Vanguard - I don't give a fuck if it's dead, It's still brown as fuck (Download link in 1st post)

I love how lev breaks flying mounts too.

Using dual 670s. Pegged at 60fps using VSync (I get coiling when playing PS2 without having Vsync on). Lowest I've gotten was about 48fps.

In the Nvidia CP my settings are:
AO: Not Supported
Anisotropic Filter: Application Controlled
Antialiasing-FXAA: On (ATI equivalent is Morphological Filtering in Fullscreen)
Antialiasing-Setting: 4x (FXAA/Morph Filter should be enough if you're losing framerate do to having AA on)
...everything else is Application Controlled or default.

In Game the following settings:
Video
Full-Screen Mode: Checked
Resolution: 1920x1080
Render Quality: High Quality
Texture Quality: Ultra High
Anisotropy: 4x

Atmospheric Distortion: 0%
Far Clipping Plane: 8192 (I noticed less hitching at 5000. It seems it wants to load stuff more frequently at anything above 5000)
Volumetric Clouds: Checked
Grass: 100%
Tree Detail: 100%

Bloom: Checked
HDR: Checked
Tone Mapping: Checked

Performance
Hardware Occlusion: OFF (this is not Ambient Occlusion. It's some wierd buggy thing)
Vertical Sync: Checked (Normally I recomend this to be OFF, but with some of the newer cards like the 7900 series or 600 series you may want it on to prevent that nasty coiling sound at times. Since I don't have a 120mhz monitor not like I'll take advantage of higher frames anyhow.
Triple Buffering: Checked

Character Occlusion: Checked
Use Provided Shaders: Checked (I didn't notice any difference with this on or off)
Animation LOD: 80%

Environment Particle Density: 10%
Player Spell Particle Density: 50%
Target " " " : 20%
PC " " ": 10%
NPC " " ":10%

(Particles are the #1 killer of frame rates during large raids/groups etc).

PC:
Win 7 Home Premium
i7 3770 3.4 OCed to 4.1
16GB DDR3 RAM
2GB MSI 670 OC PE. x2 (although only 2GB of Ram is used).

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I finally finished up the Isle of Dawn. Of the three places I can go, is there one that's recommended?

Finished all the quests on Isle, and am lvl 10 in crafting and diplomacy. Didn't max out harvesting skills...is that something I should do first?

Really if you had to choose a MMO to kick around on within the SoE family of Station Pass mediocrity, would you choose VG, EQ-Live, EQ-Test, EQ-Mac, or EQII? Looking to kick around on something until FFXIV comes out.

it totally depends on what you want, if you want to kick around leveling for a couple months and having a decent amount of fun pick VG and duel box, then quit. If you want something that might last EQ prog is still going tho you have to actually pay for that... that one you can spend a few months leveling and have some fun at endgame without a high barrier to entry plus you will find actual people to play and level with. EQ2 is a worse version of wow. EQ normal servers can be fun but mostly its like VG where its hard to break into any sort of endgame and you mostly play solo, but you can play and box for free and it can be fun to mess around and steamroll all that old content we remember fondly.

I notice that DCUO is also on the station pass. Personally I would pick that over any of the other games, its surprisingly enjoyable.

EverQuest 2 is a theme-park, if you want immediate gratification go for that.

Vanguard is more like a sandbox because you have to search for anything worthwhile, but the dungeon crawls are really good.

EverQuest I haven't played it in over eight years so I have no idea anymore.

Don't let people convince you Vanguard is a sandbox... it isn't.

You can level without doing quest hubs all the way to max level which is nice if you like that style (like me). Lots of dungeons to choose from, but I'd say only 25% of them are actually interesting. Many of them are just mob populated cave systems/ruins/whatever with no interesting mechanics, and the spawn times are too slow to have 'grind' camps... so you crawl through them to very anti-climactic ends most of the time. I mean, you wouldn't want to grind in a specific spot for the most part anyway.

The itemization in this game is probably the most boring I have ever seen. There's just so few unique 'gotta have' items that you just don't give a shit. There are some cool ones that come from the raid game... but then you have to actually raid in Vanguard, which is just painful. The lag is attrocious, and encounters are boring and uninspired. Not to mention, most of the raid guilds in Vanguard are just awful compared to other games, so if you are hoping for a 'hardcore' community, forget it. Most raid 3 times/week or less, and many are in a constant state of recruitment due to playerbase attrition...

The world map is another issue. Yes, Telon is enormous and beautiful.... and fucking empty. Points of interest are so few and far between that the world feels extremely bland and lifeless.

Player housing is very blah. There are designated housing areas in far flung places of the world that are totally devoid of life or purpose. Don't expect EQ2 levels of polish here.

All that being said, some of the classes are straight up fun. I can't remember playing another MMO where I loved some of my toons as much. Just some points of advice though; don't buy a flying mount and don't raid.

What are the ships for? I have a bunch of smedbucks lying around thought I'd get a galleon and become high-captain of the seas... So far I'm told they have no use other than they look pretty.

Can you put cannons on them? Are they the only way to access certain content, like far off inaccessible islands? Is that content worthwile?

Quaid_sl said:

For the love of god. If you start playing this game, do yourself a favor. Don't raid. I was having so much fun. Then I hit level 52 and went on my first APW raid. I unsubbed an hour later.

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I absolutely loved APW always thought it was one of the best raid zones I ever experienced. Lol

Helldiver_sl said:

What are the ships for? I have a bunch of smedbucks lying around thought I'd get a galleon and become high-captain of the seas... So far I'm told they have no use other than they look pretty.

Can you put cannons on them? Are they the only way to access certain content, like far off inaccessible islands? Is that content worthwile?

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they are for travelling on water and fishing. No, they give you access to no special content. Flying mounts are faster, too

Today they are merging the final 2 servers into 1. The euro server is going to disappear and only the US server will remain.

I am playing this again since last month and damn if they only had the game running like this in 2007. IMO, still one of the best games around. Having a lot of fun.

-Fara

Anyone else playing this?

Thoughts on new LFG channel and tool?

I've been thinking about checking it out again, they recently replaced the network layer and I'm curious to see how that affected things.

shabushabu_sl said:

I absolutely loved APW always thought it was one of the best raid zones I ever experienced. Lol

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Ditto. Progressing through APW during 2008 was some of the best gaming I've ever had. My guild was the first (only) guild to kill Kotasoth on the pvp server!

I might logging into this free brown shit soon enough. I never actually capped. What server are you guys on (lol).

ixian_sl said:

I've been thinking about checking it out again, they recently replaced the network layer and I'm curious to see how that affected things.

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So those certain culsters that were lag infested crap are fixed? Forgot which zone it was but the dark forest area i guess always lagged me to shit for whatever reason and stopped when i couldnt quest in that area and unsubbed. But yeah , was a good time when i didnt encounter the lag , played a Ranger and got some bow off the AH and was just raping face with it and made leveling trivial.

gogojira_sl said:

I might logging into this free brown shit soon enough. I never actually capped. What server are you guys on (lol).

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Facepalm!

"Join the Vanguard Development Team as they give an overview of the state of the game over the past year and share exciting details about what's planned for the future! Don't forget to bring your ideas and questions to discuss with the Team as there will time for Q&A!"

anything of note from this session?