All Posts by NovaKayne

Hey all of you PC gurus out there.

I put this system together last year

Thermaltake W0106RU 700W

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W

Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)

ASUS Striker II Extreme LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI DDR3 ATX Intel Motherboard

BFG Tech BFGE88512GTSE GeForce 8800GTS

I was looking to make some tweaks to this and was wondering where I could get the best bang for the buck.  Preferably in the $100-$200 range.

I was a part of JGC from 1997 when they first started to let people into beta.

The problem with the forumns  there is the same problem with most any forumns in any game.  They are dominated by the vocal minority of complainers. 

Now, first thing you need to understand about the JG community and JGC is the Boards were THE PLACE FOR IN-GAME CONTENT.  The game was loosley designed around player dereived and initiated conflict.  Not much for NPC or MOB to attack other than some absent minded AI bots.

Players took to the forumns and started shouting matches and story lines and political intrigue there.  This carried over into the game as vendetta's and backstabbing and allout wars between some player squads.

Some revel in this type of player drivin content.  The main issue was unless you had time to troll the boards and keep up with what was being posted, you really had no clue what to expect in game.  Pilots you thought were friendly one moment were KOS another.  Pilots you thought were KOS would end up being "friendly" and causing issues when you attacked on sight.

While quite intriguiging and fun to play it became tiresome for me and I found all of the drama was just not worth it in a game.  I did not want to come home from a stressfull day and become more stressed by going through the FLAME WARS as I called them.

That is why the community is so particularly obsessed with the boards and the old ways of JG.  I think there might be some let down for them when the game is released.  Either that or you just will NOT leave the protected areas unless you want to be involved with the drama that goes on.

I am hoping for what they are promising.  JGC with a better economy and less reliablitiy on Player driven conflict.

JGC was fun but, it got tedious at times with all of the player driven drama.  At times you just could not tell WTF was going on.

I enjoy Vanguard.  SOE is making great strides in cleaning up Brad's mess.  By GU5 this game should be where it was supposed to be at  launch.

It is not much different than most MMO's there are good points and bad points.  Some of the questing is fun and entertaining some of it is just get the damn thing so you can get the rewards type.  The biggest problem I see is there is a LOT of  content at the lower levels that is skipped due to few players being around for grouping.  While there is plenty to solo and lots of quests to do without grouping, you still miss this content and some backstory of what is going on in the world.  This tends to water down the whole experience into more of a level grind.

The good thing is, if you are interested you can generally go back to those areas at a much higher level and go through the quest lines to read the backstory.  While you will not gain xp you will at least see and read some interesting tidbits into what is going on in the world.  Diplomacy too brings in some of this backstory as well.  Although it and crafting just make my eyes bleed!

I have played just about all of the classes out there.  If you want to group alot I found the BARD to be the most group friendly and easiest class for Pick up Groups.  With a good Disciple or Cleric I have even tanked with my Bard up to level 24 currently.  Not the desired method but, the crowd control and pulling oiptions you get tends to lessen the multi-mob attacks and allow you to focus on one mob at a time.

If you want the solo aspect then I would suggest the Disciple or Cleric.  Good melee (although you will take time to chip through the mob) and the self heals is prettly kewl.  If you are solo alot I would suggest the Disciple mainly for the unique and interesting fighting style.  They are more fun than the cleric for solo, the clerics strenght is geared more towards groups with the buffs and melee.  Both classess are generally sought after for groups.

The Blood Mage used to be a good solo class(dunno if they still are) they have heals and casting speells.  Extremly squishy (cuz they are casters at heart).  One good thing is their heals depends on spell damage.  So you putr all of your resources (equipment and attrr) towards spell damage and you do better at healing.

The hardest classes to play (IMO) are the tank classes.  You need to have really good gear and to be fairly effective in groups you have to focus resources on holding aggro.  This tends to gimp you for soloing much.  I have not tried any since the latest revamp.  I just know tanking is harder in Vangurad for me  than any other MMO I have played.

Rangers, Necros, Mages, and Rogues make decent soloers but, they are squishy and if you miss more than once or twice on an attack it generally ends with you running for your life.  With the exception of the Necro all are sought after for their DPS.

Right now Vanguard seems to have most of the PC Population around some few areas that have multi tiered quests for decent sets of equipment.  While this is both good and bad it does tend to focus players on where to find groups easily.  The bqd part is there is a lot of content for the lower levels that is generally bypassed because of the "phat l00ts" being located in these areas. 

I will most likely give it a new try then as well.