Vanguard Review - Experienced PlayerFollow

The purpose of my review is to give a bit more background into Vanguard and somewhat of an update as to where the game is in my opinion. My background is an experienced veteran of 4-5 years in EQ with high level raiding experience in expansions up to and including Depths of Darkhollow. I had a much shorter lived experience with World of Warcraft that includes leveling up to 60, doing a few raids, and leveling a bit with the new expansion before moving over to play VG. In this review I will mainly address the adventuring sphere of VG, as this is my main experience at this point, but I will give my perception of crafting and diplomacy. In addition, I'll provide some information as to how PVP is working and the overall state of the game. I'm not going to dig down and be complete with specifics; it is assumed you know the basics of mechanics inside of Vanguard.

Adventuring Sphere:

I'll start of to say that the content in the world is basically 60% complete. You won't notice it in the starting areas, but about 40% of the map you see of the world contains nothing but land. Part of this is by design, but you can clearly see places where structures have been implemented, but content has not been added. This being said, content is something that is being added about weekly by Vanguard, but IMO the process is going extremely slow. My feeling is that slow, but surely they will populate the massive world they've created, but I hope that users allow them this grace period.

In their defense, the 40% they've completed is more than enough to provide a solid gaming experience up to level 50. The big thing to say about content to this point is that what is there is very well thought out and it feels to be in place in the world they've designed. This contrasts greatly to EQ2 where stuff just seemed to be sitting there and it felt like you were running through a cardboard setup. Things like crocs hanging out by the rivers and hiding just on the edge of water and moving in and out, wyverns flying around in the mountains. The truly best example is River Valley where you are fighting in a valley, but can see mobs flying thousands of feet above you. It really gives the game a true 3D sense in that you know mobs are above you instead of just on a 2D plain.

Mob design in Vanguard is 2nd to none at this point. People are raving about the beautiful graphics and world, but no one has mentioned how well animated and designed the mobs are. I've seen friendly Dragons that truly fly around instead of run, giant anaconda snakes that scare you the pieces the first time you fight them because of the level of detail, snakes that actually slither as they move on the ground, monk like humans that perform a variety of interesting kicks as they fight you, ...I can go on and on. I can't wait to see what they are doing with high level content, but this is one area they need to be given credit for. I'm truly exciting as I'm exploring to see the mobs as they are so different and well done.

Let's talk about difficulty as that seems to be something that is simply stated in current reviews as only being for the hardcore gamer. First, let me begin with solo/group content and how the user decides what he/she wants to do. Vanguard has taken the approach of characterizing mobs as 1-6 dots based on the designed intent of the mob. In my opinion, I wish they would remove the user from being able to see the dots as it adds a bit of complexity to game for the user to figure it out on their own. This is one of the ramifications of the game trying to be more user friendly, and it doesn't really deter that much from the immersion. Unlike EQ, soloing is an option to do as you work on solo quests or just adventure into an area you like and randomly kill mobs placed there. Solers do so see measurable experience gains and loot drops. In many cases there are 3 dot mobs that can be attempted solo, and if geared well, some classes (many classes currently solo slightly better than others) can progress while killing 3 dot mobs. By having solid solo content you can log on and play for 30 minutes or whatever and see gains without having to jump into the group world. In addition, it provides reason to wanting to gear your character as strong as possible - so you can solo better.

However, you can earn about 2x the experience rate by joining a group and killing 4 dot mobs in a group grind. In the current form, these areas don't start to materialize until around level 12 or so. Essentially, you see large gains by soloing until your 20s, whereas you begin to see that you can solo and do quests for 1x experience, or grind and do group quests for 2-3x experience. The metrics are very well designed to provide a gaming experience for whatever you are in the mood for.

The true beauty of what Vanguard has done with difficulty and grouping experience are the boss mob encounters in the group setting. You will spend around 10-20 minutes fighting most boss encounters even starting in your high teens. Just because you have the appropriately leveled/geared characters does not ensure you will be able to kill X boss. There are mechanics specific to each event that make it difficult - the users must learn the fight or be able to react very quickly to things going on, or the group will fail. This involves the group handling adds effectively, preventing the mob from accomplishing certain abilities, or something else that the group must strategize to accomplish. It is certainly the case, that inept and inexperienced groups will not be able to defeat certain encounters.

With such hard encounters, you would think that the old setup of needing a cleric, well geared tank, cc, and three dps classes would emerge. This leads me into being excited to say that the class diversification makes forming a group much easier to do than in EQ. When talking about classes, there is no clear choice of what you need. There may be events where certain classes are better than others, but it is based on the event - not an overall riding theme. For example, an event that is shorter but needs fast healing - you may want a cleric as they have fast/large heals. However, for an event that is 15-20 minutes long such as Kronus in uCiS, you may opt for a blood mage or disciple as they provide more damage and have more mana sustainability that a cleric. A disciple, for example, heals as it deals damage, thus the class cannot run out of healing power. As for crowd control - rogues have it, sorcerors have it, psionists have it, necros have it, and clerics have it, ECT. There is a lot of class overlap that makes building a group much easier to do.

As for the specific character operation, it is quite tedious. I play a warrior and I must click a button on the UI almost every time I wish to swing. The user is constantly engaged during the battle as the more involved you get, the more dps you can do. This is by design I'm sure, but it lessens the amount of group interaction that happens. Many see this is a negative aspect of the design, however, many see it as a less boring attack phase.

Crafting and Diplomacy:

I'm not a crafter or diplomat so my review here is quite limited, but the adventurer can see the benefits of both at this point. Having a boat is an elite icon amongst the community and it makes traveling for PvP and general reason much more viable. You can buy a boat, but it is going to cost you. I assure you that crafters are gaining much wealth as the needs to buy things are definitely there. It's also fun to see rare trees in the environment and see a group member run over and chop it down - just unique.

As for Diplomacy, I've only encountered one need for a diplomat at this point. In a major quest line, there is an extremely hard battle that can be avoided with diplomatic skills. It's one of the events that limit many players from wearing the main "elite" set of armor in the game. The more they insert barriers that need diplomacy in the game, the more I think you see users interested in this line.

State of the Game:

The overall state of the game worries me. At this point, there are not enough players playing to use the 60% of the content that is implemented. There are many dungeons getting no use and probably didn't get any use for an entire 24 hour period. The cities are setup in areas to be vibrant, but there just isn't they player base to make it so. I believe they have started off with too many servers at launch and this is hurting the overall perception of the vibrantness of the game. Hopefully, there is steady growth, but if not, so much design work will go to waste.

Why is the player base so low? In my opinion, it has to be because of the technical requirements to play the game. I know many WoW players that would love to try out Vanguard, but they simply can't upgrade their machine to do so. Quite simply, you need an advanced video card, 2 gigs of ram and at least 3gig processor to run the game at a useable level. Only top end gaming machines are running the game smoothly at this time. Will the game die out before the general population has machines to run the game? That remains to be seen.

PvP in the game is basically a joke. The classes were designed for the above mentioned PvE mechanics and there are currently exploits with certain classes that make competition obsolete. There is no comparison to the PvP balance that WoW has, and I'm not sure balancing this is even close to the top priorities that Vanguard should have. That said, this is all coming from my experience as a warrior. Classes can currently snare a warrior, invis run somewhere and nuke, invis...repeat. I can attest that even with the best gear available at a certain level, many classes do not have a chance in 1v1 PvP. In a group setting, I'm sure the exploits and unbalanced features become just a chaotic mess.

I'll move on to the economy of the game. At the current state, there is extreme item inflation. By farming up a bit of silver, a user can go buy items that are not attainable at their current level. As a matter of fact, very rarely does something drop that is an upgrade for anyone that is managing their wealth right. This is because items are entering the world at too fast of a rate and none are leaving as very little is soul bound. I've never used the option of binding my gear to me and making it soul bound, as I'm always confident that I can get to my corpse. On the hindsight, the best of the best gear requires quest flags to wear and is soul bound, so maybe all is not bad. The higher you get, the less of a problem it is and if you are just starting out, go to the broker and you can become extremely well geared for just a fraction of money. One mechanic that is interesting is that you can only sell 10 items in one region at a time. This forces me to sell my 10 best options and sell all the rest to the vender. Maybe this is forcing items out of the system...?

Overall, the game is extremely fun to play in its current state. There are glaring problems as mentioned, but I'm sure they will be ironed out if the player base gives them the time they need. I encourage you if haven't tried Vanguard yet to give it a try (assuming you can get a system to run it). People have said the game is mix of EQ and WoW, and they are right. To be more specific, it is the EQ theory and mechanics as a base with a WoW flavor. If people give the game some time and continue to invite friends it can be truly an amazing and possibly the true resurrection of EQ.

It does. Google 8800gtx vanguard problems. The problem is the game is poorly coded and needs some optimization desperately. With a super high end system it barely runs any better than your system does and thats the real problem it should be many times faster. My system is an athlon 64 3000+ @ 2.3 with 2GB of XMS pro and a 7800GS and i get about the same framerate as you do with my settings. My friend has an e6700 @3.6GHZ with 2GB of ballistix (Dunno what he has them running at) and an 8800GTS and with the same settings he gets about 10 more FPS than i do. It should be at least 2-3 times what i get.

I love vanguard im just taking a small break until a little more work has been done to it (Dont really have time lately either). But the OP has a point, to run this game on max it takes the absolute best of everything in your system to barely be playable and that really is not acceptable.

Edited, Apr 30th 2007 9:55pm by notinterested