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Does Vanguard still have a future??
thor32
Member Posts: 18
I just return to Vanguard recently with the Isle of Dawn trial.It is so much better then it was.I wonder if this game gonna die soon or if its still have a future for it?
Comments
There are too many mmorpgs released to have one of them future.Players will keep changing the games.
IF Sony ever put some focus on it, and had like a re-release, or something, it probably could. It is a good game imo, but the lack of attention and the outright comment that they were gonna ignore pvp totally, that led to the server losing its population drove me away.
I doubt they are going to do anything though, newer games are being developed, and while it runs a lot better than it ever did, for the first year or so, I guess they said the code was a jumble of mess from so many changes and patch work fixes. It isn't probably that fun to work on, and would maybe require a lot of work to fix that problem (if they didn't do it before all the devs left).
The PvE is very good in the game, raiding was pretty decent, the pve balancing broke pvp balance, and I don't think they wanted to try to figure it all out and cut their loses on the smaller player base, hoping a good amount would stay on a pve server.
The harvesting/crafting is good (the crafting can be a little much, but its still a very good system), and the diplomacy sphere was fun and had a lot of potential to tie into the other parts of the game.
I think probably the only hope for it, is a f2p move, or a eq2 type move, like they said. An actual 're-release' would be a BIG investment of time/money by Son, and I don't see that with EQ3 being developed.
I personally put VG in my top 5 MMOs (this is my list, I tried WoW beta and did not like it, so thats why its not on there, just a fyi)
1. UO
2. EQ
3. DAoC
4. VG
5. SWG (was probably due more to friends, game did need more pvp/pve content, not a revamp)
SOE doesnt love Vanguard enough to have a future.
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Fact :
No one knows. On the official forums someone recently asked if " SOE is to make any announcements soon about Vanguard ". Many speculations from the veteran players, but all guessing. With all post on official forums there is not A SINGLE RESPONSE OR INTERVENTION FROM THE SOE DEVELOPER TEAM......No one knows anything. It's all a secret !
My guess :
Vanguard has at least a year.
I hope it never goes free to play. If so it will stop potential players from ever joining seriously in a serious game, and attract all the F2P hoppers making it a short time fad, as with all the other gone to F2P games. With EQ2 and LOTRO there is more negativity than ever before because of F2P.
Untrue Page the F2P models have boosted both games greatly. Sure you have some of the older subscribing players complaining with all the new influx of players that come with different attitudes. But Other than that the player base of said games have been boosted not hurt with the new models.
I find it funny that older players complain.. Just goes to show you can never make everyone happy. People complain its hard to find enough group and they wish the game would do something to bring players back or introduce the game to more players and when they do.. Those same people complain because they dont like the way its done.
There's negativity with EQ2 extended because of the way SOE chose to do it. For one EQ2x is on separate servers, so it doesn't help boost existing regular server's population. Also if you play EQ2x you usually end up paying more than normal subscribers do provided you don't want to be so limited. They put some pretty harsh restrictions on the free accounts. But honestly in terms of how it generates interest and players, as well as revenue, I think SOE is making out very well there.
LOTR Online & DDO I've heard nothing but good feedback with their addition to Turbine's hybrid F2P system. It was the hybrid free to play implementation that got those 2 games a revived start, especially DDO which was nearly in shutdown mode before they went f2p. Now both games boast lots of subscribers, Turbine made out with a buttload of cash, it spells success. They got good feedback because F2P is a part of the existing regular servers in those games, so it boosts population all around.
I used to be against f2p but really, if you look at Vanguard now, if SOE ever does f2p for VG it'd be doing VG a favor. It'd extend Vanguard's life, and add content to it because part of having free to play is to add new things to the game that make people want to buy, this would include new zones. To be against Vanguard going f2p is to be against anything new added to the game. You are essentially asking the game to be shutdown. If the game has enough subscribers to warrant staffing developers for it, then SOE would've done it. The fact is Vanguard has been on a steady decline ever since its launch. It has gone through merges and it's now down to 1 US server and 1 Euro, and yet still, the game still feels empty.
Does Vanguard have a future? As of right now, unless SOE comes out and DO something for Vanguard, then no. It doesn't matter what Smed says, that guy says a lot of things. Over the years you learn to tune him out and only look at the actions. Actions mean more than words, and so far, there hasn't been much done to Vanguard other than SOE pulling all developers off Vanguard's team. Right now there is 0, zero, active developers left for Vanguard. So you answer this yourself, does the game have a future?
EQ1-AC1-DAOC-FFXI-L2-EQ2-WoW-DDO-GW-LoTR-VG-WAR-GW2-ESO
No.
Small community, no content updates, on life support...this wonderful game, a gem in the rough, will die a slow breath as all we can do is watch. A shame, because the huge world that can be explored in Vanguard, the classes...there are so many good features, it would have deserved another chance.
Sums up how I feel now. Used to think it had some future but the game has zero support. You pay as much as you pay for a sub to WoW and other P2P mmos but don't get the tech support or new content. All you get is access to a still glitchy game. Only people left are a few hundred or so diehards who will probably stay till they pull the plug. Even some of them are starting to drop. There were a few in my guild that have been there since launch.. it's been a month now since their last login. Out of an 80 person guild about 75% haven't logged in in over a year. The remaining ones came back for the server merge but have gradually dropped off. There were a couple of last holdouts but now they are gone. I'm the only one that has been on in the past month.
The new launcher they released today is probably going to cost some subs. People are complaining about problems with it and since there is no support at all, the small VG community is left to figure it all out. It's just a matter of time on this one. I've always said actions speak louder than words, and if you look at Sony's actions towards Vanguard that should tell you all you need to know.
Could've been a real WoW killer, if they'd had anyone with an IQ above 70 managing it.
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^^^
Most awesome PvE game ever, too sad most buggy maybe
Where themepark games try to hide that they are copying WOW, games like Mortal Online and Darkfall make no attempt to hide their inspiration
______\m/_____
LordOfDarkDesire
Really! that tired excuse gets old. Today Vanguard is no more buggy than any other mmorpg,it's not the same buggy game it was 3.5 years ago or even a years ago.
Short answer: No.
Medium-sized answer: It does not stand a chance because so many new games come out and players are fickle.
Long answer: I don't feel like it.
Edit:
I had to respond to Nightangell. Vanguard is buggy, and in addition tot hat, it has numerous problems that annoy people that like polish, things that are not bugs but that appear to be bugs to those people that like polish. For example, the health bars on enemies do not update in time with the damage from attacks. This could be very annoying to an unforgiving player. Another example would be the compass, which only shows the cardinal and intercardinal directions. That is extremely annoying to me personally, and I imagine it would be annoying to anyone exploring and wanting to know where they are going.
The point is, the game was a brilliant concept and had well-conceived zones, people, and classes, but was ultimately fundamentally flawed in programming and construction. A beautiful a place as it is, it is not good as a game. There are many, many games out there that are better, and more polished.
That is why WoW is so popular. It might be a bad game, but everything in it works. Things do what you expect and the gameplay feels tight and responsive. People want that at least as much as a well-conceived world and good mechanics. If a game plays as slugishly and jittery as Vanguard, most people simply won't play it.
Um, I guess that is the long answer.
"Gamers will no longer buy the argument that every MMO requires a subscription fee to offset server and bandwidth costs. It's not true you know it, and they know it." Jeff Strain, co-founder of ArenaNet, 2007
WTF? No subscription fee?
NO...because its an old failed game...and there are so many mmorpgs in the market..better ones and new ones alike..nobody is gonna play Vanguard thats for sure.
Err ... hu ?
Please name one MMO that is better than Vanguard.
I know of none.
None that gets close, either.
None in the future that will be like it, either.
In the past there was EQ and UO and early SWG who all might have had a compareable status.
Seriously, even buggy Vanguard is very much the ideal MMO that I would love to play. Except, of course, it has no players.
And the future looks very grim. Yeah, I might enjoy playing SWTOR or WoDO.
But the real thing ? Seamless huge beautiful world with an endless stream of quests ? Fighters, rogues, mages, clerics and many other classes, all beautifully designed and all different and challenging to play ? Elves, dwarves, orcs, halflings and many other races to choose from ?
In short, a game where you feel part of a huge fantastic world and can stay and play it for years ?
Not going to happen again any soon, it seems.
Yeah, I guess could play WoW or EQ2 or LotRO. They are somewhat compareable. But they all are a huge step backward from what Vanguard archieved.
The future was always grim for VG.
It is said that SOE bought the game to stop it competing with EQ2. Whether that is ture or not I don't know.
But from all indications it seems correct, why else stiffle the development of such a wonderful game? And it is sad really that VG was never allowed to flourish and a dis-service to the MMO genre as a whole, whoever was responsible for it.
So given that I doubt it will go F2P as then it will be successful and take away subs/population from EQ2 and not even bring in a sub itself.
So the future is bleak for VG. Maybe if EQ3 releases it may be deemed as non-competetive and be added to the Station Pass as a f2p game who knows.
PS: In case there is any doubt, VG is one of the best MMOs ever crafted and can easily easily hold its own against any MMO on the market now or any that will be release next year, period.
How quickly it is forgotten that if not for SOE this game would have died a long time ago.The fact that you can say it is no longer buggy is also thanks to SOE. But no matter what SOE did the subscriptions that were lost as a result of its release in a buggy state were never regained. That is not SOE's fault. So stop trying to blame SOE this is wholly Sigil's fault. A sinking ship cannot be prevented from sinking no matter how many holes you plug.
Before you tell me I am talking from my nether regions I betaed and played at launch and also after SOE took over and improved it so I have first hand knowledge how bad the game was and how much improvement SOE brought to it. It is amazing how everyone seems to have forgotten the horrible chunking and terrible state this game was. SOE could have just dumped it but they worked on it for months on that shitty code and improved it to a point where I played it and enjoyed it. So no I am not going to stand by while you all pile your recriminations against them because they do not deserve it. SOE gave up because this game was not gaining a population in spite of everything.
What exactly did soe do? The same people working on the game for soe were the same people working on the game under sigil, there were just less of them. Everything that people predicted when soe got involved has come true. Since nothing changed as a result of soe "saving" the game I see little to be thanking soe for.
@original poster.
I always said vanguard had two more milestones to go through before it was in danger of being shut down.
The first was a server merger down to the last server (barring geography issues)
The second was eliminating the development team.
Both of those have come true or close enough to not be a barrier anymore. Vanguard, like the giving tree, has nothing left to give.
SOE brought their own people to repair the code when I played I recall all this discussion on the SOE boards. SOE did not just use the existing staff they used their own people. They could have just kicked the game off but they did not. Anyway there is no point to this discussion I know how much the game improved when SOE took over. Had it been otherwise there would have been no improvement because the existing people could not do anything much seeing as how the game launched that should give you an idea. SOE staff made the difference they were better at repairing the code and made the game finally playable.
Besides giving the people at Sigil a job again something they could have just not done they tried to salvage this wreck. In the end it proved a waste. I love this game but please comparing to how it was at launch and how much the game improved with SOE I am surprised any one can blame SOE.
If you wanna try and save Vanguard start a letter writing campain send it to the President Sony entertainment. If you can get enough folks to do the same then there might be a small ray of hope.
MAGA
Microsoft pulling their money back is what ruined VG.
I have a deep love for this game but without a guild to go play with this game is empty....second best game ever made imho.
Best was UO.....i miss UO
Having played Vanguard when it was still under Microsoft's wing, I can say that SOE can shoulder some blame. But it wasn't the Sigil programmers/developers that were primarily at fault. Brad McQuaid is the one to point the finger at. He made a bunch of promises to Microsoft, overspent his money trying to accomplish them, then at the last minute decided to throw half of everything away. Fortunately SOE threw him out when they took over, but they came into a game that was really 3/4 complete. A lot of what was done made it all the way. The races, areas, many skills, etc. The crafting system stayed like it was. Diplomacy was mainly modified for look and appeal, but the 'card-game' was already implemented.
No one who played at the time before release blamed the coders/developers. There was no reason to cut many of them other than SOE did not want the increased number of employees. So, yes, some blame to SOE.
I'm hoping that with the release of DCUO, the Station Pass will look more appealing to folks and they will end up trying Vanguard. It may sound far-fetched but that's what I'm planning to do. DCUO, EQ2, and Vanguard sound like a great combo to me.
Essentially every MMO that has a development team and uses the subscriptions that is players pay each month for ongoing development is better than Vanguard. The gameplay may not always be better, but at least the companies behind those games are still working to provide the best product they can for their customers. The same cannot be said for Vanguard.
For the better part of a year, Vanguard players have been paying $14.99/month to have someone come in on their lunch break and flip the switch to turn holiday events on/off and to reboot the servers every now and then. But at least your money is being put to good use to help with funding the development of new games for SOE (EverQuest Next etc.), and for that I thank you.
It isn't like sigil wasn't putting out tons of patches and fixing the game prior to soe buying the company. If anything I would say that the amount of patches when sigil was in charge were far more frequent and sizable. Things kept going along the same path when soe took over, they just got slower. Looking at the body of work that soe has put into vanguard for the past 3 years is it really something that is praiseworthy? Vanguard could be sooooo much more.
Prior to that when soe was publishing the game they cut funding to force the game to release. Soe was never committed to seeing the project through to a releasable condition. That most certainly makes them culpable.
Why play Vanguard when you can play its remake. I believe the game is called Rift.
Playing: Tera, BF3, ME3
Waiting on: Guild Wars 2