Vanguard Month 6

28.06.07 Vanguard Month 6

Well its been a hell of a ride for the last 6 months. The game we had all been eagerly anticipating, Vanguard:Saga of Heroes was released. Unfortunately even by its own developers admission it was released 3-4 months too early. The developers, Sigil, had run out of money and they needed the cash to flow. It all went swimmingly to start with, then the numbers started to drop and people began to realize that they were going to need a seriously high end PC to be able to play VG at even mid range settings. The game world felt empty, bugs were abundant, quests couldn't be completed and crashes were a constant feature of game life.

Something had gone seriously wrong.

Then came the big news, Sigil was effectively folding.

The old enemy, SOE would be buying the game and half the staff were going to get fired. After 5 years of development the whole damn thing imploded with a welter of words from Brad which were largely self serving. I spent 5 years following the development of the game. I poured hundreds of hours into supporting web sites, creating communities, monitoring message boards, working with Sigil staff behind the scenes and encouraging friends to give the game a go. I logged a butt load of bug reports, wrote up ideas when asked for them and participated in in-game feed back sessions.

Suddenly it was all gone. The game was still there but all the work was toast. I tried very hard to be angry, back in the old days of EQ I would have been, I would have poured forth invective like a waterfall. I would have dragged into my anger even people who didn't know what a computer was, let alone a virtual world.

However, I guess I'm older, uglier and at the end of the day I got what I wanted. Vanguard is fun. Its a lot more challenging than most of the games out there, its prettier than almost anything else on the market and if SOE think they can make money out of it, then it has a hell of a lot of long term potential.

Southern Armada left WoW to move to Vanguard, so I have all my old raiding mates to play with again, in other words to a large extent I have found a Home, a World we can spend years exploring.

When you have cities like New Taraganor to explore what more could you want?

So I created my Dread Knight, logged in and started killing. I had been playing a Dread since the class was introduced in Beta2, nearly 2 years. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure (even after becoming an Elder) if I was going to continue to enjoy playing the class long term, I needn't have worried. A Shadow Knight was my first class in Everquest and so far I'm still loving the Vanguard version of the class.

I did have a log of where I was when all of these screens were taken but somewhere along the line they got misplaced. The Mutated Rekk is from quite early on in my leveling career, I think I was based around Renton Keep and spending a lot of time dying while trying to complete quests which were meant to be completed by groups. Even this early in the game groups were very hard to find and the LFG tool was composed pretty much of running around zones spamming "12 Dread LFG".

This shot of the named turtle Gordaukar is also from around the same time. I was completing a quest line and he was the final Mob. This fight is held entirely underwater and to be honest he was incredibly underpowered. I think he took me about 45 seconds to kill, loot and run back to the quest giver. An impressive model tho considering this is the sort of thing that you see at the very early levels of the game. To me this sort of thing is what makes VG feel empty. Its not empty plains that don't have a mob every 3 feet (Drive across the center of Aussie, you wont see anything for 1000 miles.) its mobs with no loot table.

It makes the world feel incomplete somehow, like they haven't quite gotten around to finishing it.

Another MOB from around Renton Keep. This is a Stonemaster Ettercap. There are a whole range of different types of Ettercap. This is where I began to feel the difference of Vanguard as a world from any of the previous games I had played. Each different type of Ettercap is a different class and unlike most games where that doesn't mean a lot, in Vanguard this means different tactics to fight and beat each type. Ettercaps don't just stand there and hit you, they will cast class based spells and attempt different ways to beat you, a lot like a player would.

At the end of the first 20 levels, this is Ulaa Elfbrother of Southern Armada. He is wearing amour almost entirely from the Universal Races of Thestra quests. These are quests which can be entirely soloed and I was really enjoying doing them. The rewards are great and the XP is well worth it. They were great right up until I ran into a bug which made then impossible to complete. Sigh, another bug report submitted.

At this point something happened that completely changed my game play. I got a regular group!. I was soloing in and around Renton Keep doing various quests when I teamed up with a Pally called Rocks. We hung out a bit and chatted and after a while he told me he was part of a regular Wednesday group and would I like to join them. I went into the usual, "you realize I am in Aussie", time zones speech and it turns out that half the Wednesday group were other members of SA and Rocks is applied to join, he was Cuddles the Mage when SA were playing WoW!.

At the time I joined the group we were all in the 15-20 range and thus we christened ourselves "The Teens". Initially the group was Pally, Dread, Druid, Cleric, Cleric, so we had tons of Healing but our DPS was not fantastic. Apart from off-tanking we had no CC.

The group was formed with the idea of meeting up regularly on Wednesday nights so we could run through all the quests everyone had and do some of the premiere dungeons. We started off doing Hillsbury Manor in Thestra. I thought the map of the dungeon area was really cool (although I would see it repeated later in other dungeons) . We ran through HM several times and completed every quest that wasn't broken by bugs.

Once we were finished there we moved on to the nearby Crystal Caverns, killing our way down to the lower ant caves trying to get to the Queen. We never had a problem killing anything in that area but for various reasons (namely repeated server crashes) we never did quite make it to the Queen. The Crystalline servitors and the Crystal Warders did manage to make our lives a bit difficult at times. Having 2-3 of the Servitors pop on you at the same time can make it tough with out any CC.

In between Wednesday nights I'm still doing a bit of soloing. I quite like the game balance in the late teens early 20's, with Solo quests and small group or duet quests both giving solid xp. In the downtime you can still get stuff done without having to get a full group up and running. About 40 of the Vultrix Stalkers shown below had to die in order to make the quest gods happy.


Once we began to out level the Ant Caves, we decided to hit The Tomb of Lord Tsang. Its a hell of a run from Hillsbury Manor, being that its on Kojan, but its the perfect level and we had heard there were some nice weapons to be had. The design of the place was awesome with elevators going up and down, areas where you had to jump on and off and a really well done Asian theme throughout. It feels like you might be walking through the Kyoto palace in Japan with sliding screens and beautifully painted wall hangings. Kudos to whoever designed the place.

The Mobs were pretty cool with an undead theme all the way through. I think its really at this point that we started to get our groove on as a group. The second of third run through and we are starting to figure out how each of us works and the strengths and abilities of each class. It is also at this point that Rocks (our resident Pally) also decided to swap and become Lulla, our new resident Psionicist. This was a great move as it gave us lull and CC type abilities as well as adding to our DPS considerably.

A Roaming Phantasm

At sometime during the nights of smashing our way through the undead hordes, Lulla mentioned to me that he had started the Hunters League quests north of the Gnome city of Mekalia. So, in between group nights I ran myself across to Khal and started to do the early quest lines. Initially the quests are an easy solo quest. Then you run into the undead flesh quest and that's where it all starts to get a lot harder.

At this point I suggested to the whole group that we head over to the Upside garrison region and start to do the quests. they were into it as we didn't really have any thing else on the cards and needed to level up a bit before tackling Trengal Keep. So we farmed our way through the early quests and killed lots and lots of Gauthek on the way through.



The final parts of the quests are fantastic. This whole series not only delivers some awesome gear and a fantastic weapon, its also a hell of a lot of fun. Fighting up into the Bird skull cave, killing off the council members and then pulling the named, is going to go down as one of my most fun moments in gaming. Again Kudos to whoever designed both the quest series and the Skawlra Rock chunk.

A birdie dies on the way to the Skull cave.

Once we were through the quests I took Screenies to show all the guys fully kitted out in Hunters League class amour.

Naoru Shii Cleric

Benzine Cleric

Lulla Psionicist

Zeckl Druid

Once we completed the Hunters league quests we headed up to The ruins of Trengal Keep. Its interesting how acronyms evolve. There seems to be a split between people who use TK as the short version and some who use RoTK. I seem to use both depending on how I'm feeling at the time.

Trengal Keep is a huge quest hub to the north of Renton Keep. If you are a tight group in your mid to late 20s, or in an early 30's group, I can highly recommend it. The zone itself is really fun with lots of fallen ruins, undead Orcs and huge Drakes flying all over the place. The quests lead you deeper and deeper into the Keep with really cool rambles through underground caverns and dungeons. There are several named's on the way through, from whom we have managed to get some nice upgrades and at least one awesome set of Panties for Lulla.

Named Fatboy in the courtyard

Watching the Pally pull, and Die!

Oddly enough writing all of the above has been really hard for some reason, it hasnt flowed. I guess a whole lot has gone on in my life during this period, moving countries, quitting a very long term job and then finding a new one, renting my house out and then trying to find a new place to rent myself. Its been a hell of a year so far.

I've had a number of interesting conversations with various people about VG and where it will go. One that seems to have stuck in my head was a conversation with a chap who was helping to run Ausguard.com when I was involved with that project.

We were talking about raiding and he was boasting about his Guilds uberness and how they were going to be the best Aussie raiders on his server. This was a newly formed Guild mind you, with leaders with no experience of either leading a guild or raiding. So I said the three best Aussie raid guilds that I knew about were Southern Armada, Cold Fury and Aurora Noctum. I was also thinking of including Guilds with large Aussie populations like The Hand and some of the sub guilds that have spawned from the bigger guilds into new games, like Veni Vedi Vici, but I thought that would only confuse the issue so I left it out.

Anyway, this young chap went off, he started going on about how his guild had done more content, they were further along in high level dungeons, there were more of them, they were more dedicated and played more hours yada yada yada.

I tried to point out several issues to him.
Raiding is different. Working with, behaving in, and turning up to raids week after week is simply a different proposition to logging on to play in a group. Managing and running multi group raids is completely different to being in a single group and progressing through high level content. The Guilds I had named all had history. They had all been around since early EQ and had evolved into tight, efficient, well led, dedicated raiding crews, over years of banging against high level raid encounters.

Just killing stuff in groups for the first few months simply didn't get you into the "uber guild" rating in my books.

He couldn't see it and went off again. Oddly enough not only does his guild no longer exist in Vanguard, they disbanded about 3 weeks after this conversation and he no longer plays. A classic example of uber guild burn out I guess.

I have a confession.
I have been playing with the teens group for about 8 weeks or so, we have been happily making our way through the middle level dungeon progressions and I have been having a blast!. However shortly after I started with the teens I also hooked up for a couple of dungeon runs with some very old Guildies.

Keepr, Trikkie, Sanfy and Phaithful are also playing regularly 2 nights a week, Monday and Thursday. After a couple of runs I was asked if I wanted to join them regularly. Now I don't think I have ever made any secret of the fact that I wanted to get to raid level (Raiding is coming yay!) and I wanted to be able to play a whole lot more than I have been able to up to now. Having a group is pretty much a must have for play as a tank, Soloing is possible but not a whole lot of fun.

I am now at the point in game play that I have pretty much out -levelled the teens group and Trikkies group is beginning to delve into some parts of the game that are going to require some serious dedication. (Vol Tuniel and the Swamp Quests) I really don't think I am going to be able to play with the Teens group anymore.

I don't have an alt at the right level to continue to play with them and I have been their primary tank, so I'm feeling pretty crap about it. I am trying to level a Sorceror to be able to join them but it means Lulla the Psi will have to go back to being Rocks the Pally.

Its possible the Teens may just break up, I don't know. The feeling within the group is it was always a casual group to begin with. A couple of the lads within it arent really interested in VG and would rather be playing something else (see rose colored glasses comments later) whereas the Trikkie group is a little more dedicated and I can get to raid level a lot faster.

Where will SA go at the moment? that too is a good question. A lot of people have strayed off to other games like Lord of the Rings Online. Whether they are gone permanently or they will come back once raids go live is an unknown. Unfortunately I don't think that raiding as we have known it will ever exist in a game again.

Even a lot of the old SA people have the "this game must be perfect at launch and if its not I will go elsewhere" mentality which is a real pity. I think a lot of people look back with deeply rose coloured glasses at past games and hold them up as examples of shining perfection. I have seen people comparing VG with EQ as to how "finished" they are. Ignoring the fact that EQ was 6 years old when we left, when that game came out it was horribly bugged, the servers wouldn't stay up and huge parts of the game didn't evolve till years later. World of Warcraft was the same.

I think the closest example to what could potentially happen with Vanguard is EQ2. When that game was launched it was a POS. Major surgery occurred over the next two years and by everyone's accounts it is now a very good game. In the process of managing that game to the state it is in today, SOE has evolved a series of standards and methods for the management of an MMO and for communication with their fan base. If those same standards and methods can now be applied to VG then there is an excellent chance the game will evolve into something very powerful. Will SA stay that long?. I really do not know. I certainly hope they will, everything else that's coming out in the next 12 months or so is just a WoW clone from what I have been able to ascertain.

I actually have another update ready to go as I have been playing a whole lot more recently and have a whole lot more to write about so once this goes live the next one shouldn't take much longer and I will talk about some Guild stuff then.

I will also be making the screenies a lot bigger and I'm going to stop screwing with them to reduce file sizes. If you don't have broadband by now, go and bloody get it. So hopefull the pics will be a lot clearer. Vanguard is a beautiful game and some of the Mobs and Dungeons are fantastic, I would really like to show that off.