So is Vanguard Dead?

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Skacer

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
[Lore that gets rewritten and history that gets changed when it is convenient for Blizzard

I hardly think that is complaint worthy when discussing mmorpgs and actually having a story and lore. WoW goes above and beyond in that category. Rewrites have occured to allow for things such as the Draenei becoming a playable race. /q]

Blizzard rewrites their lore whenever it suits them, and not just inside WoW. In order to make the Draenei a playable race, they have to rewrite lore all the way back to Warcraft 2, and possible even Warcraft 1. They could have easily created several other playable races out of species that exist in Azeroth without rewriting the story.

 

[KMFJD]

I have been playing since release as well, i have been playing on the Varking server as well. I have noticed in the last 2 weeks that there has been a huge decrease in players. I hear that the 3 PVP servers will be merging into a single FFA PVP server, that should piss of more people. I didn't find LOTRO very interesting during beta, but i might have to give it another try since Vanguard is dying quickly.

 

[SniperWulf]

Originally posted by: KMFJD
I have been playing since release as well, i have been playing on the Varking server as well. I have noticed in the last 2 weeks that there has been a huge decrease in players. I hear that the 3 PVP servers will be merging into a single FFA PVP server, that should piss of more people. I didn't find LOTRO very interesting during beta, but i might have to give it another try since Vanguard is dying quickly.

My friends and I have found that LOTRO became much more interesting after lvl15

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: Skacer
I hardly think that is complaint worthy when discussing mmorpgs and actually having a story and lore. WoW goes above and beyond in that category. Rewrites have occured to allow for things such as the Draenei becoming a playable race. But that isn't a big deal compared to the stories such as Nathaniel Blightcaller in Eastern Plaguelands, VanCleef's story in the Deadmines, The Onyxia line, The entire Scarlet Crusader line (including going back to SC and being treated as a friendly) and other such series.

A bit off-topic, but I'm not sure how some of these went against the lore?

-Nathanos Maris was killed when the scourge invaded the plaguelands. The idea of him being raised isn't out of the question.

-VanCleef hated Stormwind after he and his crew were hired to rebuild Stormwind after the second war but they weren't paid. Hence why they don't like Stormwind much.

-I'm not sure what's wrong with the Onyxia quest line... Neltharion was an advisor to King Gilneas for awhile under the Prestor guise.

-Not sure what Scarlet Crusade things you have an issue with?

 

[JohnAn2112]

I just started playing Vanguard last night. I picked up the game and i signed up for a 3 month subscription so I can give this game a fair chance. I'm coming off 2.5 years of WoW and I got bored and wanted to try something new. We'll see how it goes. I have a feeling that I'll end up going back to WoW at the end of the summer. (Level 70 Orc Rogue on Cenarion Circle)

 

[Vonkhan]

I played Vanguard on the Varking server for a while.

The game had lots of promise, but it just wasn't ready

The worst was the chunk loss (when u cross the invisible server boundaries), broken PvP, mind numbing crafting.

There was some good stuff - xp loss upon death, corpse runs, etc. but the problems with the game dwarfed them.

 

[ITPaladin]

Originally posted by: SniperWulf

Originally posted by: KMFJD
I have been playing since release as well, i have been playing on the Varking server as well. I have noticed in the last 2 weeks that there has been a huge decrease in players. I hear that the 3 PVP servers will be merging into a single FFA PVP server, that should piss of more people. I didn't find LOTRO very interesting during beta, but i might have to give it another try since Vanguard is dying quickly.

My friends and I have found that LOTRO became much more interesting after lvl15

I have a 36 burglar and a 31 captain.

Now with Shores of Evendim content update released yesterday, there is supposed to be more content to fill gaps for solo players in the mid 20s to 40.

I have never played nor had an interest really in VG, but I have read comments by the devs and the restructuring they are wanting to do - a sort of relaunch 6 or so months down the road.

I am more of an EQ person, playing EQ1 for a few years starting back in like 2000 after Scars of Velious was already out, and before the next expansion, up til about 2-3 years ago when my server and / or guild started a decline when WoW and EQ2 both came out at the end of the year.

I started EQ2 2 weeks after launch, and tried to play EQ1 but eventually the guild that I was in that started from the beginning of server launch died to about 3-4 active players, and constant LFG by my paladin got me frustrated.

I am surprised people still actively play EQ1. I logged in once paying one month to check it out, and still see people running around the Plane of Knowledge /ooc paying 100p for c3+...and they are still putting out expansions.

 

[Schadenfroh]

http://www.soepress.com/release.asp?i=111

The MMO launched in late January of this year and has sold nearly 200,000 retail and digital units worldwide.

Not bad, wonder how many are still subscribers?

 

[KMFJD]

Last night during prime time hours we had maybe 8 players in the guild logged on, a month ago it would have been at least 30...

 

[Bateluer]

Its usually never a good sign when servers merge, especially when it occurs less than 6 months after the game's release. At least they are going to keep their RP server, Florendyl, separate. However, that is only based on a poll taken by the devs in the VG SoE forums, where 77% of the people voted to keep Florendyl separate. Unfortunately, they allowed everyone to vote in the poll, which is probably where that 20% or so of opposing people came from.

 

[effee]

I kind of agree on the mishmash quests. There wasnt any real storyline... Too hard to find groups at the upper levels as most had quit during the journey to 40.

Can't really XP properly. Crafting is a huge pain in the ass although the process is fun

 

[Schadenfroh]

Well, looks like Sony is trying to hire some programmers to finish vanguard, a good sign that they are not going to take it out back behind the shed and shoot it in the back of the head like an old dog in pain:

http://forums.station.sony.com.../list.m?topic_id=11864

Hello all!

Vanguard has some immediate openings for experienced game programmers.

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Its usually never a good sign when servers merge, especially when it occurs less than 6 months after the game's release. At least they are going to keep their RP server, Florendyl, separate. However, that is only based on a poll taken by the devs in the VG SoE forums, where 77% of the people voted to keep Florendyl separate. Unfortunately, they allowed everyone to vote in the poll, which is probably where that 20% or so of opposing people came from.

No kidding they went from around 13 servers to 4 servers. So now it's 2 PvE ( US and Euro ), 1 RP and 1 PVP I believe.....OUCH!! The server I was on only had about about 500 people on during prime time. Considering the size of the game and the fact that each server should hold around 5000 players max that is a very small population. With every serve being a low pop server I guess they needed a drastic 3-1 server merge.

IMHO WoW and LOTRO have raised the bar for MMO launchings. Players are no longer going to put up with broken, buggy, and incomplete MMO games like when SWG or EQ1 launched. If your game is not ready to play at launch like VG was then don't expect to keep you subscription numbers. Very few people want to pay to beta test a MMO when it goes live. This isn't 1999 anymore and no one cares if you were on the original EQ1 dev team if you just launched a turd. The new rule for MMO's is now ==> "Release with finished content/game mechanics and with as few bugs as possible."

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Its usually never a good sign when servers merge, especially when it occurs less than 6 months after the game's release. At least they are going to keep their RP server, Florendyl, separate. However, that is only based on a poll taken by the devs in the VG SoE forums, where 77% of the people voted to keep Florendyl separate. Unfortunately, they allowed everyone to vote in the poll, which is probably where that 20% or so of opposing people came from.

Heh... didn't see that coming!

At least with the server merge SOE is cutting it's losses to a minimal sustainable level. Removing what - 9 servers and dedicated bandwidth might actually make an active subscriber base of 50,000-100,000 profitable.

 

[Bateluer]

Its funny that people have such short memories. WoW did launch with many bugs and missing features as well, though Blizzard can do no wrong. Their blindly devoted players will champion them unto death.

I can't speak for LOTRO though, never played it.

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
A bit off-topic, but I'm not sure how some of these went against the lore?

-Nathanos Maris was killed when the scourge invaded the plaguelands. The idea of him being raised isn't out of the question.

-VanCleef hated Stormwind after he and his crew were hired to rebuild Stormwind after the second war but they weren't paid. Hence why they don't like Stormwind much.

-I'm not sure what's wrong with the Onyxia quest line... Neltharion was an advisor to King Gilneas for awhile under the Prestor guise.

-Not sure what Scarlet Crusade things you have an issue with?

You misread, those were examples of the excellent lore of WoW. I was defending it. The Draenei was the major example anyone will bring up for them breaking lore and it isn't even that big of a deal. But people use it to blow it out of proportion.

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Its funny that people have such short memories. WoW did launch with many bugs and missing features as well, though Blizzard can do no wrong. Their blindly devoted players will champion them unto death.

I can't speak for LOTRO though, never played it.

The biggest bug WoW had at release is that they couldn't build servers as fast as people were buying the game.

 

[Bateluer]

Originally posted by: Skacer


The biggest bug WoW had at release is that they couldn't build servers as fast as people were buying the game.

Like I said, short memories. Bugs that existed at launch in WoW still exist today. Loot lag for example, even now, after almost 3 years, there is a 2 to 3 second delay between clicking the loot button and actually putting the loot in your inventory. This used to cause me no end of headaches when I played. Some interesting piece of loot, or a useful piece of something, would drop and I'd loot it, only to find that I didn't actually pick it up when I went to town to sell it off.

Then there was the fiasco with battlegrounds, a feature that was promised at launch that took over a year to get into the game. What sad is that it was an extremely easy feature to add. Its essentially a instanced PvP zone, just one of many in the game.

Blizzard has been dragging their feet over adding new content to the game because of their high profit margin. Why add new content to the game if people are still playing the old content?

The sole expansion so far for WoW, is not even a large expansion by any means, all but one of EQ2's expansions were larger and contained more content. And if you add up all the free content that EQ2 has added since launch, the situation looks even worse for Blizzard.

But, like I said, Blizzard can do no wrong. They can bathe in raw sewage and come out smelling like guest room soap.

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Like I said, short memories. Bugs that existed at launch in WoW still exist today. Loot lag for example, even now, after almost 3 years, there is a 2 to 3 second delay between clicking the loot button and actually putting the loot in your inventory. This used to cause me no end of headaches when I played. Some interesting piece of loot, or a useful piece of something, would drop and I'd loot it, only to find that I didn't actually pick it up when I went to town to sell it off.

Then there was the fiasco with battlegrounds, a feature that was promised at launch that took over a year to get into the game. What sad is that it was an extremely easy feature to add. Its essentially a instanced PvP zone, just one of many in the game.

Blizzard has been dragging their feet over adding new content to the game because of their high profit margin. Why add new content to the game if people are still playing the old content?

The sole expansion so far for WoW, is not even a large expansion by any means, all but one of EQ2's expansions were larger and contained more content. And if you add up all the free content that EQ2 has added since launch, the situation looks even worse for Blizzard.

But, like I said, Blizzard can do no wrong. They can bathe in raw sewage and come out smelling like guest room soap.

So let me get this straight, a 2-3 second delay on looting that you believe is a server problem and not say, your network, is the biggest bug you can think of when trying to slam WoW. And you played Everquest 1 right? The game where any day of the week you had to wonder if you were going to log in naked this time and need a restore. The game where zoning and crashing could mean you wouldn't be able to log back in for several days. The game where they created epic quests that took months to complete but the final hand in would eat the turn in item leaving you with nothing. The game where they created a dungeon that took months of farming a key only to realize the dungeon wasn't even completed yet. The game where players had to learn where to stand as not get harm touched through floors by poorly created agro systems.

You can knock WoW's expansions because honestly I haven't touched EQ2's expansions. It's not my fault the game is goddamn boring. I made it to level 30, that's all I could stomach considering the game kept giving my character aids everytime I walked back to town (seriously, the game would give you aids everytime you'd go to town, it was great). Although, you may not know it as level 30, it can also be referred to as the 2000th collectathon quest, I think this time around they wanted pokadotted butterfly wings and varying wooden spoons. I just hope you are including everything when knocking WoW's expansions: by everything, I mean content such as Ahn Qiraj and Blackwing Lair as well. Stuff people didn't have to pay for.

And you know what, I don't really have a problem with EQ1 or EQ2, but jesus christ you can't stop knocking wow so enjoy the response. Heh, I almost forgot that the original slam against WoW was lack of lore/story, now it's bugs. After I shoot this down you going to bring up graphics? You know, I would have started with graphics, but I also wouldn't have created a bunch of strawmen arguments.

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Bateluer

Originally posted by: Skacer


The biggest bug WoW had at release is that they couldn't build servers as fast as people were buying the game.

Like I said, short memories. Bugs that existed at launch in WoW still exist today. Loot lag for example, even now, after almost 3 years, there is a 2 to 3 second delay between clicking the loot button and actually putting the loot in your inventory. This used to cause me no end of headaches when I played. Some interesting piece of loot, or a useful piece of something, would drop and I'd loot it, only to find that I didn't actually pick it up when I went to town to sell it off.

Then there was the fiasco with battlegrounds, a feature that was promised at launch that took over a year to get into the game. What sad is that it was an extremely easy feature to add. Its essentially a instanced PvP zone, just one of many in the game.

Blizzard has been dragging their feet over adding new content to the game because of their high profit margin. Why add new content to the game if people are still playing the old content?

The sole expansion so far for WoW, is not even a large expansion by any means, all but one of EQ2's expansions were larger and contained more content. And if you add up all the free content that EQ2 has added since launch, the situation looks even worse for Blizzard.

But, like I said, Blizzard can do no wrong. They can bathe in raw sewage and come out smelling like guest room soap.

BG was never the main purpose of WoW. WoW is and for ever will be a PVE centric game. In fact Blizzard never specifically promised a BG system because at that point in time when they launched they hadn't even fleshed out the concept let alone gotten around to discussing it with fans. Anyone that knows Blizzard and how they operate their games knows that they never announce anything unless they have something to show that is almost near a state of completion and then they spend the rest of that time testing it prior to launch. Then again as I remember EQ2 had no PvP whatsoever ( which also includes flagging pvp or dueling ) untill last year !

As for the "loot lag" bug it was never a huge problem with WoW. The biggest problem with WoW at the time of their launch was the inability for them to roll out enough servers. In fact a big factor in that "loot lag" was the over crowding on servers at the time which created a whole lot of lag in some areas. Try playing on newly open or Medium pop servers and you'll encounter zero lag issues on Blizzards side. Of course like all networking issues it does not mean there is not a problem outside of their own networks or with your very own ISP and connection. Over all you complaints sound like you are nit-picking just to be on the "I hate WoW and so I am k00l" band wagon. Hell if you like I can point out all the EQ2 launch day issues I faced like the well documented memory leak issue that would make your game go poof, or the in game stutter issue that plagued Nvidia and ATI users alike, or the unoptimized UI that hindered game performance, or the of tilt graphic settings that even on the lowest settings offered just slight improvements on performance, or the so called future proof game engine that doesn't even support dual core cpu's, etc...

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Drift3r
BG was never the main purpose of WoW. WoW is and for ever will be a PVE centric game. In fact Blizzard never specifically promised a BG system because at that point in time when they launched they hadn't even fleshed out the concept let alone gotten around to discussing it with fans. Anyone that knows Blizzard and how they operate their games knows that they never announce anything unless they have something to show that is almost near a state of completion and then they spend the rest of that time testing it prior to launch. Then again as I remember EQ2 had no PvP whatsoever ( which also includes flagging pvp or dueling ) untill last year !

Blizzard brought up PVP before the BGs were ready. But all they said was something to the affect of "yes we will be addressing PVP and making it more engaging". I think they originally wanted to allow for captureable points within the real world, so the alliance could capture undercity / etc. They began to realize this was impossible, either for technical reasons or because they simply couldn't make it work and still have the game be friendly to new players "hello newbie, unfortunately, every location I want to send you to has been captured, so how about you go farm some murlocs for the next 40 lvls mmmkay?" Blizzard eventually settled on the Battlegrounds as their solution to the PVP situation. So, in retrospect BGs were "long awaited" but only because everyone was waiting for a PVP solution in general. Of course, this does not make Bateluer correct in his over sensationalized use of the term "fiasco". Some PVP purists might even say WoW lost something when the BGs came out, it lost a lot of the danger in PVP world territories because all your big PVPs were off in instances.

As for the "loot lag" bug it was never a huge problem with WoW. The biggest problem with WoW at the time of their launch was the inability for them to roll out enough servers. In fact a big factor in that "loot lag" was the over crowding on servers at the time which created a whole lot of lag in some areas. Try playing on newly open or Medium pop servers and you'll encounter zero lag issues on Blizzards side. Of course like all networking issues it does not mean there is not a problem outside of their own networks or with your very own ISP and connection. Over all you complaints sound like you are nit-picking just to be on the "I hate WoW and so I am k00l" band wagon. Hell if you like I can point out all the EQ2 launch issues like the memory leak issue that would make your game go poof, or the in game stutter issue that plaqued Nvidia and ATI users alike, or the unoptimized UI that hindered game performance, or the so called future proof game engine that doesn't even support dual core cpu's, etc...

Loot lag was a factor in the Stress Test. It was caused by shared database servers that would become overtaxed. They were purposefully doing this in the Stress Test but it also existed in a different form for a little while on overpopulated production servers. Of course, once again, Bateluer is blowing it out of proportion while he grasps at the straws he calls complaints about WoW.

 

[Markbnj]

The worst was the chunk loss (when u cross the invisible server boundaries), broken PvP, mind numbing crafting.

I agree with the first two, and there was also the UI memory leak giant dialog of doom bug, and many others.

But if you thought VG crafting was mind-numbing, then I think you just aren't a crafter . It's easily the most involved and interesting crafting system I've ever seen or heard proposed.

 

[skinsfan44]

Originally posted by: brandonb
Brad finally came out at the end of 2.5 and said "We are gonna make it closer to WoW as possible, and try to steal their numbers, if you don't like it, tough, move onto the next game if you don't like it." Then everybody basically said "You lose already, this game can't compete with WoW."
They were right.

Source please, and dont tell me the beta boards as I was one of the first peeps invited to play the game.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: Skacer
Some PVP purists might even say WoW lost something when the BGs came out, it lost a lot of the danger in PVP world territories because all your big PVPs were off in instances.

I'm no PVP purist, although I enjoy a good heart-beating skirmish, but I think BGs did ruin WoW PVP in a way. It probably made leveling a bit easier as you took big, bad, mean and then-only-level-60 Warrior Orctar out of leveling areas and into a place with people that wanted to PVP. BGs were probably welcomed on PVE servers, but I think PVP servers enjoyed the huge server-crashing Southshore vs Tarren Mill battles. They were so much fun and just huge in comparison to what we usually see. The only problem was, since WoW is... mostly uninstanced, a lot of activity went on in such a small area that it crashed servers. For example, 40 players being near a Starving Mountain Lion requires the server to check aggro range, etc. One player crossing by it once is just fine, but 40 players constantly being near said Starving Mountain Lion? That's just one of the mobs... then you add in the millions of Tarren Mill Deathguards or Southshore Guards that would spawn. If you thought Sparta was MADNESS!!!! you never saw SS vs TM.

Originally posted by: Skacer
Loot lag was a factor in the Stress Test. It was caused by shared database servers that would become overtaxed. They were purposefully doing this in the Stress Test but it also existed in a different form for a little while on overpopulated production servers. Of course, once again, Bateluer is blowing it out of proportion while he grasps at the straws he calls complaints about WoW.

Loot lag does still exist in WoW in very small amounts, but trust me, it occurs. It's fun to loot a mob and see that nothing pops up and then go and charge another mob and once I get to the mob, find my character hunched over trying to "loot the ground." Eventually it'll tell me I can't loot "the mob" and I'll go back to normal.

The worst problem I've been having as of late is becoming completely disconnected from the server... yet I'm not disconnected. It acts kind of like what happens when a player gets booted off the game or whatever... they still exist in the world, but nothing can act on them. This happened to my priest the other day, a paladin ressurected him and I couldn't see anything once I rezzed. I could see people talking but nothing else. Only logging out and logging back in fixed it. Crazy .

 

[Skacer]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
That's just one of the mobs... then you add in the millions of Tarren Mill Deathguards or Southshore Guards that would spawn. If you thought Sparta was MADNESS!!!! you never saw SS vs TM.

Everybody knows South Shore guards hack =/. The TM guards barely guard anything.

Loot lag does still exist in WoW in very small amounts, but trust me, it occurs. It's fun to loot a mob and see that nothing pops up and then go and charge another mob and once I get to the mob, find my character hunched over trying to "loot the ground." Eventually it'll tell me I can't loot "the mob" and I'll go back to normal.

Loot lag is going to exist anytime there is a lag talking to the database, but I highly doubt it is happening on any sort of global massive problem scale that anyone would refer to as a bug. I mean, I still lag in Quake1 from time to time, but I don't call it a bug. It's lag, it happens in online games. That was my only issue with what Bateluer was claiming. I've also never seen a good item on a corpse and then gotten back to town and noticed I didn't have it. Not once in the period I played WoW and I played through the loot lag period on 2 of the overcrowded servers, Archimond and Sargeras.