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Bane82
Member UncommonPosts: 1,242
Hello everyone.
Ok, I know I should probably post this in the general forums, but I have a feeling this would get lost amidst all the other posts, so I'll get to it.
I'm currently a 1 year WoW player and despite the negative criticism it has received by people I actually enjoy the game immensely and still do. The graphics are great, yes the graphics are cartoony and "unrealistic" but to be honest... I'm not looking for "realism" in a fantasy game... that's an Oxymoron.
Out of all the games I've played in the past (FFXI, EQ, CoH/CoV, SWG, DAoC, Guild Wars, UO) I also have to admit that it is the fastest, lag free game I've ever played. One of the things that has always turned me off from MMORPG's is how they lag and/or crash your computer even if you have a good rig (CoH/CoV)
Overall, WoW is a very good and very well polished game by comparison. So if you think I'm here to bash on WoW or start a flame war of WoW v. Vanguard please stop reading and don't bother replying because I sure as heck won't take your response seriously. Fact is, hate it, or love it WoW is pretty damn good in these respects.
However, despite how good WoW is, I'm starting to feel a little bored and I think mainly its because I'm missing some of the RP I used to enjoy (in EQ) and I'm starting to miss great customization options that can make your character and game life unique from everyone elses (like in SWG's profession tree system, and housing)
I had followed Vanguard in the past and I heard that it was promising the earth and the moon to their player base... however it completely bombed and I was informed it was a complete buggy disaster. However, recently I've been following some of the blogs here of people who have come back and they're saying otherwise. So now I'm starting to reconsider maybe giving Vanguard a try... But to be completely honest, I'm not completely sold. So I wanted to ask YOU, the players what are your views, what are some of the great features that make vanguard, what are some of the negatives. That way maybe I can maybe make a more solid decision as to whether I would like to play it or not.
Please list EVERYTHING that you believe separates Vanguard from the rest, and I mean everything it can be even the most minute and miniscule thing... but believe it or not, often it can be the smallest things that make a difference. For example: Can you jump? swim? climb mountains? fly? can you build boats? can you build houses? if so where? in an instance or in the world itself? is the world separated into instances like EQ? or more like WoW? or like SWG? how's the lag in comparison to WoW (and yes I'd rather it would be compared to WoW since, so far, WoW is the most polished game I've played and I honestly don't think I could go back to laggy games)
I know some would say go visit the Vanguard site, but after what happened with SWG and SWG's site, I'd sooner trust the opinions of the actual players instead of any dev or company that will do anything to get my money, even lie.
Comments
Hi,
I like the customization of the characters and the graphics.
I am not sure, but when I swim, it seems like I have to battle a current. The waves lap at the beach which I think is quite nice.
There are many starting areas which feed my altoholic tendencies
Psions are great!
I think diplomacy is very interesting, but it may be a grind thingie. Not sure.
I've been just playing a few weeks so I don't know much more than that.
Well the game has come along great since launch, SOE has worked well on it...Try it out
I would suggest Vanguard, or LoTRO 
If you liked the sandbox aspects of SWG then I think you'll really like Vanguard. I just recently came back myself after having tried it at release and the game is tons better.
- The crafting system is complex but I like it. It's not similar to SWG by means of how it works, but it's similar in complexity and even a little deeper. And the bonus is that it isn't something you have to do in place of combat like in SWG. It's more similar to WoW where you pick your main class but then have a crafting profession and two harvesting professions.
- I haven't gotten to them yet, but I'm excited about the boats. I love player housing and if boats are anything like mobile player housing I'm going to have a blast with it.
- Player creation is fairly deep. There's a good amount of races as well as classes. And beyond that you also pick what continent you start on which also gives you some individuality. All of this results in a lot of different starter quests which like someone above said, is nice for the people that like making alts.
- This game is definitely for the explorers. It's just flat out big. Some times it gets annoying having to go from point A to point B, but once you get a mount and learn the shortcuts its not bad at all. The up side of having a large world to explore definitely out weighs the bad.
Hi,
I am just curious about the phrase, 'sandbox'. What does that mean in terms of gaming?
Open skills, you're not restricted to anything. A good example would be old SWG. I may also consider Runescape to be a sandbox game; meaning you can be a mage ranger and fighter at the same time, and also be mining cutting wood or fishing.
Hope this helped.
Thanks
Yeah, I should use the term "sandbox" losely because it originates from before MMOs. Techinically all MMOs are sandboxes by traditional definition. It used to be for games that you could play but didn't have to finish or didn't have a linear path that you were forced to take.
In MMOs, sandbox is used for games that aren't just about leveling. Games like EVE and SWG where you can do many different things to make your way in the world rather than just leveling your character.
Basically, there's a whole debate that can go into the topic.
you people are confusing me! Very mixed feelings about this game. I want to try it, but then again I don't. What's the population like? Seems people like it or despise it.
Good question...I don't know as I am still pretty low level and am in a guild which makes it seem very busy. If I go with the login screen...all week Halgar was low but today was medium. So I can safely say that it changes. No matter what time, I always see someone and since I made a new character, the starting area I am currently in is quite busy. You know ...High Elf and all
If you are talking about sandbox is in more skill based, then no; it is not. If you mean by not being held hand or forced into certain areas in order to lvl, then yes. There are many different areas to fight things of similar level. In WoW it is more like you had a designated path to take in order to hit the next group of mobs as you leveled. You can do a lot more exploring and still find things to fight, that is best way I can really put it.
Depending on your system, well mostly, is depending on if you should even attempt trying this game. I would say no less than 1GB RAM, something like a Nvidia 7600 or ATI 1650 256MB RAM, 3Ghz Processor. You would have to have the settings towards the lower end, with this type setup. You could push a few things up a little, but it would be a balance act. Also, I hadn't played in maybe 2months; so they could have done more performance tweaks since then(and supposedly they have).
If you are wanting really fun classes and good combat, and also wanting a nice open world; then this might be a game you want to try out. It does give me a little of that EQ feeling, because of the atmosphere of the game.
But anyway, that is about all I can say to help you decide. Main thing is about the system specs I put up there. Just don't think you can get by with much less, cause you will be very frustrated.
Wow, seems like it will be a hard decision to make indeed. I definetely loved the sandbox style of SWG both in terms of what you could do in the world itself (housing, space ships etc.) and what you could do with your character (skill trees as opposed to the over used, over rated level system) I love the idea of boats as it reminds me so much of multi passanger ships in SWG. But speed and lag would definetely seem to be a problem.
I have a Gateway 1.5GB ram righ with a 256 NVIDIA card. The low end one for $99) and 3GHz processor (Pentium 4) as mentioned above... but I don't like the idea of having to lower settings so incredibly low to get a decent lag free running game
I went through that with EQ1 (when I had an older rig) and was so disappointed I couldn't enjoy the updated graphics without suffering a lot of lag. I went through that with SWG too and to be honest, even when I did update my rig I still had lag problems 
Sadly, you would probably be pushing the limits of Vangaurd with that setup. At least in respects to not having to lower the quality of the game to get a good experience.
They're in the process of a major update though. It's been broken into 3 phases, the first of which went live last week. Bug fixes and optimization are at the top of the list so it's possible that in the coming weeks the performance could get much better for lower end machines.
If you have the chance to get a buddy key/trial I would recommend that approach just to be safe.
Good luck.
Sounds good, guess I'll wait a little longer then and follow VG's progress, in the meanwhile I'll keep playing WoW.