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The Grind
Chiram
Member UncommonPosts: 643
I feel like possibly returning to vanguard and possibly finishing off leveling my disciple. However, the grind is what turned me away from the game. That and several other issues, as much as I loved the world I couldn't get over the grind. This coming from a guy who played old school EQ and maxed a character in Lineage 2, lol.
For those of you still playing, how is the leveling speed?. Is it still very group dependant?
Comments
It's the same as before. If you didn't like it then, you won't like it now.
Im surprised to see a fellow ex-EQ player complaining about the grind in VG. Yes they are similar but VG has 2 things that make it not as big.
1) No corpse runs and xp penalty isnt as big so it doesnt really set you back as much.
2) In VG you can do the two other spheres(crafting with how detailed it is-style and tier quests), or diplomacy, to break up the monotony. In EQ you could only craft so get away from mob grinding. And VG has better fishing.
I should have probably stated at the time of EQ I was a part time college student with no job. LOL. I now work full time + child and female aggro.
Yeah I got 2 kids and full time job too but my wife is passive after 9pm so its my time then, so I can understand where you are coming from.
My woman looks at me indifferently...I can never quite tell if I will get aggro after 9pm
To be frank, the only reason to play VG is the grouping. The problem is even with the influx of F2P people it's still pretty hard to get a group going. The grind feels worse then EQ imo because you're running around during certain levels with very little to do. At least EQ has the hotzones so you have some direction.
There's many times where you are directed to 2-3 areas that are all 4-5 levels too high for you and the questing in general is extremely stale and often lacks any direction. That's not even approaching the fact there's no reason to level in the first place because the game has very little endgame, all of which is unplayably laggy raid wise. This game has seen darker days but the lack of improvement over the course of 7 years is baffling.
I give VG a rating of: /facepalm out of 10.
1)Your main reason to play is to group, not everyone elses. I personally solo 95% of the time. Please do not speak for the masses.
2) Endgame may be your goal but again may not be everyones goal. Alot of people know that its the journey, and not the destination that they care about. In addition, you may not like the questing but I personally do due to the fact that alot of times its not tweaked to accomodate the solo'ers. Questing in Vanguard isnt much different than Rift, WoW, or any other themepark except possibly TSW which has quests where you actually need to think. You have the ability to turn off the quest helper in VG also, something that modern games dont have a toggle for because they figure "the masses" want it(and probably couldnt cope without having a quest helper).
So in short Vanguard is one game that plays to its own tune in an ocean of mmo's that now cater to the lead-me-to-the-next-point crowd so I can hurry to cap crowd.
Yeah, I don't buy into the groupthink that WoW has laid down over the years that says that an MMO should have a quick trip to level cap and then a whole second game at the cap. I have no problem with the specific endgame activities, like raids and whatnot, that are tied to that endgame, but for me the journey upward is the experience, and games ought to have lots of variety during that experience. Vanguard does this better than most themepark MMOs, IMO.
Aside from that, though, there's rather a lot to do at level cap in Vanguard, actually. It might not look like it from the outside when there's only two real raids, but those are huge affiars with tons of bosses and can easily keep people busy for many months. They are much, much more elaborate than WoW raids where there's some trash and a handful of bosses. Plus there's quite a few open world raid targets as well.
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