Slashdot Mirror
Vanguard - Saga of Heroes Released
An anonymous reader writes "After years of promises and fan hype, Sigil Games Online and SOE has released Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I've been playing the pre-release the last few days and I've been really enjoying it. I scoffed at the idea of diplomacy in a MMOG, but Sigil has done something with it I've never seen before. They made it a card game...within a game. MMORPG.com has a preview of the Beta game, and Gamespy offers up out of the box impressions of the game on Launch day. GameTrailers has a launch day trailer and dragon mount video to give you an idea of what it looks like in action. Whether the game turns out well or not, the fans are happy that it is finally on the shelves."
I've been playing very late beta and pre-release. I've played EQII, WoW and Eve. I still play Eve.
... wrong. Sterile. Vanguard seems to do it better. Things look reasonably realistic and pretty. I have it on super-high quality (8800gtx, FX-60, 2gb ram), and I get good FPS most everywhere. The worst is the stuttering/slowdown when you go indoors or cross a chunk, but it's not a big deal. Those with less beefy computers may have more complaints.
On the whole, it's pretty fun to play. It is less simplistic than WoW. It is less ugly than EQII. Personally, I always found the low-poly high-quality art direction in WoW to look better than EQII, which just looked
It's been pretty stable. Very stable considering it just launched, not quite as stable as an established game.
I think, on the whole, I enjoy it because it feels a little more risky than EQII or WoW. Dying isn't penalty free after level 7. I find myself paying more attention as I wander around, and thinking twice before engaging an enemy.
I also like the huge world. You can see for miles, and it gives a sense of really being there that I haven't experienced before.
Crafting is less attention-demanding than EQII, and way more complicated than WoW. It's basically a minigame where you make decisions to spend a pool of action points to buff quality, move along progress, or alleviate problems. But it's not real time, you can sit and think and decide if the complication that popped up is worth fixing, or just living with since you're almost done.
Diplomacy is an amusing card game that you can get some nice lore/reading from if you look for it.
On the downside, their door/elevator code is buggy. The door one isn't too bad, but the elevator one is massively frustrating. Anyone who plays and has tried to do the storehouse near the human/halfling lands knows what I mean here. We had to leave and do something else, it was near impossible to get everyone on the same floor.
There are still some minor clipping problems with the artwork. And lots of features that are 'coming soon'. Despite that, it does feel like a full game. If you want a slightly more challenging mmorpg, this might be it. I think Gamespy's verdict of 'wait and see' is about right. It's not a disaster, it's not an obvious winner. It's a decent entry that, given good continuing support, could turn into something great.
I picked your post to remind everyone what Brad McQuaid (owner of the Vanguard project). I paraphrase:
The game isn't done yet, but if it's going to be released at all it needs to be now to generate revenue to continue development. We feel it has a lot of potential but we're out of funds. The game is playable and will only get better, as is the case with all MMORPGs, though we freely admit this is not to launch specs.
So sure they're concerned about their credit cards but it's their credit cards, not their bank accounts.
Guild Wars also eliminated the MMOG aspect from the game. Towns are just chat rooms with avatars. Everything is instanced. It's just a single player game that allows you to join up with a few people.
IIRC Might and Magic VII had a card game inside even before Kotor.