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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Why so much hostility?, September 29, 2007
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
Having read most of the 75 posted reviews to date, it is very clear this is a "Love It or Hate It" game and there's no in-between. But there's not been anything significant posted in several weeks, so I felt a need to update anyone considering this MMO. Most of these posts (sadly) do not do this outstanding game justice.
First of all, I played EQ1 since Kunark and have been searching for something to fill that addiction ever since. I've tried DAOC, EQ2, AC2, Guild Wars, WoW, SWG, and several others, but nothing (and I mean nothing) has been able to fill that EQ1 void like this does. I have an extensive MMO background to base my opinion upon.
Now, obviously, there are huge similarities between this and EQ1, being developed by the same minds. However, there are so many improvements, drawing from all of the above mentioned MMO's that it leaves one to wonder how can there be so much hostility towards this game??
I will be the first to admit that this is not a 3rd generation MMO. I don't believe such a thing exists yet. This does however (given the chance) draw the gamer into its environment and provide an immersive, fun gaming experience whether for hours on end, or just a short period.
Being a "mature" gamer (35+), I for one despise the WoW-kiddie environments and all the BS smacktalking and region spam that goes on in most MMO's. I think that in general VG provides a more mature community, and from what I have encountered over the last 8 months of playing VG, most of the people you ask questions of are more than willing to help you get the answer or explain why something is the way it is. Most of the hostile reviews that I have read are transparent enough to know that either they didn't give the game enough of a chance, or couldn't get the desired group within the first 5 minutes, so quit the game altogether. WTH? Give it a chance people.
My "main" currently is a level 38 Disciple. This class is a combination of a cleric & a monk, and can solo extremely well (as well as very desireable in a group). I can solo mobs up to 2-3 levels above me depending on the number of "dots". Anyone who says they can't beat same level mobs solo, doesn't know how to play their class. I've tried them all and all classes are self-sufficient, just in different ways.
This is not a game that you are going to "conquer" within the first 90 days. Nor is it meant to be. Buy this game only if you are looking for an open ended, fun, relationship-building experience that is going to last you several years. I read several times on these posts phrases like "waste of money" and "not worth the monthly fee". How much do you spend at the movies for a 2 hour joyride? I consider VG extremely cheap entertainment.
Here are the GOOD vs. the BAD in Vanguard:
(BAD)
- laggy at times (now made worse by the server merges)
- incessant gold-seller spamming (granted most to all MMO's have this)
- occasional crash-to-desktop issues
- some minor bugs still exist in quests
- lack of "raid" content (for now)
(GOOD)
- outstanding graphics (at any setting)
- challenging and fun quests/missives that reward experience accordingly
- a complex faction system requiring you to have to earn your player renown and status
- a HUGE (at least 10 times larger than WoW) expansive world to explore with multiple continents that have a distinctly different feel to each
- a new Diplomacy sphere which is fun and immersive
- excellent player crafted items making crafting a worthwhile endeavor
- a mature player base (for the most part)
- huge replayability factor, making alt characters almost a necessity in order to learn all the aspects of the various starting areas
- multiple mount options starting at level 10, several of which require very involved quests
Now I do have certain minor beefs with some of the recent changes to the game (such as making all gear "bind on equip"), but these pale in comparison to the overall abuse this game is taking from what seems like 70% of the reviews.
As you can see, the GOOD outweighs the BAD in Vanguard. Hopefully, this info will aid those with an open mind to give this worthy game a chance.
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55 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Barely Second Generation, January 30, 2007
Fun:2.0 out of 5 stars
There was a whole lot of hype about how Vanguard was going to be a "third generation MMO" that built on the gameplay of its predecessors. Games like EQ1 and UO were classified as "first generation" and games like CoX, WoW, EQ2, etc. were classified as "second generation". So the idea was that Vanguard would advance the genre, and the FAQ about their design goals was impressive to say the least.
Unfortunately, that's not the game that released.
I'm not talking about graphics here. For graphics to advance much, hardware must first advance. In Vanguard's case, the graphics are in some ways truly stunning -- IF your computer can hack it. I have a powerful computer with a GeForce 8800GTX OC video card, and getting the game to look as good as Everquest 2 reduces playability to an unacceptable level. Vanguard chugs. But that's not my complaint because I never expected Vanguard (or any other 32-bit game) to exceed the current fare for visual quality.
My complaint with this game is the gameplay itself, which is very pedestrian. There's really nothing to make me want to leave the other games that I'm already playing. Your first few hours in the game are strictly ho-hum. There's nothing to really grab you and make you say, "wow, this is fun!" The newbie experience is probably closer to Lineage 2 with all of its grinding than any of the other MMO's that are currently popular. (In almost all starting zones, there are not enough quests to get you through the levels. Before you get to level 8 -- and in some cases, before you get to level 4 -- you WILL be spending at least part of your time running around killing random mobs because the developers haven't given you anything else to do.)
Those newbie levels are designed to get you experienced enough that you can team up with a group and go dungeon delving. For this you'll be in cramped quarters competing with dozens of other groups for the same mobs. Want to solo? Forget about doing anything in the dungeons. And if you don't want to spend your time in dungeons, then be ready for more grinding. A lot of it.
Character creation is nothing special. The characters don't look particularly great, with only a few face textures to choose from. Everything else is handled by morphs, and some of the morphs make them look terrible. Ultimately, the characters look about as diverse as DAoC or EQ2, which is to say that the differences are only noticeable if you're really looking for them.
Harvesting is another example of where the game did away with its original ideas. You originally had several harvesting skills that you could use during the harvest to influence the outcome and possibly get more resources. This whole system was ultimately done away with, and now you just click on the node (WoW-style) and wait until it's done. The only real difference from WoW is that you can get more from the node if multiple party members harvest it with you. Exciting, huh?
As for the world, yes it's very big and very pretty. But it's also very empty. Because the developers created a single supposedly seamless world, they had to leave large areas with nothing in them so that they can add more content later. Just getting from the newbie area to the next adventuring area usually requires walking. And walking. And more walking. All through landscape that is largely the same as what you've already seen, with few landmarks or other points of interest. Of course, you can get a mount so that you can get there faster. Or you can caravan in which case you join up with a group and log out of the game while someone else goes through the tedium of walking/riding to the destination.
I think that Vanugard has the potential to be pretty good after it has a couple of expansions under its belt. Unfortunately, it's just not that interesting now. Certainly not interesting enough to pull me away from what my friends and I are already doing! I'm not alone in this opinion, either. I have about 50 friends who were all anxiously looking forward to Vanguard. Once we played it, though, we all changed our minds.
I'm sure that this game will appeal to people who want things to be difficult for difficult's sake, like grinding, and believe that the game itself doesn't have to be fun if they have enough of an imagination to create their own fun. For everyone else, there are other offerings on the market.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
So close...yet so far. Still a lot of promise. , October 12, 2007
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
I got into this game during beta, I've been playing it since launch. I watched Sigil fall apart and SOE jump in. The game development is handled so poorly it's getting ridiculous.
Set yourself free is the slogan, the image is an adventurer soaring high in the sky wherever he wants to go. Not gonna happen for you in game. STILL, you can only fly on rentals for a couple minutes. They don't even work very well either, they will poof and cause you to fall to your death. Pretty annoying when you PAY for it, then have to run back and buy another one. Don't forget that you need to go find your corpse where it dropped you. Perhaps some day they can fix this and add in the quest for flying mounts. They already finished the quests on their end, but they haven't been added yet.
Guild halls were just barely added, but they require more work than anyone imagined. That's fine though, I appreciate the hard core side of it. WoW is pathetic, any step away from WoW is good. The problem is the over camped quest items you need that nobody can get without spawn camping on the hour. Not only do you have all the guilds from 4 different servers trying to get them (they had to have a server merge because the population is dying), you have the jerks camping them to sell them. It's not hardcore, it's lame. They admit this and are gonna fix it...it's fixed on their end. They've said it's been fixed on their end for a month now yet we still don;t have it live yet. See a trend?
They promised so many things and they couldn't deliver at launch. That was fine with me, you create a beast of a game you deserve a little slack and extra time in my book. Sigil tried to push updates in quickly and just broke the game further, now SOE takes forever to do ANYTHING. I'm still paying for this game because I enjoy my guild mates, but I don't know how much longer I can allow the poor development to drag it's feet and charge me money. I understand the mess they had to clean up and how much time is needed, but it's getting to be too much effort for the reward.
The 3 spheres don't work very well with each other. Adventuring and Crafting have the relationship you'd expect, but Diplomacy has been downright pointless since launch. They decided to make diplomacy finally worth it by making the guild hall construction require top tier diplomats. That just created a rush of mad grinders and players botting their way up. They are supposed to be needed in raiding whenever they actually add that. The diplo and craft grinds can really split up a guild if you are not careful.
This game still has a lot of promise and could be something some day but they need to start getting things done quicker. They are losing their fanbase the longer they take to get this to what it should have been at release. This game will eventually need PVP introduced to PVE servers, they talked about putting PVP on PVE servers but it's never happened thanks to the PVP being terrible on the PVP servers and everything else being a cluster-fudge.
I am very down on this game right now, but it has it's redeeming qualities still. It has unique classes and plenty of customization for now, most of my guild mates play their characters uniquely. I have had more fun with my Disciple than I have ever had playing another class in any other mmo. There are less complex classes like Sorcerer, but Rogues and Disciples are by far my favorite because of their complexity.
Plenty of quests, this game has a lot to do at most levels. I have seen official reviews bashing some of the quests because they were poorly written, but those have been re-worked. There was a lot of typos in the beginning. I have always enjoyed the quests, they even have some adult humor in the game that is not so obvious as other games. This game has a lack of lore behind it, but it has amazing lore buried down in the much ignored diplomacy quests. I thought the Kurashasa (cat race) initial diplomacy quests were great and as I traveled they still kept my interest.
They didn't want portals in this game, but they were forced to add them because of how buggy the game was. The boats would drop players in the water and the game would crash, they could not leave it like that with how large the world is. The game doesn't crash anymore, the boats don't drop you anymore, but the portals have stayed. They caved. That bothered me, but I can get over it. There is still plenty of hard core left in this game.
Crafting is respectable, it is very deep like SWG had. It is perhaps the longest grind in the game. It's complexity is GREAT! The rare items you need for great crafted items are GREAT! However, the way you level is by doing work orders for NPCs. Boooooooooooooooring. They needed to mix it up here, it's insane doing the amount of work orders needed. I know, I did them for 50 levels. They have introduced rest xp and lowered the xp curve so it's much easier now. I don't know exactly how it is now because they did this after I got to the top tier, but guildies have said it's better now.
Plenty of positives and negatives with this game, sadly the positives are overshadowed by things like no flying mounts, no helmets, no tails on animal races, no raiding, no decent pvp etc. The good news is that they have done a lot with the performance issues this game has had.
The community is better than WoW and EQ2, reminds me of the old SWG crowd. Sadly the majority is busy complaining, but when they are playing the game and focused they are great people.
I can't really recommend this game right now, but I hope you do come check it out. I don't see any other decent mmorpgs coming out. Most everything these days are WoW clones. This game was built with the right idea, huge world with tons of customization. Details, depth, freedom. SOE has been slow, but they have tried to stick with that original plan. I have hope still.
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