Originally posted by Deminiz

 player housing and guild housing got me sold kinda..but hows the PVP? are there factions? any endgame content ?

This.

Also since the world has no Instances, How well is the gameplay in the world. Seems like anybody could come by and still your dungon loot. Is that the case?

How does the Large Scale PvP work. Is it Guild vs Guild vs Guild? I dislike that type of grouping, because it floods players to join the most populated Guilds over new Guilds in order to be protected.

Also Since Dungons are not Instanced, how does the game regulate LvLs? If I walk in to a Dungon, how do I know iam the right lvl for it? Not to Low to get Pwned, not to high to do the over Pwning, but just right.

I'll never play another game made by Sony after they refused to cancel my account and kept drawing funds until I told my bank to force a stop payment.

Originally posted by GPrestige

Have you heard of Vanguard? To you, is Vanguard that game that had a terrible launch? It seems a majority of people in the MMO community either don't know what Vanguard is, or are still jaded by the terrible launch it had. While to some the game may not be their thing, to others it is the most amazing MMO on the market.

After being on these forums for a while, I've realized that a LOT of people are sick of their current MMO and are looking for a new one. The only problem is, nothing good is coming out for a while. Now, I'm sure I'm going to get responses like, "LOL Vanguard is terrible!" These people either have NOT played it in a long time, or are still disgruntled about release.

About Vanguard

Anyone who loves high-fantasy games, with massive worlds, amazing sceneries, an inordinate amount of races and classes, and an amazing community would love Vanguard. There are no instances, the world is massive. There are hidden dungeons around the world that are widely unknown. There are some dungeons that appear so small on the outside, like a little cave entrance, that turn into a massive cave underground the size of a city.

You can own your own house in Vanguard. There is no "housing instance". You can build boats and ships, and sail them around the world. You can discover islands that no one has been to before. The music is amazing. The views are breathtaking. The game is at the state it should be when it was released - simple as that.

 

I'm sure that someone is going to say something like, "oh you must work for Sony, who the hell would want to play Vanguard?" Let me assure you, I don't work for Sony lol. This is the downfall of the game; it is backed by a company that doesn't advertise - it is as simple as that. They have this gem of a game in their grip, that could become so popular if only they allowed it to. I don't think people are aware of the size of the game and the feeling you get while playing it.

I have never played EQ1, but from what I've heard from those who have, Vanguard is what EQ 2 should have been. People say they get the feeling they did playing Vanguard that they did the first time playing Everquest. I assume this is a good thing.

 

A Quick Word About the Population

It is true, Vanguard has a low population. The game holds around 50,000 players at most, according to http://www.mmodata.net/ If you want a populated server, play on Seradon. The server is like playing on a WoW's medium-high pop server if you play at prime time. What does the game's population matter if your server population is more than enough? Also, the worst thing that is happening to this game is people quitting because of a low population. That just worsens the problem, instead get the word out there like I am!

 

A Simple Warning

I am 100% aware that some people responding here will berate the game, or even me. As I said earlier, these people are probably either burned from launch, and have not played it in a long time, or just don't find this type of game to their liking. I am asking those who have never played it, or haven't played in a long time to ignore these naysayers, and give it a chance yourself. Don't be sheeple, people, make your own mind up. All I'm asking is if you like the game, get the word out.

I know someone will say something like, "this game must be in bad condition if the players are the ones trying to get people into the game". This is because its Sony behind the game. While Sony isn't the best company, the devs who are running VG have a HUGE passion towards the game. They choose to work on this game, and they love doing so. Think of it this way, the more people who start playing this game, the more updates it will get. While the game still has some bugs, thousands and thousands have been ironed out over time, and more are in the process of being worked out. With a game this HUGE it is common to have bugs stick around.

Get the trial http://vanguard.station.sony.com/isleofdawn/

Or buy the game for 5 dollars! http://www.gogamer.com/Vanguard--Saga-of-Heroes-for-PC-Front-Page_stcVVproductId8319544VVcatId444710VVviewprod.htm

If you want to get a custom UI go to http://www.vginterface.com/

 

Recommended Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p6TrEPSr50  **Set Yourself Free** Unofficial VG Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psTXCsC0Exc  Some views and scenes of friend who play together

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fquuus5sarA  More views of the game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFxsTHQgBlk&feature=related  Someone flying on a dragon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ji-9y2iVYQ&feature=related Showing some blank-slate player housing, sailing, views, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x4au-ih5G4&feature=related Showing a dungeon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywnmt8SQKHg&feature=fvw Another scenery video

Excellent post!  I have myself attempted to persuade people to try this game with nothing but negative comments. People would rather bash something than appreciate. I agree Vanguard is prob the best MMO on the market and SOE are idiots for not advertising/marketing this goldmine of a game that has fallen in thier lap. I played on an older AMD 3800+ single core machine w/ Nvidia9500GT card and could run it on near max settings at like 40-50 FPS so the system requirements are not that high. I played it with my wife and  her comp puts mine to shame. We prob had more fun playing Vanguard than any MMO we played together. The community is anazing. We are currently checking out AION but we are starting to really miss Vanguard. It is the only 2 MMO's we have installed on both our computers right now. AION is new and wildly popular right now but it is in no way as compelling and complex as Vanguard was. Aion is quite shallow actually and I don't know how much longer I can take the mind numbing gameplay. Will prob be back in Vanguard pretty soon. Nothing else can compare as far as fantasy mmo's go! Vanguard is a winner hands down. To bad people can't give it a try for some reason. It boggles my mind to as you will soom see when you begin to read the idiotic responses you are gonna get from this post. So sad the mentality of today's gamers... makes me want to cry.
 

I played Vanguard for a couple of months but got fed up. Everything after about level 30 was group but there was nobody around to group with. And the engine still kind of sucks, it's annoying the way objects kind of pop up on your screen even when you have the graphics settings cranked up. Shame because it would've been the best PvE MMO on the market if it got the proper development/support from SOE. The content is great, so much depth and the classes are excellent too.

Originally posted by tro44_1

Originally posted by Deminiz

 player housing and guild housing got me sold kinda..but hows the PVP? are there factions? any endgame content ?

 

This.

 

Also since the world has no Instances, How well is the gameplay in the world. Seems like anybody could come by and still your dungon loot. Is that the case?

How does the Large Scale PvP work. Is it Guild vs Guild vs Guild? I dislike that type of grouping, because it floods players to join the most populated Guilds over new Guilds in order to be protected.

 

Also Since Dungons are not Instanced, how does the game regulate LvLs? If I walk in to a Dungon, how do I know iam the right lvl for it? Not to Low to get Pwned, not to high to do the over Pwning, but just right.

PVP : FFA server. Thats about it, nothing else to it. Unbalanced FFA server. They are not focusing on the PVP balancing right now they said.

Dungeons: The monsters have the level above their head near the dungeons. Also, they wont have a level 50 dungeon in a level 10 zone. The dungeons fit a level range, say 10-15 or 15-20 etc. There isn't really a "sweet spot" level, ans you will most likely get the same XP and gold from it as you would one level above or below.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by nate1980

Of course, there's also the population problem. I'd like to see people everywhere I go, because it lets me know others are playing the game and are possibly available for group content around my level in that area.

 

I suppose that's one of the reasons I love Vanguard in that you don't see peopel everwhere you go. It actually makes it feel like a real world as opposed to an actual themepark world. Regardless of whether a game is "sandbox" or "theme park", everytime I log into these games it seems like one big theme park where everyone is running around doing their "rides".

Vanguard feels more like a world. And there are people on the general chats who will group with you. Heck, I turn down group invites all the time as I play Vanguard mostly late at night and can't stay up for several more hours to take down some named mob halfway across the world.

But the people I have grouped wtih were very nice. A good community.

It is prob the only game I have ever played where you can be out in a remote area, questing or whatnot and stumble on someone and strike up a conversation/rp like or not and the person actually seems glad to see/help you. When there are people running around everywhere it makes people cold and impersonal. If you were lost in a deep forest for days and didn't know what you were gonna do and ran into a stranger how are you gonna act? That's the feeling Vanguard can give! The community is one of the best things about this game for me. People who say the community sucks are

A) Clueless as to what a community even is

B) Played WOW and thinks smack talk and Chuck Norris are what makes a community awesomely LolZ l337 OMG wtf Cool..

C)Definetly playing on some unheardof fucked up server

Play on Seradon for the best pop and community!

I was in a very long beta for VG and then played well over a year upon release. With the strong belief that the great game mechanics and world would sustain for awhile while the bugs were fixed. The post level 40 game was very bare and many of the zones wre not functioning when i left. Most of our guild attempted to entertain themselves for quite awhile, raiding the big random mobs (Like the giant up in thestra) that had Placeholder loot until later.

A lot of us did not race to the top, knowing there was not much there yet. Most did a ton of diplomacy, crafting etc as well. After a year however the stability issues (which were huge), lack of content and other bugs just became too much to bare.

I have not been back but hear from other people thta play now and then.

While i think the game itself could still have potential, i have not heard much added from those who still play. Ancients was revamped, the warehouse became a raid zone etc. Galleons finally came in as some sort of guild house i think (?). I just have not seen enough to go back. If an expansioned was coming or anything along those lines, then yes many of us would try it in a heartbeat. But right now i just have not seen enough changes from over a year ago. What are the significant changes?

Sorry, VG is nice and I really liked it while I played, but VG allows their players to cheat, and this is unacceptable to me.  I fully understand their rationale, since I once used it to convince myself that their RMT was OK, but it's not.

Yes, 3rd party RMT is an issue, and by SoE offering it themselves they reduce scams and all that, nice story.  But it's not about the scams, it's about the CS issues they generate for SoE, who doesn't want to do anything other than collect their sub payments.  Besides, the sooner everyone starts getting comfortable with RMT, the sooner they can begin ripping everyone off, yea no thanks.

Don't bother with this game, the server population is dwindling and the dev team has been reduced to the size of a normal exp party in FFXI.

This is a recommendation for suicide...I would rather listen to Obama give a speech about how great he is....

Originally posted by Dark-Asylum

Don't bother with this game, the server population is dwindling and the dev team has been reduced to the size of a normal exp party in FFXI.

Which is a shame really. Planetside is getting a part 2 and VG does well to get non revamped content...o wait thats right they dont.  SOE picking up VG could have been a good thing but instead killed it deader than sigil ever could have. Would have been a better fate for the game to have been in the parking lot that day.

I really tried to get into Vanguard a couple years ago, but framerate was awful, and when the framerate wasn't awful, I found the gameplay to be boring and the world to feel very barren and lifeless.

That said, I did go back to Vanguard for at least a couple weeks via station access subscription (subscribed to EQ2 at the time), and really enjoyed the trial island. My problem is I found out that while the trial island was highly optimized and incredibly polished, the main areas of the game were just as buggy and laggy as they had always been. After that, I deleted the game from my hard drive never to look back.
 

 If Vanguard closed shop, changed its name, waited a couple months, and rereleased under a new name.  It would do very well.

It's a good game, especially if your the dedicated PvE/crafter sort of person.  It's not really my cup of tea, but based on quality it should be holding the #2 slot under WoW on subscriptions in the high fantasy market.  The fact that it isn't is just a testimony to Sony's incompetence. 

Anyway I hope you swell your ranks a bit.  Vanguard deserves more attention than it gets.

I'm a old Asherons Call player and have only managed to occupy my MMO interests with WoW. While this is nothing like Asheron's Call I feel like the world environment that you're describing with Vanguard is what I've been missing out on and the combat all looks similar to WoW. Would it be fair to say that there are similarities to both? If that was the case I may have found my new game. Also, can someone describe how the guild system works? Is it anything like asherons call's monarchy system?

Originally posted by Thantalis 

 

While I agree with you on the first part, I must let my oppinion come on the second and third...

In my view Vanguard still has this potential, no other game released since comes even close to what Vanguard has to offer, they are all themepark games, well maybe not Fallen Earth but... So yes it still very much exist!
And they may or may not have moved some staff arround, im not aware of this, but it wouldt be common sence to do so if a project is not going as planned. In the same breath im saying that I agree that SOE does not wdvertise this game enogh. If they gave it the marketing they give other titles like EQ or EQ2, then yes we wouldt see changes. We must remember that not all of us MMO players use sites like this, and takes the time to read about every game out there. Some of us stumple uppon an add and goes, hmm why not, ill try it. Either that or alot of studios is wasting an awefull lot of money.

And your last part. Well as the OP said, had the game been given the adds it wouldt be greater. It had a faulty launch yes, but its come a long way since. Noone besides players remember to tell this story. But tell you what... give it a go, theres a free trial, whats there to loose... Maybe your in for a treat, or maybe you wasted 2 hours of your game time, I say 2 hours because I think you shouldt at least take the time to complete the trial. If you dont like it after this, then fair enogh, but maybe you will get a possitive experience out of it.

I think we both agree Vanguard has potential.  My point was that it is potential that will never be seen.  The game is coming up on its third anniversary and honestly very little with the game has changed outside of performance enhancements.  Most of the work done by the soe team has been finishing up what the sigil team left unfinished or cannibalizing content through zone revamps.  For a 3 year old game it really has not progressed much, especially in comparison to the rest of the market and the company running it certainly isn't going to invest in its advancement.  They seem to be pulling resources away from the game which kills any effort you, I or the original poster might think we can do. 

All of the great potential was in the game at day 1.  Performance issues aside, the game offered just as much at release as it does now. 

I understand that VG doesn't get the advertising budget of other games, but that doesn't matter.  If the gameplay was as awesome as people claim, the game would sell itself.  Word of mouth would turn an increase in the population.  Vanguard did have a media push a little while ago.  It has a free trail.  Word of mouth, etc.  At some point people need to face reality and realize there is something else that is keeping people from joining this game.

Again I have to say if the game was a great as people claim it is, then more people would play it. 

Note I am not saying the game sucks and people shouldn't play it.  I have played the game and I respect some of the games features.  However I don't think the game warrents serious investment, because it is a very unstable game with a very cloudy future.  

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Originally posted by bluegrazz
It IS an SOE product. I played since launch and SOE was running the show.
Who then markets, distributes, services, promotes (or doesnt), develops and profits from Vangard? Who runs billing and customer service?
SOE- Its an SOE product. Period.

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No, It's created by Sigil Games Online and released by them aswell in jan 2007 and bought shortly after by SOE in May 2007. They are running the show now but they didn't make this game period :)

Blugrazz is a really good example of a person who doesn't really understand the relationship between Developer and Publisher. He also doesn't seem to understand the difference between Sigil and Sony, but that's a separate issue. I understand Sony dropped the ball on everyone's precious SWG, but let's give credit where it's due shall we?

Bluegrazz, I would recommend reading Brad McQuaid's blog ( http://www.bradmcquaid.com/Brad_McQuaid/Blog/Blog.html ). You'll learn all kinds of interesting reasons for the bullshit launch that was Vanguard (inter-office and extramarital affairs, Brad's drug addiction (!), Microsoft power changes, uncontrollable egos, etc.).

Actually, I just saved you the trouble.

ya know i might just buy the game for 5 bucks after everything i've heard about it.  Whats there to lose for 5 dollars? I have played the trial and i thought it was fun i just did not have the time to play it then.  But i might just go pick it up and check it out.  thanks for the post

how are the EU Servers? in terms of population?

dead