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Vanguard: Saga of Heroes General Article: CES 2007: Brad McQuaid and Paul Luna Interview
Carolyn Koh is keeping busy down in Las Vegas for CES, today, she's talking to Brad McQuaid and Paul Luna from Sigil's Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.
By Carolyn Koh on January 12, 2007
CES Pre-Launch Chat with Brad McQuaid and Paul Luna
Carolyn Koh catches up with Brad "Aradune" McQuaid and Paul "GM Vladimir" Luna at CES in Las Vegas.
With their marketing collaboration with SoE, Brad McQuaid and Paul Luna of Sigil Games showed Vanguard: Saga of Heroes at CES 2007 at invited press appointments. After introductions, we chatted about our gaming history and when Paul asked if I were familiar with Brad, my answer was tongue in cheek as I replied that I was familiar with Aradune, a wood-elf ranger in EverQuest who wore green splint mail and implied that he hacked Soulfire – the Paladin epic weapon so he could wield it.
;)
We waited to connect to the server and I asked Brad, “Who’s idea was it to put Aradune is stinky! Graffiti in the Qeynos sewers?” Bill Trost was the answer – one of the original team of developers of EverQuest. We digressed into how quickly screenshots of Aradune corpses made their way around the internet. “So I forgot to put up enduring breath in Kedge Keep.” Brad said laughingly, but enough of old EverQuest anecdotes and toward Vanguard:Saga of Heroes.
Given who the founder… the visionary for Vanguard is, we cannot get away from EverQuest, as it was the basis of experience for Vanguard. A fact that both Paul and Brad alluded to often. The launch is February. Next month. We could have spent an entire day just going over the features and exploring the game. NDA has been lifted so information is not just spilling over the dam, the floodgates are open.
“Who will want to play Vanguard?” I asked.
“We wanted to recreate the experience for the old school DAoC and EQ player. The player who wants to be challenged, but we also did away with the tedium.” Said Brad.
Paul continued, “Also the WoW players who wants more immersion and challenge. Those are the players that Vanguard will appeal to.”
As Brad stepped away to call someone to figure out why we could not log into the game, I took the opportunity to grill Paul a little, asking him about Brad’s vision for Vanguard. What’s important? “The community.” Was the firm answer. “We’ve learned to listen to the community.” He reminded me that Vanguard was six years in the making.
“There’s a misconception out there that Vanguard is a hardcore game, but you make it as hardcore as you want. Vanguard isn’t about walking uphill in the snow, both ways. We recognize that we will have Casual, Core and Raid players.” Taking the death mechanic as an example, there are three ways to deal with it. One can choose to pay a little money, wait a little while or fight your way back.
;)
Paul grinned at this point, “Both Brad and I are the die-hard, run naked to our corpses type.”
Brad also stressed the importance of community and elaborated on the features that would assist in creating that community, especially vertical integration. Players will eventually outlevel their starting cities, but housing plots are planned around cities. Diplomacy is also leveled in the city, apart from trading and crafting stations. There are two huge major cities and a number of outposts. The plan is to watch where people congregate once the game is launched and to place outposts in those areas as well.
Grouping and social interfaces within game will allow players to fill out a personal profile that provides more information such when they normally play, their crafting skills and IM or email info if they wish.
Brad informed me that 50 to 60% of content is geared toward the Core player. That core player, he opined, made up 80% of any MMOGs. Those are the players that would play 2 – 3 hours a day, 3 or 4 days a week. Perhaps they would play longer sessions on weekends and would plan a day to dedicate a larger chunk of time for a raid. To that end, zones and dungeons were designed to have safe areas for players to rest and camp out in.
Vanguard is a game of choices. It is designed as a social game much like EverQuest was and provides incentives to players to do things together, but also allows a player to solo if they choose to. Players working together to gather resources, for example, open up opportunities with the combination of their skills to obtain better raw materials that they as a solo harvester may not be able to do. There will also be adventure and quest content that will require a group or groups to defeat.
;)
I asked what differentiated Vanguard:Saga of Heroes from the rest of the MMORPGs out there. One is the unique encounter system. Not just encounter locking, but the entire series of encounters or route of a quest. Many a time, players go through certain steps to complete a quest only to have it ruined when a specially spawned NPC attacks a hapless player who happened to be in its path or an opportunist ganks the mob. Vanguard has designed a system to prevent that from happening.
“Other players will be able to see the mob, but won’t be able to select it to hail, attack or otherwise interact with it,” said Brad.
Another unique aspect of Vanguard is the Caravan system. Players joining a caravan may log out at anytime, and when they log back in, have the choice of logging in where they last camped out, or where the caravan leader last camped out. Basically a form of offline travel.
Player built ships will be another unique aspect of Vanguard. “Not since the days of Ultima Online will players be able to command a ship and sail where they choose,” Said Brad, waxing lyrical over the choice of mounts for transport. “It is a seamless world. You can travel anywhere that you can see.”
“We’ve also designed very unique experiences for each race.” Said Paul, telling me the story of how he inveigled an editor of a major newspaper who was not a gamer and had never played an MMOG before, into creating a character and playing through the newbie experience. “After a while, he asked me… Am I evil? Then when I offered to show him other areas of the game, he decided he wanted to continue playing. I consider that a measure of success. We hooked a non-gamer.”
Okay then… What’s the hook? Paul deferred that question to Brad, who sat silent for a moment before telling me. “Freedom of choice. The freedom to do what you want, go where you want. The freedom to play the game the way you want.”
They split up players in "casual" "core" and "hard core"
Now I wonder how the loot is split up,maybe "non" "crap-medium" and "uber" Imo problems of modern mmo games is not that you cant kill stuff and level , main problem is that unless you are in a big raid you never find any decent loot. There are some hard core players that dont like raiding and those never find decent loot either.
“We wanted to recreate the experience for the old school DAoC and EQ player. The player who wants to be challenged, but we also did away with the tedium.” Said Brad.
Paul continued, “Also the WoW players who wants more immersion and challenge. Those are the players that Vanguard will appeal to.”
I have yet to see any challenge or immersion which is what I have been looking for but it just isn't there. So far its been more like weak thin and boring.
I would like to see your character thrown into the storyline getting you interested and on the path so far I have only seen one of those type of starting area and even there its not clear whats going on.
How about experience the game first hand and then call it a raid game. Also, can you name me one MMORPG that doesn't have raids?
Have yet to see any challenge and immersion? What level have you gotten to? After level 10 the game starts to mean a lot more. Before then is just getting you used to the controls and world. Around level 10 the quests and tasks get harder and the level of immersion rises with them. Go and see!
Asheron's call = No raids
The first 10 levels should be getting the player hooked on the story, this is when most people are still reading the quest info screen after that people tend to read the info screen less and less especially if the first handful of quest that they did read lack any interesting lore or plot.
this is the perfect time to get me involved and hooked because after I fully understand the system and have not found anything interesting regarding the plot I will stop looking for it
"Freedom of play" is a great thing, and overall this should be a nice game.
One disappointment, however, is the "locked encounter" thing. I have no problem with locking experience (i.e., whomever attacks first, gets the experience for the kill). But locking encounters creates an artificial barrier. Sure, it may prevent players from "stepping on one another's toes", but isn't this part of the MMORPG experience?
I'd much rather have my gameplay occasionally interrupted by an asshat, that to play in a sandbox with artificial invisible barriers.
Trains were part of what made EQ1. Zone arguments over kill-stealing added to the atmosphere too.
If there are too many invisible barriers and artificial rules in a game, then play will feel more like a solo RPG than a MMORPG.
To give up on Vanguard before level 10 or 15 to me is just someone looking for instant grat. Wait a bit, get your first steed, or your first house....then come back here and tell us your oppinion.
p.s. I've been playing MMO's since 1999 with Ultima online and I've pretty much played every MMO on the list. And let me tell you, when I flew through those skies and saw where I used to be look like an ant city, I realized just then that this was the game. That was by FAR the best experince I had ever had in a MMO, and that's pretty hard to do since you always have the best experience in your first MMO. Vanguard toped Ultima Online as the best MMO experience and this is only beta.
I was really dead set against liking this game. Then I beta tested it and found it has hooked me. The only tedium that bothers me is the corpse-runs and the trains. Actually, I wouldn't mind trains if dieing wasn't such a pain. You hear this over and over by the die-hards, "don't like corpse runs? Lrn2play." Well I don't care how perfect your group is, you're still going to have wipes because some idiot came along and trained the entire non-instanced dungeon on you. In fact, we all know there are idiots that go out and do this on purpose just to be arsehats. I'm not whining, I don't want an easy game. I like that the banks won't magically port your stuff from one continent to the other. I love the travel. I like that there isn't much hand-holding. I love the diplomacy sphere, which is something else I was sure I was going to hate. But the Corpse-Runs...archaic. Yes there are alternatives to running naked, but in reality, they just don't work for me and I'm not going to let that argument overshadow the rest of the game, because I do like this game.
Right now, the game is buggy, badly buggy and a lot of quests are broken, but not any worse than other games that have launched, and they are patching constantly and I'm seeing huge improvements with the last minute patches. In fact, my FPS doubled with the last patch.
I went from having very bad expectations of this game to completely turning around and really enjoying this game. If you buy at launch, just be patient, because the game isn't finished yet. But even unfinished, if you want a game that you aren't going to race through, that you will slowly get into and take time to smell the roses, read the quests and get into the intrigue of the world that plays out in the diplomacy (not just a card game, there are plots revealed while playing those cards), then you'll like this game.
Did you read the starting out quests? I found them very well written in every way! One diplomacy quest took me 6 hours + to complete and had everything from domestic disputes to double agent intrigue lol it was awesome. Called "Crackdown" for the gnome diplomacy quest line. I suppose it depends where you start but they are all very well written should you take the time to read them.
*Arguing* with other peoples part of the "insignificant minority" that don't want to raid as I see?
If everyone jumps off the bridge, will you? When EQ was released, no other game feature PvE servers. It doesn't prevent EQ to bring that back then. The fact that "nobody" does it shouldn't prevent a bright person from doing it. In medieval times, nobody was eating potatoes and peoples starve to death (it was pig's food), I am sure a few persons did eat potatoes and live because of that.
And to your precise question: City of Villains (not CoH).
Now can you name me any mmo that has that TYPE of raid system that I just described? The only one I know with a system like that is...ohh...Vanguard.
I want to make it clear that I do want to like this game, I want to like it a lot but so far the quests seem boring
I don't like playing a gnome but I have tried wood elf, high elf and human a few times in different starting areas. I keep making new characters trying new regions hoping to find the right fit., so far I like the high elf the most but still the quests are boring.
One example is when they tell you the sages isle is over run with fairies and they need you to clear them out incase they need to make a quick exit.
Well you get over there and there only a few fairies scattered about here and there but nothing exciting or dangerous and the reward for clearing the path is like 10 copper which wouldn't be as bad if it were not for the fact that it took 2 hours to complete this because you had to battle every other noob for the kills and there are only about 6 of these mobs spawning every 5 mins.
No excitement + no reward = boring
I agree anarchyart. Try before judging. Seems to be a trend.
And CoV has monsters which requires more than one team to handle(i.e. raiding) and also has base raids(I should know, my VG would always start them without me, effectively locking me out of the base. Not to mention designing the base more for raids in lieu of more teleporters which I'd rather have). Please try not to be selective in your answers Anofalye. If you disagree that these are not the same as other raids in other MMOs, that is a different discussion.
Then why don't you try Diplomacy.I felt the same way as you did while playing up to level 11..Although WAAAAAAAY back in the summer then they were still adding content with every patch..The starting areas have gotten alot better and more populated since August heh..
But like someone else said,the first 10 levels are meant for the player to get familiar with the controls,newb quests,the world,and your character..I got to level 15 before I decided to do Diplomacy..I'm telling u,If you enjoy great lore and a good storyline,give it a shot..It is a welcome change after spending hours grinding..And it will definitely get u interested quick..You will be hooked,I was..
That sounds like a typical WoW statement.
There are plenty of games in development where raiding isn't the ONLY way to get UBER gear.
If you want more proof check out Lord of the Rings Online. People will be able to solo, craft, or raid to get the some comparable types of gear. Just because one game works that way doesn't mean every game does or will. Don't be so general.
Like I said before,gain some levels and just push yourself through the first 11 levels..I didn't like the game much when I first started..I play a Drk and let me tell you how painful it was to level up to 10.It finally started getting a little more fun at 12.. It's one thing i agree with you on.The starting levels could be a little more challenging,maybe put in a chain quest that lasts a cpl levels around level 5 that will get you hooked on the lore pertaining to your class and starting area..
They have these sort of quests,but in later levels..
And judging by that quest,you must have been level 5 or so..How many other MMO's out there can u honestly say were so great in the early levels?? NONE...WoW was boring and dull the first 10 levels,the same with EQ Live,EQ2,DAOC,SWG,L2,Horizons,etc..Actually most of these games were even more painful than Vanguard is when starting off and the game isnt even live yet!!
Personally,you just sound like a WoWcoholic who's become accustomed to how WoW is right now..You most likely think your a hardcore elite level 60 stud decked out in Full MC,BWL,and AQ gear.. But remember something,comparing WoW's endgame to Vanguard's starting game is like comparing a wolf to a puffy lil poodle..
The high end game of Vanguard will be much more exciting than WoW's..There will be more difficult raid encounters set up,exciting unique uber l33t loot,incredibly difficult bosses,and it will look 100000x better than those goofy loookin MC bosses..
So don't come here bashing a game you played it's beta for a cpl hours..Of course WoW's endgame is better than the first 10 levels of Vanguard.Why would u expect it not to be better? Hell,getting to level 60 was a pain for me.I only played WoW to reach the endgame content..Everything else WAS NO CHALLENGE AT ALL..I died only a small handfull of times from 1-60 while leveling up..Of course I got ganked by levle 60's when I was low level,but it was just to easy to level and do dungeon runs.. Any simple minded person could be considered a "great WoW gamer" But lets see you guys make that claim on a real MMO,one designed to appeal to ex EQ Vets and DAOC Vets moreso than with WOW amateurs..
This game has it all,everything I wanted that was not in EQ,and then some..There are a few things I don't like about it right now such as racial character models all look like humans with different heads,the spell animations could be better although I hear they are working on that still,racial abilities like infrovision should make its way into the game soon,and my biggest gripe with the game is dungeons up to level 24 should be more massive in scale including adding more mobs so it will comfortably allow more than 2 groups to hunt at the same time without waiting on mobs to pop..
Other than those things,the game reminds me alot like EQ more than any other MMO I've ever played,,which is a plus in my book since EQ is by far the greatest MMO ever created..
I like how they made it geared towards old school DAOC and EQ players, that is the key.
But about the seamless world, i found that there are still many places that you can't get to because their either to steep or blocked by invisible walls...hopefully they'll fix that.
I guess I don' t know that much about Vanguard (I'm lazy, I'll admit) but I the remark of gearing it towards old school DAOC players caught me off guard. EQ and DAOC appealed to different types of gamers, and people who loved one style usually didn't care for the other.
Does Vanguard offer realm/faction based PvP in a controlled setting like DAOC does. If so, that's great news..and goes a long way to making me want to play the game. Is it geared towards epic quests that require 60 people to camp a site for 12 hours like EQ did sometimes? If so, count me out. (unless of course, it has both)
DAOC has raiding, but they are very optional.... you can have a ton of fun in the game and never go on a dragon raid...heck, you can buy most of the drops that come out of them... If raiding in Vanguard is also very optional, I'm going to like this game.
Flaws at launch I can live with..as long as I know they are being addressed. WoW had tons of them at launch (how soon people seem to forget this) and I know how quickly companies can work to get them corrected.
It was a good interview.. could have used more questions addressing some of the complaints we're hearing about the unfinished state of the game, but I'm sure the interviewer was told up front to steer away from them.
Im not real sure what your point is, but your example is bad. People in Medieval Eurasia did not eat potatoes because they did not grow any. Potatoes are a new world food plant originating in the Andes Mountains. They were introduced into Europe soon after discovery by Europeans, and quickly became staple crops in Europe.
I'm kind of wondering about the RvR like DAOC too. I see ways in which it might be possible, but I have no idea how it's unlocked if it exists. Between the lines, I read yet another instance of Brad & Company's knowing glances and smug smiles.
By the way, I think I will soon need a term like "Evercrack" for Vanguard. I'm starting to have withdrawal symptoms whenever the servers are down.
I have not played every race myself but I don't see how anyone can say all the quests are well written. My favorite example is the orc starter quest. I was on a slave ship supposedly a captive and my quest was to go kill a slaver take his key then free a slave and escape. Nice quest except the slavers are non aggressive. So here are 5 slavers standing within arms reach of each other. You kill one, take the key, unlock the slave standing there walk past the other 4 slavers and down the gangplank. For gods sake a nice damn quest if the slavers had been aggro, them being non aggro ruined all immersion. The majority of the rest of the quest are kill 5 of these and ten of those and collect 5 bumblebee snouts sort of thing. I had one where I had to lead a camel down a hill, and another where I had to lead a horse down the road. I did not do any of the diplomacy or crafting quests because crafting is just not my game style. Both of which were designed to say, "look here is the next higher level mob and mission terminals ( quest NPC) " which I have to admit were useful if not terribly difficult or hard quests to do.
Now to the immersion, I have yet to see a NPC do anything but stand there like a mission terminal in SWG. Towns are pretty much empty. Remember Tazoon in Horizons? Vanguard towns are about the same. The ambiance sucks, I like to her the sound of the ocean when near the ocean, I want to hear the hustle and bustle of a city when in the city. I want to see NPCs wandering the streets and working the forges and looms, patrons ion the taverns drinking pixilated mead and eating pixilated mutton. I want to hear the fire in the fireplace and the sounds of horses being shod. Vanguard has all the ambiance of EQ1, enough said.
Now I just know a fanboy is just ready to jump in here and call me a troll but the point is everything I typed above is true and they cannot deny that. Sorry but this game needs a lot of work before they actually change people to play it. It is mid beta still, by December it may be ready for release.
Hey, It's great to know you did'nt bother to ask about the IMPORTANT SHIT!
I could go on and on. Hey, way to go out there!
I guess "What happens in Carlsbad, stays in Carlsbad". Or, in this case Vegas.
I hope you said that stuff in the quest assessments.
Other people liked the Orc starting quests, and thought they made sense for an Orc. I wondered about survivability for the totally inexperienced folks that the starting quests are obviously designed for, and now I know. How about this: In youre opinion, would the starting quests starting at night, with sleeping and/or drunk guards, who are aggro but highly inattentive, make the quests more immersive?
Understand, I'm not a vanboi or a vandev, I'm just interested in making MMOs better.
Dude, I don't even play WOW.
I am trying to get my Blood Mage past 10 but the server he is on keeps going down
the only problem is that those lvl 54382.725 mobs overthere are going to 0.00000006419 hit my char with my 66449372.543m agro radius.
so i first have to do those 5863.9 quests telling me to kill those 983164.98 rats. sounds like the 54728.271th grinder to me.
Get to level 7ish and go to the cavern where you learn about Grakkor and his sacrifice, and then have to repeat his actions. Makes up for the lousy early quests, and then some.
Well I am surew they have some good stuff in the game, but I think I will wait and give it another shot a few months after release to let them add some more polish and content. Sigil has teh talent to make a good game, it just seems they goofed off for months and are now trying to push the game out two weeks before release. EQII did not get really good until about 2 or 3 months after launch. It just seems to be a SOE habit ~shrug~
I honestly think this has the potential ( god I hate that phrase after DnL abused it) to be a good game several months down the road. Sigil has some good talent as I said, they just need to find a direction and stick to it. The closed beta wasted a lot of time backtracking and redoing instead of adding and polishing in my opinion. Unless they pull a SWG they have pretty much committed themselves to a course of action now.
A lot of people made a lot of suggestions during closed beta. The slave quest would have been better if they had started you off in the compound and the free the slave quest would have been used around lvl 3 or so to teach aggressive mob behavior was my suggestion. Even in betas of games that I am having fun in I criticize everything that does not strike me right, it's the only way the genre will improve. I try not to beat dead horses but I do speak my mind. I have been getting on the nerves of fan boys since August of 97 when I was in my first beta.
Spiritglow
P.S. Experience is really the best teacher :) After 6 years of EQ1 I lasted less than one hour in EQ2 because I knew eventually I'd have to raid to experience the whole game. That realization was enough to prompt me to log out for good. I have bought Guild Wars and every Guild Wars expansion because I know the potential to experience the whole game without raiding is possible.
If someone can tell me that past lvl 10 mobs are scripted to do more than 1 in 10 wanders 5m left then 5m right it'd help, I guess.
Ran through the Ogre Cave-thingie and Vault of the Ancients with my lvl 8 Dread Knight with a group of friends some lvls higher, and it was the most boring thing I think I've ever done in a computer game! 90% of mobs are totally static, don't care that their buddy got hammered with ranged attacks and just ran through them to get at the party. There were no combinations of ranged, melee and healer mobs in groups to challenge you... basically, it felt like the world outside, only linear with walls showing you where you can go. For crying out loud - Eye of the Beholder was more dynamic with its mobs than this!
Tell me it changes DRASTICALLY - that lvl up-to-16 dungeons are a total oversight and in no way represent the abilities of the devs, and I'll give it a try more, but so far - wooooo boy, this is boring.
In my personnal experience, games like Mankind, EVE, SWG were my best moments. They all lacked from the western style: Give quests and stuff to do at every corner of the streets but the community was and is still amazing. Being one of the guild leaders of a large guild and having a city of more then 300 citizens on SWG was an amazing experience. Suddently our focus was not raids or loots, we were geared more into trading, alliances, PVP, improvement of our city and such. Our guild really had guild nights were we worked towards our greatest achievements (Maybe having that unique Statue in front of our Cantina!)... our City, our Armors, our weapons, the best ressources, the best Buffs and at some point, our rare loot stores.
Walking in our city was laggy as Coronet lol...
Seriously, that's what I see in Vanguard... Guilds comming up from scratch with a small outpost and then bang! They have a giant Metropolis with more player interaction then the main capitals. I already picture some guilds going out for a month, raiding non stop just make that unique Armor that no one will ever wear. The guild will simply display it in a house open to all.... All this to prove how united they are or uber :D
We did it for the silly Boba Fett armor and just by charging 100 credits per visitor, we managed to make thousands or credits... it proves that many people are interested in that type of gameplay. Our City had a weekly cost (around 12 million credits per week) and we never had a prob playing... The donations were always always beyond our costs.
So yes, I believe Vanguard is heading towards that aspect.. Perhaps not as City oriented as my post but the general idea behind is the same: Community Evolution.
Uber Gear will exist i'm sure but I don't actually think that everyone will be focused on that only... Most MMOs these days are based on the Uber High End gear. Don't tell me you did Molten Core for 200 hours only for the storyline.... You did it because you wanted your DKP and your gear.
Well, first they lost the internet connection, then after we got that back, we could not log in. Brad spent some time on the phone and then we ran slap bang into an update. We did get into the game and they showed me a few things - like the really cool ships and housing, but I basically ran out of time.
They had technical issues in the suite that morning and had already pushed the appointment back an hour. Vanguard was the last game in the rotation for me - other press were there as well - and I just ran out of time. Heh. I munched on their lunch so I could have enough time to get as much info as possible before I had to go to make another appointment.
CES isn't like E3 where they have many stations all showing the same game, and usually, a local server with them. They have one each in a hotel suite and we're dependent on the hotel's internet connection, etc.
Well i'm not to sure about playing Vanguard. After Beta testing it I realized it has no innovations. And he talks about sailing a boat lol......heck i went back to Ultima Online after 5 yrs and now i'm sailing a boat again. Got my fisherman out, killing sea serpents, love it. There is no leveling system, the Uber loot does not impact the game as much as I thought it would. Not like WOW or other MMOPRGS i've tried. Its funny how this old game keeps me interested.
Vanguard is huge, has decent graphics , but it seems cold and barren. I didnt like the overall environment of the game. And I detest leveling !
Oh well, glad I tried the Beta before buying, I know its not finished but I think I saw enough.
I may give it one more honest try in a week or 2 but i'm not sure.
I'll admit I wasn't a huge Vanguard fan until I started to beta it, yea it's laggy, yea it has 'bugs' (although the only major bug i've encounted is falling thru the floor at CB), but looking at it you realise it's 'old school' MMOing, everything is earned, you HAVE to explore to get anywhere, and it deffinitly doesn't shove you down a 'you MUST level' path.
One thing that I've noted in the game is in fact player housing actally works, it's not an instanced portal that leads you to a room that doesn't really 'do' anything in the game, it is actally there, DnL promised it and failed, Vanguard have finally realised it.. Someone posted 'The Uber Guilds will own citys to show their leetness', well from a PVP view, don't like them? BURN IT DOWN! This is what will make the game it's the player created content further down the line.. Theres only one game I know thats done somthing on this level and thats would be EVE, also a small 'will die within the first year' game and look at it now, it's not the biggest subcriber based game but it's damn well known. Vanguard will thrive off it's player created content, it's the one thing if done perfect that will put this game on the map.
So all in all Vanguard may be a buggy unineresting game on release but come back to it in 6 months time when the 'leet guilds' control the world and you'll be loving it..
You have to love how they make up new terminology just to avoid the 'hardcore' label. A 'core' player instead of 'hardcore'? Well if you make up a new word it must be something different!
But then they say 80% of the players of their game will "play 2 – 3 hours a day, 3 or 4 days a week. Perhaps they would play longer sessions on weekends and would plan a day to dedicate a larger chunk of time for a raid."
12 hours each week? Plus dedicating time for raids? Sounds pretty hardcore to me. Sure there will be people who play a lot more, but playing 3-4 times a week is NOT a casual schedule.
I guess it's a good sign when a game wants to avoid the 'hardcore' label. Hardcore game mechanics dedicated to a small fraction of the potential market of players have driven MMORPG design too long.
Whatever the game mechanics, the art is atrocious. People have been comparing it to EQ2 which remnds of a Penny Arcade quote:
"I know there must be artists working at SOE. The only thing I can think of is that they are simply cogs in some corporate machine. They must be given no freedom at all. In fact after looking at the game I wouldn’t be surprised if they are beaten daily." http://www.penny-arcade.com/2006/02/15
Looks like they got some of those EQ2 artists all right. At least for the characters. The monsters look a little better at least.
yup
started as a fox based character
all beginning quests have npcs just standing around waiting to be killed - found this "very exciting"
haven't been back since
if you can't hook them before level 10 you aren't going to reel them in are you?
This is not a bad game!
If you haven't already played WOW this is a very good place to start as far as playing a MMO is concerned - other than that, skip it
I've played much more hardcore games then Vanguard (in terms of how many hours you have to play) Vanguard is a nice balance between hardcore and uh.. I guess core ?
In my personnal experience, games like Mankind, EVE, SWG were my best moments. They all lacked from the western style: Give quests and stuff to do at every corner of the streets but the community was and is still amazing. Being one of the guild leaders of a large guild and having a city of more then 300 citizens on SWG was an amazing experience. Suddently our focus was not raids or loots, we were geared more into trading, alliances, PVP, improvement of our city and such. Our guild really had guild nights were we worked towards our greatest achievements (Maybe having that unique Statue in front of our Cantina!)... our City, our Armors, our weapons, the best ressources, the best Buffs and at some point, our rare loot stores.
Walking in our city was laggy as Coronet lol...
Seriously, that's what I see in Vanguard... Guilds comming up from scratch with a small outpost and then bang! They have a giant Metropolis with more player interaction then the main capitals. I already picture some guilds going out for a month, raiding non stop just make that unique Armor that no one will ever wear. The guild will simply display it in a house open to all.... All this to prove how united they are or uber :D
We did it for the silly Boba Fett armor and just by charging 100 credits per visitor, we managed to make thousands or credits... it proves that many people are interested in that type of gameplay. Our City had a weekly cost (around 12 million credits per week) and we never had a prob playing... The donations were always always beyond our costs.
So yes, I believe Vanguard is heading towards that aspect.. Perhaps not as City oriented as my post but the general idea behind is the same: Community Evolution.
Uber Gear will exist i'm sure but I don't actually think that everyone will be focused on that only... Most MMOs these days are based on the Uber High End gear. Don't tell me you did Molten Core for 200 hours only for the storyline.... You did it because you wanted your DKP and your gear.
Nice post Ponico and hopefully you are right, there is so much more to a good game than a few bugs, quests and non-stop raiding, even the lag in Anarchy Online and SWG didn't deter folk. I know its hard to really say what Vanguard will have to offer us in the end but its certainly seems to have a good framework for building on.
Heres hoping.........to the future of Vanguard!
This is a really great game, huge, i mean HUGE. The diplomacy system is fantastic, I find myself doing nothing but Diplomacy for hours on end. Crafting is great, even though not completelly finished at this time. Racial mounts are simply unbelievable, but at this point not available to the public. With a patch every day or so this game will be finished/polished in time, no problem at all ! So just check it out, you will not regret it !
One thing you missed Cryptor...
Im playing it, that is all you should need to know
"After stepping away to find out why we couldn't login..."
HAHAHAHA, Oh man... thats classic... since NDA is lifted I can say that was 1/2 of the beta... just getting logged in!
I am in game industry from 8 years and know some things about making games
The most important thing is to make the things aged / dirt , old etc../
Vanguard look like a nice plastic world
Hi!
I am that kind of player who will spend only few hours a week and I definitely will not spend a whole day or a big bunch of hours with a game.
Therefore I am sad to read, that even with this game, the solo gamer will have poor experience compared with team player because you only get several craftings or adventures if you group up.
I know its called MMORPG. But does MMO really means that I can not get the same items, abilities, whatever indepently if i soloing or teaming? From my point of view, no.
And please don't start to compare it with real life ... did you ever ride a dragon in real life?
Cheers, Jolly
lol what a load of Bullshit. What he said had things that just contradict each other. Like you can play casually, but you need to group in a large seamless world. You have freedom, but you have to adventure. I can't believe he is spewing PR crap after the NDA was lifted. He shoulda just left it at face value.
LAG LAG LAG. Lag, at the char create screen, lag in cities, lag while crafting, lag in stores, houses, everywhere. It's beta, we'll see if this is fixed.
SUPERCOMPUTER REQUIRED, 500 CPU's performing at 5.8 Terrahertz with 15 gigaquads of memory and 175 individual video cards could not run this game on it's highest setting. EQ2 had this problem, and that game went in the trash too. Just unacceptable. Again, it's beta. We'll see if this is fixed. I doubt it. Highly.
Today the modern day mmo, needs to involve everyone. Mom needs to play with Dad and the three kids. You need thousands, even millions and millions of people subscribing and buying the game month over month and constantly adding subscribers. If you disagee with that, then what do you consider massive? 200 players? 25 million? 10? A very successful game happens to be wow, love it or hate it.
Like it or not, HARD CORE players, ie: Groupers, and raiders make up 5% of a population on a wow server. And when do you group, that would be after you make friends, form or join a guild and start having group fun. NOT at level 10, sorry just does not work that way. 5% of a total gaming population will not sustain the modern day mmo. There will be one server. No updates. And it will just end right there.
M, (in MMORPG) multiplayer, does not mean grouping. Since when did it? I think i played a few rounds of Bond on the Nintendo 64 and not once was anyone on my group. That was multiplayer. Or do you mean MGORPG (Massive Grouped Online Role Playing Game) or MROPG (Massive RAID Online Role Playing Game)
5 years of development!!! you are kidding? Or are you including the dev work done on EQ1 and EQ2? Yeah, I don't know what to say. I make better 3d models in bryce. This is a lifeless world. The charachters stand arms by their sides walking and running like cardboard models of humans. The idle animations are horrid. If a Vanguard toon had to tie his shoelaces he'd snap off at the waist and break off an arm.
A penalty for death!!! You have to be kidding. Go play Gears of War, or Pac-man and find out what the penalty for death is. There is none, this is a game it's supposed to be fun. Death isn't fun, but having a penalty for death is worse.
Grouping required after level 10. Okay, so I can play the game for 10 levels. That's not fun.
The controls are wonderful, they act as I would expect.
I love the crafting and diplomacy systems, very cool.
After this being the second failure for Brad, I hope he re-works his "I love death peanaties and grouping, they are UBER" thoughts, becasue over here, they seem pretty self-destructive. Ah well, perhaps SOE will tear this thing apart and re-work it. Here's hoping for that. Maybe I can play beyond level 10.
In the end, this is a game. It's supposed to be fun. Is it fun. No.
Now go ahead tear my review up bit-by-bit fanboi's but this is simply a bad game.