When I read articles like this, I realize just how badly I want to give in and redownload the game and play away. I was in the beta, we all knew it was a dud when they announce it would be released in the state that it was. It was one of the most depressing MMO days in my history of gaming, which is fairly long and quite extensive.
I did not end up buying the game after launch because I knew it wouldn't run well on my then-PC. A few months in, I had a new PC and a shiny new game box and I started playing and I just fell in love with Vanguard, but I suffer from game hopping, so I hopped.
A year ago I went back and played for about two months or so. Once I got past the Isle, I had a hard time finding people, the guild I joined was incredibly small and not as active as they claimed and so it was basically me, soloing the world.
I enjoy soloing, but I really enjoy talking to people while I'm doing it and I just wasn't experiencing that, which resulted in my unsubscribing.
I've often felt this horrible nagging feeling trying to draw me back to Vanguard; hell I've nearly given in several times, but I'm terrified of investing my $15 a month into a game that I'm not quite sure will ever have much content given to it, or any love given to it...
I play EQ2 currently, they just came out with another expansion, they have events on a constant basis and there are thousands of quests/writs/HQ's to keep me going. I have a fabulous guild that I love being apart of. But I still have a feeling that VG is where I want to be sometimes.
I just wish that more people would play and that SOE would take its large head from its large butt and put some love into the game. But wishing, it doesn't make these things happen.
It's tough to get people to play a game with a dwindling population that was built with thousands more intended to play. Also with a small amount of players at the lower levels, it is rough for people to get started. Guilds are probably pretty much all established, etc.
If they really want new players and believe in their product enough what they should do is advertise completely new player only servers, sell the client to new players for a fraction of a price its sold at now for a limited time, give away some cool new items like a new mount or something, give away more than one month free to entice players to stay, give a promotion involving other games by the company, such as GW gave with Aion, give something to increase XP gains for new players so they don't feel that leveling is a daunting and solitary task, start advertising a little bit online, and then maybe people will want to buy it.
Also, making more quests for leveling players is always a positive. It's rough to level and in a game that has no real lower level community the way this doesn't, they need to be aware of that and make up for it.
It takes a lot but frankly, I wouldn't have even known that game was still around if it hadn't been for this article. After reading it though, I'll definitely take a trial run sometime. In fact, I'm actually really excited to try it and maybe fill the void that GW and WoW have left me since, a void which games like Aion and WoW and EVE haven't been able to fill.
According to my friend, who is currently playing VG... he says that its not so vacant any longer. That there are a ton of people coming back and that the Trial Isle is packed full of people.
I don't know if this is true, but I think I might run a test of the Isle to verify his claims. :P
According to my friend, who is currently playing VG... he says that its not so vacant any longer. That there are a ton of people coming back and that the Trial Isle is packed full of people.
I don't know if this is true, but I think I might run a test of the Isle to verify his claims. :P
Update us on what you see when you are there.
There are 3 types of people in the world. 1.) Those who make things happen 2.) Those who watch things happen 3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
According to my friend, who is currently playing VG... he says that its not so vacant any longer. That there are a ton of people coming back and that the Trial Isle is packed full of people.
I don't know if this is true, but I think I might run a test of the Isle to verify his claims. :P
Update us on what you see when you are there.
Yep, you all will be the first awesome people to know.
I have to run out for a bit, probably while its patching (we're buying a Jeep tonight, I think! ) but as soon as I get back I'll check out everything.
Actually Ratstantz and I are both installing it right now, as we're intrigued. If it is the case that more people are playing, it might infact be worth my $15 to play.
Plus, for those who actively play EQ2, you can always petition SOE to take your VG time and add it to your EQ2 time if you don't enjoy playing. (OR any other SOE game, for that matter).
i thought that soe posted this game was not going to be getting any more updates and it they were going to be bug smashing untill further notice if they plan to update it.
i thought that soe posted this game was not going to be getting any more updates and it they were going to be bug smashing untill further notice if they plan to update it.
Well, I guess thats not the case since like a week or two ago they added a bunch of new raid content. O.o;;
I am not sure where everyone says there are no people. Obviously its not crowded or anything but I've played LOTRO, WAR, AOC and some others and honestly they didn't seem any busier to me. Last week in Misthaven crossing there were 21 people there. This is some random lvl 18-22 zone (amound like 6 others). This is a 3 year old game. My wife and I are working on our HL quests and we have had 4-6 people every night in our group. Does something change I am not aware of?
According to my friend, who is currently playing VG... he says that its not so vacant any longer. That there are a ton of people coming back and that the Trial Isle is packed full of people.
I don't know if this is true, but I think I might run a test of the Isle to verify his claims. :P
Update us on what you see when you are there.
Well, at the moment, 5:25 pm est there are 25 people on the trial island for Seradon. Can't say if they are new, subscribers, old players with alts, etc.
Later there will be a bit more as people come home from work, log on, etc and that tends to die down in the wee hours of course.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Vanguard was the best MMO I ever played. The world was huge, the content was outstanding, heaps of races, heaps of classes, and it just had the best guild experience. Solo, meh... didn't bother me. It's an MMO, I'm here to play with a guild. I play single player games if I need solo time.
However, people may say "It's improved", but it hasn't. The PvE experience is still there, and the PvE server is doing better than it was 12 months ago, but the PvP server will NEVER be ressurected. From my understanding people transferred chars to the PvE server, then transferred back to the PvP server, giving them an advantage of gearing themselves without having to worry about the FFA PvP aspect. They then stopped allowing transfers from PvE > PvP, so the PvP server lost people, and can't get anymore unless people roll fresh.
Vanguard was an awesome PvP game. So many different classes to worry about, such a big world, full FFA was awesome (minus a few changes to altar respawns instead of bind respawns). It's unfortunate that's the PvP server will never be full of players again, because Vanguard had the most potential out of any game I've ever played. Loved it.
"i would play vanguard if the population were healthier and i could find people to group with"
looking through these forums, i've lost count of how many times i've read this. if all the people who wrote this actually got together they'd have a decent sized guild and no lack of groups.
Isn't it a little too late for this game to re-surface? There was never that great of a poputation due to the bugs in the game as the OP stated. With FF 14 and Star Wars on the horizon, I can't help but wonder how many people are truely going to return to this game?
I am not falling for this again. I played Vanguard from beta 2 through 6 months post-launch. The game was very buggy and had terrible performance. Since then I have tried the game about once a year due to posts and articles stating the game has been improved and each time the improvements have been minimal. For me, the game offers nothing new or good; in fact I hate the animations, character models and gameplay.
As for the last time I played the game, it was at the 2009 SOE Fan Faire at Bally's in June. I was playing on their Alienware rigs and the game still performed poorly. I played through The Isle of Dawn and didn't enjoy the story line or gameplay. In speaking to the Dev's they talked about upcoming major changes, but nothing new from what has been discussed since SOE took over. I will not give the game another try.
The population was fine for the first 6 months if you ask me. We had a blast on the FFA server. The bugs that people mention we so over-rated as well. Games these days have bugs that are much worse off. Vanguard somehow just got a bad reputation from somewhere.
There are some good games coming out, but FFXIV, SW:TOR, GW2, etc... are not what a lot of people want. If I was to pick two games that I'll want to play, it'll be TERA (looks very asian-style, but has some good ideas to it) & Rift: Planes of Telara (which Scott Hartsman, aka EQ/EQ2, is the head of).
SW:TOR will be a solo based game, they've said that themselves. GW2 is mainly instance based, which I cannot stand and FFXIV I really have nothing bad to say about actually. There's been nothing since Everquest and Vanguard that actually has decent FFA-open-world PvP where you can dungeon crash, etc. There's no better feeling in a game than having to watch your back at all times in a dungeon incase there's a group coming to take over the run. Great fun.
unfortunatly small population does make a difference and before you say I fully realise the counter productive reason it is.
But this is why mmo's need population more than it needs anything else! And vanguard is the best example. You would (or at least I do) have thought that mmo designers would have learnt by now... but no, they still continue to make MMO's that fail on launch, then never ever recover the population. it just NEVER happens. And vanguard will never recover either
The only way I think it could drag itself up is two fold:
1] merge all servers
2] SOE Bothers to try
and even if these two things did happen, there is virtually no pvp to speak of. And everyone does like a bit of pvp.
unfortunatly small population does make a difference and before you say I fully realise the counter productive reason it is.
But this is why mmo's need population more than it needs anything else! And vanguard is the best example. You would (or at least I do) have thought that mmo designers would have learnt by now... but no, they still continue to make MMO's that fail on launch, then never ever recover the population. it just NEVER happens. And vanguard will never recover either
The only way I think it could drag itself up is two fold:
1] merge all servers
2] SOE Bothers to try
and even if these two things did happen, there is virtually no pvp to speak of. And everyone does like a bit of pvp.
Good article and I am really glad people are enjoying VG, but the tone of your article hints that there are no longer any bugs. Of course every game has some bugs, but VG is still plagued by more than it's fair share. I just recently restarted VG myself and talked 5 of my friends into joining me on the Xeth server. Since then I have run about 10 toons thru the Isle of Dawn while everyone picks what class/race combo they want to play.
Saturday night I spent about 4 hours running around with one other person and witnessed the following bugs...bouncing off invisible walls, swimming under water then getting stuck under the world, frequently being stuck in rocks, resource nodes that can never be harvested, and UI issues like targeting one person, clicking on the defensive target window to invite them to a group and end up inviting some random person on the other side of the zone.
I've invested a ton of time into playing VG, beta testing since November 2005, guild testing APW, submitting way too bug reports and still I am not too bothered to deal with the small bugs. Many new players just will not tolerate that many bugs in a game and all of them happened on the trial island, where new players get their first taste of the game.
Many new players are checking the game out everyday. Last night there were over 40 players on Isle of Dawn on Xeth, but when they face so many bugs in the first few levels of the game, most wont stick around. If they are going to continue forcing new players to start in the same place, they really need to make it as bug free as possible.
Well, as promised I've logged in to have a look at how many are on on Seradon's Trial of the Isle and I'm happy to report that there are over 40 in the area and its telling me to try to refine my search. It's 8:44 PM EST right now, so probably around prime time. Also, the population of the entire server is at Medium, whatever that means.
Since getting into the game, I've seen a decent amount of people on the Isle, but this in no way reflects the number of people out in the actual world. Unfortunately I have no idea what those numbers are or whether it will be incredibly difficult to find a group.
Shame really, I absolutely love this game, but with no one to play it with, personally, I feel like it will be a hell of a time to get back into.
but after NGE and everything i read about SOE after that...
simply never again
You choice but a poor one. I hope you never get any set backs in real life with your attitude. Burning bridges may be honourable but isn't always the best approach.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
"i would play vanguard if the population were healthier and i could find people to group with"
looking through these forums, i've lost count of how many times i've read this. if all the people who wrote this actually got together they'd have a decent sized guild and no lack of groups.
Sadly this is true. The population is pretty aged, probably in the mid 30s as well. Younglings don't fit in very well here and leave pretty quickly. This only leaves a small portion of the market left for people interested (mostly old timers from EQ apparently).
Imagine a young 21 year old going into a bar for one of the first times in his life and seeing the place infested with mid 30s and up crowd. He's not gonna stay either.
On the other hand if you're an aging gamer, this is a haven for you! Check it out.
Comments
When I read articles like this, I realize just how badly I want to give in and redownload the game and play away. I was in the beta, we all knew it was a dud when they announce it would be released in the state that it was. It was one of the most depressing MMO days in my history of gaming, which is fairly long and quite extensive.
I did not end up buying the game after launch because I knew it wouldn't run well on my then-PC. A few months in, I had a new PC and a shiny new game box and I started playing and I just fell in love with Vanguard, but I suffer from game hopping, so I hopped.
A year ago I went back and played for about two months or so. Once I got past the Isle, I had a hard time finding people, the guild I joined was incredibly small and not as active as they claimed and so it was basically me, soloing the world.
I enjoy soloing, but I really enjoy talking to people while I'm doing it and I just wasn't experiencing that, which resulted in my unsubscribing.
I've often felt this horrible nagging feeling trying to draw me back to Vanguard; hell I've nearly given in several times, but I'm terrified of investing my $15 a month into a game that I'm not quite sure will ever have much content given to it, or any love given to it...
I play EQ2 currently, they just came out with another expansion, they have events on a constant basis and there are thousands of quests/writs/HQ's to keep me going. I have a fabulous guild that I love being apart of. But I still have a feeling that VG is where I want to be sometimes.
I just wish that more people would play and that SOE would take its large head from its large butt and put some love into the game. But wishing, it doesn't make these things happen.
Fun but empty. I left game becouse of it :<
It's tough to get people to play a game with a dwindling population that was built with thousands more intended to play. Also with a small amount of players at the lower levels, it is rough for people to get started. Guilds are probably pretty much all established, etc.
If they really want new players and believe in their product enough what they should do is advertise completely new player only servers, sell the client to new players for a fraction of a price its sold at now for a limited time, give away some cool new items like a new mount or something, give away more than one month free to entice players to stay, give a promotion involving other games by the company, such as GW gave with Aion, give something to increase XP gains for new players so they don't feel that leveling is a daunting and solitary task, start advertising a little bit online, and then maybe people will want to buy it.
Also, making more quests for leveling players is always a positive. It's rough to level and in a game that has no real lower level community the way this doesn't, they need to be aware of that and make up for it.
It takes a lot but frankly, I wouldn't have even known that game was still around if it hadn't been for this article. After reading it though, I'll definitely take a trial run sometime. In fact, I'm actually really excited to try it and maybe fill the void that GW and WoW have left me since, a void which games like Aion and WoW and EVE haven't been able to fill.
every thing about vanguard sounds good.
but after NGE and everything i read about SOE after that...
simply never again
Sorry for typos... dyslexic and just too damn lazy to proof read every post for 30 min
(yes i am aware of spell check but it does not help that much
According to my friend, who is currently playing VG... he says that its not so vacant any longer. That there are a ton of people coming back and that the Trial Isle is packed full of people.
I don't know if this is true, but I think I might run a test of the Isle to verify his claims. :P
Update us on what you see when you are there.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
Yep, you all will be the first awesome people to know.
I have to run out for a bit, probably while its patching (we're buying a Jeep tonight, I think!
) but as soon as I get back I'll check out everything.
Actually Ratstantz and I are both installing it right now, as we're intrigued. If it is the case that more people are playing, it might infact be worth my $15 to play.
Plus, for those who actively play EQ2, you can always petition SOE to take your VG time and add it to your EQ2 time if you don't enjoy playing. (OR any other SOE game, for that matter).
i thought that soe posted this game was not going to be getting any more updates and it they were going to be bug smashing untill further notice if they plan to update it.
Well, I guess thats not the case since like a week or two ago they added a bunch of new raid content. O.o;;
I don't think SOE can ever make up its mind.
I last gave Vanguard a shot late last year and it was great, lack of other players eventually led me to stop playing.... Best game no one is playing.
I am not sure where everyone says there are no people. Obviously its not crowded or anything but I've played LOTRO, WAR, AOC and some others and honestly they didn't seem any busier to me. Last week in Misthaven crossing there were 21 people there. This is some random lvl 18-22 zone (amound like 6 others). This is a 3 year old game. My wife and I are working on our HL quests and we have had 4-6 people every night in our group. Does something change I am not aware of?
Well, at the moment, 5:25 pm est there are 25 people on the trial island for Seradon. Can't say if they are new, subscribers, old players with alts, etc.
Later there will be a bit more as people come home from work, log on, etc and that tends to die down in the wee hours of course.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
Vanguard was the best MMO I ever played. The world was huge, the content was outstanding, heaps of races, heaps of classes, and it just had the best guild experience. Solo, meh... didn't bother me. It's an MMO, I'm here to play with a guild. I play single player games if I need solo time.
However, people may say "It's improved", but it hasn't. The PvE experience is still there, and the PvE server is doing better than it was 12 months ago, but the PvP server will NEVER be ressurected. From my understanding people transferred chars to the PvE server, then transferred back to the PvP server, giving them an advantage of gearing themselves without having to worry about the FFA PvP aspect. They then stopped allowing transfers from PvE > PvP, so the PvP server lost people, and can't get anymore unless people roll fresh.
Vanguard was an awesome PvP game. So many different classes to worry about, such a big world, full FFA was awesome (minus a few changes to altar respawns instead of bind respawns). It's unfortunate that's the PvP server will never be full of players again, because Vanguard had the most potential out of any game I've ever played. Loved it.
"i would play vanguard if the population were healthier and i could find people to group with"
looking through these forums, i've lost count of how many times i've read this. if all the people who wrote this actually got together they'd have a decent sized guild and no lack of groups.
Isn't it a little too late for this game to re-surface? There was never that great of a poputation due to the bugs in the game as the OP stated. With FF 14 and Star Wars on the horizon, I can't help but wonder how many people are truely going to return to this game?
I am not falling for this again. I played Vanguard from beta 2 through 6 months post-launch. The game was very buggy and had terrible performance. Since then I have tried the game about once a year due to posts and articles stating the game has been improved and each time the improvements have been minimal. For me, the game offers nothing new or good; in fact I hate the animations, character models and gameplay.
As for the last time I played the game, it was at the 2009 SOE Fan Faire at Bally's in June. I was playing on their Alienware rigs and the game still performed poorly. I played through The Isle of Dawn and didn't enjoy the story line or gameplay. In speaking to the Dev's they talked about upcoming major changes, but nothing new from what has been discussed since SOE took over. I will not give the game another try.
The population was fine for the first 6 months if you ask me. We had a blast on the FFA server. The bugs that people mention we so over-rated as well. Games these days have bugs that are much worse off. Vanguard somehow just got a bad reputation from somewhere.
There are some good games coming out, but FFXIV, SW:TOR, GW2, etc... are not what a lot of people want. If I was to pick two games that I'll want to play, it'll be TERA (looks very asian-style, but has some good ideas to it) & Rift: Planes of Telara (which Scott Hartsman, aka EQ/EQ2, is the head of).
SW:TOR will be a solo based game, they've said that themselves. GW2 is mainly instance based, which I cannot stand and FFXIV I really have nothing bad to say about actually. There's been nothing since Everquest and Vanguard that actually has decent FFA-open-world PvP where you can dungeon crash, etc. There's no better feeling in a game than having to watch your back at all times in a dungeon incase there's a group coming to take over the run. Great fun.
Anyone know how many lv40+ players in Seradon now?
I'm missing my DK/Wizard so much,and I'm afraid cant find decent group for it
Becuase most lv30+ player who cant find group will left Vanguard soon.
That's why I left Vanguard.
Never seen lot lv30~40 players around in Seradon...:p
unfortunatly small population does make a difference and before you say I fully realise the counter productive reason it is.
But this is why mmo's need population more than it needs anything else! And vanguard is the best example. You would (or at least I do) have thought that mmo designers would have learnt by now... but no, they still continue to make MMO's that fail on launch, then never ever recover the population. it just NEVER happens. And vanguard will never recover either
The only way I think it could drag itself up is two fold:
1] merge all servers
2] SOE Bothers to try
and even if these two things did happen, there is virtually no pvp to speak of. And everyone does like a bit of pvp.
That's it.
Quite simple really.
Good article and I am really glad people are enjoying VG, but the tone of your article hints that there are no longer any bugs. Of course every game has some bugs, but VG is still plagued by more than it's fair share. I just recently restarted VG myself and talked 5 of my friends into joining me on the Xeth server. Since then I have run about 10 toons thru the Isle of Dawn while everyone picks what class/race combo they want to play.
Saturday night I spent about 4 hours running around with one other person and witnessed the following bugs...bouncing off invisible walls, swimming under water then getting stuck under the world, frequently being stuck in rocks, resource nodes that can never be harvested, and UI issues like targeting one person, clicking on the defensive target window to invite them to a group and end up inviting some random person on the other side of the zone.
I've invested a ton of time into playing VG, beta testing since November 2005, guild testing APW, submitting way too bug reports and still I am not too bothered to deal with the small bugs. Many new players just will not tolerate that many bugs in a game and all of them happened on the trial island, where new players get their first taste of the game.
Many new players are checking the game out everyday. Last night there were over 40 players on Isle of Dawn on Xeth, but when they face so many bugs in the first few levels of the game, most wont stick around. If they are going to continue forcing new players to start in the same place, they really need to make it as bug free as possible.
Well, as promised I've logged in to have a look at how many are on on Seradon's Trial of the Isle and I'm happy to report that there are over 40 in the area and its telling me to try to refine my search. It's 8:44 PM EST right now, so probably around prime time. Also, the population of the entire server is at Medium, whatever that means.
Since getting into the game, I've seen a decent amount of people on the Isle, but this in no way reflects the number of people out in the actual world. Unfortunately I have no idea what those numbers are or whether it will be incredibly difficult to find a group.
Shame really, I absolutely love this game, but with no one to play it with, personally, I feel like it will be a hell of a time to get back into.
You choice but a poor one. I hope you never get any set backs in real life with your attitude. Burning bridges may be honourable but isn't always the best approach.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Sadly this is true. The population is pretty aged, probably in the mid 30s as well. Younglings don't fit in very well here and leave pretty quickly. This only leaves a small portion of the market left for people interested (mostly old timers from EQ apparently).
Imagine a young 21 year old going into a bar for one of the first times in his life and seeing the place infested with mid 30s and up crowd. He's not gonna stay either.
On the other hand if you're an aging gamer, this is a haven for you! Check it out.