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Ok firstly let me say this. SOE sucks!!
Ok now that I got that out of the way, I am considering buying this game. Why might you ask since I claim SOE sucks? well Ill tell you. I have played a bounch of MMO's but mainly my first real MMORPG was swg. My first MMO was MCO (racing game)... anyways. Since then Ive played them all (CoV, CoH, EQ2, Matrix Online, Auto Assault, WoW) (I have tried some older ones also but whatever).
And basically I have discovered that there is something that I really enjoyed from swg that was lacking in every other MMO I played. That was player houses. EQ2 has a crappy house system, but I dont like it, its instanced.
So I have been thinking of getting this game, mainly because I heard this game has houses. I can go out and buy or place a house anywhere I want and I can make it public and people can visit it and so on. And personally I find that, that is something that really gets me immersed in the game. I feel like I have a home, I can always go home and empty my inventory, I can go home and decorate, I can go look at other people's home and get ideas and visit, I can spend time shopping for a bigger home, or a nicer place to put my home and so on.
So this game has player houses.
Now I would like to ask the peopel who have played this game and are currently playing some questions that will help me make a decisiong whether or not I should buy this game. My purchasing of this game... is in YOUR hands lol. So answer wisely and politely lol.
Firstly, I would like people to tell me all their is to know about player houses and player cities and everything that goes with it (I heard something about diplomacy?? is this something like a mayor??)
Secondly, is this game a FPS?? First person shooter style or is it a 3rd person view like EQ2, WoW, swg and so on? (Please god let these people say 3rd person, 3rd person!)
Thirdly, I know there is levels and I remind you all SOE sucks, but is it quest oriented mainly or is it free roaming acceptable? ( like do I need to always follow a linear questing path or can I go and do my own thing, explore and kill things or complete other tasks and still level?
Forthly, is there a player economy? Like is armor and weapons loot based or do we need to buy stuff from crafters all the time? Is their item decay?
Fiftly, is their PvP? is it server specific or is it on every server except you need to go "overt" or what WoW calls PvP enabled?
Thanks, please take the time to answer as many questions as you can and if you have some helpful insight please post it. I am seriously consdering this game, but I am not certain I should give SOE another change.
If your just gonna post "Get this game" dont bother. Or if your just going to post "This game sucks" dont bother either.
Only people who are interested in giving insightfull LONG posts lol.
Thanks
Comments
*EDIT* oh and player housing, i do not know much about that yet. Although i heard it was pretty expensive. When i had my subscription, i was in a guild that had a guildhouse on a island in Kojan. I never been to it thought, so i cant really say anything about it
I hope this was long enough =( i'm not a very good explainer so im sorry if this didn't meet your standards.
This game is like EQII and WoW. There is a quest path you can follow but you can just kill mobs to level if that is what you choose to do. There are FFA pvp servers where you may kill anybody after level 7. If you kill somebody within 20% of your level than you get a % of their infamy(sort of like pvp ratings) and 15% of their coin. You start with 100 infamy at level 7 and you will only get it for killing people near your level and it makes it easy to determine who is good on your server because they will obviously have a lot more infamy than other players. On player housing you can buy a house for X amount of gold depending on where you want to build. Once it is built you may customise your house as you see fit but you have to pay a certain amount per week as an upkeep cost.
The game is a grind, as it was originally intended to be. If you do not like SOE I will not go out on a limb and suggest this game for you. I have enjoyed it but that is only because my company takes care of monthly fees for online games we play. There are bugs, and there are imbalances in this game, but then again what game is not?
You may find fun in this game, many people have and other people have not. The people who did their share of research on the game and knew what to expect seem to be pleased while the people who just wanted a new MMO and didn't really look into this, got it because of hype and now they are upset they payed for this.
In conclusion I suggest you go and try to get a free trial for the game off of a user who never gave his out yet and judge the game for yourself. You should not let us decide which game is or is not for you. Some people love FFVII and some people love Pokemon, and claim those games to be the best games ever. Are they right? Nope, but they are not wrong either. It is all a matter of opinion and an opinion does not equal to be a fact. This is my beliefs alone and I do not claim to speak for the board when you read this.
Wow, I want to work for your company!
Anyway, back to the OP and player houses.. to say you can go and plant them anywhere is not strictly true. There are certain parts of islands that have house plots. These are laid out for you, and if you can find an empty one, you can purchase the plot, then find a bunch of crafters to come and build it for you.
The only game with real open plan houses (apart from SWG) is Ultima Online, where you can plant your home pretty much anywhere you want (in reason) and then allow others to come and view it, after building it in the way you want to (walls, floors, stairs etc).
Compared to this older system, VG is more restricted, but it is more open and feels more freeform and immersive than EQ2's houses do (although I personally quite like EQ2's, especially when you get higher. I have a 5 room mansion in EQ2, I am the only person on that plot, and it feels quite like "my house".)
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
Peace
Ok thanks for replies so far.
So let me ask you this, you say we can only purchase plots in certain areas and then we need crafters to come build it for us. Are those crafters real players you refering to Or NPC crafters?
Also, are you able to set your house to public and let others come inside? Whats the deal with that? And apart from player houses is thier player cities? can people create their own cities? like in those designated areas?
Also is this game FPS style or 3rd person style?
Thanks for the posts, but I want a bit more info on those 5 questions I posted in first post.
Player Crafters.
Yes, I will link a video for you in my next post that will let you know all about your housing.
It is 3rd person like somebody else said, but you may zoom in to first person views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF7dniRWPAs
There you go, fast forward a minute of it and then you will be at the housing information.
I just saw the video.
looks good lol
You can place guard towers and you can protect player cities he said. It looks good. The character movement and horse strafing looked a bit strange lol but whatever.
So far only down side is the 1 house per player limit.
Also, I saw boats????????????????
What can you use boats for?? Are they just for travelling from one island to the other or can you actually do things on them, like attack other boats or attack monsters in the sea or fish from them??
Any detailed info regarding boats? plz.
So far Im liking what I see.
"When people don't know much about something, they tend to fill in the blanks the way they want them to be filled in. They are almost always disappointed." - Will Wright
However, since a bunch of my friends were playing VG, and I wanted to try a new MMO (I had given up on my older ones long before), I took some allergy medication and tried it. And it turns out that I'm able to have fun in it despite the taint of SOE.
C
1) You cannot build housing wherever you want. All you can do is buy one of the pre-existing housing spots. As for player cities, I'm not sure that really exists. As far as I've seen there are only 2 types of buildings ( personal house and guild hall ). I'm not sure diplomacy serves any purpose in it.. for that matter diplomacy really doesn't serve much purpose in anything. Diplomacy is also very anti-immersive.. as you're taken into a card game instead of anything RPish.
2) You can play in first person view, or 3rd person. But it's not a shooter.. it plays exactly like WoW or EQ2.
3) You can level from questing or random slaughter equally well.
4) There is a player ( crafter ) economy, although it's been nerfed pretty good. And there is item decay.
5) PvP is server specific.
As for the game itself.. it just seems to be lacking. The gameplay and content just aren't there, and it doesn't seem likely that's going to change any time soon.
You can buy a plot...plot will have a list of structures you can build on it. You will have to work with other players to get the house built or buy the supplies somewhere as the parts for the house are built by at least two of the crafting schools...maybe more. You can only have one of them yourself so that requires you to either buy or contract someone to help build it.
You have tons of furniture, cups and other fluff that you can place anywhere you want...all player made. Different structures can hold a set number of chests that you can use for additional storage space.
this video will give you alot of info
http://youtube.com/watch?v=sF7dniRWPAs
You say it doesn't seem likely that chang is going to happen soon.
What do you base this on?
If you base this on Vanguard short history than you are wrong because alot has changed and been fixed already !
Over a dozen....very big patches have been put in place since launch...fixing, tweaking, and adding alot of new content.. This was done while staffers where rotating through some time off to recover from pre-launch 18 hr work days.
I have a different opinion. I think Vanguard will continue to evolve and improve quickly.....It is now at the point it should have been at launch..by summer it will be hitting full stride....by this time next year...many peoples hardware will have caught up with the game and I predict 200k+ subs by this time next year ...pushing 500k two years from now. I consider this to be worse case scenerio.
As far as the SOE bit goes, they are not as involved with VG as with other title's so it really doesn't matter too much. Like with Rome Rising, Star Trek Online and some others they are only the publishers and so Sigil can turn everyone's avatars into apple and pear eating monkey's and SOE can't do a thing.
:-P
You need a pretty good system to run it.
The gameplay is composed of killing mobs, killing mobs for quests, killing mobs for missives, harvesting, crafting, and diplomacy.
Diplomacy is basically an online card game. It is very simple once you get the hang of it and it bored me to tears.
The poster that stated the game doesn't have much content was mostly right, after the mid-game. This was the state of the game at the beginning of march when I canceled.
They stated they added new content, but the couple of sites I visited were pretty much empty. (On thestra.) However, by the time you get there they might have added new stuff.
And at least until March 5th, they had only added ONE content update. I doubt they've added a dozen in the past couple of weeks.
Of course, I expect them to add new content since they are hemorrhaging users badly.
The community is the worst I have ever seen in an online game. (Been playing since the first day UO came online. (MUDs before that of course.))
When I left, they had drastically altered a bunch of classes and there was much wailing. (Although it didn't effect me much.)
I recommend you go read some (a lot) of reviews. Also talk to your friends that have vanguard. The game'll be a LOT better if you don't have to shout for a loooong time trying to find a group.
Also, I had a problem (like a lot of people) canceling my account. The website SAYS canceled, but it isn't. When you refresh the page you are still paying. You have to call long distance to CS to cancel your account. There is no other way.
SOE knew about this on March 1st, but didn't do anything about it, nor post anything about it.
I won't be trying another SOE game for a long, long time.