MOGs N3RDCast, 17 January, 2007: Who Am I Kidding – All About Vanguard!
Posted by Kwip on January 17th, 2007 8 Comments 
I swear we started this episode to have a nice discussion about the games (and various factors) that are going to bring us back as paying subscribers. We just… got sidetracked by Vanguard.
Sidetracked. Like Christopher Columbus.
I don’t know why I bother getting excited about that game (or any other new game, for that matter). It’s not like I have a computer that can handle them. If you noticed on our fancy new calendar, the game I’m rocking the most lately is still Bf1942. I can run it on the laptop, Kwipette can rock it on her PC, and most of our friends can even handle it. I haven’t filled up the 12-person server yet, but with a few of us and bots, there hasn’t been any lag.
But back to our target here: Vanguard. Look, let’s just stop kidding ourselves: the game is damn sexy, with some great ideas. I’m curious to see how they do, as the market tends to be pretty brutal to games with brilliant ideas. Yeah, that’s right, I said it.
You can listen to our musings here.
January 18th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I was able to play Vanguard a little through the Fileplanet beta. Granted, I didn’t get very far, but it felt a lot like and mesh of EQ and EQ2. You can definitely tell it was created by the folks who came up with EQ, if you ever played EQ. Does have nice graphics, though you do need a fairly robust machine to run them nicely. I guess I remember enough corpse runs and hours wasted camping a spot in EQ to not want to do all that again. On the other hand, I did finish a whole bunch of Terry Pratchet books while I played EQ (like I said, lots of waiting), so maybe that’s not a bad thing. I have a feeling this game will definitely appeal more to the power gamer group, especially it’s high end.
Tathas
January 19th, 2007 at 9:29 am
It sure sounds interesting enough… Still pretty sure I’m not interested ENOUGH in it though. I’m of the player-base that thinks WoW took a SERIOUS step in the right direction by removing so much of the tedium from the game… Vanguard, from everything I’ve heard, has taken a step backwards (in my mind).
Corpse runs were never fun for me. Yeah, they may have made for some memorable scenarios before, but there were plenty of disadvantages to them. Risks weren’t something you readily took, cause there were serious consequences to them (speaking from an AC point of view, where dying resulted in loss of items and power… now you’re trying to recover your body from an area that was too much for you to handle BEFORE you lost your armor / weapons / power). And in a group atmosphere, if you died because one of your members went afk real quick or got disconnected or just wasn’t paying attention… Oh man, look out. Enemy for life.
Woody is obviously a powergamer (moreso than me, anyway), and I’m sure this game is a great option for him… but as much as he thinks WoW dumbed down the MOG genre and removed the fun from the game… I think Vanguard is making things unnecesarily hard and tedious.
January 19th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Edit: Of course, I say all this without having played it and without having done any REAL research into it. =P So I’m well aware that they might have changed how tedious it is since the last time I looked. heh
January 19th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Honestly, I might be willing to give it a try if I had a consistent group to play with. Running for 30-45 minutes to get somewhere doesn’t exactly sound like a blast, but if I can be heckling Kwip the whole time, it might not be so bad
Oh, and the fellowship idea does sound like a damn good one. It lets the casual gamer have a chance to keep up with the power gamer friend who has no life….uh, I mean more time *grin*
January 19th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I’d actually be curious to hear from Woody (since i’m too lazy to really do the research myself and didn’t get very far in the beta), how Vanguard will deal with some of the problems I always saw in EQ. Basically, how it will handle griefers. Camping spawns is bad enough, but then to have some caffeine dependent, pimple-ridden, no life-havin, 12 year old who is probably failing the 3rd grade for the 4th time punk run up with his level 60 Necro and trash your spawn because he can, just totally sucked. Or people who’d kill steal, or drop trains on you to get the spawn point, etc. Does Vanguard have things in place (or will it) to deal with this kind of stuff, or is it pretty much fend for yourself?
January 19th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Ok, I do see one downside. The freaking beta takes 17 gigs of space to install. Geez, freaking disk hog
January 24th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
I’m going to give it a shot, because I must play EVERY MOG EVER MADE FOR MYSELF!! lol. I don’t mind corpse runs or forced grouping. (if you have forced grouping, everyone is looking for a group. You just better hope your class serves a good purpose in said group =P). But really, I’m wondering why play this and not just go out and get EQ2 and its expansions? Granted, it’s a brand new game, but we shall see.
January 24th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Ok holy bajeezus this has some cool crap in it! I now see why one would play this over EQ2!