I've heard that it's pretty hardcore grinding like EQ was.

Hey, it's Crisy!

Oh, and yeah.. from my time working with OGame, I must say that everything I heard about it was VERY EQish. I'm not sure how much that has changed. I really haven't paid too awful much attention to it over the last few months, but what I did hear was enough to make me look in other directions. I think it will be a game targeting very dedicated/hardcore players, and I just don't have the time or interest in MMOs anymore to subject myself to that again.

I dont believe so.

So if ten ton hammer has a preview, does that mean the NDA is lifted and maladen can tell us all about it?

Pretty please?

If anyone gets beta invites or knows how to get in let me know. I am behind the power curve on all the betas since I just got back.

Give your code to meeeeeee ... Jiddly. They're being coy with the press.

Dam you and your tormenting!

Open beta for pre-order folk and Fileplanet subscribers starts tomorrow (Friday). The NDA is also lifted at that point.

Arent all MMOs said to be "lacking and not ready for primetime"? I remember the WOW open beta... same exact phrase used. And I've been in god-knows how many other MMO beta's and felt the same way about every single one of them.

I actually spent all night DLing the 10+ GIGS of update data just to have one of the last files "be corrupted" so now its scanning and redownloading everything again wooo!

Guess we'll see.

But yea, I would love to hear from some of those that were bound by the NDA... how is this thing?

PAR

I'm in the beta, have been for quite awhile now. To be honest though I haven't played in months. I put a fair amount of time into the game initially but only because I felt obliged to test. I got too frustrated with the game and its direction so I just gave up.

I'm a former EQ addict. I played almost every day for two years solid and then on-and-off for another year, was the leader of a small guild, all that good stuff, also played Dark Age of Camelot for awhile and some Asheron's Call. So I have some history in MMOs.

Unless they've drastically changed things in Vanguard over the past few months I think the game is done for. There was no interesting content, the world itself felt extremely bland and generic, not to mention it ran like crap. Yes, I understand it is a beta, but I saw nothing that implied the game's engine was going to be running better anytime soon. They didn't even have things like death penalties and group experience fully figured out yet. Again, I understand that it is beta, but these things have been figured out how many times in games before? Should it really be that hard?

Then there's just messed up stuff like them calling the world seamless... they have a different definition of seamless than me. There are still zones in the game, you'll hit some magical invisible wall and a loading screen pops up while the next zone loads up. Yeah, you can "see" stuff on the other side of the zone but you can't interact with it at all until you cross the zone line.

Gotta run, I'll maybe talk some more later, assuming SoE doesn't hunt me down

Just curious DreadG... how long ago was your involvement? Being in development myself, there are many times we hold back a huge patch from the beta customers simply because we are working through things in-house.

Eh, I'll give it a shot... I like the idea of MMOs but so sick of what we currently have. Logged back into WOW the other day and... just sat there looking at my guy in the bank and decided to log back off. Cant see grinding another 10 levels (which will probably be like grinding from 1-60 again) being much fun.

BadF... yea I agree with that. But then again I havent seen any reviews, previews or info yet on its current state since the NDA lifted. I remember many posts on this very forum before WOW was release on how bad it was, how unfinished it was etc etc.

I guess Im just trying to be optimistic?

PAR

Relative to most MMORPG games, WoW was retail ready months before it actually went out. Vanguard is not even sniffing the border or readiness like that. They don't even have proper bow animations in yet. Enemies still slide across grass without moving their legs half the time. Engine performance is abysmal and a large number of features are half-cooked at best. Brad McQuaid has already said that they're shipping at the end of this month because that's how long their Sony funding will last. And gosh, "You gotta ship these things eventually" after all.

Stay far, far away from this game until it's done.

It's been a few months, yeah. Honestly not sure when I last played, maybe early fall? I understand that the game is in development and they have stuff they're working on, but it was very clear to me that the devs are scrambling a bit and they have no real direction for the game.

Take death penalties. Just as I stopped playing they were in the middle of changing death penalties to an insanely complex system. Enemies have a con system like EQ where it'll give you an idea of its level relative to you. On top of that any given mob can be rated on a static level of 1-5 (or was it 1-6? I forget). Lower ranks means it should be soloable, higher ranks means you'll need a group. Based on the mob's con and it's rank your death penalty would change. Lower penalties meant you left no corpse, all your goods were on you and you'd get a small amount of exp debt, with higher penalties having a stiff exp dept and your body and all goods are left where you died. The exact penalty you got varied based on the level and rank of the mob that killed you! I'm sorry, but that whole concept is just insane. You could easily die from an unknown mob (maybe even an add) and not have any idea what type of penalty to expect.

Things like that just really made me question the game's direction. Then there are little things like the restricted race/class/location system. Certain races are restricted to certain classes (a la EQ) but further yet races are restricted to continents and not every class is represented on every continent. I wanted to play with a buddy of mine who also got in the beta but we wanted to play classes that didn't start on the same continent... what a pain.

Or the bank system. Originally each bank was unique so an item stored in a given bank only existed in that specific bank. Later they made banks common across a continent which is better, but still, far from convenient given the massive size of the game. Of course travel is a pain as there's no fast travel outside of your mount, and even then it takes quite awhile to get around. Their initial vision was that you'd have a group of people you play with often and you'll tend to roam around the world together. That's great if you are lucky enough to have a consistent group of people that all play at the same time all the time.

Then there's player housing. You can buy designated plots of land, build a house and store stuff in it. The idea is kinda neat. As I mentioned earlier, there's no fast travel in the game. What good is a house if it only exists in one part of the world and there's no way to quickly travel there? You'll never get a chance to use it. Really hoping they came up with a solution for that since I last played.

There are some good things. I do like the class system they came up with. All classes are divided into four major groups: offensive fighers, defensive fighters, healers and casters. The idea is that any class from a given group should be able to fill the role just as well as any other class from that group. For example, I think there are four healing classes and theoretically any of them should be able to fill the role as primary healer. Certainly good in concept although the balance wasn't quite there yet. They also had some interesting classes like the disciple, which is a healer but most of their healing comes through attack combo chains, so they're more of an offensive healer.

Overall the whole game just feels really dated. It seems like they have a bunch of concepts they had that they tried to all toss into one game but none of it really comes together to make a cohesive, fun experience. All this said, I am interested in hearing from anyone who tries out the game now. It very well could be significantly better than what I experienced, but again based on the changes I saw them implementing and the talk from the developers I have very little faith in the game shaping up anytime soon. I've certainly given up on the game and my friend who got into beta has also given up on it and he was insanely excited for the game, had been following it since day one.

Other than "Stay away!!!" whats your take?

In the immortal words of Judge Elihu Smails... "WELLLLLL. WE'RE WAITINGGGGG!!!"... =)

PAR

I gotta put more time into it before I really have much to say, slaying turtles and dragonflies doesn't exactly feel like the whole picture so far. I'll probably talk about it on the Conference Call, but I'll update here too when I get some more time.