As some of you might already know, the Vanguard Saga of Heroes MMO is in its final beta stage. Fileplanet is or was giving away beta keys to US residents but you can also "buy" a key by preordering the game. I received a key from a friend and started playing a few days ago. The game is scheduled for release at the end of this month and it is, imo, not ready yet.
For those who are not familiar with VG it will be a pay to play MMO with three major spheres to sink your time into: adventuring, crafting and diplomacy. I've mostly focused on the adventuring sphere so I don't have any opinions on the other two. Crafting and diplomacy are like card games and require some degree of thought for success. A character can also try to master 2 harvesting skills aside from adventuring.
My first impressions of the game is that some areas need a lot of work. There were some bugged quests that were the first step in a chain of quests that made it impossible to continue on. I played a new character whenever I encountered such a problem and the problem was usually fixed the next time I logged on with that character (bug reports and comments can be readily submitted). Each race has their own start area and of the three races that I have experienced (orc, Mordebi and Kurasha) the Mordebi area was the best developed and most fun. A person could solo in this game but after L10 I think group play is highly favored, even if it is just a small group of 2-3 people. Mobs are rated by "dots" and you can see their difficulty rating on their icon in blue. Three dot mobs are very difficult to solo, but that would probably vary by class and gear. After L10 attribute points can be distributed by the player to optimize a certain build. I like that aspect although the caps on attributes are too low for my preference. Mounts can be purchased for 12 silver 50 copper at L10 or so.
There is a useful chart of all the races and classes here.
That site is also a good source of information for the numerous classes which are split into one of the following categories: defensive fighter (tanks), offensive fighter (DPS), offensive caster (DPS) and healers.
I think this game has a lot of potential but I will reserve judgement on whether it is worth upgrading my machine to play after I've spent more time in the beta. If anyone wants to hook up with me, my characters are on the first beta server (there are 3 normal servers and 1 pvp server).
Here is a link to the official site: Vanguard
For those who are not familiar with VG it will be a pay to play MMO with three major spheres to sink your time into: adventuring, crafting and diplomacy. I've mostly focused on the adventuring sphere so I don't have any opinions on the other two. Crafting and diplomacy are like card games and require some degree of thought for success. A character can also try to master 2 harvesting skills aside from adventuring.
My first impressions of the game is that some areas need a lot of work. There were some bugged quests that were the first step in a chain of quests that made it impossible to continue on. I played a new character whenever I encountered such a problem and the problem was usually fixed the next time I logged on with that character (bug reports and comments can be readily submitted). Each race has their own start area and of the three races that I have experienced (orc, Mordebi and Kurasha) the Mordebi area was the best developed and most fun. A person could solo in this game but after L10 I think group play is highly favored, even if it is just a small group of 2-3 people. Mobs are rated by "dots" and you can see their difficulty rating on their icon in blue. Three dot mobs are very difficult to solo, but that would probably vary by class and gear. After L10 attribute points can be distributed by the player to optimize a certain build. I like that aspect although the caps on attributes are too low for my preference. Mounts can be purchased for 12 silver 50 copper at L10 or so.
There is a useful chart of all the races and classes here.
That site is also a good source of information for the numerous classes which are split into one of the following categories: defensive fighter (tanks), offensive fighter (DPS), offensive caster (DPS) and healers.
I think this game has a lot of potential but I will reserve judgement on whether it is worth upgrading my machine to play after I've spent more time in the beta. If anyone wants to hook up with me, my characters are on the first beta server (there are 3 normal servers and 1 pvp server).
Here is a link to the official site: Vanguard