Vanguard: Round 1 - FIGHT!

[Chenghiz]

Does anyone have a map of Vanguard's world so I can get an idea of what this 45 minute trip was? And I like maps.

[Venkman]

Can't find any maps. Where's Muse? Nobody gone through the pains of mapping the game? Thought that was one of the benefits of it being hard?

I never played WoW, not that you would know that.

After you tire of Vanguard, it would be interesting to hear your impressions of playing WoW if you're willing to try it then. Until then, you're just a curiosity, because nothing you say about Vanguard is even in context.

It'll sound like everyone's beef about VG, except in reverse :)

World vastness is irrelevant. It's cool that it's different, and I found both the topography and population centers very diverse. That's cool. WoW is the same way. Anyone with an active trial account try this: run from Darnassus to Booty Bay or Lights Hope Chapel. If that takes you less than an hour, you're on a mount or had a Mage teleport you to Ironforge. And WoW has boring spots too.

Death penaltiies are overrated. Nobody cares now because there's nobody at appreciable levels yet. Talk about it again when the average among this group is in their 30s (assuming the vast majority survive) and they lose a night's effort to one overrun in their vaunted public-space zones, after not having won any rolls and being late for the event they had to schedule with the three other guilds vying for the same mob.

I'm not railing VG. It's a fine game if you have patience and are bored with WoW et al. But it's got the sort of issues that require you think WoW is child's play to put up with.

[Signe]

Darniaq makes lovely maps.

[Rithrin]

Does anyone have a map of Vanguard's world so I can get an idea of what this 45 minute trip was? And I like maps.

Thestra with Names

He went from Halgarad to New Targonor. 45 Minutes seems a little short, but I assume all he did was run. And as Falconeer pointed out, that's hardly the whole continent when you consider that there are hordes of routes you could take from one place to another. Then there are three continents... and dungeons... and unexplored islands out in the ocean, etc.

[Trippy]

edit I ran across this while looking for something else- Oh how soon we forget
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/reviews/everquestkunark.htm

Ah, those were the days.

[Falconeer]

This is another map of Thestra, one of the three continents.



I tried to figure out one of the paved roads he could have taken to avoid most of the dangers to go from New Targonor to Halgarad, and drawed it on map. Those should be the 45 minutes he is talking about.

[Miasma]

There are maps of the three continents here.  As far as the 45 minutes goes, I can drive from one end of the city to the other in 45 minutes on the freeway and all I would see is pavement.  Running time from one end to the other is a pretty absurd way to judge content.  I've spent hours exploring just one of the dungeons and there are dozens of them.

[Engels]

Falconeer has it right. And I should ammend my previous statement. It did take 45 minutes, but it wasn't quite all the way to Halgarad. See that lake thingie just to the west of Halgarad, the one that looks like a leaning 8 figure? That was my final destination, called Vault of Heroes. That said, it was a Dark Elf toon, that needed to do some halt and go scouting and recieve an invis from a Psionicist friend to get past Leth Nurea, the High Elf city.

I think that folks are missing the point, somewhat. Its not wether Vanguard is technically big or not, its what's actually there, wether it feels like a living, breathing world. I'm glad for Falconeer that he does feel it is, but I think results will vary. Its not even a matter of content volume; the road way from New Targonor to Halgarad has lots of mobs on it, but just a few types. Huge spiders and large elk. In a way, that's half the problem. There are too many danged Elk romaing about the roadside to keep a proper immersion factor in play.

I said it a while back during beta, that spawns of 1 hyena, 1 snake and 1 scorpion across miles and miles of desert-ish landscape does not content make. The cities, for instance New Targonor, can be veritably enormous, but they feel uninhabited and somehow unfinished. There are few props, and fewer NPCs in many of these vast regions.

Contrast that with the enormous amount of content that was stuffed into say, the Emerald Jungle in EQ. Although far smaller than the above mentioned area covered, the Emerald Jungle had much more content per square foot. The distances get larger when you have something actually making you stop and look. Vast tracts of repetitive mob spawns you simply avoid along the way is a waste of real estate.

[Falconeer]

Fair enough, Engels.
Still. you all should take into account that you (like me) saw, at best, 2% of the whole Vanguard world.

I am not saying you or any of the others are wrong. As I pointed out I am loving the world so far and I had a completely different feeling from the Tanvu area in Kojan and the Thursh/Three rivers, or even Veskal's Exchange areas in Thestra. But there's no reason to negate that I still have to see dramatic changes in the world environment. Of course that would be contrary to the "logic" behind it, as in an attempt to recreate a rational world there's no way you can jump from jungle to volcanic area as used to happen in past MMORPGs. Still, the three continents offer enough dramatic changes and even in Thestra if you manage to go from the plains of Thursh up to the mountains of Bordinar's Cleft you'll feel mountains approaching and snow will start falling as a different climate/environment welcomes you to dwarvenland. You just can't see those happening on a 10 minutes horseback trip time. The world is large for a reason.

Sadly enough, so far I have to agree with you on the city part. I had the same identical feeling of emptiness in WoW, as opposed to EQ2 where every single building was conceived and implemented with maniacal attention to details. The world here feels lot less "alive" than the EQ2 one to me. A step back. :(

My story about a 45 minute trip (25 minutes actually, for a 40 minutes timed quest) is a bit different. From Three Rivers to Veskal's was amazing as I had to ride over a mountain pass, through a elf city, behind a waterfall, across an ancient graveyard, and some stuff like that. I had the whole "traveling" feel and I liked it. I felt it like a huge accomplishment while watching at the map it was a trip half the size of that New Targonor/Halgarad one. I managed to see some new mobs, some buildings and points of interest I'd wish to scout later and I basically had to choose my own way as the paved road disappeared into the grass a couple of times. I know I passed close to at least 3 dungeons on my way there as adventurers where shouting different acronyms during my travel to the east, but they weren't immediately visible and there was no "Dungeons this way" sign, so once again, and as someone else said, exploration is rewarded in Vanguard (although I really miss too the little xp ding for discovering new places :( :( ) while following the easiest road isn't always the best thing to do.

You know, I read with interest the thread about "Best MMO for explorers" and read so many votes for AC1. We all know our digital heart belongs to the very first massives we played, but while reading all those stories about AC1, I couldn't see any difference with what happens in Vanguard. Lots of towers, ruins, enclaves, caves, villages, encampments, dungeons, to visit, meet, stumble upon. When I read of people finding it pretty empty I seriously wonder if we are playing two different games. Maybe I am just old or just too low maintenance (it could be), but I can't really see how the world is empty and, say, the WoW one is full. Different? Ok.. as any WoW zone is so different from each other, and you are compelled to see every one of them. More content for square inch? Again yes, as WoW zones are relatively small and travel times are voluntarily reduced to a minimum. Huge and annoying lack of polish everywhere? Sadly, yes. But Empty vs.  Full? Barren vs. Detailed? I disagree. Heck, I even found a Bed and Breakfast just north of Three Rivers. I'd really like to rent a room up there.

To me it was like taking a trip from Spoleto to Mantova back in circa 1200 A.D. How many things did you expected to see on that road? It was fucking medio evo! Of course this is a game and it has to be different, populated, filled with content and points of interests, but it is! It's just not immediately obvious, and I'd feel pretty cheated should it be otherwise, with a full continent packed with stuff everywhere and with illogical weather or environment changes every 5 kilometers. It's a feature, not a bug or a lack of time/will. They went the semi-realistic way and it delivers for me.

Still, like the most of you, I have yet to visit and explore the remaining 98% of the world. So who knows what's hidden there? So far, I found out enough dungeons and stuff to keep me interested and exploring for more. I know this won't ever happen for any of you cause as Schild pointed out in his thoroughly Vanguard review, if it doesn't appeal to you in the first 5 minutes then it's not worth it. But the world in Vanguard is one of the few things that I definitely think stands out.

On a closing note, I would like to remember something that happened to me yesterday in the world of Telon. I was fighting a bugbear close to their encampment south of Three Rivers and suddenly a HUGE shadow darkened the sky for a moment while passing quickly over me and the bugbear. It was so huge and so fast (like 2 seconds of onscreen time, maximum) that I thought it was a bug, a visual glitch. But you know, just wanted to be sure, so looked up... and a Griffon was lazily gliding just above us, 4 meters or so above our heads. It wasn't a named or anything special, just one of the few griffons that you can sometime see in the distance, or very very high in the sky, waiting for flying mounts to sunk. They are level 29 and don't attack pedestrians so far, but I never had a chance to see one so close to the ground. It passed, glided, ignored us and left us to our stupid swordfight.
What struck me was the shadow. It's not a scripted thing and it wasn't like the griffon was 1 feet above our heads. It usually roams like 200 meters from the ground but this one was flying so low that the shadow was dynamically cast on me and the bugbear because of the position of the griffon and the sun. It felt SO real, so amazing. Different time of the day or different weather, clouds over the sky and I wouldn't have noticed it. It felt real, worldly. And it was definitely a "whoa" moment, although a random and probably not even intended one.

Things like this are definitely overlooked in Vanguard while usually praised elsewhere and taken as future references of goodness.

[Hound]

The question is not how big of a world they have, the question is how much content is there. Farlan used to love to brag on how big the landmass was in Dark and Light, yet it did not get them very far now did it? Not saying that Vanguard is DnL quality, but if you make a large play ground you better have some swings and slides (that work) there for the kids to use, otherwise it is just a empty field.

[Falconeer]

The question is not how big of a world they have, the question is how much content is there. Farlan used to love to brag on how big the landmass was in Dark and Light, yet it did not get them very far now did it? Not saying that Vanguard is DnL quality, but if you make a large play ground you better have some swings and slides there for the kids to use, otherwise it is just a empty field.

Did you actually read what I wrote?

[Signe]

I almost read it.

[Falconeer]

I bored myself at myself again.

I'd let this speak for me from now on.

[shiznitz]

No one has mentioned this yet.

The two "anti-hardcore" features Vanguard was supposed to have, caravans (EDIT: they are. see below.) and fellowships, are not in the game yet. The caravan feature is supposed to allow your character to travel with your friends while offline. The fellowship feature is supposed to let your character earn exp with your friends while offline (at the cost of taking up a group slot, obviously.) 

There is no announced date for their implementation.

EDIT: Caravans are in the game.  Here is a post on them:

Caravans are already in the game. I tested it out the other night, but it didn't work exactly the way I thought it might. After I joined a leader's caravan I had to camp within 10 minutes or I was going to get booted from the caravan.

After you camp, I think you have to wait a couple of hours before you log in and you can choose to show up either where you camped at or where your caravan leader is or camped at. Don't remember whcih it was. This will be useful later on, if you're in some zone that the rest of your group is planning on continuing on with but you need to jet and then want to join them all at a later point in time, but not so useful for any kind of speedy travel.

[WindupAtheist]

- Vanguard world is larger. So much larger. It's a pleasure to explore it. And I can fly over it and pilot boats over it. Wanguard is a world, while WoW zones are very well painted and connected room. Or "zones", if you prefer.

Ok, so it's "large".  Asheron's Call had a HUGE world space, but how much of it is interesting?  How much of it is unique?  (I honestly don't know, so this is a real question here.)  If it's acre after acre of open unused area, I'll pass on that for the "smaller" WoW, where there are interesting things to see all over the place.

I knew Falconeer's defense of this game reminded me of a song.

[Engels]

Most appropos line in the song for Falconeer:

"I have to squeeze him each night to keep him warm".

[Azazel]

edit I ran across this while looking for something else- Oh how soon we forget
http://www.thecomputershow.com/computershow/reviews/everquestkunark.htm

That's a pretty shit review though. And I don't mean the score he gave RoK, but the review itself.

[Hound]

The question is not how big of a world they have, the question is how much content is there. Farlan used to love to brag on how big the landmass was in Dark and Light, yet it did not get them very far now did it? Not saying that Vanguard is DnL quality, but if you make a large play ground you better have some swings and slides there for the kids to use, otherwise it is just a empty field.

Did you actually read what I wrote?

you lost me somewhere around the double smilies, I have a short attention span. I was just expressing how I feel about big virtual worlds with sparse content vs smaller ones that entertain me.

[Venkman]

Like I said above, world size is irrelevant. I actually do think VG did a good job with diverse and dense-enough content, but this entire debate is really pretty silly. VG has oh gee moments. WoW does. EQ2 does. Even it's-all-instanced CoX and GW do. Having now almost two entire pages dedicated to this type of thing tells much about what else there is to talk about (read: not much because it's not that unique).

[Falconeer]

The New York Times (?!) has an article about Vanguard.

What I didn't know is that Vanguard costed (Engrish?) 30 millions $$$.
We all know it is the 2nd most expensive MMORPG ever. So how much was it for EverQuest 2? 25millions? 20? Less?

EDIT: It's more about McQuaid than Vanguard, but it has some funny/interesting bits, like this quote from Brad himself:

“Originally we thought that if we did EverQuest in three years we could do this game in three years, but that was naïve both because of how ambitious our design was and how other games raised the bar,” he said. “Twenty-three guys and three years wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Now we have 110 people on one project. Figuring out how to set that up with different levels of managers and teams was quite a learning experience, and it cost us a lot of time and money.”

or

“I’d love to be a billionaire and fund it all myself and take more time, but all I can do is make the best game I can at launch and get the message out that it isn’t as polished as WOW but it also has a lot more depth and a lot more freedom.”

[Venkman]

$30mil seems about right. EQ2 was $25mil based on info they released about a year before launch.

However, I wonder if VG really is the secondmost expensive one. Hopefully someone's got public numbers they can share.

[Falconeer]

I can't think of any other MMO going over 30millions beside WoW (which was 60 millions IIRC, adveritising included, right?).
Which other ones are you thinking about?

[shiznitz]

Vanguard should have launched with one, tightly designed continent.

[Simond]

According to Nino over at the FoH boards (sorry, no link to the post - I'm at work), Sigil has scrapped fellowships because the week or so of testing they had on them just prior to launch showed the concept was fundamentally broken with respect to VG's design. (Read: They were being used for powerlevelling...which anyone with at least two functional neurons remaining in their skull could have pointed out was what would happen).

Sigil are planning on using mentoring/reverse mentoring instead.

[Falconeer]

According to Nino over at the FoH boards (sorry, no link to the post - I'm at work), Sigil has scrapped fellowships because the week or so of testing they had on them just prior to launch showed the concept was fundamentally broken with respect to VG's design. (Read: They were being used for powerlevelling...which anyone with at least two functional neurons remaining in their skull could have pointed out was what would happen).

Sigil are planning on using mentoring/reverse mentoring instead.

... !
Priceless.

That said, mentoring is always a good idea. Up for that.

[Rithrin]

That's a terrible idea, I think. I've got many friends who would love to play VG with me, but I play in the early mornings and they play late at night (Not to mention some of them having MMO-loyalty issues). The Fellowship system was pretty much all we had going in that dream that we'd finally MMO together. Oh well...

Edit: Relevance being that I'm sure there were a lot of people in similar situations.

[Falconeer]

That's a terrible idea, I think. I've got many friends who would love to play VG with me, but I play in the early mornings and they play late at night (Not to mention some of them having MMO-loyalty issues). The Fellowship system was pretty much all we had going in that dream that we'd finally MMO together. Oh well...

Edit: Relevance being that I'm sure there were a lot of people in similar situations.

MMORPG survived so far without Fellowship. It was a neat idea but apparently it doesn't work. I would like to have it too, but stretching it to say that it was "pretty much all we had going in..." sounds a bit extreme to me.
Plus, "XPing offline" with your friends living in a different timezon is actually completely different from "playing together".

[Nebu]

Didn't AC have some type of pyramid xp scheme in which the guy at the top got xp from all the people in the tree below him?  Is that system still in game?

[Falconeer]

Mmmm

Maybe this could use a thread on its own, but I am now really curious about it.
Let's do a list of MMORPGs and their cost. Feel free to add your titles and figures:

1. World of Warcraft - 60M $
2. Vanguard             - 30M $
3. EverQuest 2         - 25M $
4. ?
5. ?
6. ?

[Simond]

Oh, and apparently today's patch is full of bats of the nerf variety.

The "I want a game like early EQ" crowd seem to be generating the largest number of complaints, ironically enough.

[shiznitz]

Fellowships were the only saving grace for the grind this game was obviously going to have. Mentoring will fail as a band-aid in VG because a level 40 is not going to travel 30 minutes to play in the level 20 area.

[Venkman]

Didn't AC have some type of pyramid xp scheme in which the guy at the top got xp from all the people in the tree below him?  Is that system still in game?

Yes.

I'm surprised Sigil is ditching the idea wholesale. With proper tweaking, it could work fine.

I can't think of any other MMO going over 30millions beside WoW (which was 60 millions IIRC, adveritising included, right?).
Which other ones are you thinking about?

If I understand WoW dev budget correct, it was 70mil to build the game and infrastructure. They hit 100mil with advertising.

The other games I was wondering about (being in the EQ2/VG range, not the WoW range) were FFXI, Lineage 2 and LoTRO. I'd also consider AoC a candidate but we're a ways away from launch.

Pure supposition though. FFXI is pretty old but has to support both PS2 and PC in numerous countries. L2 was just a lot of cash for a sequel to the previous world-dominating MMO. And LoTRO secured a good chunk of VC after it was already pretty far along, if I recall correct.

[Miasma]

I don't see why they would have a problem with fellowships, it is the exact same amount of effort put into the levels - just by different people.  It might even take more time since you have to grind solo content instead of killing more powerful mobs together.  The fellowship system is one of the few newish ideas they have, it would be a shame to drop it.

As far as power levelling goes I think that once you tap a mob you get all of the xp so your buddies could just burn it down for you, I don't even know if there are level limits to buffs either.  I was putting level 14 cleric buffs on level ones and double or tripling their HP, the game seems designed for powerleveling, fellowships are the least of their problems.

[Lantyssa]

He says he’s going after “players who are looking for something deeper, more like a home.” He adds, “I don’t expect to get six or seven million players, but if we have 500,000 by the end of the year and keep growing after that, I’ll be happy.”

Methinks he is going to be a tad bit unhappy.

As the years passed and the price tag neared $20 million, Microsoft began to lose patience with Mr. McQuaid, who insisted on adding more virtual landscape and other features to the game. By 2005 Microsoft was focused on introducing the Xbox 360 console and was looking for someone to take Vanguard off its hands. (Microsoft representatives declined to discuss the matter in detail.)

Interesting in that we now know MS put in at least $20 million, and Sony less than $10 million, plus whatever the deal with MS cost.

In the end he may have good cause to be upbeat. “In some ways this is just the beginning of a long journey,” Mr. McQuaid said. “People ask me, ‘Are you launching a finished game?’ And the answer is no, we’re launching a game that is good enough to launch, but it’s not finished. And that’s why I love these games: because they should never be finished.”

My definition of finished and Brad's definition of finished seem to wildly differ.  For this, and this alone, I want to smack him upside the head.

[Azazel]

My definition of finished and Brad's definition of finished seem to wildly differ.  For this, and this alone, I want to smack him upside the head.

]
aka "Spin, Bradley! Spin!"