Key given.

Originally posted by Jjaybrown
Alright, I went down there a while ago and asked for a box, guy said okay, gave me a box and I left with a smile on my face. Came home and followed the directions. I logged in with my existing account that I used for every SOE game, including Vanguard beta, and selected activate, than consume key, than logged in and finally got;

Congratulations!

You've successfully registered for Vanguard beta and consumed a Vanguard beta key.

It never asked me to enter my account key that came on the card. Should I be worried? Or is this how it works? It only said what I wrote, + blah, blah, download beta here.

Any Ideas?

See the numerous other posts about this on the vanguard official forums and here. There is a fix.

As for people that live in other countries where this game is not coming out retail on the 30th. Just buy it online through SOE. While you won't get a physical box, you will still be able to play on the 30th when it goes live, at least.

Originally posted by Ethanael
Never had a problem with them before, but I'll be sure to check these new animations out. Thanks for the update!

Before this patch the animations in this game were a joke. Not only were there not that many, but they also just looked like crap. With this new patch they all feel very more fluid, there is much more movement and action, and they all have much better particle effects.

This latest 1/19 patch is amazing. They have replaced all the poor combat animations with /very/ good animations. Instead of that single lowsy bow animation, now all the bow attacks have their own neat realistic animation. Same goes with all other combat abilities. The game is /much/ better now. To anyone that was turned off because of the lacking animations, I would suggest giving it a try.

http://forums.vanguardsoh.com/showthread.php?t=105037

See that. I had the same issue and that helped out.

Applying the pre-order/beta box key from gamestop/ebgames will give you beta access, and the 3 day headstart access. Once the game comes out on the 30th you have to go back to gamestop/ebgames, pay them the rest of the money, and then apply the full retail game key to your account (and add credit card info) to continue playing.

Originally posted by swede2
Well its simple if your not using the ability's than your not seeing them , am not going to argue with you guys i like them you dont get over it and no am not really much of a beta tester so i dont play alot ,just wanted to see how it ran on my system and check it out . ive still got a unused closed beta key to Burning crusade from 4 months ago lol . Hey but i do have 20 of those friend keys with my  pre-order and i would sure give them to anyone who wants one after vanguard is released

You still fail to explain how using abilities or how 'playing your class right' somehow automagically makes the single bow attack animation better. The bow special abilities do not effect the bow attack animation -at all-. To say that they do is a lie.

I would also reccomend going to your local gamestop and pick up one of those pre-order sets. They only require a payment of 5 bucks, but it gives you beta/the 3 days headstart to play. Then if you dont like the game simply don't go in and buy the full game.

Originally posted by grape
What I mean about animations, is that I am sick of seeing 'The Ranger" hold something that looks like a stick, fire another stick at a mob. I do enjoy seeing the arrow being taken from the quiver. Seeing the bow string pull back and the fly of the arrow in a natural arch. I Think GW captured this nicely.

I played EQ2 a bit, and the animations there for Ranger had my head scratching. It literly looked like the Ranger held a pole that shot smaller poles, plus it had a Benny Hill style of combat running that made it difficult to enjoy.

It's good to hear you can make your own arrows. There's nothing worse than shooting your last arrow and telling the group you are now useless.

So as a ranger you can be doing most of your damage from ranged then? I remember in EQ1 archery was just for pulling.

As to Bards.
Has anyone played them?

Your character does not take an arrow from the quiver, nor does he place an arrow in the bow, nor does the arrow even fly in a nice ark. He just quick plucks the string on the bow and thats it. Yes, as a ranger you should be able to get an equal level mob killed/down to about 1/4 HP before he gets to you. Or you can simply use the runspeed debuffs on said mob and kite them.

Originally posted by swede2
The animations are awesome and yes playing your class the way you should adds alot to them, sorry you dont like them, shooting a bow is shooting a bow what do you want i like realistic myself .

Sorry, but when shooting a bow you don't simply quick move your hand towards the bow and quick pluck it back. It just doesnt work like that. In fact, it doesnt even look like that at all. So if that is your definition of realistic, do you like live in the game or something? The animation is fine for a game that is in alpha/beta stages, but this game goes retail in less then 2 weeks.

And I still fail to see how 'playing your class correctly' somehow automagically makes the animations better. The single bow animation remains the same regardless of how you chain your attacks.

Originally posted by swede2

I play a Ranger , arrows are 10 copper for, 50 i buy 400 at a time and that lasts quite awhile. when i first started i thought the animations where kinda poor. But that was before i learned to play the class and make an effort to use my chains which isnt easy they trigger fast and you have to be right on top of it to use them.  Once i started using the ability's that i was given it was great i love the class , reguires some skill to play right and the animations are some of the best most realistic sword play ive seen in a game

If you play whack a mole style without trying to use what was given you than yes it dosent look as good, but put a little effort into your class and its totally awesome am really impressed with sigil myself

And what exactly does knowing how to play your class have to do with the lacking combat animations? There are not any different animations for ANY of the special arrow abilities. Like deadly shot, split shot, etc.. They all look the same. What you said is like coming in to a meeting about how to expand a company's profits, and you start talking about how cool your shoes look.

So in respond to your edit - Yes, I would like to see something more then your character standing there like a statue and quickly plucking the string. Because currently, thats what it is. While running or standing still your character quick moves his hand towards the general direction of the bow, quick plucks the string, and thats that. While this may be something you find acceptable, I definatly do not for a MMO thats supposed to be the best of the best.

As someone who played a ranger I can definatly say the archery animation does not look 'great'. It is very lacking, as are most of the combat animations. Please do not debate this fact. Because it is simply a fact that the animations in the game in it's current state do not look very good.

Rangers can assemble their own arrows using items they find using the forage ability, but the current issue is, is that you have to copy and paste the long command to build the arrows - There is nothing in the assembly interface that allows you to easily craft your arrow. You have to do it manual with a few lines of code.

The special in-game features given in any game for pre-ordering/collectors edition aren't meant to be game-changing. They are only a small bonus to entice users to spend that god-awful amount of money for their game. Since you don't even like the special physical items you receive in the game, then there is no point spending 100 dollars just so you can have +1 endurance, and +1 speed on your horse. Not worth it.

Originally posted by anarchyart

Originally posted by Mchart 


Go kill 7 Welps to earn 10 bronze coins!! Joy!!

Scratch off innovation on missions/quests.

So you are writing off the entire quest system in Vanguard because of the very first kill quest? And after that you uninstalled the entire game based on one frigging quest in ONE of like 12 odd different races starting areas??

Scratch off legitimacy on this review.

Try digging a little deeper than the very surface, you might find what's inside is better than the books cover. And I'm glad you won't be playing Vanguard, truly. I would rather play with people who are slightly more patient and mature than that.

I did try more then the one quest I mentioned. Time and time again the only missions/quest that I received were the stereotypical kill X amount of creatures, return and receive Y. Thats it.

As for digging a little deeper, I refuse to dig deeper if the game does not hook me in the first place.

And my review is indeed legitimate, you just don't want it to be.  What I posted is my opinion on the game. It is what I felt when I played it. You can not minimize how I felt about the game. Either accept what I said or dont; DO NOT however try to minimize the situation.

As for being mature, at least I can admit to the fact that I did not try out certain features of the game, and I can understand other peoples opinions. I have yet to see you acknowledge that other people have the right to an opinion, however. As for patience, note my xfire profile, I don't really need to say much more.

I did not know that. However, that still does not change the fact that I like combat/adventuring. I dont like crafting, and from what I read about diplomacy.. it didnt sound fun to me at all.

Could it have been fun for me? Maybe. But as aforementioned there were more issues I had then that about this game.

Good question. My answer to that is that if I didn't feel like the quest/missions and combat where any different from any X number of MMO's i've played/playing, then i'm not going to try out a feature that is more secondary. I don't really know how to put it. Combat and core game mechanics are more important to me then some feature thats sort of added in.

Sadly, at least in my book, the diplomacy system is the only 'new' thing.

Actually, yes, I did un-install WoW for the same reason. While I can deal with the stereotypical kill X amount of creatures for Y reward, I had dealt with that for much longer then WoW has been out.

I did give vanguard a try. That is what my post details. I felt like i've allready played the game.

So I decided to give vanguard a try today. After downloading the 6GB installer, and then waiting for all 16.6GB of data to install... and then waiting for the game to scan the files - I finally got in. I was willing to deal with the massive install size since I knew it would pay off. ..

Let me start off by saying I have a top of the line system. E6600 OCed to 3.1ghz, 2GB of DDR2 800mhz running in dual-channel, nForce 680i, 2 7900GT's in SLI both overclocked an extra 100mhz on the core. Simply put, my system can easily handle anything put at it.

Vanguard looks good. However, it is still nothing compared to oblivion which my system can handle just fine. So let me just say - Vanguard needs some major performance improvements. It looks no better then oblivion yet runs worse on my high-end system - enough said. However, I could still live with the dips below 30FPS, since it was a MMORPG. However, please fix the performance issues sigil.

Now, lets take a quick step back to character creation. Character creation for this game has been dubbed 'Better then SWG', that may be true in some aspects, but overall definatly not. I was hoping for more of a selection of races then just your stereotypical elves/trolls/orks/human/wolf stuff. So I chose some sort of wolf character, and after trying very hard to make him look different from the stock generated character, he still didnt look very different.

Now time for class selection. Well - Class selection was.. Not different. Once again, your stereotypical selection of paladin/ranger/mage classes. Nothing new.

I still kept my mind open however, it was time to play the game - the real test. Well...

I login with my toon and BAM, i'm just auto-magically placed in some little town with a bunch of other noobs.

'Thats it?'

Well sadly, that was it. There was no intro movie, there was no in-game type intro, heck, there wasnt even some sort of dialog that came up to help me begin my journey. I was simply smacked right into the game-world with no introduction into the lore of the game, or even how to play it.

I still went on though, I was determined to make myself 'like' the game. Luckily, since I play many MMO's I was able to get a quick grip on the interface. The interface overall was nice, but there was one thing I couldn't help but not notice.

-It was almost exactly like the WoW interface-

Maybe thats why I thought it was easy to use.

So, not knowing really what to do, I glanced over and saw a monster. What was this monsters name? 'Insert random name here -Welp-'.

Great more welp killing. How unique. So I killed that welp, and I killed it hard. Yep, thats that. I press a button to auto attack with melee or my bow. Then spam my special attacks. Very innovative...

So combat was nothing new. Next thing I did was see if the quests were any good. Guess what? They are setup in the same manner as WoW's!!! Oh boy. Go kill 7 Welps to earn 10 bronze coins!! Joy!!

Scratch off innovation on missions/quests.


At this point I simply hit exit, and uninstalled all 17GB of data relating to vanguard. It is absolutely nothing new, and there are other games which do said things better.

Cool crafting system and player made housing? Well, SWG had a great setup for that, but unfortunatly the game was killed off. So right now vanguard is about the only game to have said stuff. But still - SWG did it better.

This game brings absolutely -nothing- to the MMO table. It is a been there done that experiance. While some people may enjoy reliving their EQ/WoW/SWG days in a slight theme change and graphics upgrade - I dont. I was expecting innovation, and thats something this game doesnt have. (Neither is it really fun to play, since I've whacked my fair share of whelps..)

Hopefully this post will inform people that were like myself so they don't have to waste time downloading and install 17GB of data. Or, in which case what I detailed sounds like fun, they will download and install 17GB.

While some people may say "You should have played past level 10!!! You don't experiance the game till then!!", I say to them - Then why should I bother dealing with levels 1-9.