I think Vanguard is one of the best designed MMORPGs I can actually recall playing.  They may want to consider giving the game the "DDO" treatment.   Grouping strongly encouraged MMORPGs are hard to come by.

Yeah, this game was pretty solid I thought.  I played the beta and thought it might end up being one of the best games around.  Then they announced that they were rushing a release due to funding issues and I realized the game was toast.  I didn't buy it because I knew, like all the beta testers knew....the game wasn't going to make it without another half a year of work.

Later on when the game was dirt cheap, I picked it up just for laughs.  I almost regret I didnt play sooner.  The graphics were fantastic with the new video card I had gotten.  The combat system was ahead of its time.  However, the population of the game....was....just abysmal.  A world that sizeneeds fewer servers and more people per server in order to feel right.

Well, i just got back a few weeks ago and im loving it. I guess ive gone from the typical "hurry up and get to max lvl and gear" to "hey, this is actually an exciting world with lots of quests, stories and exploring to do" 

Yeah the population is kinda thin, but wouldent it be even thinner if i quit too? everybody makes a difference.

You might say that im wasting my time because the game is dead and they wont develope more on it. If my goal was to max lvl and have the best gear, sure i would. But i doubt i will find a game i will play forever and as long as i enjoy the journy of my deathknight through the Vanguard world, it wont be a waste of time. Your life will end too, but will it be a waste of time?? 

My friends and I recently resubbed and we are enjoying it so far. I've seen people saying that the population is dead and that the game is slowly dying off yet every time I play I run into others and have always found others wanting to group. If you want to try the game out, there is a free 14 day trial that takes less than an hour to download and install. If you enjoy it, play it and actually help the population instead of worrying about what others think.

I played Vanguard from beta 2 up until 3 months after release.. I have a level 41 Phoenix Shaman and a 25 rogue.. I quit the game due to SOE taking over and ruining the awesome item equipment system, screwing up the loot system, and basically changing the game similar to how the SWG vets fliped out when the NGE was implemented.. Then a bunch of people started to quit because of the restructuring of the game being done right under our noses, among other issues such as broken and lack of content past level 40. I was forced to quit as well...

Now, If SOE sold the rights to a company who understood what Vanguard was supposed to be to mainly the vets of EQ, then went about making changes to how the game was "feature" wise at release, and worked on an expansion which would be similar to a re release of the game with a bunch of new implemented features that would draw thousands more into the world, I'd definitely play again..

But the way the game is going now, it's just going to be left on life support and no real significant changes and newly implemented features will ever be added in Vanguard...

I don't understand why SOE wont show this game any love and put a dev team together to help make VG successful.. It's been out since january of 2007 and the only things the dev team has done was just fix some software performance issues and add in one =end game raid dungeon "APW" that was just thrown together overnight, lol..

If there was a Dev team committed to making VG successful again, there would have already been an expansion released.. But 3 and a half years later, I doubt any real significant progress will ever be made with Vanguard.. It's like SOE has chained and locked the game down in the deepest dungeon while watching it slowly drown and fade away into nothingness.. 

Such a shame too..

Originally posted by Murashu

My friends and I recently resubbed and we are enjoying it so far. I've seen people saying that the population is dead and that the game is slowly dying off yet every time I play I run into others and have always found others wanting to group. If you want to try the game out, there is a free 14 day trial that takes less than an hour to download and install. If you enjoy it, play it and actually help the population instead of worrying about what others think.

I couldent agree more!

Originally posted by wazaap

Originally posted by Murashu

My friends and I recently resubbed and we are enjoying it so far. I've seen people saying that the population is dead and that the game is slowly dying off yet every time I play I run into others and have always found others wanting to group. If you want to try the game out, there is a free 14 day trial that takes less than an hour to download and install. If you enjoy it, play it and actually help the population instead of worrying about what others think.

I couldent agree more!

That is my thought as well.

Every game that I know that is still developed has suffered population loss and is top heavy. So that is a given.

And I still go back to games that I've finished even though they aren't developed more (single player games) because they are fun and enjoyable.

Also, Vanguard does have new content added. Some sort of magi "something" was recently added. So it's not like nothing is being added.

Population has nothing to do with my interest. After playing EQ2 for such a long time i see no reason of playing Vanguard (except for diplomacy if you enjoy that). EQ2 has everything that vanguard has to offer and even more.

Originally posted by Shastra

Population has nothing to do with my interest. After playing EQ2 for such a long time i see no reason of playing Vanguard (except for diplomacy if you enjoy that). EQ2 has everything that vanguard has to offer and even more.

This is sort of true and I can give you that to a certain extent.

I have a shadow knight in EQ 2 (which I love) and a dread knight (which I rerolled for my name as I realized I was going to stick with it) in Vanguard.

After comparing both games I dropped the EQ 2 game for the following reasons.

EQ 2 was too cute for me. Many of the quests as well as the greater sense of, for lack of a better term, "Harry Potterish" whimsy just wore on me in a huge way.

The world of Vanguard is for the most part one huge non-stop world.  I get a great rush just traveling it.

I liked the stories being told in Vanguard much better and I preferred the quests.

EQ 2 has far more polish than vangaurd, is still added to in an aggressive way, has tons of quests, has the EQ world for people who like it.

But in the end I dropped EQ 2 because I found the world of Vanguard much more to my liking. On my little extit poll I even said so for whoever tracks those types of things at sony.

So for me it goes far deeper than just listing things and going with the game with the larger column. Vanguard speaks to me more.

Originally posted by nate1980

 Brad was a druggy for one, and he was guilty for mismanaging the companyd during development, which is why Vanguard had such a sorry release. All the reasons to dislike Brad was common knowledge back during release. I don't remember all of it, since it was so long ago.

There was never any proof for Brad McQuaid taking any drugs. There was only a single report about it, and that was from an extremely obscure anonymous source that contained all kinds of other claims that never where proved either.

Brad McQuaid is a designer, not manager. The design of Vanguard is simply the best of any MMO to date. The management was far behind that, thats true. However, it was not the management that resulted in the much too early release.

The reason Vanguard was released so early was because Microsoft Games got a new management and they dropped Vanguard. It should have seen at least a year or so more of development before release, at full funding, as before.

There where also some other bad decisions, like too high hardware requirements and too large gameworld.

However, Vanguard as a design is great, and would it have gotten the funding it deserves, I am completely confident it could have reached a half to a full million of gamers. Not more, though, sadly, because of too high hardware requirements. But it could have been a success.

Originally posted by Adamantine

Originally posted by nate1980

 Brad was a druggy for one, and he was guilty for mismanaging the companyd during development, which is why Vanguard had such a sorry release. All the reasons to dislike Brad was common knowledge back during release. I don't remember all of it, since it was so long ago.

There was never any proof for Brad McQuaid taking any drugs. There was only a single report about it, and that was from an extremely obscure anonymous source that contained all kinds of other claims that never where proved either.

Brad McQuaid is a designer, not manager. The design of Vanguard is simply the best of any MMO to date. The management was far behind that, thats true. However, it was not the management that resulted in the much too early release.

The reason Vanguard was released so early was because Microsoft Games got a new management and they dropped Vanguard. It should have seen at least a year or so more of development before release, at full funding, as before.

There where also some other bad decisions, like too high hardware requirements and too large gameworld.

However, Vanguard as a design is great, and would it have gotten the funding it deserves, I am completely confident it could have reached a half to a full million of gamers. Not more, though, sadly, because of too high hardware requirements. But it could have been a success.

I would have to add that obviously the guys at sigil did something wrong when making this game.

I'm not programmer or graphic artist but the feel and smoothness of the game now as opposed to when it was released, or even a bit after, is just night and day.

I don't know if that's because they should have revisted things or if they just did things wrong. But I can travel for quite a ways before I get some sort of loading chunk.

As far as the game world being too large, I think that is what actually makes me want to play it. The caveat to that is that I also use the rift system which to me is brialliant because it allows players to go to major areas on the world but if players want to go anywhere within that area they have to travel.

From what I understand this wasn't in the game at launch? Or at least I didn't see it. All I know is that after the game was launched I spent a lot of time traveling. This is fun except when you want to be somewhere to train or get supplies. The it isn't fun.

I was thinking about returning with a friend. But we both decided to stay away because of the low population. I would guaranteed play Vanguard again if it had more people playing

Originally posted by wazaap

Well, i just got back a few weeks ago and im loving it. I guess ive gone from the typical "hurry up and get to max lvl and gear" to "hey, this is actually an exciting world with lots of quests, stories and exploring to do" 

Yeah the population is kinda thin, but wouldent it be even thinner if i quit too? everybody makes a difference.

You might say that im wasting my time because the game is dead and they wont develope more on it. If my goal was to max lvl and have the best gear, sure i would. But i doubt i will find a game i will play forever and as long as i enjoy the journy of my deathknight through the Vanguard world, it wont be a waste of time. Your life will end too, but will it be a waste of time?? 

I've just resubbed and feel similar, I've tried many MMO's over the past year and decided that I just had to lay my hat on one that really stood out for me and that one is Vanguard, though I also felt a calling back to EQ2 so play both. I had to change my attitude to the way I felt about the population and came to it feeling that I just wanted to experience Telon and all it has to offer and within one day I was invited to do a low level dungeon with a newbie friendly guild and 3 days later I'm part of the guild and the game feels alot more populated and exciting now.

I would say to people trying out the game is get on the mainland do your racial quests and get into a guild, then the game will open up and you'll be feeling more positive about its future. For me it just needs people to commit themselves and the population will rise again there is plenty to do for newbies so the game will not get old quick.

Cal.

What would be the point in playing a static mmo like Vanguard when there are games like Guildwars 2 and Heroes of Telara on the horizon? MMOs seem to be moving towards dynamic content now where players can effect and shape the game world. They are moving towards becoming more like genuine massively multiplayer games in virtual worlds where the players actions matter to each other, as opposed to co-op story games. MMOs are finally beginning to move forward. Limited older games like Vanguard with their outdated static meaningless storylines will be left in the dust.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by Adamantine

Originally posted by nate1980

 Brad was a druggy for one, and he was guilty for mismanaging the companyd during development, which is why Vanguard had such a sorry release. All the reasons to dislike Brad was common knowledge back during release. I don't remember all of it, since it was so long ago.

There was never any proof for Brad McQuaid taking any drugs. There was only a single report about it, and that was from an extremely obscure anonymous source that contained all kinds of other claims that never where proved either.

Brad McQuaid is a designer, not manager. The design of Vanguard is simply the best of any MMO to date. The management was far behind that, thats true. However, it was not the management that resulted in the much too early release.

The reason Vanguard was released so early was because Microsoft Games got a new management and they dropped Vanguard. It should have seen at least a year or so more of development before release, at full funding, as before.

There where also some other bad decisions, like too high hardware requirements and too large gameworld.

However, Vanguard as a design is great, and would it have gotten the funding it deserves, I am completely confident it could have reached a half to a full million of gamers. Not more, though, sadly, because of too high hardware requirements. But it could have been a success.

I would have to add that obviously the guys at sigil did something wrong when making this game.

I'm not programmer or graphic artist but the feel and smoothness of the game now as opposed to when it was released, or even a bit after, is just night and day.

I don't know if that's because they should have revisted things or if they just did things wrong. But I can travel for quite a ways before I get some sort of loading chunk.

As far as the game world being too large, I think that is what actually makes me want to play it. The caveat to that is that I also use the rift system which to me is brialliant because it allows players to go to major areas on the world but if players want to go anywhere within that area they have to travel.

From what I understand this wasn't in the game at launch? Or at least I didn't see it. All I know is that after the game was launched I spent a lot of time traveling. This is fun except when you want to be somewhere to train or get supplies. The it isn't fun.

This is just one of the rumors that was floating around, but if true, I think it explains a lot about the performance of VG at release.

The rumor was that devs were not allowed to use coding tools or software or whatever the industry venacular is, but rather 'handcrafted' the code line by line. If this is true, it would certainly necessitate a longer code 'clean-up' than other games, which for whatever reason, they did not receive. Hence why the performance was so unintelligbly strange at release. It 'felt' hand made to me.  It would also explain how after SOE acquired the game they were able to implement these tools to help with the code optimization and/or had the time to focus on it line by line. Hence, the turn around in performance.

Like I said though, it is an interesting thought, not sure if it could be verified.

As a secondary thought; I certainly hope that other devs take the chunking system from VG and smooth out the wrinkles. In my opinion, it is the most promising method of creating seemless worlds, but obviously still needs some work.

Originally posted by neonwire

What would be the point in playing a static mmo like Vanguard when there are games like Guildwars 2 and Heroes of Telara on the horizon? MMOs seem to be moving towards dynamic content now where players can effect and shape the game world. They are moving towards becoming more like genuine massively multiplayer games in virtual worlds where the players actions matter to each other, as opposed to co-op story games. MMOs are finally beginning to move forward. Limited older games like Vanguard with their outdated static meaningless storylines will be left in the dust.

What was the point of playing UO with EQ on the horizon?

What was the point of playing EQ with EQ2 and WoW on the horizon?

What was the point of playing WoW with WAR and AoC on the horizon?

What is the point of playing games at all?

I'll answer your question with a question, what if people should play VG because it is entertaining? I guess your premise is that no games without your list of features could be entertaining. Which would mean the entire history of mmo's have not entertained their audience. It may be the  first industry to ever grow in support and popularity by spending its first 15 years 'not' entertaining their audience.....

And btw, VG's limits were self imposed. By design, it would have ilustrated your above point. Non-instanced hand crafted player housing, guild halls and if the game did well...player built and controlled cities. VG was 'supposed' to be the first step toward what you were talking about.

I played it...I did not like it...it is like a crappier version of EQ2.

Originally posted by neonwire

What would be the point in playing a static mmo like Vanguard when there are games like Guildwars 2 and Heroes of Telara on the horizon? MMOs seem to be moving towards dynamic content now where players can effect and shape the game world. They are moving towards becoming more like genuine massively multiplayer games in virtual worlds where the players actions matter to each other, as opposed to co-op story games. MMOs are finally beginning to move forward. Limited older games like Vanguard with their outdated static meaningless storylines will be left in the dust.

Well, that's one way to think.

I just can't get behind it though. That means everything in the past is going to be immediately invalidated by anything coming down the pipeline. And you know, maybe that is a mode of thinking for someone who is always into "new new new".

But that is just not the way that I work.

Does that mean you don't watch old movies (meaning movies from the 20's and 30's) or read books that were written before the 1960's or that you dont' listen to older music?

Maybe you don't. And nothing wrong with that.

But from my perspective playing a game that hearkens back to earlier sensibilities is not a deal breaker. It's just different.

I'm not looking for new new new. I'm looking for what I consider fun or enjoyable. So maybe Heroes of Telara will be a good game. But that doesn't mean its going to speak to me in a way that I find meaningful. Or enjoyable.

and besides, in the end I don't play games as a way of life or an investment in my life. I play them for fun. Meaning I can play and replay any game for fun, whether it be the latest and greatest thing or old neverwinter nights, or diablo.

I just can't get on the move forward bandwagon because I'm not conviced that moving forward is always a good thing. It has to be taken on a case for case basis. There are still people who play the original EQ and Lineage with gusto. And even though Vanguard doens't receive tons of updates it does get new content. My thought is that what it offers is a huge world and interesting classes that stand on their own. And I can definitely find myself engrossed in what goes on. However, I'm not the type of player who grabs 5 quests without reading the material, does them, runs back for 5 more in order to rush to some sort of mythical endgame which is supposedly where "the real game" starts.

Then again, I am also the type of person who watches old movies from the 20's and 30's, reads old books and listens to the music of palestrina and gesualdo equally with Tool or Muse. Or just going back to simple good rock like Rush or Led Zeppelin.

Just because something is new doesn't mean that it invalidates what has gone before.

Anyone for a the new, complete restoration of Metropolis with 25 minutes of original footage restored?

http://www.kino.com/metropolis/

Vanguard did not have a rift system at release.

Originally posted by Sovrath

Originally posted by neonwire

What would be the point in playing a static mmo like Vanguard when there are games like Guildwars 2 and Heroes of Telara on the horizon? MMOs seem to be moving towards dynamic content now where players can effect and shape the game world. They are moving towards becoming more like genuine massively multiplayer games in virtual worlds where the players actions matter to each other, as opposed to co-op story games. MMOs are finally beginning to move forward. Limited older games like Vanguard with their outdated static meaningless storylines will be left in the dust.

Well, that's one way to think.

I just can't get behind it though. That means everything in the past is going to be immediately invalidated by anything coming down the pipeline. And you know, maybe that is a mode of thinking for someone who is always into "new new new".

But that is just not the way that I work.

Does that mean you don't watch old movies (meaning movies from the 20's and 30's) or read books that were written before the 1960's or that you dont' listen to older music?

Maybe you don't. And nothing wrong with that.

But from my perspective playing a game that hearkens back to earlier sensibilities is not a deal breaker. It's just different.

I'm not looking for new new new. I'm looking for what I consider fun or enjoyable. So maybe Heroes of Telara will be a good game. But that doesn't mean its going to speak to me in a way that I find meaningful. Or enjoyable.

and besides, in the end I don't play games as a way of life or an investment in my life. I play them for fun. Meaning I can play and replay any game for fun, whether it be the latest and greatest thing or old neverwinter nights, or diablo.

I just can't get on the move forward bandwagon because I'm not conviced that moving forward is always a good thing. It has to be taken on a case for case basis. There are still people who play the original EQ and Lineage with gusto. And even though Vanguard doens't receive tons of updates it does get new content. My thought is that what it offers is a huge world and interesting classes that stand on their own. And I can definitely find myself engrossed in what goes on. However, I'm not the type of player who grabs 5 quests without reading the material, does them, runs back for 5 more in order to rush to some sort of mythical endgame which is supposedly where "the real game" starts.

Then again, I am also the type of person who watches old movies from the 20's and 30's, reads old books and listens to the music of palestrina and gesualdo equally with Tool or Muse. Or just going back to simple good rock like Rush or Led Zeppelin.

Just because something is new doesn't mean that it invalidates what has gone before.

Anyone for a the new, complete restoration of Metropolis with 25 minutes of original footage restored?

http://www.kino.com/metropolis/

That's a great post, and I agree with it almost completely until you mentioned these bands. 

You know, those bands are 4 letter words. And that's a fact. Don't try to dispute it.....4 letter words have no place in these forums.

Luckily for you, you redeemed yourself at the end by finding the stairway to heaven.

/wink.