Filed under: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
My bloodmage dinged 10 last night in Vanguard. I was able to purchase his beginner’s mount with what silver I’d squirreled away from harvesting ore and stone and selling vendor trash. I was also lucky enough to have an uncommon lowbie chestpiece drop off one of the mobs in the library outside Mekalia which garnered me a wopping silver piece.
So I reached level 10 in four nights of casual play (2-3 hours an evening)–and that was with plenty of experience loss and mucking about not knowing what the hell I was doing. I acquired a new combat form that I haven’t had the chance to experiment with and it seems a bunch of new tabs popped up on my taskbar.
I made my way to Kahl, which is the human city on Qalia. There’s a lot more action here player-wise, but the city struck me as a little sparse in character, lacking the coziness and flavor of my toon’s gnomish home in Mekalia. I guess humans just aren’t as touchy-feely as us gnomes, embodied well in some very cool Kahlian architecture I spotted. The entrance to the town’s harbor is flanked by two imposing statues that really lend a harsh, militaristic feel to this port city.
I’ll have to find some trouble to get into there once I’ve had my fill of questing around Neamsong Bunker. I need to break in my new mount, so I’m opting for the open plains and plateaus until the novelty of not having to run everywhere gets old.
It was a busy weekend. My new comp was delivered, I got it up and running, spent Sunday afternoon installing a couple games, and blew a good part of my evening behind the keyboard. I threw down an unhealthy chunk of change on this new rig, including the purchase of a 512M NVIDIA 8800 GT graphics card–NVIDIA’s “affordable” answer to their DX10 compatible cards. This baby runs like a dream.
I’m having a ball as a born again newbie in Vanguard. Adventuring is basically what we’ve come to expect from fantasy MMOs. Very fun, but nothing that strays too far outside the norm. I must say, the classes are very fun and diverge a bit from the standard fantasy fare. I created a gnome bloodmage and have not yet begun to uncover a fraction of all the cool things this very unique and fun-to-play class is capable of. From my initial experiences playing one, they seem like some Frankenstein coupling of a necromancer or warlock with a cleric or priest.
From the minute chunk of Qalia I’ve seen so far, the world is just beautiful. You really have to walk around and look at the amazing vistas and broad horizons yourself to really get a sense of the “open world” feel that the Vanguard team really nailed. Screenshots just don’t do the game justice. Gone are the flat, washed out, bland browns that darkened my screen last January when the game was released, but I’m not sure if this is due to optimization or my new video card. I’d imagine it’s a little of both. I can’t wait to level a bit, make some friends, and group.
The canine and feline player character avatars are still awful looking, but outside of that you can see where the team has made some significant strides over the past year. I have gotten sucked into diplomacy–after a year of bitching how translating the concept of diplomacy into a “stupid” card game is a cop out. It’s addictive, it’s fun, and it serves as a great way to delve into the drama, double dealings, and intrigue of Telon society firsthand.
Let’s see if this game can suck me in for the long haul. I’m gonna hold off on any real impressions of Vanguard until I can clock in a few more weeks of play. There are unicorns in the game, so I promise not to like it too much.
And here is where I eat my words. I downloaded the 14-day trial of EVE Online. I have always talked a lot of smack about this game. Not because I have anything against EVE. On paper, I’ve always considered EVE to be one of the few against-the-grain, outside-the-box MMO’s on the market. The chip on my shoulder has always been towards sci-fi MMOs. Or so I thought.
All I’ve done so far is create my character and run through the instructional demo provided at the intro. Man, was I impressed. EVE has the best character creation I’ve ever experienced as far as giving the player a social, political, and economic context by which to enter the game world. Controls seemed easy enough to pick up, even though I seem to suck at them.
I forgot what that learning curve was like when you pick up a new game and are unfamiliar with all of its intricacies. I could very well be punch drunk from so many months of not playing anything. So I’m gonna keep my mouth shut about these two until I have some significant play time under my belt. All I have to say is, it’s good to be back!
Filed under: Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
A recent post by Vanguard developer Avarem on the Sony Vanguard forums reveals that the game’s first level 50 raid dungeon, Ancient Port Warehouse, could be instanced. On the surface, this may sound like bad news for diehard subscribers to the much maligned V-word. There they go, further watering down Vanguard and making it like every other fantasy MMO on the market. But I genuinely feel this is not their intent. There are a lot of features we’d like to see incorporated into MMORPGs that just aren’t technologically feasible quite yet. Let’s not forget that designers have to work with the tools they are given until the next wave of technology closes the gap even further between what can be done and what we can imagine.
I view anything out of most developers’ mouths–SOE or otherwise–with a good deal of healthy skepticism–but I think the way SOE is handling this will not spoil the open world feel that so many active Vanguard players hold dear. Let’s face it. With Vanguard’s as-yet-to-be-resolved hiccups, it’d probably be near impossible to negotiate your way around APW on a busy weekend night when you could potentially have 15+ groups (270+ players) concentrated in one area. Even if the server could handle it, your screen could very well become a slideshow–something pretty unwelcome when you’re in the middle of an important fight with 17 guildies reliant on your mad skills.
But make no mistake, this is not your granddaddy’s instancing. They are introducing a compelling twist that I think will maintain the game’s integrity. The instance will not be limited to one raid group. They’re shooting for instances that can hold about 10 raids simultaneously, thus negating that Skinner Box feel prevalent in so many other MMOs when you step through a dungeon door to find its corridors populated only by you, your closest acquaintances, and NPCs.
When the current Vanguard producer went on the most recent SOE propaganda-cast and threw out meaningless lines like “we’re bringing the sexy back,” I wanted to throttle my earphones and scream, “How about bringing tails to the hineys of your canine and feline avatars?” In my eyes, SOE has a lot to prove in their handling of this game.
Call me crazy, but I do think their proposed handling of APW is a very promising sign.
