Pumping Irony

Finally, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has a downloadable 14-day trial! The new Isle of Dawn experience, included as part of the recent GU6 update, is now officially available as a stand-alone trial. For anyone who’s never seen the game, or hasn’t seen what’s been done in the past 20 months since release, here’s your chance! The installer is a mere 2.2MB in size and downloads the rest of IOD in the background. My full Vanguard installation weighs in at 19.1GB so if I were to guess, I’d expect the IOD trial to be in the vicinity of 2GB.

Edit: added official IOD button image

I wanted to see what the new Isle of Dawn (IOD) experience had to offer so I created a cleric on the Sartok FFA PvP server to give it a whirl. First I’ll describe the main adventuring quest storyline then some bullet points of the Isle and of the state of the GU6 game. As the title states, this is my impressions not a “review” so do not take it as such.

New characters are given the option of beginning their adventures on the Isle of Dawn or in their normal racial starter area. The Isle of Dawn was once part of the continent of Kojan, so expect a mythological Japan feel the Isle and its inhabitants.

For those seriously interested, I would highly recommend listening to the first few minutes of  Voyages of Vanguard #48 which featured Vanguard’s Lead Designer, Silius. The first segment was all about the Isle of Dawn and he gives a developer’s standpoint of the Isle’s intent as well as some of its content. New characters quickly become involved in a serious story involving the Ulvari, otherworldly creatures who destroyed the Raki homeworld and have begun an invasion of Kojan. The overarching Ulvari theme is already prevalent in some of Vanguard’s quest lore, and Silius hints that it will continue and grow in the next few content updates to the game.

After creating your character and loading into the Isle you begin your adventures at Tentrees’ Farmstead, a small rural community scared by a mysterious corruption of the local marshland. The adventure quests obtained here are of the standard kill and collect variety, typical Vanguard fare. While I only plan on describing the Adventuring sphere of IOD, the Crafting and Diplomacy spheres are also immediately available the moment you appear on the Isle. As is the case for the first few levels in most MMORPGs, the mobs in the Tentrees quests are non-aggressive though exploring quickly yields hostiles as well. Creatures we slay range from tadpole-ish gataro podlings to marsh dwellers (scaly lizard-men with a distinctive “Creature from the Black Lagoon” look) eventually to some Hobgoblin Overseers in the marsh itself. By the time these first quests are finished, you’re at least level 4 and have received new weapons, a new small bag and several armor upgrades.

Next, you’re sent to Sun Village where more quests are available. Hobgoblins are poisoning the crops and causing general problems, and they ask the noble adventurers to help. There’s a hobgoblin camp or two nearby plus a non-instanced underground lair known as the Earth Den. During the course of these adventure quests we get a full gear upgrade and at least one more small bag. Eventually we get clues to the nature of the corruption the hobgoblins are spreading and are sent across the river to the Magistrate’s House to pick up some more quests continuing the story and meet our first Ulvari. The local priests inform us the Ulvari come from another realm and have made their lair inside the nearby Temple of the Ancestors. Naturally, bold adventurers such as ourselves are in demand to put an end to the Ulvari threat! This begins the final chapter of the main storyline, and we’ll see one last gear upgrade as a result of completing these adventure quests. The final few quests take place inside the Temple of the Ancestors itself, which is only reachable via a pegasus ride! I was a little surprised the Temple quests themselves were labeled as solo, considering similar content on the mainland would certainly be group-only, but for a trial it was probably the best way to go. As I landed my pegusus on the entrance platform, a disciple was already there fighting her way in. We took turns at the various mobs rather than trying to kill-steal from each other until more players arrived and we all grouped to give the Temple a real go, Vanguard-style. We ended with a four-man group: a warrior, ranger, disciple, and my cleric. The four of us were a devastating force to the Ulvari and their ilk; we were doing crazy dps and I only had to cast two or three heals the entire time, which was good because I am not accustomed to having to scan CoreUI’s group panel and it took some time to find a comfortable routine. Clerics in Vanguard are not the squishy robe-wearing priests of WoW, we are heavy armor-wearing, shield-using fighters who also heal, buff and resurrect!

Temple of the Ancestors is just plain cool, no two ways about it. It’s a non-instanced multi-level environment, with neat features such as a magical energy elevator to go up and down between two particular levels (with enemies patrolling a central level), and disabling a fiery barrier by bathing your armor in blood to enter the last area for the boss fight. Again, the Temple is solo difficulty if you’re careful but with so many classes in the game, I cannot recommend enough that you take advantage of this final opportunity to experience grouping in the Isle of Dawn.

At the completion of the final Temple quest, you are rewarded with the final pieces of armor and your first hero title, “Hero of Dawn.” Vanguard subscribers will then receive a quest to speak to the nearby Rift Keeper who will send your character to one of the mainland continents via the game’s Riftway system. Oh, I should mention that Isle of Dawn’s level cap occurs on the high end of 10 and not immediately upon reaching level 10, so you’re able to continue gaining xp but cannot achieve level 11 without leaving the Isle.

The Isle of Dawn is exciting in that it’s the new SOE team’s first time creating this type of content, a whole new world area. From the terrain, to the towns and NPC’s the Isle of Dawn is consistent with what you’ll see on the mainland. Bringing up the world map, the full island is a 3×3 grid of chunks but IOD adventurers are restricted to the central chunk. Attempting to cross a chunk line rewards you with “That area is currently down or locked.” While a single chunk sounds limiting — and to a degree it is — there are still plenty of opportunities for exploration that the various quests will not take you. A favorite of mine was stumbling upon Ki Ta Village, inhabited by hostile level 9 hobgoblins. In the center of the village, however, are some friendly hobgoblins on whom you can practice diplomacy. In the middle of this group we find Slappy the Cool, Master Entertainer, who is busy bustin’ a move to some real-world Earth blues-rock dance music and spamming emotes such as “parties on, gets his groove on, gets jiggy with it, breaks it down” while his hobgoblin friends cheer him on and occasionally join in the dancing. Purists may cry “immersion-breaking!” here, but here’s my suggestion: pull that stick out of your ass! Slappy was so unexpected and so hilarious, it’s hard to not at least crack a smile. Vanguard is often overly serious, so an overt display of humor goes a long way towards showing the new team is having some honest-to-goodness fun building the game.

State of the GU6 Game

Vanguard is certainly making strides, but it’s also still very obviously a work in progress. GU6 brought new character models for players, which ranged from slight to sweeping changes, but in nearly all cases improved the overall look. Tipa’s halfling even got her eyelids back! IOD is, to my knowledge, using the all-new art assets to improve performance while adventuring and also seems to have re-worked the NPCs. In the mainland, where the new art assets have barely begun to appear, many NPC’s still look, well… freaky. On IOD the NPCs look much better, easily the best-looking NPCs in the entire game. As a disclaimer, my Dread Knight is in Thestra and I did not take him back to Kojan to compare the original Kojani NPCs to what I’m seeing in Isle of Dawn so don’t take my impression on this as a hard fact.

The purpose of the new character models was to improve performance, specifically while grouped. I very much enjoy the challenging group content in the game, but my performance always took a serious hit when grouped. My overall performance while solo remained largely unchanged from GU5 to GU6 but when I grouped for the Temple of the Ancestors my frame rate was steady whereas in GU5 and earlier I would have lost at least 10-15 fps, probably more.

In the first few quests in IOD we’re adventuring in a marsh, and are quickly shown that Vanguard has a horrible implementation of swimming, and the “fix” included in the January 25, 2008 patch was nothing more than a quick hack to stop the skipping. Characters often float mostly above the water while swimming and the transition from land to water is rarely seamless; I often bounce as if I’d hit a small invisible object before sinking into the water, and the same when coming back onto the land. “Swimming” is merely a character animation, there are no additional effects that would demonstrate swimming or even movement, indeed nothing to even show that the “water” even exists other than the “breathe” bar. Terrain is always a down-slope when entering water but rather than actually swimming on the surface, characters will continue downward on the same gradient so the player has to actively direct his character back to the surface to avoid drowning.

The “fade in” effect of GU6 works fine when it works, which unfortunately isn’t very often. The majority of the objects and mobs are still popping into view in both IOD and the mainland.

Object hit boxes are still a huge problem for targeting. GU6 now shows a new cursor type to show you the corpse has no loot but the hit box still exists which means extreme difficulty targeting a corpse which does have loot if corpses are stacked. This also means difficulty in selecting a target. Since my main is a tank, it is absolutely imperative that I’m able to quickly target the correct mob but instead, not only am I contending with multiple hit boxes from additional mobs in the fight but also the huge corpse hit boxes, making it practically impossible to target by any other means than tabbing through the list until I arrive at the correct mob. Unacceptable! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if the mob has nothing, eliminate the hit box entirely from my screen. Every other game on the planet does that, and while I’m placing most of the hit box blame on the Unreal Engine 2.5 (or at least McQuaid’s intentionally hacked-up version of it) this is still a very major in-your-face issue that needs to be addressed to have a properly playable game experience.

Fonts are still wonky, sometimes partially disappearing into objects placed on the terrain. The “enormous font” bug still has not been addressed, where any object or mob that is even slightly larger than normal also has its font size increased. Harvestable trees are the worst offenders, their names are gigantic.

Twice while inside the Temple of Ancestors the game suddenly decided I was underwater and brought up the “breath” bar. I’m in a group, busy fighting in the climatic finale to the story and the game is going to drown me? Really? Luckily the game returned to its senses mere seconds before drowning.

Finally, I noticed a design flaw in Vanguard’s atmospheric changes. You know, like when you walk into a marshland and suddenly everything is foggy or misty, or you walk into a burning village and the sky turns reddish and dark smoke fills the air? Vanguard bases that atmospheric change on the camera location rather than the character’s location. I can step into a marsh but if I keep the camera zoomed behind my character, no mist appears until the camera crosses that invisible line. This one is not UE2.5’s fault. It’s quite probable that this has always been the case and I’d just never noticed it, but it became glaringly obvious in my IOD adventures.

All in all, while IOD illustrates all of Vanguard’s strengths and weaknesses, I still found it to be a very enjoyable experience, especially the Temple of Ancestors. The tutorial tips do a nice job of explaining some of the mechanics and UI and it was great that they included every possible aspect of Vanguard all within the 1-10 bracket in IOD, including all three spheres of the game and a flying mount. The most noticeable positive aspect of GU6 was my performance while grouped, while the targeting/hit box issue is still the primary negative aspect of grouping. Presuming the performance is related to not only the new character models but also the new art assets in IOD, I won’t discount the possibility that my frame rate might take a hit while grouped on the mainland which is still constructed of the original, more inefficient art assets.

For now, I’m back for this month part-time, and really enjoying getting reacquainted with the Dread Knight, but the targeting/hit box issue was the final straw last time around and it’s still a major issue that directly impacts my ability to perform my class’ role, so until this is finally fixed I can’t say with any degree of certainty how long my stay will be this time. On top of that the Vanguard chapter of Revelry and Honor is nearly dead, most of them following Karen to EQ2 so I’m quite lonely other than talking in general chat. If I stick around in Vanguard, even part-time, do I stick it out with RnH or find another friendly guild on Xeth that won’t mind part-time players? Plus WAR is on the horizon next week, though I am currently undecided if I’ll play immediately or give it a month or three to smooth out the launch issues.

In a surprise move, SOE unleashed Vanguard’s GU6, “Heroes Reborn” today rather than next week. I’m already patched up and ready to go but the World Servers are still offline for another 40 minutes.

The GU6 Patch Notes are up already, and they’re a doozy so crack open the laptop, connect to the WiFi and enjoy a spinach & bacon baked egg soufflé because you’ll need some nourishment while perusing SOE’s latest novelette. Keep in mind the patch notes are only the documented changes; I’ve seen “2500+ bug fixes” being bandied about and at a glance I don’t think these patch notes reflect them all.

I was playing last night and someone asked when GU6 was arriving and someone said “tomorrow!” but I thought it was just some leg-pulling. Bzzt! Wrong answer. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get a good screenshot of Dolndruth sans armor yesterday. I tried but was in the middle of questing without enough free inventory slots to remove his armor and underclothes during Telon’s half-hour of daylight. (Seriously, why is it always night? It seems like day lasts 30 minutes and night lasts 3 hours!) I did snap a few awesome-looking screenshots with armor on in the forested hills of Thestra only to discover that for some reason the game’s screenshot ability isn’t working and I’d forgotten to load up Fraps… /sigh

Of the myriad fixes, here are the ones that interest or affect me:

• Isle of Dawn! The Vanguard trial has finally arrived! It sounds like new characters will begin their lives on the Isle of Dawn which will allow them to reach up to level 10. Subscribers can continue on to one of the mainland continents. Characters do not incur death penalty until level 11 now, up from the previous 10 so that no DP occurs on the Isle of Dawn. Additionally, this is where the bulk of the performance increases should occur, as SOE has been saying the Isle would be build completely from the new art assets, which have not yet made it fully to the main game world. I haven’t been following Vanguard’s development, so it’s entirely possible this is no longer the case, but last time I’d checked in with the game and with the Voyages of Vanguard podcast that was still supposed to be the plan.
• Character Model Revamp. All new models that should not only look more heroic but also increase performance, especially when grouped. Now, I totally enjoyed Dolndruth’s look but as for practically every other race, they were downright silly-looking. My performance is pretty good when soloing but took a very noticeable hit while grouping so these new models are very important to me — Dolndruth is a tank, after all, and tanks need groups to, you know… tank for. GU5 removed the majority of facial customizations for that phase of character model and performance improvements, and GU6 is re-including many of them which have undergone extensive optimization to increase the game’s performance while still providing a capacity to have your characters look the way you want them.
• Players now have an additional four character slots. Wow! I’ll admit, Vanguard never struck me as the type of game I’d want an alt due to the slow leveling and other factors, but I also never intended Vanguard as my primary game. For those who do, this is excellent news!
• The patcher will now patch down pre-compiled shaders. The client will no longer attempt to compile your shaders at start up. Thank you!
• Memory Leak fixes! Two specific memory leaks were addressed as well as general memory leaks. Thank you!
• The majority of objects will now fade in when they become viewable instead of popping in. Holy crap, did someone at SOE actually read a suggestion of mine? Thank you!
• Fixed an issue where players could fall to their deaths when crossing a chunk line. Ugh, thank you again!
• Shadow Step: You can now open combat with this ability. Cool! I love Shadow Step, though I ended up creating two macros for it: one to cast Harrow for the “Boo! I suck out your soul!” effect (ie. life drain), the other to cast Phantasmal Blade for a teleport stun. I’ll have to see how, or if, this change will affect my macro usage with Shadow Step.
• Dread Knight changes. The DK only saw four skills having minor tweaks, none of which Dolndruth has yet so I have no opinion here. Only the rogue class saw less love than the DK, however, with a whopping one tweak to the class. What GU6 did not address is the 2-handed crit bug and Dreadful Countenance still not working as intended. GU6 has adjusted the dps for all classes and the dps for DK’s is to compensate for the 2H crit, which will be addressed sometime later. No word whatsoever on when DC will ever be looked at, though, which is a shame since it’s supposed to be one of the DK’s defining abilities.

I’ll give GU6 a go in awhile after I’ve run some errands, walked a few miles before the storms arrive, and SOE gets the World Servers online. Oh, speaking of which… it’s 2008, is it really that difficult to actually poll the servers to see if they’re online rather than just putting up a static “All servers are up” line on the launcher which is a lie? C’mon guys…

The majority of my interest in WAR’s Chosen class is that, on paper, it reminds me of the Dread Knight from Vanguard. I haven’t spent time with Dolndruth since March, so I thought I’d see what has changed since my last adventure in Telon. GU6 is scheduled to arrive this week, and it looks to be a Big Deal, so I wanted to get some last-minute time to see what GU5 brought to the table, and eventually snap some “before” body-shots of Dolndruth to compare with the “after” shots once GU6 goes live with its brand new character models. [Side note: Does re-subbing to VG with WAR so near say something about my overall interest in WAR itself? Possibly...]

I had damn near forgotten how to play the Dread Knight! I’d left Dolndruth somewhere in the early stages of the Coterie Infineum Sanctuary (CIS) quest line, which is dungeon difficulty group content. Seeing no sense in wasting other player’s time while I’m remembering how to play the class, I scrolled through the quest log and remembered he’d just picked up Part 3 (of 10) of the quest chain to eventually get a Shadowhound mount. Dolndruth was camped in Lomshir and after a lot of riding around, finally found the quest NPC nearby to get started on this phase.

He first asks me to travel to the Tiberian Wildwood, which is located in Hathor Zi, the next chunk directly south of Lomshir. However, after much riding in circles I was unable to find a direct route to the destination so I ended up traveling in a semi-circle through four other chunks to arrive in the fifth chunk of Hathor Zi. Of course I realize once I’m finished here I’ll have to ride back through all those chunks again to return to the NPC in Lomshir… Just last night a few of my LOTRO kin-mates were complaining about some of the quests in Forochel and Book 9 (which Arwellyn started last night) having “too much running around.” With the various means of travel available so far in Middle Earth, I chuckled to myself at just how mild that is compared to Vanguard’s “meaningful” *cough* travel.

The story behind the current phase of the chain is that Dolndruth needs to attract the attention of Ghalnn, the god of warfare and slaughter, who is favored by orcs and goblins. Shadowhounds, often called the “hounds of Ghalnn” are said to be extensions of the god himself. The hounds thrive only on violence, death and destruction so to make them, as well as Ghalnn, turn their eyes to Dolndruth he must engage them in combat! Classic implementation of the Kill Ten Rats quest though after being so accustomed to other games — especially LOTRO where most Kill Ten Rats quests quite literally ask you to only kill ten rats — I wasn’t exactly prepared to be required to kill 35 shadowhounds! Completing that, riding five chunks back to Lomshir, the NPC then says I have to ride to the eastern edge of the Lomshir chunk (thank you, short ride at least) to kill 40 dark elf ghosts! Aahhhhhhhh! Christ, did McQuaid outsource Koreans to write these quests? In any event, Part 3 is complete and tomorrow I’ll get Dolndruth on his way to starting Part 4. Destination: Camp Dhanrak in Thestra’s Spider Bluffs.

On the plus side, these 75 mobs were the extent of Part 3 to the chain, and gave me ample opportunity to re-learn many of the Dread Knight’s abilities as well as refreshing myself with Vanguard’s combat system. Despite being slower-paced (but so is LOTRO and WAR) it’s actually a fun system and I find it far more truly interactive than Age of Conan’s melee combos. AoC’s melee combos are nothing more than applying the standard casting system to fighters. The difference is rather than waiting on a progress bar, where your movement or an enemy attack will interrupt the casting, AoC puts up a DDR-esque UI to press certain key at a certain time. It’s still a timed “progress bar” mechanic, only it’s the player’s own fault if he presses the wrong key at the wrong time rather than a mob interrupting the combo. By comparison Vanguard has four different type of combat reactions — chain reactions, counter reactions, rescue reactions, and sympathetic reactions — in addition to the standard MMORPG convention of abilities and skills littered all over our hotbars. Triggering a specific reaction type means we have to choose which of the reactive abilities would be most useful to the current situation. Sometimes more than one type will trigger simultaneously. Which would be best right now? If I react quickly enough, I can use at least one reactive ability from each type. Suddenly, we’re having to think and react quickly and combat doesn’t quite seem as slow as it did a moment ago. Back in AoC I’d still just be staring at the DDR UI waiting to press a key when it lights up. /yawn I will give AoC some credit that at least it rewards the player for playing DDR with some very cool, visceral animations complete with blood sprays and dismemberments! However, cool as those can be, they are still just canned animations that we have to wait for and can take no part in, so my /yawn stands.

I’ll spend more time in the mornings this week prior to GU6 getting a small feel for GU5’s enchancements. The one thing I’ve noticed already is the new particle effects. Like much of Vanguard, they are still subtle, but without a doubt more bright, splashy, and cool-looking. For all its faults, one of Vanguard’s strengths has always been its portrayal of the characters we play. In just about every MMO, we start off as some wimpy schlamile who eventually gains power and gear to become a badass. In Vanguard, there are no schlamiles. A level one character is a level one badass and his badassery gloriously increases with each new level. The new particle effects serve to enhance the portrayal of your character’s badassness, albeit subtly.

I mentioned recently I was taking a break from Vanguard until my friend Daniel gets to a level where we can duo and group. Vanguard was included in my Station Access, which I canceled recently, and SOE advised that I needed to allow the Station Access to expire before I could renew Vanguard on its own. Station Access expired a few days ago, but I’m going to hold off re-subscribing to Vanguard just to make sure I give Daniel time to get his cleric leveled up. Otherwise, I’ve got Dolndruth right in the middle of the CIS chain and it’s just damn fun so I’d be tempted to keep at it and perpetually out-level Dan’s cleric. Having an inactive account rather forces the issue.

So, that leaves me with only DDO and LOTRO as active accounts, though it’s debatable if I should count LOTRO since I’m a lifetime member.

Speaking of DDO, I did get to participate in the final event in the 2nd Anniversary last night. My guild set up a raid in the marketplace. That was the first time I’d ever been grouped with more than a single guild member in DDO, and I have to say even though I don’t know most of them very well yet, seeing all of us banded together did instill a sense of pride and of family. It was a nice feeling; a bit surprising yet very satisfying and welcome. I have screen shots of various times during the event but didn’t get time to resize and upload them to my gallery before I had to leave on this trip. When I get home I’ll either just upload them to the DDO gallery or perhaps edit this post with a few screen shots. Otherwise, I’ll defer to DDOcast where stories were posted, many with screen shots and videos, with each change that occurred during the past week of the Shavarath invasion!

Synopsis: Devils from the plane of Shavarath instigated an invasion of Stormreach. Random portals appeared in the marketplace and small bands of devils attacked every few hours. A few days later a huge swirling portal appeared over the Bazaar tent. Soon all the NPC vendors moved out of the Bazaar and into the Rusty Nail tavern near the bank. A floating citadel appeared between the bank and the Bazaar tent, with platforms to climb to the top and meet Veheer F’Nord who is leading the research team to discover the devils’ intentions and a way to defend Stormreach. The vortex over the Bazaar grew in power and the tent flailed helplessly in its wake. Devils took up residence and posted guard at each entrance to the Bazaar and a magical force field emanated from the portal, protecting the devils from further attack. Last night the Stormreach wizards set up a counter assault, firing magical beams into the portal from points along the tent’s perimeter. The beams coalesced into a single beacon of power which succeeded in destroying the portal to Shavarath! However the ensuing explosion also destroyed the Bazaar as well, leaving a debris-filled crater in the center of the city! A quest is now available to defend from four waves of increasingly difficult devils, minions, and bosses.

This is my first live event in an MMO and I must say, the whole counter-attack thing was really cool and immersive to watch and experience. Seeing the magical blasts go up in sequence, merge, then get out of the mages’ control, destroying both the portal and the tent was awesome to say the least. The “Devil Assault” quest… much less so. The whole thing consists of two rooms, the second of which the group gets locked into as waves of devils, hell-hounds, etc. appear from three portals. I expected much more out of that. Some of the NPC dialogue over the past week makes it sound like we’ll eventually take the battle to Shavarath itself, so I hope more is coming and that simple portal room wasn’t the extent of this event.

Aside from the DDO event, I’ve spent time in LOTRO as well. I mentioned some potential kinship drama recently. Still not totally sure what was behind it all, other than the bottom line was both Exodus and Swifty & Hammo wanted more members available for raids. Why not simply create an alliance? I’ve been told that it was Swifty & Hammo’s idea for the two kinships to merge, though in reality it seemed more like an acquisition where Swifty & Hammo remains with the name and leadership intact, and simply absorb Exodus members. Whatever. It seems most of Exodus stayed and I’m now hearing it was mainly the upper echelon of (former) Exodus “management” who wanted to be in S&H. Regardless, all of us are welcome in Swifty & Hammo, though I still have to ask why there’s no Exodus-S&H alliance?

Anyway, my original “rule” (and we know the rule about rules…) in LOTRO was that I would have two “mains” and each would get equal time. I did great with that up until the low twenties where I wound up taking the Lore-master out more. She is now level 33, and had a great time last night (stayed up way too late though) with a group in Garth Agarwen, an instanced outdoor dungeon in the Lone Lands. She’ll need to go in at least once more to get a few more quests complete, and she’ll also need to get a group to complete some quests that are outside the instance but still in that general area, where all mobs are elite. She also has her first quest from Radagast the Brown to get non-combat pets, so I am very much looking forward to getting those completed. I also spent some time with my Captain, Gared, who’s been stuck at level 24 for some time. I thought I’d get him through some quests and up to level 25 where he could ride the Bree-horse he was given as a holiday gift from Turbine. We did that, and got a few groups in the Lone Lands and Gared is already level 26! Thankfully, one or two of the quests also rewarded a piece of heavy armor. Gared is woefully outfitted with a smattering of both heavy and medium armor. He’s a prospector so I’ll need to take him out gathering rich iron and ask a kinsman armorsmith to hook him up with a full set of heavy armor. Gared fellowed with a kinswoman, Elibeth, who was also level 24 at the time, who had crafted her own set of heavy armor appropriate for that level and she graciously offered to make Gared a set as well if Gared provides the materials, so that will be his mission next week, provided Arwellyn doesn’t take all my LOTRO time.

Thankfully, I’m a Founder on LOTRO with a Lifetime membership, so that’s working out great. My super-awesome kinship has been very understanding that I didn’t want to get sucked into the “must.play.all.day.and.night” rut that I found myself in with WoW. I want to do the dungeons and raids with them badly, but I want to make sure I can keep things casual so I’ve been on break from LOTRO.

Turbine recently announced a special $9.99 per month plan for DDO which I jumped on. I’m also in a super-cool casual family-style guild in DDO and, while I love the adventures in the game, the problem with a totally group-focused game is that if I can’t find a group, I can’t play the game. I do look forward to playing the high-end content, and it sounds like some amazing and awesome content is coming this year. In the meantime, if I can save $5 per month to keep the subscription active and pop into Stormreach anytime I want, sounds great to me.

My final subscription was the SOE Station Access, where I have Everquest II, Vanguard, Star Wars Galaxies and Planetside active.

However…

I haven’t bothered to play Planetside in months because I never saw more than 10 players on a server and it has an atrocious UI along with horribly flaky mouse movement in the menus. I understand it was great in its day, but apparently that day has come and gone so even as a curiosity, Planetside was a failed venture for me.

SWG. Whoah. Not that I necessarily mind adding quests and all but SOE did such a poor job of it in their misguided NGE overhaul. I could even adapt to that but, much like Planetside, the game has serious population issues. To date, I’ve encountered a grand total of six players and have seen not a single line of chat from anyone. The graphics are badly dated and I truly resent being hard-locked at 30 fps when I could be having a much smoother experience. SWG was my first MMO and I have fond memories that nothing else will ever replace, but I guess it’s true: sometimes you just can’t go home again.

EQ2. I have created several characters of different races and classes and the farthest I’ve managed to advance any is level 9. Other than the random bit of music, I have struggled to find even a single enjoyable element to the game. EQ2 is quite popular and arguably has more content than any other MMORPG on the market. Originally, I decided I would put up the fight and work my way towards whatever quality content surely must be out there, but I finally had to be honest with myself. With other games out there willing to “show me the money” with quality content from Moment One, why should I have to punish myself wading through this muck? It’s a shame, and I wanted to like EQ2 but it just wasn’t in the cards.

Vanguard, surprisingly, I’m having a blast with and I’m in a friendly, fun and helpful guild. Even though Karen has abandoned us like red-headed step-children to go adventure in Norrath. Grouping has been incredibly fun as well as challenging, and I’m thoroughly enjoying being the “Rock Star Tank” again. Actually, I may be enjoying tanking more in Vanguard than I did in WoW, because the Dread Knight class simply oozes coolness and I enjoy the challenges it presents. I also have a real-life friend playing Vanguard now (also a new guild-mate, yay!) so that’s an additional compelling reason to play. Well-known population problems aside, I can honestly say I’ve seen quite an influx of brand-new players over the past few weeks since GU3 was released, and it’s been wonderful. I’m seeing players in nearly every town I visit, the chats are active, friendly, and Chuck Norris-free (well, mostly).

I wasn’t having any financial issues, but I finally had to come to terms that I was paying an extra $15 per month to play Vanguard, because as wistfully nostalgic as I may have been, I’m not going to return to SWG, nor can I tolerate being logged into EQ2 for more than a few minutes, so it’s wasted money.

So, as of a few minutes ago logging out of the Java chat with an SOE customer service rep (thanks for the help, by the way, Eric) I am now left with only a normal monthly subscription to Vanguard and the new 33% discounted subscription to DDO. Should another game roll down the pike, I can add it without batting an eyelash as the total cost would be close to what I’ve been paying anyway with the Station Access and full-price DDO, but right now there are no titles current or in the immediate future that are piquing my interest whatsoever.

Poor Dolndruth has been in an utterly foul mood of late. See, I’ve left him camped way out on Skawlra Rock for four weeks attempting to find a group for the final Hunter’s League quest. He complains there’s not enough shade and he’s tired of eating nothing but those giant crabs. Tonight, Dolndruth and I have huge smiles on our faces — it’s done! The Chaotica’s Greataxe of Protection is ours!

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? :mad:

Ok, the good news: Game Update #3 Phase 1 is being implemented as I write this!

UPDATE 3 – PHASE 1

· Ksaravi Gulch
· Guild Hall Trophies
· Player Housing / Guild Housing
· Optimizations/Bug Fixes
· Spam Filter

1. Ksaravi Gulch
The low to high teens adventuring area of Ksaravi Gulch in Qalia has been revamped. It now features new group and solo content, with many quest lines for either type of player as well as an enhanced storyline, additional items and the chance to fly into battle on an elite black wyvern mount.

* 3 all new solo quest lines offering 20 new quests
* 12 group quests in an exciting new group quest line
* Fly into battle on an elite black wyvern
* All-new rewards, like Coronarian Gloves and Ice Ember poison

2. Guild Hall Trophies
The Guild Hall Trophy item can now be placed in a house or any Guild Headquarters. The buff from the trophy will be shared by all guild members that are online. There will be three trophies to choose from (one for each of Vanguard’s icon characters).

The Guild Hall Trophy can only be picked up by the person who placed it.

3. Player Housing / Guild Housing
All player housing areas should have a crafting center within one chunk’s distance. You will find crafting trainers, vendors, taskmasters, and stations. In addition, a few select areas (including all of the islands) have had flying mount renters added.

In addition to that, Guildhall adventuring drops should now be much easier to obtain. Mnalus Fungus will now rarely drop off most mobs in Lair of the Mnalus. Mummy Dust will now rarely drop off most mobs in Nusibe. Fiend Blood will now rarely drop off most mobs in Rhaz Inkur.

4. Optimizations / Bug Fixes
Fixing bugs and optimizing the game have been a big priority for us. We’ve put in fixes for over a dozen high-profile client crash fixes as well as hundreds of bugs. We’ve fixed a major memory leak and even made some sound optimizations. On the whole, a lot of players’ performance should improve with this patch.

With this patch, we’re also laying the groundwork to start implementing optimized NPC models. You should see them start showing up in the near future (likely in Qalia first).

5. Spam Filter
Ask, and you shall receive! It’s been in the works for quite some time, but Game Update 3 unleashes the code that should help eliminate a lot of the spam you may receive in-game. The code works similarly to those featured in other SOE games, in that it automatically filters messages flagged as spam, and reports them to Customer Service.

Source: VGPlayers.com

When I first saw the bit about the black wyvern, I got all excited, hoping they’d completed the first true flying mount quest ahead of schedule, but as it turns out, the black wyvern is a temporary mount in the Ksaravi Gulch zone which they had mentioned in a post I’d skipped over a few days earlier.

Now for the bad news:

Vanguard Development Moves to the San Diego Studio

The Vanguard development team is relocating its offices to SOE’s San Diego campus effective Monday, October 15, 2007. As part of the integration into the SOE family, the developers will benefit from having access to shared resources and the combined experience of SOE’s other game development teams. As a result, not every Carlsbad employee has been invited to stay with the development team.

Under the new leadership of Thom Terrazas, an eight-year SOE veteran, SOE will continue its commitment to Vanguard and its players. The remaining Vanguard team members are going to continue to deliver on an exceptional product. They are a creative force in the online games space and we look forward to continuing the vision for Vanguard and to continue to deliver groundbreaking game play. SOE remains committed to seeing Vanguard grow and prosper.

Source: VGPlayers.com

That’s right, SOE is integrating the Vanguard team yet again and letting go more developers. This time the axe has fallen on Director of Development David “Hasium” Gilbertson and Steve “Aruspex” Williams, who was interviewed in Episode 17 of the Voyages of Vanguard podcast.

Forum links courtesy of Jaye:

Hasium’s goodbye post
PhAtHoM’s hello post

Ok, now that I’ve got my über-esque gaming rig working again, I installed Vanguard a few days ago. I actually picked up Vanguard and Everquest 2 on the same day, but I’ll be honest: EQ2 is really struggling to hold my interest. I’m rather shocked that I am so far enjoying Vanguard so much, however. I didn’t expect to; I got it more out of morbid curiosity than anything else. I was aware of the game while it was in development (who wasn’t?) though I can’t say much of what little hype I actually read was appealing. Some was, some was not. I’ve never seen non-instanced content done right so I’m definitely interested in seeing how the (former) Sigil team decided to handle it. Of course, I’m quite well aware of how the game has been bashed over performance, crashes, and so forth. I’m obviously coming into the game post-Game Update 2, which claims to have improved performance a bit. Using both the in-game fps meter and Fraps, I’m getting anywhere from 25+ in cities to 40-50 in the wilderness and just experienced my first CTD which gave me the opportunity to write this.Now, as evidenced in my recent Bartle test, I’m a huge fan of exploration. The little I’ve seen of Telon so far has been a blast to explore and find new things. Telon, as with LOTRO’s Middle Earth, feels more natural. I grew up in the country and when I went hiking or exploring I didn’t run into mobs every 50 feet like we do in Azeroth, which gets aggravating. I’m also attempting to pay attention to the little bit of lore I’ve been exposed to so far.

While I don’t think Vanguard ended up as the “hardcore” game it was originally lauded as by used car salesman extraordinaire hype-master Brad McQuaid, there is a distinct lack of hand-holding in Vanguard. Even in areas where I didn’t even feel I was being hand-held in other games, Vanguard leaves me hanging to find my own way. Which is not a bad thing. Sometimes I’m given a direct location to go to, other times I’m pointed in the general direction, more or less. I can chalk that up to “exploration” as well, trying to find the NPC I need to find.

Without further ado, here is my Orc Dread Knight, Dolndruth! He just reached level 11 this morning, and is level 3 in Crafting (smithing) and level 4 in Diplomacy. Before I continue, I would like to add that I absolutely love that we get mounts at level 10! Developers of future games, pay attention here! The hardcore players begged for “meaningful travel” (I’ll have to write a post someday exploring just what the hell that means) and rallied when McQuaid promised just that, but of course the hardcore are only hardcore in forums. Once they actually had to deal with “meaningful travel” they changed their tune and asked for faster means of travel. But I digress. Making us run all over your landscapes does not make us appreciate your hard work any more or less. It does, however, annoy us when it takes too long to complete Fedex quests or worse, when players have to wait on each other to travel. Our enjoyment (and annoyance) is more “meaningful” than forcing us to walk for nearly an hour to talk to some NPC who sends us walking an hour right back to where we started.

Unlike WoW, which is the most recent MMORPG I played that let the player choose a faction, I have no clue what faction Dolndruth is a member of, if any. Is he “evil” or at least “bad” simply by virtue of being an orc like WoW would have us? Do I get to choose via repuation grinding which faction I am a member of? I have no idea what races Troy and Jaye have, but if I ever met them in-game can I group with them? I have no friggin clue. So perhaps either a little hand-holding could be in order, or at least have the NPC’s teach me in-game with some engaging dialogue because it would be a shame for newcomers like myself to enjoy working up a given character only to discover that character is unable to group, communicate with, or otherwise play the game with other players or friends. I think the character creation screen should definitely go into the background of the races you can choose as well as the nations. Orcs start on Kojan and I don’t recall at any time seeing any description of what it means to be a Kojan native. Some of the names and descriptions I’ve seen so far appear to have an Asian influence, but again Dolndruth is only 11 so he and I have not yet learned much about the part of Telon we’re adventuring in.

Crafting is interesting, if a bit confusing. It’s much more hands-on than your WoW or LOTRO style “set it and forget it” crafting. It’s not quite up to pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies crafting though (at least what I can remember of it). Dolndruth reached level 3 smithing this morning, but not without a few questions in the Kojan chat. He’s got three 3-slot tool belts. Off the top of my head, I’ve encountered situations where at least four tools are needed due to the actual crafting process plus dealing with complications. I bought every noob tool the vendor offered, they are in the tool belts but the game only pays attention to a single belt and does not let you change equipment while crafting. Some helpful players instructed me to use the Tool Belts button on the crafting frame rather than the character sheet and left click the tool belt I want to use (gotta remember which belt I stored which tool in…) to make that belt active (green check mark indication). Maybe that’s a “hardcore” aspect? It seems like a bit too much work to me. I’m getting the hang of it anyway and I’ve got all the tools I’ve used so far for smithing in two belts so I can quickly swap between the two but still… I guess technically I can only wear one belt so perhaps it’s just being realistic. But it was very confusing and I’m thankful that Vanguard players have been pretty helpful and encouraging of new players. Did the crafting tutorial cover changing belts? If it did, I completely missed it. In fact, I don’t even think I had multiple belts and tools when I did the tutorial.

Diplomacy is another interesting sphere of advancement. When I first read about how diplomacy would be a card game, I’ll admit I was beyond skeptical. After playing it a bit and giving it consideration, real-life diplomacy and negotiations is very much like a poker game. You have to know when to bluff, when to show your game-face, when to compromise or concede and when to go in for the kill. Or [Cheese Factor Alert!] as Kenny Rogers so aptly put it:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.
Know when to walk away, and know when to run.
You never count your money, when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done.

Once again, confusion has run rampant with diplomacy. Learning the cost of each card was the easiest step but I haven’t quite figured out if the diplomacy quest description is giving me hints which cards I should be taking aside from informing me which colors will be used, so don’t choose cards of a color that isn’t used in that negotiation. So often, though I’ll load up on card colors the description says I can spend but the NPC never plays cards which arms me with enough dots to spend my cards on. (Sorry, I haven’t quite learned the correct phraseology yet for the different aspects of diplomacy.) Which, I suppose, is ultimately how to win: if you’re able to spend your own cards without giving your opponent any quarter to spend his own. Like everything else so far, it’s very much a learning experience; trial and error are ruling the day in Vanguard.

Yes, Vanguard still has some issues, many of which I haven’t even seen yet. The major one is Vanguard has the worst map ever. Ever. In the history of humankind. Ever. Minor issues that lower my immersion are aesthetic in nature. Many textures are just… weird and jarring to look at. The Unreal engine tends to make things too shiny, which is all good and fine in Gears of War but when I’m looking at Dolndruth wearing his cloth diplomacy outfit, I should not be seeing cloth shine and glisten. I have volumetric clouds turned off to boost my framerate, but honestly didn’t see much difference with them. Telon only has a single sky, it’s always filled with the exact same high thinly broken cloud layer. When it rains (and it does quite often) I look up at the clouds and think “uh… it should not be raining.” But then Turbine takes top honors when it comes to crafting a believable virtual world. Their Middle Earth has all the various day cycles; various cloud cover; when it rains it might drizzle or downpour, complete with the occasional thunderstorm. We can see the clouds rolling in on a sunny day so we’ll know in advance when it’s going to rain and the clouds will darken if a storm comes in. But… Vanguard released way too early and Sigil admitted it. It’s still essentially in beta today. Someday it will be release-ready and perhaps they’ll add the extra “fluff” to make Telon a believable world. But in the meantime I’m still enjoying my experiences there and look forward to more!