Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Vanguard Saga Of Heroes

If there's one game i'm interested a lot on short term, It's Vanguard: Saga Of Heroes

Yes It's just another mmorpg with few unique features, but it's those few unique features of V:SOH that really appeal to me:

- 19 races
- 17 classes

A lot hard choices to make to say the least

- Complex crafting, from what I've read, since there is still not to much known, game only got released a week ago.. It seems that crafting items can be good fun. You'll do the whole crafting process, need tools, workbenches and materials. No rubbing hands and viola a Plate armor as in WoW. The quality of your crafted depends on the materials used, the unforseen problems (such as muscle strain injuries <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> ) and your crafting level. So I'm expecting some quite cool items "invented" by players.

- Diplomacy, another big part of the game is diplomacy, the art of communication, wich has its own diplomacy level. Diplomacy atm is interaction with NPC's where you try to "win" a conversation by choosing not only the right statements but the right bodylanguage. Talk your way to the top, a good alternative to grinding.

- Mounts, will be avaible early in the game, lvl10-ish. There is a wide range of mounts even flying ones. Mounts can be upgraded and equiped. Or you can buy better ones. Mounts are not only your transportation but do also function as extra storage for your equipment, you'll even be able to buy packing mules.

- Ships, similar as mounts you'll be able to buy ships to cross the oceans etc.;

- Housing, that's right, you can buy a house, or a lot and build a house. Wich I remember beeing suggested a lot for Larian's Next Gen Game.

- Character costumisation, not quite as much as in Second Life. But very statisfactory for those who love beeing unique.


Other than that the regular features like gigantic world, massive amount of items, dungeons, events and more.


If there's one small problem, i'ts not avaible on dvd yet in the benelux, and there are no prepaid cards. Wich makes some of us go trough extra lengths to play the game. Altho it could also mean less 1337-kiddies.

A thread on the open beta here.

I found their homesite, which didn't really contain any info at all about the game...

I read a Swedish review though, and the game seems... interesting. Not like the averange MMO.

Übereil

This mmorpg appeals to me because:
- It's not a brainless grindfest
- It's obviously a social mmorpg (parties are almost a must)
- Several good features
- It won't appeal to the masses (little amount of 1337 kiddies)
- You don't have to be fighting all the time to enjoy the game, if my guesses are correct several poeple will devote their time to crafting, without having to grind to be able to afford materials.
- All the good features it has

It might dissapoint me because:
- Quests are like any other mmorpg very repetetive
- Obviously it's still bug-ridden
- It's overly complex

Anyway I've ordered the game, I'll give it a try. Might be worth every eurocent, Those who do not dare die like virgins right?

PS: http://www.silkyvenom.com/ quite a good site on V:SOH

I've been playing Vanguard for 5 days now, and yes it's quite buggy. I had several times where the game freezes. Mostly in that situation I'd say f* it! and do something else, but with VG its different. Oddly I'm not overly excited to get a new level, get new gear. I've tried 4 different races/classes allready some of it because a specific class bored me, but mostly because I'd just couldn't help myself... I had to experience yet another race. This game looks magnificent, I rolled a wood-elf just today and I stood in awe of the great art-direction done to this part of the game. A whole elven city, and also fox-like humaniod (think disney's robin hood) up in the trees. And not just treehuts, huge trees with multi-story halls in it. The Dark-Elves living in a desert-ish area, live in tents, and undeground cities. Guarded by dragons. To give an example I was reading a quests objectives when a large shadow was cast over my char, something like a dragon. I expected to see a small dragon-like create like I've seen and slain before, near me. But when looking up I could see a dragon, a huge one hovering several, maybe hundreds of meters above me.

I haven't tried crafting or diplomacy other than tutorials yet, but I see its potential. Crafting for instance is strategy, making a cartwheel needs you te clean several times to ensure quality, but clean it to much quality goes down, action points are wasted and your wheel will be a shabby one. It's much more than having the right ingredients and clicking the recipy and .... ding there is your item. You need tools, the better the tools the better the crafting process, you can even upgrade your tools by crafting them yourself. And all I made yet was a cart-wheel... there just so much to do, like lumberjacking. You even see the trees fall down making the ground shake under yer feet.

The depth of this mmorpg is far beyond anything I've played before. This game, and I'm not saying this as a fanboy, this game needs some time, to be optimized, balanced, expanded and it could become the one true mmorpg for the real rpg-fan. Vanguard could be compared to WoW as Divinity to Diablo, if it handles its current problems and expand on the great ideas there are allready in the game.

I shall see to get much further in the game, try diplomacy and crafting more. Get into group required quests etc and tell you more. My only concern it could be long before I've done all that, there is so much to do, to look at, to get a tast of... that leveling goes extremely slow.

Be aware that it is a game made for high-end pc's of the feature, in open and detailed area's like a oriental city my 4 month old PC can't even hack it. But what's to be expected of such detailed graphics, where I could even see trees up to 2 kilometers away.

I was one of the first 50 beta testers, one of the first like 1,000 forum members.

Admins are assholes. Game was meh.

yeah, once you get to the mid-levels the game gets so boring repetetive as hell, half the quests are groupquests but you never find a group...

Is there something like a free trial for this game?

This game is, quite simply, one of the best failures in MMORPGs to date.
With such a variety of classes, skills, ways to spend time, excellent graphics, etc, all of it is overshadowed by the glaring technical problems and mismanagement that caused the downfall of the creating company, Sigil.

Basically last week or the week before, Sigil fired all its employees and Sony Online Entertainment rehired back some of them, and is going to try to fix the game.

So, if you want to start Vanguard, keep in mind that -
1) It's future is shady
2) You are paying money for a flawed product, and are hoping that sometime these flaws get fixed (in which time frame? 6 months? one year?)
3) Servers have low population and are (as of yet) unconsolidated.

So if you don't mind giving money to a company in the hopes that it all gets fixed, then by all means play Vanguard. However, this is akin to paying for a closed beta test; yes some of it may be fun but there are still ground-shattering bugs to be dealt with.

I do have to say, the dev team at Sigil was doing their best to fix stuff, I played closed beta, and also bought the game (though I canceled when I found out about Sigil closing). There is a lot of cool stuff going on, just not a lot of understanding or thought is put into pvp (which coincidentally had most of the players).

Anyways, I recommend not trying Vanguard, you are just going to be disappointed in the end. There is no high level content, and the content that does exist for parties is very difficult because any time you have more than three players fighting a mob, at least one of your party is going to lag out due to graphical problems.

Good luck to you <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />