Ok, to start out, Vanguard is not in easy mode. It still have a measure of difficulty not found in a lot of games. When you roll a new character you have a choice of starting at the original area's or starting on the isle of dawn..

Use the isle of dawn for the main reason of learning your new class, and for those coming back into game, to get back into the swing of things..

Vanguard has two servers TELON and HALGAR, TELON being the us server..

Now, about the world of telon, and what makes vanguard so unique among games. The world has very few instances, those being high end content and raid zones, which makes the world of telon one massive area to play in with very very little loading involved. We have 2 Major continents to explore That range from level 1  all the way up to level 50+ content, and one group of Isle that are low to mid Teens ( with the exception of Magi Hold, a level 50+ dungeon )

Your able to own your own boat ( i know some will say there just fluff, since the riftways system came in ). Also there is the ability to rent a flying mount, and fly ANYWHERE within the time limit ( think its like 5 mins) with 3 diffrent player owned flying mounts available in game.. The pegasus is a city faction mount purchased for 350 city plat coins . The  griffon is a level 50 Quest gained mount. and the Wyvern is a level 50+ raid dropped mount..

So, if your looking for a game that still has a few challenges to it,, The Trial of the Isle is a free 14 day trial, with guilds like Impact and a few others having Characters on the isle to help with any questions, and free advice.

You forgot to mention housing.

Doh.

Yes, lets talk about housing for a minute. In most games, your given a house. All you have to do is pay rent. Well in Vanguard you actuall find a plot of land around the houseing areas ( most are on isle, out off of the beaten path) some go for 2.5 gold, all the way up to 30 plat for guild plots. This was done for a reason. You see, In vanguard EVERYTHING renders in your field of view, even the insides of the houses and such.

Ok, now that you have the house plat that looks nice, or in the general area you want, you have to choose which style of house you wish to build. These are continental Specific houses ( kojan for the kojan isle, Qalia for the Qalian continent and Thestran for the Thestran conitent) There SHOULD  be about 5-6 diffrent styles you can choose from on each continent. Once you have decided which style you wish for, you can begin construction ( this will bring up a window that will show you what materials you need for any particular style house). The materials either come from a houseing vendor, or from player crafters. You do not need to have all the materials at one time, you can put then into the construction window as you get them.  Once you get to 100% materials, then you complete construction on the house of your choice.

I considered giving Vanguard a shot but with games like Darkfall and Xysom/Earthrise coming out its not likely to keep my interest...

Well, ya never know till you give it a shot. We do have a 14 day free trial. The isle of dawn has great gear for starting players and a damn good story line to go along with the quest.

Halgar and Telon will be merged in about 2 weeks.

Having a damn good time in Vanguard, actually got hooked on crafting.. yea.. crafting. Id say if anyone has any doubts just give the trial a shot.

You can say whatever glorious things about vanguard you want.  There are inescapable facts that make people not want to commit or try.

1.  SOE has downscaled the dev team to almost make patching the game all that's possible.  This makes it look as if they don't support it and will cancel anytime now.

2. Server merges are always proof of a population decline.  An Active decline only aomplifies the first point I made.

No one wants to commit to a game, start liking it, and have it bomb.  You can't trust developers, especially SOE, to keep their words.  Remember EQ2 will never go F2P or have a cash shop.....the Devs said so....

I would love to try vanguard again.  I'm looking for a slower more mature game.  But I'm not about to invest in something that is clearly a bad investment.

Guage.

While I agree that you are not likely to see anything NEW in Vanguard any time soon.  You can stop with the doom and gloom about it closing in the near future.  Here are your inescapable facts:

 MxO is still playable and so is all of the other games on the station pass or as an individual account. 

If you want to try the game and play it, do so. 

Do not let speculation keep you from enjoying it until the next new shiney comes along. 

Originally posted by gauge2k3

You can say whatever glorious things about vanguard you want.  There are inescapable facts that make people not want to commit or try.

1.  SOE has downscaled the dev team to almost make patching the game all that's possible.  This makes it look as if they don't support it and will cancel anytime now.

2. Server merges are always proof of a population decline.  An Active decline only aomplifies the first point I made.

No one wants to commit to a game, start liking it, and have it bomb.  You can't trust developers, especially SOE, to keep their words.  Remember EQ2 will never go F2P or have a cash shop.....the Devs said so....

I would love to try vanguard again.  I'm looking for a slower more mature game.  But I'm not about to invest in something that is clearly a bad investment.

 And what game DO you play ?? Ya know, one thing i have seen, is a lot of people come into this forum and constantly spout that were a dead or dying game. well if you dont want to  play then dont, but pls, dont come in trying to drive others away.

Mxo is still playable ? I would really love for you to point me towards the link of where I can sign up to play this playable closed down game

Originally posted by NovaKayne

 Here are your inescapable facts:

 

 MxO is still playable and so is all of the other games on the station pass or as an individual account. 

So much for facts these days... the game has been down for a year now, yet there are still people using MxO as a reason why Vanguard won't ever get shutdown lol.

Originally posted by Mardy

Originally posted by NovaKayne

 Here are your inescapable facts:

 

 MxO is still playable and so is all of the other games on the station pass or as an individual account. 

 

So much for facts these days... the game has been down for a year now, yet there are still people using MxO as a reason why Vanguard won't ever get shutdown lol.

Aaahhh, research, common sense and decent perception fill in the voids of a spurious argument.

First off, I will say that I love vanguard and wish that people still played it (if they ever really did). I want to actually play it again, esp. if I find a good guild that can run someone that's virtually a newbie through it. But that doesnt mean I dont have doubts.

The last patch for this game was in January. Have you ever seen a mmo that's indie, f2p, or otherwise that goes a whole 6-7 months without at least a hotfix? And no, that doesnt meant the game is bug free. Just ask all the Vanguard players out there that know what the bugs are.

I'm crossing my fingers that this game will go free 2 play because if you look at all the other f2p options out there, this one was designed for it, yet does just about everything better.

So we're looking at 1 content release a year, 2 tops.  And by content, there won't be any raid content, it'll be small sections of single group content released in "chapters".  Most of everything else got scrapped as indicated in the "road to come" post from december: http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=51939

As for the patch to fix lag, it didn't exactly fix it: http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=54080 - http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=54003

If this was a free to play game, then I can understand the lack of support, resources, and abilities to fix issues and release content patches.  But people are paying $15 a month playing this game.  This is not the way to treat paying customers.  An old game like Asheron's Call have a small playerbase too, including a small dev team.  But they actually release content on a consistent basis, and fix issues, including updating graphics and such.  But then this is Turbine we're talking about, not SOE.

Originally posted by Mardy

So we're looking at 1 content release a year, 2 tops.  And by content, there won't be any raid content, it'll be small sections of single group content released in "chapters".  Most of everything else got scrapped as indicated in the "road to come" post from december: http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=51939

 

As for the patch to fix lag, it didn't exactly fix it: http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=54080 - http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=54003

 

If this was a free to play game, then I can understand the lack of support, resources, and abilities to fix issues and release content patches.  But people are paying $15 a month playing this game.  This is not the way to treat paying customers.  An old game like Asheron's Call have a small playerbase too, including a small dev team.  But they actually release content on a consistent basis, and fix issues, including updating graphics and such.  But then this is Turbine we're talking about, not SOE.

Originally posted by obod

Originally posted by gauge2k3

You can say whatever glorious things about vanguard you want.  There are inescapable facts that make people not want to commit or try.

1.  SOE has downscaled the dev team to almost make patching the game all that's possible.  This makes it look as if they don't support it and will cancel anytime now.

2. Server merges are always proof of a population decline.  An Active decline only aomplifies the first point I made.

No one wants to commit to a game, start liking it, and have it bomb.  You can't trust developers, especially SOE, to keep their words.  Remember EQ2 will never go F2P or have a cash shop.....the Devs said so....

I would love to try vanguard again.  I'm looking for a slower more mature game.  But I'm not about to invest in something that is clearly a bad investment.

 And what game DO you play ?? Ya know, one thing i have seen, is a lot of people come into this forum and constantly spout that were a dead or dying game. well if you dont want to  play then dont, but pls, dont come in trying to drive others away.

I wasn't trying to drive people away.  I want to try the game myself.  I was just adding perspective as to why people are so hesitant to try it.  You guys come in here and are like "wow this game rocks, why isn't anyone trying it".  What if we do, and what if we like it as much as you, then the game gets sacked.  No one wants to invest time into it then have it take away.  You know it takes time to get things in vanguard, it's no WoW in terms of time investment.  Which is it's main appeal IMO.  But that also scares people who think the game might crash.

Originally posted by gauge2k3

Originally posted by obod

Originally posted by gauge2k3

You can say whatever glorious things about vanguard you want.  There are inescapable facts that make people not want to commit or try.

1.  SOE has downscaled the dev team to almost make patching the game all that's possible.  This makes it look as if they don't support it and will cancel anytime now.

2. Server merges are always proof of a population decline.  An Active decline only aomplifies the first point I made.

No one wants to commit to a game, start liking it, and have it bomb.  You can't trust developers, especially SOE, to keep their words.  Remember EQ2 will never go F2P or have a cash shop.....the Devs said so....

I would love to try vanguard again.  I'm looking for a slower more mature game.  But I'm not about to invest in something that is clearly a bad investment.

 And what game DO you play ?? Ya know, one thing i have seen, is a lot of people come into this forum and constantly spout that were a dead or dying game. well if you dont want to  play then dont, but pls, dont come in trying to drive others away.

 

I wasn't trying to drive people away.  I want to try the game myself.  I was just adding perspective as to why people are so hesitant to try it.  You guys come in here and are like "wow this game rocks, why isn't anyone trying it".  What if we do, and what if we like it as much as you, then the game gets sacked.  No one wants to invest time into it then have it take away.  You know it takes time to get things in vanguard, it's no WoW in terms of time investment.  Which is it's main appeal IMO.  But that also scares people who think the game might crash.

I agree with gauge. The way I see it, he isn't adding any doom & gloom at all. He's adding perspective. People that only see how great it is and wonder what the catch is, just heard what the catch is. SOE is doing even less to support Vanguard then they did on MxO right before they shut it down, and they shut MxO down a long time ago so the person arguing doesn't seem to keep up on SOE news very well. This is a problem for people wanting to get a broader perspective about if Vanguard has a future.

It's also really not a polished product compared to some of the other MMOs. The team they currently have working on it is not going to be enough to smooth it out to be as easily accessible as many other games. If they added more support for it or passed it on to an interested developer because they finally see people's interest in it, then it would probably be the most likely MMO on the market to become an unexpected success with a re-release. Age of Conan is steadily improving it's reputation, as did EQ2 compared to it's bumpy release, so everyone knows it can be done - just not with a skeleton crew like VG has. Even Anarchy Online has managed to stay afloat with one of the worst releases in MMO history (Yes, I was there for it). I agree with all the positives of Vanguard in this thread, but I'm also not blinded by them and agree with the negatives also.

So if you want to try VG, just enjoy it one day at a time for what it is. A lot of people are predicting, for good reason, that the VG of today is all it will ever be and it can be closed any day now. That's irrelevant though if you keep the right perspective going in. I know a few people that joined it just to enjoy the game while it lasts because you might not have the chance next month to know what people were talking about. It's well worth a trial run at the least.