I'll be fair, i've tried vangard several times, Well more then several times, It's just not interesting to me. It's probably not very interesting to a lot of people, and thier (Vanguard's Team) performance adjustments that they've made dosn't readily appear to effect my computer which still runs vanguard like a sluggish overfed walrus.

I'll stick to Eq2 for now, And give V. the undecorated uninstall from my system. You would figure a game that takes over 20 gigs of hard drive space, would be far more appealing.

If any one person asked me why i didn't like vanguard - It's not fun for me, From the get go (Though i do admit, Character creation is probably it's best feature) The game runs slowly, There's no excitiment from level 1 - Which immediatly feels like your grinding towards level 2. The quest format itself is uninspired (And hard to read, for those of us who need thick glasses) and basically is a form of go kill this, Go fetch that, go herd this.. etc). You could say that i'd have to get into the 20's to really enjoy the game - Well any game that requires me to play for 4 weeks to get to 20 to enjoy it, Dosn't deserve to be played. I've much better uses for my time then to suffer through something that might get better..

One note for those who are thinking of suffering thier way through the game - I don't know if this applies to everyone, however there is a shiny free bag available to players - a 70 slot crafting bag, a 50 slot diplomacy bag and a 36 slot adventure bag. I didn't partake in the bags, Since i figured i wouldn't be back.
Thats it.
-B-

So much promise, and its being eaten by bugs! Admittedly, many of them are small bugs, but they are swarming all over my poor computer, and making it cry. It seems that the longer I play the game, the worse it runs. Its strange, but when I initially installed, I had no problem running at medium high settings. Now that I have played for several weeks, I have had to reduce several settings, and the game is still hitching every thirty seconds or so. I ran a full defrag (with PerfectDisk 8, not the windows defragmenter) and it did not helped. The amount of time my computer spends accessing the hard drive is insane. I am actually upset, because the game is still fun to play, but it is rapidly approaching the unplayable stage because of the performance issues. Also, I mentioned the leveling slowdown last time, and I wanted to address that. Solo leveling slowed down, but full group leveling is just as fast as before if not faster. It's still possible to solo much of the non dungeon content, but at level 15 its really slowed down. I knew it was a more group oriented game going into it though, so I really can't complain. This is still one of the most beautifully rendered games on the market, but unfortunately it's hard to appreciate when your computer is slowing to a standstill every 30 seconds or so. Oh well, at least its pretty!

Things seem to be slowing down for me. I have played up to almost 15, but its taking FOREVER! I swear, its like there is a switch between 12 and the rest of the game that slows down the leveling exponentially. That and I am starting to run into broken quests, buggy combat numbers, and general lag issues. Needless to say, after the marathon gaming session I had Friday (around 11 hours straight, two levels gained) I'm slightly frustrated. I guess if I want to get anywhere, I am going to have to break down, be social, and group! Anyway, back to the grind, more later.

I have to say, its been a while since I played a game that makes me want to call in sick to work. Well, I found one! I sit and play in the mornings and have to force myself to leave for work every day. There is so much stuff to do in this game, its amazing! I have been focusing mostly on Khrul, my necromancer. I finished up most of the quests on Martok, and have moved to the continent of Qalia. When I got there, I had to grind out about 250 kobold kills to get my faction up high enough to go into Khal. Each kill gives me a whole 1 faction point. Well, when I finally finished up, I had about 370 faction built up. I received no xp from any of the kills, but I was having fun killing them (I love to watch them die), and stopped counting around 180 or so. Anyway, I finally moved on, and am questing around Hafeez Al'Azaimat. Just got level 13 today, and have soloed pretty much everything I have done so far. Still hard to believe the number of quests. Anyway, more on friday, since I'm already 30 minutes late for work!

First, I should warn you that this is a rant, pure and simple. Second I should say that this is in no way meant to be an "attack" on the developers. It is, however, my opinion that while game developers can be wonderful people with great ideas, they are also as capable of making mistakes as the rest of us. And there have been some signifigant mistakes made in the creation of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. I have said in my review and some of my blogs about the good things about the game, so it is only fair to also bring to you the things that I'm extremely frustrated with. Going to explain why first.

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In case you hadn't heard, well, crawl out from under whatever winter blanket you've been hiding under, and drag it down to your computer, because you're about to miss out. Vanguard has been released. My hope is that you pre-ordered, because rumor has it that stores are already running out of copies. And I have to say that I'm not surprised in the least. I'm totally hooked, and have been since playing back in beta. Let me explain why.

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So I thought I'd start off my blogging of Vanguard with some things that I've discovered about the game that are really cool. The positive parts of the game, and why I'll be playing it in release, in other words. And none of these are in any order other than when I thought of them.

Tops on the list has got to be the quest system. I've reached level 11 quite easily already simply by questing my way along. And some of the quests are just awesome in how they play out. For example, one quest (I apologize to the quest writer for forgetting the name) has you start out by killing some scavengers and collecting samples of the meat they'd been eating because it is tainted. The scavengers have been encroaching on the local village, as the story goes, and they need help figuring out why. So you finish that part of the quest, and as a follow up you're given a crate of meat to go drop far away from the village, near a beach in fact. Or you go open a crate, I can't quite remember which. In any case, when you drop the meat, a few seconds later the scavengers start to come in from the area you'd been hunting them in packs and start eating the meat. Don't stick around too close, however, because soon after they start chowing down, some crocodiles come out of the water looking for the lunch you just served them. It's AWESOME to watch the scavengers realize what is happening and beat feet (or wing) away from the beach to escape becoming lunch rather than having lunch.

And there is other AI in the mobs that make them feel "alive", not just all the same creature with different skins. This one mob, a ____, that charges you when you agro it and if you aren't aware and careful, will knock you back for a signifigant amount of damage (and a stun of course). And it isn't just the AI that makes mobs different. There are mobs of all levels that are designed to be hunted by solo players, small groups, and larger groups. They have a "double con" system of color and dots where the con color of the mobs tells you if it is in the right level range for you, and the dots give you an idea of how many friends you might need to take it down. And as my husband and I have discovered, you pretty much want to trust the dots. While we can take on an even level three dot mob with just the two of us, it's pretty much up to chance if we live or the mob lives through the combat. A two dot mob is no real problem for the two of us, but add in the special abilities and AI of a "three dotter", and we're in trouble as often as we're victorious. Oh, and the quests will tell you before you accept them if they are ones that are designed to do solo or with a group, too, though not how large a group you might need if it says a "group" quest.

The third thing I've loved about the game is the crafting system. It keeps you thinking and paying attention, not just letting you button click to advance. The system for leveling as a crafter (work orders) is seperate from making things, so you don't waste real resources on leveling. Right now I've been leveling an outfitter, and at level 8 I haven't really made anything useful yet. I have too much to learn about the system for crafting goods before I go playing around with resources. But I'm very much looking forward to learning.

I also like the class I've chosen, a disciple, though I can see myself creating a number of different characters in release in order to get a feel for the different classes in the game. I'll get more into that in another blog, though, when I can be more specific about some of the abilities of the disciple. For now, I will say that the variety of classes and races available makes character creation take quite a while, and I just know I'm going to be an "alt-aholic" once the game is released. For now, I'm trying to just absorb as much of this one area as I can, though, and I'll save exploring the other two islands for when the game is live.