My 2 cents are this is a great game.....and Im running it on an old machine.
Athalon XP
2 gig ram
Nividia 6400
Things run fine. In the Bata I ran the game on High Performance but since prre-release Ive been able to run it on Balanced and Im having a great time. There are so many choices and options in the game and so much to do that I hardly feel the drive to madly level up to get the next best thing.
Just started playing Vanguard...and i still dont know what to expect.
The 1st thing to trouble me is the performance of my pc.
It may not be a top edge machine but i play all other games (incl L2, Wow , EQIIant others) without absolutely any probs.
It seems there must be something with my conf cause all aspects are better than the recomended system from sony.
In addition it seems to be a lil more advanced EQII edition rather than a new game.
Even the create a char page is the same.
I think im gonna give it a try for a few more lvls to see how it goes and what aspects are patched, but i ll proly return to L2 (yeah i dont mind PvP in every day gaming life :P)!! However i really hope they ll impress me cause im rather bored of most mmorpgs out there!
Just started playing Vanguard...and i still dont know what to expect. The 1st thing to trouble me is the performance of my pc. It may not be a top edge machine but i play all other games (incl L2, Wow , EQIIant others) without absolutely any probs. It seems there must be something with my conf cause all aspects are better than the recomended system from sony. In addition it seems to be a lil more advanced EQII edition rather than a new game. Even the create a char page is the same.
I think im gonna give it a try for a few more lvls to see how it goes and what aspects are patched, but i ll proly return to L2 (yeah i dont mind PvP in every day gaming life :P)!! However i really hope they ll impress me cause im rather bored of most mmorpgs out there!
Just to point out the reason for Vanguard being 'like' EQ2 because it at the core it is: Sigil (well they were techally still SOE at the time) started EQ2 as EQ's sequal however when WoW exploded the market SOE wanted to push EQ2 to be more WoW-like to get that chunk of the market, some didn't like that idea as the game wasn't being made as intended so some of the team dropped and Sigil was formed to restart 'EQ2' anew and make it the way THEY wanted it, unfortunatly Mircosft was trying to push Sigil into doing what they wanted like SOE did, so Sigil dropped from MS and got picked up by SOE again but this time under probly a very large 'hands of my game' stip, as far as we know it's been held up ok, some of the SOE dev teams were brought in to help meet the deadline SOE put in however as far as we know SOE havn't touched the game itself so far, just mucked about with the server side...
Very weak review. At best Carolyn is a newbie mmo gamer, at worst she is in the pockets of the devs.
Geez... pay attention... this was NOT a review. The game just came out today. How's she going to review it before it comes out? Don't you think she'd have to have a chance to get into higher levels, experience more characters, get further into crafting and diplomacy before giving an actual "review"?
It's a PREVIEW. A first impression of a new game. She didn't beta test it, she saw it for the first time, for a few hours and tried to absorb as much as she could in those few hours to give you an impression. There was no number crunching, hardware comparing or other typical "review" information.
Some of you people need to take a deep breath, forget that Sony owns you all, accept that Sigil has the ability to put out a good game whether you like it or not and drop the "soap box" attitude. I realize forums are a way to speak your mind and express yourself while hiding behind a monitor, and that you may feel more comfortable while bashing someone to bits verbally because you're better than them in your own mind. But seriously, why bash someone that wrote up a little something to give people a "preview" of a new game? What the heck kind of satisfaction are you feeling from that?
Personally, I thought it was an enjoyable read, kinda funny at times. I'm not going to judge the whole GAME on it though! Gods...
Cool, I messed with a Half Elf Ranger the last night of Beta and liked it. Thought it might last me a while.
Oh, and as far as this review is concerned... do you REALLY think everything everyone says about every game listed here is biased? Do you really think EVERYone is making things sound better than they truly are so long as the game is paying for advertising? That is SO jaded man. Maybe you watch too much Sopranos?
-Naaz.
I don't know the reasoning behind sugar-coating it so much but this review IS biased. I've been playing the game for a long time now, including pre-launch. Most of what she said was accurate, but sugar coated. She said nothing about how horribly it runs on even a good system. The starting areas are dead for a lot of the races I have already tried out, the quests are uninteresting and the cities, while beautiful, seem very boring.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
For me one of the most important aspects of making a truly immersive game (MMO or otherwise) is the art - I find it hard to suspend reality and concentrate of enjoying the quests, combat and storyline if the graphics are basic or clunky. Of course what constitutes `good artwork' is entirely subjective, but I can't help feeling that Vanguard doesn't quite measure up. Certainly the character models feel clunky and (as previously described) wooden... the lack of motion capture gives it a kind of `animation student' vibe (the jump animation is particularly awful). Environments, for all their fine detail (and I'm fortunate to have a system that allows me to crank it all up to full) feel a little bland, like they lack the finishing touches that give them character.
Part of Vanguard's problem, as far as graphics goes, is that there are a number of MMO's coming out this year (supposedly!) which do seem to have quite exceptional graphics. Looking at in-game movies and screenshots of games like Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Lord of the Rings Online and Sword of the New World (Granado Espada) fills me with an excitement and anticipation that Vanguard just doesn't have.
I guess in the end the one thing Vanguard does have on its side is time. A lot of people are complaining that SOE has pushed the release date so hard it's ended up with a grossly unfinished game, and that may well be true. But what it does do is give Vanguard an uncontested three months (at the very least) to draw people in with their interesting gameplay and unique features before they have to start competing with the prettier, more polished games that are in the pipeline. And while it's certainly not the Holy Grail of MMO gaming, for those of us who're jaded with the current lineup (most of which are well over 2 years old now) it's a welcome change. For me anyway, it will be a nice filler until the games I'm *really* waiting for start hitting the shelves.
I am having a blast with the game. It is awesome. I have enjoyed it since I started and have my computer set to high performance or highest depending on what I feel like because I am not a real fan of the way graphics look today. I am much more interested in the game and have had a blast. I spent pretty much a full day working on just my crafting and another on diplomacy. It is because it might be boring to some it is not any worse to me than any grinding for adventuring levels. I have experienced some of the bad stuff but add it together and still better in my eyes compared to what I had when WoW came out.
People can come in and bash and say this and that. I enjoyed reading the authors' first look experiences. Had more than me. I have had 3 different characters. Had too much fun playing through the diplomacy quests and doing the harvesting/crafting to play much else.
This is the first MMO I have pre-ordered since WoW. I am having fun but can understand why others would not or would want to wait. Just hope I have this fun for a long time. I figure this game is going to take me a while to reach the high levels unlike WoW.
It's kinda strange hearing you guys say this is going to be such a great game, just not yet. If you KNOW it will be (or at least strongly suggest it will be), then what's the problem with playing it now? What's wrong with encouraging others to play it now? If a little revenue is all it takes to get this game shining, why not sign up and be there for the shine?
I dunno, perhaps I read your messages with the wrong tone or something. If I "knew" this was going to be the great game I was hoping for, I'd be more inclined to discuss that, give examples of why and how, then sound negative about how it came out 6 months early.
To see if it really gives me back the challenge that EQ was without the tedium.
This is all i'm asking for in a game. Bring back the good of EQ without the bad. Tall order to fill I know. I'll keep my hopes up and try game after game till someone does it though. Including Vanguard.
-Naaz.
I paid the $10 for pre-order from Best Buy but I will not be buying the the final game for 3-6 months. I do not believe in paying to beta test and, as others have said, Vanguard is very much beta. It is nowhere near ready for release.
The biggest issue for alot of people will be that it runs badly on low or mid end systems even with graphics turned down. As someone else said, it seems to be an issue with rendering players - I get 40+ fps as long as there are no players around but it drops to 5-12 fps if there is just one player moving around on my screen. This was true the final day of beta - as I have not bought the final game, I can't say if they actually managed to fix this issue (though I tend to doubt they fixed it in a week when it existed throughout beta).
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
Biggest Obstical this game has to overcome for me to try it out? Three letters.......SOE
Those are the 3 letters that actually have a better chance of me trying a game. I have not been burned by them. Had problems yes but they have never ruined my fun.
2- This was true the final day of beta - as I have not bought the final game, I can't say if they actually managed to fix this issue (though I tend to doubt they fixed it in a week when it existed throughout beta).
1- In what way is it no where near ready for release? You just slamming or do you have something (other than opinion) to back that up?
2- You can't say if they managed to fix this issue but you are ready to bash them anyway? Did you catch the part about Vanguard being able to remove the debugging code now that beta is over which improved performance all on it's own, never mind whatever last minute tweaks and changes they added?
It's fine if a lot of people aren't open to giving this game a chance. Everyone's got something different they're looking for or expecting. Each person's perspective of a game and how it plays will differ. Bashing a game without trying it when it's released because you weren't happy with beta though...
Kojani Bard here... and loving every minute of the game.
I give every game a shot, and this is the first one in a while that I look forward to playing every evening while I'm sitting at work. The world is huge, the options are amazing, crafting is deeper than any other game, and the diplomacy card game is adicting.
2- You can't say if they managed to fix this issue but you are ready to bash them anyway? Did you catch the part about Vanguard being able to remove the debugging code now that beta is over which improved performance all on it's own, never mind whatever last minute tweaks and changes they added?
-Naaz.
The removal of the debugging code has made a huge difference in game performance. During beta, I was able to run on highest quality settings in the less populated and get 60+ FPS. Once in town, I had to drop down to 'Balanced' and I'd get around 30 FPS.
In release, I'm at 'Highest Quality' all the time with 70+ FPS in the wild, and 50+ in the largest cities with tons of PCs and NPCs around.
Good "preview." Most of the annoyingly snobbish mmo critics who just love to rag on every new game, failed to acknowledge that this was a "preview" and that the "previewer" was obviously going on about 3-4 days of exp- max. To call this propaganda is flat-out insulting to the writer, and further proof that there's always an mmo'er (or 1000) out there somewhere, willing to act like they know more/better than you.
I've criticized bad reviews, most recently the MxO re-review, but I'm with whoever said "if this is GOING to be such a good game" and only missing a little revenue and patching, WTH are you talking about?
I was excited about this game but after reading forums extensively and hearing all the bad press it put me off. I have always wanted a boat in a game, but ill be waiting for PotBS i guess
Yet another , biased semi propagandal preview. Let me give you the real deal Vanguard is released 6 months before it is ready. Is it a good MMO , it is.... If you liked original EQ combined with bit of WoWish flavor.
Actually so many things of original EQ made crossover to Vanguard. The world is big, huge. But also not as well fleshed out like let say WoW or EQ2. You will feel very generic , randomly placed monsters
and generally uninteresting locations. However Vanguard is home of potentional. And will easily become the best hack&slash fantasy mmo in years to come. Reviewer also forgets to mention how greatly unoptimised game engine is. And how playing the game on any but top of the line PCs equals frustration.
So my advice is Vanguard will be great game when it is "really" ready to release , and if by then you purchase new PC - You will be in for a treat
I run the game with pretty much the minimum requirements: P4 2.4ghz, 1gb ram, 6200 vcard-256mb
The game is running very well for me. I don't believe it takes a top of the line computer to run the game, but it does seem to pick and choose certain systems it doesn't like. I hear of people with top of the line puters having the same problems as peeps with low end systems.
so this was my first day in the game and I think it has some pretty good potential. There's only one thing bothering me to the extent of not wanting to play it for long: Why in the world did they not spend some extra time on the characters? I mean, if you want players to stick with their chars, give them something to identify with and grow attached to.
If you want to stand up to WoW then why dear developers didn't you finally trash those LOVELESS character models? They look so last century, their movements are sloppy and not realistic at all. Customization?! I dunno if I am the only one who thinks like this, but I couldn't care less about a few millimeters of eye or chin adjustment... features that you will NEVER actually see in game. You start out and every player in your area looks almost exactly the same as you. How boring is that??!
Technically speaking Vanguard might be top of the line as long as your computer is brandnew and plays along. But if you can't motivate the developers to put some genuine LOVE into the character creation, then how can you expect any player to love their chars back and cherish them for a looong (paying) playtime?!
C'mon, a gnome that looks like a human with too big a head, or a dwarf who looks like the victim of a tragic gen-manipulation accident... I just wish Sony would spend half the commitment to character into this game as they would for another Final Fantasy sequel.
oh, btw... the diplomacy cardgame in vanguard is something quite entertaining.
i do need a new pc though... i updated all drivers on my p4 2.4 ghz gf 7600gt system but still get some bad crashes and mean graphic errors. still, i just had to get the feel of this "next gen" game... and right now i feel like i have seen those crappy characters in EQ before... hope they'll work something out.
Don't buy it. I made that mistake and now own a game I wont be able to play until they fix it. It runs like crap on the very best hardware and anyone who tells you differently is full of crap. I have a P4 3Ghz with 2 G DDR400 and a 512 GeForce 7600GS, - not a bad system and I get 5 FPS. The reviewer obviously played on some insane hardware to not even mention the performance issues. Either that or they just flat out lied. The game will be nice when its ready but it's nothing new, all the standard MMO fare, it's not ground breaking or anything special. I'd just wait something better will probably come along meantime.
Oh, I mean. please don't get me wrong, the environment in the game is just beautiful. And if you were into EQ you will propably embrace the character design as well.
On an old machine like a P4...(how come you think that's good hardware? Maybe it was 4 years ago...) you will still be able to play it if you dont expect too much. Do some updates to all your drivers (especially graphic card) and you'll be ok. I'll go and buy a faster harddisk tomorrow, too.
1. Graphically, a very excellant game if you have the hardware to run it.
2. Everquest clone and even the font is the same.,.
3. Game engine optimization is a ways off, and for those f you that played the SWG failure, the transfer from one zone to the other will not get seamless IMHO.
4. Like most games in the industry, except 9 dragons, XP hits for each progressive level get worse, can someone please break the mold and do something diffrent.
5. Gameplay, not too bad if you like partying, sharing and taking forever to level in a group enviroment, XP slows to a crawl when groupped, what takes 1 hour solo takes 3 hours or more groupped, no bonus for groups.
6. Questing is very efficent, even waypoints on your map to the location of the quest giver and quest itself.
7. Economy in the game reminds me of WOW before the farmers came, which i am sure is coming .
8. Getting mounts at lvl 10 is the kewlest thing i have seen in the game. at least you dont have to wait till 40 to ride across the massive maps.
9. Collision in the game is not working correctly, and im not sure that it won't seeing that the model works like SWG did, Placeable houses, and we remeber the problemn with that after players realized they were testing something that willl eventually fail with SONY breathing on it.
10. The bugs in the game are the same as the ones i saw in final beta, it seems that rushing the product to market is more important that quality.
I truely thought that Sigil would do better after all the hype, but i was wrong, just like their partners SONY, it seems that the almighty dollar is more important than Quality, the game IMO has been released way tooo early and the bugs are utterly embarrasing for a Software company of the magnitude. I for one don't feel like playing another "SONY" game for 2-3 years before it reaches final status, so cancelling my subscription early will save me the trouble that SWG did, STRIKE 3 SONY,,,,,,,
For those of you that are tired of WOW, grab ya a digital download for the generic 49.95, pay ya 15 a month and BetaTest another game for 2 years while Sigil and Sony get paid, lol, i choose to pass.
For those that read this and say , "if you dont like it play something else", ,,,, Already ahead of you, i paid my 49.95 to beta test for 2 weeks, and now its time to move along, sorry i spent the money on this everquest Clone. Darkfall is coming and it has the game model of a game i WANT to play, crafting, graphics, balance, sandbox skills, no levels,,, If it makes it to beta..
At this point , and i have been gaming since Apogee games, SONY has "ruined" the image of the gameing community by passing off cheap, unfinished products of inferior quality and will continue to do so as long as everyone keeps playing them, There is a great disturbance in the force and SONY is it..
I played the adventuring path the first night and got to level 8. Similar to most mmo's where you can get to around 8 or so in one 4/5 hour session of play. I'm now level 12 and have found questing to be a much better way to level than grinding. So, at least until level 12 where I am, I recommend quests as you will waste a lot of time if you just grind. I think this has been done on purpose to promote questing vs. grinding. Good idea if you ask me. Grouping has been fun and challenging. Ask anyone who has tried the "Stronghold" quests for the first time. I bet everyone has taken a dirt nap thinking they are just going to run through it like some other games I won't mention.
Diplomacy is pretty addicting once you figure it out. I've played about 5 hours of diplomacy without the need to be above level 1 in adventuring so for me, adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy have been independent of each other.
Not a big fan of crafting yet. It's just boring to me.
Other things I like:
- Death penalty brings back the days of actually having to pay attention and caring about yourself and others while adventuring. However, the tedium of EQ has been fixed with the multiple ways of getting your stuff back. Well done.
- Mounts can be purchased early on. At my level, I already have a horse that has 39% speed increase. Nice.
- Starting continents are very unique and, so far, appears that the replay value may be very good already.
- in-game email, broker (auction house), and LFG tools already built in
- Player models are larger than EQ2 and the ability to show off your new equipment is more comparable to WoW. Big plus.
- You can cast spells and perform skills while moving. Nice feature and may add some more strat options in boss and end-game content.
- Action and reaction spell and skill chains look like they'll be more exciting than that of EQ2. I'm having fun with them anyway.
- Graphics are top notch. Not as Artsy as WoW but better than EQ1 and 2. Some aspects better than WoW.
Things I don't like:
- Server stability is still an issue but they are working hard on it. It's much better than Beta but still needs a little work.
- Yes, there are some graphic issues and bizarre things here and there but they will be fixed.
- Some of the quests are broken
- Some pathing issues
- Ship/Boat system not working
- The game supposedly came out today but no one seems to have them. I pre-ordered from Best Buy and they didn't have one copy today
Even though Vanguard is not a innovation is gaming, I thing they have successfully raised the bar a bit.
Now thats a review worth reading!!
explains all the positive & negatives & it answered more of my questions then all the vangaurd googles i have done put together.
Don't buy it. I made that mistake and now own a game I wont be able to play until they fix it. It runs like crap on the very best hardware and anyone who tells you differently is full of crap. I have a P4 3Ghz with 2 G DDR400 and a 512 GeForce 7600GS, - not a bad system and I get 5 FPS. The reviewer obviously played on some insane hardware to not even mention the performance issues. Either that or they just flat out lied. The game will be nice when its ready but it's nothing new, all the standard MMO fare, it's not ground breaking or anything special. I'd just wait something better will probably come along meantime.
I average 5 FPS with my system and the game is playable. I do run the game one setting above the lowest. You must be running at a higher setting or just don't have the tolerence to play as it is.
This was one of my main beefs with Nvidia not too long ago.
They released the Geforce7 series and crippled a lot of the cards (GS for example), yet pushed the Geforce7 name hard, as if all version 7 cards were the best. Fact was, they were not better performers than some of the Geforce6 cards. In almost every single way the 6800 Ultra would outperform something like the 7600GS.
Only the GT card and GT in SLI for the 7600 are above the 6800U in this Half Life 2 test above. So lame of them. I believe 128bit memory interface model would perform even worse.
They would also load up the cards with something like 512MB of RAM, yet the hardware was so underpowered there was probably no way any game could even take advantage of it acceptably.
Comments
My 2 cents are this is a great game.....and Im running it on an old machine.
Athalon XP
2 gig ram
Nividia 6400
Things run fine. In the Bata I ran the game on High Performance but since prre-release Ive been able to run it on Balanced and Im having a great time. There are so many choices and options in the game and so much to do that I hardly feel the drive to madly level up to get the next best thing.
Just started playing Vanguard...and i still dont know what to expect.
The 1st thing to trouble me is the performance of my pc.
It may not be a top edge machine but i play all other games (incl L2, Wow , EQIIant others) without absolutely any probs.
It seems there must be something with my conf cause all aspects are better than the recomended system from sony.
In addition it seems to be a lil more advanced EQII edition rather than a new game.
Even the create a char page is the same.
I think im gonna give it a try for a few more lvls to see how it goes and what aspects are patched, but i ll proly return to L2 (yeah i dont mind PvP in every day gaming life :P)!! However i really hope they ll impress me cause im rather bored of most mmorpgs out there!
Just to point out the reason for Vanguard being 'like' EQ2 because it at the core it is: Sigil (well they were techally still SOE at the time) started EQ2 as EQ's sequal however when WoW exploded the market SOE wanted to push EQ2 to be more WoW-like to get that chunk of the market, some didn't like that idea as the game wasn't being made as intended so some of the team dropped and Sigil was formed to restart 'EQ2' anew and make it the way THEY wanted it, unfortunatly Mircosft was trying to push Sigil into doing what they wanted like SOE did, so Sigil dropped from MS and got picked up by SOE again but this time under probly a very large 'hands of my game' stip, as far as we know it's been held up ok, some of the SOE dev teams were brought in to help meet the deadline SOE put in however as far as we know SOE havn't touched the game itself so far, just mucked about with the server side...
Bring on the WARRRRGGHH!
It's a PREVIEW. A first impression of a new game. She didn't beta test it, she saw it for the first time, for a few hours and tried to absorb as much as she could in those few hours to give you an impression. There was no number crunching, hardware comparing or other typical "review" information.
Some of you people need to take a deep breath, forget that Sony owns you all, accept that Sigil has the ability to put out a good game whether you like it or not and drop the "soap box" attitude. I realize forums are a way to speak your mind and express yourself while hiding behind a monitor, and that you may feel more comfortable while bashing someone to bits verbally because you're better than them in your own mind. But seriously, why bash someone that wrote up a little something to give people a "preview" of a new game? What the heck kind of satisfaction are you feeling from that?
Personally, I thought it was an enjoyable read, kinda funny at times. I'm not going to judge the whole GAME on it though! Gods...
-Naaz.
Cool, I messed with a Half Elf Ranger the last night of Beta and liked it. Thought it might last me a while.
Oh, and as far as this review is concerned... do you REALLY think everything everyone says about every game listed here is biased? Do you really think EVERYone is making things sound better than they truly are so long as the game is paying for advertising? That is SO jaded man. Maybe you watch too much Sopranos?
-Naaz.
I don't know the reasoning behind sugar-coating it so much but this review IS biased. I've been playing the game for a long time now, including pre-launch. Most of what she said was accurate, but sugar coated. She said nothing about how horribly it runs on even a good system. The starting areas are dead for a lot of the races I have already tried out, the quests are uninteresting and the cities, while beautiful, seem very boring.
"God, please help us sinful children of Ivalice.."
Part of Vanguard's problem, as far as graphics goes, is that there are a number of MMO's coming out this year (supposedly!) which do seem to have quite exceptional graphics. Looking at in-game movies and screenshots of games like Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Lord of the Rings Online and Sword of the New World (Granado Espada) fills me with an excitement and anticipation that Vanguard just doesn't have.
I guess in the end the one thing Vanguard does have on its side is time. A lot of people are complaining that SOE has pushed the release date so hard it's ended up with a grossly unfinished game, and that may well be true. But what it does do is give Vanguard an uncontested three months (at the very least) to draw people in with their interesting gameplay and unique features before they have to start competing with the prettier, more polished games that are in the pipeline. And while it's certainly not the Holy Grail of MMO gaming, for those of us who're jaded with the current lineup (most of which are well over 2 years old now) it's a welcome change. For me anyway, it will be a nice filler until the games I'm *really* waiting for start hitting the shelves.
I enjoyed the review.
I am having a blast with the game. It is awesome. I have enjoyed it since I started and have my computer set to high performance or highest depending on what I feel like because I am not a real fan of the way graphics look today. I am much more interested in the game and have had a blast. I spent pretty much a full day working on just my crafting and another on diplomacy. It is because it might be boring to some it is not any worse to me than any grinding for adventuring levels. I have experienced some of the bad stuff but add it together and still better in my eyes compared to what I had when WoW came out.
People can come in and bash and say this and that. I enjoyed reading the authors' first look experiences. Had more than me. I have had 3 different characters. Had too much fun playing through the diplomacy quests and doing the harvesting/crafting to play much else.
This is the first MMO I have pre-ordered since WoW. I am having fun but can understand why others would not or would want to wait. Just hope I have this fun for a long time. I figure this game is going to take me a while to reach the high levels unlike WoW.
The biggest issue for alot of people will be that it runs badly on low or mid end systems even with graphics turned down. As someone else said, it seems to be an issue with rendering players - I get 40+ fps as long as there are no players around but it drops to 5-12 fps if there is just one player moving around on my screen. This was true the final day of beta - as I have not bought the final game, I can't say if they actually managed to fix this issue (though I tend to doubt they fixed it in a week when it existed throughout beta).
Active: D&D Online (alpha,beta,&unlimited)
Retired: Anarchy Online, Archlord (beta), Auto Assault (beta), CoH/CoV, Dark Age of Camelot, Dungeon Runners, Elder Scrolls Online, Everquest, EVE, Guild Wars, Lord of the Rings Online (beta,live), Pathfinder Online (beta), Rift (beta,live), Secret World (beta,live), Star Wars Old Republic, Vanguard (beta), Warhammer (beta,live), World of Warcraft
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/113733
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Biggest Obstical this game has to overcome for me to try it out? Three letters.......SOE
1- In what way is it no where near ready for release? You just slamming or do you have something (other than opinion) to back that up?
2- You can't say if they managed to fix this issue but you are ready to bash them anyway? Did you catch the part about Vanguard being able to remove the debugging code now that beta is over which improved performance all on it's own, never mind whatever last minute tweaks and changes they added?
It's fine if a lot of people aren't open to giving this game a chance. Everyone's got something different they're looking for or expecting. Each person's perspective of a game and how it plays will differ. Bashing a game without trying it when it's released because you weren't happy with beta though...
-Naaz.
Kojani Bard here... and loving every minute of the game.
I give every game a shot, and this is the first one in a while that I look forward to playing every evening while I'm sitting at work. The world is huge, the options are amazing, crafting is deeper than any other game, and the diplomacy card game is adicting.
Hobbit Burglar at your service
The removal of the debugging code has made a huge difference in game performance. During beta, I was able to run on highest quality settings in the less populated and get 60+ FPS. Once in town, I had to drop down to 'Balanced' and I'd get around 30 FPS.
In release, I'm at 'Highest Quality' all the time with 70+ FPS in the wild, and 50+ in the largest cities with tons of PCs and NPCs around.
Hobbit Burglar at your service
Good "preview." Most of the annoyingly snobbish mmo critics who just love to rag on every new game, failed to acknowledge that this was a "preview" and that the "previewer" was obviously going on about 3-4 days of exp- max. To call this propaganda is flat-out insulting to the writer, and further proof that there's always an mmo'er (or 1000) out there somewhere, willing to act like they know more/better than you.
I've criticized bad reviews, most recently the MxO re-review, but I'm with whoever said "if this is GOING to be such a good game" and only missing a little revenue and patching, WTH are you talking about?
I run the game with pretty much the minimum requirements: P4 2.4ghz, 1gb ram, 6200 vcard-256mb
The game is running very well for me. I don't believe it takes a top of the line computer to run the game, but it does seem to pick and choose certain systems it doesn't like.
I hear of people with top of the line puters having the same problems as peeps with low end systems.
so this was my first day in the game and I think it has some pretty good potential. There's only one thing bothering me to the extent of not wanting to play it for long: Why in the world did they not spend some extra time on the characters? I mean, if you want players to stick with their chars, give them something to identify with and grow attached to.
If you want to stand up to WoW then why dear developers didn't you finally trash those LOVELESS character models? They look so last century, their movements are sloppy and not realistic at all. Customization?! I dunno if I am the only one who thinks like this, but I couldn't care less about a few millimeters of eye or chin adjustment... features that you will NEVER actually see in game. You start out and every player in your area looks almost exactly the same as you. How boring is that??!
Technically speaking Vanguard might be top of the line as long as your computer is brandnew and plays along. But if you can't motivate the developers to put some genuine LOVE into the character creation, then how can you expect any player to love their chars back and cherish them for a looong (paying) playtime?!
C'mon, a gnome that looks like a human with too big a head, or a dwarf who looks like the victim of a tragic gen-manipulation accident... I just wish Sony would spend half the commitment to character into this game as they would for another Final Fantasy sequel.
Peace.
i do need a new pc though... i updated all drivers on my p4 2.4 ghz gf 7600gt system but still get some bad crashes and mean graphic errors. still, i just had to get the feel of this "next gen" game... and right now i feel like i have seen those crappy characters in EQ before... hope they'll work something out.
On an old machine like a P4...(how come you think that's good hardware? Maybe it was 4 years ago...) you will still be able to play it if you dont expect too much. Do some updates to all your drivers (especially graphic card) and you'll be ok. I'll go and buy a faster harddisk tomorrow, too.
My take,,,,
1. Graphically, a very excellant game if you have the hardware to run it.
2. Everquest clone and even the font is the same.,.
3. Game engine optimization is a ways off, and for those f you that played the SWG failure, the transfer from one zone to the other will not get seamless IMHO.
4. Like most games in the industry, except 9 dragons, XP hits for each progressive level get worse, can someone please break the mold and do something diffrent.
5. Gameplay, not too bad if you like partying, sharing and taking forever to level in a group enviroment, XP slows to a crawl when groupped, what takes 1 hour solo takes 3 hours or more groupped, no bonus for groups.
6. Questing is very efficent, even waypoints on your map to the location of the quest giver and quest itself.
7. Economy in the game reminds me of WOW before the farmers came, which i am sure is coming
.
8. Getting mounts at lvl 10 is the kewlest thing i have seen in the game. at least you dont have to wait till 40 to ride across the massive maps.
9. Collision in the game is not working correctly, and im not sure that it won't seeing that the model works like SWG did, Placeable houses, and we remeber the problemn with that after players realized they were testing something that willl eventually fail with SONY breathing on it.
10. The bugs in the game are the same as the ones i saw in final beta, it seems that rushing the product to market is more important that quality.
I truely thought that Sigil would do better after all the hype, but i was wrong, just like their partners SONY, it seems that the almighty dollar is more important than Quality, the game IMO has been released way tooo early and the bugs are utterly embarrasing for a Software company of the magnitude. I for one don't feel like playing another "SONY" game for 2-3 years before it reaches final status, so cancelling my subscription early will save me the trouble that SWG did, STRIKE 3 SONY,,,,,,,
For those of you that are tired of WOW, grab ya a digital download for the generic 49.95, pay ya 15 a month and BetaTest another game for 2 years while Sigil and Sony get paid, lol, i choose to pass.
For those that read this and say , "if you dont like it play something else", ,,,, Already ahead of you, i paid my 49.95 to beta test for 2 weeks, and now its time to move along, sorry i spent the money on this everquest Clone. Darkfall is coming and it has the game model of a game i WANT to play, crafting, graphics, balance, sandbox skills, no levels,,, If it makes it to beta..
At this point , and i have been gaming since Apogee games, SONY has "ruined" the image of the gameing community by passing off cheap, unfinished products of inferior quality and will continue to do so as long as everyone keeps playing them, There is a great disturbance in the force and SONY is it..
They released the Geforce7 series and crippled a lot of the cards (GS for example), yet pushed the Geforce7 name hard, as if all version 7 cards were the best. Fact was, they were not better performers than some of the Geforce6 cards. In almost every single way the 6800 Ultra would outperform something like the 7600GS.
www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
Only the GT card and GT in SLI for the 7600 are above the 6800U in this Half Life 2 test above. So lame of them.
They would also load up the cards with something like 512MB of RAM, yet the hardware was so underpowered there was probably no way any game could even take advantage of it acceptably.