Heads up: this is just a ranting bitch-fest, nothing of “relevance.”
Playing Vanguard the past few days, re-familiarizing myself with the game and re-learning how to play my Dread Knight. Even learned a new trick: I never bothered fully reading the description of Harrow. Turns out, Harrow is one of my self-heals, not just a shadow step damage skill.
So, I remembered a warrior friend a few months ago introduced me to a couple NPC’s from the Hunter’s League who reward some really great gear. I’d completed the first quest or two and noticed my other gear was, well, pathetic. So off I went getting groups for the Hunter’s League quests. These quests are very grindy as well. (Oh wait, you EQ guys call it “hunting.” Hunter’s League. Ah! I see what they did there… 
) They’re all “collect N body parts of mob X” and of course not every mob drops that particular body part, and to make matters worse if it does drop only one person in the group gets it. Needless to say, it’s a lot of killing but at least our groups were able to continue at a decent pace with very little downtime. Until… a quest called “No Rest for the Weary” which I had the displeasure of completing last night. The Hunter’s League NPC wants 10 Cyclops Eyes which were easily obtainable from a nearby location, and then 10 Patches of Zombie Flesh. Ah yes, the zombie flesh… Now, to obtain this zombie flesh we had to travel to a small area across the mountain from Upside Defense Garrison and find a hole in the ground which leads to a small underground dungeon. These zombies only spawn in one room, and the Hunter’s League quest line is very popular for the gear rewards so it’s normal to have multiple groups working on them. We showed up in the room to find another group already working on it. Ok, guess we’ll get in line. Now, these zombies only spawn every five or ten (seemed more like ten) minutes, and only in groups of 3-5 per spawn session. Most one at a time; the most we ever saw all night was two simultaneously. So… full group of 6 each needing 10 patches of flesh which don’t drop from every mob… Two hours after getting in line they finally got all their patches and it was our turn, which took another three hours. Of course, another group was in line after us, and I think one was coming in as we were leaving.
It goes without saying that this particular room needs its spawn timers significantly decreased. Regardless, while in many ways I enjoy the wide open and non-instanced world of Vanguard, in situations like that where multiple groups are doing nothing but waiting for hours for their chance to kill the same mobs, I honestly have to question anyone who dislikes instances. Five hours of my night to collect 10 body parts of a mob. Five hours is longer than it ever took to complete a WoW raid pre-TBC. Instances gets rid of the whole waiting in line business. Sure, I’ll admit that in this particular case simply having the mobs spawn faster and make the drop available to each person in the group would solve this particular problem, multiple groups or not. But as top-heavy as Vanguard is, I can’t say I have high hopes of being able to run the Ancient Port Warehouse raid with multiple guilds being in there at once and having no issues, despite the Vanguard team’s claim to the contrary.
There comes a point where we, the collective community of both players and developers, need to realize that despite all the extraneous bits sewn in to build a virtual world, in the end it’s the game play that matters. Instances have their trade-offs, although I don’t for a second buy into the “it breaks my immersion” routine I hear too often, but non-instancing popular content also takes a huge hit on game play. Maybe you guys are able to don your rose-colored glasses and over-romanticize your “good ol’ days” of EQ spawn camps, etc. but I cannot fathom telling a potential new Vanguard customer — even if I had the enthusiasm of Paul Barnett hyping up Warhammer Online — this same story of having to travel quite some time to arrive at the quest location, wait for everyone in the group to arrive, fight our way to the zombie room then sit for over two hours waiting our turn and then expecting my listener to have any interest in the game.
The industry has evolved and moved on from EQ’s mechanics for many reasons, but here’s #1 on my list: we expect our games now to be games. A few years ago we heard the phrase “graphical MUD” being tossed around liberally to describe MMORPG’s but of all the old-school titles, that most describes EQ. Most of the guys I grouped with for the zombie flesh were EQ players as well, and one described EQ as “more hardcore.” I disagree. EQ was simply more primitive (first of its kind, after all) and bottom line: more cumbersome. Text input? Give me a break already, like anyone these days can bother taking the time to type correctly, much less learn to spell correctly. I doubt anyone thinks to include leet-speak and chat-speak into text parsers either so the impatient kids can continue their game once they tire of reading line after line of irrelevant quest dialogue and tell the NPC to “stfu n00b i pwn j00!”
In other Vanguard non-news, yet another alleged former Sigil employee aired some dirty laundry on the FOH forums today. Fun read, and I can actually believe most, if not all, of what was said whether it was true or not. Much of it we knew already but it’s still an eye-opener in places. Brad McQuaid addicted to opium? Explains much of his behavior, that’s for certain. Ego + Drugs = Failure.
Oh and for the record, Vanguard’s “bonus xp” boost sucks! My Dread Knight gained 5 levels doing 3 group quests. Utterly ridiculous! Rest xp is bad enough, though fairly mild overall in Vanguard but this bonus xp boost is causing me to out-level whatever content I wanted to do. Why rush us to level cap when there’s only the single just-released raid chunk? 
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