Originally posted by William12

Originally posted by Kilsin

Originally posted by SuperXero89

Originally posted by Kilsin

Originally posted by Xiaoki

Yeah, its slightly better than before but still not good enough.

Its still a bit more limiting than EQ2 Free but EQ2 has about 100 times more players and content.

This is Vanguard's last desperate attempt to stay alive and they limp to the gate with heavy restrictions? They have to make this the most generous free to play out there. Full access to races and classes would at least get me to play and thats the first step to getting me to pay.

I am not sure where you are getting the whole "Vanguard is dead and needs help" idea from?

I hear that a lot, yet I have been playing since beta and never once has the game been on life support, never once was there talk of ever shutting it down or even coming close.

The thing with Vanguard is SOE owns the intellectual rights to it, so the game is theirs, no license agreements no money needs to go to any other company, it's 100% theirs.

So the subscriptions that are directly linked to Vanguard (not station passes) directly fund the game and a lot of us Vets have multiple Vanguard only subscriptions and we did that to support the game when everyone left.

SOE even abandoned us for 2 yrs without a single update or patch, not even a post on the forums and we continued to play and enjoy our game while supporting it, yes we were low in numbers but it was enough to pay the bills and keep the server going quite easily.

SOE saw this and that is why they are trying to turn Vanguard around, they know we won't be going any where and we won't let the game die, so although it is an effort to revamp VG and make it even more profitable, it isn't a last ditch effort to save the game. It could go on forever with low population as long as the Vanguard specific subscriptions are enough to pay the bills and turn a small profit.

I think you need to reevalutate the mental image that pops into your head whenever you hear about a game being dead because you explained to everyone perfectly excactly why the game is dead and needs help.

I don't need to reword or explain anything.

The Veteran player base supported the game for years with vanguard specific subscriptions, there were many of us from all over the world, hundreds on during prime times. It was not dead.

Vanguard being such a huge open world, gives off the impression that it was empty but I assure you, it was not.

We didn't need a patch or post from them, Vanguard as it stood, didn't need massive attention, just a few annoying bugs and class fixes would of been nice but apart from that, there is so much to do in Vanguard you could play 3-4 characters through different paths and continents from level 1 to max level 55 and still not see everything there is to do in Vanguard.

There is years worth of content if you have never played before. Years!

So Vanguard was not "Dead" or "Dying", players just started spreading that vicious rumour and other players, without bothering to actually play the game to see for themselves, believed these rumours and continued to spread them, like most of the information on these boards.

I was there on the Telon Server and playing on a range of different leveled characters and can tell you first hand, it was not dead or dying.

Proof it was not dead or dying is the news of F2P, what company in their right mind would bother wasting so much time, money and resources on a dying or dead game, especially in today's MMO market with the kind of competition Vanguard is up against...

Don't believe everything you read or hear.

Check things out for yourself.

I don't think you know what dead means in an MMO.  It doesn't mean no one plays it means the population is so small there is no REAL playerbase a few hundred players does not sustain an MMO no matter how much you wanna believe it does.

An MMO is only dead if there is nothing to do in it or no one to do it with... this was not the case for Vanguard. It was a big misconception, there were times it was quiet in off peak play times, you get that in all games, even with huge populations, but you could always get a group at nearly any level if you actually tried.

Unless you played it to know, you cannot sit there and pass judgement on a game that I know was not dead, it was as I said, quiet at times but not dead, i was there, I am not making this stuff up and I live in Australia, US off peak times and I never had a problem getting groups on my low level alts, mid level alt or high end main/alts.

If it was dead or dying, we wouldn't be hearing about F2P right now, SOE are tighter than anyone when it comes to money so there had to of been a decent player base and interest for them to even consider doing this.

The fact of the matter is, players abandoned the game for a multitude of reasons, which is fair enough but a lot of us stayed and kept on enjoying the game, enough to keep it alive and turning a profit and enough to get SOEs attention and make them want to invest in it again.

Stop being in denial and ignorant about it.  Its a game that cost millions to develop and had 2 servers that is DYING AND DEAD.   Just because theres a few hundred people DOES NOT MEAN the game is thriving or even sustainable the fact is SOE has kept past games around just to keep on station access or for PR look at EQ Mac it loses money still around planetside 1 hasnt been profitable in years still around.  

Now why invest money into vanguards f2p ?  Because its cheaper to throw it a bone and hope it becomes a self sustaining MMO then to invest the money to make another game the truth is as long as vanguard is able to sustain itself SOE will keep it around forever because its yet another game they can add to the station access.  Make no mistake people staying had nothing to do with them deciding to make it F2P.  The game did not turn a profit you cannot sustain an MMO with a few hundred subscribers or even a few thousand.

With all of that said people underestimate the potential Vanguard has to attract Classic EQ players the only reason most didn't stick around was because SOE hasn't updated it in over 2 years until F2P was announced.   Now that they're actively updating it and adding stuff people will come back its a great game and one most should try and enjoy.

much better now

Originally posted by William12

Stop being in denial and ignorant about it.  Its a game that cost millions to develop and had 2 servers that is DYING AND DEAD.   Just because theres a few hundred people DOES NOT MEAN the game is thriving or even sustainable the fact is SOE has kept past games around just to keep on station access or for PR look at EQ Mac it loses money still around planetside 1 hasnt been profitable in years still around.  

 

Now why invest money into vanguards f2p ?  Because its cheaper to throw it a bone and hope it becomes a self sustaining MMO then to invest the money to make another game the truth is as long as vanguard is able to sustain itself SOE will keep it around forever because its yet another game they can add to the station access.  Make no mistake people staying had nothing to do with them deciding to make it F2P.  The game did not turn a profit you cannot sustain an MMO with a few hundred subscribers or even a few thousand.

With all of that said people underestimate the potential Vanguard has to attract Classic EQ players the only reason most didn't stick around was because SOE hasn't updated it in over 2 years until F2P was announced.   Now that they're actively updating it and adding stuff people will come back its a great game and one most should try and enjoy.

If anyone is in denial, it is you my friend.

Log in and see for yourself, instead of mouthing off incorrect statements.

I never said it was thriving in any of my posts, I am not sure where you got that from? I said it was not dead or dying, capitol letters do not help you get the message across any better than lower case letters, especially when it's personal opinion and an incorrect one at that.

Wrong. What would be cheaper is to kill the game off and not spend another cent on it, SOE choose to spend money to make money because they saw Vanguard was not going away or dropping below X amount of subs and was still making a profit.

I agree and SOE should advertise on the EQ boards like they do with EQ/2 on VG boards.

I am far from a Vanguard fanboi and I am just stating facts that I have physically seen and been a part of overt he years, so despite what others who left have said, Vanguard was never dead or dying. Fact.

If you had of logged in, you would of been able to see that for yourself instead of taking my word for it. It was far from thriving too I might add but it was not dead.

IMO, all they would have to do is go with the gear and chat changes. Much better.

Originally posted by remyburke

IMO, all they would have to do is go with the gear and chat changes. Much better.

I agree!

Originally posted by William12

Stop being in denial and ignorant about it.  Its a game that cost millions to develop and had 2 servers that is DYING AND DEAD.   Just because theres a few hundred people DOES NOT MEAN the game is thriving or even sustainable the fact is SOE has kept past games around just to keep on station access or for PR look at EQ Mac it loses money still around planetside 1 hasnt been profitable in years still around.  

 

Now why invest money into vanguards f2p ?  Because its cheaper to throw it a bone and hope it becomes a self sustaining MMO then to invest the money to make another game the truth is as long as vanguard is able to sustain itself SOE will keep it around forever because its yet another game they can add to the station access.  Make no mistake people staying had nothing to do with them deciding to make it F2P.  The game did not turn a profit you cannot sustain an MMO with a few hundred subscribers or even a few thousand.

With all of that said people underestimate the potential Vanguard has to attract Classic EQ players the only reason most didn't stick around was because SOE hasn't updated it in over 2 years until F2P was announced.   Now that they're actively updating it and adding stuff people will come back its a great game and one most should try and enjoy.

Actually SoE was making a profit because all those millions spent to produce the game were not spent by SoE.  Those millions were spent by Sigil long before the rights were given to SoE to keep the production alive.  The majority of the production was spent by another company.  So the majority of the money the game makes is profit for SoE, since they spent so little on production during the last month or two before release.  Server costs are cheap as hell nowadays, so I'm not sure where you think they are spending all the money that goes to the profit.   If you hopped onto the Telon server like I have recently you will see posts in OOC all day with groups going in a ton of different dungeons of different level ranges.  I was suprised at first to see it still being so active as well, so I understand you not wanting to believe the Vanguard players.  But the facts are the facts and you seem to be misinformed.

Awesome changes.  The game world alone is worth the price of admission.  A bit more polish and hopefully a bit more responsive UI and this game will be one of the best deals for FTP.

Seeing this thread made me login out of retirement. I've got my Vanguard discs next to me and I'm ready to re-install once the F2P model hits. Damnit this is going to be nostalgia out of the ass on F2P release.

I still think the item restriction is too high. They need to lift it so all items except for Legendary and heroic gear is available. Also quest reward items should be equipable too. Restriction on items is the only thing that is making me thing twice of starting to play again, as I feel this limits the content that is available and forces me to pay for main game content.

Originally posted by Neptus

Seeing this thread made me login out of retirement. I've got my Vanguard discs next to me and I'm ready to re-install once the F2P model hits. Damnit this is going to be nostalgia out of the ass on F2P release.

A little word of advice, do not use your discs to install Vanguard, download the free trial and type your account info in that way, it will work a lot better for you and be a much better experience.

Vanguard has had a lot of changes over the years and the discs have too much crap on them that isn't used now.

You will have a big download update that will probably take a while but trust, download the trial and patch from there to save yourself a headache :)

I uninstalled my discs and went the trial way and it's much better.

Originally posted by Wakygreek
 

I still think the item restriction is too high. They need to lift it so all items except for Legendary and heroic gear is available. Also quest reward items should be equipable too. Restriction on items is the only thing that is making me thing twice of starting to play again, as I feel this limits the content that is available and forces me to pay for main game content.

Of course it is trying to force you to pay! but content at this stage isn't limited, you are extremely lucky! Free roam of the entire MASSIVE worl for free and allowing you to level to 55 for free...I would not be complaining. 

This F2P model like many others in the west is like an extended trial, your lucky to can level to max cap for free with only a  item restriction. If you want the good stuff of course you will have to pay!

What people don't understand is nothing is truly free, SOE is a multi million dollar company out to make money, not give everyone a multi million dollar MMO for free out of the kindness of their hearts.

Also a bit of research would of revealed to you that thousands of items have been re itemised and changed to uncommon, so Rare loot, Heroic loot and all other kinds of goodies will be available but just under the uncommon loot tag, which is extremely generous of them. They are also allowing some quest rewards that are Rare and Heroic to F2P players on main quest lines.

This is ultimately a big juicy carrot trying to tempt you to pay money in some way shape or form, whether it be via the cash shop or a subscription, so they will limit you as much as they can to try and get you hooked then pay but without letting you experience the game too much for nothing. This isn't a truly free Asian grinder MMO with lazy restrictions and millions of players, western F2P is a little different.

Pay the measly $15 a month and you can have it all, 24/7 when ever you like, what ever time of the day or night for a whole month...That's better than paying the same if not more for 1-2 hrs of entertainment from a movie at the cinema.

Originally posted by Kilsin

Pay the measly $15 a month and you can have it all, 24/7 when ever you like, what ever time of the day or night for a whole month...That's better than paying the same if not more for 1-2 hrs of entertainment from a movie at the cinema.

That would be a fine solution if Vanguard was worth $15 per month, and I get the feeling that many feel it isn't.  If it was, it may have done better than it has over the past five years.

Originally posted by Shoju

Originally posted by Kilsin

Pay the measly $15 a month and you can have it all, 24/7 when ever you like, what ever time of the day or night for a whole month...That's better than paying the same if not more for 1-2 hrs of entertainment from a movie at the cinema.

That would be a fine solution if Vanguard was worth $15 per month, and I get the feeling that many feel it isn't.  If it was, it may have done better than it has over the past five years.

I have had at least 1 account active (currently 4 active) over the last 5 years and I can tell you first hand, it is worth every cent.

The complaint we make is about end game content and a few persistent bugs, not game breaking by any means just some frustrating ones.

Starting off at level 1, you will have a good few years worth of great content and will still need to roll a new character to see it all and only for $15 a month...pretty cheap if you ask me.

You can't even go to the movies for that price and even if you could find a deal or not eat or drink to stay within your $15 budget, it only lasts for 1-2 hours.

Vanguard is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a whole month and only costs a measly $15.

I struggle to understand why people complain about that. We should be supporting the companies that give us great games not turning our noses up and going F2P, our industry is being ruined by these F2P games and it will only get worse, believe me, gamers will regret backing these F2p games in the future.

I just wish people would stop using the frase F2P and call it P2W which is what they really are.  Compnaies can NOT stay in business with a true F2P so their can not be such a beast.  At most, it might be a free trial of some sort.

Great news and actually surprised to see SOE paying attention to their players for a change. Brokering, items and chat are major if you want to have any kind of ingame community.

Originally posted by Kilsin

We should be supporting the companies that give us great games not turning our noses up

True, and that is why I am very picky about where my gaming dollars go.  The game that Brad McQuaid was selling us with 'The Vision' would have been worthy of supporting.  The game we ended up with is not.

Originally posted by Shoju

Originally posted by Kilsin

We should be supporting the companies that give us great games not turning our noses up

True, and that is why I am very picky about where my gaming dollars go.  The game that Brad McQuaid was selling us with 'The Vision' would have been worthy of supporting.  The game we ended up with is not.

WellIt is for myself and hundreds of others is what I am trying to say.

Thos enumbers are rising rapidly too with allt he Dev attention and F2P launch not far away.

Originally posted by brash99
Apparently it is back to green gear only for f2p. Such a shame.

This reason is exactly why i won't be playing their product anymore.