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Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Review: Vanguard Review - Edit
6.8
Mediocre
| Graphics | 9 | |
| Role-Playing | 7 | |
| Fun | 7 | |
| Performance | 6 | |
| Sound | 7 | |
| Value | 4 | |
| Community | 7 | |
| Service | 7 |
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Review
MMORPG.com Community Manager, Laura Genender, takes a look at the world of Telon in her review of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.
Explaining Vanguard inevitably leads to explaining Vanguard's community. So, let's just start with it: yes, the game and the forums/fansites that support it are plagued with 'Fanbois' vs 'Haters' - the most heated faction warfare I have ever witnessed. Here, though, the rule of 'vocal minority' is in effect, and if you stay off of the forums and out of general chat, the majority of players are quiet and friendly (if you're not on a PvP server!).
According to unconfirmed sources like MMOGData.com, the Vanguard community is shrinking: what at launch had featured around 200k subscribers was down below 50k by May of '07. The PvP and Roleplay server populations are still rather steady, but the "normal servers" are practically ghost towns. When I created a character to explore one of those servers, I ran into another newbie who boldly stated "you're the 3rd person I've seen so far!"
Contrary to your probable expectations, I'm not going to say that this means VG is a "bad game", or that I think it is a "bad game". In fact, I think it's a rather good game, it just isn't the game it promised to be.
For example, flying mounts were expected at launch, and still only appear in the game as "rental" items. The Inquisitor class, an anti-magic tank type, was not ready for launch and still hasn't made its way into game; neither was the offensive fighter Berserker class. Explorers found whole city or hunting areas laid out, but not populated: the list goes on and on.
;)
What is in the game now, at this moment, impresses me. Every class that I have tried in VG has its appeals both for power and for fun. For example, VG rethought the Cleric class: instead of being an exercise in heal-and-sit-and-stand-and-heal, the VG Cleric is a powerful meleer, and is expected to help in combat. Other healer-class options include the martial artist/healer Disciple, and the nuker/healer Blood Mage, who gains power when she does damage and transfers that into healing. Playing my VG Cleric, I've been able to solo and have fun bashing and smashing with the rest of the world.
The Necromancer class is another interesting twist on an old idea: the VG Necromancer has the deadly DoTs (damage over time spells) and control over the undead, but their undead pet can also be augmented via body parts - yes, body parts - that you salvage from the corpses of your enemies. There is nothing so satisfying as pulling out the shinbone of your foe and handing it to your pet.
;)
While some feel that the world graphics are too plasticy and doll-like, I personally think that Telon is an engaging and beautiful world - and a massive one, at that. The game's horseback and boat travels are absolutely necessary for traversing the three massive continents - but like the rest of the Vanguard world, travel has done its job at sparking animosity. Die hard hardcore players were expecting a world where travel was significant - fun, but still time consuming. Before launch, it was clearly stated that Vanguard would not support a teleportation system, and that users would have to hoof it or sail it to get to where they wanted to be.
At launch, "temporary" teleporters were available for cross-continental travel. These became permanent teleporters, and more were added to transport you within the continent itself. While many players rejoiced at this, the original die hards grumbled and those who had already discarded the game for its "busywork traveling" rarely ran out to buy the game.
There were also a lot of initial problems at launch with performance and lag; players were constantly crashed to desktop, had a "black screen of death" where you lost all graphics and had to restart. Opening doors was and still is a total lagfest - boats sometimes disappear, or passengers fall off in lag. One friend quit the game in frustration after multiple crashes and the inability to traverse town - and his system was well above the required specs. (Note: this has gotten a lot better over time, but is not yet completely solved).
;)
Despite the lack of content delivery and the performance issues, I still set out in Vanguard to have a good time - that's what gaming is all about. As stated above, my Cleric character was extremely self-sufficient and able to solo quite competently; I rarely hunted with others and explored the world on my own.
For kicks, my Cleric was created on the role-play preferred server, and I made every effort to get those around me engaged with "in-character" discussion. I had fun with my successes and a good laugh at my few failures, but all-in-all, the role-play community was fairly impressive and fun. As for lore, though, it seemed like the Vanguard lore was patched together and often hard to follow; from reviewing the official site and fansites I had a hard time figuring out whether I was supposed to follow one god or many, what and who the gods were, etc. The world itself allows for a great deal of role-play exploration, and races obviously at odds - gleaned via NPC text - could creatively work their individual stories into an overarching theme.
I explored the three continents, doing various quests that ranged from 'corny' to 'awesome' in my opinion (examples to follow). One of my least favorite quest lines in my starter town had Guard A ask me to play a trick on Guard B and stick a chicken in his room. Guard B, terrified of chickens, asked me to remove it. There was absolutely no storyline, and no fun. The starter diplomacy quests were also annoying, allowing me to choose between two shady factions, and once that choice was made I could not betray my employer. My self-decidedly lawful/good character was forced to murder, steal, and lie in the name of quest advancement.
Conversely, my favorite quest led me to discover a sleeping mace deep in a tomb haunted by undead. By collecting several drops off the undead I was able to partially awaken and obtain the mace - Adrid, Mace of Sorrow - and subsequent quests allowed me to further awaken its latent powers. I was sent to solve riddles, feed it with the sorrows of others, etc - and I had a blast progressing my new weapon.
Overall, the majority of quests that I came across after I left the frivolous starter town were fairly engaging and fun. But while I enjoyed my casual progression up to level 30, I had to be honest with the hardcore raider core: this was not a game I could ever play "full time", or even long past max level; I didn't see a big capacity for raiding, and the few hardcore raiders I met in my journey made max level and quit shortly thereafter to return to WoW or EQ, or move on to LotRO.
;)
Of course, age does wonders for a game - look at the size of modern EverQuest, compared to the original three continents and three raid targets - but Vanguard's updates seem to be slowing down, and the promised additions (like the Inquisitor and Berserker classes, as well as ownable flying mounts) still haven't made it into the game. Customer Support has been excellent in dealing with bots and plat sellers, but game content support has slowed down with the change of hands between multiple companies.
All said and done, I would recommend Vanguard to a casual gamer. Vanguard makes a good game a couple hours a day, or only a couple days a week, but hardcore play or long-term play just aren't options, yet. Community should improve with the upcoming planned server merges, as the world once again becomes populated and playable for non-solo classes.
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From reading this the CONS outweigh the PROS. I agree with this Review. I will never play this game.
Very....politic.....
Nice review, however, can we get a second opinion, I feel there is a vested interest in this reviewer views.
Second opinion? Man this game had soooo many bad reviews, how else do you want people to put it? The game unfortunatly, just doesn't cut it. I wish it did, such a shame.
in reality, the last week of me playing, 'ive seen an influx of former wow players.. odd...
It ain't dead yet ma..
Play it then decide, i'm having the mmo experience of my life, and i've played them all. .yes their are bugs.. but man it's an awesome game...
I feel this review was slanted, and pruned of the compleate truth.
I want someone who dosnt care in any direction, and not biased to review the game.
He said he was able to solo well...did he play any of his characters past 20-25? That's where it stopped dead for me. Has something changed or did he not try to solo anything beyond level 25.
and high end content translates to raiding?
why?
It seems quite ironic that this 'hardcore' game is recommended by the reviewer to casuals and further more he warns hardcore players off. I'm confused....but obviously not as confused as the jolly green ranger. I do wonder if the reviewer has another agenda (get people to play the game he seems to be enjoying before it goes down the pan).
how do you think the review was slanted?
and why/how was it pruned?
i don't currently play VG but i am still hoping that SOE can pull it together and i really do want to give the noobie island a shot
What complete truth do you feel was "pruned"? I don't think the reviewer glossed over anything negative about the game. She seemed balanced in terms of pointing out both strengths and weaknesses. Though she is complimentary of the game's strong points, the review is far from favorable. It wouldn't make me want to give V:SoH another chance.
OMG! I better go warn SoE they are about to have over 8 million people about to join there game since WoW is over!
Vanguard =
I agree with you on this crafting system should have definitely been a pro, he did leave out quite a bit. Plus the game is been steadily improving on the tech issues. So that as a con should not be carved in stone. If you scroll back through the reviews for Vanguard they show steady improvement minus a hater here and there. If you look at the Lotro reviews you can see that the pretty little bug free world doesnt not have the substance to sustain veteran gamers for very long. Granted I am cautiously sticking with Vanguard based on how EQ2 was turned around. Bottom line, people need to ignore me and everyone else's opinion and play the game for themselves. To each his own!
The Blood Mage was really fun to play. to bad the rest of the game was so boring and ran like crap.
someone earlier commented on how deep they thought the crafting is in this game and I have to completely disagree.
The crafting system here is a HUGE humongous time sink with little reward I couldn't stand it.
I really like what they did with the blood mage though... maybe next year if Sony sells it I may try it again
Edit:
People should not be paying to play this game in it's current state.
Crafting really can be a Con or Pro, they tried something new and fun when you first start. But after crafting for any long period of time it just isnt the same. Crafting slowly becomes less and less fun, almost to the point of being mind numbing.
If you think this review is slanted I can only laugh. I think this review is generous. Vanguard is the posterboy game for unfinished MMOs. It is one of the fastest sinking MMOs in history regardless of how it ends up. The sign of a good MMO is when the devs are fired in the parking lot, the sold to cut the losses, and the playerbase down to about 30% of what it sold after a few months. And don't give us the..."Oh you haven't played it" garbage, there are plenty of us who have played it and are willing to hold bad developers and spin doctors accountable for deliberately putting a game on a retail shelf knowing that it is only 70% complete. Its bad business practice and bad ethics.
I think people are misunderstanding me, the slant is in its generosity. Consider the source of the review.
So the reviewer had a good RP experience with other players (NOT part of the game design) and found one decent quest arc amid the HUNDREDS of terrible ones, and decided this made the game acceptable?
I see mmorpg.com is not immune to the plague of embarrassingly low standards so common among game sites that are desperate to garner the goodwill of software publishers. At least it wasn't a disingenuously glowing review, I'll hand them that.
As a former Vanguard player, i think it was a reasonably fair review. There are aspects ofthe game that are fun -- such as the classes. In particular, the way the did the healing classes was pretty satisfying.
On the other hand, the reveiw doesn't properly emphasize that the content starts to markedly decreasing both in terms of volume and quality after level 30.
Also, why include screeshots of things that are not actually in the game (like flying mounts). Isn't that a bit deceptive?
A fair review in my opinion.
I think I got my character to level 26 or 27. I saw a lot of promise in the game, a lot of potential unrealized.
I have a nice gaming rig, but performance seemed very poor and inconsistent. There were times out in the wilderness away from everyone else that the game performed adequately, albeit with annoying and often frustrating periods of lag while crossing chunk lines or as the reviewer noted, opening doors. Also, whenever I joined a group of more than a few people, the game would lag horribly, the sound would loop, and abilities would delay sometimes entire seconds after I had activated them. Now for a game that wants to be group centric, this is just unacceptable.
Graphics were a mixed bag. In some instances the game is really beautiful and inspiring just to behold; in other instances it is very lacking. For example, the water in a few areas looked great, but in most places I saw there was something wrong with it: it just didn't look right. Viewing distance was very good though, and helped create the illusion of being in a large world.
With regards to character generation, my avatar is beautiful. I love her appearance. However, there were not enough hairstyles to choose from and the sliders didn't seem to give the range of possibilites that I was expecting based on the pregame hype.
The community in game seemed really nice and helpful. I don't think I had a single bad experience in game. Outside the game though, some people defend the game's shortcomings a bit too vigorously. If you say the game has poor performance, they say it's because your rig's hardware is subpar, and if you don't like aspects of gameplay, then you're a wow fanboi and go back to where you came. It's become a tired refrain.
The truth hurt...
Lag, bad optimization, I don't like the gameplay either, I have the impression the environnement is very poor, trees looks like the same...
That's my opinion, I didn't play the game too and I don't plan too after reading bad comments
This review conclude what I was thinking of this game before.
Just a question. Why would you want to play an MMO that has these CONS?
I agree with the review.
The author was fair and accurate. The game is fun but does have some problems. I am confident that SOE will address those issues. Moreover, the author is right about the serious lack of end-game content. All we know is that SOE is developing some raid content.
Personally I would have waited to review the game until SoE has at least been given a chance to show the direction they're taking the game. I mean, it's a couple weeks away right?
Says went to lvl 30. I got stuck in the 20s too, but what I ended up doing was going to a different continent and picking up quests there that fit my level better. I'm a Cleric at 32 now.
Also the Adrid, Mace of Sorrows quest is very fun. I'm working on the CiS quest now, it has an even better mace, and has been fairly challenging.
I think the aspect is specifically depending on what kind of game your looking for. Despite the bugs (mostly stability issues) and incomplete quests it has been fun for me. The recent patch introduced a new crash that has been ticking me off, but the prior patch was smooth, it had been a long time since I had an issue. They have optimization issues still, but there is so much content already. I mean I've played to 32 and can still find things to do that are interesting. I'm not a big PVP guy so I have no idea how that even works or goes, so someone else will have to speak to that. But for me, the PVE has been enjoyable.
i disagree with this review. Doesn't really sound like the reviewer played the game a lot. the reviewer only soloed, she didn't try the fun part of this game; the many dungeons. Those can only be done by grouping with other players and that is really what i like most about the game. I think it's a bad idea to make a review of a game without even have played all parts of the game.
I played this since beta, and yeah it was very buggy an laggy back then. But it really has improved a lot. it doesn't lag like it did back then. there is very few bugs now, and none of them are big bugs.
Some of the review is right, though.
I agree. The review should have been delayed until Update 2 or the next patch.
YES. You can SOLO with EVERY class to the MAX level. It is more solo friendly than EQ 2.
Edit: To address what the person said above me, the game is so enormous that it is impossible to experience all of it. TONS of group, small group, and solo content. It is an explorer's paradise. The group dungeons are awesome. It is sort of like a small raid at times with a group of 6 people. You can take out named targets, high level dots, etc. It is great stuff....
It is clear the ONLY way Vanguard players would ever accept a review would be if it was written with 100% positives. And they dare to call people trying to be informative "biased"
As from the start, Vanguards biggest problem.. is the players playing it. Worst advertising for a game and its community I have ever seen.
The PvP players will just kill you, over and over until you quit. You almost need to play a Cleric because they are the most overpowered class in the game.
This game was doomed to failure from the start, even if it did not have launch problems.
Shows that you better do your market survey's before you launch. Making hardcore MMO's is strictly a niche business, the vast majority of MMO players want nothing to do with them. Hence you better have something to attract the hardcore players. This game just goes to show that hardcore pve is a very limited market.
Added Con:
I agree with this review and I have never played the game...
Its a REVIEW...one persons experience with the game.
For those that do not like this persons opinion, I await your view of the game instead of your view of his opinion.
Good review, but 9 for graphics is too generous. They are good but not worth 9, more like 7, 8 top.
I started up several characters on several different servers. As stated in the review, servers like the RP or PVP server had up to 50 people in the popular starting areas (IE Tursh, with up to 50 northern humans/halfling newbies at peak time). The normal servers, from my general experience, had about 10 people in Tursh - 5 of which were afk or not chatting at all - and 1 or 2 people in less common starting areas.
As for crafting...the diplomacy and crafting systems are very subjective in VG, and I mainly focused my review on adventuring. I enjoy diplomacy but the higher end diplomacy isn't in the game yet; crafting has never been my thing, and continues to not be my thing in VG.
I don't think VG is dead, I just think it sorely needs the upcoming server merges, and its a bad sign that those are happening so soon.
SHE played a cleric to level 30, and is still soloing her way to 31 ;) but then, clerics and paladins are some of the best solo classes in the game.
The review is pretty much the way it is in my opinion. I followed this game from back when it was just an idea and a FAQ on Sigil's web site and I think its very sad the way this game went with all the pontial it had.
So the arguement for many is, "it's launch was awful, it must still be awful"...man be glad your mother didn't have that attitude, because all you did at YOUR launch was bitch, cry and crap yourself......hopefully you've stopped crapping yourself, even if you can't stop bitching.
Review seems on the level, though i think the problems with performance seem to be random, as far as whom they effect and to what extent. i've heard people with lwer systems run it fone, and people with really high-end rigs have nothing but problems. Granted, I've a high-end rig and no problems, and I expect ifI did, I would be bitching also.
The Server Merge will hopefully address the vast expanses of emptiness.
The RP server is ok, but I find it weird to roleplay a game where my faction is at war with the othe faction, but I cannot attack members of that faction due to arbitrary server rules that make no sense (another words, not even Team PvP). How can I roleplay a combatant at war if I cannot act my enemies like a combatant at war. Kills kills RP for me.
So why am I giving them my money with all though Cons, someone asked...simple. I see a vast amount of potential here, and I am willing to put my money were my mouth is, in the hopes that it will come to fruition. I'm having fun now, but playing on casual basis until if gets filled out the way it should. Honestly, my hopes are more pins on Darkfall now, but its not out yet, and this is. So if this becomes they game I wanna play full time by then, I'll keep at it, and if by that time, they still haven't delivered, well then I will be jumping ship and heading over to Darkfall.
I think it was a pretty fair review, esp since the author played a class that can solo well. I had a Druid and once I hit around 20 the soloing vanished.... I could not reliably take down near-level, 3 dot mobs solo (w/o a hella lot of kiting) ...which is what I seemed to find myself surrounded by. I think it also frosted my chain that other classes were much better at soloing.....
I remember one time trying to kill a cleric..... I was like level 18...Cleric was 14...and despite my best efforts, I could not take her down before running out of mana....and had to run off.....
Maybe if I had rolled on a normal server (as PVP servers tend to limit your access to some content) and chosen a more solo friendly class my experience would have been more enjoyable. (despite all the crashes)
What a crock of bull.
"$OE pays us money, so we ban anyone who says anything against them and 'review' their games however they want!"
Might I ask if you continue to play because you enjoy the game, or is it more business?
While I feel the the score was a little low, I can't say that I totally disagree.
I don't agree with the value score that was given. Especially if you're a Station Access subscriber. I also didn't really understand the part about hardcore raiding. I couldn't tell what was meant by the game not really having the capacity for hardcore raiding. Is this in reference to the lack of raiding, or do you feel that VG, even with raids in, would not be the kind of game that hardcore raiders would get into. The later I could understand, and would agree with.
I thought that it was kind of odd that they had a community manager write the review, but then I'm not really sure if that's normal around here or not. I don't usually pay attention to who's writing what, but I was currious wich poor sole got to write this one.
Until recently I've been playing for fun, about 10 hours a week maximum - but after level 30 my attention has dropped, and the people I met/was playing with moved on from the game. I am curious about Update 2, though, and will probably play more again when flying mounts are in for real.
As for hardcore raiding...players consume content much faster than devs produce it. This is true for most high end content, with PVP and commerce (for exaple) as exceptions, since these are player-generated content spaces. Raiding, high end hunting/instances, etc takes time to mature...look at EQ's origianl Naggy, Vox, and Phinny raids vs the hundreds of raid targets available in the game today.
Unfortunently, I feel that VG was even more handicapped than the normal game on release in terms of high end content; as another forum poster stated, content starts to drop off at 30 - this is true for high end diplomacy as well as adventuring. I really don't know whether VG will end up offering a good high end game, because they might surprise me, but it isn't there yet.
Gotcha, and thank you for the responce.
I quit Vanguard after a month of playing, only got to level 16 because of how bad the lag was and how terrible it was put back together. I went back to Vanguard 1 week ago in order to level up before server mergers and have leveled from 16 to 22 now and (the most supriseing to me) found a guild that had between 20-25 people on at a time. Some might not find that to be alot but it was definately above my expectation.
Secondly, in the 4-5 months I have been away from the game I upgraded my graphics card to a "decent" card, 180$ish. And I find that lag has decreased tremendiously (2 gigs ddr2 mem though). I still crash about once an hour or once every two hours but other than that I find it to be a very great game though working for the URT is like working for the mafia. I will admit that if there is no raiding content by the time I hit 50 I will be gone in a heart beat but with how great the game seems to be progressing I am definately optimistic. And the whole flying mounts thing, they were never going to make that open to everyone anyways so I do not understand why the Review would mention that as a downside when I would figure you should be level 50 with some raid content behind you before you are allowed to even sniff at flying mounts.
Just my two coppers
It sounds like the comments on the performance where based on early performance issues with all the updates and fixs mentioned only as a little *side note.
I do not think that gives an accurate view of the way performance has improved unless this review was written within the first month and just now gone public.
The review was also very vague...I suspect intentionaly so. No mention on harvesting or crafting at all. Very little was said about diplomacy...what was said was stated in the context of personal opinion vs. unbiased review.
The review could have actualy picked apart the graphics more...there are several graphical issues not mentioned. I think the score on graphics is accurate , but for different reasons.
This was NOT a very good review compared to 3-4 page reviews I've seen on other mmorpg's. For a world the size and complexity AND combined with the fact that it's about 2 months behind with performance information. Why do so many have a hard time awknowleging the performance and content imporvements made in the first couple months ? They are there. They are for real. Include them in your review!....and not as just some little side note.
This review was obviously written with a strong anti-Vanguard bias. I don't say this because I am some kind of Vanbois or anything. I really think the review person went out of her way to point out negatives while downplaying the positive aspects of the game. It was NOT a BALANCED review.
This person obviously only played an hour or two a day. I don't even bother to log into Vanguard if I only have an hour or two a day to play.
Vanguard takes time...it's a thinking mans/womans game. It's for people who like to think and those who appreciate an huge, deep, complicated world. It's steak in a world of fast food....not perfectly cooked..yet..mind ya..but a steak none the less.
Review pros
OP was correct about the raid content. It's NOT a raiding game...despite what some have posted on these forums.
I like the high score on graphics..but for different reasons.
Review cons
Very Vague
Old information
NOT COMPLETE ..by a long shot
Took 3 months to come up with that?...I need to find me a new website to frequent.
Maybe next time you could concentrate on the good stuff and but the bad stuff in as a little side note.
example.
" Performance has improved alot since launch. * note...It was real bad at launch.
No need to add the little " there are still some problems " because ALL mmorpg have " some " problems no matter the age. I still crash in Guild Wars at times. That game has been out for over two years. I bet some still crash in WoW and Lotro even. It's the nature of the beast and can go without saying.
I reads as if someone wrote this review on their lunch break.
A fair, although very limited, review.
I've been playing since Beta 3 and when I began, the game Vanguard most ressembled was EQ2. By launch it had been hardcored up a little, but a couple of months after launch the gameplay turned round and headed back in the EQ2 direction again, which suits me very well.
Soloing in Vanguard is good for most classes into the mid-20s. After that it slows down some, but you still certainly don't need a full group. It seems to me to be a game made for duos and trios, for whom there is a ton of content already and more promised. The crafting system is the best I have seen and Diplomacy is a unique and compulsive addition to MMO gameplay - both of those spheres are primarily solo as well.
I found the adventuring progress dried up around 45th even in a duo, and my Disciple has stalled at 46. Getting to 50 with him solo or duo wouldn;t be at all difficult, though, just a bit dull. I'm taking a break and playing EQ2 for a while until SOE and Sigil get some more 40 - 50 content in, which wil probably be a few months. I am still logging on to craft and do diplomacy, though, and I will be playing up another coupele of Vanguard characters into the mid-20s, just because there is a ton of content I levelled too fast to see in those levels.
I was blessed in having a PC that runs Vanguard very smoothly, so my experiences have been less frustrating than those of others. Overall, Vanguard had a horrible launch and was mismanaged appalingly, but even at its worst it was much better than EQ2 was at launch, so I have every hope it can fulfill its enormous potential in half the time it took it EQ2 to drag itself up by its bootstraps.
To say in a few words what the opening statement said in afffect is: Stay away from this game, it's not worth it.
Hard core as in plays all day ?
Hard core as in doesn't play all day, but is wicked serious when they do?
Hard core as in plays all day AND plays hard all day ?
Hardcore as in levels fast? ....raids alot?
Can a crafter or diplomat be hardcore?
Their are many deffinitions of what is hardcore.
Some would say I am hardcore..yet I only play a few hours day...but I do frequent many gaming forums and am deeply involved in the mmorpg world in many ways. Others would say I am not hardcore because i only play a few hours a day and it takes me about 2 weeks to ding a level. I play casualy but take my online worlds very seriously...is that hardcore?
I was watching G4 just now and they reviewed Vanguard and called it "Saga of broken quests".
They also said it required a Nasa liquid cooled rocket engine to run effectively.
G4 is cheese. I don't even bother with that channel. It's not a reliable source for mmorpg information. I stopped watching them once they starting using those hot so-called ..gamer girls with big thingies......cheese.
cheese..cheese..cheese
MMORPG.com is a BIG LOTRO fan. Review = 8.5 (yeah right)
MMORPG.com does not like VG. Review = 6.9
It all makes sense guys... don't worry
You're joking right?
A Thinking Mans game?
I don't think so.
Slow and Mindless is more like it.
And not every game crashes you to your desktop every hour.
I have played Guild Wars and LOTRO and niether of those games have the problems Vanguard does which I have also played.
If you're to blind to see whats right in front of your face maybe you shouldn't read reviews of Vanguard you will only be upset.
This game isn't that good plain and simple, maybe next year but for now it's not worth the money.
Bet you wouldn't have said that if the numbers were the other way around!
Take a look at the dozens of other reviews both games have received and you'll find out that MMORPG.com is rating them both just like the rest.
But, it appears that LOTRO is getting it's fair share of criticism atm. Go look on the board!
The most fair way to review and comment on a game is to review it when its released and then write an update of sorts a few months later. I wonder what VG's rating would have been when it was released?
The damage is already done when people have wasted both money and time on a poor quality MMOG. Let's try and review a game within the first month of release from now on please and update as needed.
Actually, we have had this assigned to writers a number of times since launch. Unfortunately, circumstances beyond our control led to these not being completed. After that, it was assigned to Laura, who ultimately completed it.
Should it have been done sooner? Probably. Mistakes happen.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Good point.
This review was okay, at least they didn't kiss the game's ass like they usually do when a new game comes out. But the biggest problem with the game, in my opinion, is that the gameplay just isn't fun. The combat is so dull, diplomacy is useless and crafting is meh. If the skeleton of the game, the gameplay, particularly the combat, had not been another slow EQII/WOW style button presser, I think a lot of us could have looked passed the animation problems, model ugliness and terrible performance. The game itself just, loses. Good ideas went into it; lots of races and classes, free roaming, expansive world, good environment graphics, but bad game. Just like everyone else, I wanted it to be good, but it wasn't. It really is not worth it.
Actually this is the third "review" of sorts that been posted on MMORPG.COM
Granted not all of them were official, but 2 of them were.
I don't remember the name of the staff writer who did the first one. Perhaps someone else will. It was posted just a few days, perhaps a week after Vanguard launched. Then an unofficial review by Cymdai was posted in Vanguard forums (as I understand it, Cymdai was supposed to write the original review, but because of real-life issues couldn't finish it).
And now we have this third review.
As to which one(s) is the most fair, or how timely they were/are? Well, I guess that's pretty subjective as well.
One may argue that to truely do a review correctly you should take at least one character to the level max. - then write a review. Another might argue that the review needs to be out within days of the launch to give prospective buyers the most information possible before they decide to buy the product or not.
I would side more with the former rather than the later. However, in our need to have everything instantly society; that is probably asking for a bit too much patience from the general gaming community.
All in all, I think that MMORPG.COM has done a fairly good job in remaining unbiased in the Vanguard Saga (pun definitely intended).
actualy...the review is worse than that
Review person seemed to have been reviewing more on the way the game WAS rather than the what the game is NOW.
Review and opinions on performance were based on what they were a couple months ago while the opinions on quests and such seemed current. The remarks on the low player populations are current as well though effort could have been made to explain some of this due to the massive size of the world which exaggerates the issue greatly.
The review is not so much inaccurate as she does not tell the whole story or paint the full picture. It's called...lying by ommision. Since many on these boards consider a mmorpg review to be at least semi - professional....that is not acceptable. Particularly when one considers the high profile nature of the game...be it good or bad. Review should have been ALOT more detailed and ALOT more effort should have been made to tell the WHOLE story.
It just seems too convienent if ya ask me.
Convienent and generalized and late reviews like that just scream ...hidden agenda!
MMOs
areshould be more than massive raids.I seriously thought the game was going to be "group-oriented" with massive content for groups of 6. Add that to the massive world and you'd be in a group for hours a night and still not "conquer" every dungeon. As time went on, more and more talk of raid content went on (less and less dungeons) and thus, Vanguard became the same as everyone else. Sad.
You can basically solo up to level 50 BUT the real downside would be the pace you do solo is EXTREMELY slower than finding a group...To me soloing is 3-4x slower at level 24+ than getting into a group and grinding experience...There are certain ways you can solo faster and that is grabbing more monsters @ the cost of dying while you try it...Although it is possible for some classes to do this others are very difficult and shouldnt be tried...
My dreadknight had no problem fighting 4-6 monsters at a time (1 or 2 levels below or above mine with 2 or 3 dot difficulty) But it really comes down to if you know how to play your class...I've done really well duo with my brother's paladin we were able to take on up to 10-15 monsters again 1 or 3 levels above or below ours 3 or 4 dot difficulty...We knew when to switch aggro and heals...Our highest achievement was killing a named monster 1 level above ours with 6 dot difficulty (we were around the mid 20's if i could remember right)...And that took over 5 minutes...But this game became boring with the little population and repetitive grinding (It goes for all other MMO I've played)
The only thing that kept me leveling up was the crafting...I crafted some awesome weapons and I needed to level up to use them...One in particular was Flawless superior's brute shortsword...On my dreadknight I was able to do critical damage 3-5 times on monsters thus letting me use my high damage special abilities...So for every critical attack I dealt I would be able to do over 2-3k (total) damage using the skill chains...The necromancer was awesome as well their spell chain dot was truely amazing totaling over 5-7k damage during a certain amount of time...(I think it was 300-400 dmg for the first minute, then 1000-2000 for the next 3 minutes and 3000-4000 for the next ten minutes) It was something like that, I cant be too sure anymore because I dont play the game anymore...
Sigil steps up to the plate, digs in, and swings! It's a miss! Oh, Sigil dropped the bat on the umps head! And here's number 19, SOE to pinch-hit, taking Sigil's place at the plate...
Boo! Hiss! Cry the fans.
I'd have given the whole game a 3 or 4 at best. With polished releases like Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, and Lord of the Rings Online on the market, VG doesn't even meet the criteria to be called average. Do I hate it? No, I played for a while and found things to like. Do I think it was released broken? Hell yes, and that's not acceptable.
That's correct. Cymdai could not write the official preview but instead did a very nice in-depth one on the forums based on her experiences in beta.
I wrote the "At First Glance" article which basically describes the experience in the first few hours of a new game. I had fun my first few days in Vanguard. Then as it became more and more obvious that the game was indeed in an unfinished state, my guild and I moved on.
I will be curious to experience it again now that SoE has taken over.
There's a lot here that I agree with. When I first played the game, I was overcome with absolute wonder at the grandeur of the world. The music was addicting. The cities were breathtaking. The sense of immersion was complete. But then I crashed, and crashed, and crashed. On the advice of others, I updated my video card to a Geforce 8800 GTX. I upgraded to Vista so as not to bottleneck my computer's abilities to take on games with big memory demands like this one. Stuff would flash across my screen. Giant horizontal lines would block my view completely til I had to log out and back in again so many times my head would spin. In the meantime, I'd fallen in love with the crafting system. I would get up every day and craft for a good solid two hours while chatting on TeamSpeak with guild members. And I did meet some truly wonderful people- friends I'm sorry to leave behind for another game. But my love for the world's ambience and beauty began to erode as nothing I did- nothing- would fix my issues. I was playing the game on its lowest graphics settings just to get a framerate that would allow me to walk in major cities. The lowest framerate with a GeForce 8800 GTX. I didn't get it. I read the message boards in search of help, but got little aside from the usual "update your drivers" stuff. Still, I loved Telon, and I wanted to stay. But then, one by one, my guild members started leaving the game. And finally I gave in when most of them moved to LOTRO.
I wanted this game to work so very badly. If you can get it to work, it IS a good solo game. But you have to be willing to put up with a lot of issues that don't seem to have fixes in sight. For this gamer, the struggle just wasn't worth it in the end.
Agreed. This game had great potential and great hype. Unfortunately it got caught in the SOE trap of expecting gamers to pay to play alpha or beta. I played in the "beta". This product was NOT in beta stage at release.
They got $50 from me and no more. Sigil and SOE should be ashamed to have put out a product that was clearly not close to ready for launch.
Tbh yeh i thought the graphics were crap and bland and i thought the races and classes were bland and i thought th emassive world was a big download of the lack of content.
Not by reviewers... by forum trolls... and we all know this site is famous for them
Strange review and late. Not only that but bizarre that it is recommended to the "casual" Gamer. That is bizarre beyond words. If VG is anything, it is not casual friendly.
Hidden Agenda??
You've got to be kidding, Thamoris! LOL
The game was given a break and reviewed FIVE MONTHS after launch.
If there's any hidden agenda.. it's the fact that the game should have been reviewed three months ago like most other games and given the rating it deserved then!
I think Vanguard's falling numbers speak for the game just fine.
People who want to play the game are going to play it, and that's fine. I just recommend getting a free trial or something because it's no fun to pay $50 for an online game only to find it to be a total flop.
Well said. This has been my opinion of many posts!
Well, this review, more than any fan/hater debate, has piqued my curiosity enough to give the game a try if they ever do free trial periods.
Funny how no matter where the bad review comes from, that site is always "biased" "paid off" or "cheese" Lol.
Some of the VG fans are an incompetant developer's dream. The only thing they can do is try to attack the source of the review.
Myself, I didn't care much for this review because it was to generous, keep in mind the current and upcomming competition, VG deserves a 5.0 IMO.
If there wasnt this players i would had fallen in the trap missinformation .What else do u need in order to reject a game .
Quite true. I found some statements weird as well. I missed a lot of things, like city life, animated little things instead of NPCs mute and nailed to the ground like wax doll, but honestly flying mounts, Inquisitors and Berzerker weren't what I truly missed in acutal game play! Quite strange review. I accept the verdict, 68% sounds alright to me. But there would have been SO MUCH to say that was unsaid.
Really strange. I have the impression the reviewer was forced to review and did it lackluster and bored. Nothing that REALLY helps to judge the game in the eyes of someone who never himself played VG before.
I certainly would have as both are better than 6.9 but neither deserve an 8.5 either.
After playing them both I agree LOTRO is certainly the better of the two but not that much better...
The con is not the no high end content, it is the promise it will be completely screwed when it comes live.
Well, I must certainly say,
She was a lot easier on the review than what I would have done. But for the most part, she portrayed it well. Albiet, a more "calmer" version of what I would have done lol
Actually,
Vanguard will be a living nightmare for casuals when the high end content is put live.
I put Laura on my "to hunt list" with such a nasty recommendations, she want to hurt the casuals.
Seems a fair review to me, though of course it is not long enough to cover every pro and con, so people will inevitably feel odd that their pet issues were left out.
I was pleasantly floored by Vanguard in early Beta 2, yet something happened later on. I have ranted about it elsewhere....
CONS HAHAHAHAHAHAHA the best ever
yes high end content= raiding
bugs and dupes make the economy worst economy of any mmo besides diablo2
crafting meh, no point when no one in game to buy or sell.
no economy, no bug fixes, no players.. why not just play a single player rpg on ps3? seriously vanguard is the exact idea of what NOT to do when making or looking for a mmo. worst mmo in history
worst game ever and yes there is a huge market for hardcore games, just there's so many noobz out there like yourself who want the IWIN button that we can't get a real MMO out anytime soon.
btw im playing Project entropia atm and eve. both very good games I doubt you could even begin to understand or make it in. bye bye
I actually found the review to be somewhat accurate and representative of my time playing VG. I wouldn't have rated it as high and would have been more harsh in my review but I have no beef with what was written. My only problem is that it took so long for the review but I accept the reasons given for the delay.
Dont any of the whiners (on either side) ever get tired of hearing themselves bitch and moan about one reviewers (UNPAID reviewer to boot) opinion on a FREE review site?
Seriously... The way some of you come down with the "UNACCEPTABLE" and "UNFORGIVEABLE" and "HOW *DARE* YOU BE LATE!!!" BS I really truly hope that in whatever YOU do in real life for work (assuming any of you actually work and dont just post full times on boards) you get bosses that are every bit the hard ons that you are to the folks who DONATE time to help create a gaming community for all of us.
I thought this review was extremely fair and I'd say it pretty much matches what the average person is likely to find when trying VG. Unfortunately for VG, there are just far more appealing choices out there (nearly any of the big ones really). I stopped playing VG when I realized that I was missing WoW, EQ2 and CoH. Not good for the newest kid on the block. Then along came LOTRO and it was actually quite decent. Very bad news for VG. On the horizon looms WarHammer, Conan, etc. VG wasnt a horrible game, but it needed to have been released back in the Asherons Call 2 timeframe probably.
Vanguard will be one of those games we will all watch to see if they can get it together. I give it another six months and it should be in good shape I just wonder if it will be too late. SOE really needs to start looking at the quality of their products on release this is getting old from them.
Seriously, I wish it and you all the best, but the damage is done. This game has such a BAD word of mouth now, outside of the people that still play, it can't possibally recover. I mean even if SoE turns it around, like they did with EQ II, it'll never get back up to the 200,000 subscriptions or so it was at. SoE doesn't advertise or promote the game nearly enough to make up for the bad word of mouth in the MMO community. SoE has to be THE WORST company ever when it comes to promoting their games. They put a lot of "SPIN" into their own communities, but outside of that, they don't do anything.
Great review! I haven't played it but after what I've read from other people, you seem pretty precise on your ratings.
I seen many accusations on this forums pointing that review writer and community manager Laura G. is Vanguard advertiser (even some people said she is payed to do it)
This is probably just forum rant.
But still , i would like to hear another oppinion. Cause i am hard pressed to belive this review after all the "rumours"
hello all new to this site and look forward to seaking to you all:)
i just thought i would say that have i missed something? i read this review and thought it was extremely fair. it didn't seem to say to dont play this game at all, ok all the VG haters can try to turn this review into something it's not but come on it's getting tiresome. i dont play the game at the moment i am giving it a few months break to sort itself out then i will give it another go. but the game other than performance issues is a good game. some argue it's maybe a little difficult for them to level others think it's just right. i soloed a ranger to level 30 easily and really enjoyed the quest lines.
the crafting was as it should be for me, i got to a level 23 carpenter, it was really frustrating and a timesink but after that i had a trade to offer out and got rewarded for it. kind of like a RL trade. yes agreed this is not RL but a game. but lets face it you dont have to craft!
the world is huge and that's my biggest draw, i like to explore and there is plenty to do. overall i think the game is a good game that if they can sort certain issues will get stronger.
do yourselves a favout though. let people make thier own mind up about the game! if you dont like it dont play it and dont feel the need to turn others away! what do you gain from that? i dont comment on WoW for example because i dont like the game anymore. i comment on Vg because i do.
come on all let opinions be opinions and by all means give yours! just try not to feel you have to turn people away from the game. let them make thier own mind up.
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/vanguard/review.html?mode=web&om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary;theysay
Get your facts
average product for average people
review was spot-on I just can't imagine paying for something that isn't finshed.
average product for average people? hmm ok!
not sure if i missed something there. but if you mean simply what you wrote then.. ok i must be an average person, would have put myslef slightly above average myself but hey! maybe i am just not on a par with you!
and maybe with a little practise and help you could become average too then you would be able to play too :) sorry if i took that the wrong way and you were not labelling the players of VG average. if that is the case then i apologise!
Of all things I have posted that was all you could pick apart?
The review lies by ommision.
WAY too much was left unsaid.
I agree...the game is unfinished , BUT...the world is so big ...that even unfinished it still has alot more content then any other mmorpg I've see online...It's just more spread out.
From an adventure standpoint...Vanuard is anything BUT casual. In the context of being able to log in with only an hour or two to play and feel like you made progress. It can take 30+ min just to get to ones hunting spot or to the location where whatever quest you are on tells ya to go.
Lotro and WoW are casual games. Vanguard is not....least...not in the same way. It IS casual from the perspective that one doesn't have to play "hard " ...but expect to log alot of hours. With over 1000 hours in game I'm guess I've experienced less than 10% of what Vanguard has to offer. That is just from an adventuring standpoint.
In response to my "hidden agenda" remark...I don't really know...just talking some smak..BUT...It is obvious Laura was not enthused from the get go. Her review was beyond vague. I can only assume as a "semi-professional " poster she is capable of more than that. The fact that she did not give a good...DETAILED ...review suggests other things MAY be in the works here behind the scenes. It is my opinion , based on the way she worded her review.....she wanted to play on the games faults and not even mention the many postives.
It's such a big game....deep and complex. A true review would been 3x longer and much more in-depth than that.
She completely ommited anything in regards to crafting and harvesting...which happens to be HALF THE GAME! How can you take a review seriously when said reviewer DIDNT COMMENT ON OVER HALF THE GAME !
what about
Ships?
Boats?
Mounts ? ( camels, wolves, horses, unicorns)
Land ownership?
Building ones house?
Player economy?
Interface ? ...game and chat
just to name a few off the top of my head....
How about a few examples of good and bad exeriences in all those categories?
Where is the details about crafting and the new Diplomat card game aspect of this game?????
This review is incomplete without mentioning these aspects of the game.
I feel she did a poor review of the game.
i also bought and played the game for awhile, but had to quite do the game really sucking.
Vanguard has A LOT of potential, but not the power to make it happen. It is only half a game, it is imbalanced, incomplete, and full of grind due to the lack of some quest at certain levels. Items are still trying to be put in the game, and as a druid my character was forced to wear cloth that, incidentally was very short in supply in the game. Mosters dropped everything but casterfriendly gear.
The worst part of the game was the community. Its rotten. There are a few good people in a sea of douche bags. I am totally serious on how bad the community is and it is by far the worst I have ever seen in any MMORPG.
I had a talk with Brad (the guy behind vanguard) over one of the forums, he pretty much said it was regrettible because the fanboys were killing his game, scaring off new people who are seeing what its like. That they come into vanguard and find a bunch of elitist fanboys who want the game to be some exclusive special club, and everyone else needs to leave. This is why fanboys never help a cause, they only destroy it.
Brad also was hoping for user generated content at one point in the games history. If he allowed Vanguard to become an open sourced game, where anyone can contribute to it, then I think it might have a chance. How would this be possible? simple, have a test server purely set up for user generated content. What is good gets patched into the main servers. It runs off the unreal engine, and that can be a modders paradise.
If this doesnt happen, I am affraid its RIP vanguard.
Thamoris talks and acts like an exalted cult guru whose only pupose in life is to spread the word of his newfound "religion" and have us all embrace his mishapen defective crippled mangled monstrous deity...
He really scares me.
To bad he doesn't scare some of you enough to never see people like you again
Like a poster in this topic already said"where did you guy's go to school"that seem to be unable to read opinions, never thought that some gamers really are smallminded and ignorant, i always believed gamers where open-minded consider this wierd hobby we all have here, playing in virtual world, ah i guesse some consider themself having a very normal hobby LOL. trust me our hobby's are wierd, doesn't have to mean we are wierd. But once people realize this and hte fact we are the nichy segment of gaming would be the day people would be able to just read opinions as is and stop pretentending that every opinion is a FACT!
I must say Reklaw, you seem to have a bigger probelm reading other peoples Opinions, since you always feel the need to come and attack anyone that say something you disagree with.. you can never keep a discussion going, but always start straight off the bat with insults. Maybe talk less and think more huh? Look yourself in the mirror the next time, then say the exact same thing.
Maybe if people could read they would not see it as a attack
But i know m8 its perfectly alright for other people to be negative towards others and i know i can't do that to them aswell
I must say, as a VG player since the public beta and pre-order early access at launch I can partially understand why this game gets so much anti-hype, hate and general bad press. But really, the amount of people who have played the game up to say level 10, or never even played it at all yet still hate it and so vocally warn people off amazes me.
The idiots a few pages earlier who claim to have multiple level 50 "maxed out" characters made me laugh. Anyone with half a brain understood what they were buying when VG launched, if you didn't then it's your own fault for rushing through a minimal amount of content to "win". No MMO should start at the level cap, they all start at one. An MMO that doesn't work like that is a failure, putting continued pressure on the developers to keep the bleeding edge of the population happy with new raid content and "uber lewtz". Where this idea that raiding and end-game content is the be all and end all of MMO gaming came from, is beyond me. This game has more content than I've seen in most MMOs, if you don't RUSH your way through the game you're in for a treat. If you're willing to look for it, you will find it.
Performance is a difficult issue. But personally I can say I really don't think it's that bad as most people will say. The CTD issues have pretty much completely disappeared since launch, and performance is much better (for me at least). The next few patches are bringing in new cache optimisations, PC model optimisations and texture memory fixes, all of which promise further improvement. Really when you look at the size of this game, and the detail in the majority of the world it's no wonder that your Dell "Xtreme" rig suffers so badly.
Most people who have perfomance issues are the type of user who has a pre-built rig that's full of spyware, random applications and just general crap that will slow pretty much anything down, especially a memory intensive game like VG. I run a fairly average mainstream rig and run VG at acceptable rates (usually 20-35FPS) on balanced to high quality settings (I tweak most things myself). My specs below if anyone cares.
AMD64 X2 (DualCore) 3800+ @ 2.5Ghz
2Gb Corsair "Value" DDR RAM (my major bottleneck)
Plantronics USP DSP Headset (love it)
2x ATI x1600XT 256Mb DDR3 (crossfire is useless)
The problem I have with this review is it gives an unfair and unappealing view of this game. The review doesn't even mention grouping, they managed to get to 30 without playing through any of the major dungeons? That's a real shame. They don't really mention how much fun the combat is either, the reaction system makes each class very much a different experience with a lot of really fun features like chain moves, combos, finishing moves, counterspells... I could go on.
Really this game is for the MMO player who looks after their PC (and thus can expect to run VG just fine) and enjoys grouping, exploring and a slower pace of gameplay than most other games. I'll try and summerise why I think Vanguard is worth playing:
I forgot to mention diplomacy and crafting, while they may not be for everyone they both have a very loyal following of players, especially diplomacy, so there must be something there that appeals to people (I hear the lore is actually quite in-depth and interesting, I haven't "dipped" much myself).
There really are too many reasons for me to try and list and I've realised that's it's probably pointless to do so since the flaming is about to start. Yes I am a noob, a faggot, a masochistic vanboi. Whatever you want to hurl at me. To those of you reading these pages in the interest of seeing what Vanguard might be like ; wait for the trial or just give it a go for the free month, make up your own mind instead of following the moronic crowd!
FLAME ON!!!
Calren Eldelmar - Paladin of Daedalus - Gelenia
So was Dark and Light......
Laura Genenders Lips meet SOE's Ass
should have been the topic of this story. Never before have I.. no wait, let me just put it this way. Let's say Vanguard is a Car you're looking at buying, Laura Genender is selling it toy you. The car is broken, unpainted, has no motor, the body is rusted through, the floor is falling out, the gasline leaks, there are no tires, so forget about moving it off the lot. Nobody wants the car, BUT
Laura will tell you this:
It's ugly, but it's pretty on the inside. It's broken, but it still impresses me. It has no motor but just imagine how it might sound if it had one. No tires, but if I blow you you really hard you can pretend you're moving with the wind tossing your hair. It's gaslines leak, but if you get a good air freshener you won't notice the smell.
Let's face the cold facts, Laura is predisposed to selling the MMO as it is, because it is what it is, unredeemable, incomplete, sloppy and so ripe with problems that it belongs in the nearest junkyard. But an MMO focused site wants to make advertising dollars and so they make proper bedmates.
If you want a VALID statement or review of the game listen to the community thats playing the game, read their posts, listen to their complaints and praises.
This "article" was simply salesmanship.
Ya, not to mention saying VG has a 'twist' on clerics, then goes on to describe what clerics have and always were meant to be (at least, if you put things in D&D perspective 30+ -some-odd-years-old). Just because clerics in VG aren't like priests in WoW does not make VG creative.
At least the review was interesting...
Good review, at least from someone who beta-tested the game (me that is). I really wanted to read an "unbiased" review of the current state of the game. Saddened to see the problems people have been complaining about are still there, and that development/content/fixes are slowing down, as opposed to the opposite. I'd give the game a try again, but hearing about empty towns and the lack of development or, progress, makes me want to sit this one out and see what happens. I'm jumped into games that I loved, like Horizons, when it was a sinking ship... well, I guess it was a sinking ship from the get-go, if you follow the history of this tragic game.
Still waiting for a game I can mostly solo, and explore, explore, and explore some more. I loved and hated EQ I for so many reasons, one love being the sheer volume of land, and number of dungeons to explore. Games now, especially the free/item-mall Asian clone crap, are all about mindless pk-ing, immature players, and 0 exploration. Most don't even have a single dungeon to explore.
I beta tested LOTR (and soooo many others), but after initially liking it, I hit a certain level where quests and such were impossible to finish without being FORCED to group. Some people liked that about it. Not me. As a player, I shouldn't be FORCED to do anything I don't want to do, especially when solo content was great at lower levels.
My problem with groups? Easy. Unskilled players, the group NOT playing as a group, people spending 30 mins to find a group, then saying the have to go eat lunch with their grandma (true story) and quitting the group.. ya know, like your only tank or healer, then back to the drawing board. I haven't found a good group in a game (talking about 10 different games AT LEAST) in ages. People have real lives to deal with, as do I, being a father of 3 children, and even I can't dedicate hours to a group of strangers (but I'm still the last person to break up and leave a group).
In GW, I did almost every mission with NPCs. Yeah, almost ALL of them. There were a couple that were impossible to do without real people though. My garbage groups failed so many missions because the 12 year olds in my group couldn't follow a simple command, and would run off from the group and kill themselves or just log off with no explanation. I lost hours having to re-do mission after mission due to bad groups.
From what I understand, Laura is playing and enjoying the game.
The review I read was certainly not a sales pitch. Negative aspects of the game were brought up and written about beside aspects of the game that she enjoyed. Just because you don't agree or even because you strongly disagree, doesn't mean that the writer had some kind of hidden agenda.
You can disagree with the review as much as you like, we encourage that. However, attacking the author (or any other memebr of this site) will not be tolerated.
Hope that clears things up
I agree with this review totally, BUT at this point EQ2 does everything Vanguard tries to do but 100% better. EQ2 is currently the best MMO on the market, I dont care how many WoW fanboys may be here. Vanguard is "ok" but it needs time in the oven. I cant wait till they merge servers, right now this game is a ghost land
I also wanted to say, its not just poor advertising and bad word of mouth online hurting the popularity of this game. I recently went into two of our local EBgames and asked for store clerks opinions on Vanguard and it was pretty much blasted. They tried to steer me towards EQ II, World of Warcraft or if I was willing to wait, WarHammer Online. I did the same thing with the local Best Buy and got the same results. So at least in my area, people are being told its not a good game by the store clerks. I will say, that one of the clerks in one of the EBgames and the guy in Best Buy both said they hadn't played it, but they heard from a lot of people that did play it, that it sucked. Again, bad word of mouth, but this time in the real world instead of the virtual world. This goes to show you, bad word of mouth goes a LONG LONG LONG way.
I didn't get a sales pitch feel from the review, and I think comparing Laura to a used car salesman selling an obvious lemon is a bit unfair. The game is playable and not the complete lemon people make it out to be. Obviously people DO play the game and some are even having fun with it. I'm not implying it's without its problems though.
I'm not sure Laura was the proper person to do the review though because she obviously likes to solo more than group and doesn't care for other avenues like harvesting, crafting and diplomacy which play an important role in Vanguard. For example, did you know you can have a harvesting party, much like an adventuring party that yields greater rewards? No more competing for nodes, it makes more sense to group them. Did you know acts of diplomacy can trigger events that effect everyone within a region or open quest lines otherwise unobtainable? Diplomacy is actually a very fun game within a game once you figure it out. As for crafting, did you also know you can build a ship, not a puny little canoe, but a big ole frigate you can sail around on? It's not easy, and it probably requires help, but it's an amazing little something you can do.
Laura probably didn't write about these things because maybe she didn't do these things, which is fair enough, but the consequence of that is the article becomes less of a review and more personal opinion on the game, like a blog. This is informative and valuable in it's own right, as I value peoples opinion usually more than reviews anyway. But I think it's fair to say that perhaps someone willing to explore all the game's avenues a bit more might have made for a more informative review.
All that said, I think Vanguard was released a year too early. It obviously needs more development and time to allow technology to catch up to it a bit on the hardware side of things -- or at lease be more mainstream and affordable. But underneath all the current problems, lies an incredible game with huge potential, and I think Sony sees that too (otherwise why further waste money and resources on it). It just happened to be a little too ambitious for a start-up group like Sigil to see through to the end. It's difficult to say whether Vanguard will ever be a commercial success, but I applaud SoE for giving it a go, because I really would like to someday play Vanguard as it was intended to be.
No tires, but if I blow you you really hard
WTF! DUDE! REVIEW UR WRITING NEXT TIME. Their seriously are kids on this, like .e
Which is why you have, "I was raised on the dairy...BITCH" by your name?
LOL
ok cool, so I'm not the only one that sees him as a wacko
This is one of the better reviews I have read about this game. It's fairly honest and touches on some good points. I had been one of those people that seriously looked forward to Vsoh...Until I learned of it's many faults. I simply don't agree to this concept of releasing a game half finished and making the consumer be a paying beta tester. So instead I went and subscribed to Eq2. True it's a SoE game but it fills my needs in a mmorph.....For now until a new mmorph comes out being released complete.
I look forward to future reviews!
hahahhahahah. good point. didnt notice it till you said it. lol
i actually rofl'd
One of the things that concerns me the most about VG was bought up plain and clear by the reviewer. She said that one of Vanguard's biggest problems is that it fails to be the game that it was supposed to have been. I mean let's take grouping for example. From day 1 Sigil said how grouping was going to be the main focus in VG and that players would be expected to group to accomplish things. I mean this is a Massively Multiplayer Online game for starters.
So you get into the game and how much grouping is there really (and I mean outside tightly knit guild confines)? The reviewer even states that she was able to solo effectively, and, from her words, suggests that this is possible into the 20s and 30s. Why is a game that ultimately leads to soloing being classed as Massively Multiplayer? That's a huge problem for me. It totally goes againstw hat they always said the game was going to be.
That is a big reason for the shrinkage in player base. I know players who have excitedly followed this game since 2004 and 2005 that didn't even play because so many of the great ideas that were bounded around prior to launch were dropped in favour of simplification and appeasing the WoW crowd. Then the WoW-type players left because the game tried to do things the 'new' way and failed miserably because it still wanted to be a hardcore title.
To sum up in one sentence; Vanguards biggest problem is it tries to be too much. You could even encompass that Sigil went for too big a scope than they were able to handle; but bad management is as a big a reason for that as is incompetency.
I'm also glad that the reviewer mentioned the lore. From the game's size and scope the game would be assumed to have amples and oodles of lore. It was another reason I followed this game so intently since 2004. There were to be Gods, stories, famous characters. I got into game and found a little bit of present story lore in the newbie diplomacy quests, but outside of that it was all so vague; passing comments here and there. You never were able to choose a God to worship and after all Sigil's hype about the complexity of Vanguard that was a huge failing point for me.
I have been playing EQ2 lately and that game is how lore should be. Everyday I find half a dozen new pieces of lore to read and I am loving it. I have just chosen Tunare as my God and learnt about the history of the Dwarven Ringmail Tunic and then I find a bookseller with the history of all the races. EQ2 could be a terrible, terrible game in most aspects but still rivet me with its lore content. Thing is it is actually a rather good game in all other aspects.
Given time then SOE can probably turn VG around and make it a good game. Problem is I don't think I will play again because I know they will always be trying to do too many different things to keep too many types of gamers happy. Sigil wowed people like me with promises of difficult, challenging and engrossing content. With ideas of ship travel and contrasting player controlled economies. Of having to to explore to find quests and to think about what you were going to do within challenging and tactical combat. Sigil gave up on the players that picked up Vanguard when it was just a child and followed it with glee. We hyped it to the unbelievers and told everyone what a great and original game it was going to be. Then they said to us, 'sod you', in favour of pleasing the casual crowd.
Vanguard is not the game it ever promised to be. They tried to please too many people and pleased relatively few.
This is your average Vanguard player. Even if you don't agree with what he says know that people like this are the majority of the players in the game ( from my experience )
Thank you for taking the time to post such a well written and thought out post. Perhaps you should go on staff here and write reviews. Your simple post was better written and more accurate that Laura's review.\
You sir...suck less than the rest !
EB games and Gamestop ( same company now ) both are cheese. I should know..I used to manage a Gamestop store. They are 95% console oriented. A vast majority of the employees there don't know squat about cpu games and even less about mmorpg's.
My wife went in and asked for the latest Guild Wars game and they had no idea which one it was. I'm sure experiences will vary as alot of that depends on Area Managers doing their job to hire the right managers...but still. That should have been a no brainer for someone who gets paid to know games.
I agree this is a much more thought out and complete review, much better then the staffer did.
Well to address the performance of the game, I have a AMD 3200 with 2gb of memory and a nvidia 6600gt. Obviously a pretty middle of the road system. I have run, EQ2, Wow, Lotro, Eve, tried a host of the asian grindfests, all run at high graphics settings with no problems at all. My gaming system has very little in the startup beyond basic virus protection.
Yet, trying to run this game at even low graphics settings makes me feel like I am walking underwater half the time. I just resuscribed in May because a friend told me it was much better. Yes it was better that I remember at release, but still unplayable.
So it still is a big issue. I hope the upcoming changes address it, I might look at the game again, but probably not.
Oh for the record, AC beat Vanguard to the punch when it comes to big worlds and they actually had a lot more content at release.
I feel like I'm in a Twilight Zone episode, where I woke up and people forgot what crap Vanguard was, and it was an actual debate topic.
Good review right one the money. end of story, let's wait for some new game to suck okay ?
His post was far more disconcerting than yours. Don't apologize... anyone who can't form a complete sentence even with abbreviated words (UR?) isn't in a position to criticize anyone.
I haven't, and probably won't try Vanguard for a long time. I had many friends leave the game we were playing to give VG a try, based on the promises - promises that for the most part were not ready at launch and still aren't, as this review mentions.
Poo-poo on unfinished game releases.
There is one thing that I dislike greatly and have heard in more than one place:
"For example, VG rethought the Cleric class: instead of being an exercise in heal-and-sit-and-stand-and-heal, the VG Cleric is a powerful meleer, and is expected to help in combat."
No, no they did not. They might be the first to put the idea into practic in an MMO (not necessarily true either), but they didn't 'rethink' it. Let's go back to the late 1970's and dust off our old D&D books, shall we? Heck, let's go with an example I was alive for - 2nd Edition AD&D or even the 3.x D&D of more recent days - where your cleric has always been a mace wielder who can wear heavier armor and back up a fighter in melee!
I am excited about about the upcoming patch and Update 2. We already know that it is going to provide a rested experience feature, so that you can obtain rested experience if you are not able to play everyday.
To be sure:
Yes. All classes can solo to max level. The world provides an array of solo, small group content.
Edit on June 29th: it is a small group oriented game, so duos, trios, and quads work best. (But with a Necro, Druid, Shaman, or a Pscionist you could probably reach max level without ever having to group).
Yes. The upcoming server mergers will help with population for grouping and growing guilds. (the game was released unfinished, so many quit until the game is finished. The game was buggy, laggy at release so many also quit. The game still started with way too many servers because the world is so enormous!)
No. It is not a forced-raiding game.
No. It is not a forced-grouping game.
Yes. The world is that massive. Exploration is always fun and interesting!
I wanted to give some screenshots, as the review did not have very many:
A nice view: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/View.jpg
Group in Thelessan: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/Hell.jpg
Named in a Dungeon: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/fullpartyv.%20named.jpg
Frog attack!: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/frogattack.jpg
Bug attack!: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/Bugattack.jpg
The infamous: i181.photobucket.com/albums/x167/truenorthbg/InfamousGaku.jpg
Nothing like proving yourself wrong by rabidly defending a game.
Truly I would like to see these 30 page reviews people keep telling us about. I read many gaming magazines. Rarely do I see more than 2 pages devoted to a single review, and most of those pages are pictures. I read many gaming websites. Rarely do I see long reviews, unless they are innundated with pictures. Most of the information could be contained on 1 or 2 pages.
Please, tell me where you read these amazing, novel length reviews you people are always talking about. I would like to see them for myself.
Yes the performance of the game is really bad, as one person said the Lag is not bad if you are away from crowds but in town it is a nightmare, unless this game is optimized properly it is unplayable. Because of the lag it is just too annoying to play for long or short periods of time. It is to bad because the game has some decent gameplay to it.
Alright, i been reading a lot about this game. I am looking for a good mmorpg, to keep me busy till either AOC comes out or War comes out. I tried Lotro..... i could not stay with it. This game looks good, seems like fun, but I 'm so baffled by all the negative things i read about it, and then people protecting it. Seems this is a good game, that just got caught up in politics of the creators. And it needs to be updated some. Something that seems it will be fixed over time. My question is, it worth going out buying the game and spending $15 a month on it for next 3-6 months, or will i play it for a month and drop it just like Lotro?? LoL
These threads stop being fun when it starts to feel hostile. People should chill a little and remember that we're talking about a game. No ones life is on the line here.
I think that some are being a little to hard on Taera. Her play style sounds very much like my own. I think that it would speak to the typical MMOer. Kind of casual, but not entirely. I personally play often, but I play casually. I don't really dive head long and invest a portion of myself to the game. The things I look for when I'm playing an MMO, Taera poiinted out nicely. I'll try a little crafting, but regardless of it's gameplay, I'm not really going to get into it. I adventure, and that's what I'll spend 99% of my time playing the game doing. It's the most important part of the game. It that isn't going to keep people playing, then it doesn't really matter how good the crafting or diplomacy is.
If you're a casual type gamer, and you don't play MMO's to craft, then the crafting may not please you. Most people that don't craft, don't care, and most people, I think, don't craft.
I got the impression from the review that Taera tried crafting, but didn't really get into it; in fact she said crafting really isn't her thing.. She is also very right. Crafting and diplomacy are very subjective. I personally, have no idea what crafters find fun. Every crafting system feels the same to me. I stand in one spot clicking buttons while I watch some progress bar. Woohoo. Fun.
Diplomacy is just a card game. You may like it, you may not. There really isn't much that I could see that needs to be said about it. Everyone knows how it works by now. Every review I've read about diplomacy has felt like an overview of how it works. We don't really need another one of those do we? How many people are going to log into VG JUST to be a diplomat? Really now, if the gameplay isn't fun for them, are they going to continue playing just for the card game? If you can't get past the gameplay, then does it really matter?
Harvesting. I'm a harvester. It's my thing for some reason. But if the adventuring isn't fun then I'm not going to run around and click nodes. I can do that in any MMO for the most part. So why not do it in one that has good gameplay. I see absolutely no reason for a review about harvesting. Everyone already has an opinion on what it's like to harvest. It's no dif. in VG.
It is fair however, for us to expect to see some brief overview of all of the features in the game, but as a typical MMOer it's not really important.
Normally I would want to know about PvP. It's PvP, then adventuring, then harvesting. But PvP is very subjective. It's like crafting. It can be mentioned, but I don't think it can really be reviewed. You're either hardcore, casual, or no PvP at all. I don't think you can really write a review of VG PvP that isn't slanted towards one of them player types.
It's unfortunate that VG has no purpose for PvP at the moment. I dont' even care about balanced PvP. As long as I can kill other players I'm happy. If I can't kill another player in game then it doesn't matter how fun the adventuring is, and if the game only has senceless killing of other players then PvP isn't fun. Money drops are nice, but not enough; I mean this in every sence it could be applied.
I would have liked to see some XP gain from killing other players. I don't care that it encourages people to kill each other; in fact, that's exactly why I want. I would rather be killed by another player because I have worth then to be killed for nothing. The only game that has plenty of PvP (for me), rewards killing other players (and penalty for being killed), fun adventuring, and usefull harvesting is EQ2.
If VG gives more reason to kill other players, and more players to kill, then I'll be more active. As is, I'll just peak in every now and then for fun.
Where did " 30 pages " come from? Did I say I wanted a 30 page review? I think not.
After a 6 month wait...something more than a 300 word review that talked about ..roughly 20% of game would have been nice though.
At least a review that would touch on ALL aspects of the game.
AND...why are my posts being deleted ??
I am not flaming anyone...using foul or vulgar words ...staying on topic. What gives?
You can find a couple of reviews I did here in the forums that were better thought and more complete than this " official " review.
That are way more biased than the MMORPG.com one, the other way around.
First of all, the review on the game was accurate and pinpoints the main problems VG has. The score is to the point as well, might be a little generous however.
Thamoris, as a matter of fact you should be happy the review was not longer, because there would have been much more cons waiting of being mentioned than pros.
I have to state it again, as I did in another thread. The countless fixes they have done to the game short after launch should not go as a pro, because it does not speak for the developer. It just tells us that a sloppy coded unfinished game has been released, so why should this go as a plus for the game? This is just beyond all logical thinking. This comes from a guy, who reported about 80 bugs after the game was released, because I care about the worlds I play in. I am aware of the fact that a game never stops evolving, however the high amount of issues the game has is not acceptable to be a "paid service of entertainment", because that's what those games are in the end. Just that we love a game, can't leave us totally uncritical and blind for the flaws. This game did not see any significant QA, probably because the QA department was heavily understaffed.
I know a whole lot about what a good QA means, as I earn my money with it, and VG did not witness proper QA, period.
I can tell you why this is the case, because until now every single bit of content update the devs brought in was actually intended to be in the release version. Don't you feel fooled that you play a game and after a while the whole game changes, massive additions to class skill trees are made? New quest lines are implemented and old are revamped/redesigned heavily? You don't notice that everything above level 40 is a simple faction grind with little bits of lore tossed in between, where you have to solve a simple riddle or two? Faction grinds are there to give the dev team time to implement stuff, they are nothing more and nothing less. The formula is to keep the player base busy with something. And sorry, if the item I can get through one simple kill has equal or almost equal quality to the one I get through countless hours of faction grinding then there is something very wrong. This all adds to my point that it is/was not well thought through. And no, I am not a loot focussed player, I play to get things done, but the risk/reward-ratio is one of the most important things for a MMORPG, because it stands and falls with it.
Take the whole swamp area with it's three factions as an example. This is actually the only place where the faction grind makes sense to me, because it is imbedded into the game. Places like the Temple of Tehatamani (spelling?, sorry) or Rahz Inkur have just an artificially created faction race to extent the time needed to finish this places. On the other hand let's mention a positive example of how it can be done: The Wardship of the Sleeping Moon. Yes, yes faction involved as well, but it is naturally imbedded into the quest line so you never feel like you are grinding. I discovered all this as a member of a fix playing group, night by night going through this massive armor quest line, and it was a whole lot of fun. But wait, this is lvl 30-40 content. This is where the game shines.
Good review. I like the game, but I am not doing anything in it until they merge the servers. Went back to Eq2, and with Kunark coming out, might stay there. Depending if it brings back those old EQ1 Kunark memories.
But Vanguard is a good game, just incomplete.
But then, VG doesn't have class trees. If you mean to say that massive changes to each class, then you are only partially right. Since release my druid has seen very little change. There was a patch that upped his damage some, but nothing I would call a nerf. WoW on the other hand has been altering the classes for the past 2 years. Every update seems to change something in some classes, and not by a little. My mage took a hit on damage, had the way they used mana altered. My hunter, well he's not the same toon I started playing 2 years ago; not even close. Every class is like that in WoW. How do you justify a complaint against a NEW game that has to balance, just like EVERY game that comes out, when games that are several years old continue to do the exact same thing.
2) New quest lines are added? I pay 15 dollars a month to play an MMO, I DEMAND new content. Why would I pay to play the same game for months on end, not getting anything more then I could get from a free to play single player game. New quest lines isn't a bad thing; especially if those quests were supposed to be there. MMO's change old quest lines as well. Sometimes a quest line may not be fun, or the quest reward may not be suited to the quest. Not sure how you argue this one either. Almost every MMO goes through this.
3) Faction grinding? Yeah, so like the number one MMO out right now is one giant faction grind Faction grinding exists in MANY MMO's; not just VG. WoW had a lot of senceless faction grinding as well. Why would you grind rep with the wildhammer dwarves (think that's there name)? At one point grinding AD rep was pointless; then they added the rewards for it. In fact, I think WoW beats every game on the market with the number of factions you grind rep for. I just don't get the complaining about faction grinding in VG, as if it's the only game that has you doing it.
A review is nothing more then a single persons opinion of the game. Is that opinion worth more or less then anyone elses? I think not; so why all the hate over a silly review.
Man, the reviewer really bent over backwards ( and forwards, and sideways ) to try and Not make it sound TOO negative. What kills it for me is the stability issues - people falling off ships due to lag is an ancient EQ1 bug !
I refuse to play any mmog that has server-side lag issues (latency, freezing, popping, warping, synch issues, etc.).
There is Absolutely NO Excuse these days for lag - fast latency-free client server game code is no longer a mystery, it's been solved for many years yet some companies still refuse to implement appropriate solutions.
It seems like Vanguard may the last of the standard " Traditional Gameplay " mmogs ala EQ and AC.
I think I made it fairly clear in the review what performance problems DID happen, and what are STILL happening - i.e. doors still lag me, and I still fall off my boat from lag. Black screens of death? Not so much anymore, but it was part of the game's launch history.
As for population - I TOTALLY agree that a big part of it is world size - when you have dozens of starting cities, even 50 new players leaves the newbie areas barren and lonely. This is, though, a flaw of the game - I think that merging the servers will help a lot on this. If I handed you a cup full of sand, and a sandbox with one cup of sand in it, you'd probably call the cup full and the sandbox empty, despite the same quantities. I don't think this is an omission really.
I don't know what to tell ya - I'm a fairly hardcore gamer, and the only way I really enjoyed VG was 10 hours a week at my absolute peak. Again, though, I was a very solo friendly class.
Totally agreed, Ivan; I'm not shelving this one just yet, in hopes that it might pull it together. No, don't attack me - I'm not saying it will! I'm just saying I hope :)Yeah just like SOE fixed SWG.
Yep. Thamoris' review is totally whitewashing all the crap inside Vanguard and playing it down as minor issues. It is almost right up there with Brad's hype. Vanguard's issues are wide and varied and can't be resolved with just bug fixes.
There is a big difference between a well designed game with bugs and a lousy game. Vanguard falls into the latter category. Almost every other game on the left sidebar is better than Vanguard.
This game is a joke.
I think the writer of this review tried very hard to be objective. I don't quarrel with the premises, just the conclusions drawn from them. To me, assuming the truth of everything said in the review, it totals up to this game being crap (which it is). It is also crap for a lot of reasons not discussed in the review.
Hi just letting all you Vanguard haters out there know Vanguard rocks!! Have been playing online games and rpg's since the first apple computer came out , cut my teeth on seirra's game's and have been in most north america mmorpg beta's and played most games that have been released since 1980's ,been so long that my memory is getting dim about what came first The realm from seirra or leasure suit larry , anyways to get to my point vanguard is a evolution of games eq1 eq2 some starwars thrown in and some of every game that has come out in the last 20 years,sure the hardware that is required to run game is huge but the desiner had huge dreams and he got burned by being forced to release early and lost his dreams to the company that forced him to release (wounder if that was the plan all along?)anyways most games that I have played had start up problems and vanguard is no different with the new patches coming and content being added this game outshines any out there ie boats,houses, flying mounts,cloaks my personal pet pev against eq1 lol and many more things that need to be discovered by going off the path so come out play the game leave your negativity at the sign in page you will be supprised at how the game draws you in and makes you want to play . forgive the spelling mistakes and the grammer typing with two fingers is hard and don't know what a spell checker is too old I guess.and no don't work for soe lol.
I wonder if there is the best MMO in the market, and i think it'll be the refuge for classic MMORPG'ers when the games become more and more casual and/or elpy-killing pvp-bunnyhopping ala WoW but deeper in the follow the white bunny hole, thats the market's tendency lately.
I hope SOE fixes the problems with such a great game, and we'll have a Giant.
No offense Laura, but don't you think it would have been more fair then to give the review assignment to someone who was willing to experience and review as much of the game as possible, instead of just the parts that are their "thing"?
It is a bit unfair to your readers to ignore a (large?) portion of the game in your review just because you don't like that particular segment. We're not talking here about bias -- everyone has some -- but to my mind it's simply a refusal to do the job put before you. I've never played Vanguard, but were I trying to make that decision I now would have to wonder what else, good or bad, was ignored in the game because the reviewer was unwilling to be as thorough as she should have been.
On the other hand, I am not paying anything to read the reviews here, so I take it all with a grain of salt.
I would say that what the review covered was mostly fair but it was slanted to the adventuring sphere only and left a lot out.
First off the Adrid mace she referred to was in the Tomb of Lord Tsang and that is going to be a grouping area only unless you are way too high to even use the mace (there are four different weapons and a focus by the way in that dungeon). The Inquisitor and Berzerker were never planned for launch and this was known a long time before. No where was it even implied that they would be in 'shortly after launch'. This is also true for the Alchemist trade skill (which was not mentioned).
Second, she mentioned not liking the starter diplomacy quest for her town and that was it. Each town has their own series of quests and each has a very different flavor to it (I highly recommend the Dark Elf and Dwarf Quests). After these quests you then have Civic Diplomacy where Diplomats can set flags in a town that (a) gives them more diplomacy cards to play (b) gives buffs that help crafters (c) gives buffs that help adventurers. Not to mention all of the hundreds of diplomacy quests and higher end content that is available.
Third, there was no mention of crafting at all. No mention of the various crafting quests that are there beyond the writs. No mention on how higher tier rare recipes are really rare (about a 3% chance of getting one from a five item grade a work order). Not everyone will have a tier 3 and up rare recipe and those who do either worked hard for it or worked hard enough to purchase one off the broker.
So yes there is less than appropriate high end content at the moment and , at the moment, no raiding content. This will change though. And those players who rush to the end, ie skip the majority of the content that is out there, will be disappointed. But then those players are always disappointed becasue there is never enough for them fast enough.
Take time to experience all aspects of the game and do not rush to the end and you will find it is a fun game. Also two of the major issues (performance and CTD) were greatly mitigated with the latest patch. It is not perfect and there is still a lot of room for improvement but it is getting better.
I quit Vanguard after playing it for about 2-3 months. The game has a lot going for it and I loved many features.
Pro's-
best class selection I've ever seen. I loved and still miss the classes in vanguard
good graphics if you have the system to handle it
good group mechanics
tons of dungeons to choose from at low and mid levels
huge world
great crafting system if it wasnt for bugs
diplomacy was neat, especially if you like learning the lore
healer classes that kick ass! every healer can solo with ease and deal good damage.. think shadow priest and ret paladin, but you can heal as well as anybody.
Con's-
bugs, bugs, bugs (not as many as many people claim, but still enough to irritate even me at times)
poor performance even with a good system
very high system requirements
landscapes could be a little more varied
not near enough high level content, but that could be added if that was the only problem
I am anti insta-travel, but travel in Vanguard was just a time sink, not adventurous, and resulted in many crashes when crossing zone lines. Traveling as a group was impossible as you would lose at least one person every time you changed regions.
I quit out of boredom (no MMO has been able to keep my interest for the past year and a half), and the fact that everyone I played with left because of bugs and performance... and boredom I suppose.
I often think of going back later when there is more content and less bugs, but I'm not sure the game will ever recover. I hope sony recovers this as well as they did EQ2, I think that was just as bad when it was new, just in different ways.
system Information
------------------
Time of this report: 7/7/2007, 00:14:32
Machine name: LOAF
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Unknow
System Model: Unknow
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
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Ok, above u see my system ,, i have 2 7900gt/gto's,
Anyways, ive been playing vanguard since beta, and since eq1, i havent played a mmo consistantly, except for this one, heres my thoughts.
1. if u think vanguard runs like crap currently , u really should try and play it after i post this, if u have close to, if not a better system then i do, i get 50 frames a sec on balanced, settings. i get no lag, except when going thru khal, etc (i.e. large cities), and even then its hardly any.
2. The group mechanics are great ( IN MY OPINION) i mean , i honestly have a blast crawling thru a dungeon , or just trying to get somewhere i havent been yet. there is content for groups of 2, 3, 4, and 6. and yes even solo content,, would be very very slow in lvling but if u wanted to u could solo prob all the way to 40 maybe 50 ,, im only 31 atm.
3. classes, ,,, so far everyclass ive played i liked, except for the shaman but thats just me so
4. peeps (ingame) very helpful, if im lost or being retarded and forget how to read, i ask a question , they anwser
5. i had some really good stuff i was gonna put in this post and just lost it all.
6 i played today from 8 am to 12 midnight, and i didnt crash not once,, so they fixed that,, yesterday was a diff story though..
I just wanted to voice my opionion on this, i usually dont post and just read for enjoyment, but all these retards who never played the game, voiceing there opionions off of other opinions , just dont make any sense this post prob doesnt make any since either but atleast ive played the dang game.
Oh and if your reading this forum to find out , if u should buy the game or not,, go buy it,, decide for yourself, i cant say , yeah youll love it, or yeah dude youll play it for 20000000 hrs and youll think its the greatest since sliced bread. , if i did i would set u up for failure, it would raise your uber hype lvl to kill vanguard, ,, not everyone played eq, and some did , some loved it some hated it, it wasnt for everyone and it was for some, lol, did i mention that im drunk.. anyways, im enjoying myself and i hope i get flamed for this post
Loafkill,
I have a couple of questions for you.
First, do you mean that performance on your system used to be bad in Vanguard and it just got great, or do you mean that your system always ran it well? I have an e6300 C2Duo processor, 4 gig of RAM, an 8800GTS with 660 RAM on it, and run Win XP s.p.2. and the performance in Vanguard left something to be desired. I never got stutter lag, but the hitching was terrible... of course this was months ago. Also, last I heard Vanguard still didnt support dual vid cards so unless that has changed you are actually running on just one of those two cards.
Second, you said you are in the level 30-40 range, have you ever been up to or near the level cap? I think the content is quite good up through level 35 or 40, the problem as I understand it is after that there is very little to do, especially at end-game. I myself only played up into the mid thirties so I never experienced the lack of content myself.
If the performance problems are fixed or get fixed, and the team can move on to adding content Vanguard will be a fairly decent MMO and will be worth playing if you are looking for something new. The most important thing to realize is that Vanguard is not the "revolutionary" MMO we expected, its just another run of the mill MMO with a couple of new features and a ton of dungeons to explore.
I suggest waiting untill we hear Vanguard is truly fixed before trying the game out. Most people who try it while its still playing like a beta will not go back later.
Ok, im sober now hehe, yes the performance with this last patch increased prob by 50 percent,,
I have a couple of questions for you.
First, do you mean that performance on your system used to be bad in Vanguard and it just got great, or do you mean that your system always ran it well? I have an e6300 C2Duo processor, 4 gig of RAM, an 8800GTS with 660 RAM on it, and run Win XP s.p.2. and the performance in Vanguard left something to be desired. I never got stutter lag, but the hitching was terrible... of course this was months ago. Also, last I heard Vanguard still didnt support dual vid cards so unless that has changed you are actually running on just one of those two cards.
Second, you said you are in the level 30-40 range, have you ever been up to or near the level cap? I think the content is quite good up through level 35 or 40, the problem as I understand it is after that there is very little to do, especially at end-game. I myself only played up into the mid thirties so I never experienced the lack of content myself.
If the performance problems are fixed or get fixed, and the team can move on to adding content Vanguard will be a fairly decent MMO and will be worth playing if you are looking for something new. The most important thing to realize is that Vanguard is not the "revolutionary" MMO we expected, its just another run of the mill MMO with a couple of new features and a ton of dungeons to explore.
I suggest waiting untill we hear Vanguard is truly fixed before trying the game out. Most people who try it while its still playing like a beta will not go back later.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ive used the Evga, or E brand of cards, and i have to say BFG i got better performance i dont know what is different or if anything is,, just letting you know,, and your right a couple months ago it was a pain to play vanguard. and i dont get any hitching in most cases any longer.
As far as vanguard supporting dual video cards, if u go into the vgclient.ini file, theres a option there something like DualVGA=false set that to true, and make sure u enable it in your OS. and as far as end game content,, i was curious just to c how many 50s were on ,, well first i did a who all 50, and got over 40 uses online, wouldnt display anymore, then i did by class most cases were 10+ each class, some classes were more. and they have added some content , to what extent,, i dont know ill let u know.
I think it would be a good time for a re-review of this game. Much has changed since the pretty bad launch. The game is starting to come into its own and I think it deserves another look by the staff.
incredible game.
it must have much but note on 9,2
I would like to see MMORPG.com do another review. It has been 6 months since the last one and imo a lot has changed.
The last interview listed was done in 8/3/2007
The last article listed for Vanguard is on 1/12/2007 with Brad.
I agree that we need a re-review. I have heard about Vanguard from certain people, yet they have never given me a full review, nor listed what lvl they were at the time of telling me about it.
Even if a user wants to break down the current review and let us know how things have changed since launch. (I see a lot of "VANGUARD GREATEST GAME EVER"... but then they rarely qualify that opinion with facts or points of reference)
Anyhow, I am eager to read about it more.
So here is an attempt at a new review:
I think this can be the case on many a game Website/Forum and yes they do still exist. There are some good posts on the forums and the usual rubbish where it semms that there is always something to moan about.
I don't have any numbers and I am not sure that SOE would really give any out, but from one of there last posts they did say that numbers are rising.
The servers have been merged. There are no way as many as there was at live, we only have 4 now. Has this made a difference. Hell yes. There are Guilds with huge populations and the servers a alive with players running about and the chat channels full with folks talking. Yes things are a lot better.
I think we can all agree that at launch it was never the game it promised to be and in some cases is still not. But, it's been worked on very well by the guys and gals at SOE and they've done a great job. A number of things that were promised at the start are now in game with a number being put live in future Game Updates.
Flying mounts have now been added. To some not in the way they wanted but they have been added. The Griffon and Wyvern are the first and both need you to be 50 to have a chance and getting one. With the Wyvern requiring a lot of Raiding to be able to get that one. I, myself have started to work on th Griffon Quest line. This in it's self has been good fun so far.
Yes there are some classes that have not made it into the live version of the game. But is that not what Beta means? You test it, if it's not needed or does not work you take it out before go live. To be honest there are lots of classes already there each with some great unquie styles.
Area's are populated not with Quests all over the place. Remember the world of Telon is very big so it's not like some games where every 3 feet there is a mob to bump into. You get the great feeling of size when running around.
All I can say here is that I've filled all my character slots trying as many clases I can. There are so many great ones and each with a fresh way of playing them. Take the Disciple for example, a fighting healer. You heal your target by performing a number of set moves in combat and as long all of them land your target gets a heal. None of which require you to use any Power (Mana). You also get Power based heals if you need them.
A fantastic class with some great features. You really need to try one to see what it's like. At higher levels not only do you get your Pet, but you are also able to call forward a small army of undead pets to help.
The world is great and very well done. If you have the hardware to turn the graphics up you'll see some amazing things. Volumetric clouds and gases make things like weather and swamps come alive. It's not just a white line 3" off the ground trying to look like ground mist.
These teleporters have always been a bone of contention. But to be honest as with all games, if you get a group and you are on the otherside of the map you want to get with the others quickly as possible. So with the Riftways (large crystal stones) that allow you to transport around the world based on your level, have made a great feature to the game and help folks meet up quickly. And to be honest are not that bad. There still are portions of riding you mount and using a boat to get to some points.
SOE have done a great job on this. At the point of writing this I hardly ever get a crash to desktop and the lag is now very small. Still some can be seen within City's or areas with a large number of players running about, but to be honest this has been pretty much fixed. And with GU#6 (Game Update 6) we are going to see even more improvements.
Not much to say here except soloing and grouping seem to be pretty good. Of course grouping does help you level quicker and get some of the better Quests with rewards completed.
The Role-Playing server does not exist anymore. This was merged with others and became the Seradon server. There is still some Guilds doing the role-playing side of it and people don't get shot down in flames for doing it. It's just except part of this server.
Lore does seem in places a little lacking, until you do some of the Diplomacy and then you get stuck right in with whats going on in Telon in this area right now. Also SOE are putting a lot more information up on the Website with stories and information about areas of the game and why they came to pass.
Start quests have been worked on, but they are also very unquie. You start currently in a City of your race and learn the basics of your class from here. Some of the starting areas are amazing to see let alone to play in. Others are just okay and send you for long journeys to get some things done.
Apparently they are going to change this and create one single Trial Island a bit like EQ2 had for all starting characters. Personally I hpoe they don't. Faction has been removed, this was so that a number of Quests we opened up for Evil races as the faction grinding was just way too much. With one of the next updates Faction will be back in but changed a little to make it fair.
There are some great Quest lines like this. Try Lord Tsangs this is great fun and you get a great weapon once fully complete.
Raiding content has been added and some very good content indeed. There are now active Guilds doing raids nearly all nights of the week with some very tough boses.
There is also lots of material to get you to level 50, you are never left thinking of what to do next.
Age does help. Since live this game has had a number of changes. At this point within it's life it's become a very good game. I know, it will not please everyone, but that's why there are so many out there for them to play.
Customer suppot is very good in game. If you look at the official forums you will see folks giving Customer Service Reps credit for helping them out and thanking them for there work. It's these things that make a difference.
Hmm, I would recommand Vanguard to someone that likes a good challenge and something to really get your teeth into. Find a good guild and get stuck in. Build your character, your Legend and get to that 50. There is a great adventure on the way to 50, it's not quick nor slow but just right and let's you know that you've worked for something and got it. Once there, try the raids or just create another character and do it again, with plenty of quests that you don't have to do the same thing twice.
"Iskvosi, level 49 Rogue, Seradon Server"