Choose My Adventure: Farewell, Vanguard

by Krystalle Voecks on Oct 27th 2010 1:00PM

Fantasy, Galleries, Screenshots, Opinion, Vanguard, Choose My Adventure

It's been an interesting six weeks in Vanguard, but the time has come to wind down and leave the lands of Telon behind. From massive landscapes to odd bugs, it has been a varied adventure. For the final week I'd wanted to tackle one of the larger in-game dungeons as opposed to the mini-dungeons that Orin and I had been taking on, but sadly that wasn't to be. Despite attempting to look around in the LFG tool and sending requests over continent chat, I wound up spending the remaining time soloing or checking out things like player housing.

Curious about my final thoughts on this MMO? Join me after the break as I look over the last six weeks and give my impressions on the adventure you chose for me!

Choose My Adventure: Vanguard

As mentioned earlier, Orin wasn't feeling too well this weekend, so despite a valiant effort on his part to come guide me around for a bit, I wound up soloing most of the time. That's really not too bad, as Vanguard seems to have been designed so that if you find yourself soloing due to lack of groups, there are an obnoxious amounts of quests to do. Really, just sticking with Veskal's and moving out from there, I've never thought to myself that I was going to have to grind mobs just to get a level or two in. When it comes to quests, there is absolutely no shortage for adventuring. However, this solo-ability may be a double-edged sword.

Admittedly, over the last six weeks, I did get the odd invite for a group (sadly, quite a few just as I was logging off, or when I was working in another window) but trying to find a like-level group proved to be incredibly difficult the majority of the time. Indeed, had it not been for Orin running with my main character over the last several weeks, I dare say I wouldn't have seen the smaller dungeons we did run until I'd leveled to the higher-end of the applicable range and then pursued them solo.

Disciple is a great solo class, but, as I've said a million times before, I don't play MMOs to solo. I have tons of single-player games for that. MMOs essentially lock a certain amount of content behind "group" walls, and without a group you generally won't see it. I'm also a social creature who loves to get a chance to group. As such, it's not a good value (at least to me) to play a game that I'm blocked from seeing (or enjoying) in full simply because I can't get a group.

Indeed, if there's one major criticism I can level at Vanguard, it's that there are simply too few people in the lower levels to make friends or group with. That's not to say the game is a complete ghost town: Vanguard has a small but fairly active population in the game. The only problem is that most of them are L50+. If you're perfectly content to solo up to the higher levels, and don't mind the game being difficult, then I can recommend Vanguard to you most heartily.

As to why there may not be as many new people around, I'll be blunt. Vanguard is not a game that holds your hand and explains itself to you as so many other MMOs do. Vanguard is the pretty MMO coquette that keeps you guessing as to whether or not it likes you and wants you to stick around -- almost to the point of annoyance. It's also not really the type of game where you can log in for an hour or so and feel like you've made significant headway towards building your character up. Sure, the redesigned isle does a good job of explaining the game in broad terms, but beyond that you'd better be willing to post on (or dig through) the forums, or figure it out on your own. There is a rather obscene amount of minutiae that powers the crafting and diplomacy portions of the game -- so much so that at times it felt more like work and less like play to me. I'd also say you could Google for more help, but to be honest, short of finding the odd item description (which I could read in-game) what's out there is largely dead links, outdated info, or largely worthless for a newcomer.

Now, with that said, it's not all sour grapes. The landscapes are absolutely gorgeous. The handprints of SOE are all over this, as the game looks like a slightly different version of EverQuest II. The storylines are interesting and, as I've said many times, the sheer amount of things to do is mind-boggling. The community, while small, is very friendly, and are really a pretty shining example of why smaller communities generally tend to be better ones.

To sum up:

The good:

Tons to do between adventuring, crafting, diplomacy, harvesting and wandering around the world
While the world is large, quests are generally centrally located in each hub
Rift quick-travel system is excellent
The playerbase, while small, is friendly
Graphics are quite nice in an EverQuest II-type fashion
The Isle is an interesting (if a bit info-limited) tutorial that keeps lower-level players together so they can find groups.

The bad:

Death penalties (having to chase your gear, loss of XP, dragging "corpses") is old-school. The ability to recall your corpse to a bindstone is somewhat useful, but still doesn't conquer the annoyance of finding your corpse despawned while you were fighting through a dungeon to get back to it. I simply don't like harsh penalties in PvE.
Bugs: I hit a very bad bug with nVidia graphic cards causing the trees to strobe in and out. Considering this is a known issue for some years (turn off your hardware occlusion, folks) and still hasn't been addressed made me wonder why it hadn't. Beyond that, I managed to get stuck in terrain, rocks, and even stuck after taking a rift stone to the point where /stuck didn't work, and camping or rifting weren't options. (You can see that at 41:05 on the last livestream.)
The difficulty: The Isle does a good job at attempting to explain the game, but the overall game is just difficult. There's no getting around this point. While some people love this type of difficulty (as witnessed by the small but passionate playerbase in Vanguard) they tend to be the minority these days. In my opinion, this game feels like it was designed to be an updated EverQuest (including an extra helping of old-school difficulty), and it succeeds. However, if you ask many of the vets who love EverQuest if they want to go back to all the difficult, time-intensive, and often annoying systems that were in the game just to get to the nuggets of fun, many of them would say no after they'd had their 15 minutes of nostalgia. The ones that do want that difficulty are still playing EverQuest or games like it that predated Vanguard.
Population: Once you're off the Isle, it's very lonely for lowbies.

In the end, that's perhaps the best way to sum this up -- this game leaves me feeling like it's the love-child of EverQuest and EverQuest II, only without the benefits of either game's larger communities and updated mechanics. Could this game benefit from going free-to-play? Possibly. To be honest, with the current difficulty curve and lack of easily-referenced information versus dozens of more immediately rewarding fantasy games with bigger communities and more reference material out in the market, I'm not sure that would help.

Ultimately, Vanguard has the unenviable issue of being built for a old-school, super-hard PvE MMO playerbase that is either quite happy where they already are, or simply no longer have time to muck around with all that any longer, instead preferring to keep their difficult games in nostalgic "remember whens" over beers with long-time gaming buddies.

Join us next week as Jef Reahard takes over the reins on an all new series of Choose My Adventure postings, as always, dictated by you!

Tags: choose-my-adventure, cma, featured, opinion, overview, soe, sony-online-entertainment, vanguard, Vanguard-Saga-of-Heroes, wrap-up

Reader Comments (22)

"There is a rather obscene amount of minutiae that powers the crafting and diplomacy portions of the game -- so much so that at times it felt more like work and less like play to me."

I've tried Vanguard several times over the years, and although there are parts of it that are extremely appealing, what you observed always turned me off. If I were back in high school/college, I might leap at such a vast, deep game. But my lack of long, uninterrupted gaming time combined with the fear that any time invested would go to waste if Vanguard were shuttered has always turned me off. Hopefully Rift, which is supposedly a spiritual successor to the EQ/Vanguard style of MMO, will offer depth with accessibility, and be more of a hit.

Heck, I am still debating if I should give this a shot or not.

Is it under the "All-in-One Sony Station Pass" now or still a separate sub?

It is under the station pass so for a sweet $30 Canadian you can get such great games as Everquest, Everquest 2 and other games I cant remember, probably for a reason

It's part of the Station Pass

I would play VG if it went F2P and might even drop a few bucks in the cash shop for stuff.

Me too, I was one of the avid Fanboys for this back in the day even so far as going to the first 'Fanguard' the pre release con for the game. If this went F2P the right way (ie Turbine type not EQ2X) then it could revitalize a game that is in the shadows.

Met many of the devs that were fired off when McQuaid finally figured out he sucks, many of them very great people. The whole situation of what happened to this game before being finally sold to SOE sucks, to be blunt.

It is a game for the hardcore crowd, but that was never fully finished in a way it was intended and then 'SOE handprints' got on it and summarily put it in the janitors closet next to their other small MMOs.

@SpaceCobra: Vanguard is available via the station access account.

I love VG, however, the small population combined with an absolutely huge world makes it a lonely game for me to play. There are some beautiful cities, but it's depressing to be the only person running through them, and I always wonder what it would be like if VG had the population size that it seemed built to support.

After years of reading others reviews and comments I decided to give VG a try recently. I am an old school EQ1 player and yes the EQ1 lore is definitely in Vanguard. This really was Brad McQuaid's EQ2. But because he parted the now SoE he had to cut a deal with them to not damage the EQ2 launch hoopla; and he lost. But to me EQ2 lost too. If VG and EQ2 could have been one game it could of been a much better game.

The reviewer is correct of course. I tried this game and failed. There's plenty of lvl 50+ life in this game, but it's mostly chatter. When you walk around some of the largest albeit deeply designed cities they are ghost towns except for almost motionless NPCs.

Clearly a considerable amount of design effort went into the huge world of Telon. It is richly abundant with large islands and countless places to explore. All with their own distinctive design. As it stands it would be a shame to see all of this IP go to waste as it appears it will.

Brad you should have stayed with Everquest and given your talent to your original team. But you rolled the dice and lost but I feel that EQ2 also took a loss in the split up. Maybe the two of you can reconcile and EQ3 could be Norrath with your vision, talent, and flair that made EQ1 so successful.

You keep saying that the reason people aren't playing this is because its too hard. Well to be honest, it's not that difficult at all, and the penalties aren't even that big. Enough to make death inconvenient, as it should be.

The reason people don't play is because SoE doesn't support it. Simple as that. Most people love the game, but see its not going anywhere and the population isn't enough to fill out the huge world.

Vanguard is the best PvE MMO on the market, without a doubt.

So true dude ... for me and my wife, Vanguard is the best MMO out there. But, the lack of support is a no-go. All the devs that were shifted to EQ2 ... some of them said, that they have fixed most of the bugs in Vanguard before they were shifted, but SoE never released this fixes.

And that, my friends, sucks. I don't invest my money to a game whose developer has decided to let it die.

The reason people don't play is because they released the buggiest game in the history of the world, SOE rushed it and because Sigil couldn't get it done in time, they went defunct. Truly one of the saddest stories in games, certainly MMO's.

I do find it strange to hear Vanguard described as "difficult". I love complexity and find it draws me in and makes things seem easier. It's when I understand everything from the beginning that I find games "difficult", as in difficult to see what the point of carrying on is.

I think you're right, though, that going F2P wouldn't help. The huge majority of people trying it out of curiosity would find it very frustrating. John Smedley has said they don't plan to close it and are looking at what to do with it, but much though I love Vanguard and hope they keep a server up forever, I struggle to imagine what they can try that might interest ebnough new people to make a difference.

Any game that has SOE's handprints all over it is a game you should avoid like the plague.

Can someone elaborate on the current death penalty and the comment about "recalling your corpse to a bind stone" versus having your corpse despawn?

Personally, I can tolerate an exp penalty or even the loss of gear on death. What I have difficulty accepting is losing your corpse because the responsible thing to do is to go to bed and your corpse will be gone by the next time you get to play. By providing the option of recovering some of your losses by getting to your corpse, the game is effectively having one penalty for dying (the stuff you don't get back, even if you recover your corpse) and a second penalty for not staying up too late to get your corpse back.

If your corpse expires or you recall it to the bind stone you don't regain any XP. If you fetch your corpse you regain most of the XP you lost from death. It's not really a huge deal to recall your corpse, since you don't lose a massive amount of XP from death (at least at low-mid levels, which is where I am).

The game is a chore and a bore, that's why people don't play it and to add insult to injury, it's buggy as hell even to this day.

Yes this game is "harder" than the average MMORPG, it was designed to be, however it isn't as hard as it was at launch. And for most of us that have played since beta morn the orginal vision. It never was meant to be easy.

Death penalty is nothing (levels 1-50). You die and recover your tombstone or get a rez and your recover 85% of the loss. That means you need about 3-10 kills (equal level 2-3dot mobs) to start gaining EXP. If you summon your tombstone you are looking at 10-15 like kills to regain your EXP.

Granted the population is low at the lower levels as this is a mature game. I have 5 characters 52-55 but I also have 12 characters 14-43, that I play with friends and guildmates or solo sometimes. Getting into a guild in Vanguard is the answer to finding groups. Sorry but that is just the way it is. Also the fact that the author really didn't get involved in the game limited her chances to add friends to her list. I also cautioned her about the disciple class. Yes it is fun, yes it can be a very powerfull class, but it has a learing curve that did not match the time she wanted to devote to the game. I hope she enjoys Hello Kitty as Vanguard is not her cup of tea.

The game was interesting enough. The graphics where nice but kind of sterile looking. I have seen better more immersive worlds. The big problem for me was performance. The game lagged and stuttered all over the place. You need the latest state of the art machine for this game to be playable.

Gamers don't want a hard MMO? Well...

Wrong :)

Two words..

EVE Online

I LOVE VG and it would be my favorite MMO ever...problem? Its never updated, and I'm not going to pay 15 dollars a month to play a stagnant MMO...I can play a singleplayer RPG for that, and for a lot cheaper. If SOE updated it, I would be playing it.

I've enjoyed reading about your adventures in Telon Krystalle, they even inspired me to return to the game myself, however I think your last entry here is more than a little harash for the game.

Of note, I was online during the weekend and there weren't huge numbers of players around but there were enough for groups. Yet they don't seem to come easily, many like any MMO, prefer to solo, just with the small population it makes it even harder to find groups. If, however you had played in the afternoon or evening, I'm sure you would've had a much better time finding groups. On Sunday for example, if you'd stuck around I would've invited you to join me and my friends as we went into Khegor's End, a level 13-17 dungeon near the dwarven starting area.

Our little adventure into the dungeon, was the first time for all but one of us, and that other one hadn't been there since beta. Two Dread Knights, one Disciple and a Sorcerer, we fought our way through the spiders that inhabited the upper level and spiral ramp down to the Bugbear miners. At which point a bad pull by me brought us four Bugbears and one of the patrolling Dwarves, who proceeded to beat us to a bloody pulp.

After this wipe we ventured back down, which seemed to go on forever to us initially. More careful pulling and we were able to take on up to four at a time, but it was always a case of paying attention to our surroundings and the wandering Dwarves, never an easy or quiet moment. Once we had cleared out all the Bugbears, a good 40 or 50 of them and their Dwarven masters, we discovered another passage leading off to the side. Following it brought us to a massive lift, that went down just as far again as the original spiral ramp, this dungeon was easily as far down as any of the over-world chunks are across, a good three or four hundred meters.

Unfortunately, down on that lowest level we ran out of time, some two hours after our first entry. Looking at some information about it afterwards highlighted that there was more down at that bottom level than what we'd already done, indicating a good two or more hours more to go if we wanted to complete the whole thing. Our of the nine quests we picked up for it, we only managed to complete one, barely scratching at the wonders that must lay on that bottom level amongst the evil Dwarves.

Vanguard has many things that people can fault, but so does every MMO, the one thing you can't really fault about this game is fantastic design of the dungeons. Whether it is Temple on the starter Isle, a mid-level dungeon or even the mighty Ancient Port Warehouse raid zone, they are all done to an amazing level that you will be hard pressed to find in most of the other MMOs out there.

So, it is a shame you decided to play during the morning when so few people are about. If you ever fancy giving it another go and hitting a dungeon, send me a tell or mail in the game and I'll see if I can arrange a group at a time that suits you, my name is Thorbe, on the Telon server.

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Choose My Adventure: Farewell, Vanguard

Choose My Adventure: Vanguard

Reader Comments (22)

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 1:24PM Wisdomandlore said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 2:30PM Space Cobra said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 3:16PM Scott Ossington said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 3:27PM Faeran said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 2:54PM Thac0 said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 3:29PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 3:22PM Justpotatoes said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 3:51PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 4:08PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 28th 2010 3:07AM shanert said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 6:02PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 6:32PM Bhagpuss said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 7:21PM smg77 said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 7:44PM GreenArmadillo said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 10:08PM shivetya said

Posted: Oct 27th 2010 9:24PM Vrazule said

Posted: Oct 28th 2010 9:25AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Oct 28th 2010 11:36AM donweel said

Posted: Oct 28th 2010 12:59PM Vendayn said

Posted: Oct 28th 2010 2:10PM (Unverified) said

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