Randolph is a Christmas only mount. He can still run on the ground though! :)

 

Also, the post above about Warrior and Monk being the worst classes, I wanted to clarify that that should have read worst *solo* classes. They are excellent classes overall, I myself play a warrior and it's great fun. Also, I'd place the rogue behind monk in terms or soloing. But basically, all the classes are fantastic and well balanced, each with their strengtsh and weaknesses.

Originally posted by Dirkin

Randolph is a Christmas only mount. He can still run on the ground though! :)

 

Also, the post above about Warrior and Monk being the worst classes, I wanted to clarify that that should have read worst *solo* classes. They are excellent classes overall, I myself play a warrior and it's great fun. Also, I'd place the rogue behind monk in terms or soloing. But basically, all the classes are fantastic and well balanced, each with their strengtsh and weaknesses.

The highest level I ever got to was 35 on a Paladin, and I tried some other classes out. I did not try Warrior and Monk, but so far it seems like all of the classes are pretty well-balanced for solo play. At least, after adapting to the class, I found that they all solo equally well.

The classes are so much fun in this game. Definitely one of the strongest points !

Originally posted by ironhelix

Originally posted by allegria

Anyone who wants to try Vanguard... do not listen to most of the negative posts here. Most of them are referencing:

1. opinion

2. old / inaccurate infomormation

3. posted by folks that do not play..

 

Try the game yourself, its free now.

I want to love Vanguard, I really do. I bought a box on launch day, and gave it my best shot. I recently came back after it went free-to-play, and not much has changed. Despite enormous leaps in computer hardware, Vanguard plays about as well as it did at launch. If you can look past how terribly the game is optimized, mobs warping around, crippling lag during raids, and latency in 300-500 range for no reason at all, then there is a diamond in the rough. Frankly, I moved on a while ago, and I really don't see any reason to play this game over EQ2, or even the original EQ.

I feel the same. I keep going back to this game, wanting to love it - but I can't. For me, there is a latency or lag issue that I cannot get past. The responsiveness; the feeling of connection between your controls and the character, are severely lacking in Vanguard and  is something that makes the game difficult to enjoy for me (although I give credit to those who have adjusted and can still enjoy the game - wish I could myself!). While I haven't gotten to any raid areas, I have played multiple characters to around level 10 in my trips back to this game over the years. Still, the same issues keep me from staying each time no matter how hard I try to adjust or overcome them.

Skill/spell hot keys feel non responsive compared to what I am used to in similar games, monsters with low hp may actually be already dead but appear to be standing still, and sometimes I get spikes of lag where the game will freeze for a second or two. All this can lead to a frustrating gaming experience and unexpected deaths. If you can get past these issues, there is a real nice game here that I think has a lot to offer (tons of races, classes, explorable content). Unfortunately for me, I just can't. 

Originally posted by Oldskoo

Originally posted by ironhelix

Originally posted by allegria

Anyone who wants to try Vanguard... do not listen to most of the negative posts here. Most of them are referencing:

1. opinion

2. old / inaccurate infomormation

3. posted by folks that do not play..

 

Try the game yourself, its free now.

I want to love Vanguard, I really do. I bought a box on launch day, and gave it my best shot. I recently came back after it went free-to-play, and not much has changed. Despite enormous leaps in computer hardware, Vanguard plays about as well as it did at launch. If you can look past how terribly the game is optimized, mobs warping around, crippling lag during raids, and latency in 300-500 range for no reason at all, then there is a diamond in the rough. Frankly, I moved on a while ago, and I really don't see any reason to play this game over EQ2, or even the original EQ.

I feel the same. I keep going back to this game, wanting to love it - but I can't. For me, there is a latency or lag issue that I cannot get past. The responsiveness; the feeling of connection between your controls and the character, are severely lacking in Vanguard and  is something that makes the game difficult to enjoy for me (although I give credit to those who have adjusted and can still enjoy the game - wish I could myself!). While I haven't gotten to any raid areas, I have played multiple characters to around level 10 in my trips back to this game over the years. Still, the same issues keep me from staying each time no matter how hard I try to adjust or overcome them.

Skill/spell hot keys feel non responsive compared to what I am used to in similar games, monsters with low hp may actually be already dead but appear to be standing still, and sometimes I get spikes of lag where the game will freeze for a second or two. All this can lead to a frustrating gaming experience and unexpected deaths. If you can get past these issues, there is a real nice game here that I think has a lot to offer (tons of races, classes, explorable content). Unfortunately for me, I just can't. 

It's unfortunate that this is the case, but I can understand where you're coming from here. You should give it another try after they've pushed out the new re-written network layer. They basically trashed the old one and are completely rebuilding it in order to get rid of all the network lag, which is what you are describing. I'm not sure when it's going to be done, but once it's out you should give it a try again.

Thanks for the info. I addmittedly haven't kept up with the developer's planned fixes but if they can address the issues I am dealing with I'd certainly be back!

Vanguard is a great game. I play it almost every night. I can play over and over and see something new each time that what i love about it. It has the old mmorpg feel. It is not a click to win game.  Ill see you in game :)

Originally posted by Oldskoo

 

Skill/spell hot keys feel non responsive compared to what I am used to in similar games, monsters with low hp may actually be already dead but appear to be standing still, and sometimes I get spikes of lag where the game will freeze for a second or two. All this can lead to a frustrating gaming experience and unexpected deaths. If you can get past these issues, there is a real nice game here that I think has a lot to offer (tons of races, classes, explorable content). Unfortunately for me, I just can't. 

 

I uninstalled the game because of similar issues.  I was having issues with intermittent motion freezes during combat.  Also, when I activated a spell, the hotbar countdown sometimes wouldn’t activate. There would be a quick moment of doubt if my spell had activated.   These things happened often enough to make combat frustrating.  Yes, I sometimes got the mob that would actually die 1 – 3 seconds after you killed him..lol..but that was just a minor issue to me.  I don’t know if this is helpful but I believe my problems were somehow related to the use of the games macro system.

I was upset about uninstalling because the game really appealed to me.  Even though I didn’t get far into the game, I was enjoying the lore and questing through a seamless landscape.  The difficulty of the game was refreshing also. The graphics didn’t really bother me as such things are always secondary to the game play (to me).

I was having so much fun playing the Druid but sadly, I had to park him for a while.  It’s good to know that the network layer is being updated.  I will most certainly reinstall and give Vanguard another try if the developer can work through the games issues. 

Originally posted by DeVoDeVo

Originally posted by Oldskoo

 

Skill/spell hot keys feel non responsive compared to what I am used to in similar games, monsters with low hp may actually be already dead but appear to be standing still, and sometimes I get spikes of lag where the game will freeze for a second or two. All this can lead to a frustrating gaming experience and unexpected deaths. If you can get past these issues, there is a real nice game here that I think has a lot to offer (tons of races, classes, explorable content). Unfortunately for me, I just can't. 

 

I uninstalled the game because of similar issues.  I was having issues with intermittent motion freezes during combat.  Also, when I activated a spell, the hotbar countdown sometimes wouldn’t activate. There would be a quick moment of doubt if my spell had activated.   These things happened often enough to make combat frustrating.  Yes, I sometimes got the mob that would actually die 1 – 3 seconds after you killed him..lol..but that was just a minor issue to me.  I don’t know if this is helpful but I believe my problems were somehow related to the use of the games macro system.

I was upset about uninstalling because the game really appealed to me.  Even though I didn’t get far into the game, I was enjoying the lore and questing through a seamless landscape.  The difficulty of the game was refreshing also. The graphics didn’t really bother me as such things are always secondary to the game play (to me).

I was having so much fun playing the Druid but sadly, I had to park him for a while.  It’s good to know that the network layer is being updated.  I will most certainly reinstall and give Vanguard another try if the developer can work through the games issues. 

Aside from the already stated network lag issues, which are hopefully getting fixed soon, I just wanted to clarify the macro and ability system a little.

You mention when you used an ability the hotbar countdown, known in game as global cooldown timer (default 2 seconds), wouldn't go off. Even with lag you would get a GCD, but there are quite a few abilities in game, often each class has a couple (Druids have quite a few), that do not trigger GCD and can be chained back to back or all used in . You might have been using one of these and not realizing what was happening. Also, if you are using a custom macro, the button for macros can't show cooldown timer effects on them because of the potential many abilitiies contained within.

This may of course be not at all what you were experiencing and it was actual lag, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Originally posted by Dirkin

 

Aside from the already stated network lag issues, which are hopefully getting fixed soon, I just wanted to clarify the macro and ability system a little.

You mention when you used an ability the hotbar countdown, known in game as global cooldown timer (default 2 seconds), wouldn't go off. Even with lag you would get a GCD, but there are quite a few abilities in game, often each class has a couple (Druids have quite a few), that do not trigger GCD and can be chained back to back or all used in . You might have been using one of these and not realizing what was happening. Also, if you are using a custom macro, the button for macros can't show cooldown timer effects on them because of the potential many abilitiies contained within.

This may of course be not at all what you were experiencing and it was actual lag, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

 

Thanks for the information Dirkin.  I think I will make some macro adjustments and give the game another try.

My problem with Vanguard at the moment is that, while I'd love to play it again (I played for a short while in the past) I don't really want to reward SoE for "doing us a favor" by making this game F2P to milk some more money out of it after they systematically drove it into the ground so it wouldn't compete with EQ2.

That aside, I don't think I could start off again here with a bunch of new sandbox titles on the horizon that I can get in on the ground floor of. I'm absolutely happy the game is around, but Vangaurd deserved better than the fate it recieved /=

This game is beyond awesome. I bet most people bashing it have never even played it or just couldn't deal with an mmo that is a little harder than the typical formula.  There is so much to do its crazy

I played Vanguard on release and for quite a long time after that. But I have not played it in years.

I can easily say that this was a great game, I cannot make comments on how it is today, but if it's anywhere close to the way it used to be, you cannot go wrong with trying it out.

And, yes, this is no game for people who want easy mode. (I really do hate when they made MMO's easy)

I hope and pray that  they toughen up a lot for EQnext.

 

/Storm

Most of the hatred is from way back when.. It's old hatred, and you know old hatred never dies.. People feel scammed, let down, angry.. They really put Vanguard into the same basket as SWG post-NGE, as they see it as that bad of an industry failure.. But coming from someone who actually subbed to the game a year+ past launch, it wasn't as bad as it could have been..

Yes, alot of the world was unfinished, and I blame them for that however I blame them out of sympathy because they aimed too high. They wanted to make a great game the GREATEST game and they had aimed for the stars with all that out of the box content. It was just way to ambitious and when time lines call, things get cut and obviously it falls heavy on the players who were looking forward to. I hate hype.. I always advise against anyone over hyping or falling for too much media and peer generated hype because things frequently change. They can change in mere hours and the game could shift into a completely different direction (look at what happened to Aliens: Colonial Marines)..

Vanguard is what it is, a nod to the mmo's of the past.. While "gamers" today marvel at and praise MMO's like Neverwinter and TERA, Vanguard shows that even in a semi-modern MMO players can STILL HAVE CHOICES and the freedom to make who they want. VG also shows that the idea of a WORLD is possible and the immersion can be achieved by the smallest things such as a day/night cycle and weather..

I guarantee that most of the elements present in VG will also be present in some form in EQN.. Now that the era of WoW is reaching sunset, players are clamoring for a return to roots (Camelot Unchained?).. This would have been a PERFECT time for Vanguard to have actually released, but hopefully EQNext will hit the sweet spot and bring to the industry what VG tried and did not get credit for back then..

 

tl;dr   Not that bad of a game, not for everyone, instead of relying on others opinions (especially on THESE boards -_-) why not just give it a go?

I played for a bit after it went free.  The lag that has been mentioned bugged me but it was still fun for a while.  If they fix that I will most likely try it again.  In the meantime, it was a casualty of hard drive space :(