Vanguard is live.

[shiznitz]

Just to make it final. I backed up my VG folder yesterday to an external harddrive. 17Gb after launch patch.

I also put some more initial impressions in the Vanguard - FIGHT! thread.

[luckton]

Free to play.  http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/03/21/vanguard-going-free-to-play-this-summer-beefs-up-dev-team/

See my forum avatar for my reaction to this news.

[HaemishM]

That's only about 2 years too late.

[shiznitz]

Closest thing to old EQ.  Great dungeon crawls, big time commitments, great class diversity.  I only made it level 21, though.

[UnSub]

That's only about 2 years too late.

It was either go F2P or shut it down.

It will get a bunch of players in to look around - and the trial area is quite good - but I'm not sure many will stick around.

Also, it's good to know that "Vanguard-loving devs" exist, although I'm sure it is more of a case of "pay cheque-loving devs".

[Kageru]

Should have happened years ago. Once theres only a handful of developers left on the title there's no expenses or forward progress to justify keeping it subscription only. You're not going to build traction or volume so the title just ages and shrinks.

Though I guess this is also part of their dreams of "Station Pass" being a sensible mechanism have faded.

[shiznitz]

I see the December update relaxed the corpse run mechanic.  Cannot believe it took that long. Wow.

[luckton]

I see the December update relaxed the corpse run mechanic.  Cannot believe it took that long. Wow.

It was a game that was supposed to keep "The Vision" alive and well into the 21st century.  I think we can safely say that "The Vision" is now dead.

[Draegan]

I always like playing this game for the free 10 levels or whatever the Trial Island is.  I still believe that to this day, this game has the best Trinity based class design in the industry.

[Chimpy]

It also had the most ridiculous band of "make your game just like vanguard and it will be a huge success" fanboys I have ever seen. The cognitive dissonance with them was appalling.

[Pennilenko]

The best thing for Vanguard is to just let it die. It deserves a peaceful death. Take it out back and bury it next to Brad McQuaid's vision.

[shiznitz]

I always like playing this game for the free 10 levels or whatever the Trial Island is.  I still believe that to this day, this game has the best Trinity based class design in the industry.

I have to agree. My psionicist character was the most fun "crowd control" class iteration I have ever experienced. Great CC with decent dps to help when it was time to burn down the boss fast.

[Draegan]

If I was a Vanguard dev, first thing I'd do is change the basic font they use for everything to something else.

Worst font ever.

[Rokal]

The concept of a separate defensive target window was great too. It was such a simple change that opened up a lot of possibilities for classes with support abilities.

[Pennilenko]

Three words about best class design ever: Blood Mage, Disciple.

[ezrast]

That's only about 2 years too late.

Yeah, they should have done that shit back in 2012.

[UnSub]

Vanguard going F2P has apparently screwed up the time-space continuum.

[HaemishM]

WITNESS THE REVENGE OF ARADUNE! PREPARE FOR YOU'RE DOOM!!!!

[Sky]

Back in 2012 that would of concerned me.

[Reg]

It's hard to believe that back in 2012 "would of" was considered ungrammatical!

[Azazel]

your

[Nonentity]

Did this game ever become good servicable not terrible? I know it wasn't until December of last year that they removed corpse runs.

[Tale]

Did this game ever become good servicable not terrible? I know it wasn't until December of last year that they removed corpse runs.

I played it a bit last year. It runs better on today's machines, which turns it into a playable MMO where you can crank the settings up and see the world they were trying to make. The starting island is excellent, as people have said, and there are some sexy ideas, like the way bards work. Other than that, it's a too-big, empty, complex MMO that now feels old-fashioned. If you want to sink a lot of time into a deep, old, empty MMO it's probably the best choice. You can grind all the way up, build your SWG-style house and put your stuff in it, and take in the glorious vistas of a huge world. I just don't know anyone that would do that in an aged game, and there's your population problem.

To mix it up a little, I started in one of the traditional starting areas instead of the newbie island. Never saw anyone else and I never would have, due to the scale of the world. I only saw a couple of people on /who. I don't think F2P will fix that.

[Kageru]

Vanguard was the game that made me realise how important expansion is. If the game is effectively stagnant, no existing content will be fleshed out and little new content added, then the logic of leveling a character pretty much vanishes.

An MMO at best is a story told over time.

[Tale]

An MMO at best is a story told over time.

I like that and it should be in a sig.

[Severian]

"at best" or "at its best"?

The first is a dismissive comparison about something's limitations, the second a description of peak condition.

An MMO is at best a graphical chatroom laid on top of a badly-designed single player game.
An MMO at its best provides millions of people with the experience of a life worth living.  

[Ubvman]

Since I am not too up to date on Vanguard.

Is it still a "forced to group to get anything done" game? Because if you are still forced to group to level up, I'm surprised that it managed to last this long. Everquest 1 could do it because by the time they ran out of new noob players, they could rely on their old addicts subscriber base to maintain the overhead costs of keeping the servers running.

Solo play advancement is WoW's breakthrough.

[shiznitz]

You can solo in Vanguard up to a point.  That point used to be the low 20s.  I don't know what has changed post 2009, but it can only have gotten easier.  That said, the best part of Vanguard is the combat dynamics with a group.  The class design is excellent in this regard.  The few dungeons I explored were really fun.  You just needed at least 3 hours of uninterrupted play to really push down into them.

[Draegan]

I always thought the dungeon design was pretty shitty and simple, but then again I only did a few low level ones.  Some bugbear cave and some Tsang oriental palace thingy.

[Kageru]

I did some of the mid-level ones... they were half baked. Endless halls and caverns with a light sprinkling of mobs and what looked like interesting features or named but weren't. Leading up to a final boss area which was almost universally camped by some high level so you could just trudge on back. The lack of design meaning the challenge level was firmly stuck at "tedious".

I was always impressed at how many art assets were expended to support so little gameplay.

[Engels]

I loved Vanguard's art. I've never felt so lonely in a game tho. Not in a good, romantic ennui way that one would feel in older MMOs of yore, trekking around the rocks of Lavastorm among the wurms. More in a 'woah, there's a lot of entirely pointless landmass here I have to slog through'.

[luckton]

In retrospect, I think about all the hype this game generated, the "return of the Vision", and the falling-flat-on-their-face launch and post-launch support.

I then compare all this to SWTOR.  While SWTOR seems to be fairing a bit better, I can't help but see the irony.  SWTOR is to WoW what Vanguard was to EQ; you can try to imitate, but unless you can exactly duplicate the same game as it stands at the launch of your game AND THEN offer stuff that goes above and beyond what the original hasn't/can't, while at the same time being able to support all of your customers with a well-tested client and good customer/technical support, you're gonna have a pretty steep hill/cliff-side to climb to success.  Pray that you can keep it together without loosing too many subscribers/team members, and you might just live to see the end.

Vanguard may still be here, and they reached the mountain top, but what do they have to show for it in regards to subscriber numbers and moving the genre forward?  Now ask the same of SWTOR.

[Pennilenko]

Vanguard is better than SWTOR.

[Rokal]

In retrospect, I think about all the hype this game generated, the "return of the Vision", and the falling-flat-on-their-face launch and post-launch support.

I then compare all this to SWTOR.  While SWTOR seems to be fairing a bit better, I can't help but see the irony.  SWTOR is to WoW what Vanguard was to EQ; you can try to imitate, but unless you can exactly duplicate the same game as it stands at the launch of your game AND THEN offer stuff that goes above and beyond what the original hasn't/can't, while at the same time being able to support all of your customers with a well-tested client and good customer/technical support, you're gonna have a pretty steep hill/cliff-side to climb to success.  Pray that you can keep it together without loosing too many subscribers/team members, and you might just live to see the end.

Vanguard may still be here, and they reached the mountain top, but what do they have to show for it in regards to subscriber numbers and moving the genre forward?  Now ask the same of SWTOR.

How well Vanguard imitated EQ or what their design goals were is entirely meaningless because the game was an unplayable technical mess when it launched. They could have set out to make the friendliest, most accessible MMO ever with Vanguard and it still would have bombed.

I wouldn't say Vanguard 'reached the mountain top' either. The servers are a ghost town and the game is only playable at this point due to new consumer hardware making up for piss-poor optimization.

[HaemishM]

Sp pretty much the successor to EQ1 in every single way.