Much to my amazement, the population seems to be rising at a fairly rapid pace.  I played a month or two ago, and I didn't bump heads with anyone outside of trial island.  Today, there's people all over the place.

Vanguard is back, and it is good.

Vanguard could be an amazing game if some changes went in. For me personally, they really need to redesign the con system. The dots only serve to segregate their community, and in its current state that is a bad thing.

With the age of the game, it is rather difficult for someone to come into the game and do most of the content because it is group based.

Grouping is fine and good as long as you can get one, which in this day and age is not an easy thing.

SoE has done quite a bit to save it from the initial release. I give them credit for that, but i take away for things like item mall and lack of push to bring it back quicker than it is.

With a proper sized development team, vg could be a nice standalone platform for somebody.

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

Originally posted by ionscorp

I cannot seem to find any reviews on the current state of Vanguard. Is it dead? Are they ever going to do an expansion? Should I new player consider buying the game or is the population diminished?

 

The game might as well be dead. Here are the reasons why.... 1, the world is HUGE. True It was intended to have a huge populataion of players. If you have a very small population of players in a HUGE world, then essentially you have a ghost town. 2. The player base is notorious for driving people away, they tend to have a vocal community that is so elitist and verbally abusive, that it would shock even the most cocky player of any other game community. False 3. The changes that need to be made in order for the game to attract a larger audience is protested by this small group of players because it is counter to their RPing and PvE insecurities. False Sony needs to rerelease the game as an expansion, giving it an overhaul, dirx 10 (which the original developers planned), stronger PvP design to go along side the PvE (which runs out quickly). False

So basically the unlikely has to happen, and thus the game might as well be dead, for it is certainly going in that direction.

Wow!  It's amazing how many wrong things one person can say in a single post.  The only thing he got right is that Telon is a huge world.  He obviously hasn't played VG in a long time.

As others have correctly stated, the VG community is very helpful to noobs and I should know as I only started playing a few months back and that has been my experience.

When Im checking a less played MMO, I always find three things important:

1. Playerbase.

- I dont care if its a small community, as long as they are helpfull to new players.

This certainly is the case with VG.

2. Player made websites that are updated regurarly.

- With most more complex MMO's you will find a lot of usefull information on playermade websites.

In the case of Vanguard, lot of the websites are outdated. The stickied link on the main forums doesnt work for a while now. This is not a good sign.

3. How fast newly introduced bugs are being addressed.

- Games with low amount of subs like Vanguard dont have much manpower to deal with new updates and bugs. But what is important to me is how fast newly introduced bugs (with updates) are being addressed. This will determine if I feel the game is moving forward, or just moving 1 step forward and 1 step back.

In VG's case this is also worrying, because after resubbing I noticed two things : 1. Diplomacy levers on the starting island dont work anymore (they did use to work). 2 Performance which was greatly improved about a year ago, has grown worse again (No hardware changes on my side, still had the client installed and had to tune down graphics)

In conclusion : To me, Vanguard doesnt seem to improve much. SWG (another SOE game with low amount of subs and skeleton dev crew) seems to move forward with the speed of light if compared to the progression of Vanguard.

I went back for  3+ months.Just quit along with my wife.Reason...little game improvement and a refusal on my part to make the game my full time occupation to progress characters.I haven't found a replacement but have decided I will only play FTP games until  until.

Originally posted by Ionselon

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

Originally posted by ionscorp

I cannot seem to find any reviews on the current state of Vanguard. Is it dead? Are they ever going to do an expansion? Should I new player consider buying the game or is the population diminished?

 

The game might as well be dead. Here are the reasons why.... 1, the world is HUGE. True It was intended to have a huge populataion of players. If you have a very small population of players in a HUGE world, then essentially you have a ghost town. 2. The player base is notorious for driving people away, they tend to have a vocal community that is so elitist and verbally abusive, that it would shock even the most cocky player of any other game community. False 3. The changes that need to be made in order for the game to attract a larger audience is protested by this small group of players because it is counter to their RPing and PvE insecurities. False Sony needs to rerelease the game as an expansion, giving it an overhaul, dirx 10 (which the original developers planned), stronger PvP design to go along side the PvE (which runs out quickly). False

So basically the unlikely has to happen, and thus the game might as well be dead, for it is certainly going in that direction.

 

Wow!  It's amazing how many wrong things one person can say in a single post.  The only thing he got right is that Telon is a huge world.  He obviously hasn't played VG in a long time.

As others have correctly stated, the VG community is very helpful to noobs and I should know as I only started playing a few months back and that has been my experience.

Yes it must be false because you a new player has said so. You sir are a champion of logic. Im sorry to inform you but everything stated in my post has been true, never have I stated there will not be a few helpful individuals, they are are however quickly drowned out by the vocal hate crew if you alert them to your presence. Vanguard as it stands its a club, its a club with a sign that says "no X allowed", they dont want your kind if you prove to be nothing like them. The man behind Vanguard even admitted that the community it drew has damaged the game. Vanguard is a game that will never be perfected, nor allowed to reach a larger audience, because the community for the most part prevents that from happening.

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

Originally posted by ionscorp

I cannot seem to find any reviews on the current state of Vanguard. Is it dead? Are they ever going to do an expansion? Should I new player consider buying the game or is the population diminished?

 

The game might as well be dead. Here are the reasons why.... 1, the world is HUGE. It was intended to have a huge populataion of players. If you have a very small population of players in a HUGE world, then essentially you have a ghost town. 2. The player base is notorious for driving people away, they tend to have a vocal community that is so elitist and verbally abusive, that it would shock even the most cocky player of any other game community. 3. The changes that need to be made in order for the game to attract a larger audience is protested by this small group of players because it is counter to their RPing and PvE insecurities. Sony needs to rerelease the game as an expansion, giving it an overhaul, dirx 10 (which the original developers planned), stronger PvP design to go along side the PvE (which runs out quickly).

So basically the unlikely has to happen, and thus the game might as well be dead, for it is certainly going in that direction.

Hmmm.. I don't think there is a single correct statement in that post :)  While I think the falsehoods are obvious for anyone that plays VG or has read a review I think the most important thing to point out is that the Vanguard community is generally an older player-base that is extremely helpful to newer players to help them with the rather steep learning curves.  There's a number of volunteer guides that take turns hanging out on Isle of Dawn to help folks out.

Originally posted by boojiboy

Originally posted by triprunner

VG is a game with an OPEN world. Barely any instances. Massive plains, deserts, forests... And imho a terrible waste of space....

Why? This game would be perfect to be a Darkfall lite kinda title. Without the full loot, and stupid UI but with everything else. Theres already so much in place: very robust and complicated crafting; diplomacy that should be even more expanded and have real impact on the game not just small buffs and massive landmasses without instancing

Imagine Your guild owning Khal or New Targonor, PvP with others over massive terrain and dividing it between player guilds. This game should never be about PvE only content. It's just too big.

Of course that's all fantasy because the game would have to be redesigned, massive amounts of money poured in to already comatose title.

 

You can also look at the massive land and ocean territories another way.. immersion.  They aren't empty, they just don't have quests or mobs that bring folks there on a regular basis.  I love the fact that if I want to harvest in solitude with no competition from other players, I can hop on my Griffon fly out to some isolate place in SE Qalia and harvest to my hearts content.  I also like the fact that my fishing buddy and I can explore the oceans in his Galleon looking for a prime fishing spot with depths of over 800 meters (found 2 so far).

Telon is not a simple and  contrived set of instances that the game force-funnels players through.

I have to say, that is the reason that I subscribe to Vanguard. I love the huge world. I love being able to go forever and just explore.

This game was dead on arrival.  Being part of the station pass allows them to keep their doors open, but this game will never realize it's pre-launch potential.  If they had found a way to launch the game in a better state, it might have had a chance, but the game will never live down the sorry state it was in at launch. 

Hopefully game developers can take a lesson from that and stop thinking it's OK to launch a buggy, unfinished game with the intent of correcting the issues after launch.  You never get a second chance to make a first impressing.  Maybe you could get away with it a few years ago, when there were two or three MMOs on the market, but not when there are 20 other choices.

Originally posted by Salvatoris

This game was dead on arrival.  Being part of the station pass allows them to keep their doors open, but this game will never realize it's pre-launch potential.  If they had found a way to launch the game in a better state, it might have had a chance, but the game will never live down the sorry state it was in at launch. 

Hopefully game developers can take a lesson from that and stop thinking it's OK to launch a buggy, unfinished game with the intent of correcting the issues after launch.  You never get a second chance to make a first impressing.  Maybe you could get away with it a few years ago, when there were two or three MMOs on the market, but not when there are 20 other choices.

Although I agree the launch was an unmitigated disaster the game has recovered very nicely since then.  It'll never have the type of subscriber numbers it would have if the launch had been a success and they capitalized on all the hype and kept those 200k folks. 

That said, the population continues to grow consistently and as a player that works just fine.  At this rate, maybe there is an additional server or two added down the road, but Vanguard will probably never get back all the population it had a launch.  But in the end, that is neither here, nor there.  It's a very well done and fun MMO for those that like traditional PvE MMOs and as long as the population continues to grow that is a healthy game in my opinion.

The VG Community to me isn't any different than most communities. Only difference is its a much more older community so you won't find WoW kids posting omgZpwnz0rs. However, asides the community there are of course still major flaws in the game. Lets start the the obvious.

1. Small Development team: I know many folks say they've done miracles for the game and all that. But for the game to ever expand via more devs, etc they would need to speed up production. What also the problem with the development team is the people who are on the team. In my 10+ years of MMOS, I have never seen such hatred for one dev as I've seen with Silius. The one person who'se running the ship is the most hated person in the community, ironic isn't it? But you know what, I have to agree with those who hate him because I've had first hand experience with testing raid content/mechanics with him and when he sees its not working correctly, turns a deaf ear on it until the masses complain about it. Bad work ethics there. This is the reason why no high end raid guilds will test their content anymore. Disrespect will only get you so far in this world. As far as production rate of content? If I was the super casual gamer, their production rate would be fine considering they are ahead of me. However the end-game players, their rate is at a snails pace. Lets look at the history:

Ancient Port Warehouse (Took 8 months of 5-day-a-week testing to finally get out live)
Griffon Quest Line/Dresla/Fengrot (Took 5 months but wasn't noticed as APW was still the thing to do)
Isle of Dawn (Took 7 months, was needed but my goodness 7 months?)
Guar/Silmnr/Karax/Varking (Took 3 months, with no raid testing and see how bad it is now?)
Bridge of Destiny (Took 4 months, again horrible group content)
Shores of Darkness (Took 4 months, worst possible faction grind in MMO history, it puts EQ1's to shame)
Pantheon of the Ancients (Currently at 8 months)

You take a look at this production rate, games like EQ/EQ2 would have popped out an expansion or 2 and being less buggy at the same time. This rate is the reason why high-end guilds are dying out because its painful with the turnover rate as high as it is.

2. Small Population.

Face it guys, the population of the game is a fraction of what it was at launch. Anyone remember 10+ servers and all of them full up? It was awesome. But that's a distant memory now. The population currently is the reason why devs lost their jobs. The sub number is steady atm but compared what it used to, its too low. 4 Servers compared to other games with 12+ and being full is a sign that yes VG is going to be nothing more than a filler game for SOE Station Pass. Why do I say this? Well lets look at Talisker and Avair, two former VG Class Devs. Their salaries couldn't be supported anymore with VG's low sub numbers so they promoted Talisker to EQ2 senior developer position and put Avair on Free Realms content (also getting a raise). The population simply isn't what the game is made for. And when you look at the boards, you hear different stories of "I can find groups no problem" and "I can never find a group even during primetime". What's ironic is people's reponse is "Get a group of friends and you'll have no problems", real helpful.

I have to get back to work. Meh

Originally posted by ionscorp

I cannot seem to find any reviews on the current state of Vanguard. Is it dead? Are they ever going to do an expansion? Should I new player consider buying the game or is the population diminished?

Not dead but unplayable in Europe, in Halgar. Because of low pop. Stopped yesterday, coming back to Lotro. Can't bear paying a sub for a solo game.I played with other players in the isle of dawn but since the "real beginning " in thestra, played alone. Actually I pay for a MSN like: i talk with players i never see...

Saw only 5 other players in VE, 1 in NT.

Nothing changed since the beginning. Tried many times since 2007, couldn't stay on VG after the level 25.

Everyone could notice enormous graphic bugs on VE yesterday. This game is always a beta. (or an alpha)

I agree with Xeonsoldier, it's time to open the eyes. VG won't be another EQ1 or EQ2. It's not dead because SOE needs more Station access accounts.

_--------------------------

I Play Lotro since 30 min I found a group :0)

that's the difference...

bye