Vanguard

[lazygecko]

Does anyone play this game? I never really cared for it, but it caught my attention now that I need to fill my MMORPG void. I've browsed through a few reviews, videos and screenshots and narrowed it down to this:

+ Lots of alternatives to mindless grinding or PvPing

+ General design seems reminiscent of Forgotten Realms

+ Plenty of character/class customization

+ Tried and true interface

+ Lack of game cards makes it less accessible to annoying brats

- Notoriously high system requirements

- Many bugs and lack of high level content, though I expect these to be rectified

- Not many choices for EU servers. Are EU clients limited to EU servers or is it universal for the western userbase? I also have no idea of Germans/French/Spanish have their own servers, cause I'm not too keen on language barriers.

It would also be good to know how effective GMs are and how bots/farmers are being handled, though I guess it's kind of early to tell.

[Bigfoot]

I'm staying away from it for now. I've heard pretty bad things about it so far.

[lazygecko]

Thank you for your elaborate and insightful knowledge.

[Bigfoot]

Hey, it's not like I came in here and said "lol this game sucks". I've head there are a lot of bugs atm(what fresh MMO doesn't have bugs?").

You asked if anyone plays this game, and I gave you my answer

[ILLiterate]

Everyone who has played it in my area just said they didn't like it, felt like a worse Everquest overall. If you really want to fill that void, why not try playing some Diablo 2 again, or waiting for Hellgate London (no monthly fees is good)

[Wintermute]

I bought Vanguard on its first day of release, and here's my short review of it:

PROS:

Cool design, cool world, and love the ability to see forever.

Probably the best race and class list I've seen in a MMORPG.

Tons of stuff to do other than grind.

CONS:

It's not finished yet. Seriously. The game is buggy, runs poorly, and some of the content simply isn't there.

Bottom line:

Had it been released 6 months later, I would think it would be the best mmorpg released. Now we'll have to wait and see if it can crawl up from the beta release it got. I sincerely hope so, as I love playing it.

[Faustt]

I played the beta and hated it. I'm not sure if they optimized it much more since then, but my decently equipped PC just didn't handle it well.

It's supposed to be a sort of throw back to the old style EQ. Where you really had to work for what you wanted rather than the (near) instant gratification of the newer MMOs. I was a huge fan of EQ back in the day, but Vanguard just failed to keep me interested. The enormous amount of bugs and lag just killed the fun for me.

Lord of the Rings Online is supposed to be half way decent. From what I played, it felt very polished for a beta so I imagine Live would be just as good or better. It felt like a mix of a handful of other MMORPGs sort of taking ideas from all of them, but it didn't really bring anything special to the table, other than the "LoTR" draw.

[Beatdown]

The infamous return of corpse dragging!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

[Bigfoot]

I remember people complaining about it taking forever to level. I don't see how this is a bad thing because I hate it when people can reach max lvls in a matter of days or in some cases, 24 hours.

[OceansAndrew]

I remember people complaining about it taking forever to level. I don't see how this is a bad thing because I hate it when people can reach max lvls in a matter of days or in some cases, 24 hours.

That's cool and all, but for a guy like me who has a lot going on sometimes, levelling fast is just fine, since it all evens out in the end. Takes me forever to level, but it;s because I can only rock out a bit at a time.

[lazygecko]

So, at first I decided to wait some months and see if there'd be any improvement, but now I've heard that Sony Online Entertainment more than lives up to its mother company's reputation of abysmal customer relations. I think I'll be steering clear of this one.

[Dew]

I bought Vanguard on its first day of release, and here's my short review of it:

PROS:

Cool design, cool world, and love the ability to see forever.

Probably the best race and class list I've seen in a MMORPG.

Tons of stuff to do other than grind.

CONS:

It's not finished yet. Seriously. The game is buggy, runs poorly, and some of the content simply isn't there.

Bottom line:

Had it been released 6 months later, I would think it would be the best mmorpg released. Now we'll have to wait and see if it can crawl up from the beta release it got. I sincerely hope so, as I love playing it.

This sums it up pretty well. The release date, from my understanding, was supposed to be six months later than it ended up being. I had originally heard that it wasn't going to be out until July or August. For whatever reason though, it ended up sailing at the beginning of the year, and it sank miserably.

It's an incredible shame, since the game appeared to have so much potential, it just needed polishing and refinement. Supposedly Brad McQuaid is shooting for a "re-release" of sorts, but I'm not sure how that's going to work out, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.