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

Vanguard never ran great but to say it ran worse than it did in beta is nuts. Maybe it's all the viruses infecting your computer?

I guess I was one of the lucky ones. Even at release this game was not horribly buggy for me. I'd crash every now and then, but in general it was fairly stable and I had a total blast working my way through the wardship quest lines. There was one brief spot in VG's history that if I didn't /flush (yeah, I recognize the irony) often enough, the memory leaks would make me crash. That was annoying but it eventually cleared up. I took some breaks, but I played this game for the majority of its 7 year run and it was the most fun I have had in any mmo, and that includes playing EQ from release to 2004. The game had a lot of what made EQ great (focus on pulling/cc, group dungeons, fairly open world, no rails) but added in some features that made the game just a blast to play, such as casting while moving, low cool downs for most spells, and more. Raiding in APW is probably the most fun I have had in any mmo ever. The coordination required, the mob mechanics, everything was top notch there. Well, aside from the initial stability that required them to make 5 more copies of the zone.

Art style is just a preference, and I had no issues whatsoever with Vanguard's. Any existence of low quality textures is easily overlooked (for me) because the game was so damn fun. I also loved the very unique looks you could obtain that weren't over the top. This game will be sorely missed by me and a small group of others and I hope the emulator sees the light of day.

I couldn't run the game in Beta, and never even picked up my pre-order, (you're welcome gamestop). I was only able to play after it went F2P, but I loved the time I had. The world was great, the graphics fine for my unrefined taste, and the classes were so damn fun. I wonder if we'll ever see dungeons like these again?

I played this for a while a year ago or so. Never bothered to try it for years due to the scathing reviews of it. I liked it better than anything else out there currently. The low pop and FTP direction limited the time I stuck around because I hate raiding. I certainly understand why they did it though. I could see a bit of longevity in the leveling game with the way some of the armor quests and all went but the exp curve was too high and of course flying mounts trivialize everything.

Graphics I could give a shit. Yeah the world could've been a bit less bland but I'm fine with EQ level graphics. I grew up on snes and sega after all. Personally I find WoW character graphics to be garish as hell. Except T2 paladin, props due and given.

symbelmyne_sl said:

logged in for a few mins the other night, game ran worse than it did for me in Beta. doesn't matter now...but they sure let that game go.

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Sorry, but I'm going to straight up call bullshit on this one. If your system ran it worse than in beta, then your PC is a mess. Vanguard was running exponentially better at the end than it did in beta.

^ Agreed! In my over all time of playing VG from Beta to present, i too never really had the problems others reported. I never had top of the line machines either but I did use to treat reloading my comp like an oil change and do that every 3-6 months to keep it running as smooth as possible.

A lot of people say Blood Mage was awesome and, while I agree, the class design across the board in this game was amazing.

Class design was great. The open, non instanced dungeons are still some of the best. The parlor system was pretty cool and a fun break from combat. The game has aged though. This design team shouldnt have been broken up.

There's one innovation I really haven't seen brought to other MMO's yet and that is the two target system. Having an offensive and defensive target was fucking awesome. It's such a simple idea, yet I haven't seen it employed by other MMOs - granted I have been slacking on MMO's the past 10 years.

Elidroth_sl said:

Sorry, but I'm going to straight up call bullshit on this one. If your system ran it worse than in beta, then your PC is a mess. Vanguard was running exponentially better at the end than it did in beta.

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thats fine. the pc i used for Beta was built specifically for Vanguard. you've seen my beta screenshots, does it look like I'm having any problems? here are some more

delirium_sl said:

^ Agreed! In my over all time of playing VG from Beta to present, i too never really had the problems others reported. I never had top of the line machines either but I did use to treat reloading my comp like an oil change and do that every 3-6 months to keep it running as smooth as possible.

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and this is a valid point. i had a mid tier system for beta as well

I enjoyed Vg for a few months, but then the shutdown was announced. I would guess 90-95% of the population was gone by march. The exodus was crazy.

As others said it had great class design, others should borrow from this, especially disciple and bm.

I enjoyed the time I spent in this game. I had a terrible PC at the time, but somehow ground through that for a few months.

I was the original leak on the VG forums for the alpha SS with Aradune in it. Did not see how much use that would get over the last 7-8 years.

This was also the last game I played that I bought in box form.

Goodbye, Vanguard.

No one mentioned Bard for great designed class? Being able to design your own songs was amazing. Granted, most of the components sucked, but the concept was spot on. /cheer whoever thought that one up. I'll be looking forward to getting the components tweaked in New Telon.

I loved the DK too, its still my avatar. Avair and most of the class developers really cared and listened to feedback.

Don't forget the Disciple was another class that was pretty different also.

Agreed, both the disciple and the bard were awesome classes. Both of them could do some really amazing things. Another class I enjoyed was the Necromancer. I loved the graft system to customize your pets. Also the original Death Touch ability was sweet. Has any game since given a player the ability to death touch npcs? I heard that before it got nerfed, necros were DTing mobs like Hegnerian for millions of HP as soon as he fell below 40%

My original character was a rogue and even that class was super fun up until level 50. I really enjoyed being able to craft and throw sleep darts to mez adds. Spamming flechettes in AE fights too was a lot of fun, albeit lag-inducing.

Cyrcle_sl said:

No one mentioned Bard for great designed class? Being able to design your own songs was amazing. Granted, most of the components sucked, but the concept was spot on. /cheer whoever thought that one up. I'll be looking forward to getting the components tweaked in New Telon.

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Bard was awesome. too bad they were so easily exploited early on and into APW before someone let the devs know. The Shaman Class was pretty exceptional too. The only classes that i thought were pretty lame were the druid and warrior. also did a raid really need two PSI?

I played Paladin and I really enjoyed it. Holding aggro was right at a sweet spot where I had to put forth some effort but nothing crazy. I was also a Raki, so there's that.

This is actually me, lol: