Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
What does the new [First] Expansion contain?
Crueltylizer
Member UncommonPosts: 58
I just found out that an expansion is on the way, but is there any info on what it will actually contain?
Comments
Shack: Do you have a rough idea of where Vanguard is headed in the future as far as content expansion?
John Smedley: In the near future, performance, bugs, and issues that the community wants us to address. Longer term, we have a content plan which we're going to be outlining. In the next couple of weeks we will be putting up a plan on what we're going to be doing and when. So people can expect lots of free updates with their subscription. And then we'll be planning an expansion pack of course. As to what the features in that expansion pack will be, who knows. We're not even really discussing that part yet. Even though you're seeing comments from some people like Brad and others talking about specific features, the simple fact is, nothing is decided yet. There's a list of features a mile long that people would love to get into the expansion, and we just don't know what's going to make it.
Source: http://www.shacknews.com/extras/2007/051707_johnsmedley_1.x
I'm not sure if anything has been mentioned since then, but that's the last official word I know of.
I've heard tell of some additional islands east of Kojan (perhaps part of Kojan) with some higher-level content. These were part of the original design that didn't make it into the initial release. I've also heard tell of actual guild halls, with quests that crafters undertake to get the abilities. Yet another thing I've heard about is "trial island", which is a demo trial version that will also be used to test some new content resources (the stuff used to build content) and systems. The trial island will not affect existing characters, except to show the kind of improvements that are supposed to come to the main game. Hasium knows well what a double-edged sword this could be, if the improvements promised by the trial are not replicated in the main game.
I really hope that player cities are not on the list until a lot of other things get fixed. I don't think the SWG player cities worked out well, because they were pushed out too soon and were not integrated well with other game systems. From what I see of housing in VG, it could use some serious integration into the rest of the game and some performance improvement. Additional styles would be real nice too, because it just isn't right that, for example, all Thestran player houses are in the Thestran human style. Well-integrated systems, good planning tools, and a variety of appearance styles are a must for player cities, in my opinion.
I was just curious.
As they have licensed the Unreal Engine for the expansion - it just seems kinda odd if you ask me.
That is how i found out that an expansion actually exists. It has been listed together with some other MMO's at Epic as licensed games.
But as far as i know the game doesn't actually use the Unreal Engine?
Right now Vanguard runs on the Unreal 2.X, but as far as I know SOE hasn't licensed Unreal 3.0 for any expansions. I doubt that they'll waste the time and money doing that.
People who have to create conspiracy and hate threads to further a cause lacks in intellectual comprehension of diversity.
You know, I've not seen anything official to say that they are other than a random post here, and you just decided to bash the game based on that?
Think about it.
Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Wish Darkfall would release.
I honestly believe that people who buy the expansion pack and support commercial atrocities like this truly just hate the industry. I can't think of any other logical reason someone would pay for inferiority, other than to give fellow gamers the finger.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Wow...nothing has been stated for the expansion so claiming that they are charging for content that was promised at release isn't very true. Especially considering that most of the content that wasn't in at released was never "promised" to begin with, and in fact a lot of stuff they were pretty clear about stating that it wouldn't be in at release, and that a lot of it would be planned for later patches and xpacs.
I'm loving the proffesionalism contained in the second half. One of the reason I don't trust anything you write for the site.
Wish Darkfall would release.
Lol, this guys a staff writer? Why make a reply when you havent done any research, you just make yourself look bad. Im with the above poster.
The point I was trying to convey, whether it was "professional" or not, is that it's ludicrous to plan expansion packs when the core of the game isn't even finely polished and perfected yet. Considering every expansion pack I've ever played has introduced new bugs to the game, I'd consider it important to have the original part of the game tweaked and fixed entirely. It was also a cheap shot at "The Vision", but I guess it missed it's mark.
I'm not going to preach about this Saga though; the numbers will speak for themselves.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Lineage 2 does not try and push the Unreal 2.x engine beyond it limits, VGSOH does and that is the problem... Unreal 2 engine was not designed for what VGSOH wants.For me it seems like in Horizons..
I'm a slow walker.
But newer walk backwards -
Abe Lincoln
VG is going to release a patch this week. The last patch should have boosted the performance alot (and get rid of the CTDs).
What was wrong with the 'old' client is they didn't released used resources, this they changed in the last patch allong with a 'Garbage Can collection'. What went wrong, they set the collector to agressive which led into resources that still was in use to be released and reloaded. The patch this week will change this collector. This will result in good performance for even 1GB users.
Basicly, if they get the setting right in this patch users will see alot of more performance
All MMO's that have been coming out since EQ have had some level of planning of future expansions. If not what specific elements will exist in it for sure, the map is drawn and the ideas started from the conception of the retail game itself. It's simply prudent planning. At no point does Smedley state that an expansion is forthcoming next month, in the next few months or even this year. All he was stating was that an expansion may or may not be in the works, and that he wanted to manage expectations that people had for what would be in this current iteration of Vanguard that failed on launch. He is doing what Brad couldn't do, and that's detailing when certain features of the game will be released if soon, and if not, discussing the fact that they are on the backburner.
Secondly, did you even bother to read the Smedly quote posted earlier in this thread? At no point does he state that client stability improvements will take place in an EXPANSION PACK.
People got the idea that performance issues would be handled in an expansion because they misread the question:
So to reiterated, content expansion does not equal expansion pack. While Smed's does mention an expansion pack that is being planned for implementation down the road, as I covered above earlier that is just prudent, and he actually says that performance issues, bugs etc. will be a focus for the near future. He then goes on to say that there are even long term plans (so I'd assume for this year) for FREE content upgrades to get some of the missing content into the game. An expansion pack is a ways away, and in no way does that interview with Smedley show that they will be packaging everything that was supposed to be in retail and throwing it in an expansion pack, simply that there are a lot of features that people would want in future expansions.
As for features that were wanted on release, but never making it till an expansion, that isn't unheard of in the MMO industry. If Vanguard goes to an expansion as unpolished as it currently is, yeah there's a problem. If one or two features such as guild house's don't make it in till an expansion, that isn't the highway robbery you try to depict it as.
I wonder how many of the other 600+ posts you have are pure uninformed drivel.
Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Lineage 2 does not try and push the Unreal 2.x engine beyond it limits, VGSOH does and that is the problem... Unreal 2 engine was not designed for what VGSOH wants. Particularly, Lineage 2 didn't attempt to be a zoneless world with the engine. Even Artifact Entertainment of Horizons tested the Unreal 2.X engine out and decided against it for the purpose of seamlessness; Sigil wasn't so sage apparently.Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Lineage 2 does not try and push the Unreal 2.x engine beyond it limits, VGSOH does and that is the problem... Unreal 2 engine was not designed for what VGSOH wants.Particularly, Lineage 2 didn't attempt to be a zoneless world with the engine. Even Artifact Entertainment of Horizons tested the Unreal 2.X engine out and decided against it for the purpose of seamlessness; Sigil wasn't so sage apparently.Sorry what i out-lined red sort of made me LOL
i mean when saying "EVEN" that should mean its a well established company but seeing what happend to Artifact Entertainment can't think of it as a well thought out example. Maybe that even was their big mistake 
I'm glad (not always with its outcome) but that we do have developers that want to push some limits (though not many succeed) What if all developers where like "oh hmm think that might be hard to accomplish lets not do this" do you ever think we would see any new games which would look inovative, ah thought so, its needed to push limits even with existing things like engine.
Besides Lin2 uses a complete different build then Vanguards engine which already limited them in what they could achieve with it.
Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Lineage 2 does not try and push the Unreal 2.x engine beyond it limits, VGSOH does and that is the problem... Unreal 2 engine was not designed for what VGSOH wants.Particularly, Lineage 2 didn't attempt to be a zoneless world with the engine. Even Artifact Entertainment of Horizons tested the Unreal 2.X engine out and decided against it for the purpose of seamlessness; Sigil wasn't so sage apparently.Sorry what i out-lined red sort of made me LOL
i mean when saying "EVEN" that should mean its a well established company but seeing what happend to Artifact Entertainment can't think of it as a well thought out example. Maybe that even was their big mistake 
Which is my point, for all of Artifact's follies, even they were smart enough not to bother trying to turn the Unreal 2 engine into a zoneless, seamless world.Let's take a look at Brad's on take of the engine from awhile back.
- Per pixel lighting
- Seamless world technology
- Specular and Bump Mapping
- New Sky & Weather Code
- New Terrain engine
- Network code modifications
And much more. It's also worth noting that Lineage 2 began with the Unreal code base and also successfully modified it into an MMOG engine.So even Sigil could admit the engine wasn't ideal for what they wanted to do, and considering the game still wasn't ready 4 1/2 years into development, their choice of engine obviously didn't save them any time either despite that originally being the goal.
That whole add "seamless world technology" deal is no insignificant undertaking, and it was something Lineage 2 didn't have to bother attempting. So Lineage 2's success was never at all indicative of Vanguard having similar success with it's use of the engine as an MMO.
Anyway, my point with Artifiact was, there have been MMO companies in the past who were smart enough to decide against turning the engine into something it wasn't meant to be. Artifact in particular refused it specifically because it wasn't ideal towards making a seamless world.
Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Lineage 2 does not try and push the Unreal 2.x engine beyond it limits, VGSOH does and that is the problem... Unreal 2 engine was not designed for what VGSOH wants.Particularly, Lineage 2 didn't attempt to be a zoneless world with the engine. Even Artifact Entertainment of Horizons tested the Unreal 2.X engine out and decided against it for the purpose of seamlessness; Sigil wasn't so sage apparently.Sorry what i out-lined red sort of made me LOL
i mean when saying "EVEN" that should mean its a well established company but seeing what happend to Artifact Entertainment can't think of it as a well thought out example. Maybe that even was their big mistake 
I'm glad (not always with its outcome) but that we do have developers that want to push some limits (though not many succeed) What if all developers where like "oh hmm think that might be hard to accomplish lets not do this" do you ever think we would see any new games which would look inovative, ah thought so, its needed to push limits even with existing things like engine.
Besides Lin2 uses a complete different build then Vanguards engine which already limited them in what they could achieve with it.
Well, at least Horizons looked pretty good with really low requirements. I mean I could run it smoothly with my 128mb ATI 9600 and it still looked awesome to me back then.
Now I have an ATI X800 XT PE and twice as much ram and I´m far away from being able to play Vanguard ...
Has nothing to do with the engine.
Lineage 2 uses the unreal engine and runs just fine, as do many games. Totally unfair to blame an engine that is as popullar and well excepted in the video game industry as the UR engine.
Lineage 2 does not try and push the Unreal 2.x engine beyond it limits, VGSOH does and that is the problem... Unreal 2 engine was not designed for what VGSOH wants.Particularly, Lineage 2 didn't attempt to be a zoneless world with the engine. Even Artifact Entertainment of Horizons tested the Unreal 2.X engine out and decided against it for the purpose of seamlessness; Sigil wasn't so sage apparently.Sorry what i out-lined red sort of made me LOL
i mean when saying "EVEN" that should mean its a well established company but seeing what happend to Artifact Entertainment can't think of it as a well thought out example. Maybe that even was their big mistake 
Which is my point, for all of Artifact's follies, even they were smart enough not to bother trying to turn the Unreal 2 engine into a zoneless, seamless world.Let's take a look at Brad's on take of the engine from awhile back.
- Per pixel lighting
- Seamless world technology
- Specular and Bump Mapping
- New Sky & Weather Code
- New Terrain engine
- Network code modifications
And much more. It's also worth noting that Lineage 2 began with the Unreal code base and also successfully modified it into an MMOG engine.So even Sigil could admit the engine wasn't ideal for what they wanted to do, and considering the game still wasn't ready 4 1/2 years into development, their choice of engine obviously didn't save them any time either despite that originally being the goal.
That whole add "seamless world technology" deal is no insignificant undertaking, and it was something Lineage 2 didn't have to bother attempting. So Lineage 2's success was never at all indicative of Vanguard having similar success with it's use of the engine as an MMO.
Anyway, my point with Artifiact was, there have been MMO companies in the past who were smart enough to decide against turning the engine into something it wasn't meant to be. Artifact in particular refused it specifically because it wasn't ideal towards making a seamless world.
I understand WHAT you mean i just do not get especialy from you (who mostly does strike good examples though i don't always agree) is that you came up with such a failed company. Maybe its how i translate what i think maybe in the wrong way, but saying a company like Artifact Entertainment did not even wanted to use that engine doesn't actualy say anything, would be different if you was talking about a company that made succes with other projects/games instead of them choosing the Unreal engine. So again i understand what you mean but Artifact Entertainment as example that EVEN they did not want to use it, what does that say, well like i tried to explain actualy nothing. Hope you understand what i mean and hope i came clear in how i meant it.
And sure Lin2 might have worked great and Vanguard doesn't, had similair with pre-cu SWG with a memory of a great looking game , but realize that seeing it now it kinda could never have looked this good as then my system was 1800 or 2000 AMD with a 5700geforece card (at the time pretty high end..now low-end if you may even call it that
). Besides i can play Splintercell Double Agent at Next Gen settings (yes its called that way in SC/DA
) and thats the same Unreal build as what Vanguard uses, it even has AA and more cookies which Vanguard hasn't , should i now complain while Vanguard in many area's of this engine doesn't have that awesome performance as with SC/DA for me. Nah, like i said to many times already been a gamer for (far to long) so i know better. Oh let me be clear never agreed on the use of the Unreal engine as i keep saying that engine is much better suited towards sci-fi or a more " today's realistic " world then i feel it lends itself for Fantasy games.
Again everyone has a right to complain about what ever they like, but atleast lets hear some realistic complaints already
Like why my Ranger still kills a mob with a arrow that isn't even fired yet?
I would like to add to the underlined statement:
The whole point of capitalism and the free market is innovation is driven by the consumer dollar... You build a plane who's wings fall off and soon your sales go to Boeing and you are out of business...
If people keep buying the faulty planes then faulty planes will be continued to be made, and the same is true with crap-ass bugy games.
If the industry is not pushed towards quality, then it will not give out quality.
EA has corned the sports gaming market by putting out some damn good games, then making ridiculous profits by repackaging that same game, don't like EA? Want more innovation in sports games? Don't buy EA, its just that simple...
People say "I don't like SOE but..." so SOE keeps getting money to screw their audience.
I had high hopes for an EQ-killer (anyone who thought it would be a WoW killer was idiotic), something that would finally and forever shut down the EQ 1/2 servers and show SOE what-for... my time in Beta showed me otherwise, and we all not that things only got worse from there...
By contributing to this game you are contributing to the future mediocrity of MMO's being churned out grind-by-the-numbers clones of former games with brutally raped intellectual properites (LOTRO = AC2.5, DDO is the same)
You get what you pay for, and you pay for what you get...
Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood. -Nietzsche
I am so good, I backstabbed your face!