[Vanguard: SoH] Game On

IMAGE(http://home.comcast.net/~bmsardou/images/slicendice.jpg)

Stuff that's cool:
1) 3 spheres to level in and they're all their own little games of sorts
2) A variety of challenging quests
3) The Isle of Dawn is a great place to be introduced to the game that now exists
4) The game isn't as horribly buggy as it used to be.
(I quit at launch due to lag, crashes, constant class changes, and worse and worse,
now I haven't had a single crash and I'm level 9, lag is reasonable, and...)
5) The classes are pretty interesting. I've tried a paladin and now I'm on a ranger and there are a variety of different skills available even at low levels.
6) The community seems friendly

Things you'll have to be able to live with:
1) If you rotate the camera just right you can see your character's eyeballs
2) Characters look a little funny and don't always have the best animations
3) There's a bug atm where your weapons can disappear until you relog

My ingame name is in the image, Loahn. If anyone does the trial or wants to join me at the lower levels that would be fun. I'll update the post as I go through more stuff.

While they have improved on what they launched with this game is still a major *YAWN*

ranalin wrote:

While they have improved on what they launched with this game is still a major *YAWN*

I thought they had shutdown this game already, or at least made an announcement about shutting it down.

They consolidated servers, and people thought they were about to shut down.

Graphics are amazing, and some of the gameplay stuff they do is on par with WoW or WAR, but not everything. The performance has been dramastically improved it's not on par with other games. The diplomacy sphere is still clumsy after being overhauled. Skills dont seem to scale well.

Even with all that though there's some hardcore players still digging it.

I am just shocked Ranalin doesn’t have an active subscription to this MMO.
This is the second one in 2 weeks we have found.

What is going on?!?!?

Its not bad.. in fact in many ways its got real potential.. in a world minus WoW this would probably have been the game I ended up playing full time for my MMORPG fix.

I love the Bard class in this game..

The game is actually a lot of fun. I'm typically a LOTRO player, but I'm 10 now and it's still good. The temple was pretty cool IMO. I like the different art style as a change of pace, and the finishing and reactive moves during combat are great.

IMAGE(http://home.comcast.net/~bmsardou/images/interestingfellow.jpg)

I met the nicest fellow...it seems he was made of fire.

WiredAsylum wrote:

I am just shocked Ranalin doesn’t have an active subscription to this MMO.
This is the second one in 2 weeks we have found.

What is going on?!?!?

I was in beta and around 3months after launch and again for a month a few months ago when they invited old players back.

After a horribly negative first impression I ended up having a really good time with this game up until about level 30 then it just sort of lost it's direction with me. I think I hit a quest gap or something because until then I'd been doing big quest chains to level up. And yeah, the classes really are great, especially the bard and disciple. Being a true fighting healer was a nice change of pace. I heal you by whackin' that guy in the head. Much more fun than standing 20 yards behind the fight and pressing 1... 3.... 2.... 5.... over and over.

I'm around level 10 now and finally off the isle, but I guess we'll see what happens about level 30. I'd never made it past 20 at launch, but I guess leveling was harder then too. I'm trying the game as party of another community called Safe Haven since I have a college friend who likes them.

Some stuff about this game is just odd. e.g. I went fishing and caught a fish, but to get the fish I have to loot its dead body. Odd....

If I'd bothered to join a guild or had some friends to play with I'm sure I'd have stuck with this one far longer than I did. Again, mainly because of the classes. I just loved the way they handled them.

Now that's some unexpected thread necromancy.

Part of the 'lure' of this game is the community. I got so sick of the 'OMG, I am so uber 1337' crowd in other MMO's - all wearing exactly the same stuff, going to exactly the same spots... The non-stop 'E-peen' fest of "I'm better than you".

While there's not much documentation on the game - and a lot leaves you guessing - I guess for a 'tunnel vision' gamer like me - one who tends to just play a single game often and not jump around much, it's a lot of fun.

At first - I was taken aback! No spots on the map for resource nodes, no Quest Helper, no detailed maps with every single needed spot clearly marked.. I had... to.. explore...

Wow! And no 'list' of gear to get... I had to find stuff, not even sure where to get it! So I just dungeon crawl or whatever and see what turns up. Actually, it's a lot of fun NOT having 500 databases on the web to 'guide' me to uber-ness. After all; it is supposed to be a 'Fantasy Roleplaying Game' - which would lead one to potentially want to explore and invest time in *hunting* for stuff, rather than doing a couple database searches and following dynamic lines on the map.

If you don't seek to join the game's 'community' it would in fact get boring, real fast. However; it was quite the opposite for me in WoW - in WoW, I did everything I could to avoid the community. It took me a while to get over that too, lol...

Really - still not 'over it' - I've been playing VG for about 3 months now, after my first 5 MMO years in EQ then 2 years in WoW.. Last night, some guy gets near me, and my typical reaction is to 'shirk away' and hide.... LOL - ended up grouping with him - he was very competent, we did great with no deaths. To date; I've only had a *single* spam group invite in the three months I have been playing. All the others seemed to know how to 'communicate their intention' first, lol.

WoW's still got it's fine points - don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing the game... but I just can't deal with about half the people who play it. And just leaving every channel and avoiding 95% of guilds - well, wasn't what I was looking for.

The graphics are certainly better than most games - but at a price. It NEEDS 2GB of RAM. If you don't have at least 2GB of RAM - you'll have issues. A fragmented paging file and lots of overhead will make the game perform real poorly too. I'm on a single-core 2.2Ghz - with 2GB of RAM and it does fine for me. It's a matter of tuning and keeping the 'garbage' cleaned up on your system.

There's a lot out there in Vanguard, but it does take a bit of poking around to find. Perfect for me

I find the Paladin the perfect class for me in this game, they were done very well indeed - they aren't just 'gimp' DPS by any means - they can 'burst' when needed, but there are limitations...

They did a spectacular job with the 'healing' classes too - seem to be so many healers around, you never have to look for long for one at all.

It has some downsides, but the devs seem to be very responsive to community input. Even with the downsides, I'll stay subscribed to this game for some time, most likely.

But let's say it's not for those that want a quick fix or fast action in the sense of 'from start to finish' in a hurry. Nothing wrong with either 'style' - just a subjective opinion

Elysium wrote:

Now that's some unexpected thread necromancy.

haha, perhaps - I was just digging around - I don't 'hang' here too often
Sorry, but sometimes I don't even notice the dates!

Now that I look - yeah; it was indeed. So apologies to any that may bother

Hey, if you are playing it and enjoying it, more power to ya. Don't be afraid to let us know and don't forget to keep us informed on updates or new expansions.

If I could get my real life friends to give this game a second chance I so would, but the travesty that their launch clearly was and the bug hell that the game remained as the following 2 months there is liTtle chance of this.

I still think this game had some of the best classes of any MMO, I just wasn't that big on the world or the quests. It's a shame really. If I could've played Vanguard's Bard or Disciple class in WoW, EQ2, LOTRO, or even Conan, I'd probably still be playing those characters.

^ ^ What he said. Plus I'd add cleric, paladin, monk, ranger and blood mage. There were also interesting things done with the druid, warrior, rogue, shadow knight, shaman, sorcerer and necromancer.

Ya the class potential was high but the game play was and still a big fat bleh...

Every time they open up for a free week or weekend i go back to see if i like it any better and it just doesnt work for me.

Yup, ran, they just couldn't figure out how to dress up the monster buckets.

They did some things on the right track with the revamped trial isle. The only crime is it stopped at level 10 out of 50.

yeah I like Vanguard and EQ2 just enough to want to spend some time now and then in them, but not enough to spend $15 a month on either. I wish I could pay $5 a month for say 10 hours a month in both games. Or something.

I would have so many subscriptions to various mmo's if they modeled after the asian subscriptions. ($6 for 100 hours that don't expire)

Right now I've got no mmo subscriptions. But with $6 for 100 hours, I would subscribe to WoW, Aion, WAR, Lotro, Champions, Vanguard, and possibly EQ2 and Fallen Earth.

fangblackbone wrote:

I would have so many subscriptions to various mmo's if they modeled after the asian subscriptions. ($6 for 100 hours that don't expire)

Right now I've got no mmo subscriptions. But with $6 for 100 hours, I would subscribe to WoW, Aion, WAR, Lotro, Champions, Vanguard, and possibly EQ2 and Fallen Earth.

Oooh. I've never heard of that subscription model. Yeah, I'd have that kind of setup for all of the above plus EVE and SWG. On a lot of these games I'd just like to dip in every now and again for a little flavor but I don't want to spend 15 bucks a month and feel like I need to grind away at content for hours on end to "get my money's worth".

Hey, you know how Chinese gold farmers use non-Chinese proxies and VPN to access MMOs that aren't available in China? Could we use proxies and/or VPN to log into MMOs from South Korea or something and pay $5 for 100 hours? That would rock. Our latency would probably suck, though. And V:SoH and EQ2 may not be available on those kinds of plans anywhere. Aw, crap.

I've jumped back in to EQ2 lately and am loving it. Vanguard has some appeal but I am going to wait to try it out again till they release the AA's that one of the Dev's mentioned a while back. The game was lacking in customization when it came to differentiating yourself from others of the same class. AA trees would do a lot to fix that.

Looking at those old screenshots, does no one wear pants in this game?

Glad some are enjoying it still, after its not so illustrious history.