I wonder if CN got all the assets for closed games when they bought it. Could they/would they re-launch it through crowdsourcing to offset the improvements? Would you pay for it if they went the crowdsourcing route?
I probably would. I'd love to see them do that for SWG as well. That is if the files aren't actually lost for reals.
The only thing Vanguard prooved at launch: theres not enough people interested in such game
The only thing Vanguard proved during its lifetime: theres not enough people interested in such game in that niche even if it has AAA production value (cost)
Which people are those? The ones that want a half finished buggy game with hardware requirements that outpace what 99% of gamers have?
The only thing Vanguard proved (once again) is that if you release a game filled with bugs, has terrible performance issues and is generally unfinished, then yes people will flee. If the developer strips all the development resources, no one will come back.
I'm not saying Vanguard was an awesome game. For some I'm sure it was and others not. The point is that a niche game in current times could easily be 500,000 players. Which was once considered the runaway success for the biggest game of its time.
Developers currently keep aiming for millions of players with gameplay designed to appeal to everyone and end up with a game that appeals to no one, because it doesn't solve any issues with current games or advance gameplay in a way that will pull gamers back into MMO or away from their current MMO.
Yes, and rehashing old games like EQ/Vanguard or w/e wont do teh trick either.
EvE is a niche game and it has 500k subs. Its eqsquisite just like WoW is.
genre needs new ideas and design shift, not endless rehash in a bit different variety/skin
The only thing Vanguard prooved at launch: theres not enough people interested in such game
The only thing Vanguard proved during its lifetime: theres not enough people interested in such game in that niche even if it has AAA production value (cost)
the problem with vanguard were technical issues, during my whole time playing vanguard, I have never heard a single person say
"I am not interested in this type of game"
the gameplay of vanguard was actually one of it's best assets, it was the bugs and non stop crashes that drove people off, not the gameplay or world, which was rather amazing
Technical issues are what is wrong with Skyrim, the game design is sound hence it's popularity. Technical problems won't keep a good game down for long. Boring systems, lack of real direction, poor functionality, these are issues that will keep a game down.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
The only thing Vanguard prooved at launch: theres not enough people interested in such game
The only thing Vanguard proved during its lifetime: theres not enough people interested in such game in that niche even if it has AAA production value (cost)
the problem with vanguard were technical issues, during my whole time playing vanguard, I have never heard a single person say
"I am not interested in this type of game"
the gameplay of vanguard was actually one of it's best assets, it was the bugs and non stop crashes that drove people off, not the gameplay or world, which was rather amazing
Technical issues are what is wrong with Skyrim, the game design is sound hence it's popularity. Technical problems won't keep a good game down for long. Boring systems, lack of real direction, poor functionality, these are issues that will keep a game down.
Meh, I don't know if I'd say that. I mean ES games always have comically-hilarious bugs. They don't however, have bugs that would frustrate you into not playing them. Like crashing all the time, losing data, etc., etc.
Although, I was able to buy and sell a quest item (that I didn't know was a quest item at the time) in Morrowind which, later in the game, prevented me from progressing after 100 hours of play. I never went back after that.
Originally posted by mogi67 Asheron's Call was better in my opinion.
Fix it for ya.
Nah AC was actually better in a large number of ways.
Edit:
In fact its so dramatically better that its the only "First gen" game I would say that people should give an honest month's worth of play time in just to see how skewed their view of modern MMO is.
Its not perfect by a long shot, but the things it did and had working versus many modern MMOs attempting and failing while claiming these were "new" features is pretty ... well ... stark.
I'll say it again "in your opinion" unless your saying that everyone else agrees with you which any sensible person who understands what the word 'opinion' means wouldn't.
The only thing Vanguard prooved at launch: theres not enough people interested in such game
The only thing Vanguard proved during its lifetime: theres not enough people interested in such game in that niche even if it has AAA production value (cost)
the problem with vanguard were technical issues, during my whole time playing vanguard, I have never heard a single person say
"I am not interested in this type of game"
the gameplay of vanguard was actually one of it's best assets, it was the bugs and non stop crashes that drove people off, not the gameplay or world, which was rather amazing
Technical issues are what is wrong with Skyrim, the game design is sound hence it's popularity. Technical problems won't keep a good game down for long. Boring systems, lack of real direction, poor functionality, these are issues that will keep a game down.
This is kind of strange because I almost 100% percent certain I said on these forums multiple times near the time of release for Vanguard:
"I am not interested in this type of game"
Not that Vanguard didn't also have technical problems. Not that Vanguard wasn't possibly a good game after release. Maybe it was, people seemed to be fairly consistently in favor of the class implementations. Not much of a class based RPG person myself but that's just me. Frankly because I was not interested in this type of game I was not that concerned about its technical problems.
However I think it important to note Vanguard had far more than simply "technical" problems they also had very incomplete implementations of things since the project was managed incompetently. That is not a statement about the quality of its overall design or even quality of implementation. Nor is it an opinion. Vanguard was managed incompetently up to the point SOE bought it out. I have nothing to say after that point, maybe SOE was also incompetent I dunno. But prior to that it was managed incompetently.
So you really actually can't compare it to various Bethesda games (which have had some pretty serious tehcnical problems, for example a real bad one in FO3 that crashed your game at every point along a certain area of main quest). In the Bethesda game you can say to yourself something like "This would be great if only I didn't crash". In the context of Vanguard at release you couldn't even say that as you simply didn't even have enough to even make that educated estimation in a number of cases.
Now later on SOE put major work into the game and that is a different story that i don't really care about as I was never interested in playing a rehash of EQ which was just a rehash of DIKU MUDs and I was never all that into the DIKU MUD way of doing RPGs to begin with. So I never really kept up with it after the SOE drama.
Vanguard had its issues but I'll give it to the game for being the most recent mmo that actually felt like a real world and had a sense of wonder about it. And that's just sad that it is the most recent one being as old, and now shutdown, as it is
Yes, and rehashing old games like EQ/Vanguard or w/e wont do teh trick either.
EvE is a niche game and it has 500k subs. Its eqsquisite just like WoW is.
genre needs new ideas and design shift, not endless rehash in a bit different variety/skin
Vanguard had a lot of new ideas (diplomancy, defensive targeting, etc) and evolution of existing ideas (melee healers, non-instanced housing, etc), but that is beside the point.
The point I was making is that a game could be made to target any specific segment of gamers, not just EQ grind hards. It could be any segment of player.
Right now the market is stuck rehashing WoW over and over. Very boring.
Yes, and rehashing old games like EQ/Vanguard or w/e wont do teh trick either.
EvE is a niche game and it has 500k subs. Its eqsquisite just like WoW is.
genre needs new ideas and design shift, not endless rehash in a bit different variety/skin
Vanguard had a lot of new ideas (diplomancy, defensive targeting, etc) and evolution of existing ideas (melee healers, non-instanced housing, etc), but that is beside the point.
The point I was making is that a game could be made to target any specific segment of gamers, not just EQ grind hards. It could be any segment of player.
Right now the market is stuck rehashing WoW over and over. Very boring.
Ideas are one thing, implementing those ideas in a functional manner is comething completely different.
And evolution is not flawles, some evolution just leads to dead end (like melee healers for instance)
Targeting specific audience is good, but even then product has to be financially viable (if you dont have sugar daddy that will just pay all the bills)
The thing with whole EQ and its remake is: you either copy the original, which is pretty much very low demand or you start evolving it and implementing "modern features" which would turn out as just WoW with a twist, because WoW (and its clones) is evolved EQ
Originally posted by LisaFlexy22 Vanguard had its issues but I'll give it to the game for being the most recent mmo that actually felt like a real world and had a sense of wonder about it. And that's just sad that it is the most recent one being as old, and now shutdown, as it is
Agreed.
Bugs aside, Vanguard was really enjoyable. Even with all the themepark SOE injected it with, it still played like a very open ended adventure where there was so much to do and see you barely knew where to start. A real choose your own adventure where the game sucks you in and you feel part of it. They simply don't make MMOs like that any more because if it isn't streamlined and simplified into oblivion, you can't hope to compete with WoW... and that folks has been the motivating factor behind mmo studios and investors for the last decade.
Vanguard, even if it had high production quality, was a horrible game. People didn't play it because it was buggy, people didn;t play it because the game was horrible.
This is the truth, sadly.
SWG was this way too. Take off the rose colored glasses, and it is/was painfully obvious how poorly coded and optimized SWG was.
Great ideas. For sure. Some really, really cool ideas they put into SWG. Unique.
But the execution was PISS poor from launch all the way to the game's death.
I remember at one point, about a year before it finally shut down, creating a trial account to see if the game had any redeemable qualities worth playing.
The EXACT same animation and rubber-banding bugs and glitches during the opening tutorial stuff as were in the game back in 2003.
Pathetic.
If it isn't obvious yet, execution is more important than the ideas themselves, apparently. The games that are/have been really successful in this genre? All about execution. That "feel" of polish and smooth interaction. Just "feels" well built.
Games that have had it? WoW - GW1/2 - FFXIV: ARR, EvE, and to some extent SW:TOR & Rift (on the fence.)
Look where those games are now, versus games like SWG, EQ2, WAR, AoC, TSW, Vanguard, ArcheAge... the list of mega-hype and the flop/flounder goes on and on.
Those piss poor quality games had some GREAT ideas, and some GREAT systems in place, but the execution was SO bad, people really can feel the difference almost immediately.
It's the most important thing in game development, but nearly impossible to explain and quantify.
Companies like Blizzard have that secret recipe locked away. Everything they do comes out with the same feeling. Warcraft, WoW, SC, Hearthstone, Diablo, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch...
I don't know if it is just better talent - or more money?
But whatever it is, it's pretty easy to tell which games will "fail" within the first few minutes.
Very well said. I believe people tend to forget these types of details when they look upon found memories of the past.
I had high hopes for Vanguard when it came out, but I cancelled a few weeks later. I'm not sure when I received the email from Sony, but it was an apology email for the poor launch of Vanguard and they gave me 3 free months of EQ2 for my trouble.
Originally posted by netglen I had high hopes for Vanguard when it came out, but I cancelled a few weeks later. I'm not sure when I received the email from Sony, but it was an apology email for the poor launch of Vanguard and they gave me 3 free months of EQ2 for my trouble.
I wonder if SOE had that planned? Hmm... It makes perfect sense to me.
I told myself not to get sucked into a debate about Vanguard because the topic was to be about THE LAST MMO MADE, and Vanguard was the best example. But here is my opinion :
Sony nor Sigel never knew how to program games. Both Everquest 2 and Vanguard were coded poorly. Everquest 2 caught a little break because people were told the game is made for better computers than what the player had and adding that very little computation at the time anyway. Character models looked more human than Blizzards World of Warcraft, but plastic never the less. The environment was worst. Rocks that floated above the ground, buildings weren't shaped right, and shorelines that were square as if someone made them with a straight edge ruler. Players had to run at minimum specs so the ground looked like a green dull mat, and some catchy elevator music that sounded nice but never fit any environment. Now this isn't even considering the game really didn't even play well for almost anyone.
Well Brad and Sigel went on there own to make Vanguard. The same concept was used. Poor everything as for design. Hence we had a mess. Millions were let down causing hatred....No reason to go deeper than that.
Now here is where Evil Sony stepped in and purchased Vanguard.
First let me start off by saying that Sony was never big on fixing there games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft. They embrace the attitude to make and sell expansion's instead....Blizzard fixed there stuff for free for a long time making there WOW excel.
Anyway, Sony took Vanguard and did the bare minimum to make it at least a little playable. They added a necessary starting area and did very little amount of coding on a unrepeatable mess to put it out there to make money. Sony never liked repair, no money in it !
Sony is not very big on marketing either unless it's a paid expansion. With little or no effort they re-launched Vanguard if you could call it that. The game barely playable still worked out no better than the original launch....I don't think Evil Sony cared very much. They were happy just owning the game that was similar to their own.
From this point to shut down this is how Vanguard played out :
- Marketing was a few mailers sent out to ex-vanguard players to come back, little to no advertisement other than that.
- The game was still broken.
- Thousands of players cycled through and actually enjoyed the game. BUT NEVER AT THE SAME TIME, leaving the population very low in a game made for community.
- Later F2P. We all know how much of a bad idea that was with an old mmo.
Vanguard could have survived and EXCELLED if fixed and Marketed properly. A major rally to fill the world was needed but never happened !.......A total re-make of the game and call it something different would have been welcome but Sony doesn't care !
Vanguard could have survived and EXCELLED if fixed and Marketed properly. A major rally to fill the world was needed but never happened !.......A total re-make of the game and call it something different would have been welcome but Sony doesn't care !
Could it..? Very few games ever bounce back from a fudge release, final fantasy being the only real good example i can think of. Most other games remain in a state of "keeping afloat"
It was old... it looked old... It was not very user friendly. No i do not think it would have excelled... If nothing else because the very fact that many people here seems to be in denial of... the MARKET moved on... The young teenagers that made these games possible grew up, got jobs and formed a family. In their place a new generation with new expectations filled the void.
Like it or not... But "we" used to be the people who just wanted glitzy GFX´s and did not see the beauty of text-based adventures... And now we look at the people who just want quick games and mobile apps... Not realising we use to be them...
Dave J said it himself, people want to brag about what they can do and what they have. You can't say that you went under water and found a rock, nobody cares. I care, but that would be immersion.
Vanguard was pretty good at first - it was some thing different and I think that's what I liked the most. Games that were different trying to do some thing new.
Now that SOE has sold off this idea to a corporate investment firm, we will see change die.
And the masses cheered on while the dusty blanket wrapped once upon a timers cry silently in the smog ridden pollution called pro(fits)gress.
Vanguard was the perfect example of how do things wrong.
Not all ideas were bad, mind you, but their execution ranged from very poor to utterly bad.
Vanguard is the definition of how and MMO should NOT me made.
Except maybe for the world, which was quite nice to explore. But MMOs have to be more than landscape simulators to keep the interest of the players for longer periods.
I agree. The game was an absolute mess. All of it's positive aspects was drowned out by the bugs and instability of the rest.
Vanguard, even if it had high production quality, was a horrible game. People didn't play it because it was buggy, people didn;t play it because the game was horrible.
One of the best MMO's Ive ever played, class depth was unsurpassed to this day. Dungeons and gear progression better than any game I've played. A world so enormous I never saw it all in over 2 years of play. Crafting nothing has come close to it except perhaps SWG. It certainly was too much game for most. I understand that the simpler games are far more popular.
Check my post history. The last thing I want is simpler MMO's. With that being said, VG's combat was too slow, the animations were not fluid, the art style was atrocious and the UI was cluttered as hell. The premise of the game was great but as I said if there was no bugs it'd still be a bad game.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Despite all the love, I found Vanguard to be among the new and hollow generation of mmos. The enemies died in seconds with undetectable challenge. Your life filled before you could get to the next mob, and your equipment sets were completed in a single level, further exacerbating the challenge less combat.
graphics were fantastic though, as was music, mood, and lore.
Despite all the love, I found Vanguard to be among the new and hollow generation of mmos. The enemies died in seconds with undetectable challenge. Your life filled before you could get to the next mob, and your equipment sets were completed in a single level, further exacerbating the challenge less combat.
graphics were fantastic though, as was music, mood, and lore.
The game you tried was when SOE had dumbed it down to solo mode.
The game Vanguard, that was shut down was far from the original in both difficulty and realistic travel possibilities.
I played it with friends from day 1. You needed full groups of 6 to do dungeons, and the dungeons were awesome!
I logged on 3 months before shutdown and played a little. I experienced what you did. The game was super easy mode compared to what I used to play. The rat dungeon by the sea city Khal used to be very tough with a group. I soloed it with a new necromancer that I made.
Vanguard was a classic example of great concept and crap execution. I beta'ed it with a love hate relationship but never bought or subbed. The odd part was I never applied for the beta becasue I was busy with Lotro's beta and release ( I think that was the same time period ) and never bothered to apply for Vanguard, then one day in my inbox was an invitation. At that point in beta it was for the most part unplayable and only a couple of areas were open. When I frst recieved an invite the FPS was in single digits even with a better than average machine. Things improved before launch but it still never hooked me. Could have been the best game ever had it been left in the oven a while longer. just my opinion
Here are a few things people are not taking into account :
- Looking at Vanguard now 2015, it's an old game. You can't judge it by todays standards of what we should have now.
- The idea of an mmo was there. If you find it boring, broken or what ever, this shouldn't reflect on what an mmo is.
- This Post is not really about Vanguard.....It's an example of what a Massive Multi-player Online Roll Playing Game is, just like
FF11
EQ1 & 2
LOTRO
Vanilla WoW
And several more
SURE, they are old mmos. They are hard to use as examples because THEY ARE OLD !....There is nothing to compare because MMO's have stopped being made.....Vanguard was basically the last !
Here are a few things people are not taking into account :
- Looking at Vanguard now 2015, it's an old game. You can't judge it by todays standards of what we should have now.
- The idea of an mmo was there. If you find it boring, broken or what ever, this shouldn't reflect on what an mmo is.
- This Post is not really about Vanguard.....It's an example of what a Massive Multi-player Online Roll Playing Game is, just like
FF11
EQ1 & 2
LOTRO
Vanilla WoW
And several more
SURE, they are old mmos. They are hard to use as examples because THEY ARE OLD !....There is nothing to compare because MMO's have stopped being made.....Vanguard was basically the last !
Comments
I wonder if CN got all the assets for closed games when they bought it. Could they/would they re-launch it through crowdsourcing to offset the improvements? Would you pay for it if they went the crowdsourcing route?
I probably would. I'd love to see them do that for SWG as well. That is if the files aren't actually lost for reals.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
Yes, and rehashing old games like EQ/Vanguard or w/e wont do teh trick either.
EvE is a niche game and it has 500k subs. Its eqsquisite just like WoW is.
genre needs new ideas and design shift, not endless rehash in a bit different variety/skin
Technical issues are what is wrong with Skyrim, the game design is sound hence it's popularity. Technical problems won't keep a good game down for long. Boring systems, lack of real direction, poor functionality, these are issues that will keep a game down.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Meh, I don't know if I'd say that. I mean ES games always have comically-hilarious bugs. They don't however, have bugs that would frustrate you into not playing them. Like crashing all the time, losing data, etc., etc.
Although, I was able to buy and sell a quest item (that I didn't know was a quest item at the time) in Morrowind which, later in the game, prevented me from progressing after 100 hours of play. I never went back after that.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
----------------
This is kind of strange because I almost 100% percent certain I said on these forums multiple times near the time of release for Vanguard:
"I am not interested in this type of game"
Not that Vanguard didn't also have technical problems. Not that Vanguard wasn't possibly a good game after release. Maybe it was, people seemed to be fairly consistently in favor of the class implementations. Not much of a class based RPG person myself but that's just me. Frankly because I was not interested in this type of game I was not that concerned about its technical problems.
However I think it important to note Vanguard had far more than simply "technical" problems they also had very incomplete implementations of things since the project was managed incompetently. That is not a statement about the quality of its overall design or even quality of implementation. Nor is it an opinion. Vanguard was managed incompetently up to the point SOE bought it out. I have nothing to say after that point, maybe SOE was also incompetent I dunno. But prior to that it was managed incompetently.
So you really actually can't compare it to various Bethesda games (which have had some pretty serious tehcnical problems, for example a real bad one in FO3 that crashed your game at every point along a certain area of main quest). In the Bethesda game you can say to yourself something like "This would be great if only I didn't crash". In the context of Vanguard at release you couldn't even say that as you simply didn't even have enough to even make that educated estimation in a number of cases.
Now later on SOE put major work into the game and that is a different story that i don't really care about as I was never interested in playing a rehash of EQ which was just a rehash of DIKU MUDs and I was never all that into the DIKU MUD way of doing RPGs to begin with. So I never really kept up with it after the SOE drama.
Vanguard had a lot of new ideas (diplomancy, defensive targeting, etc) and evolution of existing ideas (melee healers, non-instanced housing, etc), but that is beside the point.
The point I was making is that a game could be made to target any specific segment of gamers, not just EQ grind hards. It could be any segment of player.
Right now the market is stuck rehashing WoW over and over. Very boring.
Ideas are one thing, implementing those ideas in a functional manner is comething completely different.
And evolution is not flawles, some evolution just leads to dead end (like melee healers for instance)
Targeting specific audience is good, but even then product has to be financially viable (if you dont have sugar daddy that will just pay all the bills)
The thing with whole EQ and its remake is: you either copy the original, which is pretty much very low demand or you start evolving it and implementing "modern features" which would turn out as just WoW with a twist, because WoW (and its clones) is evolved EQ
Agreed.
Bugs aside, Vanguard was really enjoyable. Even with all the themepark SOE injected it with, it still played like a very open ended adventure where there was so much to do and see you barely knew where to start. A real choose your own adventure where the game sucks you in and you feel part of it. They simply don't make MMOs like that any more because if it isn't streamlined and simplified into oblivion, you can't hope to compete with WoW... and that folks has been the motivating factor behind mmo studios and investors for the last decade.
Very well said. I believe people tend to forget these types of details when they look upon found memories of the past.
I told myself not to get sucked into a debate about Vanguard because the topic was to be about THE LAST MMO MADE, and Vanguard was the best example. But here is my opinion :
Sony nor Sigel never knew how to program games. Both Everquest 2 and Vanguard were coded poorly. Everquest 2 caught a little break because people were told the game is made for better computers than what the player had and adding that very little computation at the time anyway. Character models looked more human than Blizzards World of Warcraft, but plastic never the less. The environment was worst. Rocks that floated above the ground, buildings weren't shaped right, and shorelines that were square as if someone made them with a straight edge ruler. Players had to run at minimum specs so the ground looked like a green dull mat, and some catchy elevator music that sounded nice but never fit any environment. Now this isn't even considering the game really didn't even play well for almost anyone.
Well Brad and Sigel went on there own to make Vanguard. The same concept was used. Poor everything as for design. Hence we had a mess. Millions were let down causing hatred....No reason to go deeper than that.
Now here is where Evil Sony stepped in and purchased Vanguard.
First let me start off by saying that Sony was never big on fixing there games like Blizzard's World of Warcraft. They embrace the attitude to make and sell expansion's instead....Blizzard fixed there stuff for free for a long time making there WOW excel.
Anyway, Sony took Vanguard and did the bare minimum to make it at least a little playable. They added a necessary starting area and did very little amount of coding on a unrepeatable mess to put it out there to make money. Sony never liked repair, no money in it !
Sony is not very big on marketing either unless it's a paid expansion. With little or no effort they re-launched Vanguard if you could call it that. The game barely playable still worked out no better than the original launch....I don't think Evil Sony cared very much. They were happy just owning the game that was similar to their own.
From this point to shut down this is how Vanguard played out :
- Marketing was a few mailers sent out to ex-vanguard players to come back, little to no advertisement other than that.
- The game was still broken.
- Thousands of players cycled through and actually enjoyed the game. BUT NEVER AT THE SAME TIME, leaving the population very low in a game made for community.
- Later F2P. We all know how much of a bad idea that was with an old mmo.
Vanguard could have survived and EXCELLED if fixed and Marketed properly. A major rally to fill the world was needed but never happened !.......A total re-make of the game and call it something different would have been welcome but Sony doesn't care !
Could it..? Very few games ever bounce back from a fudge release, final fantasy being the only real good example i can think of. Most other games remain in a state of "keeping afloat"
It was old... it looked old... It was not very user friendly. No i do not think it would have excelled... If nothing else because the very fact that many people here seems to be in denial of... the MARKET moved on... The young teenagers that made these games possible grew up, got jobs and formed a family. In their place a new generation with new expectations filled the void.
Like it or not... But "we" used to be the people who just wanted glitzy GFX´s and did not see the beauty of text-based adventures... And now we look at the people who just want quick games and mobile apps... Not realising we use to be them...
This have been a good conversation
Dave J said it himself, people want to brag about what they can do and what they have. You can't say that you went under water and found a rock, nobody cares. I care, but that would be immersion.
Vanguard was pretty good at first - it was some thing different and I think that's what I liked the most. Games that were different trying to do some thing new.
Now that SOE has sold off this idea to a corporate investment firm, we will see change die.
And the masses cheered on while the dusty blanket wrapped once upon a timers cry silently in the smog ridden pollution called pro(fits)gress.
I agree. The game was an absolute mess. All of it's positive aspects was drowned out by the bugs and instability of the rest.
Check my post history. The last thing I want is simpler MMO's. With that being said, VG's combat was too slow, the animations were not fluid, the art style was atrocious and the UI was cluttered as hell. The premise of the game was great but as I said if there was no bugs it'd still be a bad game.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Despite all the love, I found Vanguard to be among the new and hollow generation of mmos. The enemies died in seconds with undetectable challenge. Your life filled before you could get to the next mob, and your equipment sets were completed in a single level, further exacerbating the challenge less combat.
graphics were fantastic though, as was music, mood, and lore.
The game you tried was when SOE had dumbed it down to solo mode.
The game Vanguard, that was shut down was far from the original in both difficulty and realistic travel possibilities.
I played it with friends from day 1. You needed full groups of 6 to do dungeons, and the dungeons were awesome!
I logged on 3 months before shutdown and played a little. I experienced what you did. The game was super easy mode compared to what I used to play. The rat dungeon by the sea city Khal used to be very tough with a group. I soloed it with a new necromancer that I made.
I miss DAoC
Here are a few things people are not taking into account :
- Looking at Vanguard now 2015, it's an old game. You can't judge it by todays standards of what we should have now.
- The idea of an mmo was there. If you find it boring, broken or what ever, this shouldn't reflect on what an mmo is.
- This Post is not really about Vanguard.....It's an example of what a Massive Multi-player Online Roll Playing Game is, just like
FF11
EQ1 & 2
LOTRO
Vanilla WoW
And several more
SURE, they are old mmos. They are hard to use as examples because THEY ARE OLD !....There is nothing to compare because MMO's have stopped being made.....Vanguard was basically the last !
Ford T also stopped being produced.