Anyone else looking at Vanguard?

[ima_nerd]

First off, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Vanguard is an MMO created by Sigil, a brand new (2002) game company. It was started by Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, two of the big guys in the creation of EQ1. Vanguard looks to be everything EQ1 was and more. I never played EQ1 but I have friends who were hardcore in it so I have an idea. I always questioned why they hated WoW so much until I started reading about Vanguard. I see now. WoW seems so shallow and unrewarding when compared to what Vanguard promises to be and what EQ1 was. WoW end-game is focused on raids. Vanguard has three distinct spheres - adventuring, crafting and diplomacy. You essentially are leveling 3 characters because each sphere has an independant level from the others. End-game will be so much more then LFGing in IF or Orgrimmar or logging on 3 times a week to go run MC. It's not that I dislike raiding, but I want something to do while I'm not raiding.

I remember during WoW stress test/open beta/release time when there was so much to explore. The next zone was always a huge unknown and it made the game so much cooler then anything I had ever played. Within 6 months, that feeling was gone. I was level 60 and doing the end-game. With Vanguard, this is what they don't want to happen. With the normal time to max level being around 1.5-2 years for average folks, as opposed to 3-4 months on WoW, this could be a good possibility. The level of content is supposed to be massive so you're not grinding the same area for 3 months just to move on to the next zone.

Well, this turned into a comparison to WoW which I didn't really want to do but WoW is my only MMO so it's my basis for everything related to Vanguard. Plus, over the course of this weekend I went from loving WoW to really losing interest and becoming completely psyched about Vanguard just from sitting down and reading about Vanguard for a few hours. Anywho, check out the site, read the FAQ and even sign up on the forums for a chance in the first beta.

I kind of lost my focus as I wrote this post ... I think it's original purpose was to just see who else is looking at Vanguard. Oops :P

[Rinnhart]

Some interesting discussion of Vanguard here. Most of those guys are hardened EQ1 vets, and definately have something to say about Brad McQuaid.

I'll put it this way- I've never skipped a RL event or called in sick for Warcraft. EQ1, everyone did on occasion.

If they can recapture some of that, and make it more approachable to new players, they could easily rival WoW. However, they could also easily make the game unapproachable to anyone but the most hardcore. And then you'd have EQ1, again, which was a smashing success in it's day, but was certainly no World of Warcraft.

[Raelynn]

If they can recapture some of that, and make it more approachable to new players, they could easily rival WoW. However, they could also easily make the game unapproachable to anyone but the most hardcore. And then you'd have EQ1, again, which was a smashing success in it's day, but was certainly no World of Warcraft.
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I'll have to agree that EQ (and AC) drew people into the game a lot more than WoW does for the most part. In looking through the info on the site, it seems like it'll be a much more hardcore-focused game than WoW. Although they want to allow anyone to play (every developer will claim that), I doubt it'll be great for the casual players.

[Guest]

EQ 1 had serious issues.

Im definetly no fan of the WoW end game, but basically the probelem with WoW in the end is its all about giant raids - much like EQ1.

Maybe this game is cool, but EQ1 wasnt exactly great.

[ima_nerd]

Well, it depends. The thing WoW was great for was the learning curve. Blizz did a really kick ass job on making it noob friendly and having the starting areas act like a teaching zone. I went a played EQ2 for a few days (on a friends account) after playing WoW for about 10 months and I was completely lost. I can imagine what a first time MMO player would feel. If Vanguard can make itself approachable, it could get quite an audience. Brad has also said that if he was to keep a population 500,000 for 2 years, he would be ecstatic. Vanguard is not trying to be WoW.

The thing (as I understand it) that makes/will make EQ and Vanguard so "hardcore" is the leveling time. To hit max level, you have to put in 2 years of your life. However, if what they say is true, those two years will be a lot of fun. As one person said on the Vanguard forums:

VG is more for those that think the journey is more important than the destination.

[Guest]

I found the evil line - "Vanguard will focus heavily on interdependence..."

While working together is great in an MMO. Coming from the Devs of EQ I suspect this mean more 20-40 person raids.

[ima_nerd]

I found the evil line - "Vanguard will focus heavily on interdependence..."

While working together is great in an MMO. Coming from the Devs of EQ I suspect this mean more 20-40 person raids.
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Actually, they mean more in the 6-man parties they will be using. No word as of yet has been said about raid size although most likely it will be 40+ people. The Crafting sphere has two aspects, Harvesting and Crafting. Actually, here:

Scroll down to 7.5.1 How will crafting work?

I believe that is the interdependance he is talking about. I haven't seen much on the Adventuring sphere and practically nothing about Diplomacy.

[Raelynn]

Actually, they mean more in the 6-man parties they will be using. No word as of yet has been said about raid size although most likely it will be 40+ people. The Crafting sphere has two aspects, Harvesting and Crafting. Actually, here:

Scroll down to 7.5.1 How will crafting work?

I believe that is the interdependance he is talking about. I haven't seen much on the Adventuring sphere and practically nothing about Diplomacy.
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I don't know if they just got rid of it or changed their FAQ, but I swear that a few months back when I looked at it they basically said the focus was on small and large group content, with little to no solo content. I also remember something about raids being a big part of the game, but again looking back it isn't there now.

Looking at it now, there is a lot more comments along the lines of "we want to be accessible to everyone" as opposed to the previous line of thought of "we want to cater to a group that we feel get less stuff than they should've in games like WoW".

[Rinnhart]

I don't know if they just got rid of it or changed their FAQ, but I swear that a few months back when I looked at it they basically said the focus was on small and large group content, with little to no solo content.  I also remember something about raids being a big part of the game, but again looking back it isn't there now.
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No, that's exactly correct. The game will probably end up very similar to EQ as far as how friendly it is towards the solo player (not very). Many people I know dislike the situational grouping of WoW, either because they feel it makes the game too easy to be able to solo quickly all the way to 60 or because they miss the social aspect of long parties.

Parties in WoW are brief affairs, tossed together only because instances are generally well beyond any individual's ability to solo. A couple hours, at the most, and it breaks. EQ parties were nearly as static as the game environment.

Looking at it now, there is a lot more comments along the lines of "we want to be accessible to everyone" as opposed to the previous line of thought of "we want to cater to a group that we feel get less stuff than they should've in games like WoW".

Seriously, browse the Graffe's threads on Vanguard, there's alot of discussion about exactly this.

[Guest]

I think thats half the story for WoW players.

One group of players feels that 0-60 is tooo fast an easy and discourages grouping.

The other group feels that lvl 60 is boring with too much time spent setting up raids that require way to many people to experience.

Blizz screwed up. Fast and fast paced leveling alienates some players. Then the players who remain dont like the end game.
They are doing ok so far because over all their game is better than everyone else and fortunetly doesnt direct player action through negative reinforcment. But if someone makes a quality game on WoWs scale that caters to one side over the other they will be a success. I dont thing Vangaurd is this game.

[ima_nerd]

Vanguard is targeting the 'core' gamer. It will have three types of content: casual, group, and raid. Casual and raid will be the minority, with most content group oriented.

I know some people accuse EQ of being too raid oriented. I would say Vanguard will be less so. But we also think raiding is very important and fun. Our goal from the beginning was to create a world that would support core gamers, as well as more casual or people with less time, as well as those crazy raiders you refer to

Aside from that, well, Vanguard is a new game with a lot of new features and a whole new world to explore. I don't think we'll have any problem enticing hard core raiders to migrate over.

Source: Aradune Mithara (a.k.a. Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games)

I'm counting on this being true.

Edit: Thought of something else. Blizzard didn't screw up on the pace of leveling. They screwed up the end game. They focused entirely on making raid encounters and releasing those instead of releasing 5-10 man instances as well (with the exception of DM). They basically said, raid or quit. There was no new content that was non-raid (again, excluding DM).

[Guest]

This is what would be a truely revolutionary swords and dragons MMORP.

1 No leveling. Instead make it skill based. But have real diminishing returns on skills.
Skills would have to be learned over time(with increasing time for higher skill) so no power leveling.

2 No classes. You could learn a bit of everything from crqafting to sword fighting, but you would want to specialize. Combat skill use would be somewhat gear dependent so you couldnt use every possible skill at once.

4 Make character power more about what gear they have the skills to use. You could have 3 or 4 grades of gear. Each would be much rarer than the level below it - but only modestly more powerful.

5 Allow gear to be lost occassionally when you die. But make the base gear quite affordable. Since base gear isnt junk compared to the best gear no one feels "ruined" by losing some.

6 Lots of content and lands to explore.

7 Some form of player fortresses or the like as well as NPC cities.

8 Add intersting skills like , map making, archiology etc to encourge explorer type play as well as combat play.



A game like this would be about playing the game not about leveling or getting the 1 perfect suit. If any of you play "EVE" youll notice I stole some of these ideas from that game.

[Raelynn]

Thought of something else. Blizzard didn't screw up on the pace of leveling. They screwed up the end game. They focused entirely on making raid encounters and releasing those instead of releasing 5-10 man instances as well (with the exception of DM). They basically said, raid or quit. There was no new content that was non-raid (again, excluding DM).
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There's been replies on the boards about this. The reasons they gave basically say "there have been 4 5-man end game instances since DM came out, but with AQ-40, there will only be 3 raids, with ZG and AQ-20 not cuonting because they're in between" I don't like the reason. It would've been better to bring each type out slowly so as not to run into the current situation of 15+ months between 5-mans (assuming the expansion has all the new 5-mans).

[ima_nerd]

The expansion has only three 5-man instances (I think) so end-game for non-raiders will continue to be practically nonexistant. They did such an awesome job with DM, I was really hoping for more 5-man content. Oh well.

[Raelynn]

The expansion has only three 5-man instances (I think) so end-game for non-raiders will continue to be practically nonexistant.  They did such an awesome job with DM, I was really hoping for more 5-man content.  Oh well.
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That's basically the biggest reason I don't really feel like coming back to the game. I severely dislike BG, and I'm not a big fan of raiding/don't have the time to commit to it. 5-man instances are what gave me things to do. They basically admitted in the posts that no 5-man content would come until the expansion (though after 1.9 and Naxxramas in 1.10 which was hinted in the same post, it'll basically be time for the expansion anyway). Hopefully there's more than the 3 instances that there appeared to be in the article about the expansion. They seemed to put more 15-40 man content in the expansion than 5-man.

[Quark]

The expansion has only three 5-man instances (I think) so end-game for non-raiders will continue to be practically nonexistant.  They did such an awesome job with DM, I was really hoping for more 5-man content.  Oh well.
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Only three? Nonexistant? After the expansion, you could spend every night in a different 5-man and still not see it all in a week.

Did you know Critical Mass, for the last two weeks, has finished all their raiding in two days? They have 4 scheduled raid days, but only two are occupied because they're one-shotting MC and BWL.

The grass is always greener on the other side, isn't it? The game needs new content on both sides, not just one. I'm tired of each side thinking it deserves stuff more.

[Walkiry]

Only three?  Nonexistant?  After the expansion, you could spend every night in a different 5-man and still not see it all in a week.
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A week of content for a whole expansion in a MMORPG (which is supposed to be "bigger" in scope than a single player game) doesn't strike me as particularly awe-inducing, to be honest. Spellforce's "Breath of Winter" (the last expansion I've bought for a game I had already) had me busy for longer.

[Raelynn]

Only three?  Nonexistant?  After the expansion, you could spend every night in a different 5-man and still not see it all in a week.

Did you know Critical Mass, for the last two weeks, has finished all their raiding in two days?  They have 4 scheduled raid days, but only two are occupied because they're one-shotting MC and BWL.

The grass is always greener on the other side, isn't it?  The game needs new content on both sides, not just one.  I'm tired of each side thinking it deserves stuff more.
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I agree with you, but it would be better for the players if things were spread out. The biggest problem is that it was given to us in a bad fashion. The beginning had all the 5-man stuff, and the end has all the raid stuff. Since the game is still relatively new, it's somewhat understandable that the earlier stuff wasn't raid, since that's end-game, but it's still going to be 15+ months (DM cam out last march, expansion comes out may at the earliest) between 5-man content. My problem presonally is less the existance, and more the time between.

Things will be more equal come the expansion. Both play styles will be on equal grounds (4 instances each), with an additional few middle grounds (Onyxia, ZG, AQ-20). I hope that they start planning the instances a bit more fairly, setting one or two of each type at a time, instead of loading a bunch of the same thing close together like it has been.

[Quark]

A week of content for a whole expansion in a MMORPG (which is supposed to be "bigger" in scope than a single player game) doesn't strike me as particularly awe-inducing, to be honest. Spellforce's "Breath of Winter" (the last expansion I've bought for a game I had already) had me busy for longer.
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One week to do everything 5-man in the game, compared to a current 2 days to do everything 40-man in the game.

I am not talking about how much time you can spend enjoying new things. I am talking about, once you've already learned them, how long does it take you to get through them now?

When you complete a 5-man as fast as possible right now, what can you do afterwards? 5-man it again. Didn't get what you want? Go for it again. Cleared it in an hour and have time to spare? Go do another instance.

When you complete a raid as fast as possible right now, you can't continue raiding. Raidlock prevents that. Where does a raider go when only 2 out of their, say, 6 playing nights completes all their content? They can PvP, 5man, alt, help others, farm ... but they can't raid. Raiding right now is the only thing you can't continuously do. That's the disparity, and that's why the next patch is a 20man and a 40man.

[Quark]

I agree with you, but it would be better for the players if things were spread out.  The biggest problem is that it was given to us in a bad fashion.  The beginning had all the 5-man stuff, and the end has all the raid stuff.  Since the game is still relatively new, it's somewhat understandable that the earlier stuff wasn't raid, since that's end-game, but it's still going to be 15+ months (DM cam out last march, expansion comes out may at the earliest) between 5-man content.  My problem presonally is less the existance, and more the time between.
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Agreed. But since they screwed up in the beginning, they have to pay their dues now.