Vanguard:SoH shutting down :(

[Auvdar]

Originally Posted by citizen1080 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

WTS 55 Dark Elf Bard Fully Raid Geared - PST!




WTB Emulator

One was being worked on. Not sure on the status of it right now, but they still seem active.

http://vgoemulator.net/

[citizen1080]

Thanks for link sir. Def a long way off but I will be following it for sure.

[Swish]

Mhm I'll be following this too... jumped ship on Vanguard before I got to play it purely based off the criticism. If it comes back in emulator format I'll be there! [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Neach]

This is a damn shame. I played at launch, got max level, 2nd best bard in terms of end game raid geared (1st in skill which caused some serious nerfs because of the things I did solo), APW, guild hall.... I played this game into the ground.

I can honestly say with all the bugs during early and mid life of this game it was fucking amazing. Not many actually gave this game the attention or credit it deserved, by doing so missed a great mmo title for it's time.

[Auvdar]

Originally Posted by citizen1080 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Thanks for link sir. Def a long way off but I will be following it for sure.

Looks like just recently they started being more active. Could see maybe within the year?

[stormlord]

It's a damn shame a open world MMORPG - that's not a WoW-clone - I liked in many ways could only muster enough population to survive essentially on life support for about 6-7 years. What's wrong with people? If Vanguard can't survive, how the hell does Brad expect Pantheon to be any different, unless it's drastically casualized? Maybe he's convinced Vanguard failed for another reason, but I struggle to see it.

Does Brad want to make Pantheon into a sort of open world WoW-clone and his theory is if it's this way out the door and reasonably bug free then it'll be a success? I can't see any other possible way of doing it. I see zero ways for this game to succeed if it's not mostly bug free and not a WoW-clone. I think these're the two biggest things that killed Vanguard, DESPITE me liking the fact it was not a clone of WoW. See, the sad state of affairs is most gamers just do not share my likes and dislikes and it's a hard fact of life.

Honestly I'd rather see Pantheon be like classic WoW than to be a huge disaster. I pray - for the sake of all the backers, if this thing passes the initial kickstarter - Brad has the insight to be friendly towards casual players and somehow still instill in it a feeling of being old school. Can a game be friendly towards casuals and yet still give the impression it's hardcore or old school? I hope so because its success might hinge on this. And yet I'm reminded of how Vanguard was supposed to be a game for both casuals and hardcores and yet it failed. Brad has to revisit those days and wonder what went wrong and how it can be corrected.

Look what he says here:
http://gamestudies.org/0901/articles...uaid_mcpherson

With Vanguard specifically, we’ve designed a game more along the lines of ‘traditional’ massively multiplayer games. Vanguard is about escapism, about being able to enter a virtual world and to leave the real world behind to a degree. To that end, we feel that one’s real world financial status should have no bearing on who they are or what they have access to in-game. Indeed, one of the core principles in games like Vanguard is that if you see someone and the items they’ve acquired, you should ideally be able to assume that the person earned them in-game. This way, it really doesn’t matter who you are in real life - your financial status, your race, your gender, your age, your location, etc. should all be irrelevant. And I think this is very important. Virtual worlds of this sort break down all sorts of prejudices and preconceptions that exist in the real world, and I think this is not only a good thing, but an exciting thing. Online relationships have proven to often be as real as traditional relationships.

He didn't mention time. What if someone doesn't have much time to play in real life? If you're going to say money and race and other things don't matter, shouldn't you also say time doesn't matter? Or what if someone has an on-call sort of life - like they have children, for example - and has to go AFK a lot?

By focusing your game on people who have lots of time, you necessarily limit it to certain people.

Note, oddly, how the questioner asks this next:

EH/EW: Did you expect that EverQuest would become such a total experience for some players (playing 60 hours a week, quitting work, and so on)? How does the attempt to design the game for different kinds of players (weekend, regular, hardcore) structure the game-world?

I know that's an old link, but I just was having fun googling.

[stormlord]

Nice read:
www.wolfsheadonline.com - Unintended Consequences of Quest Directed MMO’s...

Makes me think the key to all this includes how Brad handles grouping in Pantheon. After all, if he watns to focus on it so badly then he better make sure it works for as many players as possible.

Figure out a way to make grouping easy and not a pain. Make it so we can AFK as easily as we do when we're soloing. Make it so we can get story while at the same time being pulled on by group members. Don't make it hard for people with different classes to group effectively. Make grouping easy and people like it. AT the end of the day, a group game has to make us feel like heroES and also not make soloing more attractive.

In my experience, grouping has a long ways to go. Soloing is so popular because of its convenience. You can play at your own pace which is crucial to not falling behind or not losing interest.

Can we have a group-based MMORPG without all of the negatives people attach to EQ and Vanguard? Can there be a casual group-based MMORPG that did what WoW did for MMORPGs?

I'll end with the concluding remarks by the commentary writer linked at the beginning of this post:

While it’s doubtful that in the near future we’ll see a return to open-ended sandbox games like EverQuest and Star Wars Galaxies, there has to be a way to put the power back in the hand of the players and give them control over how they experience the game world. New mechanics can and need to be created that inject a healthy dose of dynamism and immediacy back into virtual worlds. Players need to wrestle control over their avatar’s destiny from the clutches of micromanaging developers. Regrettably that will never happen until MMO companies find the courage to go beyond the WoW success formula. They need to start trusting their players with more freedom and tempered by mechanics that ensure in game accountability. We need to get beyond incentivized gameplay and move to a system that allows its participants to be more then just trained monkeys and let them take an active role in the virtual worlds they inhabit. - See more at: http://www.wolfsheadonline.com/unint...ed-mmos/#53d10

[Swish]

Originally Posted by Grimfan [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

They're not releasing the server code, but I suppose where there's a will...

Surely there's gotta be a disgruntled programmer/dev that'll post it up?

[Rhambuk]

Originally Posted by stormlord [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's a damn shame a open world MMORPG - that's not a WoW-clone - I liked in many ways could only muster enough population to survive essentially on life support for about 6-7 years.

its a huge shame, too bad vanguard had such bad name on release. I didnt get to really play it until a year or 2 after so they had fixxed a lot of the issues but population was low. vanguard by far was one of my favorite mmo's based on design, loved the graphics and the class design its just too bad more people didnt give it a chance it could have been A + with a proper population

[Haynar]

I was in on beta for vanguard. It was just a mess. You could see the potential in what they were trying to do. Initial release was pretty bad. Had too often that I couldnt stay connected. Gave up on it pretty early on.

H