To the OP,

I'm running two GTX 280's in SLI and was having some graphical issues related to textures after install as well.  Updating to the latest drivers completely fixed this for me though and I've noticed no issues at all since while going through the same areas as you (went to South Burb right out of the tutorial).  After sporadically playing during the closed beta, feeling very uninspired, and then dropping it completely for the last few months, I'm actually extremely impressed with the game since launch.

As with any MMO, I think the onus is probably on you to keep trying to make ripples in the pond by throwing more stones.  Yes, people are hurrying about and trying to level up like they do in every game.  I've still had no problem getting people to respond to me in Local and even help out with tasks that I wasn't sure I could tackle on my own.

If the setting and atmosphere doesn't work for you, then it just doesn't and that's cool. It's definitely a change of pace from swords and sorcery. I am excited about what seems like the closest thing to a Fallout MMO we're going to see anytime soon, so I'm sticking with it for sure.

I'm in the open beta and am not sold yet.  Is it just one mission zone after another or do you ever end up in the city where you can just hang out and wander around?  Is there any support for that?  Like in CoX there are the nightclubs and in WoW there are taverns and inns and so on.  Does CO end up offering any of that or is it just 100% action?

Originally posted by Kamandi777

This is my MMo where the mild mannered Kamandi becomes a destroyer of souls, a master of war, a PWNER OF NOOBS! 

Yeeeaaah.  Sorry, the internet tough guy griefer routine always leaves me thinking the person spewing it most likely actually this guy, this guy, or this guy.   Where's a link to that hilarious audio of those guys claiming to be able to shut down entire servers with their griefing antics?  The funniest part was how they were dead serious about it all too.  LOL

EDIT:  Oh wow, how did I forget this guy?

http://www.mmogamer.com/05/01/2009/from-gemstone-to-heroengine-simutronics-ceo-david-whatley-on-putting-the-mud-back-into-mmos

Interview with Simutronics' CEO and co-founder David Whatley about the engine and this MMO.

Is the saying 'I don't care what talking about me, just as long as they're still talking about me' hold true for Hero's Journey?

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/news/2008/12/YE8_vaporware

8. Hero's Journey

Duke Nukem had better watch his back. This graphical MMOG — made by Simutronics, the people behind cult fave MUDs like Gemstone IV and DragonRealms -- has been in the works for almost a decade. Hero's Journey's promise of an open game world that responds to player decisions earned raves at the gaming trade show E3. That is, it earned raves at E3 2005. The official FAQ claims that the game is "actively in production and does not have a set release date."

The hold-up seems to be that development focus has shifted from the game itself to its engine, HeroEngine, which Simutronics has licensed out. Bioware is using it to power its upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic.

As reader Kuro suggests, "If Old Republic gets released before Hero's Journey, that will probably be the final nail in the game's vaporware coffin."

Heh!

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/news/2008/12/YE8_vaporware

The idea of making a faction of the Bane a playable race is seriously solid gold and would change the fortunes of Tabula Rasa so much for the better I think.  NCSoft could use the same model Cryptic did with City of Villains, leaving the current game running as it is with continued slow but steady development while putting a full team behind creating the flipside of the coin to launch later.  Using that new development to also add other essential features (more robust and meaningful crafting, more career paths, etc.) to the game through the paid expansion would be good too.  Again, much the same as Cryptic did with City of Villains.  Tabula Rasa could still be a winner.

The game isn't perfect.  It doesn't include all the features that Funcom intended to launch it with.  It is heavily instanced, needs some reworking of the UI to make chat and emoting more convenient,  and requires a powerful gaming machine to really run well.  I recently upgraded and it has made all the difference in the world.

If you have a mid range PC, this game might frustrate you.  If you have a machine that can run Crysis well, then you might enjoy this game quite a lot if you don't fixate on the various features that weren't included in the launch.  That may actually be one of the reasons I am completely unphased by all that seems to have driven so many people into a frenzy here, because I don't really even know what a lot of those features were in the first place.

I suppose a lot of it might be a matter of personal taste as well.  For example, World of Warcraft is an absolutely fantastic game with an incredible array of content and features.  There is no arguing that.  Still, I've never been able to stay interested in it for long when I've tried it.  I think the cartoonish presentation puts me off for one thing.  I would say that Age of Conan looks light years better than World of Warcraft, but it doesn't come anywehre close to having the same number of features, itemization, or spectrum of content.

This is crazy.  I haven't seen this much vitriol and hate on a newly launched game since the Vanguard mess.

Have any of you that are leaping at every chance to slam Funcom and Age of Conan paused to catch your breath and reconsider how reasonable you're actually being?

Vanguard WAS a near total debacle.  Sigil was a completely mismanaged mess, utterly imploded, SOE swooped in to save the day and the game is actually a lot more playable now for their efforts.  They've done a great job with it.

I don't get why Age of Conan is getting the same kind of hate thrown at it though.  It's a pretty damn good game, in my opinion.  The Tortage experience was excellent.  I loved how they had a different perspective of the story depending on your overall archetype (warrior, cleric, rogue, mage).  The graphics are absolutely stunning and the combat system is a little different than I'm used to which is entertaining.

Is it a perfect game?  No.  Does it include every feature that Funcom hoped to launch with?  Again, no.  Was I disappointed to leave Tortage the first time and discover the voice acting stopped?  Yes, a little.  Am I still enjoying the game regardless?  Yes, without a doubt.  Do I believe Funcom will continue to develop the game and add as many of the things they hoped to pre-launch and numerous other things they've surely planned for later expansion/improvements?  Of course, what would lead me to believe otherwise?

Maybe I'm just getting a little older and more understanding of what these development companies are facing in the real world of business that they're operating in.  What is going on with WAR having to scale back cities and classes doesn't phase me in the slightest.  They're doing what they believe they need to do.  I think a lot of people just need to pause and look around and realize that this sort of thing has happened and will continue to happen with EVERY game. 

Even some of the most solid A-list games have had hard launches and growing pains at times.  Even mighty World of Warcraft had to scramble to deal with issues at launch.  City of Heroes has been such a work in progress since Day 1 that it is barely recognizeable to the game it was at launch, much less the original concepts we all read about that are now being realized in some ways in the upcoming Champions Online.

Bottom line is that Age of Conan is a pretty solid game as it is right now, especially when compared to what else is out there right now.  The graphics are very nice, the combat system is a decent tweak on the standard fare, there are already some pretty cool features that other games don't have (like city building), and I have been given no reason to believe that Funcom doesn't have every intention of continuing to develop and improve the game going forward.

Originally posted by Valendros

Some of the 'bored housewives' as you call them are damn good RolePlayers. Increadibly inventive and creative; I am looking forward to seeing the quests they've come up with.

This is worth repeating (though not suggesting anyone is a 'bored housewife') because I think Simu's MUD development over the years and the massive modding communities of games like Neverwinter Nights, the Elder Scrolls games, and similar, have proven that supposed amateurs can create pretty professional content if given the right tools.

If the HeroEngine toolset is really all it appears to be, perhaps the Simu business model will work just fine for having much of Hero's Journey created by a lot of volunteers working remotely.  I've experienced that it works just fine for creating new environments of NWN persistent worlds like Avlis, and the whole range of development where MUDs are concerned.

How do the Riftways work exactly?  I found one ingame but haven't really thought about it again.  I've seen the Riftway shards for sale too.  Do you need to access a Riftway location to teleport to a different Riftway location you've visited?  Or do the shards work from anywhere?

Originally posted by inmysights

I found out that V:SOH was free for a month to people who had an account. So I downloaded it and patched up like normal. I logged in and was reminded why this game blows more #$$% than a whore on dollar night. I immediately crashed to the desktop, couldn't log back in for over 30min, and after I finally logged in, the lag sent me back to the stone ages. I saw no difference from launch day. I hate to say this, but this just needs to die.

I'm not saying the game is not without faults right now.  It is not anywhere close to as polished as a top flight game like World of Warcraft, but in my view, it has made tremendous progress and is actually a playable and enjoyable game now.

Originally posted by Taram

 

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Originally posted by Cemm

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Originally posted by Taram

 

 

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Originally posted by Gules_Aspen

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Originally posted by Taram
 
 
 
makes them look like a pack of ametures.

 

 

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Well, that fits, since it's exactly what they are.

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Ermm.... no, not really, they've been around longer than most other MMO companies out there actually.

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Yep, since 1987.  Time will tell (is telling?) how well a little company that has traditionally had its games developed by essentially unpaid (and sometimes unpredictably transient) volunteer staff will translate to the truly massively multiplayer (multiple servers, more than 100,000 subscribers, etc.) graphical games.

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Actually the games are developed by paid staff. Volunteers produce additional content using in and out of game tools for the game. Get your facts straight please.

When I say pittance, I mean something you couldn't possibly live comfortably on in the United States as a single source of income, and that is for an amount of hours that is easily a second full time job (40 hours) for a lot of these volunteers.

Further, the text-based games Simutronics currently fields are absolutely developed by these volunteer staffers from home.  All the major core systems (combat, magic, stealth, etc.), related mechanics upgrades, new areas to adventure in, room painting, and similar that constitutes developing/expanding/refining the existing games are created and implemented by these remote staffers. 

There is obviously a paid staff of Simutronics employees working in the St. Louis office, but it is mostly administrators, support staff, and technical support to keep the ship afloat.  The actual development of the meat of the games (from major system design to room painting) themselves is tackled from afar by people with first priority full time day jobs that pay the bills so they can enjoy the hobby a lot of them are extremely passionate about.

To an outsider it may seem incomprehensible as a business model, but it has mostly worked out for Simutronics for years and years now.  I only say mostly because there have been numerous occasions where gamemaster burn out and other issues has led to extended delays or even cancellation of promised features.  It is something you just grow accustomed to as a Simutronics subscriber, that whole joke about "Simu Soon" and the reality of what that usually means.

It is just part of the risk of relying on a volunteer workforce to develop your games though.  For example, the Necromancer Guild in DragonRealms was supposedly in development years ago.  The gamemaster in charge was a previously well known hotshot as far as churning things out but apparently eventually hit the burn out zone a lot of them do after a few years on staff.  So that was dead in the water for years.  Now another group of gamemasters has picked it up and it is apparently about to finally get launched as a new guild in the game.

I'm really not intending to knock on Simutronics or the awesome volunteers who put so much of their time and energy into making their games great here.  I'm actually a huge fan of their games and have been a constant customer/subscriber since 1995.  These are just the realities, and some would say charms just as soon as others might say negatives, of how things have always worked with Simutronics.

Originally posted by ID10T

How long did it take you to get to LvL 42? I really want to play this game, but I am  involved with WOW right now, but the graphic shots I see of VG is just outstanding!!!!!!

At what LvL do you get a Mount?

What is the best soloing class?, DPS\Healer\minons

 

 

 

I'm still very new to Vanguard myself for all practical purposes, so my advice about classes probably isn't much help.  I can say that I solo just fine with my disciple (martial artist healer) so far.  It's been great fun.

Originally posted by Taram

 

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Originally posted by Gules_Aspen

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Originally posted by Taram

 

 
 
makes them look like a pack of ametures.

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Well, that fits, since it's exactly what they are.

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Ermm.... no, not really, they've been around longer than most other MMO companies out there actually.

Yep, since 1987.  Time will tell (is telling?) how well a little company that has traditionally had its games developed by essentially unpaid (and sometimes unpredictably transient) volunteer staff will translate to the truly massively multiplayer (multiple servers, more than 100,000 subscribers, etc.) graphical games.

I'm definitely in the 'it's worth trying' camp.  It's not a perfect or entirely polished game, but everyone knows that going in at this point.  If you can put up with minor hitches here and there, there is a ton of promise here I think.

I really like that the world really does feel huge.  I don't get that feeling of vaguely hidden 'walls' around areas like you do in World of Warcraft (not a slam against WoW here, I think that is probably the most fleshed out and heavily polished game on the market these days, I just don't have the inspiration to play it right now).

I’m three or four sessions (two to three hours each) into Vanguard now and thought I’d try my hand at starting a rambling running review of the game from a very casual player’s perspective.  I was a beta tester that really really wanted to like the game, thought it had tons of promise, but refused to pay for my pre-order and subscribe to the game with all the bugs and issues it had going into launch.  

Now I’m back to give it another shot with an open mind and much lower expectations.  It’s worth noting that the system I game on is definitely aging at this point (3.2 GHz P4 with two gigs of ram and a 6800 GeForce video card), so I wasn’t expecting much going in.  Additionally, please keep in mind that I’m not a professional game reviewer and this isn’t an attempt to write that kind of point-by-point system-by-system review of the game.  These are just my opinions about the game as I’m experiencing it this time around, highlighting things that stick out to me as I go.

So, on with the beginning of my running review here.  After several play sessions the last week or so, I have to say I’m really having a great time.  One of the biggest surprises of all so far is that my computer seems to be running the game just fine, relatively speaking.  I am not experiencing massive show stopping lag, or constant crashes to desktop or something (I’ve crashed once while swimming south of Khal).  As far as I’ve seen, the servers have been stable as well.  I don’t have any major complaints to speak of and I think that’s a good thing.

This game IS clearly a beast to run.  You can kind of sense it chugging along if you’re on a dated system like mine and it certainly doesn’t run as smoothly as a game like WoW where you forget all about technical issues because it is so polished.  I genuinely haven’t had any frustration-inducing problems though and that’s the important thing to me.  A relatively rare stutter of the UI here and there (opening a menu and needing to reopen it to refresh it after a graphical glitch), a momentary hitch when crossing the invisible zone lines, but that’s basically it.  I’m not using any UI mods or any of the performance-enhancing tweaks either, so it is possible performance could be improved further.

My character is a human disciple questing in and around Khal.  I haven’t touched crafting or harvesting yet beyond going to meet the tutorial NPCs in Khal and I’ve been really impressed with diplomacy.  I’m enjoying the storytelling part of the system and just having fun with it in general.  I like the multiple avenues to get parts of the stories of the areas of the game world we’re in.  Adventuring, you get a sense that these rat people and local bandits are causing trouble for land based caravans and its through Diplomacy that you get the story behind the story in that case.  It’s pretty fun so far.

The disciple also plays pretty well in combat for me.  I spent a couple of hours giving a monk a shot on Kojan and decided to come back to the disciple.  They seem very similar as martial artists, with the monk supposedly dealing out more damage while the disciple is a healer.  The disciple seems to have better graphical effects in my opinion and just was more interesting to me, so I’m sticking with that for a while.  I feel like I’m doing decent enough damage and it is also pretty nice to self heal or heal teammates as needed.

The game world feels genuinely vast, which is great.  I haven’t the foggiest notion about how the Riftway system works so obviously haven’t tried that yet but I understand that it is designed to bring folks closer together faster.  I can see how it is possible that two characters from different continents could be played for months, maybe forever, without ever crossing paths.  I have no complaints about that though.  I like the idea that the world is so big I might never see it all.

Getting a horse at 10^th level is a huge bonus to the game.  It’s just fun to get to ride around a little faster that early.  The idea of getting a flying mount (once they’re available) and/or a sailing ship sometime down the road is pretty cool too.  I think the ship and house building/owning systems are definitely charms of the game even if it may be a very long time before I experience either.  My understanding is that building a ship or a house can be fairly costly and require a lot of help from others.

Speaking of ‘others’, another welcome surprise while I’ve been playing is the current player population.  I’ve never once felt like I was the only player on Qalia or something like that.  I tend to solo a lot because I’m constantly coming and going and rarely get to play for long, but I’ve found the player community on Seradon to be extremely helpful and good natured.  I’ve had no trouble finding a group when I was looking for one, and people have been really patient with my various newbie questions.  There’s a nice balance of other players out within the areas I’m wandering around in the vicinity of Khal too.

I’ll try to wrap this up before it gets too much longer.  A big thing that leaps out to me after the last few days is that Vanguard, in its current state, is far and away not in as bad of shape as you might be led to believe reading some of the other posts here.  It’s by no means as polished as World of Warcraft or Everquest 2, but it is absolutely playable and enjoyable as it is right now.  The game really reminds me of what a glimpse of an Elder Scrolls MMO might be like.  I haven’t done a lot of research into what Sony has planned for Vanguard in the future, but I hope they keep at it.  I’m going to stick with my disciple character and keep trying to work up adventuring and diplomacy into the 20’s.  Maybe try some crafting or harvesting too.

I don't really get what the problem is.  So races that have big animals heads in the first place have...surprise here...big helmets? 

Are there any screenshots available of human or elven characters with helmets on?  I can't recall from the last few days in the game around Khal and couldn't find any screenshots myself after a brief search.

The lack of updates and such bugs me too, but I'm a pretty long time Simu subscriber and have grown a thicker skin for it over the years.  We've (the 'general' we as MMO gamers) gotten spoiled by the well known players in the graphical game market, especially lately with some of the developers who have been very consistent and open about their games.

I'm not saying that is a bad thing by any stretch, just that it's something to keep in mind about Simu.  A typical player in the MMORPG industry Simutronics is not.  They do things their own way at their own pace and anyone who has played their text-based games for any length of time is abundantly aware of that.

The almost total silence from Simu doesn't grate any less as other games keep us posted all the time on what's going on, but it also doesn't scream to me that HJ is dead in the water like it does to some of you.  For an example of what we call "Simu 'Soon'", note that a major expansion to their text-based DragonRealms (a 5th province, which amounts to WoW's upcoming Lich King expansion in size and scope) took over five years to get completed and rolled out.

Ahhh, so a disciple is kind of a melee fighting healer?  I think I actually tried one of those briefly in beta and liked it (didn't get out of the starter area and down that huge cliff to Khul with them though).