Vanguard was in essence a larger, more expansive Everquest. The classes were better designed and there were so many dungeons--some hidden in out of the way places--that most players likely never saw the majority of them. It was probably the most ambitious role playing game of its kind, at least by the standards of a decade ago.
Unfortunately, it was also the most comprehensively broken video game I think I've ever played. Not a single system worked right 100% of the time. Absolutely nothing. Zoning didn't work right, combat didn't work right, spells didn't always work, crafting was sometimes glitchy, the client was full of memory leaks, and so forth. Playing Vanguard could be likened to the video game equivalent of death by a thousand cuts--no single glitch was necessarily severe enough to cause a player to ragequit, however over time the sheer unending glitchiness of the thing gradually wore people down. Vanguard was poorly managed, its studio was rife with internal turmoil, and the game was released when it was functionally a glorified alpha. That doomed it to failure before it ever had a fair chance. After the failure of the original studio, its second owners (Sony) immediately relegated it to the position of an unwanted problem, staffed mostly by inept rejects or new hires, in which condition it labored until finally being put out of its misery several years ago.
An emulated version might work a lot better than the original game since it's an entirely new host.
Danth
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