The best way for SOE to keep the game down, was to buy it so no one else could fully develop it. Not that anyone else was lining up, but what if someone like Microsoft decided they wanted to give it a go?
So sure they keep it going on life support so they can earn a little bit of money off of it, from the few loyal fans.
Microsoft was the original development partner in Vanguard. When they dropped, Sigil had to turn to SOE to distribute the game (and they released it in train wreck form. I have never seen a game less ready to release in my life) and they were completely out of money. McQuaid said as much when the game launched "We're broke, had to release, sorry". I understand what you are saying, but there was no one else who wanted it. No one. What if EA bought it, or Santa Claus, or maybe that guy who just opened the Macs store down the block from my house? They didn't , no one other than SOE was willing to gamble on a game the hitting the m key hard locked your comp and you constantly fell through the world.
They did it to make a profit, they had the resources to fix a few bugs, the hard part was done, servers were there. All they had to do was fix all the holes and collect the revenue it added to the stationpass. I think the SOE hate out there has blinded a lot of people to the reality of any situation that involves SOE (or $OE as SWG vets call them).
I dont understnad why no one had made a Vanguard emulator yet if they did it would become popular again but iam not sure all the legal stuff but iam sure u could do it and make it tower over the giants of mmorpgs.
im guessing your not being serious, otherwise i'd have to assume your
Have u ever played an emulator or know how they work?
They did, I think, then SoE picked them up. Then they cut funding and forced them to release early.
SOE came on to distribute the game. But Microsoft pulling out left Sigil cash strapped, so they had to release before they wanted to. SOE had nothing to do with that a they were just the distributer. The game released and about 4 or 6 months later they announced the full sale to SOE, as Sigil's slow demise had finally produced a corpse. Again, Sigil and McQuaid's fault. You should read his blog, he actually cops to a lot of this stuff.
They did, I think, then SoE picked them up. Then they cut funding and forced them to release early.
SOE came on to distribute the game. But Microsoft pulling out left Sigil cash strapped, so they had to release before they wanted to. SOE had nothing to do with that a they were just the distributer. The game released and about 4 or 6 months later they announced the full sale to SOE, as Sigil's slow demise had finally produced a corpse. Again, Sigil and McQuaid's fault. You should read his blog, he actually cops to a lot of this stuff.
Please stop posting. You're making too much sense for this board to handle.
They did, I think, then SoE picked them up. Then they cut funding and forced them to release early.
SOE came on to distribute the game. But Microsoft pulling out left Sigil cash strapped, so they had to release before they wanted to. SOE had nothing to do with that a they were just the distributer. The game released and about 4 or 6 months later they announced the full sale to SOE, as Sigil's slow demise had finally produced a corpse. Again, Sigil and McQuaid's fault. You should read his blog, he actually cops to a lot of this stuff.
Please stop posting. You're making too much sense for this board to handle.
Actually, according to Brad, SoE had agreed to continue funding the game for another year I believe, but SoE went back on the deal and forced them out I think about 6-8 months early.
Not seeing another game not ready for release? I'm guessing you haven't played many MMOs.
Either way, this is now way off topic, we're talking about what is holding back Vanguard NOW. Currently, it's probably the best PvE game on the market, almost without a doubt. SoE is holding it back. You don't sit on a game with that much potential and not do anything with it, unless you want it to fail. And of all the companies out there, SoE WOULD want it to fail, because it would just steal subs from EQ and EQ2
My brain is starting to hurt. I played EQ when they nerfed monks the first time before Luclin I wanted to kill them, then PoP made it easy to get around and put in the PoK. Then the CU in SWG pissed me off hard. NGE made me leave that game. The fun thing all these stories have in comman is I got over it.
Hey Fibsdk. I came here to see some interesting Vanguard discussion, but instead found people whining about things that our guild actually love, such as exploring to find stuff instead of having a map tell us everything, and the wide open realistic world, instead of a world arranged to be convenient for the players.
We are discussing Vanguard, particularly the maps. If you don't want to discuss the maps, go elsewhere. You're worse than a whiner if you play into their whining by claiming to like the things they find annoying.
I hear the wow forums are fun to troll. You might find more excitement there.
You're not discussing maps, you're whining about maps. The title of the thread also wasn't "Maps is holding Vanguard back," its "What holds this game back..."
I'm all for legitimate criticism and Vanguard deserves plenty of it, but maps? Your complaint is that the maps doesn't lead you by the nose, so you don't have to think. Speaking of WoW, why don't you go back to it? It seems as though that game is up to your standard. It tells you what to do, when to do it, and where it is, so you never have to use the grey matter between your ears.
The game is buggy, has performance problems, a lack of population, and little developer support from SOE. Those are things holding Vanguard back, not maps that dumb the game down for the retards that play MMORPGs.
Before you reply back with something you think is witty, use your head and think about what you're saying. You're upset because a game doesn't offer a map system that tells you where everything is, versus using the one you have and exploring. You want it to tell you where NPC's and quest objectives are, like that's a realistic thing to have. The map is a guide to HELP you find your way, not completely do all the work for you. The fact is that you and others like you don't like to explore. You lost your sense of adventure and want to have your hand held. You want NPC"s to tell you exactly where everything is, mark it on the map, and even light the path for you. I consider this taking the adventure out of the game, and dumbing it down. This allows for you to go into "quest-mode," which is where you collect all the quests in the area without reading them, and then follow the objectives on the map. No thinking or effort involved.
There's plenty of games like that, and complaining that one game out of the many doesn't dumb crap down is idiotic to me. But go ahead and reply with crap like, "It's not about dumbing the game down, it's about making the game [user-friendly]." Then ask yourself what the difference between user-friendly and dumbing a game down is.
First of all, there is no WoW for me to go back to, since I am not from that game by any means. I've mostly been an EQ2 player, but I've played just about all of them.
I'm not asking for any kind of hand-holding. I'm all for Vanguard's more adventure-like playstyle where you need to find your way around. However, when it comes to simple things such as finding a certain vendor, I don't believe I should have to wander around a given city for 25 minutes or wait till someone responds to my question on the public channel to know where the god damned necromancer trainer is. It's true that most cities have a guard to show me the way, but some cities' guards are even hard to find. Also, why the guards in Veskal's Exchange do not give directions is beyond me.
I don't think the game as a whole needs to be "dumbed down," but I think at least when a player is dropped off in the middle of their first real city, they should be given some kind of direction or hint as to what they should do first. After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find), I found out from someone in my guild that I should go to some cave for a good questing/leveling experience and that I should find the quest NPCs close by. I searched for 2 hours for these NPCs. I could not find them. I still haven't found them. I should not have to wander around aimlessly in order to find a couple of quest NPCs. A little "!" or some sort of icon on the map would solve this problem and save me hours of pointless walking around. I want to explore, honestly! I just don't want to explore the whole damned continent in search for one random NPC whose name I know but whose location is so vague on the quest description that I could literally go anywhere and really not know if I was close.
To me, this level of "hardcore-ness," if you want to call it that, is unnecessary. There's a fine line between not being carebear and being overly ambiguous and open-ended. I believe Vanguard to be the latter.
After reading your post history, I see that you're not some troll or whiner, but I still disagree with you. Other than general directions, I don't think a game should tell you where things are. It's part of exploration. If you fully explore an area, you'll see all there is to see, thus when you ask where this or that is, you'll remember running across it an hour ago or whatever. I haven't had any problems so far, except when doing my Ranger quest. It took me 2 hours running around 3 different Kojan islands to finally find a mob I was hunting. So I do understand your fustration, but we just have differing opinions.
What I said was I have never seen a a game as not ready to release as Vanguard. There has been a literal crapload of games in the last 5 years that should have involved jail time for the crime of cartoonish early release.
Why would you need a map to tell you where a vendor is? Just walk up to any guard NPC in any town and they will point you to every NPC in that town. God people whine too much....
Why would you need a map to tell you where a vendor is? Just walk up to any guard NPC in any town and they will point you to every NPC in that town. God people whine too much....
WoW generation doesn't know how to do things on their own.
What I said was I have never seen a a game as not ready to release as Vanguard. There has been a literal crapload of games in the last 5 years that should have involved jail time for the crime of cartoonish early release.
I dont understnad why no one had made a Vanguard emulator yet if they did it would become popular again but iam not sure all the legal stuff but iam sure u could do it and make it tower over the giants of mmorpgs.
im guessing your not being serious, otherwise i'd have to assume your
Have u ever played an emulator or know how they work?
no, perhaps, and, in what way is that relevant to vanguard? this is about vanguard after all, not some clonealike, and if you want to see how they get on, then perhaps you ought to check out swg's so called emulators.. several years on and .... ? nope, so much for that then.. vanguard doesnt need an emulator, it just needs players, which means advertisements and work done on the game itself too...
'After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find)'
If you need a guard in Veskals Exchange to tell you where things are that tells me all i need to know about you. That is such a small confined area. The fact it took you a whole 25 minutes to find your trainer is even more worrisome. It takes less than 5 minutes to learn the layout and where the npc's are considering there are only 3 small buildings. Its an outpost not a city
The points you bring up has nothing to do with Vanguard but everything to do with you...25 minutes?..really? I don't think any game should cater to people like you.
This little area? ..well shit (pardon my french) no wonder you are going off on a tangent. You have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever. How is that Vanguards fault again?
BEST GAME ON THE MARKET HANDS DOWN!! Still loving every minute of this game, I also wanan thank the Devs for giving us permanent Randolph for christmas this year, THANK YOU!!!
you should learn your history...at the early times it was only UO, EQ and AC...SWG and DAoC came out a few years later.
EQ launched 1999, followed by AC late 1999, followed by DAoC early 2001. Check your facts. All were in beta around the same exact time. And SWG was still spiritually like the original MMOs because it was innovative and original. There were probably more MMOs pre 2005 than there are post 2005.
Sorry you are just plain wrong here and are in fact the one that needs to check their facts.
DAOC wasn't even a blip on the radar, let alone in beta while EQ and AC1 were in beta.
The original big 3 were of course UO(9/97) first, then EQ(3/99), then AC1(11/99). The rest came years later and most do not lump them in with the group many consider responsible for kicking off the genre.
Just an FYI:
-DAOC released nearly 2 years after that last one of that original group in October of 2001, not early 2001 as you state.
-Anarchy Online released before DAOC as well in June 2001. The only reason AO gets lumped in the big 3 group sometimes is because it was the first Sci-Fi MMO
-SWG was released in June 2003 nearly 4 years after AC1 was released.
MORE OT:
The biggest thing for me that really did Vanguard in was the launch. The game simply was not ready and I was not going to invest time in a game that no one was really sure was going to make it.
All the Brad drama certainly didn't help this game either.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
Hey Fibsdk. I came here to see some interesting Vanguard discussion, but instead found people whining about things that our guild actually love, such as exploring to find stuff instead of having a map tell us everything, and the wide open realistic world, instead of a world arranged to be convenient for the players.
We are discussing Vanguard, particularly the maps. If you don't want to discuss the maps, go elsewhere. You're worse than a whiner if you play into their whining by claiming to like the things they find annoying.
I hear the wow forums are fun to troll. You might find more excitement there.
You're not discussing maps, you're whining about maps. The title of the thread also wasn't "Maps is holding Vanguard back," its "What holds this game back..."
I'm all for legitimate criticism and Vanguard deserves plenty of it, but maps? Your complaint is that the maps doesn't lead you by the nose, so you don't have to think. Speaking of WoW, why don't you go back to it? It seems as though that game is up to your standard. It tells you what to do, when to do it, and where it is, so you never have to use the grey matter between your ears.
The game is buggy, has performance problems, a lack of population, and little developer support from SOE. Those are things holding Vanguard back, not maps that dumb the game down for the retards that play MMORPGs.
Before you reply back with something you think is witty, use your head and think about what you're saying. You're upset because a game doesn't offer a map system that tells you where everything is, versus using the one you have and exploring. You want it to tell you where NPC's and quest objectives are, like that's a realistic thing to have. The map is a guide to HELP you find your way, not completely do all the work for you. The fact is that you and others like you don't like to explore. You lost your sense of adventure and want to have your hand held. You want NPC"s to tell you exactly where everything is, mark it on the map, and even light the path for you. I consider this taking the adventure out of the game, and dumbing it down. This allows for you to go into "quest-mode," which is where you collect all the quests in the area without reading them, and then follow the objectives on the map. No thinking or effort involved.
There's plenty of games like that, and complaining that one game out of the many doesn't dumb crap down is idiotic to me. But go ahead and reply with crap like, "It's not about dumbing the game down, it's about making the game [user-friendly]." Then ask yourself what the difference between user-friendly and dumbing a game down is.
First of all, there is no WoW for me to go back to, since I am not from that game by any means. I've mostly been an EQ2 player, but I've played just about all of them.
I'm not asking for any kind of hand-holding. I'm all for Vanguard's more adventure-like playstyle where you need to find your way around. However, when it comes to simple things such as finding a certain vendor, I don't believe I should have to wander around a given city for 25 minutes or wait till someone responds to my question on the public channel to know where the god damned necromancer trainer is. It's true that most cities have a guard to show me the way, but some cities' guards are even hard to find. Also, why the guards in Veskal's Exchange do not give directions is beyond me.
I don't think the game as a whole needs to be "dumbed down," but I think at least when a player is dropped off in the middle of their first real city, they should be given some kind of direction or hint as to what they should do first. After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find), I found out from someone in my guild that I should go to some cave for a good questing/leveling experience and that I should find the quest NPCs close by. I searched for 2 hours for these NPCs. I could not find them. I still haven't found them. I should not have to wander around aimlessly in order to find a couple of quest NPCs. A little "!" or some sort of icon on the map would solve this problem and save me hours of pointless walking around. I want to explore, honestly! I just don't want to explore the whole damned continent in search for one random NPC whose name I know but whose location is so vague on the quest description that I could literally go anywhere and really not know if I was close.
To me, this level of "hardcore-ness," if you want to call it that, is unnecessary. There's a fine line between not being carebear and being overly ambiguous and open-ended. I believe Vanguard to be the latter.
After reading your post history, I see that you're not some troll or whiner, but I still disagree with you. Other than general directions, I don't think a game should tell you where things are. It's part of exploration. If you fully explore an area, you'll see all there is to see, thus when you ask where this or that is, you'll remember running across it an hour ago or whatever. I haven't had any problems so far, except when doing my Ranger quest. It took me 2 hours running around 3 different Kojan islands to finally find a mob I was hunting. So I do understand your fustration, but we just have differing opinions.
Ironically, it's SoE that's holding Vanguard back. After all, they bought the game just so it wouldn't be a direct competitor to Everquest 2 and it seems that practice from those early days has continued... basically, SoE continues to keep Vanguard on life-support.
I'm sorry, but thats utter tripe. SOE bought it because Sigil was done, they were out of cash/out of time. They bought it and put it on "life support" as it was circling the bowl. If they it as competition to EQ2, they could have done nothing and watch it get flushed. I imagine they picked it up because they saw something in it. They might not have done much new stuff with it, but they did fix a giant wad of bugs that made this game unplayable.
This myth that SOE had something to fear in Vanguard is bunk. I played vanguard beta and the first month and a bit of launch. At the point SOE stepped it, it wasn't ready to compete with bejeweled or majong online.
I think Mehthos is right for the most part. I think SOE did buy Vanguard to eliminate competition. Vanguard is the best PvE MMO on the market. I give credit to SOE for fixing a completely broken game at launch and they did invest a lot of time and effort to fix the bugs, drastically improve performance and finish content such as Ancient Port Warehouse. Unfortunately, Vanguard is not the horse SOE chose to ride and they rolled it into their portfolio of games and did not invest in it like they did other games.
I think if SOE decided to go with Vanguard instead of EQ2 they would have been much better off as Vanguard beats EQ2 on almost every level. But EQ2 is SOE's home-grown baby and they decided to stick with it. I understand why SOE doesn't have the resources available to fully develop both Vanguard and EQ2, but in the end they made a mistake by putting their money behind EQ2 instead of Vanguard.
I still play Vanguard and love it. The population is good, the end-game is challenging, the community is awesome. If SOE decides to develop another MMO (Everquest 3 perhaps) then I hope it takes the best of EQ1 plus the best of Vanguard and creates the next great PvE MMO.
"Quote" 'After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find)'
If you need a guard in Veskals Exchange to tell you where things are that tells me all i need to know about you. That is such a small confined area. The fact it took you a whole 25 minutes to find your trainer is even more worrisome. It takes less than 5 minutes to learn the layout and where the npc's are considering there are only 3 small buildings. Its an outpost not a city
The points you bring up has nothing to do with Vanguard but everything to do with you...25 minutes?..really? I don't think any game should cater to people like you.
This little area? ..well shit (pardon my french) no wonder you are going off on a tangent. You have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever. How is that Vanguards fault again?
Some trainers are tucked away in little corners that aren't visible when circling the city multiple times. After my first circle, I search inside all of the buildings, eventually finding him next to the last building I searched tucked away a bit.
Perhaps the game shouldn't cater to me for not having a good sense of direction. However, if there was one guard in that outpost that could point me where to go, how much harm would that do to the game? You would think that a game as old as this, a simple guard could be placed in areas that don't have one.
And what of the quest NPCs I searched hours to find and never did? I don't think there are very many games anymore that don't have a little "!" pop up on the map to tell you that there are quests for you, but Vanguard is one of them. Would it really hurt this game to have a more interactive UI that simply tells you where you can get a quest? I'll look for the mobs myself, I'm ok with that. There are enough clues in the quest descriptions to help me find them, and a little adventure makes the game that much more interesting.
However, mundane things like finding a trainer in a city, finding a quest NPC for a certain area, looking for a certain vendor or diplomat, and even trying to find where the damned goblin who gives you Randolph is are **sometimes** so unrealistic. In a city, you should easily be able to find a person you need to find, granted that they're a static vendor or trainer. I want to adventure in the wilderness, not every building in a 25,000 square foot city.
For the same reason I think EQ and EQ2 are held back, lack of a clear distinct reason to do all those quests or progress my character.
I give you LOTRO and FFXI as games that just grabbed me with reasons to progress my character. Story and exploration. I think Vanguard had potential but it got bogged down in overly complex mechanics(such as diplomacy, which is a card game rather than actually being based on diplomatic solutions and choices) and lack of awesome things to go see when exploring.
The only thing I enjoyed about Vanguard was the different classes. I found the combat slightly boring and the world itself slightly bland in presentation. It just didn't pull me in.
Why would you need a map to tell you where a vendor is? Just walk up to any guard NPC in any town and they will point you to every NPC in that town. God people whine too much....
WoW generation doesn't know how to do things on their own.
I'm from before the WoW generation, moron.
Letsinod, if you read one of my other posts you'll see that my problems were A) In Veskal's Exchange, where there are no guard NPCs that point things out and Finding specific quest givers for a given area.
For the same reason I think EQ and EQ2 are held back, lack of a clear distinct reason to do all those quests or progress my character. I give you LOTRO and FFXI as games that just grabbed me with reasons to progress my character. Story and exploration. I think Vanguard had potential but it got bogged down in overly complex mechanics(such as diplomacy, which is a card game rather than actually being based on diplomatic solutions and choices) and lack of awesome things to go see when exploring. The only thing I enjoyed about Vanguard was the different classes. I found the combat slightly boring and the world itself slightly bland in presentation. It just didn't pull me in.
Complexity is exactly why some people love Vanguard. It's also what drives out of the game as well. One of my best friends left Vanguard for EQ2 because he just didn't have the patience to figure out crafting, diplomacy or even the mechanics of his own class. To each their own, but the depth and complexity of Vanguard hooked me.
I have recently started in VG in the past 2 weeks.
Honestly, the only thing I can think of that is holding VG back, is the failed launch.
The game plays fine for me, and the world is well done and huge. It actually feels like a world as opposed to a zone like all other games.
The UI doesn't bother me because I am from the days of EQ and UO. It is much like EQ in the map sense, you had to go looking in freeport for an NPC and it might take you 30 minutes to find him/her. That is ok with me also, because I play the game to learn and explore.
Thing is once you DO find that NPC that has been dodging you for an hour. You bet your sweet ass I remember where he is from that day forward. I don't even need a map. As I look for him/her, I look at every name of every NPC I pass, and after you pass them enough times, you just learn and remember where they all are.
That is how we did it back in the day, and VG is like that also. You have to put in a lot of effort to learn VG.
I can't believe I let VG pass me by for so long without trying it. I never did because the forums always bleed "Vanguard is the suck". I just never even bothered with it.
Glad I went ahead and tried it, it has been a great experience all the way so far. I am really enjoying the game, even with it quirks and faults. All games have faults, VG's just aren't that bad or game breaking for me.
Sorry you dislike it, but I think it is a great game, and every day it grows on me more and more.
I enjoyed Vanguard for awhile, but it ended up feeling too much like WoW to me and not enough like EQ. Not that WoW is necessarily bad, I was just expecting something closer to EQ when I logged into what was frequently claimed to be EQ's "Spiritual Successor". Maybe that has changed though, it's been a long time since I tried it.
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2]" (Wikipedia.org, 8-24-09)
Comments
Microsoft was the original development partner in Vanguard. When they dropped, Sigil had to turn to SOE to distribute the game (and they released it in train wreck form. I have never seen a game less ready to release in my life) and they were completely out of money. McQuaid said as much when the game launched "We're broke, had to release, sorry". I understand what you are saying, but there was no one else who wanted it. No one. What if EA bought it, or Santa Claus, or maybe that guy who just opened the Macs store down the block from my house? They didn't , no one other than SOE was willing to gamble on a game the hitting the m key hard locked your comp and you constantly fell through the world.
They did it to make a profit, they had the resources to fix a few bugs, the hard part was done, servers were there. All they had to do was fix all the holes and collect the revenue it added to the stationpass. I think the SOE hate out there has blinded a lot of people to the reality of any situation that involves SOE (or $OE as SWG vets call them).
im guessing your not being serious, otherwise i'd have to assume your
Have u ever played an emulator or know how they work?
They did, I think, then SoE picked them up. Then they cut funding and forced them to release early.
SOE came on to distribute the game. But Microsoft pulling out left Sigil cash strapped, so they had to release before they wanted to. SOE had nothing to do with that a they were just the distributer. The game released and about 4 or 6 months later they announced the full sale to SOE, as Sigil's slow demise had finally produced a corpse. Again, Sigil and McQuaid's fault. You should read his blog, he actually cops to a lot of this stuff.
They did, I think, then SoE picked them up. Then they cut funding and forced them to release early.
SOE came on to distribute the game. But Microsoft pulling out left Sigil cash strapped, so they had to release before they wanted to. SOE had nothing to do with that a they were just the distributer. The game released and about 4 or 6 months later they announced the full sale to SOE, as Sigil's slow demise had finally produced a corpse. Again, Sigil and McQuaid's fault. You should read his blog, he actually cops to a lot of this stuff.
Please stop posting. You're making too much sense for this board to handle.
They did, I think, then SoE picked them up. Then they cut funding and forced them to release early.
SOE came on to distribute the game. But Microsoft pulling out left Sigil cash strapped, so they had to release before they wanted to. SOE had nothing to do with that a they were just the distributer. The game released and about 4 or 6 months later they announced the full sale to SOE, as Sigil's slow demise had finally produced a corpse. Again, Sigil and McQuaid's fault. You should read his blog, he actually cops to a lot of this stuff.
Please stop posting. You're making too much sense for this board to handle.
Actually, according to Brad, SoE had agreed to continue funding the game for another year I believe, but SoE went back on the deal and forced them out I think about 6-8 months early.
Not seeing another game not ready for release? I'm guessing you haven't played many MMOs.
Either way, this is now way off topic, we're talking about what is holding back Vanguard NOW. Currently, it's probably the best PvE game on the market, almost without a doubt. SoE is holding it back. You don't sit on a game with that much potential and not do anything with it, unless you want it to fail. And of all the companies out there, SoE WOULD want it to fail, because it would just steal subs from EQ and EQ2
Darkfall Travelogues!
My brain is starting to hurt. I played EQ when they nerfed monks the first time before Luclin I wanted to kill them, then PoP made it easy to get around and put in the PoK. Then the CU in SWG pissed me off hard. NGE made me leave that game. The fun thing all these stories have in comman is I got over it.
We are discussing Vanguard, particularly the maps. If you don't want to discuss the maps, go elsewhere. You're worse than a whiner if you play into their whining by claiming to like the things they find annoying.
I hear the wow forums are fun to troll. You might find more excitement there.
You're not discussing maps, you're whining about maps. The title of the thread also wasn't "Maps is holding Vanguard back," its "What holds this game back..."
I'm all for legitimate criticism and Vanguard deserves plenty of it, but maps? Your complaint is that the maps doesn't lead you by the nose, so you don't have to think. Speaking of WoW, why don't you go back to it? It seems as though that game is up to your standard. It tells you what to do, when to do it, and where it is, so you never have to use the grey matter between your ears.
The game is buggy, has performance problems, a lack of population, and little developer support from SOE. Those are things holding Vanguard back, not maps that dumb the game down for the retards that play MMORPGs.
Before you reply back with something you think is witty, use your head and think about what you're saying. You're upset because a game doesn't offer a map system that tells you where everything is, versus using the one you have and exploring. You want it to tell you where NPC's and quest objectives are, like that's a realistic thing to have. The map is a guide to HELP you find your way, not completely do all the work for you. The fact is that you and others like you don't like to explore. You lost your sense of adventure and want to have your hand held. You want NPC"s to tell you exactly where everything is, mark it on the map, and even light the path for you. I consider this taking the adventure out of the game, and dumbing it down. This allows for you to go into "quest-mode," which is where you collect all the quests in the area without reading them, and then follow the objectives on the map. No thinking or effort involved.
There's plenty of games like that, and complaining that one game out of the many doesn't dumb crap down is idiotic to me. But go ahead and reply with crap like, "It's not about dumbing the game down, it's about making the game [user-friendly]." Then ask yourself what the difference between user-friendly and dumbing a game down is.
First of all, there is no WoW for me to go back to, since I am not from that game by any means. I've mostly been an EQ2 player, but I've played just about all of them.
I'm not asking for any kind of hand-holding. I'm all for Vanguard's more adventure-like playstyle where you need to find your way around. However, when it comes to simple things such as finding a certain vendor, I don't believe I should have to wander around a given city for 25 minutes or wait till someone responds to my question on the public channel to know where the god damned necromancer trainer is. It's true that most cities have a guard to show me the way, but some cities' guards are even hard to find. Also, why the guards in Veskal's Exchange do not give directions is beyond me.
I don't think the game as a whole needs to be "dumbed down," but I think at least when a player is dropped off in the middle of their first real city, they should be given some kind of direction or hint as to what they should do first. After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find), I found out from someone in my guild that I should go to some cave for a good questing/leveling experience and that I should find the quest NPCs close by. I searched for 2 hours for these NPCs. I could not find them. I still haven't found them. I should not have to wander around aimlessly in order to find a couple of quest NPCs. A little "!" or some sort of icon on the map would solve this problem and save me hours of pointless walking around. I want to explore, honestly! I just don't want to explore the whole damned continent in search for one random NPC whose name I know but whose location is so vague on the quest description that I could literally go anywhere and really not know if I was close.
To me, this level of "hardcore-ness," if you want to call it that, is unnecessary. There's a fine line between not being carebear and being overly ambiguous and open-ended. I believe Vanguard to be the latter.
After reading your post history, I see that you're not some troll or whiner, but I still disagree with you. Other than general directions, I don't think a game should tell you where things are. It's part of exploration. If you fully explore an area, you'll see all there is to see, thus when you ask where this or that is, you'll remember running across it an hour ago or whatever. I haven't had any problems so far, except when doing my Ranger quest. It took me 2 hours running around 3 different Kojan islands to finally find a mob I was hunting. So I do understand your fustration, but we just have differing opinions.
What I said was I have never seen a a game as not ready to release as Vanguard. There has been a literal crapload of games in the last 5 years that should have involved jail time for the crime of cartoonish early release.
Why would you need a map to tell you where a vendor is? Just walk up to any guard NPC in any town and they will point you to every NPC in that town. God people whine too much....
WoW generation doesn't know how to do things on their own.
Darkfall Travelogues!
There is one now...Alganon...lol
im guessing your not being serious, otherwise i'd have to assume your
Have u ever played an emulator or know how they work?
no, perhaps, and, in what way is that relevant to vanguard? this is about vanguard after all, not some clonealike, and if you want to see how they get on, then perhaps you ought to check out swg's so called emulators.. several years on and .... ? nope, so much for that then.. vanguard doesnt need an emulator, it just needs players, which means advertisements and work done on the game itself too...
"Quote"
'After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find)'
If you need a guard in Veskals Exchange to tell you where things are that tells me all i need to know about you. That is such a small confined area. The fact it took you a whole 25 minutes to find your trainer is even more worrisome. It takes less than 5 minutes to learn the layout and where the npc's are considering there are only 3 small buildings. Its an outpost not a city
The points you bring up has nothing to do with Vanguard but everything to do with you...25 minutes?..really? I don't think any game should cater to people like you.
This little area? ..well shit (pardon my french) no wonder you are going off on a tangent. You have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever. How is that Vanguards fault again?
BEST GAME ON THE MARKET HANDS DOWN!! Still loving every minute of this game, I also wanan thank the Devs for giving us permanent Randolph for christmas this year, THANK YOU!!!
I am so good, I backstabbed your face!
I'd say the ugly graphics like the Plastic looking trees which sway way too much and the nasty character models.
EQ launched 1999, followed by AC late 1999, followed by DAoC early 2001. Check your facts. All were in beta around the same exact time. And SWG was still spiritually like the original MMOs because it was innovative and original. There were probably more MMOs pre 2005 than there are post 2005.
Sorry you are just plain wrong here and are in fact the one that needs to check their facts.
DAOC wasn't even a blip on the radar, let alone in beta while EQ and AC1 were in beta.
The original big 3 were of course UO(9/97) first, then EQ(3/99), then AC1(11/99). The rest came years later and most do not lump them in with the group many consider responsible for kicking off the genre.
Just an FYI:
-DAOC released nearly 2 years after that last one of that original group in October of 2001, not early 2001 as you state.
-Anarchy Online released before DAOC as well in June 2001. The only reason AO gets lumped in the big 3 group sometimes is because it was the first Sci-Fi MMO
-SWG was released in June 2003 nearly 4 years after AC1 was released.
MORE OT:
The biggest thing for me that really did Vanguard in was the launch. The game simply was not ready and I was not going to invest time in a game that no one was really sure was going to make it.
All the Brad drama certainly didn't help this game either.
Einherjar_LC says: WTB the true successor to UO or Asheron's Call pst!
We are discussing Vanguard, particularly the maps. If you don't want to discuss the maps, go elsewhere. You're worse than a whiner if you play into their whining by claiming to like the things they find annoying.
I hear the wow forums are fun to troll. You might find more excitement there.
You're not discussing maps, you're whining about maps. The title of the thread also wasn't "Maps is holding Vanguard back," its "What holds this game back..."
I'm all for legitimate criticism and Vanguard deserves plenty of it, but maps? Your complaint is that the maps doesn't lead you by the nose, so you don't have to think. Speaking of WoW, why don't you go back to it? It seems as though that game is up to your standard. It tells you what to do, when to do it, and where it is, so you never have to use the grey matter between your ears.
The game is buggy, has performance problems, a lack of population, and little developer support from SOE. Those are things holding Vanguard back, not maps that dumb the game down for the retards that play MMORPGs.
Before you reply back with something you think is witty, use your head and think about what you're saying. You're upset because a game doesn't offer a map system that tells you where everything is, versus using the one you have and exploring. You want it to tell you where NPC's and quest objectives are, like that's a realistic thing to have. The map is a guide to HELP you find your way, not completely do all the work for you. The fact is that you and others like you don't like to explore. You lost your sense of adventure and want to have your hand held. You want NPC"s to tell you exactly where everything is, mark it on the map, and even light the path for you. I consider this taking the adventure out of the game, and dumbing it down. This allows for you to go into "quest-mode," which is where you collect all the quests in the area without reading them, and then follow the objectives on the map. No thinking or effort involved.
There's plenty of games like that, and complaining that one game out of the many doesn't dumb crap down is idiotic to me. But go ahead and reply with crap like, "It's not about dumbing the game down, it's about making the game [user-friendly]." Then ask yourself what the difference between user-friendly and dumbing a game down is.
First of all, there is no WoW for me to go back to, since I am not from that game by any means. I've mostly been an EQ2 player, but I've played just about all of them.
I'm not asking for any kind of hand-holding. I'm all for Vanguard's more adventure-like playstyle where you need to find your way around. However, when it comes to simple things such as finding a certain vendor, I don't believe I should have to wander around a given city for 25 minutes or wait till someone responds to my question on the public channel to know where the god damned necromancer trainer is. It's true that most cities have a guard to show me the way, but some cities' guards are even hard to find. Also, why the guards in Veskal's Exchange do not give directions is beyond me.
I don't think the game as a whole needs to be "dumbed down," but I think at least when a player is dropped off in the middle of their first real city, they should be given some kind of direction or hint as to what they should do first. After wandering around Veskal's for 25 minutes looking for the stupid trainer (I know I'm an idiot, but some NPCs should be easier to find), I found out from someone in my guild that I should go to some cave for a good questing/leveling experience and that I should find the quest NPCs close by. I searched for 2 hours for these NPCs. I could not find them. I still haven't found them. I should not have to wander around aimlessly in order to find a couple of quest NPCs. A little "!" or some sort of icon on the map would solve this problem and save me hours of pointless walking around. I want to explore, honestly! I just don't want to explore the whole damned continent in search for one random NPC whose name I know but whose location is so vague on the quest description that I could literally go anywhere and really not know if I was close.
To me, this level of "hardcore-ness," if you want to call it that, is unnecessary. There's a fine line between not being carebear and being overly ambiguous and open-ended. I believe Vanguard to be the latter.
After reading your post history, I see that you're not some troll or whiner, but I still disagree with you. Other than general directions, I don't think a game should tell you where things are. It's part of exploration. If you fully explore an area, you'll see all there is to see, thus when you ask where this or that is, you'll remember running across it an hour ago or whatever. I haven't had any problems so far, except when doing my Ranger quest. It took me 2 hours running around 3 different Kojan islands to finally find a mob I was hunting. So I do understand your fustration, but we just have differing opinions.
Fair enough...agree to disagree.
I'm sorry, but thats utter tripe. SOE bought it because Sigil was done, they were out of cash/out of time. They bought it and put it on "life support" as it was circling the bowl. If they it as competition to EQ2, they could have done nothing and watch it get flushed. I imagine they picked it up because they saw something in it. They might not have done much new stuff with it, but they did fix a giant wad of bugs that made this game unplayable.
This myth that SOE had something to fear in Vanguard is bunk. I played vanguard beta and the first month and a bit of launch. At the point SOE stepped it, it wasn't ready to compete with bejeweled or majong online.
I think Mehthos is right for the most part. I think SOE did buy Vanguard to eliminate competition. Vanguard is the best PvE MMO on the market. I give credit to SOE for fixing a completely broken game at launch and they did invest a lot of time and effort to fix the bugs, drastically improve performance and finish content such as Ancient Port Warehouse. Unfortunately, Vanguard is not the horse SOE chose to ride and they rolled it into their portfolio of games and did not invest in it like they did other games.
I think if SOE decided to go with Vanguard instead of EQ2 they would have been much better off as Vanguard beats EQ2 on almost every level. But EQ2 is SOE's home-grown baby and they decided to stick with it. I understand why SOE doesn't have the resources available to fully develop both Vanguard and EQ2, but in the end they made a mistake by putting their money behind EQ2 instead of Vanguard.
I still play Vanguard and love it. The population is good, the end-game is challenging, the community is awesome. If SOE decides to develop another MMO (Everquest 3 perhaps) then I hope it takes the best of EQ1 plus the best of Vanguard and creates the next great PvE MMO.
Some trainers are tucked away in little corners that aren't visible when circling the city multiple times. After my first circle, I search inside all of the buildings, eventually finding him next to the last building I searched tucked away a bit.
Perhaps the game shouldn't cater to me for not having a good sense of direction. However, if there was one guard in that outpost that could point me where to go, how much harm would that do to the game? You would think that a game as old as this, a simple guard could be placed in areas that don't have one.
And what of the quest NPCs I searched hours to find and never did? I don't think there are very many games anymore that don't have a little "!" pop up on the map to tell you that there are quests for you, but Vanguard is one of them. Would it really hurt this game to have a more interactive UI that simply tells you where you can get a quest? I'll look for the mobs myself, I'm ok with that. There are enough clues in the quest descriptions to help me find them, and a little adventure makes the game that much more interesting.
However, mundane things like finding a trainer in a city, finding a quest NPC for a certain area, looking for a certain vendor or diplomat, and even trying to find where the damned goblin who gives you Randolph is are **sometimes** so unrealistic. In a city, you should easily be able to find a person you need to find, granted that they're a static vendor or trainer. I want to adventure in the wilderness, not every building in a 25,000 square foot city.
For the same reason I think EQ and EQ2 are held back, lack of a clear distinct reason to do all those quests or progress my character.
I give you LOTRO and FFXI as games that just grabbed me with reasons to progress my character. Story and exploration. I think Vanguard had potential but it got bogged down in overly complex mechanics(such as diplomacy, which is a card game rather than actually being based on diplomatic solutions and choices) and lack of awesome things to go see when exploring.
The only thing I enjoyed about Vanguard was the different classes. I found the combat slightly boring and the world itself slightly bland in presentation. It just didn't pull me in.
WoW generation doesn't know how to do things on their own.
I'm from before the WoW generation, moron.
Letsinod, if you read one of my other posts you'll see that my problems were A) In Veskal's Exchange, where there are no guard NPCs that point things out and
Finding specific quest givers for a given area.
Trolls should invest in literacy.
Complexity is exactly why some people love Vanguard. It's also what drives out of the game as well. One of my best friends left Vanguard for EQ2 because he just didn't have the patience to figure out crafting, diplomacy or even the mechanics of his own class. To each their own, but the depth and complexity of Vanguard hooked me.
I have recently started in VG in the past 2 weeks.
Honestly, the only thing I can think of that is holding VG back, is the failed launch.
The game plays fine for me, and the world is well done and huge. It actually feels like a world as opposed to a zone like all other games.
The UI doesn't bother me because I am from the days of EQ and UO. It is much like EQ in the map sense, you had to go looking in freeport for an NPC and it might take you 30 minutes to find him/her. That is ok with me also, because I play the game to learn and explore.
Thing is once you DO find that NPC that has been dodging you for an hour. You bet your sweet ass I remember where he is from that day forward. I don't even need a map. As I look for him/her, I look at every name of every NPC I pass, and after you pass them enough times, you just learn and remember where they all are.
That is how we did it back in the day, and VG is like that also. You have to put in a lot of effort to learn VG.
I can't believe I let VG pass me by for so long without trying it. I never did because the forums always bleed "Vanguard is the suck". I just never even bothered with it.
Glad I went ahead and tried it, it has been a great experience all the way so far. I am really enjoying the game, even with it quirks and faults. All games have faults, VG's just aren't that bad or game breaking for me.
Sorry you dislike it, but I think it is a great game, and every day it grows on me more and more.
In a word "population"
The following statement is false
The previous statement is true
I enjoyed Vanguard for awhile, but it ended up feeling too much like WoW to me and not enough like EQ. Not that WoW is necessarily bad, I was just expecting something closer to EQ when I logged into what was frequently claimed to be EQ's "Spiritual Successor". Maybe that has changed though, it's been a long time since I tried it.
"In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional or disciplinary response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2]" (Wikipedia.org, 8-24-09)
The best way to deal with trolls:
http://www.angelfire.com/space/usenet/ [IGNORE THEM, THEY JUST WANT ATTENTION!]