My Review of Vanguard

[Thamoris]

Hey..I think I knew you in game. You were cool back then....I had no idea you were such a dink.

[AA0]

Sometimes you have to look at yourself and ask if you are one of those rabid jerk off fanbois that everyone hates.. and sometimes you have to realize you should shut up or look at things from a different perspective.
Vanguard is dying for a reason, for many reasons.

Thousands upon thousands have had horrid experiences and telling them that they are wrong is just moronic.

[Cobal]

A lot of folks indeed had a horrible experience with vanguard at launch it seems, for me this was not the case.
Then again, for me this never seems to be the case.
Folks may remember my "rose coloured spectacles" when discussing HZ back on the tazoon forums.

No matter what the game I am getting good performance.
When the VNboards where rife with hate posts about HZ's bad performance I was busy posting screenshots of my dragon flying over tazoon at 76 fps to counter that.
I could prove to the haters that HZ would run fecking fine if you just tweaked it a bit and they just ignored me and started a new bash thread.
Idiots like Dozer that never even played HZ beyond the first month would discard all my proof on the basis that I dont have enough post counts on VNboards to be taken serious.

I NEVER have any of these huge and monstrous game crippling bugs you can read about on the forums of any mmorpg.
I only have the smaller, toned down and realistic versions of these bugs.
People tell me the game crashes literally every 10 minutes and my experience will be every two hours.
People tell me so-and-so instance takes 10 minutes to even load and my own experience will be that the instance loads in 10-20 seconds.
People tell me this and that quest is bugged and I go out and do the ******** quest with maybe one minor hitch (a quest item does not spawn until I click the trigger to do so a second time for example).
I guess that makes me a generic mmorpg fanboy, because I dont blow bugs out of proportion.
And we all know if someone is not listing 1000's of gamekilling bugs and flinging poo at a game they just MUST be a fanboy!
No?

And now, with Vanguard, this ******** is happening again!
A company releases a game with subpar performance that with some tweaking can be gotten to fly high.
Everybody goes BOOM! without even bothering to check if the crap pc they built without even having ANY pc knowledge might be the problem (before you jump me, no I am NOT saying that every single case of bad performance is pc related).
Every single negative comment by the Vanguard haters is based on the first month at the most.
None, and I do mean absolutely NONE, of the bashers have played vanguard again to see if maybe the issues they are harping about are gone.
Many of them have never even played the game, they just saw the Brad MchowthefuckdoIspellthisname name on the front and conclude from that what the game will be like.
None of the vitriol remarks from the haters are based on the current vanguard.

Here are some nice quotes:

VG is EQ II 1/2 - everyone knows that...:P

I don't have to play Vanguard to know it's nothing but EQ1 on steroids. It's fucking BRAD we're talking about here.

Completely uninformed.
Based on the fact the Brad is behind this and the fact that the rabid vanboys of the first hour want it to be EQ1.5 everybody assumes it IS EQ1.5 and therefore so super hardcore only a no lifer can play it.
Vanguard is more of a cross between WoW and HZ then a EQ1.x
You CAN achieve stuff in only 1 hour of game time.
You CAN solo to max level.
WoW is more hardcore then Vanguard! (wow has long 40 man dungeon raids and vanguard will have short 24 man raids)
The best gear in game can be gotten casually easily.
Etc etc etc.

The so called "big" game world is in fact smaller then EQ1 at launch!
Man this sucky world does not even have mountains, the tallest hill I found was a 20 second run to the top

Ok it should be very obvious this gamer never even played the game and is lying through his/her teeth.
Telon is easily larger then Istaria (I measured both worlds several times over, I like making map mods for games so I tend to map and measure every game world I play in.).
Vanguard has mountains that rival HZ's mountains in scale (I may be wrong but I think HZ was the first mmorpg where you actually could count a mountain as a mountain, rocky walls around a zone I dont call mountains)

Some of the folks reading here will recognise my quotes as the words they wrote on another board, your names are not there because it is not important who wrote it, it is not personal
I did not mean to single your posts out for this quote but I just happened to have that other board open in another browser window.

The quotes are here because I wanted to illustrate how unreasonably stupid and uninformed most of these remarks are, the remarks have zero connection with reality.
Posts like these infuriated the lot of you when it happened to Horizons and now you are doing it yourself, to vanguard.
Asshats.

now, back to vanguard performance I started of about before I got distracted by the fact that major game issues pass me by.
Yes, many people suffer crap performance.

Yes, quite a lot of those problems will be caused by the fact that the vanguard devs are asshats with an ATI fetish, it didnt occur to them until last year that they will need to support nvidia too (/boggle)

Yes, everyone who has a pc that has even one component below spec is going to suffer.

Yes, all of those that have a cpu of max 2 years old (like I have), a video card of max 1 year old (like I have), two gigs of ram and the basic knowledge how to handle your swap file can play Vanguard at 40-60 fps in outdoor area's, 30-40 fps in a dungeon with 5 groupmates and 10-20 fps in a crowded town.
Thats the performance I get on my crappy old box (ok it was tailored to run HZ fine, that will help with a game like vanguard wich has the same bottlenecks but still)

Yes, you need a recent pc to get 100 fps

Yes, I think this is normal for gaming.
I am used to having to upgrade to play the latest game with the latest graphics.
this has allways been so. Why people think mmorpg's magically are above this is beyond me.

Yes, I did just make an annoying "yes" list.

[Thamoris]

Sometimes you have to look at yourself and ask if you are one of those rabid jerk off fanbois that everyone hates.. and sometimes you have to realize you should shut up or look at things from a different perspective.
Vanguard is dying for a reason, for many reasons.

Thousands upon thousands have had horrid experiences and telling them that they are wrong is just moronic.

You have no idea what you are talking about.
I have never told anyone they are wrong.

I have only shared my perspective and made it painfully obvious.
Horrid expriences?
Getting your eyes jabbed out with a knife is a horrid experience.
Playing a game that crashed on you alot or had less than 30 fps on your rig does not qualify as a " horrid " experience. If it does..you need to get out more.

Anyways....whatever yall.
I've waisted too much time here anyways...Time I could have spent playing Vanguard.

I'm playing Vanguard..I like the game...I will continue to play it ...I will continue to encourage others to join me.

[Thamoris]

soo...It has come down to name calling I see. Where...exactly have I dogged on someone because they have a POS rig?

My own rig is over 2 years old. Old rigs don't play new games well...it's just the fact of life...get used to it.
In fact...please DO NOT play Vanguard..seriously. Stay away..go fester in a different mmo...good grief.
Go play with Lotro or WoW or yourself..I really don't care.

and another thing......
I'm a 35 year old man ..being called a " tard " has absolutely no effect on me whatsoever. My 16 year old daughter calls me that all the time.
If you really want to be taken seriously by anyone old enough to buy a beer.... I would encourage you to stop calling people ************ ..or tard. It just screems adolescence and immaturity. I know instantly someone using that kind of language is very young...most often a teenager. Just some advice..take it or leave it...I don't really care either way.

[Frith-Rae]

You know Cobal you can rant and rave - but the fact that you take quotes from another board, and talk about us here and not there - as if we don't know when we're quoted (when you could just as easily you know TALK to us there instead of just slam us here) - just really destroyed all validity and realiablity I would have given you.

That's pretty low - esp. when you're trying to defend a point I otherwise would have agreed on you with.

But you know I have to say - why would I play something that I already had huge performance issues with to begin with? Not only that but somethign I never found fun anyway?

Why does it deserve another shot - when obviously my vision of "fun" and Brad's vision of "fun" don't sync up.

Everyone who complains is not a slamboi - try and remember that.

But if you have the guts to actually respond to me in the same place I post, I'll be here AND there - you know in case you want to quote this one over there *rolls eyes*

[Thamoris]

I applaud you Comal. That was a very well thought out and written post..complete with quotes and examples. Didn't ya know people hate it when you do that ? They may call you " Vanbois " or " Tard ". They may even fart in thine general direction !!!

be prepared..that's all I'm saying

[Kulamata]

On a machine that was pretty good 2 1/2 years ago, but with a new 7800 GS (AGP, ~=7600GT) and now 2G of RAM, VG was hitchy but definitely playable except in Khal. Like everyone else I had major chunk line problems in beta, but only once or twice in release. After 8 weeks in beta, I bought the box, as I was encouraged by the late beta changes. I played release for three weeks, got discouraged, and whiney, as the game erodes mind and character.

For me, there were quite a few small to middling problems. During beta, many complained about the darkness of the nights. After twiddling with night darkness, the devs wound up about where it had started, as the hirsute hardcore screamed that the game had been ruined by a lighter night. Making the night individually adjustable as Hz did never happened. As a result, with gamma and brightness calibrated correctly, on a very good CRT monitor with deep blacks, my older eyes had trouble with the night. I played on Qalia almost exclusively, a desert continent, with drab colors. When I turned gamma, saturation and brightness up for the night, the colors were even more washed out. Not a showstopper, but an example of many nagging irritants.

The design is (to me) unimaginative. And because of the size, often repetitive. Even when I tried out level 50 and explored Qalia thoroughly, I never found anything that was at all breathtaking. Some of the problems were long travel, very widely separated starting areas, faction grinding at low levels, inexplicably limited class choices for races, button-mashing irritating crafting system, and (again for me, not all) dopily simple Diplomacy mini-game, plus systems like caravan and the "grouping out of game to prevent too wide a spread in leveling system, I forgot the name" that simply didn't work. Lore was scattered and incoherent. Grouping xp rules required a pretty tight range of levels, and soloing was not really effective or fun. Well done instancing can be excellent, but VG as a design decision has no instancing. In general, despite a long checklist of features, (implemented weakly, but whatever) the game in the end lacks the elusive, magic requirement of fun for most of those who've tried it.

QA was a real problem; bugs in patches are not unexpected, but VG tended to more, and larger, patch bugs than other games.

I understand that as the truth dawned, quite a few changes were made to the game after I left; xp and travel became easier for example, but I continue to read about falling server populations.

Why the vehemence on the boards around the net? During beta Sigil did have an official general board. The devs didn't seem to listen to any but those who confirmed their preconceptions. Suggestions from testers who pointed out that VG was too much a niche game for success were savagely attacked by cultists, whose nicest response was to suggest through crocodile tears that sadly this was not the game for the suggesters; this was for REAL playas. They made a lot of enemies. Since turnover in beta was so high, they made a LOT of enemies. The early hardcore pitch, (softened to "core" in the last year or so) had apparently attracted a bullying crowd, who were pretty rough on the boards with those who suggested that the game had problems. Some took such extreme positions defending VG that they'll never be able to change.

That, coupled with the very human urges for revenge and to say "tolja so" by the departed, pretty much ensured bloody warfare on the boards. There is a major reorganization being discussed which has further fueled the fires.

Of the games I've tried, the two that are really professionally run are EVE and LotRO; very different, but united in excellence. In the end, VG did not do anything well, and a lot of things in poor to mediocre fashion. Still, some greatly enjoy it now, and it undoubtedly will get better. There's too much invested in it for it to be allowed to fail (I think), and I expect it to follow the path of EQII's evolutionary improvement after a major reorganization.

[Cobal]

You know Cobal you can rant and rave - but the fact that you take quotes from another board, and talk about us here and not there - as if we don't know when we're quoted (when you could just as easily you know TALK to us there instead of just slam us here) - just really destroyed all validity and realiablity I would have given you.

That's pretty low - esp. when you're trying to defend a point I otherwise would have agreed on you with.

Holy crap Frith, I just pulled those quotes to illustrate my point, I also stated that It is not important who wrote the the original words in the context of the discussion going on here that I see as a seperate discussion to the one on rants.

You suggest I expected you to never read this:

as if we don't know when we're quoted

When taking the quotes I knew you folks would read and recognise your own words, hence I explained my intention of pulling a quote from you and left you anonymous.

At the time of writing I had three fora open, HZ community, rants and silky venom.
I needed a few quotes to illustrate my point and I grabbed them.
One of them is from a random dude on Silky venom, I would have liked to grab more of him but most of his posts attack devs personaly and not the game making him useless to me for further illustration.
I was simply to lazy to look any further.

After I had written:

Some of the folks reading here will recognise my quotes as the words they wrote on another board, your names are not there because it is not important who wrote it, it is not personal.
I did not mean to single your posts out for this quote but I just happened to have that other board open in another browser window.

I believed you ("you" being the folks over at rants) would understand that I was being general and not aiming at the folks over at rants.
I'm even saying it is not personal, now correct me if im wrong but that quite clearly means I am not targeting anyone.

Obviously I should have put in an extra disclaimer like "Asshats in this instance refers to anyone bashing a game based on mis-information or an uniformed opinion" or something like that.
Maybe I should have been less of a lazy ****** and I should have searched from some quotes by people that never played HZ.
But then again, if I need to start doing that then ALL my posts will become this huge bloated thing filled with warnings, disclaimers and messages from your surgeon general.
The written word is missinterpreted 90% of the time (number obtained by time honoured pulling from me arse method)

I'm sorry you feel slighted Frith and thought I was singling you out, this was not my intention.
I do feel you are reading into this way to much.
Doesn't really matter I even take the time to further explain myself I think, You probably don't believe I did not have any ulterior motives.

Why does it deserve another shot - when obviously my vision of "fun" and Brad's vision of "fun" don't sync up.

Everyone who complains is not a slamboi - try and remember that.

That isn't my point Frith, I am not trying to convince anyone to give it another shot.
I'm trying to convince people to stop bashing mmorpgs based on false and uninformed ideas.

Merely complaining does not make one a slamboi but the ranter who complains based on word on mouth, 1 week of play or some forum meme that Dev X is evil incarnate is in fact a slamboi.

[Thamoris]

I don't see why he got his panties in a bunch. I had no idea those quotes where from him till he announced that they were.

I don't think you did anything wrong. Just like you said...no names were given. I like your style ...I suspect a debate against ya would be near futile. Your post was informative, mature, well thought out and well written.

No need to apologize to anyone imo. It helps that we are on the same page, but even if we disagreed..I would still respect a response such as the one you gave.
And you didn't even call anyone **************** !! amazing

[LaughingOtter]

The quotes are here because I wanted to illustrate how unreasonably stupid and uninformed most of these remarks are, the remarks have zero connection with reality.

Those statements you cite may have been made with a degree of colorful hyperbole, but I think "unreasonably stupid and uninformed" goes beyond rebuttal and into personal attack on the speaker.

One of the best things about the Horizons community (Back in The Day) was that even the most passionate advocates of the game admitted that there were problems. Information and solutions and work-arounds were offered to newcomers and discussed openly.

I don't see that degree of openness and honesty in the majority of the VG fan base. I see "it's your machine", or "the game was intended to be run on tomorrow's systems", or "that doesn't happen to me so it's not happening to you", or the ever-popular catch-all, "go back to WoW you lamer/whiner/n00b/carebear/**********/wimp/etc. I see people who are angry because the game was released well before it was ready being attacked for saying so; however, even Brad himself has said the game was not ready for release and apologized for it. When the head honcho says that the game should not have been released and talks about having the "real launch" next year, then this is one occasion where the old saw about 'paying for beta' is both literal and accurate.

It might yet become a great game, but I don't feel like paying for "maybe" any more.

[Cobal]

Those statements you cite may have been made with a degree of colorful hyperbole, but I think "unreasonably stupid and uninformed" goes beyond rebuttal and into personal attack on the speaker.

You are right, I could have been more neutral.
However it wasn't about the speaker, it was about the quote, completely detached from whoever wrote it.
In hindsight I could probably have said "Unreasonable and uniformed" but I do feel such remarks are stupid as they have no bearing on reality hence me adding "stupid" to it.

[Frith-Rae]

Holy crap Frith, I just pulled those quotes to illustrate my point, I also stated that It is not important who wrote the the original words in the context of the discussion going on here that I see as a seperate discussion to the one on rants.

But your point was misillustrated. It IS important to me who wrote those words, when you're ranting about slambois and people who gripe about a game they "are uninformed" "stupid" and have never "experienced."

Those are my words, using them to illustrate the above point is basically yes saying I am one of those people.

Maybe its irelevant to YOU, but its very relevant to ME. Those are my words, that you misquoted (because that actual post was a semi-joke in the first place), to MISrepresent an example you were making. Using the words of someone who isn't even an example of what you're ranting about isn't constructive. And its offensive to me because I hate that same type of person you're talking about, and the idea that that lumps me in with them is ugg.....

But since you quoted them out of context, without my entire explanation throughout that thread, nor referencing that I was half joking and actually complimenting Horizons at the same time - why does it even NEED to be quoted?

Why do you need to give examples?? Esp. examples that come from a third party (board and person). When there are tons of examples here...when everyone knows exactly what you're talking about without those examples. Its not like none of us know what a slamboi is or even assume that half the people that gripe about something know more than jack crap about what htey are talking about...

NOW having said THAT - I will apologize for jumping on you that way. I was skimming your post as I'd already decided it added nothing to the conversation (as..well it doesn't - its not a review, its a rant on slambois and contains nothing really you know informative...) and was skimmning down when I saw my words staring me in the face. I only read the paragraph above it as I was confused, and kept reading.

I missed the disclaimer -so I apologize. Honest.

Though I still feel its just unnecessary and I don't agree with it. It smacks to me somethign smiliar of quoting people's PMS or IMS to others without letting them know. Esp. in this case when it wasnt' even necessary - you don't need to skim forums and quote other people without their knowledge. I just don't agree that its a "nice" thing to do - I don't care what the point is.

Obviously I should have put in an extra disclaimer like "Asshats in this instance refers to anyone bashing a game based on mis-information or an uniformed opinion" or something like that.

That somehow makes it better - that now you're calling me that? When I don't do that either.

Maybe I should have been less of a lazy ****** and I should have searched from some quotes by people that never played HZ.

No, it doesnt make it any better. I wouldn't have thought it was "better" or "nicer" or "less asshatty" of you to quote ANYONE. Its UNNECESSARY.

I'm trying to convince people to stop bashing mmorpgs based on false and uninformed ideas.

Well I guess IMO overall, you do a better job (you as anyone) convincing people of your point using your own words - not words from other people without permission - or misquoted/misrepresented. In general. as a point anyway.

don't see why he got his panties in a bunch.

First off I"m a "she" .

And you'd get your panties in a bunch too if your words were taken without your permission and misrepresented to say something that wasn't even their point.

Like If I quoted you and then said:

I don't think you did anything wrong.

"People like this guy who defend EI Interactive..."

See, I bet you'd get a little irked...

I spoke up because I don't agree with the use of other people's words to make a point - unless those words are already existing say in this thread - where anyone can go and see and read for themselves what htey mean or don't mean or represent or don't represent.

And how you find that post "Informative" is beyond me - 90% of it is ranting against slambois and then a "oh I can get 100 fps btw"...

Now hey, I love ranting as much as the next person - rant away (though I don't feel its appropriate here out of respect to THIS community..just cuz the cats are away...). I"d have preferred to have him rant back at me in RR, rather than quote me here and rant about slambois - using my own words as an example of uninformed opinion.

but I think "unreasonably stupid and uninformed" goes beyond rebuttal and into personal attack on the speaker.

Yes..exactly. Thank you. And THAT is why I got miffed.


And you can say it was "about the quote" all you want - but that quote wasn't representative at all of what you were talking about in the reference it was posted in. YOU Can say they are unreasonable and uninformed - I happen to think that comparing VG to Horizons DOES insult Horizons. I feel Horizons was better loads at release. And since I HAD experience with VG at release, I am NOT uninformed to make that statement.

And why other people think its ok to walk around quoting and using other people's words however you want blows my mind...

[Cobal]

I now fully understand why you feel slighted.
I do not share your views on what is appropriate for quoting and what is not but at least now I am aware that some people have your view and that I should therefore be considerate of it.
In my view only PM's, e-mail and other personal messages cannot be quoted just like that.
I see anything written on a public message board as, well, public.

Im glad to see you understand my explanation, even though you disagree with it and feel I should have acted differently.

Now, why I need to use illustrations is due to my way of communicating.
I find it hard to get my point across in english without using illustrations.
I can babble a lot of words in english but the fact remains that I never did any proper english lessons like debating and whatnot.
I learned english from playing text adventures on the commodore 64 and watching saturday morning cartoons with subtitles (when I was a kid all my fave cartoons like he-man and transformers were in english with dutch subtitles.).
Because my entire knowledge of the english language is based on pop culture I have the feeling I am limited in my english.
I really need the illustrations, if only to have the feeling that I did all I could to get my point across.
(as example a post where I even drew diagrams to make sure I was understood: http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=12409)

I hope the air between us is a bit more cleared up now Frith.

[LaughingOtter]

Don't worry about your English skills, Cobol - you communicate better than most professional athletes, career politicians, and CEOs who grew up speaking English.

Using illustrations and examples to make sure your point is conveyed properly is a good idea. You just picked bad examples this time.

[C`gan]

Cobal, I live in a region of the US called the Midwest. We have an influx of non-native speakers who refuse on day-to-day conversation to acknowledge English as the language of the country. We also have those native speakers who have all the speaking grace of Boomhauer on King of the Hill. That you've been able to pick up as much as you have in only cartoon subtitles and such is a RELIEF, believe me.

[LOVWYRM]

(I would have never guessed, that English is not your mother-tongue, Cobal.)

I sense it quite impressive, how Cobal and Frith got thru the disputation.
Exemplary!
Thx for that

[Kulamata]

This goes a long way to explain the fiasco:

http://f13.net/index.php?itemid=561#more

Basically a case study in how not to do it.

[LaughingOtter]

The fact that Brad got a 'creative consultant' contract is a major disappointment. What he deserves is a swift kick in the jewels and a "Will spew BS for food" sign.

[Daedalus]

The fact that Brad got a 'creative consultant' contract is a major disappointment. What he deserves is a swift kick in the jewels and a "Will spew BS for food" sign.

He was only kept on in that capacity so that the hardcore Brad fans wouldn't kick up a fuss. I doubt he'll be working on Vanguard again. It is more likely that Sony will pick his brains for ideas on new projects but never give him control of a project of his own again.