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

Utnayan

Utnayan

F16 patrolling Rajaah until he plays DS3
<Gold Donor>
16,862
14,254
Rafterman_sl said:
I don't think the game not being sexy enough or lame had anything to do with it's problems. The world was one of the best in any MMO ever IMO, it was just destroyed by technical issues and the sheer amount of shit that people had to deal with on a daily basis while playing. I had more "oh wow" moments playing and exploring the world in Vanguard than I ever did playing WoW, and if it had a tenth of the polish that WoW, or any modern MMO really, it wouldn't be shutting down and many of us would still be playing.
Click to expand...
Completely 100% disagree enough that I will post about it here. Vanguard had shit for atmosphere and lore/world surroundings compared to some of the LEAST memorable experiences out there. Quaid mentions Ironforge, I remember walking into Stormwind and hearing this as I looked at the statues of fallen heroes and little kid NPC's following a teacher explaining the city to them.

Stormwind - Music of World of Warcraft - YouTube

I am all for subjective opinion but I am not sure what you are basing your opinion on when you say this about Vanguard. It was a completely stale and lackluster experience with a good blood mage class and a half addicting diplomacy game plagued with a boring/stale world due to a lack of not only polish or passes, but under a tight time crunch given the circumstances where the developers wanted to do about 500% more than the framework that was laid out, yet the framework ended up shipping as is to the resounding thud of facepalms before given walking papers by a scam artist in the parking lot. Vanguard and it's fall is the epitome of what Brad McQuaid has become in life.
 
P

Pooch

Lord Nagafen Raider
89
38
I think its a little unfair to compare vanguard to WoW in some aspects, because i think most of us had play through the warcraft campaigns and seeing a lot of places you only saw from top down into a first person view was amazing. I think its alot harder for an MMO to draw you in the same way without some pre established lore and landmarks.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,859
8,265
Some of the competition for your $15/month in 2008

rrr_img_72125.jpg

rrr_img_72126.jpg

rrr_img_72127.jpg

rrr_img_72128.jpg

rrr_img_72129.jpg


Edit: corrected by gogojira, Rift was released in 2010. My bad.
 
G

gogojira_sl

shitlord
2,202
3
Aion wasn't out then and Rift was waaay later. Certain parts of Vanguard look good but your point is valid for a lot of the game, most of it is kind of ugly and buggy. It was always the scale I liked and hearing the Khal music kick in upon entering the city was pretty epic.
 
V

Vinyard_sl

shitlord
3,322
16
You can't count EQ2 in those screenshots.....You can't even go into 90% of the buildings they have in the game. In VG, if you could see it, chances are you could go to it.
 
Hateyou

Hateyou

Not Great, Not Terrible
<Bronze Donator>
17,796
48,157
Vinyard_sl said:
You can't count EQ2 in those screenshots.....You can't even go into 90% of the buildings they have in the game. In VG, if you could see it, chances are you could go to it.
Click to expand...
Does it matter if you can go in it if there is nothing in there? Who cares?

One of my favorite MMOs ever, and I'm bummed it never got fixed/attention but still. VG had several things going for it, but white knighting it is just stupid. The game was a buggy, ugly mess.
 
P

pointyboot

Bronze Knight of the Realm
167
3
Comparing VG to WoW in this regard is not even fair. WoW shows fucking expert craftsmanship in the world and lore.
 
K

Kharza-kzad_sl

shitlord
1,080
0
I wouldn't rate warcraft's lore or art highly at all. If you are well read at all, you can spot where every name and plot and location was stolen from. Everyone steals but they didn't really bother to even be clever about it. Some of the names are jumbled together nonsense words from sindarin even.

The art style is just lifted from warhammer. It makes a good mcdonalds style package for the masses but I'm not seeing the expert craftsmanship.

I explored a lot of the VG world as a psionicist, back when invisibility worked really well. What VG was missing was consistency. Some areas were beautiful, others were just unfinished.
 
Daidraco

Daidraco

Avatar of War Slayer
10,716
11,380
People just wanted what Brad promised them. There are some really great things about this game, but its hard to see them when they are cloaked in the shadow of behemoths like the Graphics Engine. If they never had that monster, Im sure what funds didnt go into drug use could have been used to add some flare around the world. Someone else mentioned it, but I was damn near addicted to the Diplomacy system and I usually hate card games. Imagine if Blizzard perfectly merged Hearthstone into World of Warcraft. That shit would be tits.
 
popsicledeath

popsicledeath

Potato del Grande
7,547
11,831
Quaid_sl said:
We'll just have to agree to disagree, since it's a question of personal taste.

I think Telon is about as bland as Grandma's meatloaf.
Click to expand...
That's the point, though. Personal taste isn't usually what kills a game. The majority of people not even being able to stay logged in long enough to form a personal opinion, though, is what killed Vanguard before it even had a chance to bore people or not.

But yeah, most cities in Vanguard where shit. Plenty of amazing dungeons and outpost-dungeon related storylines. And some cities and surrounding areas were cool (to me and my personal taste) like the high elf area, and I'm not usually down with the gay-elf sort of environs.

In the end I'd describe the inconsistency with the lore, world, environment and that sort of thing as a symptom of the greater issues. There are a ton of things to claim were what sunk Vanguard, and spending time saying it was just too boring a world is lazy or ignorant.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,859
8,265
I don't think anyone with a rational mind thinks Vanguard's failure wasjustbecause the world was ugly & boring. However, it certainly helped.
 
Bruman

Bruman

Golden Squire
1,154
0
There's probably a billion little things that helped, but by far and away the biggest reason had to have been the terrible technical issues at launch. MMOs rarely get a second chance. Everything else pales in comparison to the bombed launch, so much that they're really insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

Kudos to Smed and crew for trying to keep the game going for several years. FTP transition, content updates, etc. While it never had a chance to be a real success after the launch, I do suspect that if the game hadn't been so damn buggy with terrible performance, that the FTP transition could've helped it build a steady niche user base. I tried to get into the game a few times, especially when it went FTP, and chunks crashing all the time really killed it for me. Hell, there's still tons I'd have loved to see and do in the game, but if the chunk wasn't crashing on me, I was having mobs go under the world and killing me.
 
Dyvim

Dyvim

Bronze Knight of the Realm
1,420
195
I think why most people disagree on "the world" of VG is, that there are some places that really work out great, really guk-style and these places happen to be (exclusively?) premium dungeons.
On the other hand the cities in VG sucked donkey balls, like big hairy male donkey balls, nearly all of them.
They lagged like horror shit in a can, looked mediocre at best, crashed and bugged every so often.
Its so bad noone went there, noone even crafted there, everyone preferred the working stations in some hilly billy mnts outpost.
 
Xinux

Xinux

Lord Nagafen Raider
91
177
Picked up a new Developer Volt and we are still looking for more of anyone is interested.

Basic lua support is now in and a few commands have been added.


rrr_img_72357.jpg



and had to throw this in


rrr_img_72358.jpg
 
Noodleface

Noodleface

A Mod Real Quick
38,680
16,753
Quaid_sl said:
Oh come on. Compare the major cities to Darnassus and Stormwind. Compare the Tauren to the Raki. The game was DOA when you compare it to other products available. It just wasnt sexy at all.

I mean ya, SOME of the dungeons were top notch, and the world's scale is unmatched. The classes are some of the best in the industry to this day. But fuck me the world was lame. Ya, the nooks and crannies were cool. I remember stumbling on that sunken ship/siren dungeon with the dancing skeletons, and that was one of my favorite MMORPG experiences ever. But do you remember the first time you climbed the ramp to Ironforge, and then stepped through the threshold? How about your first Griffin ride? Do you remember the first time you entered the immensity of Blackrock Mountain? Hell, compare your first 5 hours of gameplay in WoW to your first 5 in Vanguard. How many players even got through that chunk of gameplay in Vanguard to discover the 'nooks and crannies' that were the real joy of that game? That was where the game failed in comparison its competition.

I played vanguard for about a year, and felt the same way the whole time. It's a real shame, because the developers at Sigil really knew how to create a deep MMORPG experience... they just had really really bad taste.
Click to expand...
WoW is up there as one of my top MMO experiences, especially vanilla. I can't say shit about that.

But not everything was as "not awesome" as that. I remember standing on top of the hill, me and my friend hitting level 5. Looking down the winding path there was one of the major cities with the port and all the ships - that was epic to me. Additionally the underground gnome village was awesome.

Was it as awesome as WoW? No. At the same time, this game had none of the financial backing, existing lore, seasoned veterans, or hype that WoW had. They did what they could and did a really damn good job.
 
Quaid

Quaid

Trump's Staff
11,859
8,265
Vanguard had a 30 million dollar budget, no? Pretty sure WoW was developed for 60 million, and I bet a good portion of the difference is marketing expense
 
You must log in or register to reply here.