New game era?

[burnzey boi]

Just browsing the net and came up with this game http://www.vanguardsoh.com. It sounds promosing as it's from Windows and the graphics are awsome as.
Think WoW has a little competition.

[Luvian]

I don't think wow has any competition. It's just your 3d generic medieval mmorpg. What new concept to they bring? What's so special about their world that would make people switch? What's the appeal?

[burnzey boi]

Good point...

[SpiritWarrior]

lol, pwnt

Nah, it looks okay but nothing out of the box as far as I can see. There will also be other next gen MMO's too.

[Huwge]

Whats so special about it? Well, its from the original creator of EQ. Hopefully it wont be full of childish players like the ones I have come across in WoW. EQ had a steep learning curve and hopefully Vanguard will too. Please dont bother flaming. Its Horses for Courses. If you like WoW then fine. As for me Im kicking my heels waiting for the Vanguard release

[Luvian]

Well, here are their design ideas:

"The game is going to focus on character advancement, item acquisition, and interdependence to build community and teamwork."

This traslate to a game where you spend all your time leveling and looking for more powerfull items, since it's from the creator of Everquest, this doesn't surprise me. Here's what they had to say about items:

"Vanguard will be a very item acquisition-centric game... questing, crafting, and adventuring to obtain items that enhance your character will be key, as will honing your skills and abilities. Crafting will be quite item centric also. Tool quality will be as important in harvesting as weapon quality is in adventuring"


This won't be a game you can solo either. As they said in this next part:

"Additionally we will have areas that are more geared for one of the categories: casual, group, and raid. The casual areas require less of a contiguous time commitment and you don't need a full group. The grouping areas, well, require you to group. Think classic, old school grouping. Then the raid areas, well that's pretty obvious.

Both risk and reward will be present, however, so one shouldn't expect to see as much of a reward in a casual area vs a group area. It's something to do when you have less time, and it should be fun, but you're not going to get the fiery scimitar of ultimate doom in a casual region."

Sound to me like soloing is going to be just a time filler until your raid group get on. You know, there will be solo areas, but nothing meaningfull will be there. If you want to do anything it's going to be in groups and raids. Let's hope all the classes will be as desirable for groups. The people that weren't satisfied with warcraft's Raid focus will dislike this game even more.

Oh yeah they have corpse recovery when you die too too, I always hated that. Here's what they have to say about it:
"Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes will employ a variation on the traditional corpse retrieval death penalty – you die, you return to your bind point but leave a corpse behind and that corpse contains the items and coin you had in your possession. You're encouraged to return to your corpse with another set of gear stored at the nearest outpost if you desire to retrive your other possessions."

But wait, it get better:
Remember, if you die in the depths of a dungeon and cannot get a resurrection (which would bring you back to your corpse), you'll return to your bind point (likely the nearest outpost, village, or city); our intent is that you’ll have stored multiple other sets of equipment in these places, so, even assuming no resurrection and no assistance getting back to your corpse, you won't be running back to it naked.

Until then you can keep playing the game using your other sets of equipment.

Worst, worst, worst case scenario: you go and play and gain a few levels until you can solo your way back to that particular corpse."

They also have a crafting system which is "arguably just as important as the adventuring side of things." This can be good or it can be bad, depending on the player, but to me crafting systems are usually big time sink.

And then there is their setting. In their faq, all they managed to say about it is that it's going to have the traditional fantasy races and monsters. As for the land itself "Pretty much every conceivable environment exists, including plains and fields, mountains, swamps, deserts, and much more." Like I said earlier, this scream "generic fantasy" to me. They seem really proud or their "seamless" world and talk at length about it, but I was playing seamless mmorpgs 6 years ago...

There are also two other things I don't like about this game. They are against instances, which mean everyone will compete for the dungeons and they will always be camped. They are also considering letting people have only 1 character per server.

All in all, their game add nothing new to the mmorpg market. They're just recycling ideas. They haven't even created a world either, it's just rules. MMORPGS usually try to sell you the setting first. If you want to play "high fantasy races" in "all kind of lands" then this is the game for you I guess. Personally I like games with more details and less annoyances.

[ 01-25-2006, 12:02 PM: Message edited by: Luvian ]

[SpiritWarrior]

The death system sounds horrible and just...not fun.

As far as ruling out the kids you find in places like WoW, it won't happen. Every MMO I have played has them, some more so some less so but they are there - always. Worse than them are the hardcore fanbois with the superiority complex who you find in games like EQ, the guys who think they run and own the game and noone knows better than them (they don't get out much I guess).

[Luvian]

Originally posted by SpiritWarrior: The death system sounds horrible and just...not fun. As far as ruling out the kids you find in places like WoW, it won't happen. Every MMO I have played has them, some more so some less so but they are there - always. Worse than them are the hardcore fanbois with the superiority complex who you find in games like EQ, the guys who think they run and own the game and noone knows better than them (they don't get out much I guess).

The say the whole point of the game is getting items, then tell you if you die you lose all your items and you might not be able to get them back for a long time. That's just stupid.

[burnzey boi]

Ok WoW I'm sticking to =S But there are other things, The price to pay monthly, what lvl can you get up to things like that that may be different to your usual MMOG.

[ 01-25-2006, 09:26 PM: Message edited by: burnzey boi ]

[TheCrimsomBlade]

The game Vanguard is still a couple of years away
before it will even be really even out in BETA.
There is a giant forum about this game and how most
of the game is still in the minds of the creaters.

http://www.MMORPG.com

Its really funny how everytime another MMORPG
comes out everybody here starts talking of how
it will effect WoW like the world of WoW will
go poof if a really good MMO hits the shelves.
Just read the posts they always say the same
thing go back to when Guild Wars came out and
read the posts and then notice that half of those
posters still play WOW and GW both. NO game lasts forever. not even the game of life>