Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

holymight said:

Care to give some examples? This has not been my experience at all. All the bugs I report get fixed promptly and I have never had a dev give me the runaround.

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There"s a ton of bugs listed in this thread alone; and in most other VG threads you"ll find. Non-working search functions, inability to customize certain functions, exp and item loss due to zoning, logging out while in a group, logging out while not in a group...

Actual specific quest/bug examples you"ll have to look up. Since I don"t play the game I don"t know the bugged quests etc by name, only that they are singled out that way.

I"ll add to the nerd rage a little.
I played my character. In Khal. Level 32. Everything starting to fuck up on my inventory sheet. I couldn"t remove the items my character had in its hands. If I tried to equip something else, it just disappeared. I was going to log out, but I crashed.
When I logged back in, my character was level 31 (although still with the lvl 32 skills, but unable to use them.) Looking at the XP bar, it went back to 36 hours earlier.
If a GM ever answers and apologizes for not being able to do anything, I"ll give a new name to nerd rage. 3 Days ago, I died without a tombstone and lost 10% XP. Now, 75% XP, 3 days later... That"s a bit too much, even with all the goodwill in the world.

Kaxmax said:

It really depended on the server cluster you were on (they have multiple realms sharing a single DB server, if I remember correctly). You could have been on a low pop server & still had shitty performance due to another server on your cluster. On the other hand there were clusters that never had problems at all, which is why you see such wildly varying opinions on WoW"s server stability.

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Correct. My opening day server had queues, but was never down for long periods. IIRC, there were only 18-20 servers (dubbed the terrible twenty) that were part of the same clusters that had the most trouble. It sucked yeah, but there were 50 other servers people could have gone to.. and refusing to was a choice. Should people have been forced to make that choice? No, they shouldn"t. At least Blizzard gave everyone on those servers creditted playtime to address it. They acknowledged the problem and did at least something to compensate for it. I guess they could have cried on random forums that people just didn"t understand them though.

BTW - Looking at alot of the pictures and screenies of VG it gives me a very Morrowwind/Guild Wars feel, is that what they were aiming for graphics wise?

You can"t seriously class Vanguard and WoW in the same league with regards to bugs, and I bet Sigil wish they had the overcrowding problems that bedevilled Blizzard for so long. Whatever else WoW did, it raised the bar on what you can get away with when you release an MMO. "Interesting but buggy" will kill a game on release just as much as "working but dull".

LadyVex said:

BTW - Looking at alot of the pictures and screenies of VG it gives me a very Morrowwind/Guild Wars feel, is that what they were aiming for graphics wise?

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If you mean Guild Wars/Morrowwind trying to look like an amazing piece of art created by Keith Parkinson like Vanguard is, you"re warm

Camerous said:

Is it as easy as WoW? No it"s not but WoW was made for an audience that is a lot younger than most of us. While that is alright, and yes I know I"ve used it as an insult but I"m a dick most times as you all know, it is not a game for me. I like a more adult orientated game and VG is that. The people are generally more mature and there are not as many kids playing it which suits me just fine.

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Without quoting your whole post, I agree. The games are different. But you can compare them since they are in the same genre. I played VG up to level 22 druid and 18 rogue. Played for 3 weeks. After that, it just wasn"t much fun anymore, for me. Which is why I stopped playing.

What I would like to comment on, is your quote right here. Ignoring the playerbase, how is WOW less of a mature game than VG? I"m in my mid 20"s. I played with a group of people that I"ve met in game for the past year that are the same age as I am up to their 40"s. What in WOW focuses on the less mature person? If anything its made for older people due to the less time needed to play the game to excel.

kcxiv said:

One thing about VG i have absolutely loved is every pick up group i have been in has been great. Everyone knew exactly what to do, and i have had 0 dumbasses that didnt know how to play. I remember my first UBRS run, and wow, that shit was horrible.

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Every pick up group I was in sucked ass.

Draegan said:

Every pick up group I was in sucked ass.

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Mine have been fine for the most part, better than in WoW. My personal experience was so fucking painful in WoW it almost drove me to hate the game. I didn"t move over with my EQ guild(mistake) so when I picked up WoW a year after them I just rolled where ever.

Every single pick up group I got in was an test of patience I met a few skilled people here and there, but overall just painful, so painful in fact I couldn"t even do it anymore. Now I certainly don"t believe that everyone in WoW is dumb, or the game is strictly for dumb people, just that our experiences differ.

I forget who but someone posted on this board what I think was the perfect way to describe it.

If any given game has 15% retards in it, that number is just flat out much more significant in WoW, as such, more noticable. VG/EQ/WoW all had special freds.

Also, is it Zehn who always posts "eq just made more resiliant players, not better ones?" or something close to that? Anyway I agree with that also. The harder curve, mobs, required grouping, didn"t make people really "better" players, but trained players. People knew to, at least try, not to get aggro if not a tank, or how to assist because attacking the wrong mob often meant death. Again, I"m sure there are those who never got that simple concept either.

Where I think WoW missed in this particular regard is having solo, not only as a viable option, but as the superior option. Many people never learned the simple group concepts that everyone from EQ now has as second nature. I still stand to this day that if much of the static camps in WoW outdoors were like that elite area in Hinterlands with trolls, players by consequence would be much "better". Leave the random bears and a few small camps as non-elite so solo play is still there, but make everything else elite, and you force grouping. When you force grouping you force standard group tactics. As such, pick up groups would be more comfortable/prepared/knowledged of how to interact inside of a dungeon.

That"s my 2cents belief anyway.

WoW isn"t made for younger players, but people like Cam just perpetuate the stereotype.

What"s funny is the constant references to "Bnet kiddies".....guess what? When was the last time you actually used Bnet? Bnet was back in the days of Starcraft and Warcraft, like 10 years ago......assuming those "Bnet kiddies" were in high school, they would be in their late 20s by now. If they were say 10 years old, they would be in college now or working. I"m sure many of you were Bnet kiddies and now have moved on.

I would agree with Draegun. If anything WoW is designed for the more casual player, which tends to be the person with less time to play, i.e. working people, adults, with only a few hours a night to spend on gaming. If you think back to EQ, who was online more, the high school kid, the college kid, or the guy holding down a job with a family?

Izuldan said:

WoW isn"t made for younger players, but people like Cam just perpetuate the stereotype.

What"s funny is the constant references to "Bnet kiddies".....guess what? When was the last time you actually used Bnet? Bnet was back in the days of Starcraft and Warcraft, like 10 years ago......assuming those "Bnet kiddies" were in high school, they would be in their late 20s by now. If they were say 10 years old, they would be in college now or working. I"m sure many of you were Bnet kiddies and now have moved on.

I would agree with Draegun. If anything WoW is designed for the more casual player, which tends to be the person with less time to play, i.e. working people, adults, with only a few hours a night to spend on gaming. If you think back to EQ, who was online more, the high school kid, the college kid, or the guy holding down a job with a family?

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I think you"re partially right, but let me add a little to that thought.

Much of World of Warcraft"s success stems from it"s name. "Warcraft" was a very, very popular RTS game back in it"s time. It did have a lot of kids that were either assholes, or didn"t know what they were doing.

Now lets say, they"ve grown up and started playing WoW. They may have matured, but they"re not experienced in common MMORPG skills. And unlike EverQuest, WoW doesn"t really push the player to learn common rules (don"t over agro, don"t break mez, etc), so you have a bunch of older players, but they have no idea what they"re doing.

It"s especially bad when they"re soloing all the time. Soloing itself isn"t bad, but soloing all the way to the maximum level is. :/

Just my two cents.

Good thing about WOW is that there are a shit load of people playing. It"s easy to get a list of good people to play with. I"ve havn"t been without a guild in ages so I can"t speak from recent experience, but since leveling up a new toon recently, I"ve done a few PUGs in SM, some suck, some don"t.

However this is a VG thread. Because there are so FEW people to play with you tend to remember people you are playing with. And because the leveling curve is so much higher compared to WOW you tend to stick around the same people level wise. This could create a sense of community. However for me, it"s a false sense of community. Because these people vary in skill. They arn"t my friends. But it"s easier to weed through them because there arn"t as many.

It"s a numbers game.

Hopefully once things get fixed, the numbers go up a bit.

Sithro said:

Now lets say, they"ve grown up and started playing WoW. They may have matured, but they"re not experienced in common MMORPG skills. And unlike EverQuest, WoW doesn"t really push the player to learn common rules (don"t over agro, don"t break mez, etc), so you have a bunch of older players, but they have no idea what they"re doing.

It"s especially bad when they"re soloing all the time. Soloing itself isn"t bad, but soloing all the way to the maximum level is. :/

Just my two cents.

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You act like MMO skills are something that are hard to develop. Anyone that plays any genre of game with some success can pick up a MMO and adapt quickly. How hard is it to "buff players, tank mobs, heal tanks, dps mobs to just below the gank agro threshold and profit!"? It"s not. And while people may need to learn what tools they have available, the basic premise is simple until you start getting into gimmick fights. Even then I think the old RTS/FPS player would be much more adept at them. Hell, we had some fantastic healers back in EQ who could spam heals and keep a cheal rotation going without skipping a beat for hours on end (hi2u xegony), but I wouldn"t trust them in my Shade of Aran fight for anything.

Well, I don"t think the age thing has ever, or will ever hold water in regards to WOW. Its just an easy way to insult folks.

What does hold water is that WOW is full of people who don"t have MMO experience. They don"t know what an assist is, they don"t know how to function in groups because they haven"t had to and they don"t push their characters like many of us learned how to do in previous games.

Think back to 99 and starting in EQ, how many idiots were in that game?? How many people trained the hell out of everyone, not because they were mean, but because they wanted help and ran to the group of people??

What you see in WOW is a combination of new MMO players, without the skills many of us learned over many years time in other games, and the option to avoid learning those skills because they can solo all the time. Its not that they are worse players, or stupid, or children, they just don"t have the gaming experience that sooo many of us take for granted.

I can remember being so very frustrated with grouping in EQ in 99 and 2000 because everyone was a freaking idiot. But that changed because people learned. Eventually it got to the point where you could easily identify the ebays and the idiots because there were no WAY they could have survived that long without being stupid in some way. In WOW...they don"t reach the point of actually learning how to play with others until they finally start raiding or doing the bigger group instances and that can easily be 60+.

Sure there are more idiots in WOW just because of the scale of the whole thing....but I wouldn"t say the percentage is actually any different than in EQ. A lot of the borderline folks in EQ either learned or didn"t get to hunt whereas in WOW they can still hunt, just not with other people.

Think back to all the explaining you did to folks in Guk, in Solusek, Karnors, etc, etc. Think about how many times you had to show people how to do things as you leveled up. Now take away the leveling part and smash all that learning into the end game and you have what you experience in WOW.

Twobit Whore said:

You act like MMO skills are something that are hard to develop. Anyone that plays any genre of game with some success can pick up a MMO and adapt quickly. How hard is it to "buff players, tank mobs, heal tanks, dps mobs to just below the gank agro threshold and profit!"? It"s not. And while people may need to learn what tools they have available, the basic premise is simple until you start getting into gimmick fights. Even then I think the old RTS/FPS player would be much more adept at them. Hell, we had some fantastic healers back in EQ who could spam heals and keep a cheal rotation going without skipping a beat for hours on end (hi2u xegony), but I wouldn"t trust them in my Shade of Aran fight for anything.

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It"s not that, usually. It"s getting them to either listen, or remember this stuff. Getting them to remember to do these simple things, and do them WHEN they"re supposed to is the toughy.

And a lot of the time, when you try to explain something to them, they get insulted.

It"s annoying, really.

Twobit Whore said:

How hard is it to "buff players, tank mobs, heal tanks, dps mobs to just below the gank agro threshold and profit!"? It"s not. .

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That wasn"t all there was in EQ to survive. In a typical XP group in a dungeon in EQ you had to... watch monster pushes if you were melee", keep looking in every direction for a train, timing spawns in the area you fought at, timing spawns in OTHER areas to steal mobs if you were a puller to maximize xp/loot, balancing mana usage against the spawn table, etc... On their own they sound easy, but your typical EQ vet had to manage all of those at the same time, on top of the basic ropes.

You can dumb it down the way you said, but there was a big difference between people with "MMO skillz", and your average idiot who at best, knew his class. Back last summer on Progression it was quite easy to tell the retards from the competent.

To be honest, I probably wouldn"t have been a good player if my neighbor hadn"t taught me (he"s the one who got me into EQ). He showed me a lot of things to watch out for in groups, how to solo as a Wizard, etc.

Was pretty cool.

Lyenae said:

That wasn"t all there was in EQ to survive. In a typical XP group in a dungeon in EQ you had to... watch monster pushes if you were melee", keep looking in every direction for a train, timing spawns in the area you fought at, timing spawns in OTHER areas to steal mobs if you were a puller to maximize xp/loot, balancing mana usage against the spawn table, etc... On their own they sound easy, but your typical EQ vet had to manage all of those at the same time, on top of the basic ropes.

You can dumb it down the way you said, but there was a big difference between people with "MMO skillz", and your average idiot who at best, knew his class. Back last summer on Progression it was quite easy to tell the retards from the competent.

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Yes, some of those skills could make you more successful than others, but they aren"t something that every person in the group needed. A good puller could time spawns and watch other groups to "steal" mobs as you put it (which isn"t going to win you any community awards if you are talking about PUGS - which we are). That said, there is certainly more than just knowing your class, but these things only come with time and experience in a given game.. like knowing agro ranges when running across a dangerous zone etc. You can"t teach that, people just have to learn it from trial and error. Others have covered that though, and it"s easy to forget the trouble you went through to learn it when it seems like second nature to you now.

I guess the point would be, there is a difference in stupid and inexperienced.

Twobit Whore said:

I think one of the main things that contributed to it is how many core systems got revamped multiple times or scrapped altogether. Combat went through several major revisions, from turn-based to super fast action. Harvesting used to be a clone of combat, where you "fought" the resource. Spending months on these systems only to change them a few months before release means that basically the game that was released was in beta less than half of the time beta was actually going on.

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This is true of course, and while I"d love to have been in the room when entire systems were scrapped, it doesn"t really explain why so many little but damned important things were neglected. I can"t imagine the turmoil that pulling the whole "lets be more like wow 180" caused inside the company, but that doesn"t explain why character creation/selection was/is fucked up (my character still looks different every time I log in for fuck"s sake), why auction search didn"t work, etc.

I would give leeway where leeway is due, but doing an aboutface after years of development isn"t carte blanche to fuck everything up without being held accountable by your customers, potential customers, or squandered customers.