If anyone bought Vanguard a while back and left for legit reasons (it was a piece of shit)... I would come back and try it out.   They have made so many changes and improvements, the game is awesome to play.    The game was always fun to play, it was just those obstacles of performance and bugs that killed it

since launch:

• 1000's of bug fixes
• 50-60% performance increase
• ALOT of class improvements, balancing. etc
• New player models!! teh sexay is back!  improved performance with new models
• Lots of new content for 50's (Shores of darkness,  Bridge of destiny, APW, etc).
• New raid zone , Pantheon of ancients is being deployed to test this week!  Goes live real real soon!

If you're new.   14 day free trial here - http://vanguard.station.sony.com/isleofdawn/

Not to mention,  Vanguard is best looking MMORPG on the market (yes > AoC).  See the screenshot below if you think otherwise.

Sounds cool, i will have ot try again someday soon, but Pantheon is an old zone lol. It was really the only thing to do at high level. It wasnt 100% complete and had bugs glad they are finnally fixing it

With them introducing that new item mall thing into the game I will never play it. P2p with cash shop is a stupid scam.

When real money markets in a game show results like that, it just tells me that the game was utterly failing before the implementation of said markets. Which means the market will only keep it afloat for so long. This is not surprising to me, considering this is an SOE game.

An unintended result of the real money markets is a mass amount of potential players refuse to play it if it's not a F2P game.

I am part of that unintended result.

I'm not someone who refuses to give SOE my money on principle. If they released a GOOD game, didn't ruin it for at least 2 years, and kept it free of desperate attempts for more cash, I would consider it. But this ain't the one.

The last several years, all I have seen from SOE is a desperate attempt to keep subscribers for 1 more month (or to sucker in new meat for a month or two). The bare minimum to keep subscribers for just one more month is NOT what I want to see from the developer of ANY game I might play. I believe that the second their bottom line shows a loss, they're going to be shutting their doors on those games, which could ultimately happen at any moment at this point.

The addition of the RMM into their games and the recent massive server consolidations of their games only screams to me that this time is drawing nearer by the quarter.

I was tricked by people who said Vanguard has improved last year.  I don't want to make the same mistake again since the most systemic problem in Vanguard is the utterly dull gameplay.

 So I heard you can have ships in game. Is this true? Ships were my favorite part of UO back in the day.

Yes you can craft ships (sloop,galleon and something else) and pilot them. Last I remember they added a fishing minigame to give capped players something to do other than twiddle their thumbs. Too bad the fish you catch serve no purpose.

By the way OP... that screenshot looks HORRIBLE compared to an AoC screen. Just thought you should know.

Originally posted by theguru22

By the way OP... that screenshot looks HORRIBLE compared to an AoC screen. Just thought you should know.

I disagree, unlike AoC's SS VG SS's have depth and scope.

To me VG looks awesome , AoC all I see is another damn mountain .

I played it for like 3 weeks and having a blast.  However, even on the most populated server, the player population is just too low for me and with the real money market, I can say for sure I won't be touching that game ever again.

I would suggest playing AoC and VG back to back to see the difference in performance. BUT , I can'T recommend VG to players simply because the cash shop is annying.  From my personal experience with both games, Vanguard, a massive world, runs better then AoC's world.  Also find AoCs world ( I use world loosely) is just boring, with nothing to really explore. VG i've gotten lost visually and without the game map , I would of be wondering around for days.  I suggest playing VG and not look at the game map for a week and see how immersive that makes you feel, against a game like AoC.

VG you can run straight for hours on some continents. AoC you will run into a moutain in 20 minutes lol.

I've been on the lookout for a new MMO home since cancelling my EQ2 account a while ago due to the Station Cash fiasco. I recently decided I would go back and try either AoC or Vanguard. Having pre-ordered and been in the early access to both of them, I also found they were both huge letdowns at launch and had cancelled my accounts to both within a few months of playing.

Luckily I decided to pay the Vanguard forums a visit and found out about this Livegamer RMT store thing, looks like SOE are determined to try and introduce MicroTransactions+RMT+Monthly subs all together. Of course this made my decision much easier and I resubbed to AoC last weekend. Must say that so far I'm happy with my decision, I'm guessing I won't be touching any SOE games for quite some time. Shame really as I'd never been one to jump on the whole 'SOE is the devil' bandwagon, and maybe I'm just an old fashioned MMO player, but I like a set monthly subscription which gives me access to everything the game has to offer without having to worry about pimping out my toon via cash stores etc.

Not only has it not improved, but SOE added RMT. Whoever pays the most wins.

Never played Vanguard in the first place first it was published by a nonfamiliar MMO producer then givin "Microsoft" logo.. Was a hate for me. Then the Bugs and whining and flaming started... so the game died, or atleast so I thought. Still a free trial is a free trial, cant hurt to see wether its good or bad

Played at release, and it was garbage.

Went on a 4 year WoW streak, and came back to VG in Dec 2008, and I must admit, I was very pleasently surprised.  

The world is beautiful, the classes are awesome, and the lore is pretty deep as well.  I enjoyed that it wasn't just a "round up 10 mobs" and solo them all down type of game, and that if you ran into the wrong tunnel or dungeon, and you managed to get 3 big hairy spiders on you, you were pretty much done. 

However, you hardly ever see another player.  This is partly due to low and falling subscriptions, but it's mainly due to what is, in my opinion, the one glaring weakness of VGSoH.  The world is just WAY too BIG.  The cities are unnaturally huge, and needlessly complex.  It's immersive to have 500 miles of trees and field stretch out before you, but it suddenly becomes a little less so when you find out you have to ride across it on your glue-factory quality level 10 horse to turn in a quest, just to have the quest giver tell you to ride all the way back.  You've heard my opinions on other topics about this.  It's not a CHALLENGE.  It's a TIME SINK.  

Overall, I enjoyed coming back to VG though, and I played for about 3 or 4 months, but in the end, despite little gems like Diplomacy and the better than average crafting system, it was really just another MMO following the proven, but tired theory.

1.  Level up

2.  Re-Spec to one of a handful of cardboard cutout specs designed for raid content

3.  Gear up

4.  Raid

If you enjoy it though, more power to you.

played for an hour or so.. my comp is low/mid so the graphics were horrible, landscapes dry and so on.. but thats not my biggest concern, I find the system, the npcs... it doesnt have any feeling. Cant put my hands on exactly what.. it just doesnt feel right, maybe its the empty starter areas, the lack of music.. no, this game was not for me.

So SOE isn't experimenting with vanguard having completely F2P servers on vanguard yet?

You just have to love how predictable the soe viral marketing is.

I'm sorry OP but Vanguard just doesn't run right on my system.

I can play WAR on medium settings but Vanguard stutters like a bitch and looks like ass at my monitors resolution.

I'll take your word for it.

VG is an excellent PVE game more so if you have a good guild or friend to play with.

I find the lack of class customisation a bit of a put off. There are some sliders, Int, Str, Wis, Dex etc but nothing concrete to make your class a bit different to others of the same class.