[General Article] Vanguard: Saga of Heroes: Vanguard’s History to Now

SBFord

Vanguard has reached a venerated age of "seasoned MMORPG". In a new retrospective article, we take a look at the history of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes from its earliest days to today. Check it out!

Proclaimed as the prodigal step-son of EverQuest, Vanguard crashed into life, slinked into adolescence, and has now finally taken steps towards maturity as an MMORPG. From being the darling of every Norrath-dweller pre-2001, the fate that this game has suffered was not expected. Assembled by an all star cast and crew, funded by the might of Microsoft, and helmed by the online demigod himself, Brad McQuaid, we are here to sift through fact, fiction, and rumour, and ask "what in the hell happened?"

Read more of Adam Tingle's Vanguard's History to Now.

Jjay8869

VG in its current state is still one of the best MMOs out there.  Even with its disastrous start, I believe VG will be around for some time.

Rrib

"...Glitches, bugs, and broken mechanics mired the experience..."

Thanks to the undying love of a few the game will probably live forever.

But the continued glitches, bugs and broken mechanics still make it the worst mmo experience I've ever had.

boojiboy

I played Vanguard from launch until 2011.  Despite the problems, it was by far the best MMO experience I've ever had with the best community I've ever experienced.  It's set the standard so high, that I can't find another MMO that I can enjoy.

ironhelix

The game is awesome, but ruined by poor execution. I came back recently (because of the implied new attention that this game was supposed to be getting from the developers) to find that it's in about as bad a condition that it was in when it launched. The FTP thing is a ruse to hook a few more people, and that's all. It's obvious that they have no intention of finally cleaning up this game like they said they would. I should have known better.

Kenze

Vanguard will forever be the game with awesome potential that never was. Its sat stagnant and molding for too long. Its no longer an AAA title and its showing its age and poor upkeep. F2P isnt going to fulfill that potential we all saw so many years ago.
Its time has passed, the star are no longer in alignment, the Gods no longer smile upon it..Its imo time to let it die with a little dignitude.

nuttob

When it went FTP I logged in for what would be my final time.  With games like GW2 and TSW which I am now currently playing I simply can't go back to a game like this...

roo67

I've tried the free to play . It actually seems quite a nice game so I'll give  I do what i do with free to play mmos and play it on an irregular basis . The EU servers were on medium load os seems like its doing well enough to be around for a while .

JerYnkFan

I signed up for the yearly special package.  Not playing as much as I want, but game is a heck of alot of fun when running dungeons with other people.

UtukuMoon

Originally posted by Jjay8869
VG in its current state is still one of the best MMOs out there.  Even with its disastrous start, I believe VG will be around for some time.

Agree totally,seems people talk a good one about wanting an old school pve game but don't want to give Vanguard another chance.

Thery would rather moan about DF2 not havinbg a pve server lol.

erictlewis

I had to laugh at this "Fixing, patching up, and making "the vision" playable".  Playable,  uhmm no.  I logged in after the free to play, the massive lag that we had when Vangaurd luanched was still in the game.

I have to say reached it's maturity, I don't think so.  Vangaurd will always be the game tha was.  It should have been so much better but SOE just about killed it off.  I really don't see this game getting any better.

 

eddieg50

Vanguard is a heck of a lot of fun to play, between vanguard and TSW I really get my mmo fix, and Vanguard feels a heck of a lot more mmo like than GW2. I love the f2p, I can come in and casually play without worrying about a monthly sub.  That being said they still need to fix the hitching and lag, you swing a sword and 3 seconds later it hits LOL, it is annoying, I have gotten used to it but I can see how others might quit because of it. The good news is when you get off the Island the lag gets a little better unless you go into the cities where it actually gets worse. Still with the gliches it is a better mmo than most

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VikingGamer

Vanguard has lots of great features and ideas hidden in it. The world is also top notch. The problem was in execution and timing. Everybody should play Vanguard for at least a few weeks or months just as a mind expanding exercise. In spite of how dated it now looks it still shows you what it possible.

nuttob

I was one of those that bought VG when it first came out.  I log in for the first time and realized that my computer specs were no where near good enough to play the game.  It was so bad I would wait 5 to 10 minutes only to see a screen that would go at a frame rate of maybe a frame every few seconds at best.  I wasn't going to spend several thousand dollars at that time just to play a game so I cancelled wasting $50 that I spent on the game.  I believe that was the main reason people quit at lev4 as earlier mentioned in this article.  I didn't even make it that far as the game was unplayable.

different

Played it from launch for a couple of years until my first baby was born. Despite its faults it's a great game, the dungeon runs were immense. I do remember the wow crowdin open beta screaming about the lack of waypoints and fast travel, personally though I loved the old school feeling. If I had 30 gb free I'd reinstall.

GolbezTheLion

Performance is exactly the same for me now, as it was way back then.

It's just bad and there is no excuse for it, especially when the hardware I have these days exceeds the recommend requirements by a ridiculous margin.

"Barely playable" seems more accurate, imho.

Kenze

Originally posted by GolbezTheLion

Performance is exactly the same for me now, as it was way back then.It's just bad and there is no excuse for it, especially when the hardware I have these days exceeds the recommend requirements by a ridiculous margin."Barely playable" seems more accurate, imho.

 

performance has actually got worse since it went f2p..I'm not sure what they did but its just like it was at release. go to any town or have more than 10 people in one chunk and its 10yrs ago all over again and the graphics by todays standards aren't with poor performance.

Paladrink

Again please put some damn AI bots for hire ingame, this game is unplayable if you do not have people to play with and sadly even with the f2p still wont cover a 10% of the damn world as its too huge.

Arclan

Originally posted by Paladrink
Again please put some damn AI bots for hire ingame, this game is unplayable if you do not have people to play with and sadly even with the f2p still wont cover a 10% of the damn world as its too huge.

Agreed VG was too big and felt empty.  VG is a social failure, not a technical failure.  Game mechanics made it so players neither had time nor reason to interact.  Hindsight is 20/20.  In theory, lots of button mashing and lack of downtime sounds cool; in the implementation it was impersonal. 

Evolution8

Silius & his lazyness killed VG, no more pvp server and terrible managment

Trueth

It should also be noted that Silius, aka Siliem Grant (or whatever), was largely responsible for the failure that is/was Vanguard. He completely borked gameplay and rather then simply fixing the game - he pursured the WoW model.

 

Silius was the lead developer, fyi.

SuperXero89

"At this point, I feel it important to note that while Vanguard was a failure in terms of both management and development, this wasn't the desired end result."

 

erictlewis

Originally posted by Trueth

It should also be noted that Silius, aka Siliem Grant (or whatever), was largely responsible for the failure that is/was Vanguard. He completely borked gameplay and rather then simply fixing the game - he pursured the WoW model.

 

Silius was the lead developer, fyi.

Silius still is the lead dev, and we are glad that they moved him out of eq2 because he was screwing up our itemization of weapons and armor so bad.   The guy is totaly clueless how to do anything original, he is all about copying somebody the work somebody else did. Now that he is back in vangaurd he is their problem now, good luck with that.

 

 

Letsinod

Pretty sure that Vanguard sold 250k copies, not 100k.  Regardless the fallout didn't have anything to do with the game setup, many people knew what it was going to be.  Rather the game was a bug filled mess.  My computer I had at the time of launch would constantly BSOD when launching VG.  The game would freeze,hitch, and you would fall through the world all the time.  Quests were broken and no one knew how to fix anything.  Also, never underestimate the amount of people that never tried the game when SOE basically got their feet in the door.  The beta forums were ABLAZE and I thought people were going to run a lynch mob in San Diego....

Badaboom

Vanguard used to have its place as a great mmo in terms of scope but I find that with the current crop of MMO's, vanguards model is antiquated.   Not to mention still buggy. Nothing like meleeing with a mob in hand to hand combat 20 feet apart.  

Velocinox

This article keeps bringing up 'The Vision'. That isn't anywhere to be seen in the current Vanguard. VG was Brad's Fight against WoW, and included XP loss, corpse runs and other 'old school' PITA gameplay. He thought WoW was too easy on players and Vanguard was to return to early EQ's punishment formula and forced grouping. NONE of that remains.

The XP loss was mitigated, the corpse runs eliminated, the forced grouping relaxed. Faction grinding eased. In short, it basically took all that noise that people keep making in the MMO forums about difficult games, put it to the test, and it FAILED.

Bugs, glitches, and broken mechanics aside, if there was a market for punishment based PITA gameplay like old EQ, then people would have stuck it out throught the bugs and supported it. As it is, it didn't get popular until after all that nonsense was removed or seriously curtailed.