Welcome to beta :D

Ork Warrior: Kowl Dominant
Orc Dread Knight: Cowl Darkened

First things first, when you logon to Beta you are taken through the character creation process. The Character builder is almost a game in and of itself. There is almost nothing about your character and its appearance that you cant in some way modify. Nose length, chin thickness, eyebrow width, fullness of lips, anything can be changed. If you want a fat and ugly dark elf female, you can do that, a handsome and noble Orc?, you can do that too.

Next comes the choice of Class. Now as my (rl) physical resemblance is very close to that of an Orc anyway and I prefer to be up front bashing stuff, I chose Orc Warrior and hit the GO button.

The screen goes dark and I sit waiting with baited breath for the world to appear around me. Pop and I'm in. Firstly, a nearby Goblin calls out to me that he needs aid to help free the prisoners. Looking about I seem to be on some kind of boat which has run aground. I tell the Goblin that I will help and taking his key I run to a nearby chained prisoner and using the key I release him. The prisoner expresses his thanks and starts to follow me, as I'm not sure what to do next I run back to the Goblin who originally tasked me with freeing the prisoners.

As is proper the Goblin roundly abuses me for being an idiot and tells me to get the hell off the ship and away to a fellow Orc who will be waiting on shore to help fellow such as myself who are newly arrived in this world. I run down the plank and off the ship onto the beach into the middle of a battle. Fellow Martok Orcs appear to be deep in battle with a new, unrecognised force of Orcs. I run between battling soldiers and piles of flaming debris and arrive at my destination, a gruff heavily armoured Orc trooper who gives me a sword and sends me back into battle.

Thus begins the life of an Orc Warrior newly arrived to the world of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. The graphics are lush and like nothing else in the genre of MMO's today. Screenshots simply don't do it justice as there is no sense of movement in a screen shot. In the example I gave of the entrance of an Orc Warrior, the flames leap into the night sky, the grass ripples in the breeze and the tree's sway in the cool night air. Feathery clouds scud across the night sky and the star scape is absolutely beautiful.The only thing you need to make the scene complete is the sense of smell and I'm sure that if they could Sigil would be building that into their engine as well. The depth of the imagery is awesome.

Many will compare the graphics to that of EQ2 and claim that WoW's cartoonish graphics allow them to give more detail. On the surface both of these claims look correct. That is until you get up close and walk around a toon or an NPC in Vanguard. That's when you realise that the light is playing across the surface of the armour showing each nick and cut in the armour surface. The NPC casts a shadow which changes depending on what surface it is being cast against. As you look closer you realise that there are runes and symbols etched into the surface of the armour, you can see the straps overlaying each other on the bindings of the sword scabbard. The close up detail in these models and in every piece of equipment is awesome.

The opening quests in the Orc islands lead you cleverly from site to site and up through the levels. The original quest sets are designed to take you up to at least 10th level and provide you with a decent set of armour and beginning weapons. By the time you get to your major racial city you will have a good idea of the dynamics of your class and how to play it. You will have progressed through several levels of quests and you will have seen the earliest of the monster models that have obviously been lovingly crafted by skilled artisans. There are Mob models in this game that absolutely put any other MMO to shame and those are just the ones you will see on the way to level 10.

Some of my favourite models so far are the frogs with the 6 inch long teeth, or the giant beastie that just wanders the roads of the island, the Razzenbacks in the testing caves are awesome!. The Orcs that you first meet in battle on the beach all wield swords that strongly resemble the Orc weapons from the movie series Lord of the Rings. I want one!






As I move up the levels and follow the opening quest lines I am led slowly through the lore and history of the Orcs. Who did what to whom and why, the early history, the Heroes and Villains and the great items of Orcish history. There is a Weapon called the Harvester which was wielded by the greatest hero of the Martok Orcs in antiquity, just from the description and based on the possibility of Unique weapons it already has me drooling and I'm only level 9. I have read that Sigil has discussed the possibility of one off weapons which can only be gained once per server and they seem to be setting up the lore of the game to allow for such items, or maybe the other way around. I was playing in a graveyard killing off Haarq Bugs when I was jumped by the Haarq Queen. My Girlfriend wandered in to see what I was doing, took one look at this ultra realistic bug rearing up to bite me and ran out of the room with a shriek. I think there went my chance to ever get her to play an MMO.

As I progressed I wandered across the world and finally came to the Orc city of Martok. I organised some banking and received some mail. At this point I decided I would try grouping for the first time. To say it wasn't successful is something of an understatement. Now before I get into this I want to make the following point. Before all the Sigil haters popup and say see its broken I told you so!, this is Beta and bad things can happen. I have lost at least 2 characters so far to unfixable bugs, corruption or Beta Wipe. These are the reasons why we test, so that you don't have to go through these things.

So I join up with 2 other players, a Sorceror (Make things go BOOM) and a Necromancer (Cool pets!) and we decide to help each other fight our way down into the Ogre caverns to see the Ogre King as we all have a quest which involves talking to him. As a trio we absolutely breeze through the Ogres guards and make it down to the King. The Necro runs up to the King and before we even know what's happened, the King attacks and the Necro is down. The Necro tells us he had just hailed the king and run through the quest text when the King attacked. I figured as a Warrior I would have the best chance of surviving the Kings attacks so i would give it a go. Boy was I wrong. The King and his bodyguard turned me into so much greenish paste on the cavern walls.

So I respawn at the altar just in time to see the Necro's hp dropping and his death. Bugger now we are all dead. Much like any Warrior through out History, without my weapons I am pretty much stuffed. So I begin the long run back to my corpse. As I run I am trying to sort out a CR with the other two, neither of them respond in the 5 minutes or so it takes me to get back to the Cavern entrance. Just as I get there the Sorceror leaves the group. I try to ask the Necro what is going on, but without answering me he leaves the group about 5 minutes later. Then it dawns on me, in WoW there is no such thing as a CR, players don't need to help each other or to work as a team very much as any class is more than capable of soloing all the way to the top. I think what I have just experienced is the "Every man for himself" attitude of many of the players in World of Warcraft. Vanguard is not designed as a fantasy based First Person Shooter in the same way that WoW is. In VG you will have to group, you will have to co-operate and its going to hurt a lot more if you die and cant get your corpse back. The WoW players will adapt or die and the WoW guilds will rapidly disintegrate, old school EQ, UO, Lineage 2 guilds will do really well in this game.

So my corpse is now at the foot of the Ogre King and I am naked. So I head over to an altar and decide to take the corpse summon hit (If you summon a corpse you get it back but lose XP), I summon the corpse and get told " you have no corpses in this zone". Bugger. So now I am corpseless, no Guildies to help and no one in zone. Ah well, I'm only level 10. I /bug the corpse loss, log out and start a Dread Knight.

I run through the Level 1 - 10 quests again and come out with a slightly different Toon. When playing the Warrior I got a couple of random item drops which improved him significantly. With the Dread Knight I didn't get those rare drops so the Toon is different not only in skills and abilities but in equipped items. As I am levelling I learn an interesting tit-bit. If you stand at extreme distance from the Ogre King you can hail him and complete the quest. So once I reach 10 I decide to see if I can solo down to the King, whaddaya know, I can!. So I hail him, complete the quest that got me killed last time and I have started off into an entirely new Quest thread!. The King sets all his minions to ally so I don't have to fight my way in and out of the Ogre caves each time i want to come back to him. Voila I am now an ally of the Ogres and may walk within the Ogre kingdom safely!.

The Port of Khal.