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

I wish I knew the city name but it was near where the Gnomes started. You left the Gnome starting area and there was a port city that lead into a desert-like zone. In that zone there was a massive, massive city. Similar in size and scale to the Gnome starting city. I'm talking big. But there wasnothingin it. No other players, no NPCs (there may have been like 3 non intractable NPC), no enemies.Nothing. I ran around there for like 30 minutes thinking "there has got to be a point here" but there wasn't a point. Just dead content.

I think it's hard to have pretty scenery in a game that's mostly centered around progression without thinking "this is a waste of space", as most MMOs are. I get what some people are saying though, if done right, it can have a good effect.

But what you end up with is 10 forests with bears or whatever walking around everywhere, then this one forest with nothing in it. It sticks out as "wrong".

VG was more like having 1 forest with bears walking around with 10 with no bears

Shrug, hit me up just started boxing Pal / Psi / Shaman - Glangal

I haven't played since 2009, so I can't comment on changes made since then.
When I was playing, I was in lurv with this game. SO much so, I had started a blog about VG until I gave up and quit playing:http://deadlillith.blogspot.com/

BUT, I'm not a raider or a super social player. Err... Also, I've never played WoW, therefore I cannot compare.

And apparently I am all alone here, but I LOVED IoD. I loved it so much, I started like a zillion alts just so I could start over on the island!!
And I would max out crafting and diplomacy, as well as adventuring on the island, to further extend my stay there. It was F-U-N!!
The chicken candy & feeding that little fairy so she'd turn into a monster... I had so much fun!! Which is why I play games in the first place...

I even grew to understand, respect and enjoy diplomacy (although I've since forgotten what the point is).

Anyway, I also loved the housing in VG. Building your GH or house and it was really there, not just a clicky door. That was fun.

I'm sure a lot of it has to do with VG being my first ever intro to an MMO, but the environment sucked me in 100%. The ambient sounds, the music, the scenery... All of it... I was no longer sitting at my computer, staring at a monitor... I was in Telon.

Draegan_sl said:

I tried it like 3 months ago? The newbie island barely loaded, and then the game crashed. I've got a pretty decent PC too.

Regarding world design and dungeon crawls:
I wasn't really impressed with the overall design of the game. There were some really neat POIs, like around the dwarven starting area. But overall it was just really empty in places. It wasn't bad, it was pretty average as far as large world designs go. Just an opinion though.

Dungeons were pretty meh, but I'll admit I only did the ones up through Tsangs. They just seemed like random caves/hallways but together to me. But again, only did low level ones.

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This was my feeling as well. I like the idea of the big sprawling dungeons but once you got inside them their was nothing really unique about them. I didn't feel like there were any awesome "boss" rooms, they all felt generic to me. Even the named felt like they were dropped in a hall way and nothing was special with them. Compare that to EQ where the dungeons felt like they were themed and the bosses seem to fit into their rooms. I think they could have been a lot better but I do like the public/group dungeons.

Merlin_sl said:

This was a serious problem. It wasn't always about being smart and brave, it was odd. I remember doing the 5 or six quests around my starting huts, then walking up the hill only to see level 25ish mobs at the top. So I wandered back down and started exploring. I walked and walked and walked through fields of grass for 10 minutes. There was nothing around. At level 6 ya got to be pretty careful just wandering around aimlessly. Obviously eventually I found another town, but the lack of content was an issue moreso then the player simply being retarded and scared. Vanguard was frikkin HUGE. They could have filled it with content a bit better around the starting areas.

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Yeah it was a problem. Part of the problem is that Brad (or whoever on the team) were such insanely tight arsed about everything. For example, the world was gigantic but you had to run everywhere on foot. The first horse wasn't possible until about level 10 or so, but even that wasn't much faster than being on foot. Everyone I knew had quit by 30, and it's sad because none of them had ever seen a fast mount or a flying mount. But the game had that technology way back when the only thing close was WoW which just had flying mounts that followed pre-defined paths.

In other words, Vanguard was stupid for not just giving fast ground mounts to people at low levels, and then mediocre flying mounts at mid levels.

And I think some of the areas weren't very good to explore either. I loved Tursh because you could get to 10 there, and then the mountain range meant that there was only really 2 ways out of the area. One was high level mobs, and the other one was not too bad, so you knew that was the way to go. But other areas weren't so logical. I'm sure they could have improved all that but the game was released like a year too early so... Oh well.

TragedyAnn_sl said:

And apparently I am all alone here, but I LOVED IoD. I loved it so much

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I loved it too. I never understood all the hate. It definitely lacks the realism of the racial starting areas, and it's not as big either. But it's still fun and it's very streamlined. I also liked how it ended with a dungeon that was really challenging to solo, but you could do it if you were determined enough. Or you could just join a group.

TragedyAnn_sl said:

All of it... I was no longer sitting at my computer, staring at a monitor... I was in Telon.

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That's the thing that made most of us fall in love with Everquest back in 1999. It was incredibly immersive, you were transported in to the world and felt like you were there, not sitting at your desk looking at it through a screen. I haven't managed to get that experience in any other MMO, and even today with the ancient graphics, Everquest still does the same thing to me. I think the first person view is a big part of it.

Tenks_sl said:

I wish I knew the city name but it was near where the Gnomes started. You left the Gnome starting area and there was a port city that lead into a desert-like zone. In that zone there was a massive, massive city. Similar in size and scale to the Gnome starting city. I'm talking big. But there wasnothingin it. No other players, no NPCs (there may have been like 3 non intractable NPC), no enemies.Nothing. I ran around there for like 30 minutes thinking "there has got to be a point here" but there wasn't a point. Just dead content.

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Ahgram ? Not sure if that is how you spell but they did populate that quite a bit with the crafting quest series

Logged back in the other day, and last night hit 20 on my Disc finally, hah. After over a year at 19.

Playing VG is interesting - it's probably the only MMO by a big company that you can't just find out everything about it on the internet, because noone cares enough to have any all-inclusive sites that are kept up to date. That's a good thing, but it's hard to get used to hehe.

Dang. Y'all are making me want to play again... hmm.. got 3 weeks left on my maternity leave... might as well go d/l it

Added a ranger to my boxing. Hit 18 finishing up khegor quest then hunter league. Having a blast

Bruman_sl said:

Logged back in the other day, and last night hit 20 on my Disc finally, hah. After over a year at 19.

Playing VG is interesting - it's probably the only MMO by a big company that you can't just find out everything about it on the internet, because noone cares enough to have any all-inclusive sites that are kept up to date. That's a good thing, but it's hard to get used to hehe.

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its not that hard to find info. most of the links on this page are maintained.

edit: hm i cant seem to post the link. go to the official forums, and under the newbie yard you'll see a thread called vanguard community site library.

Schags_sl said:

This was my feeling as well. I like the idea of the big sprawling dungeons but once you got inside them their was nothing really unique about them. I didn't feel like there were any awesome "boss" rooms, they all felt generic to me. Even the named felt like they were dropped in a hall way and nothing was special with them. Compare that to EQ where the dungeons felt like they were themed and the bosses seem to fit into their rooms. I think they could have been a lot better but I do like the public/group dungeons.

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there are a lot dungeons that are like this but there's a fair number of unique dungeons that are pretty well scripted. most people these days dont know/ignore because they're just trying to grind to 55 asap

Yeah, I didn't say there was *no* info, but what's out there pales greatly to resources for WoW of course, but even lesser MMOs like GW2, LOTRO, etc. And what's out there is often out of date.

For example - I was wondering how URT rewards compared to HL rewards. You can find some of that info out there, sure, but you'll have to search through 3-4 sites to find one that has it, then it doesn't have the updated rewards from URT after the revamp.

Not trying to get into a big argument about it - but yes, there are definitely sites out there, but it's spread out and haphazardly maintained. There's the official Wikia site, Telon Project, and Silky Venom are kinda the big ones. VGWalkthroughs is very useful and well done for what's there. But you'll find outdated and incomplete information at every turn on all the sites.

Which is fine! Leaves more to find out in game. Just saying compared to using something like WoWHead or the LOTRO wiki, you can really tell the difference.

yea i see what youre saying. basically i use like 4 sites: the telon project which is probably the most up to date and accurate, vgwalkthroughs for the old forgotten horde maps, xanadu for the raid loot db, and sometimes the final resolve guild website for the crafting info. telon project should have vgtact mirrored somewhere as well for anyone who is looking for diplo stuff.

I've always wished (foolishly of course) that Sony would just sell Vanguard to a small team of developers who could shut it down, spend a year working on it and rerelease it in all its glory. This game still has so much untapped potential, but Sony is content to sit and watch it die. Whenever it gets any steam at all, they just pull the support they have working on it until it starts to die again. I'm fully convinced they can't wait until they can just shut the thing down entirely.

I was with you up to the "shut it down" part

bayr_sl said:

I was with you up to the "shut it down" part

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Well I cannot explain the details, and maybe someone better versed in the nuts and bolts can do a better job than me, but it was my understanding that there is a serious problem with the engine itself. It didn't sound like something you can just fix and keep rolling. The engine is going to require nearly an entire rewrite. But again, maybe someone can explain this better or correct me if I'm wrong.

Not only that, I would love to see a dedicated team just go over every single inch of the game and give it the attention it deserved before it was released. Hell, you could even rebox it and put it back on shelves. Call it, Vanguard Phoenix Gold Edition. Toss in cloth maps, coins, a free months play, pix of the developers working on it.....the theory is cool haha. That would help recoup some of the money that a major overhaul would cost.