It was kinda my final try, and I am giving this game up, I am sorry to say. It is a beautiful world, good classes and races, but after 2 years there are still WAY too many frustrating moments. Yeah, I know, there are some of you so called "hardcore" folks, whatever that means, but sorry to say, I don't belong to that crowd.

All in all the game is still basically the same. The work is from my everday gamers perspective still microscopic. The many small things which frustrate me, are just adding up. While not big in themselves, altogether I just have enough.

I am shot out of the sky, while renting a wyvern which last FOUR minutes, losing my stuff all in the nowhere zone, which is quite empty of players btw, even tho I was flying about 100 m above the mobs, but magically they can walk the air. Why travelling still takes so long, the rifts are way to expensive, the flying mounts way too short to rent, and that entire approach to give flying mounts only to high end hardcore 24/7 gamers is a tad too elitarian for my taste, to begin with.

Yes, I read so many new armor and quests, but not much armor I ever found.

Soloability is near zero, YES YOU CAN, but the xp gain is miniature, even soloable mobs are often dangerous. I recall doin that so called solo quest in Qalia with my 18 Mage to kill small Wyvern, and dammit that poision they had lasted TWO LONG minutues and I died all the friggin time. Not to speak that there are not enough of some quests mobs in the given area. Was supposed to kill certain sorts of rat-men, and there were TWO in the spawn area, when I was supposed to kill 12.

Many quests still have no direction on the map, and even the quest text says often only vague things. Some had "go to NPC x in Zone Z", and that was all. I didnt even know the damn continent without asking in OOC. It is just impossible to simply log in and go out to have fun. Especially after level 20 soloing gets impossible, unless you really accept the crawl of XP and lots of grind.

Oh and did I mention that Death Penalities are so yesterdays fashion? I did not feel more excited a bit, by dying all out in the nowhere just trying to travel to the next quest hub. No fun at all.

The bottom line for me is: I can not just log in and go to have some fun, there is a myriad of obstacles between me and whereever the fun is hiding. I regret this is so, for the potential, but all in all I feel too frustrated too often while logging in, and there is just way too little change in some of the borked fundamentals to think there is any hope. *shrug*

And no you can NOT have my stuff.
 

your conclusions are the same as a vast majority of people who have tried Vanguard and REtried Vanguard over and over again.  It really is sad that a game that couldve been SO great ends up being what it is. People will come and claim everything is fine!, population is booming and there are no Bugs! and everyone who claims so on these boards are simply vg haters and want to be vindictive to a game that left them buttsore, and that simply not true.

I encourage everyone to visit the VG official forums and do some reading. Flip back a few pages and really see what those who pay and have paid to play the game really think.
 

Originally posted by Elikal

 

Soloability is near zero,

Oh and did I mention that Death Penalities are so yesterdays fashion? I did not feel more excited a bit, by dying all out in the nowhere just trying to travel to the next quest hub. No fun at all.

You can solo 1-50 on solo quests in 5-6 days played while half asleep.  There are so many quests its impossible to do even do half of them before 50.  Unfortunately Vanguard is just like all other games super easy with super fast leveling and lacking in challenge.  What frustrates many new players are the lack of signposts (quests that send you to new areas) and directions.  Without leveling a character before or having friends to provide help or directions it can be very confusing for new players.

There virtually is no death penalty in Vanguard.  Besides being almost impossible to die when you do die all you have to do is kill 4-5 mobs and you get your experience back.

Now I will agree with you that the classes and races are well done and I will also agree that since SOE took over 26 months ago they have added almst zero content to the game.  But the 1-50 game while lacking on directions and completeness is very good and well done. The end game and lack fo quality content is what is sub par in Vanguard.  SOE's failure to fund the game and employ developers is what is killing the game and driving away veteran players. 

Originally posted by Bodeus

your conclusions are the same as a vast majority of people who have tried Vanguard and REtried Vanguard over and over again.  It really is sad that a game that couldve been SO great ends up being what it is. People will come and claim everything is fine!, population is booming and there are no Bugs! and everyone who claims so on these boards are simply vg haters and want to be vindictive to a game that left them buttsore, and that simply not true.

I encourage everyone to visit the VG official forums and do some reading. Flip back a few pages and really see what those who pay and have paid to play the game really think.
 

Well I pay to play the game and I can say that I've never seen anyone say there are "no" bugs nor have I seen people say "population is booming".

The bugs are there. It is a lot better than it was several months into launch but they are there.

the populatio is not booming. The trial isle always seems to have peopel but the larger world, though it has people, is not a crowd fest. This game has a small and loyal following and will always, most likely, have a small following. Now to address Elikal.

I'm also back in Vanguard for the X th time and I share some of your concerns but some of them I just can't understand.

1. Renting flying mobs is fun but maybe 4 minutes is on the short side. Only rewarding flying mounts to 24/7 players I agree with annoys me too. The blah blah blah you have to earn it does nothing for me here, they could easily have different sorts of flying mounts with different speeds etc.

2. What do you mean it is too expensive to use the riftways? Never seen this as a problem!

3. I don't have any trouble soloing which I have been doing 99% of my time since I returned (self-chosen, never tried to get a group other than at certain specific outdoor mobs and others being there at the same time). It's even easy (most of the time) to do small group quests (that is 3-dot mobs) on your own.

4. Death penalty, the penalty is much much milder now compared to launch, then it felt like a kick in your balls now it is nothing. If you die at a distant location you can even summon your corpse to where you respawned.

5. The leveling is much faster now than at launch, but I agree that it still is on the slow side for soloers (many VG-players would disagree though).

6. What I love about VG: Combat is fun, diplomacy is fun, the world is great to explore, classes are just great and diverse.

7. What I really don't like about VG: Boring crafting I much prefer for example EQ2 crafting, the game is on the grindy side of things, especially when it comes to crafting and diplomacy. Stability and this is strange because at release I had a very stable gaming experience compared to a lot of others. Ok I fell through the world twice (happened to me in DAoC as well though) but I never crashed and the game ran fine. Now though I get lots of "stuttering" and much poorer fps and even got a blue screen, also on one of my computers I can't use the riftways or maps because they just keep opening and closing like mad.

As I said very strange and it feels so frustrating since this game does so many things right and is so fun yet so frustrating...every time I load up Lotro I think to myself ohh what lovely polish compared to VG, but what a bland gameplay...yet I can't decide on which of the two games to focus on.

I feel happy because I can play a "hardcore" game like Vanguard with not problem at all.  Is easier than at release now.

But then I remenber that I can't play DAOC or UO because I am not that "hardcore" and I get sad again :( 

What I learn is that "hardcore" is something that helps you play better games.  

With all the new games free/premium and all the games that are due to come out in the near future I can't see why anyone would want to play VG.  It's a 2 year old game that is still in "damage control" as a project.  The population is a ghost town, it still has performance issues on most people's computers, the content is pretty much unchanged since release and so on.  Oh, let me take that back, some of the content they "added" was stuff that was promised at release but finally got around to adding.

Save your time, save your money, play something other than this title on life support.

Originally posted by Elikal

It was kinda my final try, and I am giving this game up, I am sorry to say. It is a beautiful world, good classes and races, but after 2 years there are still WAY too many frustrating moments. Yeah, I know, there are some of you so called "hardcore" folks, whatever that means, but sorry to say, I don't belong to that crowd.

Well that's fine, no said you should. You either like something, are ambivalent or hate it. If you don't like it you don't like it. that is your right.

All in all the game is still basically the same. The work is from my everday gamers perspective still microscopic. The many small things which frustrate me, are just adding up. While not big in themselves, altogether I just have enough.

I am shot out of the sky, while renting a wyvern which last FOUR minutes, losing my stuff all in the nowhere zone, which is quite empty of players btw, even tho I was flying about 100 m above the mobs, but magically they can walk the air. Why travelling still takes so long, the rifts are way to expensive, the flying mounts way too short to rent, and that entire approach to give flying mounts only to high end hardcore 24/7 gamers is a tad too elitarian for my taste, to begin with.

Rifts are not expensive. It doesn't take too long if you are into the game from the standpoint that you want to travel and see the world. This is not to say that you have to like this design decision but it is a decision. In another thread I say how the rifts make the game more playable and there is another indivdual who feels that they take away from the sense of travel. So as you can see it is highly subjective. For those who want a huge world and one where you have to take time to travel it then it is good. For those who want a huge world but who want no rifts or very few and that time takes even longer than the game is not right for them either.

I don't see the problem with renting the mounts for 4 minutes, it works to get you to dungeon areas rather quickly. this is not the first game that allows higher lvl players who put in the time more perks.

Yes, I read so many new armor and quests, but not much armor I ever found.

It seems that there are different armor sets but not a huge variety in looks. I've recently spent a lot of time and a good deal of my money trying to cosmetically make my character not look like a hobo with mismatched pieces.

Soloability is near zero, YES YOU CAN, but the xp gain is miniature (what lvl were you, I've gotten practically to 21 and it's been very easy - if you haven't gotten to this point then I suspect you need a far easier game to play. Though this goes back to your "I'm not hardcore" statement. Still, I don't see the leveling at my low lvl as having been hardcore in any way) , even soloable mobs are often dangerous (this is a good thing). I recall doin that so called solo quest in Qalia with my 18 Mage to kill small Wyvern, and dammit that poision they had lasted TWO LONG minutues and I died all the friggin time. Not to speak that there are not enough of some quests mobs in the given area. Was supposed to kill certain sorts of rat-men, and there were TWO in the spawn area, when I was supposed to kill 12.

Many quests still have no direction on the map, and even the quest text says often only vague things. Some had "go to NPC x in Zone Z", and that was all. I didnt even know the damn continent without asking in OOC. It is just impossible to simply log in and go out to have fun ( I do it all the time so this is subjective). Especially after level 20 soloing gets impossible (well we'll see I can't refute you as I havne' gotten there yet. However, given that you think it's hard before that I suspect I might also disagree with you), unless you really accept the crawl of XP and lots of grind. (well, it's a game based in an older style of play so what were you expecting. This was precisely why a lot of people, myself included, were not interested in Vanguard)

Oh and did I mention that Death Penalities are so yesterdays fashion? I did not feel more excited a bit, by dying all out in the nowhere just trying to travel to the next quest hub. No fun at all.

Again, that was the premise of the game. Did you not read about what the original designers had in mind? As it stands there is a thread here that goes on about what is "easier" or has been taken out of the game since its original launch. Not saying you have to like it but I find it peculiar that you scoff at something that is essentially working as intended. Death pentalites are hard. I had to seriously think whether to go back and get my tomb stone or just eat it. I went back and was reward by the fact that I didn't die again. It is what it is. I'm sure there are players who think it's too easy still.

The bottom line for me is: I can not just log in and go to have some fun, there is a myriad of obstacles between me and whereever the fun is hiding. I regret this is so, for the potential, but all in all I feel too frustrated too often while logging in, and there is just way too little change in some of the borked fundamentals to think there is any hope. *shrug*

And no you can NOT have my stuff.
 

Don't want your stuff.

Your points are well taken but it's hard to take some of it seriously when you decry things that were put in for exactly the reason that they were harder, such as  more grind,  hard death penalties, etc

I am not saying you have to like them but for example:

I started Lineage 2 a month after launch. I had never played an mmo. I wanted to try one because I wanted the morrowind large world experience and wanted to try my hand at pvp. I read everything about the game, knew about the ganking, the hard economy, all of that. But I wanted to just try it for the week and then leave. I stayed for 4 years.

Point is, I read about it, knew what to expect and had I tried the game and then decried the ganking and the hard economy the the only person who would have been at fault would have bee me.

You dont' like Vanguard? Good, not every game is for everyone. But because of that then "not every game is for everyone but there is at least someone for every game".

Your point is well taken on the bugs. They are there. I don't feel they are game breaking but I'm not you. I am playing precisely because of the long travel. And I'm told that some would prefer it even longer, so I guess it really is "to each his own".

I find you a smart guy elikal and generally a "good egg" but I am questioning why you didn't go into this game knowing full well that it is a throwback game, one that has a bit of a retro feel.

as far as the population, there are die hard players for this game who will probably be around a long time. Even I in my small fashion will always have a Vanguard account for what it offers is different from other games. I'm sure that the players would love more people but this game just isn't going to appeal to everyone. Having said that, if it did then it might not appeal to the players who have stuck with it.

It's a retro game, it's creaky and it's not for everyone.

I fail to notice any substantial complaints.

For example, first you complain that dying is too easy, then you complain death penalty is too mellow. Meh. And besides, death penalty turns a lot more nasty after level 45. And I remember slaughtering through the Wyvens north of Ahgram for hours on a level 16 (later higher) sorc with 1 or 2 deaths total due to some carelessness on my part. Druid, Psi and Necro shouldnt have problems there either, as they also have abilities to slow the mobs and keep them from hitting you.

Theres also obvious errors. For example, the flying mounts lasts a full 5 minutes, not 4. If you would have been more attentive, you would have noticed the "5" on the timer which lasts for 1 second, at the beginning. And you would have noticed you get a full minute where the timer reads "1", and only after that it counts down the seconds.

I am also puzzled why Riftways would be too expensive. For example, killing mobs solo on my level 50 Sorc results in an income of about 10 gold/hour at the good places, such as the crypts area. Using the Riftway to get there takes 50 silver. Using the other riftway, then using a flying mount to cross the mountains between will sum up to only 22 silver 50 copper, even. Why is that too expensive ? Granted, if you want to riftway all the time, that will drain a lot of money. But if you want to actually do something in the target area, that wont be the case.

And while I agree I dislike the elitism approach of flying mounts only for level 50+ players as well, I fail to see the point of  making this being a dealbreaker. You can have ships at level 1 and both normal and rented flying mounts at level 10. Is having a permanent flying mount even nicer than that ? Certainly. But you can still get pretty much everywhere in the game very fast.

Oh, and yes, some bugs are indeed there. Just like in every other game. New content usually comes with some bigger bugs, but they get fixed, sooner or later.

I wouldnt claim the population is "booming", but there is a constant stream of new players. Of course old vets also leave the game at the same time. But overall it feels the population is going upwards.

Well, he didn't say anything about one or two dealbreakers but to him there are still a lot of small frustrations. The question is, does the game do enough good things for you to weigh up these small problems or does it not? I am not yet decided on this. I really like the core of VG but also suffer from small annoyances and both EQ2 and Lotro are good alternatives to me, both which are much more polished.

It is very sad that SOE does not give more resources to VG. I wonder if they are working on another fantasy based MMO to take over after EQ2 and VG or if they have turned fully towards the console and casual consumers :(

Hmmm,  I never found soloing to be a problem until past lvl 45 where it does get really slow, but still doable, just boring.

Riftways being too expensive?..  whoa, ok, Im starting to see a pattern here.  noob much?

While I agree that VG slowly gets out dated as it gets throttled with a lack, well a lack of anything from SOE.  And Id also agree that I have tried it many times and pretty much stopped now,  I cant say I agree with any of the reasons you give.

Seriously rifts too expensive? And even in WoW some ppls have dificulties get flying mount especially the "real" one... No comments!

Last played before year maybe. outside of some small hitching in cities everything works and looks great! Even low population is a lie. If you really play the game you will see that there are plenty of players all over the world. Just cities are a bit empty but thats because there is no great deal to stay there.

Its no WoW where 60% of the players stay in the few major cities!

Originally posted by iZakaroN

Seriously rifts too expensive? And even in WoW some ppls have dificulties get flying mount especially the "real" one... No comments!

Last played before year maybe. outside of some small hitching in cities everything works and looks great! Even low population is a lie. If you really play the game you will see that there are plenty of players all over the world. Just cities are a bit empty but thats because there is no great deal to stay there.

Its no WoW where 60% of the players stay in the few major cities!

I would also say that the lowest rift choices are something like 10 copper and 5 silver. The highest seems like 50 silver. The hubs are free.

So if one didn't want to spend 50 silver they could spend the 10 copper or 5 silvedr (5 silver is not a lot) and then just travel to where you need to go.

Originally posted by Elikal

It was kinda my final try, and I am giving this game up, I am sorry to say. It is a beautiful world, good classes and races, but after 2 years there are still WAY too many frustrating moments. Yeah, I know, there are some of you so called "hardcore" folks, whatever that means, but sorry to say, I don't belong to that crowd.

All in all the game is still basically the same. The work is from my everday gamers perspective still microscopic. The many small things which frustrate me, are just adding up. While not big in themselves, altogether I just have enough.

I am shot out of the sky, while renting a wyvern which last FOUR minutes, losing my stuff all in the nowhere zone, which is quite empty of players btw, even tho I was flying about 100 m above the mobs, but magically they can walk the air. Why travelling still takes so long, the rifts are way to expensive, the flying mounts way too short to rent, and that entire approach to give flying mounts only to high end hardcore 24/7 gamers is a tad too elitarian for my taste, to begin with.

Yes, I read so many new armor and quests, but not much armor I ever found.

Soloability is near zero, YES YOU CAN, but the xp gain is miniature, even soloable mobs are often dangerous. I recall doin that so called solo quest in Qalia with my 18 Mage to kill small Wyvern, and dammit that poision they had lasted TWO LONG minutues and I died all the friggin time. Not to speak that there are not enough of some quests mobs in the given area. Was supposed to kill certain sorts of rat-men, and there were TWO in the spawn area, when I was supposed to kill 12.

Many quests still have no direction on the map, and even the quest text says often only vague things. Some had "go to NPC x in Zone Z", and that was all. I didnt even know the damn continent without asking in OOC. It is just impossible to simply log in and go out to have fun. Especially after level 20 soloing gets impossible, unless you really accept the crawl of XP and lots of grind.

Oh and did I mention that Death Penalities are so yesterdays fashion? I did not feel more excited a bit, by dying all out in the nowhere just trying to travel to the next quest hub. No fun at all.

The bottom line for me is: I can not just log in and go to have some fun, there is a myriad of obstacles between me and whereever the fun is hiding. I regret this is so, for the potential, but all in all I feel too frustrated too often while logging in, and there is just way too little change in some of the borked fundamentals to think there is any hope. *shrug*

And no you can NOT have my stuff.
 

/shrug

Some complain the game is too easy, some complain it's too hard.  Par for the course I guess.

Yeah, Griffon dismount bug sucks.  It's returned for some reason and Ikik is working on replicating and fixing.  However, if you were flying over Shores of Darkness, the gnomes will shoot you down 100% of the time. 

Any class can solo to 55.  I did a lot of solo'ing because of my limited play schedule and die a ton before I got better and playing my class.  Took a lot of practice and a willingness to understand the capabilities and limitations of my class as well as what I could solo and what wasn't worth the risk.  As a caster, I had a different approach to mobs that could cast.  I'd counter, learn how and when to shield myself from dots, pick up key buffs, swap out for spell mitigation gear, etc.  I'm sorry, but if someone wants to solo and finds it impossible, then they are not taking the time to figure out how to solo effectively with their class.

Riftways expensive?  No.  Kill a few mobs, loot them for cash rewards and items to sell to merchants or vendors and you'll have more than enough to rift around, especially at the level range you are speaking about.

I like having quests that are not all marked on the map.  I really enjoy reading the dialogue and figuring things out myself.  All in all, it's a good balance of quests that have directions and those that don't.  Looking around, reading the quest dialogue and the lore is a good way to learn about Telon.  Why even do a quest if you just click through it and follow a marker?

Death penalties are about right in my opinion.  They are harsh enough to make one afraid of dying and certainly very cautious about getting in a situation where you might not be able to recover your tombstone.

So in the end, Vanguard is challenging and if people find a challenge key to having fun in an MMO it's a good game for them.  If a challenge and risk/reward is not fun, then there are a crap-ton of other MMOs to choose from.

the game is similar to many mmo's with exception of diplomacy which is unique,  the prob i have with the game is stability and hitching issues,  I have played about 10 mmo's and this one is the worst for those issues and yes i have a good computer-that to me wears down a player after awhile and makes them want to quit.

Originally posted by eddieg50

the game is similar to many mmo's with exception of diplomacy which is unique,  the prob i have with the game is stability and hitching issues,  I have played about 10 mmo's and this one is the worst for those issues and yes i have a good computer-that to me wears down a player after awhile and makes them want to quit.

I easily can see where this would be an issue for players.

I just accept it as a necessary evil and pretty much ignore it. However, I have an Nvidea card and because of some advice given on this forum I made some changes in the control panel. It has really helped that chugging and hitching quite a bit.

However, there are still some areas where it's there.

That is a huge reason why this game will just not be on many people's list. Bugs aside, if one has an amazing computer and it still doesn't matter then it really points to a great flaw in how the game was put together.

But it is what it is and I enjoy the exploration too much to fret about it.

Written by Elikal:  http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/2904326#2904326

About the "elimination of no-fun" we have discussed a lot of times. I understand better not to try to persuade anyone here to feel otherwise. That is a matter of preferrence. All I say is a) that *I* don't see sense in any of it and b) indepentently future MMOs will have less to none of it.

Death needs no penality. It IS the penality. You have failed in your task and must enter the house/dungeon/forest again. Penalizing it further with XP loss, items decay asf does not make me avoid it more than it does already. I dont think anyone can play a character a certain time and not feel so connected to him emotionally, that by nature a player does not already avoid death as best as he can. I just dont see that. Insofar death is a natural occurance in a MMO, and thus penalizing it extra means penalizing people to play their games. Also, for simple reasons, people will go to games with less harsh penalities, and like a Darwinisitc system, these penalities will just die out. Every new generation of games had less of it, like it or not, and the new ones we see all have practically none at all.

As the the world and personal story. After so many years I just can't play this EQ type MMO anymore. It was great for the past years, but I have outgrown it, like I have outgrown the sandbox. (The literal one, not the proverbial!) Today I want to be entertained, I want drama, story-arcs, connected events, personalized events (see LOTRO-books). I am no longer happy with "here you are dropped in a world with 5000 quests, now good luck". And my feeling tells me that is an entertainment form of the past. Thats not to say enough companies will not try. But you get a glimpse of it, when you look at the Deathknight in WOW. It is a lot about personal story of one class, an experience not shared by any other class, told in dramatic scenes and with story-climax, and so much unlike the sterile, old fashioned Fedex quests "go fetch 20 of X". People just enjoy such personalized, dramatized things, the Deathknight was a very popular thing in WOW, and you will see much more in future developments. Yes that has something of single player games, but it does not rule out cooperation. I understand for some who cling to the simple old EQ sort of MMOs it is difficult to imagine. But it is the future, of that I am certain, and one day people will look back to cookie cutter quests like we do on texts on stone tablets.

VG is an EQ descendant. Everything you mentioned and hate  in this post is present in VG and its there because its what defined EverQUEST. There is no way VG has even a remote chance to satisfy  your taste. I would suggest to never ever touch a EQ version game again and simply play different games. Note that I dont even have to mention WoW personally.

Why would you keep trying a game that you don't like the core mechanics of? Of couse games are different it would be very fkin boring if they weren't , some of the things in the OP are theings that keep me playing.

As for rifts, expensive or not, shouldn't be there in the first place imo, but I'm in a minority of people that play VG so fair enough.

I dont like the extended riftways tbh, there should be a sense of distance and travel, and they can put the best dungeons far away from the main routes ( see os in eq1 for example ). Also it is nice that they havent stupified it as much as wow with all the addons that almost play the game for you ( quest helper etc ) 

Until they either make a new more non-hand-held mmorpg or open up a eq1 classic server Im staying with vanguard :)

The only thing I would "fix" in VG is animations and armor/weapon models (they need a more commanding appearance, especially the helms).

Other than that, the game is one of the most comprehensive PvE games out there at the moment...

Originally posted by Elikal
...

Soloability is near zero, YES YOU CAN, but the xp gain is miniature, even soloable mobs are often dangerous. I recall doin that so called solo quest in Qalia with my 18 Mage to kill small Wyvern, and dammit that poision they had lasted TWO LONG minutues and I died all the friggin time. ...
 

Hm, my experience was that solo content was even too easy. If play correctly - equip proper equipement, use proper skills on proper moment, etc, even has no problem to kill 3-4 3dot mobs alone that was supposed to be small group, achieved all arena armors completely alone by killing most 4dots and even 5dot boss without serious problems that was supposed to be for full group. Of course soloing group content was risky but at least possible and very fun.

Also I do not see rifts expensive at all, and rented mounts last enough to  fly even from one rift to another.

Even some small problems he have for me Vanguard is the best PvE game up to date.

It looks you have played too much WoW and forget that any game can be made easy by yourslef, not just to be easy no mater how you play.

All I can say is thank god I found this game, the MMO market has been seriously bleak and 2009 looks to be no exception. This game has filled the void and then some. I was not expecting to like it since there is a lot of bad mouthing VG, but after playing a string of dissapointing MMOs, this is a breath of fresh air in a stale market.

All you guys can chase the latest and greatest half-finished MMO releases, lord knows I sure have, but for my entertainment dollars I have found a new home.