General Discussion

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

I had a talk with Brad (the guy behind vanguard) over one of the forums, he pretty much said it was regrettible because the fanboys were killing his game, scaring off new people who are seeing what its like.

Thamoris talks and acts like an exalted cult guru whose only pupose in life is to spread the word of his newfound "religion" and have us all embrace his  mishapen defective crippled mangled monstrous deity...

He really scares me.

Originally posted by StrikeTeam

 

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

I had a talk with Brad (the guy behind vanguard) over one of the forums, he pretty much said it was regrettible because the fanboys were killing his game, scaring off new people who are seeing what its like.

You're right.

 

Thamoris talks and acts like an exalted cult guru whose only pupose in life is to spread the word of his newfound "religion" and have us all embrace his  mishapen defective crippled mangled monstrous deity...

He really scares me.

To bad he doesn't scare some of you enough to never see people like you again  Like a poster in this topic already said"where did you guy's go to school"that seem to be unable to read opinions, never thought that some gamers really are smallminded and ignorant, i always believed gamers where open-minded consider this wierd hobby we all have here, playing in virtual world, ah i guesse some consider themself having a very normal hobby LOL. trust me our hobby's are wierd, doesn't have to mean we are wierd. But once people realize this and hte fact we are the nichy segment of gaming would be the day people would be able to just read opinions as is and stop pretentending that every opinion is a FACT!

I must say Reklaw, you seem to have a bigger probelm reading other peoples Opinions, since you always feel the need to come and attack anyone that say something you disagree with.. you can never keep a discussion going, but always start straight off the bat with insults. Maybe talk less and think more huh? Look yourself in the mirror the next time, then say the exact same thing.

Originally posted by Kasimir

I must say Reklaw, you seem to have a bigger probelm reading other peoples Opinions, since you always feel the need to come and attack anyone that say something you disagree with.. you can never keep a discussion going, but always start straight off the bat with insults. Maybe talk less and think more huh? Look yourself in the mirror the next time, then say the exact same thing.

Maybe if people could read they would not see it as a attack  But i know m8 its perfectly alright for other people to be negative towards others and i know i can't do that to them aswell

I must say, as a VG player since the public beta and pre-order early access at launch I can partially understand why this game gets so much anti-hype, hate and general bad press. But really, the amount of people who have played the game up to say level 10, or never even played it at all yet still hate it and so vocally warn people off amazes me.

The idiots a few pages earlier who claim to have multiple level 50 "maxed out" characters made me laugh. Anyone with half a brain understood what they were buying when VG launched, if you didn't then it's your own fault for rushing through a minimal amount of content to "win". No MMO should start at the level cap, they all start at one. An MMO that doesn't work like that is a failure, putting continued pressure on the developers to keep the bleeding edge of the population happy with new raid content and "uber lewtz". Where this idea that raiding and end-game content is the be all and end all of MMO gaming came from, is beyond me. This game has more content than I've seen in most MMOs, if you don't RUSH your way through the game you're in for a treat. If you're willing to look for it, you will find it.

Performance is a difficult issue. But personally I can say I really don't think it's that bad as most people will say. The CTD issues have pretty much completely disappeared since launch, and performance is much better (for me at least). The next few patches are bringing in new cache optimisations, PC model optimisations and texture memory fixes, all of which promise further improvement. Really when you look at the size of this game, and the detail in the majority of the world it's no wonder that your Dell "Xtreme" rig suffers so badly.

Most people who have perfomance issues are the type of user who has a pre-built rig that's full of spyware, random applications and just general crap that will slow pretty much anything down, especially a memory intensive game like VG. I run a fairly average mainstream rig and run VG at acceptable rates (usually 20-35FPS) on balanced to high quality settings (I tweak most things myself).  My specs below if anyone cares.

AMD64 X2 (DualCore) 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz
2Gb Corsair "Value" DDR RAM (my major bottleneck)
Plantronics USP DSP Headset (love it)
2x ATI x1600XT 256Mb DDR3 (crossfire is useless)

The problem I have with this review is it gives an unfair and unappealing view of this game. The review doesn't even mention grouping, they managed to get to 30 without playing through any of the major dungeons? That's a real shame. They don't really mention how much fun the combat is either, the reaction system makes each class very much a different experience with a lot of really fun features like chain moves, combos, finishing moves, counterspells... I could go on.

Really this game is for the MMO player who looks after their PC (and thus can expect to run VG just fine) and enjoys grouping, exploring and a slower pace of gameplay than most other games. I'll try and summerise why I think Vanguard is worth playing:

• Exploration : Horses, unicorns, shadowhounds, boats, flying mounts... No invisible walls or instancing, an epic world to get lost in.
• Engaging Combat : Yes it's not Conan, it's not realtime swordplay but it is one of the most engaging traditional MMO combat systems, with unique and well thought out classes.
• True Dungeon Crawling : Play though Temple of Dailuk, Ruins of Trengal Keep, Vol Tuniel or any of the othe major dungeons in the game and you'll understand what VG brings to the table. These places are big enough for several groups to be working through the questlines and content without it getting annoying (well, not too often anyway, the first weeks on Gelenia were a bit mad)
• Loads of Gear : Loot is plentiful, varied and fun to collect/hunt for. There are loads of armor quest-lines and dropped sets to collect.
• Atmosphere : Played DAoC in to the early hours? Loved the atmosphere created by the epic landscapes and music? Vanguard has this, no other MMO really has the same feeling of size and expanse as VG does today.

I forgot to mention diplomacy and crafting, while they may not be for everyone they both have a very loyal following of players, especially diplomacy, so there must be something there that appeals to people (I hear the lore is actually quite in-depth and interesting, I haven't "dipped" much myself).

There really are too many reasons for me to try and list and I've realised that's it's probably pointless to do so since the flaming is about to start. Yes I am a noob, a faggot, a masochistic vanboi. Whatever you want to hurl at me. To those of you reading these pages in the interest of seeing what Vanguard might be like ; wait for the trial or just give it a go for the free month, make up your own mind instead of following the moronic crowd! FLAME ON!!!

Calren Eldelmar - Paladin of Daedalus - Gelenia

Originally posted by Thamoris

 

Originally posted by Agent_X7

 

Originally posted by Thamoris

 

Originally posted by Ginaz

 

Originally posted by Stradden

MMORPG.com Community Manager, Laura Genender, takes a look at the world of Telon in her review of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Explaining Vanguard inevitably leads to explaining Vanguard's community. So, let's just start with it: yes, the game and the forums/fansites that support it are plagued with 'Fanbois' vs 'Haters' - the most heated faction warfare I have ever witnessed. Here, though, the rule of 'vocal minority' is in effect, and if you stay off of the forums and out of general chat, the majority of players are quiet and friendly (if you're not on a PvP server!).

According to unconfirmed sources like MMOGData.com, the Vanguard community is shrinking: what at launch had featured around 200k subscribers was down below 50k by May of '07. The PvP and Roleplay server populations are still rather steady, but the "normal servers" are practically ghost towns. When I created a character to explore one of those servers, I ran into another newbie who boldly stated "you're the 3rd person I've seen so far!"

Read the whole review here.

This review really doesn't mean much since they've had 6 months to patch and fix it.  Is it this website's policy to only review games after the devs have had a chance to fix their mistakes?  Is that fair to the people that were looking for a review here when VG was released?  Does mmorpg.com have this kind of review policy for other games or was VG treated differently?  Whats the reason you people waited so long to write a review?

 

The most fair way to review and comment on a game is to review it when its released and then write an update of sorts a few months later.  I wonder what VG's rating would have been when it was released?

 

actualy...the review is worse than that

Review person seemed to have been reviewing more on the way the game WAS rather than the what the game is NOW.

Review and opinions on performance were based on what they were a couple months ago while the opinions on quests and such seemed current. The remarks on the low player populations are current as well though effort could have been made to explain some of this due  to the massive size of the world which exaggerates the issue greatly.

The review is not so much inaccurate as she does not  tell the whole story or paint the full picture. It's called...lying by ommision. Since many on these boards consider a mmorpg review to be at least semi - professional....that is not acceptable. Particularly when one considers the high profile nature of the game...be it good or bad.  Review should have been ALOT more detailed and ALOT more effort should have been made to tell the WHOLE story.

It just seems too convienent if ya ask me.

Convienent and generalized and late reviews like that just scream ...hidden agenda!

What, pray tell, would our hidden agenda be? The reason for the late review has already been explained. The original reviewer - for whatever reason - found they couldn't complete the review. Others were asked to step up, and in the end Laura ended up doing it. Is that not clear enough?

 

Sigil steps up to the plate, digs in, and swings! It's a miss! Oh, Sigil dropped the bat on the umps head! And here's number 19, SOE to pinch-hit, taking Sigil's place at the plate... Boo! Hiss! Cry the fans.

I'd have given the whole game a 3 or 4 at best. With polished releases like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings Online on the market, VG doesn't even meet the criteria to be called average. Do I hate it? No, I played for a while and found things to like. Do I think it was released broken? Hell yes, and that's not acceptable.

I agree...the game is unfinished , BUT...the world is so big ...

So was Dark and Light......

Laura Genenders Lips meet SOE's Ass

should have been the topic of this story. Never before have I.. no wait, let me just put it this way. Let's say Vanguard is a Car you're looking at buying, Laura Genender is selling it toy you. The car is broken, unpainted, has no motor, the body is rusted through, the floor is falling out, the gasline leaks, there are no tires, so forget about moving it off the lot. Nobody wants the car, BUT

 Laura will tell you this:

 It's ugly, but it's pretty on the inside. It's broken, but it still impresses me. It has no motor but just imagine how it might sound if it had one. No tires, but if I blow you you really hard you can pretend you're moving with the wind tossing your hair. It's gaslines leak, but if you get a good air freshener you won't notice the smell. 

 Let's face the cold facts, Laura is predisposed to selling the MMO as it is, because it is what it is, unredeemable, incomplete, sloppy and so ripe with problems that it belongs in the nearest junkyard. But an MMO focused site wants to make advertising dollars and so they make proper bedmates.

 If you want a VALID statement or review of the game listen to the community thats playing the game, read their posts, listen to their complaints and praises. 

 This "article" was simply salesmanship. 

Originally posted by Gorilla

It seems quite ironic that this 'hardcore' game is recommended by the reviewer to casuals and further more he warns hardcore players off. I'm confused....but obviously not as confused as the jolly green