Originally posted by tevans

Originally posted by WSIMike

Originally posted by tevans
There's a lot of idiocy to threads and discussions like these. What difference does it make where the game is ranked? The only thing that matters is if you like the game. Play whatever game you're going to play and be done with it. It's tiresome reading about the WoW players, the EvE players and all the other players conspiring to bash Vanguard. It's also stupid. According to conspiracy theorists these people have nothing better to do than to go from website to website and bash Vanguard. It's nice to show ethusiasm for a product you like but this borders on mental. You show loyalty to your family or your country but not to a video game. The one thing that I've learned in my short time of playing MMO's is that some of you people need help. You eat, live and breath your game. That's not healthy. Also many of you should spend more time hitting the books instead of the games because a lot of you lack the common sense to know the difference between game and reality. Like whatever game you're going to like but leave the stupidty at home. These are games we're talking about. It's not life or death. There are many places in the world that would love the luxury of playing even a so-called crappy game in relative peace without having to worry about whether or not they're going to be alive tomorrow. So grow the hell up.

Gee.. thanks for the PSA.

You know what... I'm 33 Years old.. I have a full-time job. MMORPGs, and video games in general are a favorite hobby of mine. I, however, do not let them consume my life to some ridiculous degree. Likewise, I read and post to forums like these when, and because, I read and find I have an opinion of my own to contribute.

You, however, seem to be here only to lecture and shake your finger at those of us displaying what you choose to call "idiocy". You know what, maybe in some cases it is - but then again, that's what these forums are for. If people want to discuss their feelings on the ratings of a game, these forums provide the vehicle for them, and it's their right to do so - your personal feelings on the matter notwithstanding.

To suggest that the debate is pointless is fine and, perhaps, has merit. However, when you get on a soap-box and start throwing out terms like "idiocy" and "some of you people need help" is unnecessary.

Here's a suggestion for you - if you find posts like these that distressing.. don't read 'em.

Not a PSA. Just an observation. Just as I'll now point out that age and job status mean absolutely nothing. Discussing ratings is one thing but the childish, idiotic behavior that some display here and on other forums regarding this game borders on the mental. Conspiracy theories? Diehard loyalty to a game? Who cares if WoW is better or worse than Vanguard? People are going to play what they want to play. Just because Vanguard is rated 8.3 or whatever doesn't make it a great or rotten game. It's a matter of choice. All of these arguments remind me of someone with mental problems or someone who lacks the maturity to know that it doesn't matter. They fail to see the difference between game and reality and the fact that not everybody is going to like the same thing. What difference does it make what the game is rated? You're either going to play it or you're not. In the future you might want to take your own advice. If you find posts like mine "distressing" then don't respond to it. Notice I said don't respond because as someone 33 years of age with a full-time job should know, you can't be bothered by something you haven't read in the first place.

In case you haven't noticed this entire site is absolutely loaded with extreme opinions.  Oh sure I'll grant that there are quite a few well written and well backed up posts.  But meh, the vast majority are exaggerated in one direction or another.  That being said, slinging insults doesn't exactly help contribute to positive and constructive atmosphere.  (whatever happened to lead by example?)  ;)

So far, vanguard feels at about an 8.3ish to me as well.  Its been a fair amount of fun, and has little details/refinements here and there that make a noticable positive impact, like how they dealt with harvesting or the excellent and very tailored story arcs and lore, the sheer level of options for most aspects of the game etc.  Now that SHOULD earn it something in the low nines. 

BUT then there is the gaps in some quest chains, some of animations need tuning, about once a day I'll crash to desk (tolerable obviously but still shows lack of polish etc).  Some environments do feel a bit barren and not fully fleshed out.  They could handle having more crafting recipies, PVP still needs to be tweaked.  In general you can "feel" that the game was released early, not that this was any surprise to anyone whose been playing solid from beta and still playing now. 

So yeah, 8.3 seems about right to me personally (like that matters), its been quite fun so far but still has a fair amount of polishing to do.  As a credit to Sigil however they have made absolute leaps in the last few weeks and don't seem to be slowing down much.  As a credit to SOE the servers after launch have been quite stable.  Then again its not everyone's game.  That and the different race's starting feel is quite different in many cases from each other.  But whatever, if the numbers change on this site I somehow doubt it will impact my play experience...call it a hunch.  ;)

Originally posted by Markn12
The 6800 GT works fine, I have it and have no problems. 

Originally posted by Arclan
That just goes to show you how comparatively easy this game is.  It isn't the "hardcore grindfest" that people speak of.  I've been taking it very easy during my many VG hours and I'm level 12.  I can't imagine if I played all day and had people to group with during those hours.   Yes I worry that people will be max level far too quickly.   This game is just too soloable.  I see mostly individuals running around; very rarely do I see a group working together.  Really, a group is overkill.  One partner or two is more than enough to devastate the content.  Combat is over in a matter of seconds, since no one ever misses.  Not you and not the mob.  I prefer EQ style, more epic combats that last longer.

You get to level 6 in a hearbeat, level 8 doesn't take very long.  10 isn't too bad, 12 is reasonable, and it starts slowing down rapidly, 14 takes a little bit, 16 takes much longer etc.  However by the time you are doing level 14 stuff you will almost always find yourself wanting to group for the purpose of questing and dungeons.  Even if its just a 3 person group, if everyone is on the ball and knows what they are doing it works well.  Only a small amount of quests are soloable after a certian point. 

Sure you can still solo 2 and sometimes 3 dotters throughout the game.  But most of the fun stuff needs a group of 3-6 to pull off.  And when you fight actual group mobs 4 dot and expecially 5 dot the encounters can often be quite epic. 

The mob misses me regularly but then again I play an evasive class so go figure, I miss certain types of mobs regularly, but that is irrelevant, 2 dot mobs are ment to be soloable and crushed handily with more than one person, 3 doters are ment to be duoed and a good team can rip them up too.  But you'll find that around level 15 etc. you will still have to be on your toes and that you aren't womping the tar out of everything you see quite like what happens when you are level 12 and lower.  The mobs get tougher and the game starts expecting you to know how to play your class a bit.

And the only people who are higher level than 20 right now have been playing...A LOT, already know the content, and have been skipping a lot of diplomacy, questing, harvesting and crafting.  And while anyone is entitled to do just that, well...its kinda like watching a moving at 4x mode.  You miss most of what its all about.   But to each their own.  No one can force somebody to not grind levels even if its never actually neccesary and considerably less fun for most sane people.  :)

People can say what they want, we all know the game released early, but its been a lot of fun for me and my friends/guildies so far so what do we care?  Yeah FFIX has more polish but I don't like their combat mech and lack of options in many aspects of the game, EQ2 has actually gotten to be a pretty good game at this point but its storyline feels weak, always has.  I like the combat mech in VG and the story lines in the races I've tried have been pretty darn engaging especially thanks to diplomacy.  I also suspect that the PVP servers are going to take off at some point because the PVP effects of an ability can be tuned independantly of the PVE effects in VG thanks to how they did the programming which means they are going to be easier to balance and won't break the PVE content in doing so.

But whatever, this game has constantly had people taking extreme views on pretty much everything, even in this thread we get

"VG IS SOOOO HARDCORE AND ONLY FOR HARDCORE PEOPLE!!!"  

followed of course by 

"VG IS WAAAAAY TOO EASY!!!  I'M SOOO DISSAPOINTED!!!"

Often being spoken by people are not only not playing right now, but having never expereienced mid game content.  Don't get me wrong, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  But consider the context eh?  ;)

Its more challenging than WoW sure, but its never felt like a grind either. 

Ignoring all the political crap and getting to the point, your starting experience varies greatly depending on your starting race/class.

Some is intentional, others like having a gap in quests if you start as a half-elf or kojani durring levels 12-14ish are clearly showing that some quests are planned and have stories written complete with excellent and detailed dungeons but simply not implementing the actual option to take the quests yet.  Magi Hold is a great example.  Damn impressive, clearly has story to it but you can't get any quests for it yet.

So was VG released early?  You bet.

Was it released too early?  Matter of opinion.  My thought is that its a game. 

The purpose of a game is to have fun.  My wife, myself and my friends are having quite a bit of fun so far.  Tons of guildies from back when we all played EQ have come out of the woodwork.

And yes it feels much more like the original EQ than EQ2 does.

But it also gives you A LOT of choice in how you want to go about things.  The death penalty is a shining example.  You CAN go on a nakkid corpse run, or you can summon your corpse at an alter for a fee and take a hit to your gear's durability. 

Sometimes the risk of trying to get your body back just isn't worth it, so you swallow the hit to your gear and pay repair fees.  A lot of the time you'll find yourself happy that you can make a corpse run.  Its just extremely well balanced in most cases in that regard.

Many of the animations are stale, many are excellent, another example of "released early" but "released too early?" well, it doesn't break immersion for me but anyone's milage may vary.

I like the reactive combat and chains... a lot.  The game definitely is more challenging than WoW close to on par with EQ but with more depth to the combat system comes more options for player skill to shine so you can pull off some impressive stunts with a less than full group and still survive if you're careful, where as in EQ if you didn' thave a full group you had no prayer in several cases.

You also will find yourself exploring at several points much like in EQ instead of having your hand held 24/7.

I have yet to talk to someone who was unable to solo at any given level.  Some classes are better at it than others but so far they feel pretty capable. 

Things that can hook you is taking great floating leaps jumping from roof to roof "crouching tiger hidden dragon" style fighting evil monks that appear in puffs of smoke with cherry tree petals floating around you. 

Some aspects you just say "OK that's just plain cool" and then you'll hit a glitch or crash to desk.  Granted crashing to desktop doesn't happen too often but its another ear mark of early release.

The servers have been pretty solid though, a credit to SOE. 

More quests seem to be added every time I log in, both adventuring, diplomacy levers (civic diplomacy), and crafting options.

If you have a weak graphics card, you'll have to turn the settings way down, but it still looks much better than EQ2 did when it launched and everyone with older graphics cards had to turn their settings way down.  (remember faces that were simply a blur?  Yeah VG doesn't have that problem ;))

The lore and background is consistantly excellent and diplomacy is a GREAT vehical for it.

Crafting currently is dissapointing to me, I expected there to be MANY more recipies than what is currently available, GRANTED my crafter is low level but still...feels like way too few recipies.  On the flip side crafted gear is excellent on average compared to dropped and quested gear...very competitive and functional but not unreasonably so.  A good balance.

I could go on about this and that, but if some of this intrigues you, talk to someone you know whos been playing and still is, hit em with questions, see if its a good fit for you.  It won't be fun for everyone.  Example, while you can always solo I can tell you that the game dynamics don't show themselves off unless you're in a group rockin and sockin.  Soloing is nice, especially to get more in touch with your character and their skills, but the real action happens in groups, even smallish ones of 3 people can be a blast and functional.

The group harvesting idea is excellent and works.  You'll just have to do it to see what I mean, wish every MMO with harvesting did it the way VG does.

Anyway, find a friend, convince them to give you their free 10 day trial pass.  See what you think.  I'm having fun with the game right now, I like the mechanics and flow among other things, the game made litteral leaps on improvement in the last few weeks, seems to be continuting to polish rapidly.   I'm looking forward to that as well. 

The lack of instancing hurts at some choke points in some of the over crowded popular newbie area's but after a point people get spread out far and wide pretty quick, it seems to work well in practice overall.  Its nice to have real people around in dungeons that you can save or follow and/or group with or lead etc.  Its nice to be able to to do run by heals or buffs again that have significant enough durration to be useful to the groups being buffed etc.  :)

Ok done rambling must sleep. 

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Originally posted by lordtwisted
They always stated there will be no open beta, but then the promo for pre-order says it will include a pass to the open beta...

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If it was really an open beta you wouldn't need a pass.  ;)

The ideas that are blurring things are twofold.

1) NDA comes down durring beta 5 making the information of beta 5 "public"

2) Beta 5 is ment to stress test the network, billing and infrastructure and thus will be inviting tens of thousands of players to max things out and find out where the weaknesses are etc.  In short many of the people who want to try durring beta 5 will get in, making it feel openish.

That being said beta 5 is still not an open beta.  There are a limited (though not overly) number of seats that will be doled out.  But the information of beat 5 will be public since there will no longer be an NDA.  So its openish but not technically an "open beta". 

Hope that clears things up.  :)

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Originally posted by Dimitrio
Actually world of warcraft players also know what is spawn camping. Yes, it world of warcraft there's spawn camping. For example most of the rare named in world of warcraft are spawn camping mobs. If you don't believe me, go and read some http://www.rpgexpert.com

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True, like tracking down the wandering giant as part of the chain of quests to free the trapped "princess".

Best example I can think of though is any hunters who wanted broken tooth.

Some would camp for weeks with no luck.

Camping in itself isn't a bad thing, its when camping is forced on the player because it becomes some type of barrier that involves sitting on one's keyster accomplishing little else.

I never felt gimped as a hunter because I didn't camp and aquire broken tooth.  Now if a quest involved killing broken tooth...and it delayed your whole friggin game experience by weeks.  That would suck.

Most of the time camping in WoW was either completely on the side, or involved a reasonable time span that could be combined with doing other things.

I anticipate this being not much different in VG. 

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Originally posted by dragonace

I agree.  You'll have to add me to that list of non-haters as well Anofalye.  I don't like raiding for myself, but I certainly DO NOT HATE a company that makes use of it. 

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Currently the class with the most info in regards to its pet related setup is the necro. 

The necro has 1 primary persistant named pet.  It is considered an "abomination" you litterally build and customize your abomination as you go along attatching parts of fallen enemies here and there, I use the word "parts" loosely since some of the parts are things like your abomination's soul.  It is your trusty crusty companion 24/7.

The necro can also raise a dead enemy and have it fight for him/her temporarily as a zombie of its own type.

In addition to that, in traditional fashion the neccro can also exploit corpses of enemies and temporarily raise undead minions from them to do his/her bidding they can also be adapted to the situation in terms of what kind of minions you raise (defensive, offensive, etc.)

There are other aspects to the necro (lich forms, debuffs, dots, curses) but those are most of the pet related ones.

We've seen rangers with wolves, druids can summon elementals, someone summon's a fiery pheonix (might be shammies who follow the pheonix totem), but much specific pet info is yet to be released.

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Originally posted by lackluster

So my questions are:
1. Do you agree with the journey system that Vsoh will have?
2. Do you think that Vsoh will still have those life sucking instanced zones?
3. Will the lengthy journeys make for difficulty grouping and turn many gamers
off?

Question 3 is my big concern. I think that Vsoh will bring back
those epic journeys across land rather well but I’m curious to see if
it will hinder player’s ability to form groups quickly. Tell me what
you think.

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1) Impossible to say if you aren't playing it, and even then its opinion.  Currently there are VERY few complaints about the land travel system in beta, which would imply that its balanced out and functioning well.  Water travel isn't fully implemented yet but since there is litterally about 110 actual miles in game from two of the largest continent they currently intend to have portals out in the ocean somewhere to shorten the distance for those that are just interested in shooting from one contient to the other.  Though it is entirely possible to sail the entire 110 miles manually and explore the islands and content that you encounter inbetween.

2) Vsoh has zero instancing, period, end of story.  It was one of their primary goals and they've stuck with it.

3) Everyone's milage will vary, but as I said, currently very few complaints about the travel system right now and the caravan system makes it damn easy for a group of people to stick together even after some of them log off.

/shrug we'll see but it would seem that the devs are trying to keep things accessable and reasonable without making it a teleport festival or loaded with "flight paths" etc.  The goal seems to be to keep the freedom to roam at will intact. 

Graphically has been my strongest gripe about the game.  Plastic looking skin with playdough hair.  Ughn...

That being said with the latest shader revision the character skin is looking better and the remodeling of how the hair (facial and non facial) is rendered was a MUCH needed improvement (I "think" there is currently only one screen shot showing the improvements, all others were prior).

Still a lot more room for improvement but its certainly much better than it was and exceptable enough for me.

I doubt they will get much better prior to release in terms of skin and hair texture and rendering.  As they are now focusing on racial animations/movement and body customizations to give each race a more distinct feel from each other than what they currently have.

I'll be very curious to see how this turns out, considering that vulmane (as much as I love the concept and lore) currently look like someone simply stuck a dog head on a man's body.  Doh...

So yeah...that definitely needs major tweaking.  We'll see what happens though eh?  ;)

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Originally posted by jackilojohn
I am talking about the type of pvp that can shape the world for the players. If it's completely open pvp there are no safe zones. The only safety you have is usually friends/guild members. Also, a certain guild could inhabit an area and basically take it over by force. There is no boundaries because the only reason a area would be called a certain guild's was because they held it by force. What i'm talking about it alot like the original UO. It would need some better balancing though becuase there was alot of mindless ganking in UO. Also, in this type of pvp there is player looting. Were one player can kill you and take things from your body. There would need to be alot of balancing though. I doubt they can do it because most game makers don't think outside the box.

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Last I understood it they were shooting for one of the first PVP servers to be similar to FV?

In any case PVP will be tuned and tested in beta 4.  They will have as large a variety of PVP servers as there is demand for, garunteed AT LEAST one at launch. 

Even if they have "wide open PVP" on a server I'm willing to bet they will have some kind of ruleset for it similar to lineage2.  But that is pure speculation, it is entirely possible that they will have a server that follows the UO route.  Time will tell eh?

The good part is that they can tune PVP independant of PVE as they have allowed for abilities/stats/spells/etc. to function independantly based on if you are interacting with an NPC vs. interacting with another player etc.

AKA they can tune, fix and balance PVP without breaking PVE and vice versa.

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Originally posted by baphamet

i would even support you on the vanguard forums with your idea about a non raiding server and having a npc where you buy the raid gear with points you earn from doing small group tasks (similar to LDON).

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Thread already exists on the official forum.  Better to bump it than start a new one.  ;)

http://www.vanguardsoh.com/forums/showthread.php?t=68937&highlight=raid+server

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Originally posted by Phoenixs
The amount of code in a game has nothing to do with the filesize. It's pure text, dude.

It's the assets that make the filesize.

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Typically true unless leaving those hooks in requires multiple dupes of files.  Enough of that going on can actually make the excess inactive programming code start to take up room. 

But additionally if they want the game to look good a long time from now it also means its likely they will have textures with much higher native resolutions than what most of us will be seeing so that 2 years down the road they will still look good etc. 

Then there is the minor detail that all of the world is hand crafted.  That means no random placement of trees etc.  Everything is invididually hard coded in.  Typically that wouldn't make much difference (at least in obvlivion it doesn't) but who knows.  It really depends on how their file system for the world is setup.

Its all speculation either way.  Regardless its a big friggin world with a ton of content, so a big friggin client isn't overly suprising.  /shrug

Will it lag due to its client footprint?  If you meat the PC requirements probably not.  If you are under the requirements, who knows?

I am willing to wager that much of the file size increase is due to the notion that a large chunk of programming has been left "flexible" for the purpose of being easy to update with intentional features down the road. 

Two basic examples: they have left all the programming hooks in for physics to effect nearly everything, they have left in all the programming hooks for mounted combat options to be implemented and fleshed out.

Programming in all this extra code to be used and meshed in later on amounts to A LOT of inactive coding.  But it is neccesary to keep the game flexible and easily refreashable by the devs.

Things like programming in 100% seperate interaction for PVP so that it has no impact on PVE allows the devs to tune them completely independantly of each other and thus balance one without breaking the other.

Its bloody brilliant but makes for a whomping huge client.  Of course then there are massive amounts of high res textures etc. and the list goes on and on...

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Originally posted by lordtwisted

I think the quest in Vanguard will be story line, not just task.

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There will supposedly be thousands upon release.  And while it is entirely possible that the majority will be "go here kill x of that" quests one can only hope this is not the case.

I would wager we'll all have a very solid feel for this answer at some point durring beta 5.

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Originally posted by lordtwisted

There is nothing in this game that says you must solo, or raid.

 It is there because not everyone can find a group the second they log on. So would you rather stand in town picking your butt and wait for someone to invite you to a group, or would you rather step outside bash in a few skulls on your own while you wait?

 Raiding? Well, I doubt I will ever be in a raid, I would like to be in one every now and then,  but rarely do I find the time to do it. The only thing raiding will get you is a better chance at some of the best loot.

 Well, so will crafting, they have said in a few diffrent areas the crafting system has a generator in it, that will on occassion give you the oppurtunity to turn your item your crafting into a very rare item. Not sure how it will work, but going to assume it's something set up random and spontaneous to make it so botters will never accomplish it.

  Point being you can go through and play this game 100% groups and never raid or solo if you wish. The only thing you will miss out on is the chance to kill some uber boss that it takes a raid party to do. It doesn't mean you will not be able to get some of the best gear.

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I agree with you 100%.

But it doesn't change the point that if you somehow manage to pound through all non raid end game content and are at level cap, then the only options left to advance your character will be raiding.

For people who fit amathe's profile that's a deal breaker. 

But I believe for most people the setup the devs are shooting for will be just fine.  I like it (on paper) and hope it works out just how they seem to want it to.

So then the relevance of the argument comes back to "how many people are serious hard core groupers that will manage to hit all non raid end game content before an expansion and absolutely loathe raiding?"

No clue.  My personal opinion is not that many, but without seeing the game out for a year running?  It's all total speculation.

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Originally posted by Dimitrio
I don't want to make this a non raider vs raider thread, well maybe I want to.


My question is, why a non raider would like raid oriented gear, when they clearly are not going to need it for non raid quests, solo and group content?

 

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Sometimes he's a bit angry and sarcastic but here is amathe's point in a nutshell. 

Start from here:

Say you hate raiding...by hate I mean you will simply puke on your keyboard if you try it.  You just really REALLY friggin can't stand it.  OK?

On the flip side:

Being in the ultimate doom squad group of butt kicking fools is your cup of tea.  So much so that you are pretty darn confident you will play though all the group content and get all the gear sets from it well before the next expansion comes out. 

And here in lies the problem for amathe:

At this point, he has already collected the group drops he needs, this means litterally THE ONLY WAY HE CAN FURTHER ADVANCE HIS CHARACTER is by raiding.  And that would be absolutely true.  And in fact, if he want's to be the MOST diversified grouping character with THE MOST complete set of gear it is the only way he will be able to accomplish this, thus he is litterally FORCED to raid to advance his character.

Now my opinion is that so long as raiding is not an actual bottleneck to content *choke* EQ1 flagging *choke* it really won't be an issue for most people.  But for someone like amathe who does in fact truelly need to be the best and most capable grouper possible?  Yeah its a deal breaker for him.  His reasoning is completely fair.  Granted I don't think many people hate raiding quite as much as he does.  I also personally feel the route the VG devs are taking will actually make for a more open and free flowing game experience in terms of play style, BUT for someone who fits amathe's personal profile and there certainly are people who do:

1) HATE HATE HATE raiding

and

2) MUST have every possible tool available to group or won't be happy

Then yeah...pretty much any game that has raid drops usable for grouping is going to wreck their day at some point, even if they are essentially = in power to group drops. 

If you understand it from that point of view then his posts make more sense, the part that is in actual conflict is "how many people does his argument apply to?"  Good friggin luck getting a tangible answer.  I know that I actually like the idea of the setup the devs are shooting for, but then I am unlikely to finish all the group content before the first expansion is out so go figure.  Raiding won't ever be a bottleneck for me, its just something on the side I could try my hand at periodically if I see fit to do so.  So to me the model implies open ness of play style which I really like, will it work well in practice?  We'll have to wait and see of course.  ;) 

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Originally posted by gestalt11

Fine then just put in a Boss Kill Point system.  Lets call this system BKP.  Then put in some vendors all over the place, maybe even some hidden ones whose location you can't disclose except on pain of death (real life death).  That people can use their BKP to buy the best items.  Then both styles are rewarded.

Oh but then that gets away from teh deliciously addictive and neurotic random drop system.  Well we can't have that.

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Anofyle

It's crazy but I finally get where you are comming from.  And while I still suspect that the balance the devs are shooting for will work fine for me and most people in general so long as raiding never becomes a bottleneck to content... I finally get your view on things. 

Your idea of a special server that is group only would be a very interesting one.  The devs could do this by (yuck) simply eliminating all raid content or (one would hope) retune the raid content on said server to be accomplishable by a dedicated group. 

The ONLY major issue I could see with this is if someone played on this group only server and then transfered to another server (assuming char transfers are even an option) I can picture people having a problem with that even if the returned content still takes just as much time and effort.

AKA they would have no legitamate claim to complain but I could still see it happening.

It would be a very impressive thing, and would take a good chunk of dev time to get it right but I can picture more than a few people making it their main server.  I like the idea, its just a matter of how much time it would take to adjust and retune 20% of the content for grouping.  20% is still a pretty big chunk.  I'm willing to bet there is no way it would make release (too much dev resources needed) but it's a rather neat option to consider down the road.  And more server options is rarely a bad thing.  :D

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Originally posted by Amathe

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Originally posted by Aradune

flying mounts that aren't on rails anywhere in the world

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What percentage of your players would you estimate will  have one of these, and within what time frame? Obviously it will be a rough prediction, but then you have many years of experience in the industry, a ton of market research on your prospective players, and the fact that you made the game to base that rough prediction on. So as long as Sigil is promoting the game in part based on this feature, and if this is an example of "freedom", why not go ahead and tell them how many can reasonably expect to ever get one.

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A fair (if very sarcastically worded) question.  To my understanding you can't even try to get one until level 40.  Given the variety of flying mounts we've seen from videos already: swamp drake, a purple "fairy drake" (what it looks like to me), a roc (giant eagle), and a griffon I would wager there is more than one way to get a flying mount.  Just like there is more than one way to get a horse.

But think about this...pretty much EVERYONE is likely to have a horse by level 10.  And some as early as level 6 (though a diplomacy quest).

IF (and that's a big if) that same kind of philosphy follows suit it would only make sense that after you hit 40 a few different choices will open up to aquiring flying mounts and as you get higher in level it will just get easier, much like getting your first land mount. 

I'm curious myself if this is actually the case.