Vanguard has its problems; Stargrace mentioned last night while we were chatting that you really should think of it as still being in beta and that’s right on. And we now know from former Sigil employees that the artwork was in place, but most of the quests were written by new hires in the last year of development so in short, the game is absolutely beautiful, but the quests are rote and the game isn’t all that stable. ...
Quickly, you haven’t much time. Which game, after a four hour patch, did I have to drop my resolution down from 1680x1050 to 1240x782 to play at an acceptable frame rate, dropped me through the world, attacked me with monsters I couldn’t attack back because the game said I couldn’t see it when it was right in front of me, have doors that only become visible once I get real close, and rebooted my system for me while I was talking to an NPC? ...
Huh. I wonder if I spend too much time gaming? Anyway. Some minor news from my various gaming related interests: EQ2: Finished Tier 2 last night (finally!) as the Overking went down quickly and painlessly. The raid leaders decided not to flag everyone who needed him in one go, instead some of us (including me!) got in this time, and the rest will go the next time. It’s more important to actually win than to try to do it all at once, but lose. We went on to do Leviathon, the hentai tentacle monster in the Chamber of Destiny (which is not that crystal emerald sphere after all, but a different place entirely), to finish Tier 3. I’d have pictures, but I sat out of that raid. Next time! Listening to the fight on guild chat was fun. People turning into fishes to grab things from the beast’s stomach… some of us sitting out did a Vault of the Eternal Sleeper run, and they were still fighting that same guy when we were done. LONG fight. I finally got Dina’s Coat of Imperious Strikes (legendary RoK scout-set bp) from the boss of VoES… I’d though that dropped only in Maiden’s, but apparently not. ...
2007 opened with me splitting my time between EQ1 and EQ2. Through brief flings with LotRO, Dungeon Runners and Mythos, and even briefer flings with a half dozen more I played just once, I ended the year in pretty much the same place – playing EQ2 exclusively. There’s these incredibly massive hype/PR machines and all they want to do is build up expectations for their ground-breaking, world-shaking title, or book, or movie, and then when it finally arrives, you go “meh” and wait for the next big thing. And the hype machine worked overtime this year. Burning Crusade, Vanguard, Warhammer, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Hellgate: London, Tabula Rasa; all have (or had) the hype machine promissing so much that almost anything that came (or will come) can only disappoint. ...
Keen made a post decrying the “dumbing down” of MMOs – people head for easy mode at every opportunity, and seeing that, more, even easier, games are made. A vicious spiral that ends in “Hello Kitty Adventure Island”. I thought I rather reasonably suggested that there were hard(er) MMOs out there – FFXI Online, EverQuest, and Lineage 2 among them – and that they weren’t exactly burning up the charts. Keen replied that the whole point of his post was that games are getting easier, not that old games were harder (and in fact, that tended to support his point). ...
Shut Up, We’re Talking! #12 is up. I had the pleasure of being part of it, along with Grimwell (SOE EQ2 Community Manager) and Tom-Tom from Gamer’s Mind. Thanks, Darren, for being such an awesome host! Darren really knows how to keep the discussion going and moving to interesting places. I was positive I’d have nothing to say :P
You gotta know when to hold ’em Know when to fold ’em Know when to walk away Know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sitting at the table There’ll be time enough to count it When the dealing’s done I am a huge fan of SOE and their games. But even I could see what was coming when SOE agreed to publish Vanguard. There was no way ever that they weren’t already thinking how they would position it when it became their own. ...
After a weekend on LotRO, a game I wasn’t all that excited about, I wanted to play more. After a weekend playing Vanguard, a game I was very much looking forward to, I never wanted to play again. The difference? In Vanguard, I had an incredible sense that I had played this game before… many times… I found myself falling into the same patterns I had run in EQ, DAoC, WoW, FFXI and EQ2… kill stuff level kill stuff level kill stuff level. ...
Check out all the pictures in the thread on the CE boards.
Sigil Games is holding another Fanguard here in San Diego. I’ve been interested in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes for awhile, but my time was filled with other games. Now, temporarily not playing EQ, and with the WoW bug waning, I have time. So, I signed up, and if I remember, I’ll sneak the company digital camera out and take some pictures and post them after. There are quite a lot of people registered, and I imagine a fair number of them are not from San Diego. ...