I don't think I'll be playing VG much now or in the future. I've played on and off since beta, and everytime I return it's the same thing. The game has great potential, but sadly, it falls short. It's obvious that SOE is not interested in putting any real resources into the game, and the devs seem somewhat out of touch with the players IMO. Bugs and fixes are slow in coming, and it's 2 steps back for every 1 step forward with this game.
VG will always be the game that could have been for me.
The people that love and play Vanguard right now hate the fact they are playing such a low populated game so we see these ressurection threads over and over again.
There is nothing wrong in loving Vanguard or playing it but you need to stop fooling yourself into thinking a ressurection thread will bring population back to the game. I applaud your effort though. The game does deserve a second chance but it's just not going to happen. Sure people will give the trial a go but that's where the populated area end. From what i hear..the game is still largely empty.
I love these threads The people that love and play Vanguard right now hate the fact they are playing such a low populated game so we see these ressurection threads over and over again. There is nothing wrong in loving Vanguard or playing it but you need to stop fooling yourself into thinking a ressurection thread will bring population back to the game. I applaud your effort though. The game does deserve a second chance but it's just not going to happen. Sure people will give the trial a go but that's where the populated area end. From what i hear..the game is still largely empty.
What is a resurrection thread?
Anyway, for those that actually play Vanguard, I don't think anyone cares if it becomes a mass-media hit like WoW. But as long as the small number of servers stay packed and the population keeps increasing..... who cares?! This is the best PvE MMO on the market.
If the gameplay was the greatest on the market this thread would not exist. There would be no discussion about a surge in population that consists of 400 more people online spread over 6 months.
Honestly if the game was the bet pve mmo on the market it would sell itself. People would be filling the servers and the company behind it would be investing money in its future.
Vanguard has potential to be a lot of things, but beyond that I wouldn't start handing out trophies.
I love these threads The people that love and play Vanguard right now hate the fact they are playing such a low populated game so we see these ressurection threads over and over again. There is nothing wrong in loving Vanguard or playing it but you need to stop fooling yourself into thinking a ressurection thread will bring population back to the game. I applaud your effort though. The game does deserve a second chance but it's just not going to happen. Sure people will give the trial a go but that's where the populated area end. From what i hear..the game is still largely empty.
What is a resurrection thread?
Anyway, for those that actually play Vanguard, I don't think anyone cares if it becomes a mass-media hit like WoW. But as long as the small number of servers stay packed and the population keeps increasing..... who cares?! This is the best PvE MMO on the market.
A resurrection thread is a thread that is pleading with the community to start playing the game again in an attempt to resurrect their game to it's former glory. Whatever the game is now is irrelevant. The fact you feel this is the best game on the market is also irrelevant. The game is on life support and there it will stay no matter how many of these "please come back to vanguard" threads you people make.
People have been trying to do the same with other games for years. People are trying it with DaoC right now as we speak. That's what i find funny. That you people can't see the futility of it. You are blinded by romantic notions that if we gather enough signatures we can make a difference! mentality. To me it's comical.
Vanguard is the most awesome game I have played and I have played them all. Vanguard is the only reason I even play MMO's anymore. I have finally found my new obsession. I didn't know a game like this even existed anymore. I can't for the life of me understand why this game doesn't have more people than any other online game. Of course it it was as popular as WOW im sure that many people would ruin it. And then SOE would start focusing on updating it and if the mass of players didn't ruin it SOE would. So I guess it's better to keep it the most well kept secret of the MMO world. It you havent played it lately It will absolutely blow you away if you have the computer to run it in all it's splendor! Unless you like linear hand holding 3rd grade games of the modern world that is. Because Vanguard will challenge you in ways you have probably not experienced before. You might actually have to use your brain and think. Imagine that!
My problem isn't with the game. It's with the lack of funding and interest from SOE. Would you jump on a slowly sinking ship?
The thing is, is that a few people are still in this mindset. A lot of people are joining, and once the population gets a bit higher they will notice and start funding it. If they notice that the game is becoming popular, why wouldn't they?
[Mod Edit]
I swear every 3-6 months some Vanguard Dev or Shill comes here spouting the same rubbish. "Join Now!" "The games on a rebound!" "Numbers are up and the games now stable and bug free" etc etc etc. only probelm is it doesn't take long to see people still reporting the game as buggy, unstable, and that the pop continues to drop. Add to that the game has no future, ie no planned expansions a bare bone skeleton team to meet the minimal needs of keeping the game running, and yes its easy to see VG = a game on life support
Your post really upsets me. If they ever shut Vanguard down I will never play another MMO ever again. Period! This game is the last hope any true MMO gamer has left! Only a fool would think otherwise unless they havent played it recently that is.
I also loved pre-cu SWG, particularly the crafting and Ranger class.
I would come back to VG in a second if I didn't have to worry about investing endless hours in the game just to have SOE come along and make drastic changes to the crafting, classes, etc.
You know the whole "burn me once - shame on you, burn me twice - shame on me" thing.
Originally posted by Wrender Unless you like linear hand holding 3rd grade games of the modern world that is. Because Vanguard will challenge you in ways you have probably not experienced before. You might actually have to use your brain and think. Imagine that!
Vanguard removed artificial zone barriers like mountains to allow more free movement, but then added in the completely hand holding quest system that marks every goal on the map and details exactly what to do once you get there. I wouldn't go bragging about how much thought it takes to play this game when it takes the player by the hand like this and walks them from point a to point b.
I thought you made some good points until you took on the superior attitude in this post and the one that followed it where you call anyone a fool for disagreeing with your opinion.
Vanguard had it's nail in the coffin at release. That is just the way MMOs work. You've got one shot at launch to get a feel out there and if it isn't received well then you're pretty much done for (or at least on a steady decline to the bottom).
Vanguard's world is so big that it feels like you're alone all the time. Its almost a paradox - all VG needs is more players and the one thing it will never get is more players.
It's a shame, really. The game is great - but the one shot deal really comes into play with Vanguard. It was probably one of the most unfortunate launches ever.
It's cool that you're trying to pull people back in, but I've long since realized that its just lessons in futility. People are too stubborn to try it for themselves; they'd rather jump on bandwagons. Stubborn people and the near complete lack of advertising by SOE, anyway.
Edit: My sinking ship comment was a bit off. A couple have people noted that Vanguard is going in the right direction, and I agree with that. It's just that its going at a rate that just isn't going to cut it in the MMO genre. People are paying monthly fees for a game and they should expect updates on a regular basis; Vanguard has failed to provide this. Most updates are either adding things that were supposed to be in at launch or revamping bad/broken parts of the game.
Vanguard is the most awesome game I have played and I have played them all. Vanguard is the only reason I even play MMO's anymore. I have finally found my new obsession. I didn't know a game like this even existed anymore. I can't for the life of me understand why this game doesn't have more people than any other online game. Of course it it was as popular as WOW im sure that many people would ruin it. And then SOE would start focusing on updating it and if the mass of players didn't ruin it SOE would. So I guess it's better to keep it the most well kept secret of the MMO world. It you havent played it lately It will absolutely blow you away if you have the computer to run it in all it's splendor! Unless you like linear hand holding 3rd grade games of the modern world that is. Because Vanguard will challenge you in ways you have probably not experienced before. You might actually have to use your brain and think. Imagine that!
If VG challenges you in anything its patience...
Sorry, VG is just as easy as any other MMO out there.
I love these threads The people that love and play Vanguard right now hate the fact they are playing such a low populated game so we see these ressurection threads over and over again. There is nothing wrong in loving Vanguard or playing it but you need to stop fooling yourself into thinking a ressurection thread will bring population back to the game. I applaud your effort though. The game does deserve a second chance but it's just not going to happen. Sure people will give the trial a go but that's where the populated area end. From what i hear..the game is still largely empty.
Well you know what is interesting about these threads to me is that they are normally started by people that are new to the game... The guy that started this thead from looking at his post history has only been playing a few weeks at most and was likely playing AoC before that...
So I think rather then coming as a fan to resurect the game they are coming as a new player to exclaim that the game is a lot better then the forums had led them to believe... Kinda seems like a good topic to post doesn't it?
Everytime one of these pop up I always remind people that most all SOE games now are subscription based as well as virtual items for real life money. If I pay to play an online game every time that can be in the game better be in the game.
Originally posted by Xeonsoldier If VG challenges you in anything its patience... Sorry, VG is just as easy as any other MMO out there.
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
I'm new to this game so I'll explain a bit.
1) Crafting -- one of the most complex systems I've seen in a game and very little "grinding" through hundreds of junk items just to level up your skill. You can do work for taskmasters where they'll provide most of the hard to get stuff then you buy the rest of the components and make the results for them. It's not a "gold sink". You actually MAKE money crafting from the very first time you do it through the end and the exp/loot rewards from this depend upon the quality of the materials you made for them -- D = failed, A = top of the line so best rewards and bonus loot.
2) Diplomacy -- a game within the game that has its own level system and gear to play it and, again goes up to 50th level in and of itself. Again, this isn't some "waste of time" gig. You make money and have loot rewards just like adventuring and crafting.
3) Adventuring -- Risk and rewards. If you get wooped, you won't spend vast amounts on repairs but you will lose experience and will need to get your corpse back, though you can summon it to you at your bounce spot -- you'll lose all the xp from doing that so it's better to go back and get your corpse to regain most of the exp from being wooped. You won't find yourself running naked there, most of your equipped gear is "soulbound" so stays with you but all your loot items are sitting on that corpse so you'll want to get it.
Travel comes in 4 flavors: Foot, Mounted (starting at level 10), air (rentable before level 10, getting your own mount later on), by ship (craftable ships in the game too). It takes a bit to learn how to fly a mount but there are quests to scout locations that give you a bit of practice with this. One that I like is where I had to scout 6 "safe spots" within an enemy camp where they had nets up to block the flying mounts from getting into their camp so you fly over these nets, under those, land on the top of this building so a short 'runway' to get airborn again, etc...
Lots of little things like that.
If you're looking at just the "combat" aspects of the game, you'll probably find it to be little different than many other games. Hotbar with buttons you hit to launch attacks. Reaction buttons that light up so you click them when you can, etc... That's how most MMO's work. Outside of that, the AI isn't too bad. The quest system... Learn to READ the text and you shouldn't have too many problems with it but the world is HUGE and you'll stumble over things in the wilds as you move around. It can be a bit frustrating to get a quest to go to this or that outpost but no idea where it's at and the map gets cluttered with "points of interest", as you build up quests and the like, so you may find you'll need to ask a few questions of others until you learn your way around the world.
Solo? It's there through 50.
Group? You can start with these under level 10 and do nothing but group content if you want.
Raids? My guys aren't big enough to go there yet so I don't know much about those aspects of the game.
-------
Population issues:
Those that think the game is dead, I have to snicker about. I played EQ from about a week after it's launch up to when I switched to the new WoW game at its first day of release for that game. I switched to LoTRO shortly after TBC in WoW, right when they started nerfing the hard mode content in WoW and played LoTRO up until about 2 weeks ago when I started up with Vanguard.
Now the snicker about it all: The few servers in Vanguard have populations about even with an average WoW server. Having played a variety of games, one thing remains constant. It doesn't matter how many play the game but how many play on the server you're playing on. If your server has a decent population then you'll be able to do well. If your server has a low pop, then you'll hit issues. etc...
So having a few servers, with decent population levels, is little different than having many servers with decent population levels. The main difference being you can be a mouthy puke on a server and just switch to a different on to start up again but with only a few... If you're a rude prick, there's little room for you to "go hide and start over".
I kind of like that. It keeps the jackass portion of the population to a minimum so I really don't mind playing the game with fewer servers, as long as there are enough folks to do the content with that I get along with and the community in Vanguard reminds me a lot of the community in LoTRO -- a bit more mature with massively less punk attitudes.
For me the 3 main points for a game are:
1) Overall Game play.
2) Community -- being stuck in a group of moronic jerks... You can have the best game play in a game but that'll trash it fast.
3) Eye Candy and "bugless" environment.
Well the overall gameplay is diverse and offers content for soloing -- from crafting and diplomacy through mass adventuring solo quests -- group and raid content. It's got that covered and in a huge spread out world. The community is helpful and I've rarely seen someone chewed out for asking "stupid" questions (such as the newbie area -- "where's the farm? That's where you started." without the "you idiot" attached like you'll find in some games.).
The graphics are steep enough that I ordered up a new video card to enjoy it more. I checked out the differences between performance and highest quality and I like the higher quality but my video isn't up to snuff so I'm addressing that.
Bugs... I've hit a few glitches here or there but no more nor less than I've hit in most other games. UI extensions I have issues with at times but I saw that with stacking UI extensions in WoW at times too but the UI extensions here don't seem to break with every patch like they did in WoW where you'd be back to default until your extensions were updated or hack the files to change version info just to find that something *DID* break... Not quite that bad here.
So... If you want to try it out, give it a shot. I wouldn't recommend it to some folks I've gamed with but for many others, I'd say they might find this game rather interesting -- especially those into crafting for craftings sake and those who enjoy having a variety of interesting things to do solo but get into doing group stuff. Use the trial and give it a shot. If someone likes it -- good deal. If they don't... No big, there are plenty of other games out there to check out but this is a good one in its own way.
Vanguard had it's nail in the coffin at release. That is just the way MMOs work. You've got one shot at launch to get a feel out there and if it isn't received well then you're pretty much done for (or at least on a steady decline to the bottom). Vanguard's world is so big that it feels like you're alone all the time. Its almost a paradox - all VG needs is more players and the one thing it will never get is more players. It's a shame, really. The game is great - but the one shot deal really comes into play with Vanguard. It was probably one of the most unfortunate launches ever. It's cool that you're trying to pull people back in, but I've long since realized that its just lessons in futility. People are too stubborn to try it for themselves; they'd rather jump on bandwagons. Stubborn people and the near complete lack of advertising by SOE, anyway. Edit: My sinking ship comment was a bit off. A couple have people noted that Vanguard is going in the right direction, and I agree with that. It's just that its going at a rate that just isn't going to cut it in the MMO genre. People are paying monthly fees for a game and they should expect updates on a regular basis; Vanguard has failed to provide this. Most updates are either adding things that were supposed to be in at launch or revamping bad/broken parts of the game.
Don't you think that those of us who are actually paying to play VG should be the ones who decide if this is an issue or not? At the moment, I'm happy being able to play a MMO that is as engrossing as VG. I don't feel cheated in the slightest because there aren't regular updates.
I would recommend VG to anyone who is looking for a thinking persons MMO. Yes, it's that good.
I did exactly what the OP suggested about 4 months ago and put in about 30hour a week playing. This was my 3rd and final effort to get hooked on the game. FOR ME.....the game was more like a full time job.Yes work...not play...not fun.If you want a game that you can play for a long time...to take up signifigant parts of your life...this is it. FUN ? Wasen't for me.Besides the lack of fun, the other issue was the lack of SOE support.They appear to me to have decided to put an effort to make the game playable.That's done.Now investment /staffinghas been minimized.Basic things one would take for granted...highlighting housing..showing pictures of the types....not on game websites. You have to go to youtube to find it and it's not done by the company. Ships....nope...you will find a photo here and there but no big section selling this special feature..When a company has minimized staffing so much that it won't even bother to sell some of it's special features.....you have recieved a clue about what the decision makers have decided about the game.
Originally posted by Xeonsoldier If VG challenges you in anything its patience... Sorry, VG is just as easy as any other MMO out there.
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
I'm new to this game so I'll explain a bit.
1) Crafting -- one of the most complex systems I've seen in a game and very little "grinding" through hundreds of junk items just to level up your skill. You can do work for taskmasters where they'll provide most of the hard to get stuff then you buy the rest of the components and make the results for them. It's not a "gold sink". You actually MAKE money crafting from the very first time you do it through the end and the exp/loot rewards from this depend upon the quality of the materials you made for them -- D = failed, A = top of the line so best rewards and bonus loot.
Very little grinding, are you smoking?? The whole system is based around grinding out countless work orders. It's painfully boring. Sure the system seems robust...at first, then it becomes a mindless game of click this click this click this in this order and poof your done. It's most tedious and unfun grind in the game. I grinded out 47 levels and for months dreaded going near a crafting station afterwards even tho i only had 3 lvls to go.
2) Diplomacy -- a game within the game that has its own level system and gear to play it and, again goes up to 50th level in and of itself. Again, this isn't some "waste of time" gig. You make money and have loot rewards just like adventuring and crafting.
I read they changed something about it, but once you get around 20 and have your strat and deck worked out, it becomes as mindless as crafting
3) Adventuring -- Risk and rewards. If you get wooped, you won't spend vast amounts on repairs but you will lose experience and will need to get your corpse back, though you can summon it to you at your bounce spot -- you'll lose all the xp from doing that so it's better to go back and get your corpse to regain most of the exp from being wooped. You won't find yourself running naked there, most of your equipped gear is "soulbound" so stays with you but all your loot items are sitting on that corpse so you'll want to get it.
Travel comes in 4 flavors: Foot, Mounted (starting at level 10), air (rentable before level 10, getting your own mount later on), by ship (craftable ships in the game too). It takes a bit to learn how to fly a mount but there are quests to scout locations that give you a bit of practice with this. One that I like is where I had to scout 6 "safe spots" within an enemy camp where they had nets up to block the flying mounts from getting into their camp so you fly over these nets, under those, land on the top of this building so a short 'runway' to get airborn again, etc...
The only thing mounts are used for are riding/flying to the next rift. The instant travel riftway systems SOE added eliminated whatever purpose/asethic the variety of transportaion modes were intended to add. And Boats are just for show and hardly ever used except for the quick sail to APW.
Lots of little things like that.
If you're looking at just the "combat" aspects of the game, you'll probably find it to be little different than many other games. Hotbar with buttons you hit to launch attacks. Reaction buttons that light up so you click them when you can, etc... That's how most MMO's work. Outside of that, the AI isn't too bad. The quest system... Learn to READ the text and you shouldn't have too many problems with it but the world is HUGE and you'll stumble over things in the wilds as you move around. It can be a bit frustrating to get a quest to go to this or that outpost but no idea where it's at and the map gets cluttered with "points of interest", as you build up quests and the like, so you may find you'll need to ask a few questions of others until you learn your way around the world.
you dont need to read the text to do quests. accept it and a marker tells you exactly where to go, text on the screen tells you exactly what kill and how many, if you need to collect something, it fuckin glows on the ground so you cant miss it. People would just run to a quest hub, pick up all quests ignoring lore and text, knock em out quickly and move on. Most of these easy quest systems were compliments of SOE.
Solo? It's there through 50.
Group? You can start with these under level 10 and do nothing but group content if you want.
only if your in the right area becuase despite the 40 different adventure zones at any given lvl, everyone congregates at the areas which drop the best loot and have the easiest risk vs reward quest lines (hunter league ring a bell). so tough luck finding a group for anywhere else. about 75% of the game world goes untouched by the average player.
Raids? My guys aren't big enough to go there yet so I don't know much about those aspects of the game.
i can't begin to list all the bugs
-------
Population issues:
Those that think the game is dead, I have to snicker about. I played EQ from about a week after it's launch up to when I switched to the new WoW game at its first day of release for that game. I switched to LoTRO shortly after TBC in WoW, right when they started nerfing the hard mode content in WoW and played LoTRO up until about 2 weeks ago when I started up with Vanguard.
Now the snicker about it all: The few servers in Vanguard have populations about even with an average WoW server. Having played a variety of games, one thing remains constant. It doesn't matter how many play the game but how many play on the server you're playing on. If your server has a decent population then you'll be able to do well. If your server has a low pop, then you'll hit issues. etc...
So having a few servers, with decent population levels, is little different than having many servers with decent population levels. The main difference being you can be a mouthy puke on a server and just switch to a different on to start up again but with only a few... If you're a rude prick, there's little room for you to "go hide and start over".
I kind of like that. It keeps the jackass portion of the population to a minimum so I really don't mind playing the game with fewer servers, as long as there are enough folks to do the content with that I get along with and the community in Vanguard reminds me a lot of the community in LoTRO -- a bit more mature with massively less punk attitudes.
At the time when i quit, sartok had 50-70 players during peak hours on the weekend. Seradon had around 800. if these are the same as WoW servers (i quit right after they added b lack wing layer) then WoW is dieing too. But ill give credit where credit is due, the ingame community was the best of any MMO i ever played. the forum community however, is full of assholes.
For me the 3 main points for a game are:
1) Overall Game play.
2) Community -- being stuck in a group of moronic jerks... You can have the best game play in a game but that'll trash it fast.
3) Eye Candy and "bugless" environment.
bugless?? fuck outta here
Well the overall gameplay is diverse and offers content for soloing -- from crafting and diplomacy through mass adventuring solo quests -- group and raid content. It's got that covered and in a huge spread out world. The community is helpful and I've rarely seen someone chewed out for asking "stupid" questions (such as the newbie area -- "where's the farm? That's where you started." without the "you idiot" attached like you'll find in some games.).
The graphics are steep enough that I ordered up a new video card to enjoy it more. I checked out the differences between performance and highest quality and I like the higher quality but my video isn't up to snuff so I'm addressing that.
Bugs... I've hit a few glitches here or there but no more nor less than I've hit in most other games. UI extensions I have issues with at times but I saw that with stacking UI extensions in WoW at times too but the UI extensions here don't seem to break with every patch like they did in WoW where you'd be back to default until your extensions were updated or hack the files to change version info just to find that something *DID* break... Not quite that bad here.
So... If you want to try it out, give it a shot. I wouldn't recommend it to some folks I've gamed with but for many others, I'd say they might find this game rather interesting -- especially those into crafting for craftings sake and those who enjoy having a variety of interesting things to do solo but get into doing group stuff. Use the trial and give it a shot. If someone likes it -- good deal. If they don't... No big, there are plenty of other games out there to check out but this is a good one in its own way.
Originally posted by Xeonsoldier If VG challenges you in anything its patience... Sorry, VG is just as easy as any other MMO out there.
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
I'm new to this game so I'll explain a bit.
1) Crafting -- one of the most complex systems I've seen in a game and very little "grinding" through hundreds of junk items just to level up your skill. You can do work for taskmasters where they'll provide most of the hard to get stuff then you buy the rest of the components and make the results for them. It's not a "gold sink". You actually MAKE money crafting from the very first time you do it through the end and the exp/loot rewards from this depend upon the quality of the materials you made for them -- D = failed, A = top of the line so best rewards and bonus loot.
Very little grinding, are you smoking?? The whole system is based around grinding out countless work orders. It's painfully boring. Sure the system seems robust...at first, then it becomes a mindless game of click this click this click this in this order and poof your done. It's most tedious and unfun grind in the game. I grinded out 47 levels and for months dreaded going near a crafting station afterwards even tho i only had 3 lvls to go.
2) Diplomacy -- a game within the game that has its own level system and gear to play it and, again goes up to 50th level in and of itself. Again, this isn't some "waste of time" gig. You make money and have loot rewards just like adventuring and crafting.
I read they changed something about it, but once you get around 20 and have your strat and deck worked out, it becomes as mindless as crafting
3) Adventuring -- Risk and rewards. If you get wooped, you won't spend vast amounts on repairs but you will lose experience and will need to get your corpse back, though you can summon it to you at your bounce spot -- you'll lose all the xp from doing that so it's better to go back and get your corpse to regain most of the exp from being wooped. You won't find yourself running naked there, most of your equipped gear is "soulbound" so stays with you but all your loot items are sitting on that corpse so you'll want to get it.
Travel comes in 4 flavors: Foot, Mounted (starting at level 10), air (rentable before level 10, getting your own mount later on), by ship (craftable ships in the game too). It takes a bit to learn how to fly a mount but there are quests to scout locations that give you a bit of practice with this. One that I like is where I had to scout 6 "safe spots" within an enemy camp where they had nets up to block the flying mounts from getting into their camp so you fly over these nets, under those, land on the top of this building so a short 'runway' to get airborn again, etc...
The only thing mounts are used for are riding/flying to the next rift. The instant travel riftway systems SOE added eliminated whatever purpose/asethic the variety of transportaion modes were intended to add. And Boats are just for show and hardly ever used except for the quick sail to APW.
Lots of little things like that.
If you're looking at just the "combat" aspects of the game, you'll probably find it to be little different than many other games. Hotbar with buttons you hit to launch attacks. Reaction buttons that light up so you click them when you can, etc... That's how most MMO's work. Outside of that, the AI isn't too bad. The quest system... Learn to READ the text and you shouldn't have too many problems with it but the world is HUGE and you'll stumble over things in the wilds as you move around. It can be a bit frustrating to get a quest to go to this or that outpost but no idea where it's at and the map gets cluttered with "points of interest", as you build up quests and the like, so you may find you'll need to ask a few questions of others until you learn your way around the world.
you dont need to read the text to do quests. accept it and a marker tells you exactly where to go, text on the screen tells you exactly what kill and how many, if you need to collect something, it fuckin glows on the ground so you cant miss it. People would just run to a quest hub, pick up all quests ignoring lore and text, knock em out quickly and move on. Most of these easy quest systems were compliments of SOE.
Solo? It's there through 50.
Group? You can start with these under level 10 and do nothing but group content if you want.
only if your in the right area becuase despite the 40 different adventure zones at any given lvl, everyone congregates at the areas which drop the best loot and have the easiest risk vs reward quest lines (hunter league ring a bell). so tough luck finding a group for anywhere else. about 75% of the game world goes untouched by the average player.
Raids? My guys aren't big enough to go there yet so I don't know much about those aspects of the game.
i can't begin to list all the bugs
-------
Population issues:
Those that think the game is dead, I have to snicker about. I played EQ from about a week after it's launch up to when I switched to the new WoW game at its first day of release for that game. I switched to LoTRO shortly after TBC in WoW, right when they started nerfing the hard mode content in WoW and played LoTRO up until about 2 weeks ago when I started up with Vanguard.
Now the snicker about it all: The few servers in Vanguard have populations about even with an average WoW server. Having played a variety of games, one thing remains constant. It doesn't matter how many play the game but how many play on the server you're playing on. If your server has a decent population then you'll be able to do well. If your server has a low pop, then you'll hit issues. etc...
So having a few servers, with decent population levels, is little different than having many servers with decent population levels. The main difference being you can be a mouthy puke on a server and just switch to a different on to start up again but with only a few... If you're a rude prick, there's little room for you to "go hide and start over".
I kind of like that. It keeps the jackass portion of the population to a minimum so I really don't mind playing the game with fewer servers, as long as there are enough folks to do the content with that I get along with and the community in Vanguard reminds me a lot of the community in LoTRO -- a bit more mature with massively less punk attitudes.
At the time when i quit, sartok had 50-70 players during peak hours on the weekend. Seradon had around 800. if these are the same as WoW servers (i quit right after they added b lack wing layer) then WoW is dieing too. But ill give credit where credit is due, the ingame community was the best of any MMO i ever played. the forum community however, is full of assholes.
For me the 3 main points for a game are:
1) Overall Game play.
2) Community -- being stuck in a group of moronic jerks... You can have the best game play in a game but that'll trash it fast.
3) Eye Candy and "bugless" environment.
bugless?? fuck outta here
Well the overall gameplay is diverse and offers content for soloing -- from crafting and diplomacy through mass adventuring solo quests -- group and raid content. It's got that covered and in a huge spread out world. The community is helpful and I've rarely seen someone chewed out for asking "stupid" questions (such as the newbie area -- "where's the farm? That's where you started." without the "you idiot" attached like you'll find in some games.).
The graphics are steep enough that I ordered up a new video card to enjoy it more. I checked out the differences between performance and highest quality and I like the higher quality but my video isn't up to snuff so I'm addressing that.
Bugs... I've hit a few glitches here or there but no more nor less than I've hit in most other games. UI extensions I have issues with at times but I saw that with stacking UI extensions in WoW at times too but the UI extensions here don't seem to break with every patch like they did in WoW where you'd be back to default until your extensions were updated or hack the files to change version info just to find that something *DID* break... Not quite that bad here.
So... If you want to try it out, give it a shot. I wouldn't recommend it to some folks I've gamed with but for many others, I'd say they might find this game rather interesting -- especially those into crafting for craftings sake and those who enjoy having a variety of interesting things to do solo but get into doing group stuff. Use the trial and give it a shot. If someone likes it -- good deal. If they don't... No big, there are plenty of other games out there to check out but this is a good one in its own way.
bigpooh, i would hug u if i could.
VG is a "thinking" man's game? LOL anyone who think this game requires any thinking must be smoking some good stuff or must be an amateur at gaming. The only true difficult MMO was EQ1. Since then there has nothing that met the challenging level that EQ1 did. Maybe because we were all inexperienced then but the devs aren't keeping up with the fact that gamers are simply smarter now.
Comments
I don't think I'll be playing VG much now or in the future. I've played on and off since beta, and everytime I return it's the same thing. The game has great potential, but sadly, it falls short. It's obvious that SOE is not interested in putting any real resources into the game, and the devs seem somewhat out of touch with the players IMO. Bugs and fixes are slow in coming, and it's 2 steps back for every 1 step forward with this game.
VG will always be the game that could have been for me.
I love these threads
The people that love and play Vanguard right now hate the fact they are playing such a low populated game so we see these ressurection threads over and over again.
There is nothing wrong in loving Vanguard or playing it but you need to stop fooling yourself into thinking a ressurection thread will bring population back to the game. I applaud your effort though. The game does deserve a second chance but it's just not going to happen. Sure people will give the trial a go but that's where the populated area end. From what i hear..the game is still largely empty.
What is a resurrection thread?
Anyway, for those that actually play Vanguard, I don't think anyone cares if it becomes a mass-media hit like WoW. But as long as the small number of servers stay packed and the population keeps increasing..... who cares?! This is the best PvE MMO on the market.
If the gameplay was the greatest on the market this thread would not exist. There would be no discussion about a surge in population that consists of 400 more people online spread over 6 months.
Honestly if the game was the bet pve mmo on the market it would sell itself. People would be filling the servers and the company behind it would be investing money in its future.
Vanguard has potential to be a lot of things, but beyond that I wouldn't start handing out trophies.
What is a resurrection thread?
Anyway, for those that actually play Vanguard, I don't think anyone cares if it becomes a mass-media hit like WoW. But as long as the small number of servers stay packed and the population keeps increasing..... who cares?! This is the best PvE MMO on the market.
A resurrection thread is a thread that is pleading with the community to start playing the game again in an attempt to resurrect their game to it's former glory. Whatever the game is now is irrelevant. The fact you feel this is the best game on the market is also irrelevant. The game is on life support and there it will stay no matter how many of these "please come back to vanguard" threads you people make.
People have been trying to do the same with other games for years. People are trying it with DaoC right now as we speak. That's what i find funny. That you people can't see the futility of it. You are blinded by romantic notions that if we gather enough signatures we can make a difference! mentality. To me it's comical.
Vanguard is the most awesome game I have played and I have played them all. Vanguard is the only reason I even play MMO's anymore. I have finally found my new obsession. I didn't know a game like this even existed anymore. I can't for the life of me understand why this game doesn't have more people than any other online game. Of course it it was as popular as WOW im sure that many people would ruin it. And then SOE would start focusing on updating it and if the mass of players didn't ruin it SOE would. So I guess it's better to keep it the most well kept secret of the MMO world. It you havent played it lately It will absolutely blow you away if you have the computer to run it in all it's splendor! Unless you like linear hand holding 3rd grade games of the modern world that is. Because Vanguard will challenge you in ways you have probably not experienced before. You might actually have to use your brain and think. Imagine that!
The thing is, is that a few people are still in this mindset. A lot of people are joining, and once the population gets a bit higher they will notice and start funding it. If they notice that the game is becoming popular, why wouldn't they?
[Mod Edit]
I swear every 3-6 months some Vanguard Dev or Shill comes here spouting the same rubbish. "Join Now!" "The games on a rebound!" "Numbers are up and the games now stable and bug free" etc etc etc. only probelm is it doesn't take long to see people still reporting the game as buggy, unstable, and that the pop continues to drop. Add to that the game has no future, ie no planned expansions a bare bone skeleton team to meet the minimal needs of keeping the game running, and yes its easy to see VG = a game on life support
Your post really upsets me. If they ever shut Vanguard down I will never play another MMO ever again. Period! This game is the last hope any true MMO gamer has left! Only a fool would think otherwise unless they havent played it recently that is.
I loved VG, but here is my problem;
I also loved pre-cu SWG, particularly the crafting and Ranger class.
I would come back to VG in a second if I didn't have to worry about investing endless hours in the game just to have SOE come along and make drastic changes to the crafting, classes, etc.
You know the whole "burn me once - shame on you, burn me twice - shame on me" thing.
I wish I could get past that.
Vanguard removed artificial zone barriers like mountains to allow more free movement, but then added in the completely hand holding quest system that marks every goal on the map and details exactly what to do once you get there. I wouldn't go bragging about how much thought it takes to play this game when it takes the player by the hand like this and walks them from point a to point b.
I thought you made some good points until you took on the superior attitude in this post and the one that followed it where you call anyone a fool for disagreeing with your opinion.
Vanguard had it's nail in the coffin at release. That is just the way MMOs work. You've got one shot at launch to get a feel out there and if it isn't received well then you're pretty much done for (or at least on a steady decline to the bottom).
Vanguard's world is so big that it feels like you're alone all the time. Its almost a paradox - all VG needs is more players and the one thing it will never get is more players.
It's a shame, really. The game is great - but the one shot deal really comes into play with Vanguard. It was probably one of the most unfortunate launches ever.
It's cool that you're trying to pull people back in, but I've long since realized that its just lessons in futility. People are too stubborn to try it for themselves; they'd rather jump on bandwagons. Stubborn people and the near complete lack of advertising by SOE, anyway.
Edit: My sinking ship comment was a bit off. A couple have people noted that Vanguard is going in the right direction, and I agree with that. It's just that its going at a rate that just isn't going to cut it in the MMO genre. People are paying monthly fees for a game and they should expect updates on a regular basis; Vanguard has failed to provide this. Most updates are either adding things that were supposed to be in at launch or revamping bad/broken parts of the game.
If VG challenges you in anything its patience...
Sorry, VG is just as easy as any other MMO out there.
Rift: Storm Legion Raid Progression Tracker
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
finding groups for group content. /sarcasm off
Try playing right now.
In all my time of playing, this is the FIRST time the game has EVER been down unannounced.
-Computer specs no one cares about: check.
-MMOs played no one cares about: check.
-Xfire stats no one cares about: check.
-Signature no one cares about: check.
------------------------------------------------------------
-Narcissism: check.
Well you know what is interesting about these threads to me is that they are normally started by people that are new to the game... The guy that started this thead from looking at his post history has only been playing a few weeks at most and was likely playing AoC before that...
So I think rather then coming as a fan to resurect the game they are coming as a new player to exclaim that the game is a lot better then the forums had led them to believe... Kinda seems like a good topic to post doesn't it?
---
Ethion
Everytime one of these pop up I always remind people that most all SOE games now are subscription based as well as virtual items for real life money. If I pay to play an online game every time that can be in the game better be in the game.
In all my time of playing, this is the FIRST time the game has EVER been down unannounced.
They announced it in the forums. And in the message of the day. Log-on maintence for 5 hours.
What forums?
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
I'm new to this game so I'll explain a bit.
1) Crafting -- one of the most complex systems I've seen in a game and very little "grinding" through hundreds of junk items just to level up your skill. You can do work for taskmasters where they'll provide most of the hard to get stuff then you buy the rest of the components and make the results for them. It's not a "gold sink". You actually MAKE money crafting from the very first time you do it through the end and the exp/loot rewards from this depend upon the quality of the materials you made for them -- D = failed, A = top of the line so best rewards and bonus loot.
2) Diplomacy -- a game within the game that has its own level system and gear to play it and, again goes up to 50th level in and of itself. Again, this isn't some "waste of time" gig. You make money and have loot rewards just like adventuring and crafting.
3) Adventuring -- Risk and rewards. If you get wooped, you won't spend vast amounts on repairs but you will lose experience and will need to get your corpse back, though you can summon it to you at your bounce spot -- you'll lose all the xp from doing that so it's better to go back and get your corpse to regain most of the exp from being wooped. You won't find yourself running naked there, most of your equipped gear is "soulbound" so stays with you but all your loot items are sitting on that corpse so you'll want to get it.
Travel comes in 4 flavors: Foot, Mounted (starting at level 10), air (rentable before level 10, getting your own mount later on), by ship (craftable ships in the game too). It takes a bit to learn how to fly a mount but there are quests to scout locations that give you a bit of practice with this. One that I like is where I had to scout 6 "safe spots" within an enemy camp where they had nets up to block the flying mounts from getting into their camp so you fly over these nets, under those, land on the top of this building so a short 'runway' to get airborn again, etc...
Lots of little things like that.
If you're looking at just the "combat" aspects of the game, you'll probably find it to be little different than many other games. Hotbar with buttons you hit to launch attacks. Reaction buttons that light up so you click them when you can, etc... That's how most MMO's work. Outside of that, the AI isn't too bad. The quest system... Learn to READ the text and you shouldn't have too many problems with it but the world is HUGE and you'll stumble over things in the wilds as you move around. It can be a bit frustrating to get a quest to go to this or that outpost but no idea where it's at and the map gets cluttered with "points of interest", as you build up quests and the like, so you may find you'll need to ask a few questions of others until you learn your way around the world.
Solo? It's there through 50.
Group? You can start with these under level 10 and do nothing but group content if you want.
Raids? My guys aren't big enough to go there yet so I don't know much about those aspects of the game.
-------
Population issues:
Those that think the game is dead, I have to snicker about. I played EQ from about a week after it's launch up to when I switched to the new WoW game at its first day of release for that game. I switched to LoTRO shortly after TBC in WoW, right when they started nerfing the hard mode content in WoW and played LoTRO up until about 2 weeks ago when I started up with Vanguard.
Now the snicker about it all: The few servers in Vanguard have populations about even with an average WoW server. Having played a variety of games, one thing remains constant. It doesn't matter how many play the game but how many play on the server you're playing on. If your server has a decent population then you'll be able to do well. If your server has a low pop, then you'll hit issues. etc...
So having a few servers, with decent population levels, is little different than having many servers with decent population levels. The main difference being you can be a mouthy puke on a server and just switch to a different on to start up again but with only a few... If you're a rude prick, there's little room for you to "go hide and start over".
I kind of like that. It keeps the jackass portion of the population to a minimum so I really don't mind playing the game with fewer servers, as long as there are enough folks to do the content with that I get along with and the community in Vanguard reminds me a lot of the community in LoTRO -- a bit more mature with massively less punk attitudes.
For me the 3 main points for a game are:
1) Overall Game play.
2) Community -- being stuck in a group of moronic jerks... You can have the best game play in a game but that'll trash it fast.
3) Eye Candy and "bugless" environment.
Well the overall gameplay is diverse and offers content for soloing -- from crafting and diplomacy through mass adventuring solo quests -- group and raid content. It's got that covered and in a huge spread out world. The community is helpful and I've rarely seen someone chewed out for asking "stupid" questions (such as the newbie area -- "where's the farm? That's where you started." without the "you idiot" attached like you'll find in some games.).
The graphics are steep enough that I ordered up a new video card to enjoy it more. I checked out the differences between performance and highest quality and I like the higher quality but my video isn't up to snuff so I'm addressing that.
Bugs... I've hit a few glitches here or there but no more nor less than I've hit in most other games. UI extensions I have issues with at times but I saw that with stacking UI extensions in WoW at times too but the UI extensions here don't seem to break with every patch like they did in WoW where you'd be back to default until your extensions were updated or hack the files to change version info just to find that something *DID* break... Not quite that bad here.
So... If you want to try it out, give it a shot. I wouldn't recommend it to some folks I've gamed with but for many others, I'd say they might find this game rather interesting -- especially those into crafting for craftings sake and those who enjoy having a variety of interesting things to do solo but get into doing group stuff. Use the trial and give it a shot. If someone likes it -- good deal. If they don't... No big, there are plenty of other games out there to check out but this is a good one in its own way.
Don't you think that those of us who are actually paying to play VG should be the ones who decide if this is an issue or not? At the moment, I'm happy being able to play a MMO that is as engrossing as VG. I don't feel cheated in the slightest because there aren't regular updates.
I would recommend VG to anyone who is looking for a thinking persons MMO. Yes, it's that good.
Ion
I did exactly what the OP suggested about 4 months ago and put in about 30hour a week playing. This was my 3rd and final effort to get hooked on the game. FOR ME.....the game was more like a full time job.Yes work...not play...not fun.If you want a game that you can play for a long time...to take up signifigant parts of your life...this is it. FUN ? Wasen't for me.Besides the lack of fun, the other issue was the lack of SOE support.They appear to me to have decided to put an effort to make the game playable.That's done.Now investment /staffinghas been minimized.Basic things one would take for granted...highlighting housing..showing pictures of the types....not on game websites. You have to go to youtube to find it and it's not done by the company. Ships....nope...you will find a photo here and there but no big section selling this special feature..When a company has minimized staffing so much that it won't even bother to sell some of it's special features.....you have recieved a clue about what the decision makers have decided about the game.
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
I'm new to this game so I'll explain a bit.
1) Crafting -- one of the most complex systems I've seen in a game and very little "grinding" through hundreds of junk items just to level up your skill. You can do work for taskmasters where they'll provide most of the hard to get stuff then you buy the rest of the components and make the results for them. It's not a "gold sink". You actually MAKE money crafting from the very first time you do it through the end and the exp/loot rewards from this depend upon the quality of the materials you made for them -- D = failed, A = top of the line so best rewards and bonus loot.
Very little grinding, are you smoking?? The whole system is based around grinding out countless work orders. It's painfully boring. Sure the system seems robust...at first, then it becomes a mindless game of click this click this click this in this order and poof your done. It's most tedious and unfun grind in the game. I grinded out 47 levels and for months dreaded going near a crafting station afterwards even tho i only had 3 lvls to go.
2) Diplomacy -- a game within the game that has its own level system and gear to play it and, again goes up to 50th level in and of itself. Again, this isn't some "waste of time" gig. You make money and have loot rewards just like adventuring and crafting.
I read they changed something about it, but once you get around 20 and have your strat and deck worked out, it becomes as mindless as crafting
3) Adventuring -- Risk and rewards. If you get wooped, you won't spend vast amounts on repairs but you will lose experience and will need to get your corpse back, though you can summon it to you at your bounce spot -- you'll lose all the xp from doing that so it's better to go back and get your corpse to regain most of the exp from being wooped. You won't find yourself running naked there, most of your equipped gear is "soulbound" so stays with you but all your loot items are sitting on that corpse so you'll want to get it.
Travel comes in 4 flavors: Foot, Mounted (starting at level 10), air (rentable before level 10, getting your own mount later on), by ship (craftable ships in the game too). It takes a bit to learn how to fly a mount but there are quests to scout locations that give you a bit of practice with this. One that I like is where I had to scout 6 "safe spots" within an enemy camp where they had nets up to block the flying mounts from getting into their camp so you fly over these nets, under those, land on the top of this building so a short 'runway' to get airborn again, etc...
The only thing mounts are used for are riding/flying to the next rift. The instant travel riftway systems SOE added eliminated whatever purpose/asethic the variety of transportaion modes were intended to add. And Boats are just for show and hardly ever used except for the quick sail to APW.
Lots of little things like that.
If you're looking at just the "combat" aspects of the game, you'll probably find it to be little different than many other games. Hotbar with buttons you hit to launch attacks. Reaction buttons that light up so you click them when you can, etc... That's how most MMO's work. Outside of that, the AI isn't too bad. The quest system... Learn to READ the text and you shouldn't have too many problems with it but the world is HUGE and you'll stumble over things in the wilds as you move around. It can be a bit frustrating to get a quest to go to this or that outpost but no idea where it's at and the map gets cluttered with "points of interest", as you build up quests and the like, so you may find you'll need to ask a few questions of others until you learn your way around the world.
you dont need to read the text to do quests. accept it and a marker tells you exactly where to go, text on the screen tells you exactly what kill and how many, if you need to collect something, it fuckin glows on the ground so you cant miss it. People would just run to a quest hub, pick up all quests ignoring lore and text, knock em out quickly and move on. Most of these easy quest systems were compliments of SOE.
Solo? It's there through 50.
Group? You can start with these under level 10 and do nothing but group content if you want.
only if your in the right area becuase despite the 40 different adventure zones at any given lvl, everyone congregates at the areas which drop the best loot and have the easiest risk vs reward quest lines (hunter league ring a bell). so tough luck finding a group for anywhere else. about 75% of the game world goes untouched by the average player.
Raids? My guys aren't big enough to go there yet so I don't know much about those aspects of the game.
i can't begin to list all the bugs
-------
Population issues:
Those that think the game is dead, I have to snicker about. I played EQ from about a week after it's launch up to when I switched to the new WoW game at its first day of release for that game. I switched to LoTRO shortly after TBC in WoW, right when they started nerfing the hard mode content in WoW and played LoTRO up until about 2 weeks ago when I started up with Vanguard.
Now the snicker about it all: The few servers in Vanguard have populations about even with an average WoW server. Having played a variety of games, one thing remains constant. It doesn't matter how many play the game but how many play on the server you're playing on. If your server has a decent population then you'll be able to do well. If your server has a low pop, then you'll hit issues. etc...
So having a few servers, with decent population levels, is little different than having many servers with decent population levels. The main difference being you can be a mouthy puke on a server and just switch to a different on to start up again but with only a few... If you're a rude prick, there's little room for you to "go hide and start over".
I kind of like that. It keeps the jackass portion of the population to a minimum so I really don't mind playing the game with fewer servers, as long as there are enough folks to do the content with that I get along with and the community in Vanguard reminds me a lot of the community in LoTRO -- a bit more mature with massively less punk attitudes.
At the time when i quit, sartok had 50-70 players during peak hours on the weekend. Seradon had around 800. if these are the same as WoW servers (i quit right after they added b lack wing layer) then WoW is dieing too. But ill give credit where credit is due, the ingame community was the best of any MMO i ever played. the forum community however, is full of assholes.
For me the 3 main points for a game are:
1) Overall Game play.
2) Community -- being stuck in a group of moronic jerks... You can have the best game play in a game but that'll trash it fast.
3) Eye Candy and "bugless" environment.
bugless?? fuck outta here
Well the overall gameplay is diverse and offers content for soloing -- from crafting and diplomacy through mass adventuring solo quests -- group and raid content. It's got that covered and in a huge spread out world. The community is helpful and I've rarely seen someone chewed out for asking "stupid" questions (such as the newbie area -- "where's the farm? That's where you started." without the "you idiot" attached like you'll find in some games.).
The graphics are steep enough that I ordered up a new video card to enjoy it more. I checked out the differences between performance and highest quality and I like the higher quality but my video isn't up to snuff so I'm addressing that.
Bugs... I've hit a few glitches here or there but no more nor less than I've hit in most other games. UI extensions I have issues with at times but I saw that with stacking UI extensions in WoW at times too but the UI extensions here don't seem to break with every patch like they did in WoW where you'd be back to default until your extensions were updated or hack the files to change version info just to find that something *DID* break... Not quite that bad here.
So... If you want to try it out, give it a shot. I wouldn't recommend it to some folks I've gamed with but for many others, I'd say they might find this game rather interesting -- especially those into crafting for craftings sake and those who enjoy having a variety of interesting things to do solo but get into doing group stuff. Use the trial and give it a shot. If someone likes it -- good deal. If they don't... No big, there are plenty of other games out there to check out but this is a good one in its own way.
Vanguard is way harder than Wow. Of course, so is any other game too now.
Still Vanguard is slightly harder tham most MMOs, it is harder than AoC, EQ2, WAR (PvE part), LOTRO, but not that much.
It is nowhere near playing Guildwars in hardmode however.
In what way is it harder?
I'm new to this game so I'll explain a bit.
1) Crafting -- one of the most complex systems I've seen in a game and very little "grinding" through hundreds of junk items just to level up your skill. You can do work for taskmasters where they'll provide most of the hard to get stuff then you buy the rest of the components and make the results for them. It's not a "gold sink". You actually MAKE money crafting from the very first time you do it through the end and the exp/loot rewards from this depend upon the quality of the materials you made for them -- D = failed, A = top of the line so best rewards and bonus loot.
Very little grinding, are you smoking?? The whole system is based around grinding out countless work orders. It's painfully boring. Sure the system seems robust...at first, then it becomes a mindless game of click this click this click this in this order and poof your done. It's most tedious and unfun grind in the game. I grinded out 47 levels and for months dreaded going near a crafting station afterwards even tho i only had 3 lvls to go.
2) Diplomacy -- a game within the game that has its own level system and gear to play it and, again goes up to 50th level in and of itself. Again, this isn't some "waste of time" gig. You make money and have loot rewards just like adventuring and crafting.
I read they changed something about it, but once you get around 20 and have your strat and deck worked out, it becomes as mindless as crafting
3) Adventuring -- Risk and rewards. If you get wooped, you won't spend vast amounts on repairs but you will lose experience and will need to get your corpse back, though you can summon it to you at your bounce spot -- you'll lose all the xp from doing that so it's better to go back and get your corpse to regain most of the exp from being wooped. You won't find yourself running naked there, most of your equipped gear is "soulbound" so stays with you but all your loot items are sitting on that corpse so you'll want to get it.
Travel comes in 4 flavors: Foot, Mounted (starting at level 10), air (rentable before level 10, getting your own mount later on), by ship (craftable ships in the game too). It takes a bit to learn how to fly a mount but there are quests to scout locations that give you a bit of practice with this. One that I like is where I had to scout 6 "safe spots" within an enemy camp where they had nets up to block the flying mounts from getting into their camp so you fly over these nets, under those, land on the top of this building so a short 'runway' to get airborn again, etc...
The only thing mounts are used for are riding/flying to the next rift. The instant travel riftway systems SOE added eliminated whatever purpose/asethic the variety of transportaion modes were intended to add. And Boats are just for show and hardly ever used except for the quick sail to APW.
Lots of little things like that.
If you're looking at just the "combat" aspects of the game, you'll probably find it to be little different than many other games. Hotbar with buttons you hit to launch attacks. Reaction buttons that light up so you click them when you can, etc... That's how most MMO's work. Outside of that, the AI isn't too bad. The quest system... Learn to READ the text and you shouldn't have too many problems with it but the world is HUGE and you'll stumble over things in the wilds as you move around. It can be a bit frustrating to get a quest to go to this or that outpost but no idea where it's at and the map gets cluttered with "points of interest", as you build up quests and the like, so you may find you'll need to ask a few questions of others until you learn your way around the world.
you dont need to read the text to do quests. accept it and a marker tells you exactly where to go, text on the screen tells you exactly what kill and how many, if you need to collect something, it fuckin glows on the ground so you cant miss it. People would just run to a quest hub, pick up all quests ignoring lore and text, knock em out quickly and move on. Most of these easy quest systems were compliments of SOE.
Solo? It's there through 50.
Group? You can start with these under level 10 and do nothing but group content if you want.
only if your in the right area becuase despite the 40 different adventure zones at any given lvl, everyone congregates at the areas which drop the best loot and have the easiest risk vs reward quest lines (hunter league ring a bell). so tough luck finding a group for anywhere else. about 75% of the game world goes untouched by the average player.
Raids? My guys aren't big enough to go there yet so I don't know much about those aspects of the game.
i can't begin to list all the bugs
-------
Population issues:
Those that think the game is dead, I have to snicker about. I played EQ from about a week after it's launch up to when I switched to the new WoW game at its first day of release for that game. I switched to LoTRO shortly after TBC in WoW, right when they started nerfing the hard mode content in WoW and played LoTRO up until about 2 weeks ago when I started up with Vanguard.
Now the snicker about it all: The few servers in Vanguard have populations about even with an average WoW server. Having played a variety of games, one thing remains constant. It doesn't matter how many play the game but how many play on the server you're playing on. If your server has a decent population then you'll be able to do well. If your server has a low pop, then you'll hit issues. etc...
So having a few servers, with decent population levels, is little different than having many servers with decent population levels. The main difference being you can be a mouthy puke on a server and just switch to a different on to start up again but with only a few... If you're a rude prick, there's little room for you to "go hide and start over".
I kind of like that. It keeps the jackass portion of the population to a minimum so I really don't mind playing the game with fewer servers, as long as there are enough folks to do the content with that I get along with and the community in Vanguard reminds me a lot of the community in LoTRO -- a bit more mature with massively less punk attitudes.
At the time when i quit, sartok had 50-70 players during peak hours on the weekend. Seradon had around 800. if these are the same as WoW servers (i quit right after they added b lack wing layer) then WoW is dieing too. But ill give credit where credit is due, the ingame community was the best of any MMO i ever played. the forum community however, is full of assholes.
For me the 3 main points for a game are:
1) Overall Game play.
2) Community -- being stuck in a group of moronic jerks... You can have the best game play in a game but that'll trash it fast.
3) Eye Candy and "bugless" environment.
bugless?? fuck outta here
Well the overall gameplay is diverse and offers content for soloing -- from crafting and diplomacy through mass adventuring solo quests -- group and raid content. It's got that covered and in a huge spread out world. The community is helpful and I've rarely seen someone chewed out for asking "stupid" questions (such as the newbie area -- "where's the farm? That's where you started." without the "you idiot" attached like you'll find in some games.).
The graphics are steep enough that I ordered up a new video card to enjoy it more. I checked out the differences between performance and highest quality and I like the higher quality but my video isn't up to snuff so I'm addressing that.
Bugs... I've hit a few glitches here or there but no more nor less than I've hit in most other games. UI extensions I have issues with at times but I saw that with stacking UI extensions in WoW at times too but the UI extensions here don't seem to break with every patch like they did in WoW where you'd be back to default until your extensions were updated or hack the files to change version info just to find that something *DID* break... Not quite that bad here.
So... If you want to try it out, give it a shot. I wouldn't recommend it to some folks I've gamed with but for many others, I'd say they might find this game rather interesting -- especially those into crafting for craftings sake and those who enjoy having a variety of interesting things to do solo but get into doing group stuff. Use the trial and give it a shot. If someone likes it -- good deal. If they don't... No big, there are plenty of other games out there to check out but this is a good one in its own way.
bigpooh, i would hug u if i could.
VG is a "thinking" man's game? LOL anyone who think this game requires any thinking must be smoking some good stuff or must be an amateur at gaming. The only true difficult MMO was EQ1. Since then there has nothing that met the challenging level that EQ1 did. Maybe because we were all inexperienced then but the devs aren't keeping up with the fact that gamers are simply smarter now.
Rift: Storm Legion Raid Progression Tracker