If you like horribly grindy leveling, static mobs, retarded humanoid animations, lovely scenery and landscapes that renders itself on your monitor like spastic molasses, Vanguard is the game for you.
Lest you think it’s all bad, there are some very nice locations in the starting areas, and a few clever quests. I recommend Tanvu (half-elf and human newbie area in Kojan) - very medeival Japanese feel, with quests to match, if you must try the game for yourself.
Disclaimer: Although I wouldn’t be caught dead buying this game, I have played it almost every day since August, and have one character up to level 21, and five more around level 12ish. There’s something about ‘free game’ that pushes my stupidity button, I guess.
I’ve been beta testing a little bit here and there and while it isn’t a bad game really (albeit my characters are all pretty low level) it definitely is not ready for prime-time. It needs about three months more polish. If you thought EQ2 was a decent or good game then you’ll probably like Vanguard.
Lumberjacking is strangely fun (watching trees fall down is entertaining) and I like to sing that I’m OKAY.
I was in the beta for a while this fall. Corpse runs aren’t my thing, but I -think- I would have liked the crafting and diplomacy, at least for a while, if only I could play the game on my 6600GT/1 Gig Ram machine. However, I can’t; the game has never actually crashed but the slide shows on Ofoto are smooth by comparison, even on the lowest settings, and those settings are pretty stark and unappealing.
This is disappointing to see. I had high hopes for Vanguard, but I’m not going to try another game that runs so poorly. I wanted to enjoy Everquest 2, but it runs so porrly for the graphics you get, that it sucks some ofthe fun out of it. I’d rather have toned down graphics/better art direction/good performance… than this “building then game for the future”. I also think this is part of the reaosn EQ2 never recovered, as it’s just not that fun having to tweak so many graphic options to still get your game to run bad.
I don’t understand the hate for Brad McQuaid. I was hoping he’d learn from EQ’s problems & Wow’s successes and understand so many of us hate to group. But I liked some of the new ideas he had in the previews I read of Vanguard (in the 3 different pc game magazines I get).
Did Brad do something horrible to have so many want this game to go down in flames?
Was Brad the fucker responsible for me spending so damn long looking at my Shaman’s spellbook while meditating to “regain mana”?
I think the funniest thing was when they put in a gems minigame you could play while medding. Why the assholes just didnt let you see the world I dont know.
Oh yeah and just a heads up when you “uninstall” the game make sure you actually go delete the folder because for some reason it thinks its a good idea to save 17gigs of data that you might need later!
Brad actually explained this in an interview after he left Sony. Appearantly they had agreed in house that it was a stupid mechanic, but Brad wanted the book to fade away slowly as you leveled. As their programmers couldn’t figure out how to do that, he left it in until they could rather than just removing it completely.
This explanation convinced me that I would never again play a game he was in charge of.
That’s not the story I heard. I heard that originally they wanted meditation to completely isolate you from the outside world so that you couldn’t even see chat. You’d have to stand up, breaking your “meditation”, every couple of seconds to see if a monster was attacking your party or, for that matter, yourself. But the devteam convinced Brad that it was untenable.
The “book fading out” idea did really exist, though. It was brilliant when you think about it. As you leveled up, the book would get more and more transparent, thereby rewarding you for leveling and making the newbie experience as painful as humanly possible. Truly, they were ahead of their time.
I had to hit myself upside the head after reading that to make sure that the incredible levels of stupid radiating from that idea didn’t have a chance to sink in.
I’ve seen that sentiment from quite a few people in the context of various MMOGs: WoW, EQ2, FFXI… All these people marking time in their current game, while they wait for Vanguard to whisk them off to Heaven in a flaming chariot. Weird.
So true! I played a Shadowknight in EQ1, and I remember when they announced that not only did hybrid classes gain experience more slowly than other classes, but anyone GROUPED with a hybrid would then gain experience more slowly. Of course, they claimed this was hard coded and couldn’t be removed. Needless to say, they removed it after Brad left (and long after I quit). Way to go, Brad!
It’s a recurrent theme from the (not insignificant numbers of) MMOG players who seem to no longer be enjoying playing their current MMOG, but continue to do so anyway. The earliest manifestation I can recall was people in EQ saying, “As soon as DAoC - ‘EQ without the bits that suck!’ - comes out, I’m gone!”. There were undoubtedly earlier cases. Repeat for every forecast MMOG, until WoW, when most everyone who wanted to go, did. EQ is actually a pretty pleasant place to play now, since all these people have left.
I couldn’t get the Beta working - and after downloading something like 40Gig, that was more than a little annoying - but I was actually interested in playing the thing. It’s the Diplomacy stuff - and, to a lesser degree, the crafting - which intrigued me. For the former, at least, when I met the Devs they talked a good fight.
You all have no idea how good you had it. If you thought EQ was punishing when it was released, you should have seen the very early beta phases.
You couldn’t talk while meditating, you had to click off the button, type, then click it back on.
The Bards travel song sped up the monsters as well as the bard. Probably a bug, but still hilarious, and totally in keeping with fucking the player over at every chance.
No teleport spells and if you wanted to rebind you had to buy a topaz, which A) you couldn’t afford B) was only available in the middle of the main continent and C) was through mobs that would make you crap your pants if they just looked at you. Oh, and the one guy high enough to cast the spell couldn’t afford it. Seriously, it was like a month long project trying to get my poor erudite wizard rebound to anywhere other than Erudin.
Plus a ton more I am forgetting I am sure. I still played the game for years and enjoyed it. I don’t hate Brad, it was my choice to keep playing, not his. Why would you hate him?
over the holiday break I got an invite to beta managed to DL it, but couldnt get it to work something about the beta forums access not working. I admit im definitely curious to see how bad it is but at this point it would take pretty much a 180 degree change in the word of mouth to make that happen.
shame really as it probably could have been a nice game. looks like their mantra of “content is king” has been replaced by “might as well get it over with posthaste”
