Vanguard is live.

[palmer_eldritch]

Nothing could have prepared me for how ugly this game is. I'd got the impression that everyone more or less agreed that, whatever its failings, at least it looked nice on a high-powered PC.

[Strazos]

If you got it at Gamestop, try to return it and say it had a bad install disc or some shit. No need for you to pay for shit if you're not even going to play it.

[Trippy]

Nothing could have prepared me for how ugly this game is. I'd got the impression that everyone more or less agreed that, whatever its failings, at least it looked nice on a high-powered PC.

No, we didn't agree on that.

[Arthur_Parker]

A grindy PVE game with tacked on FFA PVP, within set level ranges and without a death penalty like looting, is carebear, it just is.  There's nothing wrong with a carebear playstyle and there's nothing wrong with enjoying Vanguard but trying to steal the meaning of the word, just because it's seen as a harsh insult, is silly.  In fact it's fast approaching the levels of stupidity of those who use "carebear" as an insult in the first place.

[Miasma]

It's not set level ranges, a level 50 can kill a level 7 with impunity.  He can kill him in his home town because the guards don't care, he can kill him while he is in the middle of crafting because there are no safe zones or times (yet).  If you are within 20% of the person's level you automatically loot 15% of their money, since there is no coin banking (yet) that is actually a pretty good way to make money.

[Valmorian]

I realize that the world is full of worthless idiots.

Why would people who enjoy a game you don't enjoy be worthless idiots?  Are you really that deluded with self-importance?

[HaemishM]

If you are within 20% of the person's level you automatically loot 15% of their money, since there is no coin banking (yet)

Wait, what? Is that just on the PVP server, or the whole game? The no coin banking thing, I mean.

[Miasma]

There is no coin banking anywhere, you keep it on your avatar, it does not have weight like in EQ though.  They are supposed to be adding coin banking to the PvP servers so that people don't have to mail it around.

And Arthur_Parker from your reference in the other thread about not getting into to it here I wasn't trying to defend what Vanguard has chosen to call FFA PvP, I was just trying to clarify their PvP ruleset.  I'm not a fan of PvP and I know Vanguard's is not at all well thought out, basically all they did was turn off the code which prevented you from hitting another player, it was a last-minute minimal effort.

[Nebu]

Wait, what? Is that just on the PVP server, or the whole game? The no coin banking thing, I mean.

The game is full of bugs and missing tons of key features not to mention the mob pathing issues and class imbalances due to lack of proper implementation.  You've been right about all of that.  The only part of the game really worth anything at the moment are questing, crafting, diplomacy, and exploring.  I've been doing mostly ATitD-style exploring and that has been entertaining enough to me.  If I even thought about everything wrong with the rest of the game, I'd likely be more disgusted.

[Nija]

Man, they spend years and years making this SUPER HARDCORE EXPERIENCE and then coins don't have weight. Banks - which exist to hold money - don't.

What the christ?

I'd love to see design docs.

[HaemishM]

I'd love to see design docs.

Toilet paper doesn't hold the ink very well, so they are a bit hard to read.

[shiznitz]

Unless you right with a shit pencil and let it dry nice and crusty.

[Hutch]

Man, they spend years and years making this SUPER HARDCORE EXPERIENCE and then coins don't have weight. Banks - which exist to hold money - don't.

What the christ?

I'd love to see design docs.

The patch notes are the design docs.

[Morat20]

Man, they spend years and years making this SUPER HARDCORE EXPERIENCE and then coins don't have weight. Banks - which exist to hold money - don't.

What the christ?

I'd love to see design docs.

Reminder -- when Microsoft dropped them and SOE took over, someone started removing all the SUPER HARDCORE. This is the pussy version. Now, I have no idea whether it was the Beta that convinced them to remove the constant nut-kicks, or SOE forcing it on them, but Vanguard as it launched is utterly unlike what it was back when the Beta first opened. They scrapped a lot and replaced it with stock DIKU-- I'm shocked it even runs, to be honest.

[Riggswolfe]

Man, they spend years and years making this SUPER HARDCORE EXPERIENCE and then coins don't have weight. Banks - which exist to hold money - don't.

What the christ?

I'd love to see design docs.

Reminder -- when Microsoft dropped them and SOE took over, someone started removing all the SUPER HARDCORE. This is the pussy version. Now, I have no idea whether it was the Beta that convinced them to remove the constant nut-kicks, or SOE forcing it on them, but Vanguard as it launched is utterly unlike what it was back when the Beta first opened. They scrapped a lot and replaced it with stock DIKU-- I'm shocked it even runs, to be honest.

Isn't this comparable to what happened with SWG launch? It's been awhile but I seem to remember that SOE or LA told them they had to make some last minute changes. Hell, that game's history is so convoluted I can't be sure.

[Morat20]

Isn't this comparable to what happened with SWG launch? It's been awhile but I seem to remember that SOE or LA told them they had to make some last minute changes. Hell, that game's history is so convoluted I can't be sure.

I vaguely recalling that about a year to a year and a half before launch, a giant chunk of the SWG engine and features was scrapped and redone. I've heard conflicting stories on whether it was a scrap of the initial Koster design, a scrap of the badly implemented Koster design for a simpler Koster design, Koster rescueing his design from incompetent designers, a graphics/db engine that couldn't hack it and had to be rewritten...

I vaguely recall there were complaints about the engine having to be rewritten, which meant that a ton of things got scrapped -- including a lot of skill interactions and testing.

[Falconeer]

Reminder -- when Microsoft dropped them and SOE took over, someone started removing all the SUPER HARDCORE. This is the pussy version. Now, I have no idea whether it was the Beta that convinced them to remove the constant nut-kicks, or SOE forcing it on them, but Vanguard as it launched is utterly unlike what it was back when the Beta first opened. They scrapped a lot and replaced it with stock DIKU-- I'm shocked it even runs, to be honest.

Yeah, they basically went NGE pre-launch this time. Well, better call than the SWG one anyway.

[Arthur_Parker]

And Arthur_Parker from your reference in the other thread about not getting into to it here I wasn't trying to defend what Vanguard has chosen to call FFA PvP, I was just trying to clarify their PvP ruleset.  I'm not a fan of PvP and I know Vanguard's is not at all well thought out, basically all they did was turn off the code which prevented you from hitting another player, it was a last-minute minimal effort.

Don't mind me, I'm suffering from a bad cold so just a bit grumpy today.

[Arthur_Parker]

link

Vanguard population
I thought it made sense to insert a copy of one of my posts here, since I did calculations for the entire community across servers. I was interested in quantifying how many people might be playing, how many might be alts, and how many people had achieved what levels. You can look to server forums (including Woefeather) for information regarding class distributions, etc.

_________________

So, attempting to assess how many toons might be "alts," I queried all servers, different minimum adventure levels, and received the following results:

Total results/number of characters in Vanguard, all servers: 122,690
At/Above level 2 adventuring level: 79,064
At/Above level 3: 73,752
At/Above level 4: 67,976
At/Above level 5: 59,782
At/Above level 6: 51,324
At/Above level 7: 43,903
At/Above level 8: 37,595
At/Above level 9: 31,303
At/Above level 10: 26,224
At/Above level 11: 18,541
At/Above level 12: 13,560
At/Above level 13: 9,073
At/Above level 14: 6,364
At/Above level 15: 4,121
At/Above level 16: 2,720
At/Above level 17: 1,741
At/Above level 18: 1,226
At/Above level 19: 775
At/Above level 20: 545
At/Above level 21: 331
At/Above level 22: 221
At/Above level 23: 160
At/Above level 24: 133
At/Above level 25: 96
At/Agove level 26: 87
At/Above level 27: 73
At/Above level 28: 72
At/Above level 29: 72
At/Above level 30: 72

At this point, I suspect it's the case that the 71 characters that show up as being over level 28 are Sigil-created level 50 GM characters who are reserved on multiple servers. To check this, I looked at the individual names, and my suspicion was confirmed: For example, "Aughosx" is a level 50 Dread Knight on 7 different servers. "Gmahvir" is a level 50 Warrior on 10 different servers. Gmdaegarmo is a level 50 Paladin on 4 different servers, etc. I'd subtract these ~72 Sigil/"GM" toons from the search results.

SO, there are 43,626 level 1 toons right now, and it's probably fair to assume that a large number of them are alts, or people who have only logged in once. I'd say there are approximately 70,000-80,000 people who are playing this game now and have logged in more than once to do so, across all the servers.

Split into levels (by simply subtracting), I show, across all servers:

Level 2: 5,312
Level 3: 5,776
Level 4: 8,194
Level 5: 8,458
Level 6: 7,421
Level 7: 6,308
Level 8: 6,292
Level 9: 5,079
Level 10: 7,683
Level 11: 4,981
Level 12: 4,487
Level 13: 2,709
Level 14: 2,243
Level 15: 1,401
Level 16: 979
Level 17: 515
Level 18:451
Level 19: 451
Level 20: 214
Level 21: 110
Level 22: 61
Level 23: 27
Level 24: 37
Level 25: 9
Level 26: 14
Level 27: 1


It would appear congratulations are in order to Atrius, on Tharridon server, who has achieved the highest rank of all worlds as a Kojan Human level 27 Warrior (albeit level 1 crafter).

There are 14 level 26 characters, including Drake, a level 26 Bard, from Woefeather. Not suprisingly, many of these top players are from the same guild, including 6 from Florendyl's Halcyon Affinity,4 from Tharridon's "KOS" guild, and 4 from Gulgrethor's "Pain" guild.

[slog]

80,000 box sales from 122,000 TOTAL CHARACTERS? 

Um, he's on Crack.  3 toons per account be more accurate I would think...

[Trippy]

80,000 box sales from 122,000 TOTAL CHARACTERS? 

Um, he's on Crack.  3 toons per account be more accurate I would think...

The game just launched, though. Unless there's a need for mule accounts I don't see people making a ton of alts right off the bat.

[Rodivar]

Can't forget every box came with a free trial, CE's with 10.

Wow 18 months here and that was what I choose to post first, it's a sign


some people made alts to save names

[pants]

some people made alts to save names

yeah, I know a lot of lv1 alts which have been created to save names for people who don't have the game yet.

[Trippy]

some people made alts to save names

Good point.

[Miasma]

I seldom trust people like this who try to query a database through questionable workarounds.  Also note that he seemed to be exploiting the vgplayers site and that takes a while to be updated, it lagged my level by about 24 hours, since he only made this list yesterday I doubt he got all of the new characters that were made on release two days ago.

That said I've made all eight characters that I'm allowed to.

[HRose]

Uhm, hello?

At 12PM PST tomorrow, 02/02/2007, all players will be required to have a valid retail key associated with their account in order to continue playing.

Vanguard has been "free for play" till now. I'm even willingly to consider station pass accounts as standard ones even if they aren't. But the number of characters on a game still in "open beta" mean jack shit.

And since they aren't going to wipe the DB tomorrow those number will always mean nothing.

[Trippy]

Uhm, hello?

At 12PM PST tomorrow, 02/02/2007, all players will be required to have a valid retail key associated with their account in order to continue playing.

Doh!

[Arthur_Parker]

But the number of characters on a game still in "open beta" mean jack shit.

Except if you want to know the number of characters during the "open beta" stage, right?  Or if you need the open stage info to make more sense of the number of characters during live, providing they don't wipe the database?

[eldaec]

80,000 box sales from 122,000 TOTAL CHARACTERS? 

Um, he's on Crack.  3 toons per account be more accurate I would think...

The game just launched, though. Unless there's a need for mule accounts I don't see people making a ton of alts right off the bat.

True, but the assumption in those numbers is that there are no alts above level 1.

I reckon something like 50k would be a better guess at the number of subs.

But the number of characters on a game still in "open beta" mean jack shit.

Hardly. When the beta accounts without keys get killed, that isn't going to add to the number of accounts, so this gives us an upper bound on the number of paid installations to date.

50k is a lower number than I would have expected at this point.

I'd have expected around 100k now, topping out around 200k in the summer, falling off to 100k again around christmas, then it'll limp along for years in the sub-100k range.

VG is aimed at organised guild players, you'd have to expect a quick takeup amoungst the small group who intend to play, rather than a EQ/WoW sytle inexorable rise.

[Falconeer]

As inaccurate as these calculations can be, vgplayers.com keep statistics and rankings for every single action you do in game. For example, some of my alts have a best melee hit of 0 (zero) damage. That puts me in position 188408 of the global rankings.
It's hard to believe that I am the last one of that ranking but assuming me and all the other zero damage characters are on the bottom spot of that rankings, you could assume that there are at least 188408 characters created across all servers. And That is usually 36 hours old informations.

To make a comparions using the same rule of the thumb, looks like you are in position 1,815,743 if you have zero damage or anything similar in EQ2 (according to eq2players.com), so ten times the characters (not the players or the accounts) of Vanguard, but in a 26 months span. But keep in mind we are talking of created characters, not active ones. If you created 8 alts on launch day back in november 2004 and quit playing 2 weeks later to play WoW, those 8 chars still pile up in thar 1800k ranking.

Honestly, I think what I just described is a crappy method of getting figures. But it doesn't sound badder than the previously described one of querying servers. I'd say let's scrap both.

[Ixxit]

Concerning the post from 10 Ton Hammer, I believe he polled the numbers from the previous night (1st night of official launch).  There were some posts on the forums stating that people were still waiting from their vendors to receive the game (Amazon especially).  That night all servers were reporting 'medium' and 'low'.  There were also problems with the log in server for a period of time, so not everyone was able to register their boxes that night.

Last night all servers (except the EU ones) were reporting Med and High levels and the game seems nicely populated in the newbie  and surrounding lowbie areas.

Also, the people who bought by digital download are probably still waiting for their downloads to finish, which is about 40 gigs right Falconeer?   :-D

[Rodivar]

But the number of characters on a game still in "open beta" mean jack shit.

Hardly. When the beta accounts without keys get killed, that isn't going to add to the number of accounts, so this gives us an upper bound on the number of paid installations to date.

50k is a lower number than I would have expected at this point.

When beta accounts get killed we won't know much more than we did yesterday due to the fact that every CE box can spawn 10 unpaid buddy accounts for the next 10 days and every regular account spawns one buddy account.   


With these vaiables I don't how we can know much more post beta account drops than pre, until the 10 day buddy keys move through the system. 

This is one title you will really need the NPD sales numbers to draw any real conclusions.

[Endie]

Also, the people who bought by digital download are probably still waiting for their downloads to finish, which is about 40 gigs right Falconeer?   :-D

I heard it was 40 + 20GB

[Arthur_Parker]

If the number of character is being accurately reported then you know the total number of characters at a certain point in time and hence the maximum possible number of subscribers.

[Nebu]

The digital DL was 5 total files that roughly total 6Gb.  (setup file was small.  2 files about 800 meg, 2 approaching 2 Gb)