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Seems like Vanguard may be coming back
Jalaris
Member UncommonPosts: 29
I recently re-subbed to Vanguard as an old returning player, and there are many new players and returning players that are subbing to the game now and there is definately no lack of population, atleast, not that I have noticed. Perhaps Vanguard has better days ahead.
Edited for spelling
Comments
good news. Keep us posted if the population maintains i'd reactivate.
I just signed up for the trial yesterday and so far I am liking it allot!
Sory, heard this before, how good it is, how the bugs have been fixed, how the game has improved and also how the game has alot of players comming back. All of which have been utter BS.
Will rather wait for a free comeback trial to be offered firstly before i come back and check it out. Other than that i will not even bother returning beforehand. Its upto sony to make the move.
Didn't they just cut off a couple of the devs, from a team that already was lacking in devs to begin with?
Sony Online Entertainment, publisher and developer behind the upcoming DC Universe Online and The Agency, has laid off 35 employees, or "just over 4% of its full-time workforce." In a statement to Joystiq, Scott Gulbransen, Sr. Director Global PR & Corp Communications, said that the cuts were necessary to "better align the company's resources ... as well as improve operational efficiency." Unfortunately, the publisher declined to go into further detail, adding "this is all we're going to say today."
The full statement is available after the break.
"In a move to better align the company's resources against areas of growth that meet consumer demand in today's online market as well as improve operational efficiency, Sony Online Entertainment has eliminated just over 4% of its full-time workforce, equaling 35 people. The changes will better position SOE to deliver against its emphasis on developing games for a wider, more diverse audience and remaining a worldwide leader in online gaming."
Just tried the trial, lasted about 15mins then uninstalled. The feeling of my toon being heavy and clunky doesint sit well with me. Not to mention the dated optimization this game runs on. Seems to me that all SOE mmos feel this way, even with the latest hardware.
i7 860@3.4ghz with Zalman 9500
Evga p55 ftw sli/xfire mobo
G.skill ripjaw 4gig running at 1600mhz
gtz 260 c216
all wrapped nicely in a Coolermaster haf 922
ocz 700w modxtreme psu
Unfortunately this game has a better chance of being reincarnated as a ham sandwich. Too bad, I actually did like this game, and I really like ham sandwiches.
Played for 4-5 hrs yesterday, starting two week trial, and character movement felt just like any other major MMO; WoW, AO etc. Admittedly the lag spikes were killing the experince a bit. Switched over to GW and ran a few DSL tests to see if it was my end and seemed to be on VG servers end as others were complaining about the server merge causing them. I'll give it a few days and see.
On the whole I like the few classes I tried, shaman and Psionist. But the quest design is nothing different. It seems to follow the EQ model closely, with a rather decent GUI and a supposedly slightly wider breadth of play avaible via the Dimpolacy and Harvesting/Crafting will have to give those a whirl see how they pan out.
i hope this is the case so SOE can put some work into this game..
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
SOE just closed 3 of the last 4 servers and laid off 4 developers from the team. This is a trend that has been going on for the game the moment soe bought it. That isn't a statement of blame, just a fact.
Vanguard is on its last server and this will be the final hoorah for the game. There will be no revival, soe doesn't have the extra money to try to save a dead game and subscriptions are not going to improve in a game that has continually gotten less resources each year.
It is a great time to experience the game with the consolidated population and the game being closer to a release condition than it ever has been. The window for that experience is going to close soon as the decline of population will again kick in.
The gamplay was actually very good...
But the cluncky character annimations killed it for me, as long as they are there i will not try this game again.
They should improve the game, improve characyter annimations and then release it under a new name with fresh servers. To much good inthere to be lost, first time i really blame SOE for one of their buisness decisions.
Best MMO experiences : EQ(PvE), DAoC(PvP), WoW(total package) LOTRO (worldfeel) GW2 (Artstyle and animations and worlddesign) SWTOR (Story immersion) TSW (story) ESO (character advancement)
wow this is sad
, shame the game had to die like this
March on! - Lets Invade Pekopon
have they actually merfed ALL servers now? even the EU ones?
No there are 2 servers now, a US and a European. The lag is horrible, but the game is currently down putting a patch in that is supposed to fix it, a second attempt after a brainy "defrag" fix attempt haha
All in all i love the game, but the lead designers idea of time sink is just stupid long grinds, faction based really. In order to complete any end game items quests, you have to grind out faction. For instance this cog that gives you a passive buff, you need over 22k faction, and eacy mob gives you 3, and there are once-a-day repeatable quests that give 5 haha.
Then once you move on to your epic quest, you have to go back to the same zone and grind for months to collect shards off the same mobs. Doesnt that sound fun!
well first of all concerning the lag issue, it was because of the server merge and this morning they are patching/fixing the lag today so that is why the servers are locked or down this morning( as RaidTheSpade has said in another post) and second of all there have been many new players and old ones resubbing, me included, i have been playing VG for almost a week now and I have seen a hell of alot more players than I did last time I played.
and yeah the servers are merged into two( Telon, North America/ and Halgar, EU) but all it has done is good for VG now there are absolutely no lack of players, and many players are returning because of the MERGE... I dont know about you all but i am very much enjoying VG and have great hope that it will "come back", and if it doesn't I will enjoy it while I can
plus maybe the new subscribers, if it continues, will draw SOE's attention again
Just came back to vanguard, haven't played since launch. Basically i'm so burnt out on every other mmorpg this is hte only one i could think of that might be kinda fresh.
The game has improved alot but alot of stupid bugs are still there. I log out and when i login i'm somewhere else in the middle of nowhere, stuff like that. Animations as someone mentioned are crappy at best. But teh game world is truely beautiful and if you like to explore it's a blast. I hate the fact that the dungeons are non instanced, it really sucks trying to enjoy yourself only to have another group run through and mess up your entire run, dungeon instancing is the best MMO invention since mmo's came out, why this game didn't use it is beyond me. I know brad in his infinite wisdom was trying to remake EQ and eq didn't have instanced dungeons at first. That was my biggest complaint back in the EQ days as well, was lame sitting around the wall in unrest with everyone pulling mobs out of the house, nothing epic about that. Would have been way cooler to actually "do" the dungeon rather than stupid camping.
I'm having fun in the game, it's a shame it's been shelved by SOE, it really could be a great game if they put out an expansion and updated some stuff.
This game died before it started, when the lead developer spent a ton of the development money towards personal gain.
I love Vanguard and has resubbed for that last Hoorah, which it probably will be. It is doomed and it is a shame that SOE chose to focus on EQ2 instead and strangling VG. Hopefully they will make an EQNext with a lot of ideas taken from both EQ2 and VG combined. Both are good games but their designs put together would be great!
The DDO f2p model would probably work wonders for this game and is probably the only thing that can save it.
Make games you want to play.
http://www.youtube.com/user/RavikAztar
SOE has lost all credibility in the AAA MMO market.
they are hanging onto the MMOs they have left such as EQ2 - all the others are in life support and they are now trying to rip off clueless "non-gamers" with browser MMOs such as free realms, clone star wars and facebook games are next.
Agreed and why they haven't made it free to play is impossible to understand!
Soe has at least 3 other mmos in the works right now, not enough talent to fill the positions and declining revenues that has forced them to layoff almost 10% of their work force.
In the grand scheme of things Vanguard is not a project that offeres a worthwhile return on investment for soe in comparison to their other projects.
Things were different for turbine.
Sony has no business being in the mmo market anymore. Only thing they have shown is that they can run good, decent mmos into the ground.
To SOE's credit (omg I can't believe I'm saying this), Vanguard would not have launched if it wasn't for them. And no, Vanguard was never even a "decent" game. It had some good concepts, good design, great music, newer graphics, yes. It had one of the genre's very few FFA PvP server that was a blast to play on initially. But when we play a MMO, everything has to come together, all aspect of the gameplay has to be somewhat enjoyable. You can't release a game with good graphics, but with sucky animation and spell effects. You can't release a game with tons of character customizations, then after people have puchased your game say "oops, we forgot to put visible helmets on people's heads!".
You can't advertise a game to be "seamless", yet you still have to chunk from one zone to another. The chunking issues plagued the game for a loooong time. Heck they never could fix bard songs when zoning through chunks, so they eventually made bard songs like a spell buff instead.
The game really was doomed from the start. SOE saved it from never being launched, but SOE didn't really give it a fair shot. However, if you understood how badly coded Vanguard was, how unfinished it was during the first TWO YEARS, can you really blame anybody for not wanting to dump another $30mil into the game after it's out? It doesn't work that way, you cut your losses if it was your money that you're spending.
So while I have my own dislikes for SOE, mainly because how they shoved RMT down people's throats, especially EQ1 (the game that brought them to where they are today), I can't say SOE was to blame for Vanguard. Brad and Sigil co. were to blame from day 1. You simply don't mismanage $30mil and not launch a game in decent shape after 5 years of development.
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
SOE did not save or rescue vanguard from anything. Vanguard was still going to release under microsoft, but it would have died a swift death where no one would debate the reasons why it died.