Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

I kept the game on my hard drive waiting for a free trial / period. Sadly though VG did not appeal to me and I am no longer playing even though the free trial has not finished. Some reasons are :

Bad graphics. Namely the stiff walking  animation and thunderbird plastic models. The fact certain models look like a bad copy of WoW... sorry guys its true. The popping of medium distance objects to close distance e.g. fences is totally immersion breaking. I don't asked for seemless but sudden apperence of objects close to your charecter is bad. Bump mapping parts of the landscape makes it all look like some type of felt like fabric.

Performance is OK but not great given the above issues. Personally using the UT2004 engine for this game was a big mistake and I continue to believe that.

The vast and mostly empty world is a real turn off and just says "fail" all over it. Sadly.

The real killer is I could put up with the above if the game world was not so static or typical fantasy affair but I dont think VG is going to revolutionize itself.

Finally, I'll add that VG needs more than to "fix" itself. It also needs to say "sorry" for the worst launch in history. For a boxed product which should never have been published so early.I dont think to be fair that VG can ever get itself onto that level.

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Originally posted by tombear81
I kept the game on my hard drive waiting for a free trial / period. Sadly though VG did not appeal to me and I am no longer playing even though the free trial has not finished. Some reasons are :
 
Bad graphics. Namely the stiff walking  animation and thunderbird plastic models. The fact certain models look like a bad copy of WoW... sorry guys its true. The popping of medium distance objects to close distance e.g. fences is totally immersion breaking. I don't asked for seemless but sudden apperence of objects close to your charecter is bad. Bump mapping parts of the landscape makes it all look like some type of felt like fabric.
Performance is OK but not great given the above issues. Personally using the UT2004 engine for this game was a big mistake and I continue to believe that.
The vast and mostly empty world is a real turn off and just says "fail" all over it. Sadly.
The real killer is I could put up with the above if the game world was not so static or typical fantasy affair but I dont think VG is going to revolutionize itself.
Finally, I'll add that VG needs more than to "fix" itself. It also needs to say "sorry" for the worst launch in history. For a boxed product which should never have been published so early.I dont think to be fair that VG can ever get itself onto that level.

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Not even close to the worst launch in history. EQ, and AO were far far far worse and that doesn't even count DOA games like DnL.

/resub BABY!!!

Having a great time! Most of all because of the community. Everyone I've played with over the last couple of days has been great - reminds me of the old days and why I started playing MMO's in the first place. 

Just a note that in the very recent Dev Letter, it was said that new models and presumably animations are due for GU6 in late August so that may go a long way in improving the look of the game.  I think with more people coming back and actually giving them some money will go a long way in improving the performance and such as well.  I'll give SoE some credit for actually listening to the community and trying to make this a better game which they have so far.  Time will tell how much further it comes, but it seems like it's gaining momentum.

More on topic, I tried this game in beta and did not subscribe when it went live due to the well known issues (Performance, lack of features at release, etc).  I just came back after seeing it free to try for former members and have so far liked it.  I will probably subscribe and see how much better things look after GU6, before deciding more long term.

I have logged in a few times and think VG is a much better game now over what we got when it launched.  I do not plan to resub as of yet.  If they add a nice alternate advancement system similar to EQ1 then I will return.   

Originally posted by Enforcer71

I had already subscribed to try it right before they gave out the free month..

 

That being said, I am having a good time in VG and will keep my subscription.

Same here! Patience is a virtue.

Originally posted by tombear81

I kept the game on my hard drive waiting for a free trial / period. Sadly though VG did not appeal to me and I am no longer playing even though the free trial has not finished. Some reasons are :

 

Bad graphics. Namely the stiff walking  animation and thunderbird plastic models. The fact certain models look like a bad copy of WoW... sorry guys its true. The popping of medium distance objects to close distance e.g. fences is totally immersion breaking. I don't asked for seemless but sudden apperence of objects close to your charecter is bad. Bump mapping parts of the landscape makes it all look like some type of felt like fabric.

Performance is OK but not great given the above issues. Personally using the UT2004 engine for this game was a big mistake and I continue to believe that.

The vast and mostly empty world is a real turn off and just says "fail" all over it. Sadly.

The real killer is I could put up with the above if the game world was not so static or typical fantasy affair but I dont think VG is going to revolutionize itself.

Finally, I'll add that VG needs more than to "fix" itself. It also needs to say "sorry" for the worst launch in history. For a boxed product which should never have been published so early.I dont think to be fair that VG can ever get itself onto that level.

i would say most of your comments are far out to lunch except the unreal engine part.I also believe it may have been a mistake as that engine is nice to mod with ,it is also a hog when comes to lots of online action. VANGUARD has IMO the BEST graphics of ANY game out there ,in the RPG market of course.

The rest of what you are talking about is VIEW DISTANCE,sounds like you had bad settings.I know very early in the game some of the sliders didn't do anything or weren't in full working order but wasn't long after ,like within opening week that they all worked fine.BTW EVERY single game does this,so not sure your need to single out vanguard.As a matter of fact vanguard's view distance from opening day ,even when the so called problems were in effect was brilliant and the best i have seen from any game.

The graphics was the one thing i gave the game full marks for right out of the hop,i don't care if you couldn't play it or run it, i could and with very few problems.

Truly from day one i thought the game was sheer brilliance,because i had very few problems that others claimed to have.There was two reasons i quit the game.One there just wasn't enough players in such a large world to make it fun.Two i didn't like the idea of spending countless weeks/months trying to gain faction for every single spot in the game.I didn't like being attacked miles away from the next factioned area[seemed unrealistic aggro]. I guess i also didn't like the game economy that showed very quickly to be full of cheating.They quickly started booting lots of the cheats ,who of course claimed foul,but it just started to look bad so i got out.Sorry had to tell my fourth pet peeve lol...high level players camping quest needed mobs for there drops,that really po'd me.Other than my pet peeves the game is REAL GOOD and deserves nothing but praise.

I would have to say:

Heck NO!

The game has been SOE'ified. Maybe I'll sign up again once they get back to the original vision of Vanguard, and not some SOE vision.

Originally posted by tombear81

The fact certain models look like a bad copy of WoW... sorry guys its true.

Not it's not. Not even close. The art designs are completely different.

I won't speak to your other crtiticisms because I truly feel that the only way to approach Vangaurd is through the eyes of a sort of "retro gamer". One needs to just accpept it for what it is. Not saying you have to but I found that once I accepted that there were issues, it was easier to just play.

However, in no way have I seen any art design that looked like a copy of WoW. At all.