Hello,

Let me start by saying I am experienced in UO, Eve-Online, DAoC, GW and WoW; I am also not going to make an immature posting with regards to V:SOH; however, I do want to ‘say my piece’ in a constructive manner.

I pre-ordered Vanguard based on several promising features of the game and playing on a friends beta account for several days. Vanguard is, conceptually, a great game and has potential to pull in a lot of mmorpg players bored of WoW, GW etc.

I have never seen such a bad launch week. Not only is the game full of bugs and ‘missing’ elements but the obscure public relations is not helping the situation.

There seems to be some ignorant / arrogant assumption by the support staff (on community forums, via e-mail support) that problems are generally client side. NO.

I’m Sigil, sorry but your game code is not ready for retail. The numerous crashes, ludicrous FPS, failing logins, missing items, memory leaks etc. are your fault and should have been dealt with before launch.

People can say ‘its just launched give it time’, but a retailing product that you pay £30 for should be playable; the game in its current state is not. Personally I crash every 10 minutes regardless of the operating system and settings. Two of my friends who play BOTH can’t even enter the game world! These aren’t isolated incidents Sigil, they are widespread regardless of OS, hardware and settings.

Sigil I hope you wake up, listen to your community (which is dwindling) and deal with major playability issues before Vanguard becomes just another mediocre mmorpg.

I suggest compensating players with at least an extra week of game time, possibly scraping the monthly subscription for now and asking players to help ‘beta’ the code. You should also publicly admit that the game is not ready and ask the community to be patient.

Originally posted by Giganike

Hello,

Let me start by saying I am experienced in UO, Eve-Online, DAoC, GW and WoW; I am also not going to make an immature posting with regards to V:SOH; however, I do want to ‘say my piece’ in a constructive manner.

I pre-ordered Vanguard based on several promising features of the game and playing on a friends beta account for several days. Vanguard is, conceptually, a great game and has potential to pull in a lot of mmorpg players bored of WoW, GW etc.

I have never seen such a bad launch week. Not only is the game full of bugs and ‘missing’ elements but the obscure public relations is not helping the situation.

There seems to be some ignorant / arrogant assumption by the support staff (on community forums, via e-mail support) that problems are generally client side. NO.

I’m Sigil, sorry but your game code is not ready for retail. The numerous crashes, ludicrous FPS, failing logins, missing items, memory leaks etc. are your fault and should have been dealt with before launch.

People can say ‘its just launched give it time’, but a retailing product that you pay £30 for should be playable; the game in its current state is not. Personally I crash every 10 minutes regardless of the operating system and settings. Two of my friends who play BOTH can’t even enter the game world! These aren’t isolated incidents Sigil, they are widespread regardless of OS, hardware and settings.

Sigil I hope you wake up, listen to your community (which is dwindling) and deal with major playability issues before Vanguard becomes just another mediocre mmorpg.

I suggest compensating players with at least an extra week of game time, possibly scraping the monthly subscription for now and asking players to help ‘beta’ the code. You should also publicly admit that the game is not ready and ask the community to be patient.

Your post is a good indication that out of all of those games listed you have never seen a launch before. 

With MMOs and with the rest of games in general that are being released now. . it has become a "Give it time" Kinda thing, there are numerous games on the PC, 360, PS3 are releasing screwed up. . .we have reached the end of an era in receiving a decent product. . .as long as there is an internet connection and a hard drive to make the changes to the developers of all games will consider them as in beta and never launch until they run out of their last red cent. . .

You will either be one of the people who quits the game or never buys it until later on when you would actually consider that time your launch week or you will be one of the people who enjoys playing the game. . .I myself had my first crash for the first time.  If you are crashing to the desktop and both of these people are your friends whose computers you are playing on it is feasible to say  they have done something foolish.. . . You could come to my house and I will make you pancakes while we play vanguard. . lmao

Originally posted by freako969
if you actually bother to head over to Sigil's site it tells you that the game was MEANT to be released December 2007. Only Sony being Sony forced them to release it this early as they have been running off bank loans for the past 5 years and have literally run out of money, so they needed to release.

Yes, the game is bug infested.  Take grouping for instance:

1. Sometimes players cannot be invited with err msg.
2. Some invites result in no grp icon for the new member.
3. Some members hp bars get stuck.
4. Sometimes the grp chat channel does not work.
5. Sometimes you get your old grp chat channel.
6. Grp memebrs go invis sometimes for no reason.

And these are all very basic features that are needed to play the game!  Very annoying, poorly coded game that I.. just... gotta... play...

Originally posted by Trenker

Yes, the game is bug infested.  Take grouping for instance:

1. Sometimes players cannot be invited with err msg.
2. Some invites result in no grp icon for the new member.
3. Some members hp bars get stuck.
4. Sometimes the grp chat channel does not work.
5. Sometimes you get your old grp chat channel.
6. Grp memebrs go invis sometimes for no reason.

And these are all very basic features that are needed to play the game!  Very annoying, poorly coded game that I.. just... gotta... play...

I am assuming that you are actually from Sigil.  I have questions for you.

1. Are we going to see new and improved animations, and cities with more NPC movement and life?

2. Are there any plans to improve the appearance of water, names the horrific appearance of water as it touches the shore in a boxy, polygonish way?

3. Speaking of water, any plans for underwater plant life to spruce it up?  I can get more life leaving a glass of water on a the counter overnight.

4. Any plans to changing and/or expanding character creation options to make characters look more unique?

5. Clipping plane.  It doesn't seem to go anywhere about 900 meters even though the slider bars goes further, will this change in the future?  What about how objects and creatures don't appear until ~50 meters, I hear it is going to be fixed.  Is this true, and if so, how much improvement can we expect?

6. If yes to any of the above, can you give us an idea of their priority?

Originally posted by vylo

I am assuming that you are actually from Sigil.  I have questions for you.

1. Are we going to see new and improved animations, and cities with more NPC movement and life?

Agreed that NPCs need more life/movement in the cities; biggest issue right now is performance.  I've had ambient scripts and triggers completed for months that'd initiate random animations and conversations between passing NPCs but all of that takes a toll on the server.  Add in a high player pop and that said city will go to hell.  It's ready to go in when possible, tho :)  As for animations, that's the art department and I honestly have no idea what their plans are.

2. Are there any plans to improve the appearance of water, names the horrific appearance of water as it touches the shore in a boxy, polygonish way?

We really need some sort of particle effect similiar to our rivers that bridges the water and land; trust me, I've complained about it as a beta tester well before I was hired :)

3. Speaking of water, any plans for underwater plant life to spruce it up?  I can get more life leaving a glass of water on a the counter overnight.

It's pretty easy on our side to add plant life under the water, just a matter of the time it takes to get it in.  We obviously have a priority list of stuff that needs to get done and marine life isn't at the top of it

4. Any plans to changing and/or expanding character creation options to make characters look more unique?

No idea...again, is an art thing.  They're just as busy these days as us designers so I wouldn't put it past them to continue tweaking art-related things such as customization.

5. Clipping plane.  It doesn't seem to go anywhere about 900 meters even though the slider bars goes further, will this change in the future?  What about how objects and creatures don't appear until ~50 meters, I hear it is going to be fixed.  Is this true, and if so, how much improvement can we expect?

The 50m things bugs me as well, even more so when I was a Sorc and our ranged spell was 50m...hard to nuke something if ya can't see it.  I haven't pinged Gebron about this in a while so not exactly sure what our plans are atm.  A higher clipping plane for those that could take advantage of it and a slider for object population would be money.  I'm not a coder though, so no idea on how involved it is; am assuming that it's fairly difficult with our engine since it hasn't happened already, to the disappointment of all.

Thanks for the reply!

another thing.  I noticed that tapestry, like flags are stiff and don't move, I don't suppose you know about those either?

And lastly, if I'm allowed to ask this, why was the game release so early in its current state?  The incompleteness of the game is tangible and is turning off many people.

R u rilly from sigil?

Maybe abit off topic but I am just amazed how people not that just accept but acctualy defend a product that hit the shelfs unfinished.

I am not sayn' Vanguard is not a good game, or a bad one, certainly it have potantial.BUt from a  customer point of view, would you buy a car wich "sound to be cool'" but the salemans will fgive it to you without wheels?"We will deliver the super turbo wheels included in the next month sir"..

Come on people get real and have a  little respect for the money you spend on something as customer at least..The game market made such a habit to sell unfinished products in ther past years that it become a rule.

Soon they will "patch" our grocery too lol

Originally posted by sipus

Maybe abit off topic but I am just amazed how people not that just accept but acctualy defend a product that hit the shelfs unfinished.

I am not sayn' Vanguard is not a good game, or a bad one, certainly it have potantial.BUt from a  customer point of view, would you buy a car wich "sound to be cool'" but the salemans will fgive it to you without wheels?"We will deliver the super turbo wheels included in the next month sir"..

Come on people get real and have a  little respect for the money you spend on something as customer at least..The game market made such a habit to sell unfinished products in ther past years that it become a rule.

Soon they will "patch" our grocery too lol

Because it has "wheels".  Just a lot of dents, etc.

I won't defend it to the point where I won't admit it has flaws, because it has glaring ones.

I play this because it is the MMO I am interested in.  WoW is higher quality, but I'm bored with it.  The expansion didn't do much at all to wet my appitite either. 

EQ is past its prime. 

Tried EQ2, but I can't get into it.  Instancing drives me away from MMOs.

Tried Eve, definitely not my style.

Shadowbane had an awesome skill system that more MMOs should "borrow", but beyond that was a hollow shell and completely devoid of anything even remotely resembling balance.

Horizons...... lol.... enough said.

Asheron's call - see EQ, and it wasn't that great to begin with.

Ashreon's call 2 - train wreck of a game.  

DDO - again with the instancing.  I could just play regular D&D.

LOTRO - was in beta.  Wasn't very impressed,  Controls were at a super nintendo level of physical realism, and that is coming from a man who loved to jump in a circle backwards on his mount in WoW.

So here I am. 

The pro- I got this game earlier then I expected. 

The horrible, horrible con - it isn't actually done yet.

Clearly their priority should be on bringing the Gnome area up to snuff relative to the other races starting areas. I think it shows a great deal of disrespect for what is obviously an inherently superior Gnomish way of life.

Some more cowbell wouldn't hurt, either.