Vangaurd Released and I'm loving it.

[Droxor]

After all the hassle I went through to play this game I finnaly got in, and let me tell you. . .it's everything I was hoping it would be and so much more. Everything we ever talked about this game having it has, but 100x's more. . .and I'm not even exagerating. The Diplomacy alone can be focused on by itself and take months to master. . .but in the end you can litteraly minipulate NPC armys and leaders. Crafting is essencial especially in this early stage of the game, but it wont be replaced with Raid Gear easily. . .there will always be an on demand call for regualr gear for the every day player. The auction house has a max limit on items, so as to keep from inflating the market (Like WoW did so often). Player housing. . .oh god. . .don't even get me started on how excited I am about player housing. . .let's just say. . .if you want a buisness. . .or guild hall. . .or storage shed. . .or vendor location. . .or crafting warehouse. . .you can take all that. . .and roll it into a player house. It is my prediction that larger, wealthier player houses with crafting areas, relaxation areas and areas for player to purchase goods. . .will turn in to world hot spots. And speaking of world. . .I can give you this for an esitmate on how big it is. On foot it takes aproximately 2 hours and 13 minutes to run from the highest point of a WoW contenint to the bottom. It took me 40 minuts to run 13% across an area that was less than 5% of one of the 4 continents in the game. . .you do the math. . .that's massive.

Although I was disapointed with the over all graphics at first. . .I realized that the amount of content they packed in to this game (including cities that are hundreds of feet tall) all zipped in to 1 giant map with no zone walls. . .I was impressed.

I can't wait to get home from work tommorow and start on the Diplomacy and Crafting. The combat is great. . .and I am sooooo tempted to continue with the combat. . .but I have been waiting to open my own buisness in VG since I heard about it's release 13 months ago.

[roadrunner]

First I will admit the game has a LOT of minor bugs at the moment from quests not working to mobs disappearing when fighting them. While annoying I have not found one that impedes game play. There are also server issues but in whole this launch is much smoother than WoW where servers would go offline for days. Lag and FPS could be better but then again it is better than the loot lag present in the early days of WoW.

With the disclaimers aside I second the game depth is amazing. If you want more than just killing mobs I would definitely recommend it.

Crafting in WoW is simplistic at best. It will take a few minutes to craft an item in VG and require you to go thru several steps to achieve the result. Along the way you invoke actions which will impact the progression and quality of the item and also encounter difficulties which impede you. At the end you may fail to create anything or if created the item will have a grade based on how far you raised its quality during the process. There are other factors like your attributes, gear and so on that affect crafting. Another neat thing about crafting is that you don't have to harvest to go up in levels. You can do work orders which required only purchased resources to finish. You also get paid and can get gear and other items by completing work orders.

Harvesting is about the same as WoW. See it hit it to raise your level. You need certain levels to harvest certain items. Eventually harvesting the lower items does not move your skill.

Diplomacy is fun. The interaction part is an addicting card game where you try to beat the NPC by utilizing your deck of cards. Once you finish the newbie diplomacy quest line (which is quite long but fun) you can embark on civil diplomacy. Also after you finish the first quest line you can also get a free horse (but it is 5% slower than the vendor horse) via a quest. With civic diplomacy you can grant bonuses to everyone around the city. For this reason it actually makes good sense to group with other diplomats so you all concentrate on moving the same city levers to achieve results faster. You can get gear by turning in items received doing civic diplomacy.

Adventuring is also good. The abilities in VG show more creativity than WoW. Play a Blood Mage and you will quickly see what I mean. There are dungeons for each level range which I have found enjoyable. No instancing. That is good and bad. It is more realistic that multiple groups may be in a dungeon at a time but you do have to wait for quest mob respawn sometimes. It will get better as the levels start to distribute more. The good thing about no instances is that a few times I had to log before a certain quest was completed. Since there are not instances I came back to the same place when I logged back in and was able to kill the last few mobs to complete the quest.

I found that I am not power leveling as I spend time doing diplomacy and crafting. I don't feel a need to gain levels as much as when I played WoW and CoV.

That's Road's review =]

[Tritonstone]

What server you guys on? Myself, anairt Uelamas and some other old school TE are on The FFA PVP server Tharridon (sp?) and having a blast.

[Droxor]

What server you guys on? Myself, anairt Uelamas and some other old school TE are on The FFA PVP server Tharridon (sp?) and having a blast.

My first toon was on there, but I got ganked way to much and switched to Shidreth.

I love the FFA PvP concept, in having to eventually hire body gaurds to help with your caravan ect. But I can't stand being onstantly inturupted while crafting. It takes long enough as is.

[BigBossMonkey]

Sounds good... I'll have to try it out.

[TheLoneTerran]

Same...after money, school, and apartment. Lol.

[rhonnin]

I'm finally getting a copy so I'll make toons to play with you guys, my main will still be on the RP server Florendyl.
I'm playing on a 10 day buddy key right now (courtesy of one of the Devs) but my copy should be here tomorrowish.

[PanzerFaust]

This summer, when I get money, I'll have to try it out. Next time I get an urge to play an MMO, I'll try thinking Vanguard instead of WoW.

Edit: Did a bit of reading on Vanguard, sounds like it's more group-centered than WoW. That could be nice if we all decided to play at the same time.

[Droxor]

Official Game magazines have been cited as predicting VG will be dead withing 18 months due to lack of subscriptions. It's been out 2 months and still has less Subs than DoD online did on release. . .and we all know what happened to DoD.

Also LotR and Connan already have more subs than VG, and they're not even out yet.

I fear the perfect MMO Fantasy I have been waiting for will be a flop like the last MMO I loved

[roadrunner]

I'm afraid that these predictions may be right. That is too bad as the game is actually pretty good when compared against everything else out there. Its stuck between the hardcore (they don't like the changes for the masses) and the masses (who are still playing wow).