This is the closest thing to myspace or twitter faggotry that I will ever touch, so I will just post this here. Really all I want to do is post thoughts on several MMMOs out there, and some coming soon and see if opinion is pretty much the same. And maybe share some screenshots and stories.

World of Warcraft
I don't want to talk about WoW anymore. All I really want to say about this game is people need to stop bullshiting with themselves and realize you don't want to quit because you are upset with upcoming changes, you don't want to quit because of some faggotry faction change service, or the cost of said service. You feel the way you do because it's tired. It's no longer fresh and fun for you. Move on. It's been 4 and a half years or so.

If you enjoy it, that is great and awesome.

I only have one screenshot worth a shit that I bothered to keep.

We ride together. We die together. Duke Boys for life.


Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning.

--Then
Now I was hella rough on this turd. Justifiably so in my opinion. This was to be the game to make up for the shotcomings of WoW PVP and the abortion that was Age of Conan. I don't think I am out of line to say it failed on all counts on it's launch in almost the same way Conan did. The early stages of playing it were polished like no other, sadly in an attempt to hide the glaring flaws that would soon follow and be discovered. There was no actual want or need to defend keeps. PvP was a mishmash of AE fucking and rage inciting crowd control abilities to such an extent that it sucked the fun out of the game with the force that only a 13 year old Thai ladyboy hooker could muster. The list just grew and grew.

The PvE was jokingly bad. NPC AI was terrible, quests seemed just there to be there. The Public Quest system, while a super awesome thing soon became wastelands as players left and there was no way to complete them, leaving people to farm early stages only to wait 5 plus mins for a reset since there was no way to complete them.

My list of complaints were pretty long. I was really frustrated how Mythic could fuck something up guarenteed to print money like the Warhammer universe.

Oh, and worst tradeskilling ever.

--Now
The PVP is still very much fun. They have made a ton of improvments to performance that make keep/castle sieges not send your computer into meltdown. It still can get bad, but dropping settings works like a champ now.

They retweaked all the Renown PVP gear, making it pretty much a must to keep your ranks close to one another, because that PVP gear destroys anything else you will find. Any gear pretty much that isn't gotten through renown is vendor/talisman making fodder.

But thats alright, because the PvP is just pretty much awesome fun. It's still a very simplistic formula. You get all your core class abilities within the first 20 levels or so, everything afterward is your anti this, or make this not do this filler and CC breaks. Speaking of that, the crowd control is still off the hook gay, but you can deal with it. I read they may tone it back a bit.

PvE is pure and utter shit. Except for PQs, those are fun and they now added in or redesigned specific ones aimed at groups of 2 or 3, which can be solo'd by most. But at it's core, PvE in this game is a waste of time.

So while there was a lot of anger at first over this title, they are making good attempts to fix things and it is a ton better game now than it was at launch. I just wish it played more fluid, like say WoW. Everything still moves like it's a bit slowed down, even after they tweaked the GCDs.

It is very playable and fun, but make no mistake, if you go in expecting any PvE at all, other than PQs which you will be bored to shit over within 3 days, you will be SORELY disappointed. The PvE is garbage sorry. Thankfully they know this and don't try to hide the fact that PvP is the way to play the game.

Oh, and save yourself some pain. Don't play a tank class. Roll something ranged, or roll a healer. Because healing in this game is the most fun you will ever have doing that job in a game.

I had several screenshots but they are gone now so oh well.

EverQuest 2

--Then
What a stubborn hoe this game is. When she came on the scene, she was one high dollar whore. The system requirements to run this needy bitch were outrageous and really now that I think about it, not really public release yet. Coming out a full two months before World of Warcraft did, I think I tried to run this on a 1.3ghz Athlon with 1 gig of ram and a 9800 Pro.

Big mistake. Pretty sure I melted my poor computer and if I recall, I upgraded shortly afterward.

I really don't recall any glaring launch problems, some say it had a shitty launch but I honestly can not remember. Squink and I had a pretty good initial run, roling as two swashbucklers I think. It was pretty fun actually. I recall there just being so many quests and things to do it was pretty overwhelming. One gripe I know we had is one that people still knock the game for to this day.

Too many god damn buttons, and every one of them is important.



This is my Froglok Swashbuckler. See all those buttons on the first row? Those are all attacks. All of them have debuff components and I must land them all to win.

Nutty.

Anyway, yeah, I can't remember any REAL glaring shitflaws other than a lack of solo monsters to slay and the fact it destroyed my computer. I hated that computer anyway.

--Now
Today, I can't help but feel very sad that I did not experience any of the latter raid content. I hear it was fun and there is always that nostalga factor. Their patches are always something pretty amazing and this game has more content in it that you will probably ever see anywhere else. Their mentoring system is second to none and allows players of all level ranges to play together and gives you a chance to maybe go back and try out some raids/dungeons you missed.

Out of the box, it has one of the best UI's i've seen in a mmo. I used a custom one but could easily do with default if I had to. Move and resize everything.

What is really lacks is players. Some servers are just ghost towns. I played on the heavy pop roleplay server and it was jam packed. It was great and I would suggest starting there. The community is also great there, really reminds me of that old EQ1 feeling of closeness.

Lord of the Rings Online

--Then and Now
I initially hated this game, and you know what, I will say it. It's World of Warcrafts fucking fault. Because of WoW, I probably missed out on 2 years of the best mmo experience out there because there was nothing wrong at all with this mmo and I really feel like an idiot for blasting it for not being WoW while looking like wow.

I don't know how Turbine pulled it off, but if I were asked to pick one mmorpg that I would call the best of the best, this is the game I would choose. Outside of going from game to game and ripping out what is great about them and combining it all into one new game, LotRO is the one shining star that does so much right. It does have its little frustrations but the game is just so much fun. Classes will always need balance in any game, and sometimes you feel like the last ability you trained was just some random thing, like one ability my Runemaster got was an AE nuke that roots all targets.

....after 10 seconds.

Initially this confuses me but somehow it works as a skill.

I did not try any raid content, but its there. And it's a beautiful game. I have seen posted some screenshots that just are jawdropping awesome.

Like these.

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm11 ... t00313.jpg

http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm11 ... t00335.jpg

Next up would be Age of Conan and Vanguard if anybody would be interested in seeing and reading more.

I'm tired of WoW. I'm even more tired of hopskotching to flavor of the month MMOs.

Good post. Finish what you started.

Ya, thanks. More please.

Yes please do continue.

I think I am one of the only people out there who really enjoyed Vanguard. Then again I was playing on a very high end machine and never experienced the problems most people had with performance.

Conana was great until the massive nerf on the TOS. I quit that same day at lvl 70. Never went back.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Good read, give us more givin.

_________________

moar!

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I really enjoyed reading this post. I played and quit each of these games at some point, but I always like reading the well-formed opinions of others on their overall experiences with them.

I had a lot of fun in eq II.

I loved so much about it. Housing was great. The graphics were fantastic.
The perpetual AH rocked...all the nice voice acting, quests up the wazoo..different emotes, voices and personas for every race, class and whatnot. Tradeskilling was a game in itself.
I loved that you could mine, herb, log w/out having some stupid ass skill requirement like WoW.

My computer simply could not run the game properly w/out massive lag and stutter. Enemies would render in multiple stages, magically coloring, gaining armor...weapons as I got closer...but only if i got closer.

The other thing that sucked was that in 40 levels I grouped once. There were simply no low level players and far too many group quests I couldn't do. There was also very VERY few online resources in which to get help on items, quests..etc.

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

Yeah, I quite enjoyed EQ2 back when it started as I had a static group (me, Aeralla, Jarhn) who tackled most things, and eventually we joined Mith Web there and had a fun time.

After I disappeared for 3 years in Japan, I came back and the game just wasn't the same. Very few people played anymore, and solo life in EQ2 is boring as hell.
I made it up to 72 as an Assassin before pulling the plug. Not sure if it'll work, but char profile is here:
http://eq2players.station.sony.com/char ... =115732103

A lot of fun aspects to that game, but much like FFXI, there were just a few things about it that drove me away.
For FFXI it was the commitment required to really advance in the missions; for EQ2 it was the repetitiveness of it all (combat was whack-a-mole with your 1395013750 abilities), and the inability to see a fair chunk of the game without a group :/

Good game overall, though. EQ2 and FFXI have been the few MMOs I've really enjoyed since EQ1.

Looking forward to reading the rest. I'm looking to get back into an MMO again and sadly WoW seems my best option. I'd be interested in reading takes on the others available.

I am looking for one of my old hard drives that has a ton of screen shots of various games on it, and when I locate that and my USB hard drive shell I will upload a bunch.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

We all know the story behind Vanguard, or at least most know enough to be able to relate to where it came from. Out of any game I have beta tested, none have changed so much from patch to patch as this beast.

Just for the record, I was not the one that narc'd on Turbo, getting him shitcanned from beta.

I initially got in an early stage, when they were still setting sail under the good ship Microsoft and before Miggent came on board. Way way back when you had to jump through about a billion hoops and enter something like 5 registration codes and other assorted bullshit just to be able to download the client. Early beta was interesting. It was pretty much a giant flat grassless landmass with numerically arranged tiles. I heard from Mig later that it was near impossible for them to keep an art guy on staff.

What really stood out to me was the use of the defensive target system. I really enjoyed that. Some argue that it was just like the Focus target in WoW but I always had to wonder why the focus target settings were hidden and pretty much unknown to about 90% of their playerbase.

I remember quitting and shitcanning this originally due to how sloppy it ran, even for a beta. People always excused it saying that it was the logging software but it was just terrible. Keep in mind that none of the fancy shit was in yet. No AA, shadows, hell, not even grass.

Fast forward a few months and the Brad McQuaid hypetrain is in full effect. His posts on the FoH forums are legend when it came to shrilling this thing. All kinds of crazy things happen, Microsoft bails, SoE picks up the ball and so on. I happen to run into Miggent again and he hooks up Team Bro with the beta hotness and we begin testing as a team. It was pretty elite because we actually did test the shit out of it. We broke this piece of shit at every chance. My personal favorite was finding an instant respawning sheep NPC that anybody could 1 shot and it always gave at least 1 exp regardless of level. If there was a hole in the world, we found it. Misplaced mobs, shitty text, Team Bro was on the case. We also helped test the PVP beta server when it went live, and actually pissed off some dev working with Mig because his god GM powers wouldn't work on us and we kept slaying his face.

Good times.

Launch was getting pretty close by this time and they rolled out one final patch. This was like the jesus miracle patch. It GREATLY improved performance and fixed a ton of shit. It was great. A lot of things such as class balance and shit wasn't really fixed, but a lot of what actually killed the game at launch wasn't in this patch. Performance was pretty solid and I experienced no real graphic problems. I was pretty confident that it would be a decent game so I jumped aboard the last bandwagon leaving.

I ordered two brand spanking new elite dual core gaming beasts. Top of the line. 4 gig of ram, brand new 8800 GTs. My wife also wanted to play and I put them all together the night before release. They ran like champions and I slept well that night, knowing for sure that a new dawn in mmo gaming would be had the next day.

I was correct of course, for Vanguard would usher in the Era of Unfinished Buggy Fucking Shit.

I was pretty amazed at how a release candidate could run worse on hardware that was about 200 times better than I had played an earlier beta build on. I mean it was terrible. I had to run just under mid settings. The memory leak was so bad, I could time every crash, and what was worse is that most of the Vanguard crashes caused BSODs. It was so frustrating. Entire textures would go missing for no reason or they would just suddenly disappear. One pretty comedic moment concerning this was on my wifes PC. She had all the character skin disappear so everyone was nothing more than floating hair, eyeballs and a big long tongue hanging down.

And the rest is pretty much history. Nothing really positive could come out of that launch. And anything positive the game offered was buried under a sea of shit pretty much. It was impossible to look past.

--Now
That was two years ago, and of course the game is under new management. Apparently the dev team works out of a closet and is pretty much the smallest crew they have going. Smedley actually didn't mention Vanguard in his Fanfare speech for the second year in a row I heard. And that is a real shame because for all the shit the game has been pulled through, the current batch of guys that work it over have done a very good job.

Firstly, performance has vastly improved on all fronts. The game runs smooth for the most part and looks amazing. They did some work with the character models and those are better. I remember reading about how much of a nightmare it is to design armor textures for this game. Still no tails for the furry character races and they pretty much said don't expect it ever.

The voice overs are still terrible. Pulling random passing by Sigil employees into a recording studio must have saved them boo koo buckaroos. All of the fake asian NPC talk makes me groan still to this day.

Gameplay is pretty solid. It is the spiritual embodiment of EQ with a splash of modern WoWisque thrown in for flavoring. Meaning that grouping and mechanics play out much like WoW, with the heart of EQ in its delivery. This is a superb dungeon crawler. There are so many. They range in size from jesus fucking gigantic labyrinths to the smaller monster lair type crawls. You could level a char to 55 and pretty much not hit every one on your run through.

With a world so big, and it was massive, they had to come up with a new system of travel. It was so big that often when you found people to party with, they were a half hour or more away from you. They correct this by connecting the world with a port system called rifts. Most of them were level locked so you couldn't really head to an area you had no business being in. It works pretty good and made it a lot easier to get around.

The classes are pretty interesting for the most part. Clerics aren't healbot bitches and can contribute DPS and minor tanking roles if need be. Feign Death is alive and well here. It really is the spiritual embodiment of EverQuest, it just had the unfortunate luck to be wrapped in tin foil shit.

After getting the infos on all the Sigil drama, I honeslty can't blame the guys who cut their teeth on this turd. Only so much you can do given those circumstances.

My final thoughts on it would have to reflect on how far it has come in two years. For all intent and purpose, this game should be dead and buried by now, but the guys that are working on it now have really turned it around for a lack of a better way to describe it. It is very playable, and fun if you really get into the meat of grouping and dungeon crawling. They added in a superb starting area that anybody can start in that will take you to level 10 in adventuring, crafting and diplomacy. You get a pretty beefy set of starting equipment too by the time you are done.

It still has its flaws. The map is still pretty bad, even with a reskinning and the quest markers are buggy as all hell. And there is still very little direction once you get out of the tutorial area. It pretty much dumps you out into the next leveling hub in BFE and you're left for the wolves pretty much. Quests leading you to the next hub could come at any time, before you are ready to leave the area even and some offer little to no direction whatsoever.

And finally, there just isn't many people playing this anymore. That could be good and bad depending on what you want. The core fun of the game is in grouping and crawling those dungeons, so if you bring a six pack of friends, you're set for adventure.

A shame really because there is a ton of fun to be have. You have to work for your accomplishments, and while it has had its share of toning down, the level of challenge is still very much there and it makes you work. The sad state of it is tho, that there will be very few people around to help celebrate with you.

My Vanguard experience was so much more brief. Login, wow this game runs like shit. Run around a while, get to like level 15, wow this game looks and plays like shit too! /cancelaccount

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Avelle <Risen>
80 Mage
Ner'zhul Server (Fuck Illidan)
Avelle 75 PLD/DRG/DRK/BRD
Midgardsormr - Active again
Elidrin 75 Paladin
Midgardsormr - Retired
Elidrin 65 Ranger
Lanys T'Vyl - Retired

You just summed up the entirety of my WoW and FF11 runs, Eli.

Not sure how you can say WoW runs or plays like shit. Gotta at least give it those pluses.

Maybe he played when Ironforge was a lagfest.

Did you miss release?

Sooo.. moving to the coming soon part. Which are up for discussion Givin? Personally I'm looking forward to a good Sci-Fi MMO. Stargate Worlds or maybe Kights of the Old Republic.

Yes, a sci-fi mmo please God. I can't take much more fantasy.

KotOR will sell its balls off based on the name alone. As far as the actual game goes, I haven't seen anything from them yet to really say it will be good or bad. Other than it is Star Wars and has a license to print money. Lot of people betting the farm on this one.

Stargate Worlds last I heard may never see the light of day. Gobbled up by some Korean publisher that got taken over by someone else or some shit.

Champions Online sounds like this years fall clusterfuck. I didn't even bother signing up for beta but from reading leak boards and whatnot the only similarity between it and City of Heroes/Villains is the fact both have super heroes in them. A lot of people giving pretty gritty negitive feedback on it. Right now I'm going to pass it by and wait on DC Universe if I ever want to check out another superhero mmo. Makes me wonder about Star Trek Online as well since Cryptic is developing it alongside Champions.

I also heard Atari gave Cryptic the green light for a Neverwinter Nights mmo due out in 2011-2012. Hopfully it will use 4th edition rules and they take a long hard look at DDO and see how not to do a Dungeons and Dragons mmo.

Speaking of DDO, it's going free to play sometime this summer. Apparently you can play a lot of the current content and buy extra modules and odds from the Turbine store. Also some race/classes you will have to purchase to unlock. The game was pretty horrible and even worse if you had to play solo but it's definitely worth playing for the price, I.E. free.

Still no character respecs other than traits, or the delete character button as most people say.

On the PVP side of the world, three things that I can think of. Of course there is Aion. I don't know how this is going to go over in the US. Some things just won't fly over here so well. The public bazaar for one. Also, people don't really realize this game isn't new. This has been out in asia for a while, and the patches really are just priming it for a US audience. WSAD was patched in not too long ago. It looks pretty enough to give a fair shot tho. Can't beat big eared elvan dickgirls with wings. Hot shit.

Darkfall is supposed to release a north american server. Why, I do not know but it's apparently coming.

There is one called Mortal Online as well. Supposed to be pretty hardcore. Once in a life time mob spawns, full on pvp with a skill based PVP system, meaning you pick and choose what skills you want to focus in. I don't know anything about it really other than some really FUCKED UP videos I saw where a guy shot another dude in the face point blank with a ballista and blood went everywhere.

Everquest 2 will roll out its next expansion come Feb. Supposed to have something to do with Odius. Lots of people thought it would be Velious. Lots of people were disappointed with the news it was Odius. The groans are pretty audible at the Fanfare announcement. Another EQ1 expansion as well.

WoW of course has Casual Colloseum.

Rumors still abound that the next Lord of the Rings expansion is Riders of Rohan. This is where I would put my PvE money. Great community, healthy server populations and enough shit to do that would kill anybody with really bad OCD. But in all seriousness, if you are in that mmo slump and looking for that green pasture, find yourself an mmo buddy. I'd have quit a long time ago if not for Team Bro/Oryx. Or if you want to jump into something and give it a fair shake, find yourself one of the new player guilds that scoop up newbies. That extra security feeling you get just from having a guildtag will make the stay better. You won't feel as alone even if you don't know anyone. The green guildchat text is soothing believe it or not.

Vanguard to get AAs and class Epics.

That's really all I can think of at the moment. It's kind of a quiet time for mmos. Pretty much everyone that is making one has it out or is afraid to seeing as how badly the last batch of super anticipated wow killers have failed.

I played in Beta all the way up to release, yes.

Sure, there was the queuing issue and the database problem right at release that kept you from looting, but other than that the game could run on a damn Commodore 64 and had smoother gameplay than just about anything else out there.

I may try LOTRO when I get back from vacation thanks to this post. Nice stuff Givin.

You are right about that. Other than having a brand new top line ment nothing with the database issues, it ran like you were on a commodore 64 like everyone else.

No.

Anyone heard anything on Dragon Age : Origins?

Wow hadn't heard that. The studio and software company building it is here in Phoenix. And there forums have still been active on their progress. Dev Post from today.
http://forums.stargateworlds.com/showthread.php?t=29224

There's no way you can stick to that stance seriously. Sorry. You're just being full of bullcrap beacuse you don't like the game now or something if you try claiming that it didn't run and play smoothly.

In terms of performance, that was one of the big "casual" draws to begin with - the fact that you could load the game up on just about anything.

Ok

I played at release. Or was it just before? Don't remember. Borrowed a guildie's account.

It's not that it didn't run decently (which I don't even remember), it's that it was just another pointless rat and beetle fest (or whatever they're called in WoW), which couldn't hold my interest.

After EQ, I refuse to work at enjoying a game.

I have high hopes and low expectations for KOTOR.

yeah i have real high hopes about the old republic, but if it plays like kotor, i'll pass. i know i'm the one in a million who couldn't stand the way that game ran, but i had to force myself to get through it.

_________________

Force yourself, good one.

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!

_________________
Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

OMG IT WORKED FOR MY SYSTEM FINE SO THE REST OF YOU ARE FAGS.

It actually had SIGNIFICANT issues with different drivers. When run with an Audigy card you had problems, and they stemmed from the client, not the reference drivers. Same applies for nforce chipsets and various graphics card manufacturers (notoriously so for the included SLI profile). This is to be expected for obscure setups and a minority of players, but that wasn't the case at release. It was far more.

This statement is not speculation.

I don't recall saying or implying that. You ok over there?



We're talking about two different things, really. Yes, it had a lot of strange problems at release and for some time, but that's not really what we were talking about.

The discussion was leaning more toward the overall performance of the game as compared to the average system at that time, and the general impression of flow of gameplay. (A separate issue from performance.)

Leo said it played like shit. He was right, it's pretty simple. I'll paraphrase you by saying "in terms of performance" the engine and client were quite dogshit.

With regards to my smart ass comment, you told leo, and I quote: "There's no way you can stick to that stance seriously. Sorry. You're just being full of bullcrap beacuse you don't like the game now or something if you try claiming that it didn't run and play smoothly."

He wasn't full of bullcrap. You made an assumption based on your positive experience and assumed that was the case overall, which it generally wasn't. So yeah, I'm doing fine over here. I used hyperbole to make my point

Maybe I wasn't clear, that comment wasn't directed to Leo. It was meant for Garborg and his comment about any system being as good as a C64 because it ran so bad. (Which, by any stretch of the imagination, is a silly assertion. The database issues were server side anyway, the game ran just fine until you tried to loot certain things. So it wasn't a game performance issue.)

But its all moot, because Leo wasn't talking about any of that any way, so I guess we're all off the mark.

As for my positive experience...I started playing on Archimonde. About as un-positive as it gets there. =/

all that shit you gave me about liking LOTRO....

Garborg then, /shrug. And there most definitely were significant client side engine issues, but ok. And Archimonde was as insane as Kilrogg for initial queue times ugh.

If it were one thing I would never criticize WoW for, it would be the game engine quite frankly. I never experienced anything BUT smoothness in almost every area with the exception of highly-populated areas(does any MMO actually perform BETTER in highly-populated areas? I can't think of any. Maybe Runescape lol). I remember seeing the first screenshots of WoW and going "Holy shit... time to upgrade the computer." And then I read that the more surprising thing about it was to actually play it and realize that it wasn't a laggy piece of junk. Clever, efficient disguising and use of polygons seemed to help a lot.



I noticed this is under the label "Now". Curious, which parts here were not in the initial release of the game? I experienced all of this my first go-round. The dungeons were incredible, the classes were diverse and playable, and the world has always been fucking enormous.

I'm not sure what's changed really. Their development team has been sliced and diced in every manner imaginable... patches have been tiny as hell ever since a few months after Vanguard's release. Turbo played longer than I did, and one of his main criticisms was that there was never anything new released nor in the pipe. Graphics/loading improved to an extent, granted, but this was never a problem that a good computer didn't solve. I played on release and only had slowdown in major cities, with relatively few graphical glitches. Same with most of the people I played with back then. that stuff has nothing to do with gameplay.

You can't judge a game poorly because your computer sucked or you didn't build it properly at the time.

It was a great game, and still is a great game. The primary problems were/are 1) the PVP sucked balls/nonexistent 2) It never managed to hook a big audience, and it's just gone downhill from there.

This is wrong. I tried Vanguard at release. I am running a dual core (I know Vanguard does not take advantage of that, just saying) with 4 gig of RAM and a GForce 8700 512MB card. Vanguard ran like shit to the point I had to use the /flush command they built in to flush the engine cache constantly. I had updated drivers, everything at this time. I made SURE to have all of it for VG's release because I heard the system requirements were hell.

Also, speaking of the /flush command they had to create. if you have to create that fucking command, that should tell you something.

_________________
There is no such thing as right or wrong; only pleasure and pain.

I think its under the now part because it was such a shitty game to most of the people here that we never played those parts.

He mentioned the size of the world because of the new traveling system, though I dunno how new.

He also mentioned putting together a top of the line, at the time, machine for it, so I dunno where the crappy computer part of your post came from, unless you had a machine from the future to run it on at release.

I went back to Vanguard as recently as a month go, and I still find it to be a shitty game with hardly anyone playing and fairly unkind to new players. I brought two people with me too so it wasn't just solo play. I had more fun with Runes of Magic and that's just a trashy WoW clone. Maybe because my friend fell through the world 4 times in one play session, multiple chat/group bugs, and a buggy map that was grayed out or at the wrong area most of the time.

Also, 20 minute respawns for quest mobs/items that only one person can loot was fun. Spiritual embodiment of EQ indeed.

The current rift system was not in at release.
The fellowship system was not in at release.

There has also been improvement in NPC AI and pathing. You still pretty much have to body pull everything, but NPCs won't run the opposite direction anymore and bring the whole dungeon on top of you. Also you won't find every other mob evade bugged like they were at launch.



Except for the whole part where scores of people that built brand new machines with top of the line shit just to play this game had worse performance than those with older last gen hardware. The issue with the 8800 series and shaders comes to mind.

We aren't talking about a Dell special here.



I guess I put my video card in upside down or something.

This will make a pretty good segway into Age of Conan with the whole performance and hardware thing.

Well, then now you know why it's important to not drop an MMORPG 5 hours into the gameplay. Do you remember EQ for it's awesome giant rat grinds outside of Qeynos? I sure don't. I remember it for the endgame raids and instances.



The world was big, and it was a bit harder to get around, but there were still ways to travel rather well - mounts became WAY faster as I remember even upon level 30-40. Assuming there was a river or body of water in the direction you were going, taking a friend's boat was very fast. Could've used some improvement, but hardly gameplay changing unless someone had ADHD or something.



Read what I said: *Properly*. I cannot count the number of people that buy what they think are tough rigs that are really just recommended by some know-nothing that thought it was the best at the time. People who buy every great part they can think of and then spend 100 bucks on a used graphics card. People who don't insert their ram sticks properly and end up with 2 GB. People that don't configure it generally for optimum performance. People that buy from bad companies that sell shit hardware.

So, there were quite a few people that had trouble running it no question. What do you think those of us who had no problems did? Engage in witchcraft?

Anyhoo, you've listed 2-3 changes which barely have anything to do with gameplay. Game's the same.



Again, rift system isn't a bad addition, even though some would argue at the cost of feeling like a smaller world. It really doesn't have that much effect on gameplay, since travel times really weren't all that bad anyway.

Fellowships are nice, but more or less a convenience thing. Every MMORPG would probably be better off with one, but being specific to Vanguard doesn't mean this is some miraculous change made to gameplay. The dungeons are still epic, the classes are still diverse and fun, grouping in general is still fun as well as some of the group quests, the gear and risk v reward is nicely tuned. None of the core aspects have changed. Making things slightly more convenient for very casual players has changed. But not in a way that has massively altered its accessibility, TBH.

Heh, missed this somehow. It tells me that it was one of the most graphically complex games at the time. Part of their strategy(which, in hindsight, may have not worked out quite as they had planned) was to release a game which was very high-end in terms of demanding resources, but something they figured would level off as newer hardware was released. As opposed to the common strategy of releasing a game that requires the specs of lower-end rigs that are a few years old.

Unfortunately they were hit with a double-whammy on that plan - Not enough people were hooked on initial release, and not enough people came back for seconds when hardware improved.

This just shows how little you really know about hardware. I have built literally thousands of PC's and I can tell you for a fact that even if you have 2 boxes with identical hardware 99% of the time they will not run the same nor will they run the same program with the same performance. Especially with Intel processors and the flawed way they determine what chip runs at what speed.

Case in point, I had 2 identical boxes set up to play Vanguard, one ran it without a hitch, the other experienced the memory leak. A third box, which was several rungs down the evolutionary ladder couldn't run it at all, yet ran every other game out there like a champ.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Seriously, as if Givin didn't put his computer together correctly.

That much difference between identical components 99 percent of the time? That's a bit high, but that's more than likely what you WOULD see if you buy parts from the worst and most unreliable manufacturers. I'd say at least 80 percent of the time you can trace the problem to something more than a mere defect in the hardware that is unfixable without buying a new piece. And yes, there are a lot of things that can go wrong in any system, and it's pretty hard to narrow them all down but it is possible. The best way to avoid those kinds of scenarios is to not buy from 2nd and 3rd rate manufacturers.

Either way, thanks for proving my point: You can't just buy up the bulletpoint list of items and expect demanding games to run perfectly on every machine. Vanguard had engine problems, no question, but out of the 8 people I knew IRL that played it, only one had serious issues that affected gameplay. 5 of those machines I helped order the proper parts for and build, and the one I was completely unassociated with. That's a good enough success rate for me.

Again, this is one game you couldn't ask mommy to order your parts for you and assemble it like a lego set without paying any attention. And that killed the playerbase by itself.

Wrong. Driver compatibility is worst offender. X-Fi + SLI + nForce for instance in most cases. 2nd and 3rd rate manufacturers don't make key system components with the exception of MAYBE memory, but even then, you're looking at the same reference from the same fabs in the vast majority of cases.

Server hardware? That's another matter entirely and I agree with your statement wholeheartedly in that case

Electronic components are built with 5-20% tolerances. Processors are manufactured with top grade wafers, but the rest of the PC is not. It's just too expensive. There can be quite a bit of variability within the specs, and in the timers that make everything run. If they add up in a bad combination, boom, your device runs like shit and your neighbor's does not.

There are only a few places that the 'down in the weeds' components come from anyway. Manufacturers just put the dies in a package and assemble it into a board.

Venen, please don't preach to me about your parts integration savvy. I compare your hardware knowledge to that of the guys working the floor at Fry's. The hardest part about building a PC today is routing cables and opening clam shells. Talk to me after you diagnose and repair a machine with a chip claw, soldering iron and voltage tester or ramped up a few quad+ processor servers without calling tech support to figure out why it keeps beeping when you turn it on .

As for your statement; "The best way to avoid those kinds of scenarios is to not buy from 2nd and 3rd rate manufacturers." shows how little you really know about the components you are "helping order and build".

Just head on back to the kids table, i mean WoW forum, the grown ups are talking here.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

For me RAM has been one of the biggest offenders, and you definitely get some 2nd rate manufacturers there. I can't count the number of times I've tweaked the timings to reach optimum performance on different machines.

The main thing Sarissa is how they assemble it. I've gone from one company to another and ordered the same motherboard and see significant differences in average quality - everything from the CPU not being properly connected in the socket, transistors being partially or completely dislodged, battery broken(even massive leaking), and innumerable different parts indented or dislodged entirely.

They're factory-made and all that, but it's obviously not an entirely flawless process at times. I'd tend to agree with you if I hadn't seen so many instances of particular motherboards being just fine from one company and having the flaw rate jump considerably when I try another.

I won't disagree about driver compatibility issues, though.

Yeah, implying that games run shitty only because people put their computers together wrong (God, how can you even put one together wrong anymore?) is just kinda silly.

Frankly, I probably would've agreed if I wasn't 5/5(With a bit of tweaking on other machines I was able to get Vanguard to work on them as well, but I won't take full credit for their assembly) for Vanguard running smoothly.

Are we going with witchcraft here, or massive unheard of streak of luck? =p

The fact that you managed (I say that with a great amount of humor) to put together some boxes and they ran Vanguard is hardly a "massive unheard of streak of luck".

Like Khan said, the hardest part of putting a box together anymore is routing cables. (And not letting them hit a fan like I did yesterday, oops.)

What a dumb fucking argument. People not being able to assemble PCs didn't kill Vanguard's release. Blergh.

Back on topic: it's pretty interesting the way the MMORPG market has unfolded over the last few years. We old school gamers can nitpick all we want about which game mechanic sucked or what graphic was stunning or why some class was overpowered. But the fact is there were several eminently playable games released, as Givin has described. I had a lot of fun in Vanguard, and Warhammer as well, but when the populations plummeted the games got dull (Just Kinda Multiplayer ORPGs suck, wtfs).

I'm curious what people think were the differentiating factors that made WoW so dominant. I suspect they're mostly in the business realm, because while the gameplay was very well done and certainly had its original elements, WoW didn't exactly revolutionized the genre.

Off the top of my head:

1) Inclusivity. You didn't need a high-end machine (or even Windows) to run it. Opened up a large section of the market that can't afford tip top hardware. The casual focus also opened the game up to people with limited gaming time.

2) Marketing. Blizzard already had a solid customer base from the Diablo, SC and WC games that was easily converted to WoW subscribers. (DDO, LotRO and Warhammer had their fan bases, but not in the form of avid PC gamers.)

3) PvP focus. Allowed players to create their own content, which took some of the pressure off developers to keep cranking out new PvE content.

I'd love to play a game geared towards the hardcore raiding set of the MMO market, but it just hasn't come out in the last few years. Vanguard came close, but the McQuaid clusterfuck pretty much killed its chances. Too bad. We'll see if anything else can wrest a self-sustaining market share away from Blizzard.

There's nothing particularly hard about casual assembly UNLESS you have malfunctioning parts you can identify(and if need be, replace or fix). Installing and smoldering on replacement parts can be a little tricky if you don't know what you're doing.

But my main point is more or less about the companies you get them from, as well as subsequent tweaking to bring your machine to optimum performance. Putting a "proper" PC together is about more than just assembling the parts.

I would still call 5/5(plus the other tweaks) a pretty decent string of luck considering the sheer volume of people crying their eyes out on the forums about how Vanguard wouldn't load for them. I should've had a 70 percent chance of something going wrong, at least. Add in the other two PCs, who buy from the same companies I do(though I did not assemble or tweak them), along with maybe 3-4 comps I tweaked around with to get it to run, and that's a bit of a streak.

There wasn't a revolution of gameplay per say, but like many of their products they went over it with a fine-tooth comb. Every little avenue of it is explored and prodded. Almost everything is pretty fluid. Content is their biggest adversary right now, not gameplay(although let's face it, it's gotten more dull over the years because we're used to it). Sheer marketing and even casual appeal are not enough to justify how much they've sold. Solid PVP is a decent reason, but the majority of the playerbase is still PVE-centric.

SMT/SMD are assembled by machine. A company that can screw that up won't be in business long. The big difference really is some throw out components out of tolerance and some (China) don't care because they're building in lots of 25,000 and next week they're building something different.

Yeah, I do a lot of smoldering too. With my smoldering iron.

(Sorry.)