Tabula Rasa may seem "revolutionary" and it might be... ON CONSOLES! but on the PC platform, it is below expected standards for an MMORPG.

Sorry, a change of setting isnt revolutionary, game play is. And quite frankly, the gameplay setup for Tabula Rasa is horribly. Its made for the two year old in everyone. Its dumbed down style of play may be great for consoles, and i see no problem with that, but on the PC, give me a break.

Warhammer also isnt revolutionary. Sorry but its a bunch of rehash, though upgraded from the old. The closest I can see anyone getting to revolutionary is with Age of Conan and not by much. It has AI that spawns armies that build towns, destroyable buildings, and live action. It hasnt been done that level before, which is nice.

on the client they told the beta testers things will be offline till sometime wednesday

The only resemblance it bears to world of warcraft as opposed to a general and commonly used features (example, hot bar, mailbox, wasd, ! mark), is that it has battle grounds (aka warzones) and imbalanced archetypes.

The rest is pretty much common. For example, there really are no quest, they are trials and all they do is unlock a memory. So you dont really do anything except pay the cost with fury points, and then click unlock memory. The mailboxes are mailboxes. Mailboxes look like mailboxes, its not a WoW thing.

If anything, the game is unreal tournament. The warzones are similar, the concept is similar, only difference is you pick your skills and use a hot bar, buy items and kill some more.

The game definately needs optimization, as it shouldnt be that much of a resource hog for what it is. I dont have any problems with my rig, but I see some taking 3 minutes just for their war zones to load, and by that time they are already dead.

Nice review though, however i disagree with the reasons for it looking like WoW, as wow has merely made popular designs that were already used before.

Ok, big read. Just a different perspective on a few things about Fury. Read for curiosity or brain food, feel free to disagree but think about the bigger picture if you do, and be nice about it.

FURY

First, one must ask themselves... what is Fury? Is it your normal run of the mill MMO? The answer is a simple yes and no. Fury is unreal tournament with an asian theme, a third person perspective, armor and skills with a hotbar. Think, World of Tournamentcraft. How is it different? Simple, its business model is quite interesting and it carries with it both the quick fix action and the depthy strategic placement of skills, points, and items. The best of both worlds.

Fury is a nice little project, that I hope succeeds, yet it seems to fall short on many levels as well. First being, the game feels more like a user mod from some unreal game rather than a nice full budget MMO. Second, there seems to be a lack of class and character balance in the game. The devs need to get someone who truely knows how to balance the game, because right now it is becoming worse.

It looks like quite a few have pre-ordered the game, however, from the way things look, the game might be worth purchasing for unlimited play, but purchasing and then paying monthly for "immortal status" seems purely retarded. They seem to be putting more of a focus on adding things like "player housing" for monthly subscribers than actually adding features into the game that would work towards the purchase once an play gamer.

The battle grounds are for the most part, melee favored and full of bad design (in my opinion). Take for example, Blood Bath, a free for all game where everyone is supposed to kill eachother. Only, if you are melee you have the upper hand, especially if you are one of the two favored archtypes. Add the fact that players team up with eachother and turn it into a team vs one person game destroys the whole point of the war zone to begin with. Some skills allow players to get out of the spawn point in order to kill others before the game begins. Finally, it requires no Int, its merely a button mashing gank fest. That may be enterataining to some, but sadly a few are miffed by it as well.

So then there are other war grounds right? right.  Elimination. Meaning 4v4. Also meaning, Pugs vs Premades. Also meaning, if you are not with a set up premade, the chances are you will be farmed for gold and fury. These actually require you to use your head a little bit, but not much unless you form a premade group and have strategies down. Even then, if you are seen as a caster type or healer, you will be targeted first. At this point, you will most likely go down in a matter of seconds, as the heal to dmg ratio is imbalanced. Again, its more of a gank fest, only once your dead you are dead unless you pop a rez.

So where does that leave us? any fun and exciting strategic gameplay... like capture the flag or what not? Yes. its called Vortex. Its pretty much a capture the flag, but instead your goal is to get 4 crystals. It was 8v8, then was moved to 12v12. Now back to 8v8.
So whats the problem? ... No one plays vortex. Why? well first off the rewards are not the best, and sadly most will choose rewards over "fun factor", it also puts casters and other types on some what of an equal level. These kinds of senarios can really add to the whole idea of defend and attack and cooperation with a large group. So why turn vortex into an elimination with crystals? beats me. They should have left it with 12v12 and offered better bonuses rather than turn it into a more premade friendly battle.

Well, now whats the next plan? any more warzones to play? well apparently there is a 32 v 32 siege zone planned, which is good because they need more options rather than support the mindless gankfest battle runs.

Having played both melee and caster type, I have seen that two things happen in these battle grounds. You kill or be killed. Because of imbalance, the Kill focused warzones become less fun. Thus goal oriented zones like Vortex are godsend as it works with every kind of build. Why then not encourage people to play it, why then not build more goal oriented games that let players choose how they wish to play, rather than force them into gank or be ganked senarios. Kill grinding is enteraining for only so long. For long term enjoyment, offering multipul challenges and ways to use ones vast skill setup are key. Something i as of yet do not see Auran focusing on.

So despite all that, the game is fun but it could be so much more. As of right now its a wait and see, yet so far there have been a series of bad design moves. It, in my opinion, is not worth anyones money as the game feels more like an amatuer project focused on a used and enhanced unreal tournament rpg like style of play.

A suggestion to the devs would be to make bots first and foremost. Offer the less skilled players the fun of playing against AI to practice their skills, because lets face it. Losing to real people is never fun. I win half the time, and lose half the time with my caster build, but win most of the time with a melee build. This isnt a QQ, but a fair assesment to help in pinpointing how to improve the game to make it worth the money and attract a wider audience. Bots, like in unreal tournament, make a huge difference. There do not have to be rewards for botting, but it can allow practice and fun to those not ready for confrontation.

Second, offer warzones that pit user vs AI and AI vs user. Imagine being part of a group and your goal is to retrieve an item, but there are 20 guards in the way. Bots. This allows a team to actually strategize and plan out taking them out to achieve a goal. This is needed. Unreal Tournament modes can easily be incorporated into Fury's style of play, since Fury is pretty much Unreal Tournament. The massive scale allows for users not to be overwelmed by cracked out premades, and gives a sense of choice making rather than zerging.

Third, options. The ability to choose not just maps when picking the war zones, but perhaps offering different modes. Example, ones that allow only weapon skills to be used, where others are focus only skills. Of course some of this is easier said than done, because at the moment, that would only make the Que lines longer, but it can easily be a longer term goal if the game population rises.

So with a final summary, the game has depth with skills and itemization, yet lacks in real options and balance. It needs a lot of polish, and needs to move from the semi-amatuerish level to a more professional build. Choose if you think its worth the money or not, but at the moment, in my opinion, its not. All these mistakes and rough start do not help the public image.

Good luck.

well crap, if they got rid of the team pvp server, then theres no point in playing. FFApvp server is the worst thing invented, since its just a murder fest. Team pvp actually gave you a REASON to kill. PvE is just grinding for loot.

Without pvp, theres no point in playing Vanguard in my opinion, as the enemy AI is merely "charge and attack".  Not to mention, I am guessing the classes are still imbalanced, which is another reason to avoid pvp.

again, apparently Digital Anvil was just looking for a publisher. Microsoft want to use it to support their xbox instead and bam the guys company and its assets dissapeared and were in microsoft control. Upset he leaves company. Fed up, he now works in film instead.

i also bought and played the game for awhile, but had to quite do the game really sucking.

Vanguard has A LOT of potential, but not the power to make it happen. It is only half a game, it is imbalanced, incomplete, and full of grind due to the lack of some quest at certain levels.  Items are still trying to be put in the game, and as a druid my character was forced to wear cloth that, incidentally was very short in supply in the game. Mosters dropped everything but casterfriendly gear.

The worst part of the game was the community. Its rotten. There are a few good people in a sea of douche bags. I am totally serious on how bad the community is and it is by far the worst I have ever seen in any MMORPG.

I had a talk with Brad (the guy behind vanguard) over one of the forums, he pretty much said it was regrettible because the fanboys were killing his game, scaring off new people who are seeing what its like. That they come into vanguard and find a bunch of elitist fanboys who want the game to be some exclusive special club, and everyone else needs to leave. This is why fanboys never help a cause, they only destroy it.

Brad also was hoping for user generated content at one point in the games history. If he allowed Vanguard to become an open sourced game, where anyone can contribute to it, then I think it might have a chance.  How would this be possible? simple, have a test server purely set up for user generated content. What is good gets patched into the main servers. It runs off the unreal engine, and that can be a modders paradise.

If this doesnt happen, I am affraid its RIP vanguard.

Originally posted by Nunez1212
Ahh, well do you know if there are any patche for english or not?

Originally posted by Nunez1212

I have played several different MMORPG's. I played the guild wars series for about 6 months, and than I got a little bored, so I decided to look for another one. I have not really found my calling yet.....I'm posting here in hope that someone will be able to help me find my dream game. I will describe what I'm kinda looking for in a game, and please tell me if you know of a game like this or even pretty close maybe...here are the features.

1. I would like it to have a good variety of monsters, but plz not so much grinding

2. Hopefully a good bit of quests to cut the grinding.

3. Cartoony, 2d graphics are fine to me.

4. Good community

5. Skills such as: fishing, mining perhaps.....I really would just love to be able to fish

6. I would really like it if you could own personal land or atleast your own house.

7. Fun relaxed atmosphere

8. Here's a big one now folks....I would like it to be free, or atleast have a private server somewhere or something. I cant really pay for a monthly subscription..

Thanks for your time...hopfully I will be able to find a good one :)

Originally posted by jesad

How I comprehended this...

In 1996, game designer Chris Roberts founded an all-new studio, Digital Anvil. Already renowned for his creation of the then-popular Wing Commander series, Roberts had grown restless after his employer, Origin Systems, grew in size. He told the press that Digital Anvil would be a return to the smaller studio system which he felt produced better games.

Dude got in, made a name for himself, and like so many others parleyed that (keeping the initial costs down by selling his own personal vision instead of the vision of Origin systems who would be expected to pay top dollar for R&D) into his own studio (probably in the exact hopes of what was to follow).

However, it wasn't until four years later that Starlancer (PC, Dreamcast), the first game to bear the Digital Anvil imprimatur, was released. Around the same time, the small shop was bought by one of the biggest companies around--Microsoft, which folded it into its internal Microsoft Game Studios system. Chris Roberts promptly exited the company, but would consult on several games in development.

He then built a piece of software that he could use as a portfolio for the rest of his intellectual property and upon approval sold the entire company lock, stock, and barrel to microsoft, got his money and got out as has been the industry standard since I can remember.

Microsoft's first move after buying Digital Anvil was to sell off two of its projects--Frontier Wars and Loose Cannon--to Ubisoft. It also took the previously PC-only Brute Force and turned it into an Xbox exclusive, released in 2003. That year also saw the release of the most acclaimed Digital Anvil game, Freelancer, for the PC.

Microsoft then went to work on getting a rebate for their initial investment by selling off intellectual properties that were either sub-standard or too costly to develop to other companies and developing some of the more portable properties in order to push their XBox division and releasing what they considered to be the appropriate game for the PC market.  Talk about disposable, the way it reads it's almost as if it couldn't have worked out any better than it did.

Now, it appears Brute Force will have the distinction of being Digital Anvil's last game. Today, Microsoft confirmed to GameSpot that it has shut down the shop and is organizing a "redeployment" of its staff to studios at Microsoft Game Studios headquarters.

Now that the initial purchase has been "cleaned" of all it's intellectual property the only thing left to do is clean it of all it's talented personell by intergrating them into the Microsoft family in places where they can be of most use.  I'm sure that the guys with skills and talent aren't complaining about that paycheck and as for those without, well they should have known better because this is business 101 happening right before your eyes.

"Microsoft Game Studios has undergone a redeploying of resources in its Austin, Texas-based Digital Anvil studio and will centralize the studio's resources in Redmond, Washington," the company said in a statement. "We are working closely with current Digital Anvil employees to place each team member in a position on the Microsoft Game Studios team in Redmond if they so choose. This redeployment of resources will be finalized on January 31, 2006."

And finally this is how they weed out the poor or uninspired who are not willing to uproot their lives to work for the beast (no offense to Microsoft because I mean the basic corporation when I say it).  In the totally Nazi way that most US businesses are run they do away with all Non-Essential employee's and cherry pick only the most dedicated of the best and brightest (who to most companies are the only truly essential employee's that exist) and keep on rolling.

If anyone should be held accountable for any percieved wrong-doing I would put that on Chris Roberts who (most likely) intentionally did what he did to get what he got and even then only if he intentionally led his employee's to believe otherwise.

Roberts returned to the United States in 1986. He soon found a job at Origin Systems, where he created Times of Lore, published in 1988. The game's interface had a strong influence on other Origin products such as the popular Ultima series. A similar game system was used in Roberts' next release for Origin, Bad Blood (1990). Wing Commander was published later in 1990 and was highly acclaimed. Wing Commander (and the franchise it spawned) soon became Origin's most successful product, eclipsing even the Ultima series. Roberts wasn't as heavily involved in the sequel Wing Commander II, which he only produced. He instead concentrated on Strike Commander. First shown to the public at Summer CES 1991, the project suffered from numerous delays and wasn't released until 1993. Roberts returned to Wing Commander soon after, devising the original concept for the spin-off Wing Commander: Privateer (which his brother, Erin Roberts, produced) and being more deeply involved in Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV. For these sequels, Roberts directed the live-action cinematic scenes.

Following the traditions of Origin Systems, Chris Roberts' residence at the outskirts of Austin, Texas was aptly named "Commander's Ranch", a reference to the Wing Commander series he created.

Digital Anvil

Roberts left Origin in 1996 and founded Digital Anvil along with Marten Reginald Davies EA National Sales Manager PC, Origin producer Tony Zurovec and his brother Erin Roberts. The fledgling studio set up shop in Austin and for several years worked quietly, inking a publishing deal with Microsoft in 1997.

Roberts had stated that he desired to produce films as well as games with Digital Anvil. The 1999 feature film release of Wing Commander directed by Roberts himself, starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and featuring visual effects from Digital Anvil failed to attract either critical praise or financial success.

Digital Anvil's first finished game was Starlancer, released to a somewhat lukewarm reception in 2000. Developed externally at Warthog, the game was produced by the Roberts brothers, and featured only some contributions by Digital Anvil. The company was acquired by Microsoft soon after, who sold two of Digital Anvil's projects to Ubi Soft. Roberts left the company after the acquisition, abandoning the director position of his extremely ambitious project Freelancer, even though he remained with the game in a consulting role for a while. The game was commonly regarded as vaporware due to its promised release date of 2001. The game was eventually released in 2003 with a markedly different feature set than the initial plans, but was received fairly favorably.

Point of No Return Entertainment/Ascendant Pictures

After leaving Digital Anvil, Roberts founded Point of No Return Entertainment, planning to produce films, television and games. However, no projects materialized from Point of No Return. Roberts founded Ascendant Pictures in 2002 and served as a producer for a number of major Hollywood productions including the 2004 adaptation of The Punisher, The Jacket and Lord of War.

Originally posted by n25philly

You can cry all you want, but if Microsoft own it they can do what ever they want with it.  There is nothing wrong with that.

Originally posted by xcessandryll

I have windows vista on a dual core with 3 GB ram and a Nvidia 8800 GTS, running like a charm. I can play all games without slowing down the computer.

Originally posted by Goldknyght

 

 

Good point. Xbox 360 does have its advantages. I don't really know what the hype is about the PS3 nor the 360. Only reason I like consoles VS. PCs is compatiblity. Now with PC's best graphics close to par with the consoles now its going to be harder for the PC market because you dont have to worry about installing drivers to play the next cool game that comes out. The PC industry needs to make a standard for there hardware because as the consoles become more powerful they can take PC's role in dominating the gaming market on the best graphics/visuals. Because for the best graphics card out at the moment i can purchase the 599.99 ps3 and have a working game machine where i dont have to worry about windows driver compatiblities. And have a blu-ray player. or get a xbox360 with a hd-dvd add on for 599.99 aswell and if i get the same set up for my PC at the moment im looking to spend 2,500+. By the time PS4 and xbox 720 come out PC gaming will all but be dying IMO because of these costs. I can place a keyboard on my consoles now and a mouse so the gaming industry is going to change soon to market consoles first.

Originally posted by mcharj11

I wouldn't bother getting another 8800 if the 9 series will be out soon.

Originally posted by Goldknyght

Originally posted by Kordesh
AoC on the PS3! Netting the game a a whopping 20 additional players. All I can say is I'm glad I was never interested in this. Lol PStriple.

theres no confirmation that AoC will be on PS3, even there web site say that AoC is only being developed for 360 and PC not PS3

Originally posted by mcharj11

Originally posted by Rabenwolf

Originally posted by mcharj11

Originally posted by Rabenwolf
over and over and over again I keep seeing this misinformation. No, the xbox360 does not out power the PS3 in terms of processing power. So many of you are saying "it can only be on the 360 cause nothing else can run it", and thats NOT true. Sorry but its not. The ps3 out powers the 360, and it is this reason games like MGS4 will appear on PS3. The 360 has better graphical power but over all power? no. So lets drop the bias here and admit the pros and cons of both consoles. Ps3 is by far the most powerful console on the market, the 360 has the best console gpu on the market. Nuff said.

Still I will be playing aoc on my PC. The way these games are meant to be played.

Only in the CPU department NOT in the GPU terms. The 360 does give better overall power than the PS3, all the PS3 has thats worth anything is it's CPU and Blu-Ray. The 360 has a far better GPU and memory system, it is far easier and faster to produce games on the 360 than PS3. Oh by the way MGS4 will be comming to the 360 and so will DMC4. There isn't a game the PS3 can play that the 360 can't.

LOL. Sorry to say bub, but you are wrong on all accounts. Do you usually talk out of your arse? You clearly have no idea about the differences between the PS3 and the 360, nor how the PS3 opporates. MGS4 is NOT coming out for the 360 btw champ. You should stop making sh*t up. Im no PS3 fanboy, but at least I have my facts straight.

""Moving on, I remind him of a comment he made last year comparing each of the three current consoles to "different kinds of dinner". Did he still think that was the case, now that all three are on the market? Nope. "They're more like a movie theatre metaphor", he says.

"The PS3 is like the theatre, it's a little bit high-priced but it has to be high quality as well. The 360 is a DVD, it still needs to be high quality but you need more variations, while the Wii is almost like a TV channel, because every game you have it with your family".

But like I said, MGS4 is aimed for the movie theatre, it's aimed for the PS3, so the game's scenario and graphics need this theatre-type hardware. It's when a producer has a game that can work on the 'DVD level' that a game will go multiplatform", he says. Sorry kids. Your "OMGMGS4360" banners will have to come out another day.

Since we've opened up this can of worms, I may as well get his thoughts on it. Why, I ask, do you think this rumour simply refuses to go away? "Because 360 owners want it on 360, obviously", he quips."

 -Hideo Kojima

Enjoy

Well you should go and do some research fanboi. The 360's GPU is far superior to the the PS3's, the PS3 has the equivilent to a GeForce 7800gtx series. Need i remind you that that type of card is or almost 2 years old, i should know i had two in my pc before getting an 8800. The 360 has an ATI Xenos which is a custom built card very similiar to the ATI HD2900XT which was recently released. The 360's GPU would benchmark the PS3's under the bloody table mate. The 360's memory and other componenets(not including CPU) are better and more efficient than what the PS3 has, fact. The Xbox's online service is far better than it's playstation counterpart aswell, it's tried and teasted and has a far bigger user base infact it's more than double the user base for PS3's online service. The only area the PS3 shine in is it's CPU i don't think i need to explain how much potential Cell has. It is difficult to code for though thats a fact, developer have been saying it for months. There aren't any games out that even utilise Dual-Core properly yet so what good is having 8 cores.

By the way it would be stupid in economic terms for kojima to not bring MGS4 to the 360, look at the amount of money he and his compnay would stand to make if they went multi-platmform. Sony has sold how many PS3's? around 1 million, MicroSoft has sold over 11 million 360's so there are more customers for Kojima on the 360. I think it was you that said that there wasn't enough room on Blu-Ray discs for MGS4, well thats probably bullshit consideering that a Blu-ray disc has a 50Gb capacity. DVD discs would probably not have enough room i agree but thats what multiple discs are for or they could utilise HD DVD on the 360.

Anyway my PC pisses all over the PS3.