All Posts by ethion

I don't know about anyone else but I'm seeing lots of ex aoc people in vanguard.  In the past week I've been in maybe 5-6 groups and almost everyone has played AoC and left and many of the people are no free trial people but actually genuine new people.

Another thing I'm hearing is mostly positive feedback.  Not everyone is positive though one guy, I had no idea why he was playing.  He was like constantly bitching about everything and I'd swear playing the game musta been like driving nails in his eyes.  So I got no idea why he was playing at all.

Originally posted by Shol

One of the reasons VG failed at release was, that not many people had the rig to run it well.

Now its one year later and VG still needs a good machine to run, but most people have now hardware which doesnt fold under the grafikpower of VG. So yeah, VG graphics are beautiful. Maybe not the best available but nice enough that I sometimes climb a mountain/walk to a building/whatever and simply make a screeny of the scenario Im seeing because its awesome.

Well performance wasn't strictly the issue at launch.  Crashing every hour, horrendous memory leaks, crashing when chunking or worse dying, group issues up the wassu... These all were major problems that seem to be overlooked.  VG today is nothing like VG at release.

Originally posted by kitsunegirl

My few complaints are: Theres no dressing room,

Actually there is kinda a dressing room function.  When you mouse over items look at your character.  It automatically shows what the item looks like on your character.

You know it is really kinda funny.  I've been playing vanguard recently and there is like this flood of people coming to vanguard from AoC.  Not sure if this is something talked about online in AoC among people when they become disastisfied?  But anyway Vanguard now days is like an AoC refugee camp.

Originally posted by AOCjester

Originally posted by Locklain

Originally posted by AOCjester

i used my dog name (no i wont reveal) and u saying that someone could potenteally hack in and find my dog name in CLEARTEXT?

should i change, what is good for password?

These are the worst passwords possible.  You should never use a password that could be known by someone else.  Birth dates, animal names, friends names, all are very easily guessed. 

Its not that hard to choose a random number and letter based password.  Just write it down and as often as you log into an MMO you will remember the pass in no time.

 

what if u mix up with letters to make harder crack, would muffin2004 be better?

it is a little better but still crackable if someone can attack it with a program...

I always use a saying to make a nuemonic.

Something like...  I Love AoC The best  so I can remember the saying.  They I make it into a password.

IluvA0CtB3st

Anyway you get the idea.  You can play with the saying to get something shorter.  Maybe IluvA0C! so it is only 8 characters.  Or you can go with other things like Ih8tbman for I hate batman :P

I seriously doubt that AoC will retain 400-500k subs.  So far the game doesn't have a lot of replayability and people max out pretty fast.  I would guess it will be lucky to maintain 100k subs after all the hype dies down.  Check back in 2-3 months....

Originally posted by donjn

If you swim underwater in lakes in the starting area and try to come up if you hit the bottom of the rocks while underwater sometimes you go through the world. This happened three times in different areas in one hour with me.

This sounds like a bug.  Did you bug it and if not tell me where it is and I'll check it out and bug it.

Originally posted by donjn

I tried Vanguard recently. I was pleased at first.

But after a week the following issues got to me:

• A tedious crafting system This is a matter of opinion.  If you want crafting to be a side game where you just click a single button to combine and you are done then yeah it's tedious.  If you want a crafting game where making stuff takes time and some effort and even risk of failure, with stats, equipment, tasks to make money, and quests, well then VG crafting is your ticket.  
• A tedious Diplomacy mini-game Personally I think it is a fun diversion.  Like the crafting system it is a fully fleshed out game.  Unfortunately it is one of the weaker games as the higher lvls could definitely use more content.  That said it is still kinda fun to do when you are wanting to do something different.
• Flickering textures all over the place. Windmills missing, doors missing, flickering clothing, flickering hay stacks/rocks, etc This must be system dependent.  I don't see flickering issues.  Or maybe I do in clothing sometimes but it isn't flickering it is where sometimes clothing is to close to the character body and lower layer clothing clips through upper clothing.  Not a big deal and many games have similar issues.   Other then that I've never seen flicking objects.  Doors missing however is an issue I do see and it irritates me.  It is minor though....
• The ONLY MMO where your framerate is much WORSE in a dungeon than outside My framerate is pretty great no matter where I am and I don't see any difference in dungeons.  I do see some hitching when I'm hitting a new environment but it is nowhere near as bad as it was at release and it generally only happens once in any area.
• Bugged mining nodes all over the place I'm only upto tier 2 mining but I've not seen this happen although it did happen rarely back a year ago when I was playing.  I think it was in certain areas.  I remember the training nodes in lomshir were bugged frequently but again that was a year ago.
• A large world, but mostly empty It is a large world and there are areas that are pretty empty.  But there are other areas with lots to do.  So I wouldn't say it is mostly empty, but it isn't uniformly densely packed with content.  But I kinda like that it feel less contrived and less like an amusement park.  That said doing a pass on the land and content by the devs would provide plenty of opportunity for improvements.
• Worst looking water ever. Does not fit with the rest of the graphics which are nice. I'm not sure.  I guess I've never really noticed.  The water generally looks ok to me so maybe it is your settings or maybe I'm just not very discerning.  It could use some enhancements in reflections, and rippling effects on the banks and when you are swiming but again this isn't a big deal for me.
• Dreary un-colorful graphics, much like EQ2. It's as if someone placed a grey filter over everything. I kinda agree that VG could use some better use of color and some enhancement on their textures.  Some of this might be personal artistic differences but I would like to see some improvements here.  But again this isn't that big a deal to me.  And it also isn't consistent some areas of VG are brighter and quite lush, like Kojan, or the river jungle area in qalia.  But areas like lomshir in the desert are pretty dull but that might be because it's the desert and it is dry and dull looking.  Again not a big deal to me.
• Falling through the world multiple times, mostly when swimming I've never really had any issues with this.  Even when the game was releases I fell through a couple times but it wasn't like it was a major issue that happened a lot.  Just before I quit they fixed it so when you fell through it popped you back up and droped you on the land.  Don't know if that still works as in the past couple of weeks that I've been playing I haven't had it happen.
• Brutal animations Another area I'm not sure I care much about.  Sure some of the animations are not that good and I'd certainly be happy to see them improved, even if just two, jumping, and your cloak.  But a lot of the animations seem very good as well.  My rogue and bard combat animations both look great and I have no issue with them.  Also I had a monk and a disciple and though their animations were good.  One thing I might suggest you look at is the animation frame rate setting.  By default the game sets it to 50% so you are only getting half the animation frames you could.

Over a year and these issues are still present.

Vanguard sucks.

 

I feel that you spend a lot of time focused on minor issues and you completely ignore all the MAJOR issues that vanguard has fixed in the past year.

• Crippling hitching issues constantly every time went anywhere.  Going into a dungeon or leaving one or going into a building would cause 5-10 second of hitching where fps dropped to 1 or lower. Now it is maybe a second or two and only happens once in an area then no more.
• Poor framerates even when not hitching.  I'd run on balanced and when I'd go tough tursh my frame rate was maybe 15 on a 8800gtx... Now I get like 30-40 with everything maxed.
• Quest content, they have added a number of quests like the URT quests and they have added a lot more missive boards.  
• Riftstones have made it very possible to get groups together for any dungeon anywhere in the game in a short time. Previously we would have to wait an hour or more for people to get to us for doing a group.
• Chunking bugs are gone and chunk times are 1-5 seconds.  When I last played chunking took 20-30 seconds and you would loose buffs, drop from groups, loose the chat server, sometimes get stuck in a wierd half dead state, I even once fell to my death.
• Crashing was something that always happened for even the best people every couple hours.  Now I never crash.  Even after playing 6-8 hours nonstop no crashes no problems at all.
• Memory leaks, omg these were the worst.  2GB of ram would last you like 30 minutes and if you forgot to flush you would crash.  Now the game is amazing and I rarely ever see it use more then 1.5g of ram.
• guild interface was extremely basic with only guild member list and that was about it.  Now you have various messages that can be posted, info sections, more details on guild members, and a looking for guild interface.
• Brotherhoods were a rumor when I played last now they are fully in and functional. 
• Looking for group and looking for more interfaces are in the game now and look very very good.
• The UI has been cleaned up and works without killing your system.  Used to be you would open your map and your poor fps would go to nothing that was if the map didn't crash your computer.
• Bugs I can't even begin to describe the bugs in the game....  Group bugs were rampent, I couldn't add people, people would drop and not be addable, loot was open to everyone, at the end they added the loot system which was severely buged and if you used it you would loose the loot completely.

I could go on and I'm sure there is a lot of stuff I'm missing.  Oh and I didn't even mention they added a raid interface and a fantastic huge raid dungeon. 

So it is fair to say Vanguard sucks but relative to what it was over a year ago their is no comparison.  If the game were released today in it's current state I'm 100% certain it would have done quite well. 

Originally posted by Porfat

Have they changed diplomacy?   Was the most interested feature of Vanguard.   But I played the game at my friends house shortly after release.    Was a very simple card game.   Used basically one strategy to win about 20 games in a row without really getting close to losing.   Lost interest after that.    Diplomacy has nothing to do with actual diplomacy just winning a card game.

I think they should scrapped diplomacy early.   Can't believe it made it into the live game or even an external beta.   If Vanguard was so bad in that one feature I had no intentions of giving the rest of the game a shot.    Esp when it seemed like warmed over EQ.

They have enhanced diplomacy a little and added some more quests and general polish but you can still at the higher lvls come up with some pretty solid strategies to make winning easy.  That said they are always working on things and improving them.  Word is the diplomacy system is getting some love with GU6 as well.  We will have to wait and see how much love.  I'm getting a bit concerned that GU6 is starting to sound like a miracle update :P

hmm for me I couldn't get the petition interface to work.... I just brought up a blank screen.  I know the web browser is working cause I have that maps addon installed and it has a web link in it that works.

Hopefully this was an exception... but my first experience with the petition system was not a good one :(

Originally posted by laresloci

Originally posted by ethion

AoC failed to deliver on many fronts.  And while you can say, "well it didn't suck more then other new releases", that is a BS attitude and not true.  LoTR for example had a good launch.  I think consumers need to say something when a company ships a substandard product.  AoC is worse then most launchs. 

People coming to the forums looking for information on a new game deserve to have all the facts about a game the good and the bad.  People posting about the bad aspects of the game are providing a service to the community by letting people know what the state of the game is before they buy it that way when they buy it they don't have expectations that the game on the box and the game in the box match. 

I know that if I had read these forums before I bought the game I would have saved myself $50 and would in hindsight have been better off.

 

 

 

I've just paid the $50.00 but I am not going into the game with a lot of high expectations. After all it's a only game...and not my life.

And that is the entire point of my post.  You are going into the game informed that their are some issues and you can make a decision if that is something you want to do in spite of shortcomings.

BTW One can easily make the case that the $50 is worth it if you are in fact only getting a months worth of entertainment.  I logged over 120 hours playing and while if I knew what I do now I might not have spent that $50 I'm not going to say I didn't get a fair entertainment value for it.  In my book less then 50 cents per hour for entertainment is a good value.

Originally posted by hdnine

I see this kind of reactions everywhere. People, like the most of you who are upset, need to vent it onto others. That's normal i guess since we all do it.

I just love the posts where people write that they quit the game for whatever reason. They feel compelled to let everyone else know that they did just that, what they think is wrong with the game (which is great but really has no effect) and in the end they are the once ending up looking like the fool.

I'm not saying that you people shouldn't share your thoughts or concerns for any topic, but seriously, which MMO or almost any other game out there had zero problems at its release?

I'm not a "fanboi" (or troll for that matter) because that implies so much more. I enjoy the game, yes. It has problems, annoying bugs and what not... YES! But when it comes to game play, animations, graphics, player control and a lot of other things - the game is the first MMO to capture my interest since WoW and before that, SWG.

Everyone says AoC is such a let down but in the end, they all seem to base it on all the current bugs and problems. It will get better, give it some time. As for PvP... the game does have a lack of it yes which might be a main issue for some of you. But if we compare it to let's say WoW, they too started of with world-pvp which almost disappear when the battlegrounds arrived. Battlegrounds in my opinion are great fun and is something i really miss. In SWG we had these large PvP areas - great fun too.

AoC failed to deliver on many fronts.  And while you can say, "well it didn't suck more then other new releases", that is a BS attitude and not true.  LoTR for example had a good launch.  I think consumers need to say something when a company ships a substandard product.  AoC is worse then most launchs. 

People coming to the forums looking for information on a new game deserve to have all the facts about a game the good and the bad.  People posting about the bad aspects of the game are providing a service to the community by letting people know what the state of the game is before they buy it that way when they buy it they don't have expectations that the game on the box and the game in the box match. 

I know that if I had read these forums before I bought the game I would have saved myself $50 and would in hindsight have been better off.

I thought the game was great fun initially.  So like people said take it slow explore it fully to give it time to develop.  I'd say it is worth it as you can definitely get 100+ hours of good gameplay before running into issues.  I played and probably had 120 hours played before I quit.

I found starting pops to be pretty good although it might vary depending on where you start.  From lvl 1-10 there isn't much need to group and by the time you get to 10 you should know how to use the riftstones and after that there are plenty of people to group with.

I've had a bunch of groups and I'm a lvl 14 bard.  So it seems pretty easy to join a group of just start one.

Originally posted by argos5

Umm. The lower level guys are already mid-lower to mid level.

 

"But Is there any lower levels group with ? i hate where your playing and theres no groups how do you advance with out others ?"

Yes, I understand its an MMO. But why the hell do you need a group for lower levels?!

Some people like the social comradary of a group :) I know I enjoy grouping.

but what you say is also true, you do not need a group to advance in VG there are many many solo quests and there are an ennormous number of areas to explore.

Originally posted by broomjay

I never thught the game was bad But Is there any lower levels group with ? i hate where your playing and theres no groups how do you advance with out others ?

Yeah there are groups.  I'm on saradon or something like that and I've done a ton of grouping.  I'm lvl 14 now but I've had groups in riftseeker, some spider cave near vextle, a troll cave, and some giant fortress in a chunck named heros something, I've done a dungeon called KE and all this has taken me up to the ripe old age of 14.

So I have joined a couple groups and I've started some.  These were all just pickup groups.  Like at riftseekers I was exploring a bit and saw some other people and started a group then just added people over time.

For KE and the dungeon in the Hero zone I just joined a pickup that was being advertised.

Now I'm a bard so I'd say if I can get a group a healer of tank would be even easier.

Originally posted by Bane82

 

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Originally posted by ethion
You probably just want to wait a couple months till GU6 is out.
Hard to say if you would like this if you are pretty happy with wow.  This game is not very wow like in my opinion.  Definitely not as polished or bug free.  Can be irritating running into quests that don't work properly or other types of somewhat minor issues.  Most of the huge issues seem to be gone but there are still little ones in abundance.   It is easy to pick VG apart if you want to focus on bugs.  Most however are frustrating from time to time and can be worked around.  That said VG has become fun and enjoyable.
That aside VG seems to have two advancement paths.  There is a strong solo game where you can do solo quests and progress quite well.  This works sell and is fun.  There is also a much stronger group element then wow where you can explore some really amazing dungeons but not like the ones in wow that tend to be rather scripted and linear.  These tend to be larger and deeper with a variety of quests but far less directed feeling.  On the negative side it is far easier to be lost in vanguard dungeons and not sure what to do.  You kinda gotta enjoy just working through them and generally exploring.  They feel quite different then wow.  Some people might like it some might not.
And as you have read VG Crafting and Diplomacy are pretty much separate games and there isn't an analog in wow.
VG really doesn't have much in the way of PvP.  There is a PvP server but really it is nothing like wow with reguard to pvp.  VG is really a PvE game.
Raid content in VG is far less then in wow and while the current raid dungeon is really huge with lots of raid mobs it is the ONLY raid dungeon.  Course more are coming and while I haven't tried the raid in VG I have heard that it is VERY good.
Oh one more thing on dungeons.  IN VG early on there are easier dungeons.  These have 2 dot and 3 dot mobs.  These dungeons work well for solo or small groups.  Later in VG you start running into dungeons with 4 and 5 dot mobs.  These are your real group dungeons that will take a group of 5-6 level apprpriate players.

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What can you tell me about some of the other features mentioned in here? Mounts, flying mounts, ships, building ships, building/owning homes/guilds, caravans etc. and be honest and objective. As I stated at the beginning of my post, I'm really not looking for over-hyped opinions and you seem to have a good head on your shoulder. I'm considering getting it, and basically trading in some of my old PS2 games in to EB games so that, that way I can get store credit and basically get a copy for free. That way at least I won't be too upset if I'm not happy with the game.

I think I'm pretty objective maybe even sometimes harsh...

Mounts are great.  You get a horse at lvl 10 and what is really cool is you can buy stuff to upgrade your horse.  So early on you become well integrated with mounts which offer substantial speed.  A basic lvl 10 horse with store bought tack, horseshoes, and saddlebags gives you a 149 run speed.  Normal run speed is 100.

As you lvl up each tier you can upgrade your mount and gear.  So lvl 20 you get a better mount.  Better mounts have higher speed and better stability.  Stability is how likely you are to be dismounted being hit.

At lvl 30 or so you can do quests for unique mounts, and now their are city faction mounts you can earn.

Flying mounts are mostly usable via the flying mount rentals.  Near riftstones which teleport you around the map there are flying mount rentals.  This gets you a flying mount that lasts 5 minutes.  5 minutes might not see like much but you fly at something over 200 and can fly very high and obviously straight where you want to go.  There are occasionally flying mobs that you need to avoid, not a big deal but if you fly into one and get attacked it will dismount you and you can't fight on your mount.  As a saftey measure you have a safefall buf so if dismounted or if the mount timer ends you just fall to the ground.  Flying mounts are great!!  At lvl 40 or so you can do a quest to get a perminent flying mount.  There are some flying mounts that you can get as loot but they are norent so when you log they are gone.

Boats are pretty amazing looking and kinda cool to sail around on but don't really serve much purpose.   They are pretty fast and they are the best way other then flying to cross the water.

Housing is not really necessary and not something you do till you are pretty high lvl.  Housing as the best system for decorating in that you have complete control over placement.  Other then looking cool a house gives you a port ability so you can port once per hour home.  It can also be flagged to be your guild headquarters that gives everyone in the guild a port to it.  Finally it can house chests which can be used as a guild bank or just extra storage area.  All in all houses are a luxtury.  Most housing areas are not far from a rift and have a crafting area and vendors and are in little town like arrangements.  You can only build a house on a plot.

Caravans are pretty useless or only good in very limited circumstances.  At least they were a year ago after there were a number of limitations.

Brotherhoods are nice if you have a group you play with frequently like a group of friends.  Not as good as mentoring but still a nice feature.

Crafters make boats and they make parts for houses.  So for a boat you usually contact a crafter for them.  Learning to make a boat is a long involved process that includes a fair quest.  You also can't make a boat alone you need the help of other crafters.  Like an artificer makes the hull but an outfitter makes the sails. 

For houses depending on the type and tier of the hours you want to build it will list a number of things like bricks, shingles, window frames etc.  You need to buy from crafters all the stuff and put it in your house.  After you have added all the stuff into your house it is built.  Then you can buy furnishings and set it up.  Again other then the ports and storage houses are mostly for looks.  There are no instances so your house is like a real house.  Since they are built on plots it can be a challenge sometimes to find a plot that is cheap in an area you like.  Houses are a bit expensive and require upkeep.  If you don't maintian your house it will eventually disappear.

Crafting is a very involved process.  Some people like it some people hate it.  It requires a lot of work to become a master crafter.  Unlike wow there is no single click to make items.  You have to work at a station and you do a process which involves numberous steps as you progress through the stages of creating the item.  This involves using tools and resources and dealing with complications.  As you level up the process becomes more complicated.  Also you don't level up your crafting by making items you want to sell you make it by doing work orders for city task masters.  Think of these as very simple quests.  Make me 3 horse shoes.  You make 3 horseshoes and you get xp and a reward depending on the quality of the horseshoes.  The rewards are money, crafter tools, clothing, resources, supplies or even recipes.  Crafters also have quests although their could be a lot more but you can learn some unique recipes.  Also there are regional recipes that take faction and questing to learn.  Anyway I could go on but there is a lot too it.  As I said some people think it is great others think it is a tedious bore.  The biggest difference is it takes about the same time to lvl crafting as adventuring and like adventuring work order pay for themselves and make money.  So you can truely play the game as a pure crafter and have a good time if you like the crafting system.  Crafting can also make a lot of things.  I heard that there were over 500k items that can be crafted.

You probably just want to wait a couple months till GU6 is out.

Hard to say if you would like this if you are pretty happy with wow.  This game is not very wow like in my opinion.  Definitely not as polished or bug free.  Can be irritating running into quests that don't work properly or other types of somewhat minor issues.  Most of the huge issues seem to be gone but there are still little ones in abundance.   It is easy to pick VG apart if you want to focus on bugs.  Most however are frustrating from time to time and can be worked around.  That said VG has become fun and enjoyable.

That aside VG seems to have two advancement paths.  There is a strong solo game where you can do solo quests and progress quite well.  This works sell and is fun.  There is also a much stronger group element then wow where you can explore some really amazing dungeons but not like the ones in wow that tend to be rather scripted and linear.  These tend to be larger and deeper with a variety of quests but far less directed feeling.  On the negative side it is far easier to be lost in vanguard dungeons and not sure what to do.  You kinda gotta enjoy just working through them and generally exploring.  They feel quite different then wow.  Some people might like it some might not.

And as you have read VG Crafting and Diplomacy are pretty much separate games and there isn't an analog in wow.

VG really doesn't have much in the way of PvP.  There is a PvP server but really it is nothing like wow with reguard to pvp.  VG is really a PvE game.

Raid content in VG is far less then in wow and while the current