Vanguard - Saga of Heroes Previewed

Labyrrinth writes "The media blitz for the upcoming release of the new MMOG, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has begun with 2 independent previews at IGN and Gamespot . From the article at Gamespot 'In days of old when knights were bold, elves with pointy sticks would totally beat up on a bunch of skeletons. You may have seen online games that take place in high-fantasy worlds, but recently, these games have become much more lenient on players, so that exploring, fighting, and even falling in battle has relatively minor consequences. Not since EverQuest of 1999 (a game that was infamously punishing back then and was clearly one of the main reasons why newer games got easier) has a new massively multiplayer game tried to offer a well-thought-out, but purposely steep, challenge.'" Normally I don't think previews are noteworthy, but Vanguard has been practically a black hole of information since development began.

Comments

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[MuNansen]

Well, those previews killed all interest I had in the game whatsoever. Sounds like a re-hash of the same old junk, just with a new engine and the same old "Poser-built" artistry. Blech.

All the annoyances of Everquest, but more so

[AuMatar]

Let me get this straight- long travel times, corpse runs, heavy death penalties, money and xp grinds. I'm supposed to want to play this?

A Long Time EQ Player

[Puhase]

For those of you WoWer's who never went through the Everquest days let me give you some situations where a "harder" game may have consequences:

Imagine having to spend 10+ hours of grinding to get level 29.

Imagine doing a 5+ endgame raid where you finally get the boss and you lose the roll on the loot. And so you leave your computer having lost almost a complete level of experience with wipes and not much to show for it. (And you though get groups together was hard)
Now imagine trying to keep a guild together or just general group tension down when wiping with any party can cost you the exp equivalent of 3-4 hours of mob grinding. Plus a ton of extra time and money in regents from having to summon all your corpses from under the feet of "Baron VonAssbeater".
I had alot of fun with EQ and a pretty successful guild. But I was also a teenager and this was the best that was available at the time. There is No Way in Hell I would put up with that stuff now.

EQ vs. WoW

[william_w_bush]

Most people here seem to be missing the point.

EQ/Vanguard are not for people who enjoy playing mmorpgs, like they enjoy playing other games, or for people who play them like glorified IM clients. These games are for the people who actually enjoy the challenge, enjoy the fact that it might take hours to get a reward, and instead of hating the process, count it as an effort towards building a character they see value in.

This is like saying MGS 2 was too hard because you couldn't play it like Tetris or Solitaire, they are totally different types of games. In WoW, the actual work done by the player is minimal, with low risk, and even unskilled/casual players (which is a huge, HUGE market) can compete evenly with the hardcore players. They are actually different games, and the problem until now has been trying to expand the market with new unskilled players, while still keeping the hardcore tier-1 dragon-slayers with server-uniques which are critical to the game, like the old FoH and LoS guilds were to EQ, setting an inspiring ideal for the rest of the players to follow, part hero-worship, part social-hierarchy.

My point is they are different audiences completely. Trying to put them in the same game is difficult without either pissing off the casual players, or letting the hardcore players reach the "End". WoW tried, and got an assload of casual players, but most of the hardcore players I know have left, doing cameos whenever a new dragon comes out, and otherwise actually getting on with their lives. The only hardcore players in WoW now are the compulsive "Ok now I want armor X and horse Y so I look cooler" until the next patch comes out with new armor X and horse Y.

Basically, I miss EQ :(