my rented mount despawned....that was two months ago.
SWG NGE is done get over it for the love of god.
i'm still a little upset that they canceled the A Team but ive chosen to move on.
SWG NGE is done get over it for the love of god.
i'm still a little upset that they canceled the A Team but ive chosen to move on.
I still dont think you understand why people get pissed over how an mmorpg screws them over. People who were in SWG before the NGE has every right to stay angry.
How would you feel playing your favorite MMO and all of the sudden 3/4 of your classes were gone and the class everyone depised because they represeneted grind afk players (Jedi) becomes a starter class. The game lost over 200K players in 90 days because of that.
Its going to be hard to move on. Plus you cannot compare A Team to this. Thats stupid. SWG is still live on servers. As long as people are being charged for the game, they have the right to voice their opinion.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
No one cares about WoW.
No one mentioned WoW and that completely destroys your credibility. Why so desperate now.
No wonder this game is dead.
BTW: I created a new account with my buddy key and yea... 5FPS in Balanced Settings.
You DO know that Vanguard doesn't even come close to making your computer require 4GB of RAM right? You also know that 32-BIT OS cannot even access 4GB RAM? Only like 3.5GB or so?
Please load Vanguard, run around a bit, and then alt-tab off and look in task manager to see how much RAM it's using (RAM + Virtual Memory). By the time Vanguard is even thinking about gettin gup to 1GB of RAM used, it is crashing you to the desktop. Don't even go there.
The system requirements are accurate (the recommended), the issue with this game are the low quality textures (they look fine, but are very unoptimized and inefficient) and the crappy coding. It's okay, EQ2 has the same (self-professed, so fans can't hysterically defend it) issues too.
Sad but true... I bet Age of Conan runs better on my PC than Vanguard, and it has 3x the system requirements... If the game runs fine for you, great. I'm tired reinstalling this bloated piece of feces just to see if they made some grand improvements cause fanbois keep telling me I'm hallucinating...
Stop telling people they need better computers. My computer is more than fine, and people who have computers that surpass my rig have the same issues. I upgraded my RAM and Graphics card since I last played it, and with the new equip in I still have the same issues today. The only difference is that I can actually move around on Highest Performance - I'm not a graphics fanatic, but who wants to play outside of raids on Highest Performance?
What's next? My mom needs to double click the icon to start it on my desktop?
well i untill recently i used to play vanguard on a P4 3ghz 2g ram and radeon 1950
at the launch it was easy to LD or crash but devs made a pretty good work here and is lot of time that i have not such issues... a crash here and there happens (expecially using rifts or in a particular chunk when you get rezzed) but generally the game is pretty stable and was playable even with my old pc
model... well personally my fav where the beta models, still the GU6 put up some nice models to replace the "static ones" we had on live and for sure they are better than ones on WAR :P
the landscape of vvanguard is also very beautifull and you are free to explore it... no constrictions, no insances... you see a mountain in distance... you can climb it, you see an isle far from the coast you can get your boat and sail there
problem of vanguard is that it got a bad name due to a veeery problematic release, the game was lacky on content, unpolished, unstable... well it is not anymore the case the game have really improved and i think deserve a "second try" expecially now that thers a free trial
ah about tabbing, i have same problem (even if i had it not with my old pc lol) so can be related do the OS or something else, mass effect (who use same engine) have same problem too, i just try to not tab too much ingame... and is not even true that it always happen, today i was tabbing in and out of game to parse raid dps for example
Only thing that SWG did was make it a breeding ground for carebears who's only concern is decorating thier houses , RPing thier one click Jedi, AFK Base Busts to get to General with no risk, and make it all about PVE content and no PVP content, which by the way is centered around the GCW which is the core part of the game and actual story line, but no look at my museum of items and shinies!!!!!! Lets Role-Play the Sith-Jedi war!!!!, when Jedi are supposed to be extinct in the time line.... And now $OE even made gambling fun with thier new card game at a chance of cool new shinies!!!! Buy now!!! At 3.99$ per pack or 9.99$ A Starter Pack!!! or 99.99$ a box of digital cards!!!!! $OE.. we promote gambling to children....
No one cares about WoW.
No one mentioned WoW and that completely destroys your credibility. Why so desperate now.
No wonder this game is dead.
BTW: I created a new account with my buddy key and yea... 5FPS in Balanced Settings.
You DO know that Vanguard doesn't even come close to making your computer require 4GB of RAM right? You also know that 32-BIT OS cannot even access 4GB RAM? Only like 3.5GB or so?
Please load Vanguard, run around a bit, and then alt-tab off and look in task manager to see how much RAM it's using (RAM + Virtual Memory). By the time Vanguard is even thinking about gettin gup to 1GB of RAM used, it is crashing you to the desktop. Don't even go there.
The system requirements are accurate (the recommended), the issue with this game are the low quality textures (they look fine, but are very unoptimized and inefficient) and the crappy coding. It's okay, EQ2 has the same (self-professed, so fans can't hysterically defend it) issues too.
Sad but true... I bet Age of Conan runs better on my PC than Vanguard, and it has 3x the system requirements... If the game runs fine for you, great. I'm tired reinstalling this bloated piece of feces just to see if they made some grand improvements cause fanbois keep telling me I'm hallucinating...
Stop telling people they need better computers. My computer is more than fine, and people who have computers that surpass my rig have the same issues. I upgraded my RAM and Graphics card since I last played it, and with the new equip in I still have the same issues today. The only difference is that I can actually move around on Highest Performance - I'm not a graphics fanatic, but who wants to play outside of raids on Highest Performance?
What's next? My mom needs to double click the icon to start it on my desktop?
not quite sure what oyu're smoking but i sure could use some.
dont mention wow? wow destroys my credibiltiy ?
not even gonna glorify that comment with anything. Time to step out of this conversation.
SWG NGE is done get over it for the love of god.
i'm still a little upset that they canceled the A Team but ive chosen to move on.
I am over it...that's why I don't pay SOE money every month. Just because I'm over it, however, doesn't mean SOE shouldn't suffer for screwing over their players.
Sorry about your A-Team grief, though. It was a good show.
You can't lay blame for the state of the game at launch at SOE's doorstep. That is 100% Sigil(I. E.) Brads fault. The game needed another six months to a years worth of closed beta before it should have been released. But Prior to release SOE did pick up the publishing. that announcement cost them a significant number of subs right off the bat,(A good chunk of the targeted audience did not like SOE. That decision alone boded ill for the future of the game.). Same thing happened with POTBS. When launch came and we got to see just how unready it was for launch it made the decision to not stick it out till things got fixed even easier. Then SOE bought out the game and that led to another minor exodus. I was actually generous and waited to see if SOE was going to pull the same old bs dumbing down that led me to leave every other SOE Game. And yup they couldn't resist themselves, very first patch after they took over. They get credit for fixing the bugs and stabilizing the game, but they also get credit for the bS dumbing down they do too.
Why any developer would want to have SOE associated with their game in any form when that automatically loses you a small but significant segment of your target audience is beyond me. Maybe you personally have not had any issues with SOE or you may even like the stuff they do to dumb down games, but I won't touch a game that is associated with SOE with a ten foot pole.
Sure you can. They own it, and they are the ones collecting money for it.
If they had any integrity, they would just give the game away, give everyone a free month to play it, and refund the purchase price of the game to anyone who bought it and cancelled within a month.
____________________________________________
im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Sure you can. They own it, and they are the ones collecting money for it.
If they had any integrity, they would just give the game away, give everyone a free month to play it, and refund the purchase price of the game to anyone who bought it and cancelled within a month.
Um dude I really really can't stand SOE, but you can't put blame for the launch on a company that had zip to do with the actually development of the game to that point. You can only blame SOE for what they did to the game after they took it over
Sure you can. They own it, and they are the ones collecting money for it.
If they had any integrity, they would just give the game away, give everyone a free month to play it, and refund the purchase price of the game to anyone who bought it and cancelled within a month.
Um dude I really really can't stand SOE, but you can't put blame for the launch on a company that had zip to do with the actually development of the game to that point. You can only blame SOE for what they did to the game after they took it over
Like I said, sure you can. SOE was the publisher, and financially backed it. This game could never have been released without SOE. Selling the game to people in the condition it was in at launch was borderline fraud, just like selling an SWG expansion pack immediately before the NGE was unleashed.
After SOE acquired the full rights to the game, they continued to pawn it off on the public.
Sure they're culpable.
____________________________________________
im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
At the point where Vangaurd started tanking big time, with people leaving in droves, Sony marketing types tried a gimic: flying wyvern mount rentals. For a small fee you could try out a flying mount, a promised feature that was missing at release.
Me and my guildy were watching people take off, i said, 'no way am I getting on that death trap'.
Sure enough, when the wyvern rider hit the chunk line, he dismounted and plumited to his death. he was so high up that it took him a minute to hit the ground.
I played the insanely over powered bear shaman. Imagine a priest in WoW someone capable of healing a five man group. Now give that priest a hunter pet that can tank like crazy. I never died. The whole group would whipe except for me and my bear.
There was a bug that would aggro my bear on my fellow party members. This pally thought it was funny at first, oh how cute, she's attacking me, but then he started to complain.
I said S T F U, let her chew on ya, I'm a healer.
maybe SOE forced the release hand because its a business and Sigil was out of development dollars? If you want ot know what really went on the info is on the internet in black and white. All bets are on the fact that SOE knew vanguard would be on life support for a year when they received it....which is why i didnt play their pay to play beta for about a year...but now its fixed up into a mighty fine game.
I find it very humerous when SOE gets depicted as some type of exclusive hostile npc whose only purpose in life is to rip off teh consumer. Learn some objectivity.
Lol every game manufacturer out there is trying to do the same thing to you yet SOE gets the bad wrap eveytime. Theres EA, Funcom, Vivendi .....yet SOE is the black sheep of them all for all time because of NGE. For get Trammel & AoS forget the Eve online and DAOC debacos of the past! but never ever forget SOE is there to make your money and make a profit in a capitalistic society! A lot of poeple are pissed off at sony for now other reason other than they have to pay taxes and that Sony logo is burnt onto their brain from that walkman they had as a kid.
I think if people are going to make a consumer decision to not buy products thats their god given democratic right. But at least make it informed and educated and not just jump on the 'stick it to the man' bandwagon because thats the trend right along side American [insert reality tv show trend here].
I guess maybe im in the minoirty but i try out games and play them based on whether they are fun or not and I lend some type of sympathetic support to the creative effort long enough to see if its for me. And if you can believe it then omfg i played wow too to see if it was any good.....and even though it wasnt for me millions of others beg to differ.
Vanguard has had a lot of negative hype from people who haven't the sweetest clue whats going on in the game past or present. A subset of this crowd is the same one that would burn down your street in a civil unrest situation because it seemed like a good idea at the moment and they saw some people that looked right doing the same thing.
Anyway, this is all a non issue because in a few months people will realize that Vanguard is indeed popular.
There shoudl be some new term coined for the herd mentality that is spawning all the hate for all games these days.
what a desensitized society - maybe we should all vote Nixon and revert back to packman....
The first part I agree with you.
As for the last part I would heavily recommend you to read my blog on the very subject you bring up
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Enigma/082008/2436_A-growing-trend-I-have-been-noticing-among-MMO-players-#comments
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
I'm not your run of the mill SOE hater. I'm just explaining why Vanguard has failed to date and has an uphill battle going forward.
Although I think they have done some seriously sleezy things in the past that are going to make me think twice before I buy another one of their products, I don't really have anything against them overall. They may win me back as a customer some day. Right now, I'm not seeing it.
____________________________________________
im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Why Vanguard is unpopular?... well IMO its because the GAMEPLAY is actually worse now (well when I left 3 months ago) than it was at launch.
Performance aside - I say this because apart from falling through the world and the odd chunk disconnect, I was one of the few lucky ones that never really had a problem running Vanguard - I loved VG for the first 6 months. VG looks stunning (although why it never had AA beats me), the racial starting areas were all unique, I found the classes varied and fun, and I loved the fact that the world was so large. But then things started to change.
First up SOE, in its efforts to get more subscribers, decided to lower the leveling curve. Trouble is in making leveling faster they didn't make any changes to the game design, meaning you out-leveled dungeons, questlines etc, BEFORE you completed them and got the reward. ie the reward was useless --> no incentive to do the quest/dungeon. Same as crafting you outleveled crafting tiers before you got the upgrade recipes for that tier. Just bad game design.
IMo many of the changes to classes, just dumbed them down. Bloodmages (probably the most unique class in any MMO to date) became just another sit back healer. Tank classes were changed so each class tanked in a specific way ie warrior dual weld. The game was slowly loosing its sandbox appeal. BTW in what is a PvE game, why do classes have to be balanced. As long as each class is fun who really cares?
Changes to character customization was IMO a backward step (but as I said I had no real performance issues). I hated the new Khal as well
Diplomacy was great to start with, each race had a great storyline to follow. Unfortuanately the storyline quickly faded out, so the only way to increase diplomacy level was to grind. A year on and SOE still hadn't built on the storylines.
Final straw for me was GU5, I mean giant lobster things as mounts??? I mean seriously.. why and where was the lore??? Although the flying mounts I do miss... the landscape was/is breath-taking and one of the things I really miss.
But to top it all off, after playing VG for just over a year, the design team still had not fixed bugs that had been in the game since day one. eg numerous quests were still broken. Yes introduce even more mounts, but fix bugs... nah.
I could go on and on - riftways, faction, etc etc.
IMO VG has simply lost the plot, or rather it now has an identity crisis. It started as a great sandbox MMO, but then changes were made to design (to make it more casual??), yet there was no effort to fix bugs. It just doesn't know what type of game it wants to be. And really is now a very bland game.
Really all SOE had to do was fix up performance and quest bugs.