Why all the nerd rage against Vanguard

Okay.
I played it at release. First week of release. Pretty solidly, hours a day, tried different characters, tried different races, diplomacy, the whole nine yards. I didn"t touch it in Beta and went in with a reasonably open mind. I haven"t played WoW in maybe a year or so.

Nice burn there by telling me I have no friends in a game on the internet. I bet your Blood Mage is a god-damn socialite.

Unless there has been a patch that has added in a great deal of charm to the world that was obviously missing, then I"m lost here.

What I like here is that people are saying "DAMN LOOK AT ALL THE NERD RAGE ABOUT VANGUARD." Yet the moment that anyone defends it, it instantly becomes a game of pin-the-falsehood-on-the-hater. I didn"t call any of you a shitdick now, did I?

Nah. they"re stupid homos heheh.

The Bog said:

Excuse me, WHAT?
Do you play Vanguard, or do you play some other game? Because the Vanguard I played was ultimately one of the least doable in a few hours a day - and if I went over that, my brain would begin to seize up. I"m serious, I"d start getting boredom headaches.

Vanguard is really the bastard cousin of EQ. Every bad, shitty thing I remember from EQ has returned, except I have absolutely no endearment to it. It"s dramatically unfun.

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NO, i am not playing. I lied, I actually hate the game. Its all a front, i dont even have a 35 dreadknight. you got me.

The Bog said:

Okay.
I played it at release. First week of release. Pretty solidly, hours a day, tried different characters, tried different races, diplomacy, the whole nine yards. I didn"t touch it in Beta and went in with a reasonably open mind. I haven"t played WoW in maybe a year or so.

Nice burn there by telling me I have no friends in a game on the internet. I bet your Blood Mage is a god-damn socialite.

Unless there has been a patch that has added in a great deal of charm to the world that was obviously missing, then I"m lost here.

What I like here is that people are saying "DAMN LOOK AT ALL THE NERD RAGE ABOUT VANGUARD." Yet the moment that anyone defends it, it instantly becomes a game of pin-the-falsehood-on-the-hater. I didn"t call any of you a shitdick now, did I?

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First thing with VG in my oponion is dont touch diplomacy its just not that fun. Once you get a class to 8+ its just like WoW in that your craving x ability or buff or what not.

I could play VG a few hours a day hell I got a group for the ant mound did one quest in a half hour and logged for work. Bottom line though this game needs a summon stone or something temp. until there is fellowships or something, breadcrumbs to other dungeons, and at the least UPDATE DUNGEOSN THAT ARENT GETTING VISITED.

BTW Nino Garden south of martok blows is like 3-4 quests no drops no named. Id say for a first group point would be courtesy to toss a constant spawning named mob.

MetalNeo said:

Well isnt that the thing if you miss the initial progression with people in WoW your hosed to solo.

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On my BE Paladin, I did a few instance groups for fun and even turned down a few invites. Keep in mind this is right after BC launched (and I was far ahead of 98% of the rest of the Blood Elves,) so most were in Outland or leveling their BE. I"m also Horde on a PvE server; ie, low pop.

As for not getting lower level instance groups in Outlands, there is less of them for sure, but it"s not as bad as you make it out to be. If I want to group, I just put myself in the LFG que and advertise in General while soloing. I"ve not had too much of a problem getting my Rogue (62) into a few instance runs.

I would agree that any MMO should now have some way to get your group together in a short time frame. Having a huge world sounds great when you are hyping your product, but when it comes time to play and the only healer/tank is literally 10+ minutes away, it becomes a burden. The summoning stones have really helped to promote grouping more in WoW and is something I think most MMO"s should implement in some way, even if it is more limited (can only use once an hour, have to be within X miles, etc.) Or add an item called "Attunement Shards" or whatever which you can collect from a dungeon that allows you to port to them. Put them on a 1+ hour shared cooldown.

MetalNeo said:

Well isnt that the thing if you miss the initial progression with people in WoW your hosed to solo. But honestly joining late shouldnt mean a 5% chance of running any instances between 1-70. In my case TBH 62-70 or 65-70.

Its just a pain tbh and where are the free char transfer options to super low pop servers o yea $25 per transfer was just too much extra dough...

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Oh no I definitely agree. I just have a slight different take on it. The only instances I consider sad at the lower end if you don"t do them are deadmines and wailing caverns. Stockades can rot in hell; I hate that zone to all hell and back.

Since I"ve been leveling my draenei in my off time, I"ve found a decent amount of people to group with, but I"ve not been gung-ho on instances, they just kinda fall into my lap.

My draenei is on a pve server, so I"m not sure if that changes anything.

What makes instances so challenging to get groups for is that they are real actual chances to die a billion times if you go with idiots, for maybe 2-3 quests to do, and no real loot, so most people when leveling an alt skip it.

I think I would hate them if they make stockades mandatory but maybe thats what they should do, or at least make it a chain progression through the lower instances so people aren"t stuck. Re-itemization might also work, or an abundance of new quests for rep rewards at the low end for various cities. (For example, no way in f**k am I getting a stupid elekk, I have been farming Darn rep since level 15.)

For me though, the way things work are a blessing. Being a healing class and not getting 349237 tells for a stupid instance is really nice, and when I do get a tell it"s really even money whether they know what they are doing or not.

Anyways to more formally address your question, I actually didn"t see a big giant leap progression wise on my server; except for the one at the high end. (For Outlands, and its pretty easy to find a group for virtually any instance there whenever.) Those that did start draenei immediately did so with the intent to level them to 70 as fast as possible, so they either skipped instances or had a high level buddy run them through.

The only real rush to progression I saw was when I made my first character and started playing the game. Everyone else being at most 20 levels above me (If they were hardcore, woo) made it pretty easy to find someone who would go to an instance.

TBH, what I would love to see happen is an EQ-style new area designed so you can go from 1-60 without doing any of the old content. EQ did that with The Serpent"s Spine? I think, where if you started a dragon char, or any char for that matter you could level 1 to whatever the max was without leaving the new area. Something like that would go a long way to revitalizing the lower end content and giving people who want to experience the wonder of the old instances a chance to do so.

Also if I never have to do ashenvale quests again that would be pretty super.

Aphextwin said:

When the game was initially released I rolled a Sorcerer, plenty of people around and pretty easy to find a quest buddy or two or group it up while exploring and leveling. Once I got into my low 30"s finding others started to become a pain, waiting around for tank or healer or both seemed to take forever and I am not big on playing solo for extended periods so I decided to roll a warrior alt and level that guy up while the majority of our guild and the general server population continued to level up and once I see more players around low to mid 30"s I"ll start playing my Sorcerer again.

Oddly enough I am now running into the same exact problem with my warrior but at the low to mid 20"s level, last night for example we just could not find a healer for our Infineum group, checking the LFG only displayed around 15 people and only one was a healer but unfortunately he was miles away from us and doing something else anyway, spamming /1 and /shout yielded nothing for almost an hour. Hopefully it is just that people are taking it easy after the back to back double XP weekends but it is discouraging nonetheless.

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Running into this on my 24 Bard, haven"t been able to find a group all week anywhere and its driving me fucking crazy.

Guzrog said:

Running into this on my 24 Bard, haven"t been able to find a group all week anywhere and its driving me fucking crazy.

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Well you all got what you wanted right?

A group dependant game, now unfortunately you all have to pay the price

The old days of EQ1 are over, and all we have now is WoW. It dominates the market, and to some that is bad, to others good. But its games like this that suffer for it

gimpz0r said:

Well you all got what you wanted right?

A group dependant game, now unfortunately you all have to pay the price

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I agree with the gimp, how the concept of group centric game, gigantic world, and travel restrictions all got approved at the same time just boggles my mind.

Why not just have a message popup and say "Fuck you HAHAHA !!!" everytime you activate the LFG tool.

The Hiram Key said:

I agree with the gimp, how the concept of group centric game, gigantic world, and travel restrictions all got approved at the same time just boggles my mind.

Why not just have a message popup and say "Fuck you HAHAHA !!!" everytime you activate the LFG tool.

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I think the gigantic would is what causes that, not being group centric. Hell, I grouped all the time in EQII, and my server was pretty populated.

They should just put in summoning stones near the group hotspots/dungeons and call it a day. There"s really no point in having such a huge world, if groups can"t easily form up and get to the things they want to do within a few minutes.

Rayne said:

They should just put in summoning stones near the group hotspots/dungeons and call it a day. There"s really no point in having such a huge world, if groups can"t easily form up and get to the things they want to do within a few minutes.

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Agree....but everytime this was brought up people screamed. Huge is wonderful but you need to be central initially and expand outwards later so that people can find each other in a group centric game. I know they wanted to be able to fill in holes in later expansions rather than adding onto the exterior of existing lands....but it just isn"t practical gameplay wise.

<shrug> I have no doubt they will add something, it just blows my mind they didn"t anticipate this...especially with everyone and their dog telling them it would be an issue.

Gaereth said:

Agree....but everytime this was brought up people screamed. Huge is wonderful but you need to be central initially and expand outwards later so that people can find each other in a group centric game. I know they wanted to be able to fill in holes in later expansions rather than adding onto the exterior of existing lands....but it just isn"t practical gameplay wise.

<shrug> I have no doubt they will add something, it just blows my mind they didn"t anticipate this...especially with everyone and their dog telling them it would be an issue.

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Agreed, they need to fix this. There should always be a balance. Hell, EverQuest had spires, port spells, etc. Why can"t Vanguard?

Isn"t the fellowship program or something supposed to help with this?

Yeah. I remember the 20+ page discussions about transportation on the official forums. And the 100+ page death penalty thread. I wonder if the guy that started that thread is even playing Vanguard.

Sithro said:

I think the gigantic would is what causes that, not being group centric. Hell, I grouped all the time in EQII, and my server was pretty populated.

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EQ2 has very short trips needed to reach basically any zone, with the bells (voyage by sea for 60 silver), with the spires to go from CL to antonica, with druid and wizard ports since last xpac and with, honestly, the longest trip doable in a few minutes running even without a SoW or a mount.

Recently, during the Erollisi day (Valentine"s) SoE added a NPC who ported people from Kelethin to Antonica. After the event ended, people screamed as they wanted it back, it was handy to skip those 5-8 minutes of travel needed to go from one place to the other, this of course if you didn"t find a druid around, which was unlikely.

Yes, people want to skip traveling, although I think some is nice and needed, I generally agree with those who say that 15 minutes min to go anywhere are a royal pain.
Travel should have some "meaning" aka the goal of not making you go from one place to the other like you were loading different maps in a FPS, not much more than that. The generl consensus on EQ2 boards was that few minutes are ok once in a while, pass the 10 minute mark and it"s shitty and stuff.

Of course people will bitch anyway, whatever devs will do.
To keep my examples in EQ2, for 2 years people bitched that traveling by clicking a bell was shitty and "unimmersive", SoE added an actual boat travel to and from Faydark (new continent) that between waiting for the boat and doing the trip, robs them for 5 to 7 minutes of their precious gameplay (and it"s not you do back and forth 10 times per night).
It was an unneeded timesink and had to go... sigh, hopefully it will stay there.

Personally I don"t mind traveling a lot, it"s just that sometimes, I don"t want to have people waiting around for me for 30-40 minutes, that"s why I"ll always embrace things like summoning stones, or spells etc. and have them available at all level ranges.

Miele said:

EQ2 has very short trips needed to reach basically any zone, with the bells (voyage by sea for 60 silver), with the spires to go from CL to antonica, with druid and wizard ports since last xpac and with, honestly, the longest trip doable in a few minutes running even without a SoW or a mount.

Recently, during the Erollisi day (Valentine"s) SoE added a NPC who ported people from Kelethin to Antonica. After the event ended, people screamed as they wanted it back, it was handy to skip those 5-8 minutes of travel needed to go from one place to the other, this of course if you didn"t find a druid around, which was unlikely.

Yes, people want to skip traveling, although I think some is nice and needed, I generally agree with those who say that 15 minutes min to go anywhere are a royal pain.
Travel should have some "meaning" aka the goal of not making you go from one place to the other like you were loading different maps in a FPS, not much more than that. The generl consensus on EQ2 boards was that few minutes are ok once in a while, pass the 10 minute mark and it"s shitty and stuff.

Of course people will bitch anyway, whatever devs will do.
To keep my examples in EQ2, for 2 years people bitched that traveling by clicking a bell was shitty and "unimmersive", SoE added an actual boat travel to and from Faydark (new continent) that between waiting for the boat and doing the trip, robs them for 5 to 7 minutes of their precious gameplay (and it"s not you do back and forth 10 times per night).
It was an unneeded timesink and had to go... sigh, hopefully it will stay there.

Personally I don"t mind traveling a lot, it"s just that sometimes, I don"t want to have people waiting around for me for 30-40 minutes, that"s why I"ll always embrace things like summoning stones, or spells etc. and have them available at all level ranges.

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Personally, I wouldn"t mind some quick ways around continents. I don"t think they should do cross continent porting, though. Kind of makes boats pointless.

Sithro said:

Personally, I wouldn"t mind some quick ways around continents. I don"t think they should do cross continent porting, though. Kind of makes boats pointless.

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Boats should be pointless. If ther was one thing I ALWAYS hated about EQ1 was the damn boring ass boat rides. Just plain fuck that. Give me a porter any day of the week.

You want to sail to the other continent? Then build you a boat and YOU sail to it. Me? I want to get to where I am going and get to the fun.

wait I"m not done yet!

As for this travel thing.. Who gives a shit about passing lvl 10 content when you are lvl 20? I"ve been there once already! I don"t need to walk by the same lvl 10 lions to make the world seem huge and alive. Just makes it frustrating and a PITA to get to where I am going. If nothing else make it so that horses are faster. Add at least 20% to every horse lvl 20+

LadyVex said:

I think I would hate them if they make stockades mandatory but maybe thats what they should do, or at least make it a chain progression through the lower instances so people aren"t stuck. Re-itemization might also work, or an abundance of new quests for rep rewards at the low end for various cities. (For example, no way in f**k am I getting a stupid elekk, I have been farming Darn rep since level 15.)

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So... I havn"t missed your point. But I"d like to point out you"r pretty dumb if you skip stockades.

There is a quest that chains into stocks and ends in Seal of Wrynn which has to be a ring good for 20 - 50 levels. I know personally I wore it for a long time. My alts have each got that ring.

Quick, automated travel is good. Instant-porting not so much. The problem with travel in EQ2 is for much of it you have to pay attention, which sucks.

WoW has travel nailed to the T. Plenty of places to travel to and explore, a decently sized world. And the best part is once you"ve seen and done it all, there is no "fuck oh god oh fuck why am I still doing this?" 50th run from Commonlands to NToV.

The worst I remember from WoW was doing BRM stuff as horde. Zep to BB/UC and flightpath to Kargath. At least you could AFK and take a leak or get a snack for the raid while doing most of it.