Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Well i read about how Vanguard failed at launch and how they kept correcting bugs afterwards, but then there was this revival rumor around, that it was improving and they made this trial so i downloaded it and tried. It's only impressions from the trial island, not a review, to shed some light for others who may feel tempted ;)

My rig is dual core 3 gh, nvidia 8800 GTS, 2 gb ram, played with maxxed-up options.

So far what i like :

- only around 1 GB (trial of course), you download it through the Sony station launcher and it installs itself.

- you can choose your character by class or race, it will tick off/on race/class available (simple but cool feature)

- very deep character customization, you can choose nearly everything about your appearance.

- funny races and original mixed classes: i took a raki (vixen) sorcerer

- music was good and varied so far, sounds were err don't remember them, ok i guess.

- i can't judge community, all were busy asking noob questions and people were answering quickly, the Mynnxx guy was very helpful, maybe he's an official. No retards like in WoW anyway.

- running smooth, no performance issue or lag.

What i dislike :

- you got a 14-day trial, better make it a 1-10 level trial cause you don't want to play night and day not to waste your attributed time? Chronicles of Spellborn is doing it right with its level trial.

- FIRST, yeah! 1ST quest made me crash and return to the char selection screen, i had to laugh at that actually

- Quests are normal (they are beginner's quests anyway) but could be better written (coming from LOTRO won't help being indulgent of course), but you got no introduction, who am i, what am i doing here? Where the heck is my immersion!

- UI is unpolished and amateurish, few options to configure the game, but you can easily click on your quests and can use the (evil) tracker option. Not autoloot function for instance, people told me to make a macro, err...

- mixed feeling about graphic : trees look bizarre, sort of not belonging to the environment but well drawn at the same time, sky is beautiful and complex, ground is poor, textures are mediocre, characters are cute but combat animations and movements are poor (especially foes). For instance swimming is simplistic and you don't leave wake. All in all you get the feeling of a very inconsistent world as if different decisions were made for different aspects and no one was making sure everything fits well together.

- the compass tracker to find npc and quest objectives (you can turn it off i think) is for lazy butts and very unrealistic (innuendo; that way they avoid writing it in the quest text, LOTRO is thousand miles better in this aspect)

- combat was ok but i wasn't impressed at special effects, and i got a square shadow using a round shield

What makes me sad :

- to sum it up these are bad impressions, reading fans on the forum i thought the game would be better but the bad textures or ugly animations aren't simply par to other better mmos.

- scary to think that they are nowadays still implementing patches fixing 1000 bugs... Zomg . Innuendo: when they get this game fixed, they may work on lacking textures and animations? And what about new contents then? Better forget it? Or it will be as good as a 2006 year game... in 2012?

- I wanted to look at sub price and i was pissed off to see that it's more expensive than WoW, War and Lotro to name a few which in my opinion are far better and solid games. Besides you have to go through all this Sony bullshit with "optional" monthly sums that add to basic monthly price, reminded me of the WoW account marketing whoriness where you have to say why you are cancelling before being allowed to submit it

Conclusions :

You can't judge a game by screenshots and video games or fan reviews. Maybe you can read lots of professional reviews, if they almost all say it's good then it's at least worth a try. But playing the game is necessary (same thing with Warhammer, graphics are better than i imagined judging from indirect sources) From what i know now Vanguard isn't very good, and their graphic style is a mess, and i thought it could be a real challenger...

TBH maybe it's only trial island and the real game with lots of features and exploring could be better and i didn't do many chain quests or experiment unique features (if they are there) BUT if you don't even feel good or thrilled during your first hour playing in a new game then something is amiss... But it's their fault anyway... I have more fun discovering small 600 mb f2p grinders... And it's expensive too, don't see any reason to play it as you have far better alternatives and stout companies out there. But to finish on a positive note, don't trust me and download the trial and have a go at it, to achieve a new level in your mmo tome of knowledge

I think you've figured out the pro's and cons of the game pretty acurately. I agree with the pros you mentioned, and definately agree that content roll-out going forward is a big concern (it was why i left the game personally).

On the other hand one thing you won't get from the trial is the epic feeling of the high level quests. Stuff like the Swamp factions, Rhaz, the Griffon quest and APW are IMO some of the best PvE content money can buy these days. It is just sad that it is unlikely we will see a steady stream of this content coming out due to sub numbers and SOE's attitude towards the game.

Im curious about your comment that VG is more expensive than WoW though? I thought both were 14.95 per month? If your reffering about the optional $2 extra for the station players thing, dont worry, that POS has been broken for about a year now.

At least it was good enough for you to play your 14 days out , when i tryed LoTR free trial  the game is so bad i didn't even play for 1/2 hour out of the 7 days, talk about bad animations and trees and lame quests. And when i jumped it looked like my toon was skipping down the street right in the middle of a gay pride parade that was enough LoTR for me

Originally posted by Saggra

At least it was good enough for you to play your 14 days out , when i tryed LoTR free trial  the game is so bad i didn't even play for 1/2 hour out of the 7 days, talk about bad animations and trees and lame quests. And when i jumped it looked like my toon was skipping down the street right in the middle of a gay pride parade that was enough LoTR for me

He doesn't like VG, so you bash LOTRO.

I enjoyed VG, but the lack of other players was a real concern in a game that touted itself as a grouping game.

eheh never played lotro so cant compare but a few thing about your cons

graphic:

for animation you are right, many animations are far from be good, the problem here is that they have not an animator (:() even if they are looking into it.

the remark about trees is quite interesting, one of the things about VG is that the 3 continets are "themed", kojan is asian themed, qualia is mideast and thestra western midage. this mean that not only the houses and structrues have a certain style, but everything, trees, rock conformation included. what i think you saw about tree is that they where trees from thestra put in the swamp so they looked a bit "out of place" for a good observer but is not a good indicator for the rest of the game.

the enviroment graphic and "consistancy" are pretty good in all the game, but about that you have just my word eheh :P

instead i agree about terrain texture, the swamp is pretty terrible (i tought they forgot to put grass to cover it in the beginning :P) still generally there is lot of grass that cover the textures so is not a big issue :)

story/immersion

sadly this is one of the weak points of iod, i fully agree with you... why someone of a certain race is on a kojan isle to help farmers?... but you have to consider that iod is mostly a trial area just to give a look to the tame, the racial start of various races are waaaay better in this reguard.

first they start in their own town (so dark elves start in the major DE town and not in some "strange place") and they give you a better perspective of the race, its society, its goals and so on... all are also pretty different and very well made.... you can start as a ruthless DE doing "evil things" or an halfing whos villag is infested by big ants :D

bug fixes/new content

well 1k bug fixes is a lot, but that doesnt mean  they are not adding content. VG had a lot of content introduced from release, high level zones, huge raid dung, new questlines, revamped areas, iod itself...

so is not that they are just fixing things and the game will not see new contents in years... content is implemented too in every GU so no problem here :)

Well, for me I found 2 quests on that Island after running around...tried the Diplomat thingy quest got frustrated and quit. I dunno I really don't have that bad of an attention span.

Originally posted by FischerBlack

I think you've figured out the pro's and cons of the game pretty acurately. I agree with the pros you mentioned, and definately agree that content roll-out going forward is a big concern (it was why i left the game personally).

On the other hand one thing you won't get from the trial is the epic feeling of the high level quests. Stuff like the Swamp factions, Rhaz, the Griffon quest and APW are IMO some of the best PvE content money can buy these days. It is just sad that it is unlikely we will see a steady stream of this content coming out due to sub numbers and SOE's attitude towards the game.

Im curious about your comment that VG is more expensive than WoW though? I thought both were 14.95 per month? If your reffering about the optional $2 extra for the station players thing, dont worry, that POS has been broken for about a year now.

Thanks for the positive feedback, i agree with you i'd be interested to see more of the game in other places but i won't because it didn't convince me yet and i can't sub for every mmo that are worth a try.

About monthly sub price i checked for 6 months option (whithout Bundle pack)  :

- Vanguard : 11.66 euros

- WoW : 10.99 euros

- Warhammer : 10.99 euros

- LOTRO : 10.99 euros

Originally posted by Saggra

At least it was good enough for you to play your 14 days out , when i tryed LoTR free trial  the game is so bad i didn't even play for 1/2 hour out of the 7 days, talk about bad animations and trees and lame quests. And when i jumped it looked like my toon was skipping down the street right in the middle of a gay pride parade that was enough LoTR for me

Gay pride parade in Bree? and people are complaining of the lack of events in LOTRO!