I have to put my two cents in for Vanguard Saga of Heroes.  I am a long time follower of Lord of the Rings online since Beta and have since left when F2P went into effect.   I was looking for something that came close to the same community and gameplay as Lotro gave me for a few years.  Well, what I found was not even close.  The below is from my experience in Vanguard with leveling a Ranger to level 26 and still climbing.

Crafting - Like no other I have ever seen.  Crafting in Vanguard is an adventure all in it's own. I have spent days on crafting and not paying no mind to leveling my toon through adventuring.   Crafting is so addicting because it has a quest line that rewards each player with great crafting gear.  Crafting Gear determines what grade a recipes outcome will produce "A" Grade being the best, "D" being not bad but could be better.   And you can add Attuning Dust to your recipes that add stats. So, one weapon of the same recipe I.E. a Bow, both made to "A" grade can have two seperate stats. like Poison or Crushing Damage.

Adventureing - This game was made for those who like to discover.  You could end up in a small outpost camp with one NPC giveing a quest.  It will leave you saying, Whats going on? only one quest? But once you are out in the field killing these mobs, you stumble on a camp thats not even on the map and pick up ten more quests.

Grouping - I recently witnessed a player rage quit for not being able to find a group to quest with.  There is a Group/Dungeon finder that has not failed me yet.  Most of the time all you have to do is ask in chat for help and someone WILL answer you on how to complete the quest or they will come meet up with you to help.  I met alot of players with this tactic that I have added to my Friends list.

Diplomacy - I have not been able to persue this aspect for the fact that I have two adventures going on right now.  Crafting and Adventuring.  But this too has its own quest line that also rewards gear.

I was a bit turned off at first by the Isle of Dawn(The Trial starting area)  But once you get out into the larger maps past level ten the world is Huge.  And if you decide to subscribe to the game you have a choice to start in your Race of choices home town or The Isle of Dawn.

I know there is alot of this game I have not covered. but the point is, More need to discover what Vanguard has to offer.  I am very pleased with sticking with Vanguard past level ten.  Give it a chance, it will surprise and amaze you. 

Thank you for reading,

Zoucka

Level 26 Ranger / 23 Carpenter

Look me up, I will adventure with ya.

This game is hands down the best PvE game I have ever played in my entire life. The amount of content in this game is incredible. I wish this game hadnt been shit on by the orginal developers and then taken over by SoE and further pissed on by them. This game could have been the end all be all games had someone with balls taken it over and gave it the love it deserved.

Agree :) There is hardly any other game with similar ingame depth... The (non instanced) dungeon runs in Vanguard are the best I've experienced in a mmorpg so far. Even after raising multiple toons, there still are dungeons I yet have to explore.

If you have trouble finding a group, I suggest joining a guild. There are many guilds around which just aim for grouping, especially in the earlier aspects of the game.

Originally posted by donjuanagain

This game is hands down the best PvE game I have ever played in my entire life. The amount of content in this game is incredible. I wish this game hadnt been shit on by the orginal developers and then taken over by SoE and further pissed on by them. This game could have been the end all be all games had someone with balls taken it over and gave it the love it deserved.

Exactly, I bought this game about 6 months after it first came out and I thought it was a huge piece of shit.  At the time I wasn't wrong.  I'm glad I gave it another shot though. It's definatly the coolest MMO world I've ever explored and the amount of content is crazy for a game that hasn't had a developer touch it in 5 years.

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Originally posted by Sybnal

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Originally posted by donjuanagain
This game is hands down the best PvE game I have ever played in my entire life. The amount of content in this game is incredible. I wish this game hadnt been shit on by the orginal developers and then taken over by SoE and further pissed on by them. This game could have been the end all be all games had someone with balls taken it over and gave it the love it deserved.

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Exactly, I bought this game about 6 months after it first came out and I thought it was a huge piece of shit.  At the time I wasn't wrong.  I'm glad I gave it another shot though. It's definatly the coolest MMO world I've ever explored and the amount of content is crazy for a game that hasn't had a developer touch it in 5 years.

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We got to give credit where it is due; SOE agreed to adopt this child of a game after Microsoft abandoned it. At launch, VG was unfinished (buggy with content gaps). SOE finished what Microsoft and Sigil started. Without SOE this game simply would not exist.

It's nice that you all like the game, but SOE is going to keep people out.

I just downloaded the 14-day trial, log in with my Sony ID (which I had to update because I haven't played an SOE game since... the Vanguard Beta). Game then spent tthe time to download, but when I launched it told be "You do not currently have a Vanguard subscription" and my only option was to quit.

So, looking at the small-print I see the 14-day trial only applies to totally new SOE subscriptions. That is just stupid. How many MMO players that would have ANY interest in a game like Vanguard haven't already tried EQ, EQ2, SW, etc.? For kicks I looked at my "History" with SOE and all it lists is a subscription for SW from 2003 (not even anything for EQ2 which I played for a bit, never mind the original EQ).

Ya, I could make up a fake new account for the trial, but I won't. I shouldn't have to. If SOE wants people to try this game, they need to make it open and easy to get in. This is the kind of thing that keeps games (population and subscriber wise) small.

@hundejahre: every1 is currently affected by mentinoed error. reason is the huge power loss in San Diego which brought down their subscription server.

Originally posted by donjuanagain

This game is hands down the best PvE game I have ever played in my entire life. The amount of content in this game is incredible. I wish this game hadnt been shit on by the orginal developers and then taken over by SoE and further pissed on by them. This game could have been the end all be all games had someone with balls taken it over and gave it the love it deserved.

 This game was great but Sigil was forced to release way too early and they knew it. Gotta love SOE. All about the money never about a good solid finished product.

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Originally posted by Knupps
@hundejahre: every1 is currently affected by mentinoed error. reason is the huge power loss in San Diego which brought down their subscription server.

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Would be nice if there was ANY mention of this on the SOE login client, there's other news posted there.

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Originally posted by Beacker


 This game was great but Sigil was forced to release way too early and they knew it. Gotta love SOE. All about the money never about a good solid finished product.

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I was in several of the early beta tests as well as the final pre-release test and I have to say none of us were surprised when Microsoft pulled out. Sigil may have had some great ideas, but their management was crap and there is no one to blame for the state of this game but them.

I'm no fan of SOE, but I don't understand why they even picked this title up unless they already knew they'd need some "B" titles to make the Station Pass look more appealing.

Originally posted by Knupps

@hundejahre: every1 is currently affected by mentinoed error. reason is the huge power loss in San Diego which brought down their subscription server.

actually over much of the southwest, starting in Arizona spreadking north to South Dakota and West to California, then south to Tiajuana, Mexico.

as for Vanguard, glad to see some recognition here, the ol'girl deserves it.

Originally posted by hundejahre

 

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Originally posted by Beacker


 This game was great but Sigil was forced to release way too early and they knew it. Gotta love SOE. All about the money never about a good solid finished product.

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I was in several of the early beta tests as well as the final pre-release test and I have to say none of us were surprised when Microsoft pulled out. Sigil may have had some great ideas, but their management was crap and there is no one to blame for the state of this game but them.

I'm no fan of SOE, but I don't understand why they even picked this title up unless they already knew they'd need some "B" titles to make the Station Pass look more appealing.

 Yea I hear you. I was in beta for 9 months. I reported so many bugs and yet they went unfixed. Sigil is to blame yes but I think if SOE could have allowed them some more time they would have gladly did it. They knew they were putting out a bug filled game. Hell it took what 4 or 5 months for the first raids to go in The warehouse or whatever it was. I think another year of polishing would have done them good. Just sad because we all knew what potential this game had too. I was pretty upset when I heard it was SOE who picked up VG. Everything SOE touches goes down the toilet. Pretty sad really.

Originally posted by hundejahre

 

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Originally posted by Beacker


 This game was great but Sigil was forced to release way too early and they knew it. Gotta love SOE. All about the money never about a good solid finished product.

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I was in several of the early beta tests as well as the final pre-release test and I have to say none of us were surprised when Microsoft pulled out. Sigil may have had some great ideas, but their management was crap and there is no one to blame for the state of this game but them.

I'm no fan of SOE, but I don't understand why they even picked this title up unless they already knew they'd need some "B" titles to make the Station Pass look more appealing.

They picked it up mainly because Vanguard would lead to massive competition vs Sony's lovechild eq and eq2 if it was in the right hands

Originally posted by Knupps

Originally posted by hundejahre

 

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Originally posted by Beacker


 This game was great but Sigil was forced to release way too early and they knew it. Gotta love SOE. All about the money never about a good solid finished product.

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I was in several of the early beta tests as well as the final pre-release test and I have to say none of us were surprised when Microsoft pulled out. Sigil may have had some great ideas, but their management was crap and there is no one to blame for the state of this game but them.

I'm no fan of SOE, but I don't understand why they even picked this title up unless they already knew they'd need some "B" titles to make the Station Pass look more appealing.

They picked it up mainly because Vanguard would lead to massive competition vs Sony's lovechild eq and eq2 if it was in the right hands

Originally posted by donjuanagain

This game is hands down the best PvE game I have ever played in my entire life. The amount of content in this game is incredible. I wish this game hadnt been shit on by the orginal developers and then taken over by SoE and further pissed on by them. This game could have been the end all be all games had someone with balls taken it over and gave it the love it deserved.

The original developers were really bad programmers, that is the reason SOE got the game in the firrst place.

They had great ideas but couldn't implement them and eventually got out of money. The only reason we even tried it is because SOE bought it, otherwise would it just have been another game that never got released.

That doesn't mean I like how SOE treated the game, their first mistake was releasing it before they fixed it up, it would have been a very different case if it released in the shape it is now instead of he buggy mess it used to be.

My hope is that SOE at least use all the good and innovative parts of it for Everquest Next, I don't think SOE will sell the game and our best hope with it right now is that they start to at least update itr a few times every year.

How could bad programmers make such an awesome game? True, Brad bit off more than he can chew; he oversaw the creation of a massive and beautiful game world.

Microsoft is stupid for giving the game away; they should have supported the game for the additional 1 to 2 years required to get it into shape. The game needed a long beta so players could provide feedback to improve game play.

Some great movies went far over budget; like Titanic and Dances with Wolves. But the producers (or in the case of DWW, the main actor) kept investing in the projects; The result? Movies that rewarded the owners with HUGE Profits and Industry Recognition. Imagine if they threw in the towel; all that would have been lost.

VG was an extremly ambitious undertaking; it required an equally persistent producer. Microsoft has money to burn; WTH did they throw in the towel??!!

I believe it was Sigil that utimately decided to go to SOE and part with Microsoft. They both had different visions for the game and Sigil thought they knew what was best and then went with SOE. After all Sigil use to be pretty much the old team from EQ.Sigil then bought back thier part of the company from microsoft. Big mistake not working together with microsoft imo.

@ All posters above.

Very Mature thought out replies and I thank you for that.  Reading all of your posts and Me being new to SOE, it's too bad the way this game was left virtually un-done.  There is so much potential but I guess I am pretty content with what the game has to offer as is.  I do see the bugs and the need for a few things that we are forced to make macro's for, or the dreded reboot.  I guess we will just have to keep working around them until if ever the game gets the attention it deserves.