Games - WoW, EQ, & Vanguard? (1 Viewer)

[RedBema]

I am one of those types that likes to try out every new MMO on the market. I have played CoH, SWG, WoW, LoTRO just to name a few.

Last year, a game was released that was supposed to be the "Chosen One." It was said that it would be what EQ2 was supposed to be, or what EverQuest used to be.

I happened to come across a buddy key from a friend and have been testing out Vanguard, so I felt that I would give anyone who may be interested a few updates on the game.

1. It has Potential - I know that this isn't exactly what most would want to hear when it comes to an MMO that has been out for half a year, but it's the truth. When I say "potential," I mean that it has the potential to be a great game. IMO, it already is a great game, it has all of the pieces, it just needs to be ironed out.

2. The Graphics are Stunning! - Surprisingly, when I picked up LoTRO, it held some of the most amazing graphics that I had ever seen on an MMO. The water was simply beautiful.

Vanguard's graphics are fantastic. The only downfall is that you have to have a computer on steroids to even be able to play the game, not to mention put the graphics on a high quality setting. Even still, the medium quality settings allow you to see what seems like miles upon miles into the distance.

The water is just as gorgeous as Lord of the Rings is, and the mountains and terrain reacts well to the atmosphere.

3. The Gameplay is Vast - Vanguard allows you to enter into 3 different spheres of life.

• Diplomacy

• Crafting

• Adventuring

This is one of the greatest concepts of Vanguard. You get to engage yourself into what seems like a true life. You can become a renowned crafter of any certain object, or become a great leader among the people. The simple adventurer style is still around, it is just surrounded by many great traits.

4. Mounts & Houses - It took WoW about 2-3 years to come out with controllable flying mounts. Vanguard allows you to control a riding mount at level 10, and flying mounts a little later. But it's not just the idea of a flying mount that rocks, it is the idea that there are tons of different kinds of mounts unlike any other MMO out there. I am talking about the Pegasus, Dragons, and Unicorns. Each looking great and giving you the potential to rule the sky.

As for houses? Not too many MMO's allow you to actually buy a piece of their virtual world. Vanguard gives you the possiblity of buying a plot of land and building a house on it.

5. The Overall Feel - Chemistry is hard to create. Any good sports team will tell you that. Chemistry is not something that you can create out of a stipulated system, it just happens. Vanguard has chemistry. The feel of the game is something between a "Middle-Earthish" type of fantasy and a "Star-Warsy" expanded universe. What I mean is that it seems to take the best of both worlds and unite them in a way that you can only dream of.

With the dozens of races, classes, mounts, and terrain that you can experience, Vanguard has it all. It's more than orcs, trolls, elves, and humans to choose from, you have the ability to be a giant, goblin, and many other races that are new to fantasy-like MMO's.

My advice is that you keep your eye on this game, especially if you are looking for something for personal enjoyment. Vanguard gives you the chance to invest in a really great game that I believe will be something one day. It's not overly crowded with noobs with names like "ipwnu" or "ipooedmypants," but with people who really are there to enjoy something that you can usually only read in a good book.

I give it 4 out of 5 stars myself. When they fix the bugs, I'll give it 6 out of 5.

Check it out for yourself,

http://vanguard.station.sony.com/

 

[Tomahawk]

I played Vanguard thru the Beta and then for about 6 months after it went live. I loved the game and like Bema said the graphics are incredible. The options were there to play however you want to. The only problem for me was that the computer on steriods thing. I went out and bought a NASA computer and can play it fine but the friends I went in with couldnt afford to upgrade so we all left and went back to EQ. I have since moved on to WOW but am looking forward to the day I go back to VG.

I deffinately would encourage everyone to give it a look.

 

[Marbury]

What you have seen so far is just the surface of the beauty of Vanguard. I find myself learning new things even at level 34. I just wanted to address a few things that RedBema left out.

First and foremost, like when EverQuest came out, it had a bunch of memory leaks and required quite a bit for it's time to run at maximum. The rendering for the graphics on Vanguard are far beyond what you have seen in any MMO, and the graphics make your little e-peen go boink.

In any matter though, the new game update that just hit the test server is fixing the problems with the steroid addiction that Vanguard has. Don't get Bema wrong, he has more problems crashing than I do, and I am running a Pentium 4, Nvidia 6800, and a single gigabyte of RAM. He's got me spec'd out on hardware like you wouldn't believe. I think the key lies within Windows XP versus Vista.

Mounts aren't just what he said, they just released 17 racial mounts, adding it to the Griffons, Unicorns, Wyverns, and Horses.

Adding to the mounts, people can actually build ships in the game and you can control them. From a small Qalian Sloop, to a larger Kojan Caravel, oh and you can name your own boat also.

The quests seem endless, the chains aren't useless, and the gear is definitely worth the effort. Like the three spheres, there is so much to do in them including quests which can yield great results, and actual uses for player interaction.

EverQuest II had the houses, Lineage II had the castles, Vanguard has them both! The castle requires two sphere's, Diplomacy and Crafting. You need that deed, and to get a deed you have to prove you're worth it. To build a castle you need minerals, metals, and even wood. You're going to need carpenters, miners, and people who can quarry for this task. It's a guild thing, but there are benefits to having a house and a castle. (My guild is about to have the server first castle)

Like Bema said, try it, it's worth it.

I have 6 buddy keys left.

Send me a PM.

Marbury

 

[Zulan]

This game, is it a raiding game when you get higher up? im not quite understanding the logic of the game...

 

[Zulan]

And please Marbury i would love to try it out...

 

[Marbury]

Yeah, they put in two raiding instances at high end, but as soon as the next expansion launches there will be more to the game, I'm sure of it. There's already enough content to keep you busy.

 

[RedBema]

The thing about Vanguard is that it is not like any MMO that you have ever seen. It's not about the race to the level cap, or about simply raiding to get better gear, it's about choosing the path that you want to go in the game, and experiencing it to it's fullest.

Imagine that, a game about having fun?

 

[Khatib]

Yeah, I'm really disappointed that the race to level cap thing is starting to become the norm. The biggest problem with that is devs spend the most time polishing the entry level content so they can hook new players.

By mid levels, you get out of that really polished stuff, and then you hit end-game which seems to just not be really well polished or even thought out and designed... and you're stuck there. Forever. Waiting on content patches to bring something new to the game. I very much prefer 6 or 8 or 12 months to level instead of 2 and the a life spent chasing the never ending gear improvement carrot.



If AoC wasn't coming out in less than a month, I'd take you up on the VG buddy key. I really wanted that game to be good. I followed it for a couple years before launch and got into the beta pretty early. I actually enjoyed the beta a good deal, but was disappointed watching all the concessions they were making to the flood of "WoW was my first MMO" players who bitched about every little thing that made the game a glorious return to old school. "Corpse runs are bad." "XP loss is bad." --- Well hey guys... DYING is bad. Try this: Don't fucking die and you won't have to bitch about what happens when you do!

But yeah. I really wanted VG to be my next big game. Very much so. The biggest thing that kept me from just playing it through the bugs, were the combination of it being sold to SOE (major SWG issues here) and the all the compromises that were happening to the original ideas behind the game (major sick of WoW issues here) -- and the fact that like 9 out of 10 of my friends couldn't play it without doing a major PC upgrade that they couldn't afford to do at the time.

 

[RedBema]

By mid levels, you get out of that really polished stuff, and then you hit end-game which seems to just not be really well polished or even thought out and designed... and you're stuck there. Forever. Waiting on content patches to bring something new to the game. I very much prefer 6 or 8 or 12 months to level instead of 2 and the a life spent chasing the never ending gear improvement carrot.

Sounds like Lotro to me, lol. That is why I stopped playing it.

I followed it for a couple years before launch and got into the beta pretty early. I actually enjoyed the beta a good deal, but was disappointed watching all the concessions they were making to the flood of "WoW was my first MMO" players who b&%#@ about every little thing that made the game a glorious return to old school. "Corpse runs are bad." "XP loss is bad." --- Well hey guys... DYING is bad. Try this: Don't f#&&*# die and you won't have to b&%#%@ about what happens when you do!

Lol, this made me rofl. It is so true.

 

[Marbury]

I don't know what you mean by the WoW issues, because I notice some World of Warcraft things that are available in Vanguard, but they are altered to change them from being direct importations and make them one of a kind to Vanguard.

Sony never really did much to the game except fix it and add content. There was so much going for the game that Sony didn't have to touch much to fix the game. Just it's performance. The latest patch down the extremities that Vanguard takes on your PC.

I don't understand, maybe Vanguard was worse, but I run it on a 6 year old computer right now.


Wait a second Bema, are you saying VG is fun? That can't be true, no MMO is fun. lol

 

[RedBema]

VG is fun, except when I get locked out and bluescreened every 15 minutes.

 

[Marbury]

Bema,

Vista sucks.

XP rocks.

Trust me, alot of your issues lie within that. I don't crash, I do have a crappy wireless router that won't let my computer renew it's IP address so I have to reset the router every two hours.

You know it's your Vista, cause I'm running a crappier PC on XP and I am doing just fine.



Oh, and for the record;

I have 4 Buddy Keys Remaining!

 

[RedBema]

I won't argue with that.

 

[Ryzon]

Yeah, they put in two raiding instances at high end, but as soon as the next expansion launches there will be more to the game, I'm sure of it. There's already enough content to keep you busy.

Is there going to be an expansion? I though SOE fired all of Sigil's developers and put Vanguard on life support.

 

[Acigaretteandsex]

I have 4 Buddy Keys Remaining!

HOOK ONE UP!

 

[Khatib]

Is there going to be an expansion? I though SOE fired all of Sigil's developers and put Vanguard on life support.

I heard something like that too, but I've also seen a LOT of random chatter like this around the web about people picking it up to give it a shot, or people who really wanted it to be good going back to it and liking it.

So if their sub numbers start to climb, they might still ride it out instead of just flushing it. Any xpacs would be a ways down the road I'm sure, but they might come back to it and give it a major content patch or something in the future.

 

[RedBema]

Their are no Xpac's on the horizon, but there are Game Updates.

The game is still pretty buggy, but it is improving. It has a shot at making it.

 

[Marbury]

I think it will make it, once AoC flops. Which I'm almost 100% it will, because the gameplay from what I hear is not as good as everyone made it out to be.

Anyways, I see a lot of people folding from EverQuest because of the lack of players, and they seem to be trying out Vanguard and sticking to it. In the past month from what I heard through chatter, the population of the game has almost doubled. I think Sony might let EQ go on the wayside and begin brushing up Vanguard.

I am out of buddy keys. Sorry.