Updated the number of classes we are recruiting.

And for those that were asking, we are an Order of Alurad guild.

Self removed

More of the same...

I was really hoping that they would do something to the mechanics. I was really hoping that they would give me a new activity, a new side of the game to play...not the same activity with different goals. That is why I didn't buy Burning Crusade, and this article simply reaffirms my decision.

When I quit WoW, I didn't quit because there wasn't enough to do. I quit because I was tired of the mechanics and gameplay. Blizzard will need to do something more for them to get my buisness back.

Final details about Blades of Ire's launch has been decided. We will be forming on a Realm vs. Realm PvP server, Thestra faction.

Recruitment will officially open during the 3 day head start, and will be open to all classes. More detail about class specific spots will be available as we close in on our target size.

If you like PvP.
If you like Raiding.
http://www.bladesofire.nexgencommunity.com

Originally posted by KombatJesus

EQ broke your cherry and you aren't going to get it back. 

QFT

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by Vengeful

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by MrVicchio
Since the Beta is "open" now and the NDA lifted, and I am sure this has been addressed before, but I am at work, brief search time, and 20 min to type this up so please, don't thrash me if you cannot/won't answer the question.

Is the gameplay in V:SOH really "hard and complex" as the Vanguard fans claim, often deriding WoW players as incapable or unable to appreciate "hard" and just seek easy gameplay.  I think that's a bit unfair, my wife and I seek time well spent having fun...

So anyway, is the "challenge" really hard, or is it more like "time sinks" and time investment challenges?

I appreciate your answers.

Time sinks and tedium is about all i had seen before constant crashes and reboots.

  Nothing that challenges your mind, problem solving skills, or anything like that.

Group content starting at level 10 changes that.

Don't know what you mean by time sinks though. Most starting areas have a great flow until level 10ish and always lead to one another (so you can't mean traveling by saying time sinks) and the XP curve is enough so that you start outleveling your quests if you don't stay on them so you can't mean that you have to waste time grinding (not doing anything important) as being a time sink.

And what is tedious? Be more specific. I've gone through about 5 starting areas and I have yet to feel like I've repeated the same actions over and over again for little or no gain. There is always some new place I need to go to, some new thing to do. What are you finding tedious.

You can't just make general comments like that without giving us a little more meat to your thoughts. Otherwise we'll just confuse your post as that of a troll.

 

Sadly, I didn’t get that far. The time sinks that were starting to add to my frustration were the lack of any directions, in the quest text, or in any feedback as to where things were. I do like to explore... but not necessarily as a noob while I’m trying to understand the basic game play. There were quite a few quests that gave no indication as to where this next person was.. Like I said. To me that’s a waste of time. I don’t know this area, I have only been here about 10 minutes.. Basically it was to early to be getting lost in the game with no direction. Sure, maybe an epic (Not the MMO meaning) quest that is multi legged and crosses continents, ill expect to get lost. and need to explore. But not to find my trainer. 

All of this was only compounded by the poor performance of the client engine, and then the crashing and rebooting (No Aniti-critics’, not server reboots)

My pc, run oblivion, and eq2 , and unreal and doom 3 well, so its not that my machine is "Not up to snuff". Its the client code, or shader coding. I meet or exceeded minimum and required speciation’s.(Depending on what machine I use) Its simply buggy, badly coded (Hence needing a MONSTER machine to handle it) and not tested on any sort of range of PC components.

 

Don't get too heartbroken then. A great many quests (as we speak) are getting locations added to their quest log so that you'll have a little marker to show you were to go....And performance is constantly being improved. =P

If you were instead saying that the game had time sinks like Rez timers or were tedious because combat involved repeating one attack over and over again with no periodic reactionary abilities....then I would just pass by and say, that sir, is your opinion and you're entitled to it and I would perhaps share my own.

But to say a game has timesinks and is tedius based on non-permanent features (Buggs, missing content) is a little unfair, don't you think? Lets not be blind haters here.

Originally posted by MrVicchio
Well, I played EQI back before any of the expansions through the third one then I left for greener pastures.  That being I do believe it was AO or DAoC, getting old, can't remember, ended up in DAoC cause AO was so terrible at launch, moved on from there to... back to AO with my wife waiting on EQII cause I thought WoW looked like a kiddie game that would be a passing fad (yeah.. shuush I was wrong) and than settled nicely into WoW for now.  Can't wait for Mid Feburary when TBC becomes playable (yes I am getting it on Tuesday for me and the wife).  Tried SWG and various other MMO's inbetween but none really held me until WoW.  One month after launch.  CoH was one we played for 2-3 months but lost interest because it was just... so stale after the first 10-12 levels... I'd often fall asleep in missions.


Vanguard holds interest for me because I loved EQI, but I have done the artificial pain passing for "challenge" when it was new and the only way anyone knew how to do it.  Maybe I am lazy now, or just cynical, but artificial time sinks like extended travel, hell levels in XP (they may or may not be in V:SOH but knowing Brad.... )  and corpse runs, there has to be a compelling reason for me to drop $$ for such.

And the main reason I am so interested and even bothering to post here is to see if picking up V:SoH on launch would be even remotely worth the money.   So far I am not getting that warm fuzzy.  MMO's almost without fail have poor launches, and take 30-90 days to stabalize.  I don't care about being "the first" I care about my time and money not being wasted on a Beta product for pay.   I'd say there is even money V:SoH is Beta for Pay on launch day.

The death penalty in Vanguard isn't as bad as it is in EQ. You don't have to make a CR if you don't want to, so if you're worried about CR timesinks, you shouldn't.

In regards to travel time, you won't be doing a whole lot of it...the way the continents are layed out you will only be moving one or two zones over (not that far) to find your next little outpost with quests for your level. You have a Recall spell that will send you to your bind point, so if you need to train you are really only making one trip....

The only time travel is really long is when you are simply picking up and completely relocating, which you won't be doing very often. But yes.... The Death penalty is tougher than WoW (But I'd say standard for most MMOs) and travel is longer (But isn't an issue unless you choose to constantly move around).

The challenge is really in what you are doing. It is in what you need to do to be successful. In WoW there isn't a huge disparity between crappy players (yet functional) and players who know their class well. In Vanguard there is....simply because players that really know their class in vanguard can do so much more (in terms of speed killing, multiple pulls, etc.)

In WoW what seperates a good player from a bad is being able to perform a primary job while taking full advantage of their situational abilities and are low maintainence.

In Vanguard, a good player is seperated by a bad by being able to perform their primary job, take advantage of their situational abilities, are low maintainence, set up weaknesses for their allies in an intuitive manner, use reactive combat elements, and assist other classes by using abilities that allows them to perform their primary job to a greater degree.

Originally posted by Raztor

Originally posted by Vengeful

In WoW tanking boiled down to

1) Pull
2) Taunt
3) Sunder Armor
4) Sunder Armor
5) Sunder Armor
6) Sunder Armor
7) Sunder Armor
8) Repeat Heroic Strike

Vanguard is much more difficult to master than Warcraft (though I'm not blind enough to say Vanguard is the most difficult). But I will say that if you think WoW is as difficult or more so than Vanguard.......I'm not sure we can continue this conversation.

That is true if you are fighting in MC. Saying that Vanguard is more difficult than WoW in terms of tanking is just not true. In fact some fights, ie C'thun, Twin Emps don't use the "normal" tanking strategies you mentioned above, and with many classes having different skills to help tanking in BC, ie hunters being able to "add" aggro to a tank on a pull rather than themselfs, or paladins having a "taunt" ability will make things even more interesting. Also rogues and druids have finishing abilities.

In the end it all boils down to pressing buttons in a different combination for both games. There's little difference, in tanking anyway.

I think we're talking past eachother here.

1) Was I talking Tanking strategies? No, nor was I talking raiding in general. The fact that you don't see more difficult tanking in WoW until endgame should say a bit about the comparison in difficulty. Because VG tanking is what I described from your first group encounter, and it only gets tougher from then on out when you involve interesting encounter scripts and so on and so forth.

2) We are talking about tanking in general, not particularly how other classes fit in. But if you want to involve that...Light fighters have an ability that blocks one attack from an ally and increases their hate. Bloodmages have the ability to split damage between themselves and their tank. You see...we aren't talking about repetoir, we are talking about difficulty in execution and challenge. In general, in Vanguard you have more to do to be as effective. There are more concerns.

3) You say Druids and Rogues have finishing attacks. Druids only get one, their Instant heal off of a HoT if they spec to it. Rogues get Combo Points. So out of the 8 classes in WoW, 1/8 truely has finishing moves built into their class....and a handful can spec to have one. In Vanguard....all classes have finishing moves and being able to use them efficiently and effectively is a part of the game.

Yes, you can say it boils down to pushing buttons. But then again, so can using using an elevator and flying a plane. It's just pushing buttons, right?

The difference is the importance of pushing those buttons, what the adverse affect of pushing those buttons incorrectly is, how much room for error there is, and how much control the person has over the percentage of error. In that sense....no....it doesn't just boil down to pushing buttons.

Originally posted by Mrbloodworth

Originally posted by MrVicchio
Since the Beta is "open" now and the NDA lifted, and I am sure this has been addressed before, but I am at work, brief search time, and 20 min to type this up so please, don't thrash me if you cannot/won't answer the question.

Is the gameplay in V:SOH really "hard and complex" as the Vanguard fans claim, often deriding WoW players as incapable or unable to appreciate "hard" and just seek easy gameplay.  I think that's a bit unfair, my wife and I seek time well spent having fun...

So anyway, is the "challenge" really hard, or is it more like "time sinks" and time investment challenges?

I appreciate your answers.

Time sinks and tedium is about all i had seen before constant crashes and reboots.

  Nothing that challenges your mind, problem solving skills, or anything like that.

Group content starting at level 10 changes that.

Don't know what you mean by time sinks though. Most starting areas have a great flow until level 10ish and always lead to one another (so you can't mean traveling by saying time sinks) and the XP curve is enough so that you start outleveling your quests if you don't stay on them so you can't mean that you have to waste time grinding (not doing anything important) as being a time sink.

And what is tedious? Be more specific. I've gone through about 5 starting areas and I have yet to feel like I've repeated the same actions over and over again for little or no gain. There is always some new place I need to go to, some new thing to do. What are you finding tedious.

You can't just make general comments like that without giving us a little more meat to your thoughts. Otherwise we'll just confuse your post as that of a troll.

Originally posted by godpuppet

Originally posted by PB&J
Good grief, I don't want to copy and paste the entire web site here. I gave a couple of examples of classes that I know. If you want more information go look for yourself. You were wrong, get over it.

Actually, I was curious. Couldnt find any info on the webby.

Monks also pick fighting styles. Necros choose between Skeleton, Wraith, Lich form.

This is in addition to an Alternate Advancement system which will be patched into the game within the first months. (Hopefully)

Originally posted by MrVicchio
WoW has more than Taunt.

Tank goes in lays down 5 Sunders, which lower the targets armor and makes them really mad.   Along with Taunt there is also Challenging Shout, which is an AoE like Taunt (and can break stealth from targets).

So right there you show a fundamental lack of understanding of WoW's combat.

And there are finishing moves and abilities, of sorts.  Execute for warriors, which in boss fights is saved for the final 10% of a fight.   Fire Mages can learn a talent that increases substantially the damage they do against enemies with 20% or less health... and other classes and talent spec's I do believe have similiar abilities.

Granted, these are not straight up "finishing" moves, it's more subtle but the effect is none the less equatable.

WoW's combat is simplistic on the front, just mash the right buttons in the right order and call it a day, scripted fights against bosses that often discourage finding alternative methods to defeat.   I won't argue this, but to maximize your abilities and play your class to it's fullest both solo and in a group setting requires an understanding of what does what and how.

You missed the point. I didn't say that WoW only has taunt, I was comparing two abilities that are nearly compatable (Target, Execute, Aggro Snap) and describing how WoW's version of the Aggro Snap Ability (Taunt) requires less thought than VG:SoH's aggro snap (Rescues).

The reason is that all you need to know for a WoW Taunt to be effective is that you lost aggro. In VG, you also need to know who pulled aggro and on top of that must decide between your Rescues which have different cooldowns, effects, and duration of Aggro snap.

If you want to talk about aggro building in particular: WoW Tank has Taunt (Cooldown) and Sunders (Spam, build to 5) and dps (speaking about a protection warrior in defensive stance). In VG a Paladin (speaking from knowledge because it's the only tank I've played) Has a Ranged Taunt (uses Mana), Shield Assault (Spamable, +Aggro), a Free Aggro ability (No global cooldown, uses Endurance), a Hate over Time ability, Damage Rescue (Aggro Snap, High Damage), Healing Rescue (Aggro Snap, Heal Ally), Debuff Rescue (Aggro Snap, Debuff Enemey), and DPS.

And most importantly...you need to use most the the Paladin's arsenal all of the time to hold aggro well.

In WoW tanking boiled down to

1) Pull
2) Taunt
3) Sunder Armor
4) Sunder Armor
5) Sunder Armor
6) Sunder Armor
7) Sunder Armor
8) Repeat Heroic Strike

With situational differences and other abilities peppered in.

VG Paladin

1) Smite (Pull)
2) Taunt
3) Guardians Assault

After that you try to maximize your DPS while using these when they are up. Use Finishers if they are up and you have the resources.

Sounds similar? It is. But In VG, this isn't enough to hold aggro. If that's all you do, you'll hold aggro for most of the fight unless you really don't let your DPS do anything. In 80% of the fights you WILL loose aggro at some point (More so at higher levels), and you have to be on your toes to catch it, figure out who pulled, and rescue them (on top of choosing what rescue is best for the situation). THAT is the hard part about VG tanking. All you need to do in WoW is the above and if your mob turns away from you, you hit Taunt....no target switching. No guess work, no responding to other stimuli. It's like Whack-a-mole. The Sheer mechanics of the Vanguard Rescue and the Warcraft Taunt makes Vanguard Rescues more difficult to use solely on the virtue of the number of thought processes involved. Not to mention how often they are necissary.

And for your information, most VG tanks (to my understanding) have a huge attack they can use when a mob is low on HP. That isn't a finishing move. A Finishing move is an attack that you can only complete after you meet a certain number of prerequisites or hudles are met.

In Vanguard, Finishers are available and usable After a Crit or After a Crit on a specific damage type. (Previously they were apart of chains. I.E. Opener => Bridge => Finisher). WoW really has nothing like this, most of it's abilities are entirely Pro-active. You can use them whenever you want and are a part of your normal repetoir. There may be attacks in Warcraft that make more sense when executed after another attack....but VG has that too...plus finishing moves.

Vanguard is much more difficult to master than Warcraft (though I'm not blind enough to say Vanguard is the most difficult). But I will say that if you think WoW is as difficult or more so than Vanguard.......I'm not sure we can continue this conversation.

Originally posted by -aLpHa-

Originally posted by Vengeful

I'll explain it this way.

Vanguard combat is easy to learn but harder to master. It isn't any more difficult to start playing Vanguard as it is to start playing WoW. Infact, the basics of the combat is very similar between WoW and Vanguard. The difference is that Vanguard's combat has multiple layers to it that WoW's combat doesn't. Some players will be satisfied to ignore those additional layers but they will never be and can never be as good or as effective as those that take all aspects of combat into consideration.

A few examples:

1. Aggro generation
   • A tank will be able to hold aggro by spamming his taunt abilities, but the DPS in his group will be required to watch their aggro generation to avoid pulling it so that they don't die.
   • A skilled tank will be able to keep aggro no matter what (through rescues), the DPS will be able to chain nuke and not get hit. Being able to do this is MUCH more difficult because it requires split second decision making and reflexes to catch bouncing aggro with a rescue. As a side effect of being able to perform these sorts of difficult manuvers, combat and XP gain usually picks up.
   • Aggro bounces alot in Vanguard, which makes being able to judge your own aggro generation quite important and more difficult to manage.
2. Damage
   • A player will be able to damage their opponant.
   • A skilled player will be able to time their attacks in coordination with their allies to achieve the maximum bonuses from Weaknesses. This is much more difficult as it requires great communication and coordination on the groups part and knowledge of what classes use which weakness you can add and when (round abouts) a certain class may put an weakness on the mob you are fighting.
   • Finishers which are only available on crits may be often passed by simply because a player is unable to manage their resources properly. The added difficulty that finishers is represented by the players efficiency. A player can get by with only using finisher once in a blue moon, it is much more difficult to master how and when finishers can be used and it is more difficult to manage your resources around them.

I dont see a difference between WoW and Vanguard oO. The above is exactly the same in WoW.

Untrue.

Does WoW have Crit finishers? No
Does WoW have Finishers at all? No
Does WoW have a weakness system that creates implied group chains? No

WoW has an ability called Taunt that targets a particular mob and locks aggro for so many seconds. Straightforward and easy to use.
Vanguard has abilities called "Rescues" that target party members and locks mobs targeting that party member for so many attacks or seconds. More difficult to use as you need to not only understand that a mob has switched aggro but who has pulled aggro.

If you don't understand these differences (and they are but a few) then you either haven't played VG, haven't played WoW or both.

I'll explain it this way.

Vanguard combat is easy to learn but harder to master. It isn't any more difficult to start playing Vanguard as it is to start playing WoW. Infact, the basics of the combat is very similar between WoW and Vanguard. The difference is that Vanguard's combat has multiple layers to it that WoW's combat doesn't. Some players will be satisfied to ignore those additional layers but they will never be and can never be as good or as effective as those that take all aspects of combat into consideration.

A few examples:

1. Aggro generation
   • A tank will be able to hold aggro by spamming his taunt abilities, but the DPS in his group will be required to watch their aggro generation to avoid pulling it so that they don't die.
   • A skilled tank will be able to keep aggro no matter what (through rescues), the DPS will be able to chain nuke and not get hit. Being able to do this is MUCH more difficult because it requires split second decision making and reflexes to catch bouncing aggro with a rescue. As a side effect of being able to perform these sorts of difficult manuvers, combat and XP gain usually picks up.
   • Aggro bounces alot in Vanguard, which makes being able to judge your own aggro generation quite important and more difficult to manage.
2. Damage
   • A player will be able to damage their opponant.
   • A skilled player will be able to time their attacks in coordination with their allies to achieve the maximum bonuses from Weaknesses. This is much more difficult as it requires great communication and coordination on the groups part and knowledge of what classes use which weakness you can add and when (round abouts) a certain class may put an weakness on the mob you are fighting.
   • Finishers which are only available on crits may be often passed by simply because a player is unable to manage their resources properly. The added difficulty that finishers is represented by the players efficiency. A player can get by with only using finisher once in a blue moon, it is much more difficult to master how and when finishers can be used and it is more difficult to manage your resources around them.

I'm beginning to see a patern. The people who dislike new MMOs often have a 5 or mor MMOs under their belts. To me that seems like excesive jumping around considering the types of games that MMOs are. Could it simply be that those types of people (the ones that have 5 or more MMOs "under their belt") are just simply jaded or simply aren't fans of MMOs in general?

MMOs by definition involve comittment. They aren't like console games or other single player games where you reach the end and are finished with them. But it seems to me that there is a subsection of the MMO community that becomes tired of MMOs rather quickly, and that these players have exponentially growing expections of the industry and are thusly exponentially unimpressed by each succeeding MMO they try on.

It think it might be more telling if people, when they give their "Qualifications" for why we should believe them, list their subcription length and days played. I'll start.

CoH- 6 Months subscribed, roughly 30 days played.
WoW- 1.5 Years played over 100 days played
CoV- 1 Month subscribed, about 20 hours played
DDO- 1 Month Subscribed about 1 day played
DAoC- Free Trial, about 15 minutes
EQII- 1 Month Subscription, about 15 hours played
3 month hiatus from MMOs
VG:SOH 4 month Beta, about 10 days played

There you go. Obviously I spent some time with my first MMO, CoH and then played WoW for three times that length. Skipped around a bit trying to find a game that I could commit to for longer than I had WoW. I knew within the first month of WoW that it would have trouble keeping me after about a year. I knew when I tried CoV, DDO, and EQII that I wasn't impressed and wouldn't renew after the first month.

And now...given my "Qualifications"...

Vanguard is deep enough to at least keep me interested for a year, possibly two. The combat is familiar to me, but more involved than the other games I have played. There are more dungeons than I could possibly experience with one character...I haven't even started doing anything on Thestra/Kojan.....

VG is a great game. Fix the performance and stability issues and the more detrimental bugs and I won't have to worry about new MMOs coming out for quite a while. And by then, I'll probably be finished with the Fantasy setting =P

Originally posted by MX13

Originally posted by stormphoenix
I would just like to say that this game is not complex. I just laugh when I read threads that say this game is "complex" and WOW is "simple". Really? They are both simple.

If you want a "complex" MMO then right now I think EVE online holds that title, because the learning curve there is steep. Vanguard doesn't do anything "complex".


So far I tried the tweaks and I'm running pretty decent fps except when I'm in the cities.

The graphics are great, but the characters look and animations don't really do it for me. The Raki look particulary awkward. While the other races with animalistic features look like humans with new skins and animal heads plopped on top of their shoulders.

The music I adore.

There's just something missing that I can't put a name to. I just don't have that excitment and eagerness to click the vanguard icon on my desktop. Why is that?

I will give it a few more weeks, but I'm still siting on the fence.

This game become VERY complex as you advance. The start is quite simple, but as you levle you not only gain Abilities, you gain stances, Counters, Sympathys, and start building your skills. Once you get into the teens you'll begin to see it. In the 20's, if you don't know your template, you will die aesily.

For example, I (a DK) and a Bard friend were doing a Dungeon, when a group of 4 including a DK my level came up from behind us. They went to the next group of Mobs and got owned. They hung around, probably to watch us get owned, and watched us take out the same Mobs. The DK asked me how we did it, and I replied we knew our Classes and Templates. He got angry and actually said we must be exploiting.

As you advance, the game takes on deeper mechanics.

I agree. The game becomes increasingly more complex as you get higher. It stops being about simply doing your primary job and managing your resources. You have to worry about weaknesses (Setting them up for your team and exploiting them when available), many classes have to juggle resources, timing rescues and intercepts, make decisions about finishers, defensive manuvers, eventually sympathetics.

Give it a couple more weeks, try to read up on weaknesses (they really do make you change your opinion of group combat). Solo gameplay, yeah... it is pretty straight forward, but once you group up there are so many more things you can accomplish.

We've known the OVF was closing before release for a really really long time. Like...years long. And personally...I've seen official boards. Can't stand them. Look at WoW and EQ1. Those are discussion boards those are bitch and whine boards. They are troll boards. And usually the community managers are powerless to stop it.

/shrug

It's an interesting move, but not something I would call a bad move. The devs that are focusing on a particular class or sphere or whatever will visit the affiliate sites and make announcements through them. All the affiliate sites will be listed from the Vanguard page, it'll fuction in much the same way, only Affiliate sites don't have to worry about being fired for being too harsh on trolls and flames.

Prior to Beta 5 I grouped almost exclusively, and I would only solo about 15 minutes while finding a group for what I wanted to do. The Door bug is annoying, I agree...and the stability makes grouping difficult. But yeah....it's really hard right now.

Though I trust that they will be able to fix it.

Originally posted by Anofalye

I could do the reverse.

 

What is wrong with YOU guys?  All of a sudden, suddenly talking a LOT, and a LOT, and a LOT.   Where you here 1 month ago?  2 months ago?  3 months ago?  Just NOW?  Before release?  All newcomers?  Most peoples who complains, they are peoples I see.  You?  It is the first time I read a post from you and I think I qualify as "someone who as been around" and as "a member of the local community".  Are you qualifying as a member of this community?  If not, you are welcome to join us...but that isn't your objective.

 

Usually Vanguard is about 5% of the thread.  NOW it is almost 50%!  Well duh, something is going on!  And something DIRTY, smelling bad...very bad.

 

Just before release.  Some of you might be with Sigil or SoE, but most of you are personnally trying to advance YOUR agenda, which is getting non-raiders playing a game where raiding is enforced.  Otherwise you wouldn't be caring.  And strangely enought, you ALL keep talking about TECHNICAL issues, and it is obviously well orchastrated and well prepared, Sigil work with you and prepare the arguments to counter and everything.  See the Mort thingy in doubts.  How strange that suddenly, a 3rd party program make a sucky game on technical levels been good?  I mean, non-Sigil staff?  Err, that is a LOT of coincidences...

 

Vanguard lack a LOT gameplay-wise for non-raiders.  Go ahead, promote your agenda all you want.  I am immune to it, I didn't play a character for 60 levels before realizing this suckiness.  So you want to be shining in a game where peoples lack because they don't raid?  Your problem, not mine, but I will make sure that non-raiders know better than to believe in Sigil, blindly.  No thanks, never again.