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Vanguard/EQ2
Hawkaron
Member UncommonPosts: 208
I would like to hear your opinions about Vanguard and EQ2. I'm considering either of those "sandbox"-ish games, as I can not afford to spend a lot on games right now. My monkey has sank way too much into games lately as it is.
What I want is a comparison between the two, and a conclusion which one YOU would pick above the other. Maybe they both have their own qualities, but I am sure you got a preference.
Thx
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It's a tough call. I guess the biggest thing you need to consider is long-term appeal. To be clear, I've become a bit of a Vanguard cheerleader of late, but the reality is that the future of the game is uncertain. I like EQ2 as well, but the games have a lot of differences.
Vanguard is an open, virtually seamless game with a huge world and quite a bit of content. There are quite a few races and classes, and each race has it's own starting area and lore. There's a diplomacy card game as a form of alternate advancement, as well as a really nice crafting system that also offers alternate advancement. There's plenty of solo and group content in the levelling part, but my understanding is that it lacks in the endgame department.
EQ2 also offers a lot of content, but the game world is divided into instances. Some areas can be of decent size, while others are small and seem like overworld open-air dungeons. Proper dungeons are instanced as well. Despite this, there is quite a bit of area variety to choose from, with each levelling tier offering at least two different places to do your levelling. Crafting is pretty good, but I feel that Vanguard's is a bit better.
EQ2 is a lot more polished than Vanguard, since SOE continues to actively support it with a full crew, whereas Vanguard seems to have whoever drew the shortest straw on any particular occasion. Because of this, Vanguard has a lot more bugs, despite the fact that a majority of those that screwed up the launch have been taken care of.
As for either of them being sandbox games, I would say they're not. Some people confuse open worlds with sandboxes, but that's not the case. Despite Vanguard's wide open vistas, it-- like EQ2-- is pretty much a themepark.
"You'll never win an argument with an idiot because he is too stupid to recognize his own defeat." ~Anonymous
Both have free trials.
.
Both are very similar. Both have been gradually moving towards the WoW style.
.
Neither have many players at lower levels.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
EQ2 is no where near "sandbox" -ish it's one of the most linear mmorpg you will come across. Loading screens and a non seamless map.
Furious Fighters
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm
Neither of those things define a sandbox, but you are right that EQ2 isn't a sandbox, it is a linear level based themepark MMO.
Vanguard isnt really a sandbox either, though it has bits and pieces of one.
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Not true. EQ2 is very sandboxy at max level. And nearly all EQ2 players are at max level.
Well shave my back and call me an elf! -- Oghren
Pros of Vanguard:
Vanguard looks MUCH better than EQ2 does.
Vanguard has a more elaborate crafting system and more elaborate character development (think the unique diplomacy system, etcetera).
Vanguard has the most charm of the two (in my opinion, anyway).
Cons of Vanguard:
While advertised as seamless, Vanguard's world is really divided into huge squares on the map, on the border of which you'll load for a second or 10 to access the other area. There's no explicit loading screen, but the world is far from seamless. In my book, EQ2 is the better of the two, as its loading screens come at 'logical' locations, such as when zoning into an instance or when zoning between overworld zones. In Vanguard, overworld boundaries can occur nearly anywhere.
Especially the centre continent, Kojan, feels unfinished. Quest chains suddenly stop mid-story, and there's no proper level progression on Kojan after level 20 or so.
Originally a selling point, Vanguard has long done away with real-time travel, completely changing their travel system to a system of teleportation.
Vanguard's future is uncertain at best. Its dev team has announced they will no longer provide content upgrades, but will only focus on ironing out the bugs.
Vanguard's population is quite small, although you should not have any problems finding a nice guild.
Pros of EQ2:
The game is much more polished than Vanguard; you are unlikely to find bugs or broken quest chains.
The game enjoys frequent and considerable updates to its content and developers are not afraid to improve on existing systems such as the quest log, nor are they afraid to introduce entirely new concepts, such as player-written books.
EQ2 has a healthy amount of players.
Cons of EQ2:
Despite contemporary upgrades, such as Shader 3.0, EQ2's graphics are starting to show their age.
Although EQ2 has a rather elaborate crafting system, Vanguard does a much better job and offers diplomacy as a third branch of advancement to boot.
Personally, I would not bet my money on Vanguard. The main reason for this is that SOE seems to be shutting down support, no longer providing content upgrades and only providing a rare bug fix. With Kojan in the state that it is in now, Vanguard feels unfinished, and without content upgrades, it is unlikely it ever will be completed. EQ2, on the other hand, has a healthy supply of content updates, a good population, and is the more polished of the two, overall.
Let me clarify this. Vanguard has much better landscape art design than EQ2.
However, it also has terrible character models (just 1 model actually if i remember right) and godawful wooden animations that make EQ2's animations and character look like Avatar in comparison.
Despite coming out like 3 years after EQ2, I found the graphics in Vanguard to actually be much worse in overall quality. It did have some really breathtaking architectural and landscape views - elven and dwarven cities, etc.
Neither one is anywhere near to being a sandbox unless you consider decorating your house in EQ2 to be "meaningful sandbox gameplay".
EQ2 along with WoW is the posterchild for making a "Themepark MMO". It's not a world, it's a elf-themed digital amusement park.
Vanguard is pretty much the same, just 3 years later.
As it's been pointed out EQ2 has a lot more content and it has instances. Vanguard has no instances and you have to spend hours upon hours recovering your body if you die in a bad place. This adds a sense of danger and appeals to some people. Others only have an hour to play and don't want to spend it getting their corpse. Overall, I found EQ2 is more friendly to being able to accomplish something (whether solo, group or raid) in a short time than vanguard, if that's a factor.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
Vanguard has a feature that allows you to summon your tombstone if you can't retrieve it. The items recovered suffer a small durabiity loss, but you don't have to spend hours recovering your corpse.
Here is what it boils down to.
VG is in shut down mode and has had no significant improvements or updates literally in years.
In approx the last 12 months or so EQ2 has added 2 full expansions, Shadow Odyssey & Sentinals Fate and recently Halas Reborn plus they added PvP battlegrounds.
The biggest complaint of VG is the lack of players, lack of endgame content and the world feeling empty.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. Personally I don't care for either game, I would go with Age of Conan.
Tell your monkey I said "hi" and stop touching him
You missed the part where i and the OP said "sandbox- ISH , I can't recall me saying Vanguard was sandbox, lol i know it's not a sand box game, i have played it for the last 3.4 years. Vanguard world is sandbox but the quests system is typical them-park quests but you do have the option of never picking up a weapon and levelling in Diplomacy or crafting as they both level the same as adventuring.
If any of the above mention games can be called sandbox ISH then it's Vanguard.
So again, can you show me in my post where i said Vanguard is sandbox?
Furious Fighters
http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/13trindx.htm
hmmmm, I'll use this as a starting point.
OP:
I played both simultaneously so I'll offer my opinion and use this gentleman's post as a starting point.
The world of Vanguard for the most part looks better than EQ 2. There are massive vistas and sprawling scenes. However,there are parts that seem a bit bland. EQ 2 does have some "nice-ish" gear but at times seems a bit over the top to my taste. Cloaks look a bit ridiculous in EQ 2.
Vanguard seems much less cute than EQ 2. Sometimes EQ 2 carries a sort fo whimsical charm that may appeal or grate on a player depending on your personality. It drove me nuts.
Vanguard's Chunks are one of the technical issues because it is "seamless" in that you can see across the land and travel across the land without a loading screen. However, sometimes you might feel a slight chug when crossing over one of these barriers. It seems that processor power might be a help with this as I've seen videos were people don't chug at all. I sometimes get a small chug, sometimes none and sometimes my computer will hold for a few seconds. Since I have an average to poor processor (2.4 ghz dual core) I believe that a more powerful processor will help in that regard.
The travel in Vanguard is one of the better things in opinion. you do have real time travel but you have transporters to various parts of the world. If you want to get to a certain dungeon you can teleport to a nearby city and then hoof it. To me this is perfect because taking an innordinate amount of time to travel (and I imagine it could be huge without the teleporters) isn't conducive to a more casual game play. So there is still plenty of real world travel but you can manage it well.
Vanguard does have content upgrades. They just recently addded to magi's hold. However it doesn't get the full fleshed upgrades that EQ 2 has gotten. EQ 2 has gotten far more as far as content upgrade. over the past few years Vanguard has required more technical help and bug squashing.
I believe that Sony will keep vanguard on for a few more years but it will never become a robust and well funded game.
I prefer the open world nature of Vanguard to EQ 2. I prefer the art design as well.
Both have a large amount of races and classes. Vanguard has a more hardcore death penalty than EQ 2 and there is more of a sense of danger.
EQ 2 has a larger population but it is a bit top heavy. Vanguard has a lower population but you will see people from all levels roaming the land as some of the dungeon levels are mixed up over the landscape. You can have a lower lvl area and a bit away a high lvl area. This is a sellng point to me. You can litterally have a higher lvl named mob sneak up on you while you aren't looking and get whacked.
Both games have trials. Vanguard's trial is ok but doesn't represent the game well in that the game world for Vanguard is huge and you just don't get that scope on the trial island. Also, because it's so large people are scattered farther from each other. for me this is a plus but I'm sure that for most players they want to see areas teaming with players.
In the end I picked Vanguard because I feel it's a better game and better game world and would rather put my money behind something I actually like. Of course I have limited time to play games these days so I usually do a few weeks in LOTRO then will go back to vanguard but I play it as a sandbox game. I'm not quite sure either is a sandbox game but I am of the opinion that you can play theme park games more like sandbox games. I tend to do this. In LOTRO as well.
It really depends on your personality.
If you are laid back, can take Vanguard's creakiness and issues and don't mind a huge world where you aren't running into horde's of people then Vanguard will shine. If you want a very polished experience, lots of people closer to end game and continual content upgrades to a somewhat whimsical game world then you might prefer EQ 2. Personally after playing both I took EQ 2 off of my computer and in the exit interview told them I was keeping my Vanguard sub. If Vanguard was ever to close down I might consider going back to EQ 2 because it offers a very high fantasy setting and I love my shadow knight character. I don't really like its world or art design.
But this is all subjective.
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Ive played both to max level and would recomend Vanguard hands down as the better choice , IMO ...
Vanguard's trial is definitely worth trying, if only to try out their unique Dipomacy system. Game seemed solid enough when I tried it recently (I took this long to try it because of the talk during the game's development which seemed to say, "Know all those bad parts of boring MMORPGs? We're making a game exactly like that!")
I'm not sure I'd classify either game as sandbox (or at least as more sandbox than WOW.) But admittedly I didn't get very far in either.
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Vanguard is def the way to go! I have a station account but hardly ever seem to log into EQ2. I'm playing four toons in Vanguard but I don't know which one to make my main. I'm having a blast with all of them! And to the ones saying literally no content has been added, they are way off)
One game has more players, more dev resources, expansions, and it's currently SOE's flagship game.
The other has very little players, very tiny development team, no expansions, and its SOE's redheaded step child. SOE didn't make this game. (Vanguard)
Now if you don't care about any of that, then gameplay wise, these 2 games are very different from each other. EQ2 is not what I would call sandbox but these days you have people that want to call EQ2 sandbox just because they give you freedom once you hit max level? What kind of sandbox is that?
Both are decent games, both have a free trial you can try to see which caters to you better. They are different games, so which one you pick should depend on which one you like best in the trial.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
Having played EQ2, AoC and Vanguard, I'd go with the quoted poster Torak over Captain Caps here. I play EQ2 because i have been for a while and AoC has too much PvP for my taste, but if I liked PvP, I'd probably switch to AoC full time. I see no reason to play Vanguard over those two games. There is also LoTRO which has amazing art design and immersion if that's what you're looking for.
Also, I wouldn't listen to people that claim the diplomacy system is a full-fledged progression game in itself. Up to a few months after launch, diplomacy wasn't even finished past level 10. And what was in game was totally separated from the other in-game disciplines. I played vanguard for diplomacy and was amazed at how great the idea was and how piss-poor the execution of it was. They created something brilliant then left it to wither and die. Maybe it's been fleshed out by now, but my guess is that it was largely abandoned.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
This statement isn't exactly true for EQ2 right now. I saw 4 newb instances of the new Halas the other night. Right now people seem to be rolling quite a few alts.
Vanguard on the other hand is a tough call. My guy in his 30s is playing in Bernadid (sp?) and has seen 10 people in a week.
Vanguard: The ultimate sandbox experience. If you see mountain way off in the distance you CAN fly there.
It has housing, diplo, a good crafting system massive world , excellent graphics and ZERO SUPPORT FROM SOE. It has more than no players but the world is massive so it is hard. What Vanguard needs to do is open up some of the group dungeons at lower levels to the idea of a 2man - 3man run.
Eq2 is SOE's poster child that they just have to make money t because they sunk lots of irl gold into it to have it do anything but. Having said that, its supported, marketed and funded so of course its going to seem like the better game on average.
Vanguard has challenge and is a little more than button mashing. Vanguard has the EQ classic class system. I am happy to see monks do the FD pull and a proper chanter to the right kind of CC.
EQ2s crafting system was fun, I even played in the early days. I see no reason to craft in Vanguard so I havent'.
I'm playing both right now and I think the answer is Eve. But, seriously, if I decide by the time my sub is up it will come down to whether i want to play a supported game with lots of players or a realtively polished gem of a game that doesn't have a lot of support or players.
Honestly, I may play neither becaues Vanguard IS the better game and everyone knows it but SOE wishes it would just die. So I feel like I need to play the game despite them or move on to a company who recognizes good games when they see them.
I'll give SOE credit for slapping some devs on to finish the game but they and everyone else know Vanguard is an unfinished game with awesome potental which I doubt will ever get realized.
Boy, what I wouldn't give to have your low expectations for MMOs.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
You probably mean attention span. Its ok I enjoyed a different era.
I've played both for a pretty good while, just hit 4.5 years in eq2 and played vanguard for a year from launch non-stop and off and on since then up untill a month ago.
I like the summary given with the first reply to the OP the best as it's the most accurate.
Of the two I wish Vanguard was the more well off game because of it's huge wide open world, many many unique classes and sub classes, and it's exciting combat that really demands your attention due to it's chain and reactive skills "you can't afford to miss them"
But the game still is'nt very polished and the community only keeps shrinking and it's not gaining any new players which makes doing group content out off question untill very high levels.
Eq2 is a lot more polished and confined feeling world but it's got plenty of classes and races to chose from, tons of content and plenty of challenges of it's own, it's constantly getting new content and updates and the starter zones are always scattered with low level characters during regular play times, and finding a group for anything is never very hard.
I get more enjoyment out of eq2 despite it being a little less challenging and expansive simply because it's thriving with plenty of things to do, in vangaurd I usually just end up feeling a bit frustrated because of having to skip over content I can't do because spamming for a group simply does'nt seem to work, and there is almost an apocolyptic feeling of desolation in most areas including world chat.
Pretty good summary and interestng topic. I ask myself if I care if anyone is playing or not and the only reason I do is because I won't get to the see the really neat stuff without a group. There are some really cool places in Vanguard that people will never see.
If SOE does actaully care about the game they should think of ways to open this content to smaller groups , even the solo player. I find dugeons = must have group to be a silly paradigm that VAnguard could live without.
I haven't made up my mind about the two either and I'm to the point where I can feelmyself thinking too hard for the answer.
It's only matter of time til vanguard gets shut down, go with eq2 that game will be here another 6 years at lest.