There's empty and then there's beyond empty....

[Treesong]

Took a Station Pass, patched all the SOE games I have(which is now all of them since Pirates of the Burning Sea is a free client ), and gave them all a spin again.

I have to admit that VG was the most disappointing of them all. I like the graphics better then I thought, the game was very stable and the hitching indeed gets less when you are in a certain area for a while, so that was all good. The game also has an old fashioned feel which I love. But then I started to explore..... I walked from Tursh to Three Rivers with my level 3 Sorceror which was ok. Did meet one person in Three Rivers. Then took the Rift to New Targonor...... and now I need Prozac.

This is where the lost potential really stares you right in the face. I remember this Epic city from the beta, when there were not even NPC's in it. I remember thinking how this would be great place when the city would be bustling with NPC's and players......

Nobody there, totally empty. How can you create such a beautifull city and then make it so that it serves no or hardly any function? These HUGE pathways, corridors, walls, with only a few scattered guards here and there and NO players. :( Mind you, I like desolate places in my MMO, I even still love to roam old zones in EQ that are deserted but at least those zones are teeming with memories. And even then you can see the odd person in Qeynos now and then.
But NT? So sad.

Anyway, I went to the harbor town underneath(with the elevator); I loved this design with the Keep and city high above the little harbour where all the provisions and food would come in. Then crossed the water to a remote peninsula and there I realized that some chunks of the game are not even populated. Not a single mob in sight. Not untill I crossed a chunkline, did a few scattered mobs appear again.

This is not empty, this is pure unfinished. As were all the underwater surfaces that are just a simple grey or brown texture with no features or life at all.

This is just too empty and unfinished, I honestly was expecting more life. I guess the players are all gathered in a few high level spots, but I do not see this game ever come to life again. Not even when you quadruple its population. It is just too huge and too empty.

Still sad, because I feel there are good mechanics and features in this game. :)

[Joodah]

To be fair, NT has always been "empty" due to the fact that the coding for it is a horrible mess :P We like to call it "New Lagonor"... I can't even go down the elevator without CTD'ing. Now Khal, there's a city you would have seen a lot of players at.

But yeh, as far as the lost potential of great cities being utilized, I agree.

[Hatto]

It was different at first, but when they added every crafting station to every little outpost it got like this. Never really understood that move, even WoW centers population to some extent. But its like the riftways, instead of adding something to improve the situation they went over the top and trivialized it. Well, NT wasn't different, but as Joodah said, that's a different story.

[Jave]

Sony REFUSES to advertise or give Vanguard any support whatsoever. This game will go down as one of the greatest "what could have been's" in MMO history.

[Nepenthia]

Not sure what server you were on but there are just a few areas of activity in NT ... some questlines for all three spheres have pieces in town, but, there is no real reason for anyone to spend time there.

Before hitting about level 10, honestly, it's better to do IoD or a popular race starting area. IoD is a very good introduction to each of the three spheres and longtime players often create alts there to help folks out and be sociable.

Once you hit level 10 on your first character, if you want to find folks to group with, there are one or two areas on each continent that players tend to move to ... to get to them, just follow the quests that send you out from the beginning area you started in.

I agree about the "could have been" moniker. I keep thinking how wonderful it would be for a very affluent gamer to decide to buy Vanguard from Sony and make sure the entire staff is devoted to making the world into what it could have been. Pie in the sky, I know, but still ... it'd be better than having the award for the greatest "could have been" game.

[Jave]

I agree about the "could have been" moniker. I keep thinking how wonderful it would be for a very affluent gamer to decide to buy Vanguard from Sony and make sure the entire staff is devoted to making the world into what it could have been. Pie in the sky, I know, but still ... it'd be better than having the award for the greatest "could have been" game.

I keep hoping beyond hope Sony will just cancel the entire MMO division and sell the games off. GOD what I would give for a little company who gave a shit to take over VG and give it the attention it deserves.

[Nepenthia]

I keep hoping beyond hope Sony will just cancel the entire MMO division and sell the games off. GOD what I would give for a little company who gave a shit to take over VG and give it the attention it deserves.

Well after Smed's interview in the LA Times last week, it's clear that SOE no longer believes in or supports their "hacknslash" MMO's. They've jumped on the microtransaction bandwagon, and, as bad as the RMT thing is, I'm guessing a conversion to quick, purchased content will be worse and will result in complete loss of the possibility of immersive play, complex content and challenge to the people who have been filling the EQ/VG niche.

[dwarfman420]

I agree w/ OP.

I have been keeping up with VG on the ovf and got to jump on a friends account the other week to see how Seradon was doing.

Fishing: (What for? A mini-achievement? Cant cook, mount as wall deco, equip..)

RMT: forced on all servers... really? (bullshit)

March ask a dev a question feedback. (bullshit, why even bother submitting a question?)


Still no life in the sea when u swim (or reflection for that matter).

Housing Areas are still void of any life either by players, npc's, critters, or foilage/landscape.

There hasn't been an actual solid GAME UPDATE since GU6 back in September 10, 2008... that's about 7 months by now....

Sad really, I do like the potential this game had at release, but management decisions from Smed and Silius has pretty much killed it for me for the foreseeable future.

Still I keep track of it, like a person watching over a coma patient waiting for him/her to wake up.....

[Treesong]

It was different at first, but when they added every crafting station to every little outpost it got like this. Never really understood that move, even WoW centers population to some extent. But its like the riftways, instead of adding something to improve the situation they went over the top and trivialized it. Well, NT wasn't different, but as Joodah said, that's a different story.

I do not want to start tooting WoWs horn too much in a thread like this, but one thing Blizzard did extremely well was keeping Major cities in the loop. And this is not just because the WoW servers are usually full.

Out of the 5 Major cities that I visited in WoW (never been to the Undead capital city), 3 of them are teeming with players, even after WotLK came out(I have two active accounts now since I play this game with my son). Thunderbluff and Darnassus still have players in them too but obviously these cities play second fiddle to Orgrimmar and Ironforge/Stormwind. But everytime I visit one of these cities I am confronted with the simple fact that it can be done: keeping your capital cities alive.

I know the chat can be obnoxious, but if you can endure that you get a wonderfull mix of high levels, lowbies, NPC's, little scripted events, people auctioning, maybe even a bit of PvP mayhem when some high levels start killing guards and what not. If only we could see such a thing in a game like VG, with a slightly more mature playerbase(though honestly I do not get offended that much by the chat in WoW).

Blizzard sure is doing a couple of things right. I am not a WoW veteran so I do not even know if their expansion areas have new cities but somehow they manage to keep these old cities alive. Kudos! :)

[acrobat]

Yeah WoW did that well, and a LOT of other stuff well too imo. It did a lot of things I don't like as well though, unfortunately, but at least they nailed a lot of the basics.

I always felt like Vanguard's towns/cities/whatever were on a bad path right from the start. Even at release, a lot of the areas had people in but just weren't really put together very well. I started in Tursh too and although it was really pretty, I didn't like the layout.

I started on a road in the middle of nowhere, with no explanation of who I am and where I am. A guard gives you a kill quest and then sends you up to the barracks place on the hill. That was better, but it was just a little building where people run in, grab a few quests, and run out again. And then the third place I was sent was the castle perched on top of the hill with the class trainers in. From a distance it looked really cool! But when I got there, it was a big empty courtyard with a couple of NPC's in, and then a big lifeless room with a bunch of zombified NPC class trainers standing around. What a shame, and what a waste of a cool location.

And then sadly, that was it. There was a little tiny village nearby which had some liveliness to it, mostly thanks to the mailbox and the broker guy. Sadly though I headed off on my adventure and never really went back there. I ended up being at Veskals Exchange and because Tursh was so freakin far, I rarely went back. In fact, I wouldn't always go back to get my new spells. I would let a few levels build up, then hearth back there, get spells, and autorun all the way back to Veskals. It was a chore, not a "returning home" experience I used to feel when I used to go back to Kelethin in EQ.

Just not really well thought out or laid out imo.

p.s. I also once went to the Dwarf start town. I forgot what it's called but it was probably the best looking building/place I saw in the entire game, graphics wise. Really stunning, huge, great architecture and graphics. Sadly though, it was completely empty of players, and not even many NPC's there. Most of them were no use to me too, which made it even worse. I ran around the whole place looking for something of interest, and there just wasn't. So I headed off in to the nearby mountains instead and I never went back. Luckily I enjoyed the mountains, but it's amazing that the incredible main city place was so hauntingly empty.

[Treesong]

Yeah WoW did that well, and a LOT of other stuff well too imo. It did a lot of things I don't like as well though, unfortunately, but at least they nailed a lot of the basics.

I always felt like Vanguard's towns/cities/whatever were on a bad path right from the start. Even at release, a lot of the areas had people in but just weren't really put together very well. I started in Tursh too and although it was really pretty, I didn't like the layout.

I started on a road in the middle of nowhere, with no explanation of who I am and where I am. A guard gives you a kill quest and then sends you up to the barracks place on the hill. That was better, but it was just a little building where people run in, grab a few quests, and run out again. And then the third place I was sent was the castle perched on top of the hill with the class trainers in. From a distance it looked really cool! But when I got there, it was a big empty courtyard with a couple of NPC's in, and then a big lifeless room with a bunch of zombified NPC class trainers standing around. What a shame, and what a waste of a cool location.

And then sadly, that was it. There was a little tiny village nearby which had some liveliness to it, mostly thanks to the mailbox and the broker guy. Sadly though I headed off on my adventure and never really went back there. I ended up being at Veskals Exchange and because Tursh was so freakin far, I rarely went back. In fact, I wouldn't always go back to get my new spells. I would let a few levels build up, then hearth back there, get spells, and autorun all the way back to Veskals. It was a chore, not a "returning home" experience I used to feel when I used to go back to Kelethin in EQ.

Just not really well thought out or laid out imo.

p.s. I also once went to the Dwarf start town. I forgot what it's called but it was probably the best looking building/place I saw in the entire game, graphics wise. Really stunning, huge, great architecture and graphics. Sadly though, it was completely empty of players, and not even many NPC's there. Most of them were no use to me too, which made it even worse. I ran around the whole place looking for something of interest, and there just wasn't. So I headed off in to the nearby mountains instead and I never went back. Luckily I enjoyed the mountains, but it's amazing that the incredible main city place was so hauntingly empty.

I have had the same experiences as you, totaly agree. Apparently they did not change much to the Dwarf city since Beta since I also felt that the city was too humongous for the few Dwarves that seemed to reside there. I must say that even with WoW numbers, these cities would probably look empty, also because they lack NPC activity. There is *some* but not nearly enough.

I also think it will be interesting to see what developers will do in the future, when it comes to landmass and size of cities.

Truth be told, WoW cities do feel somewhat cramped and "miniature" in a way, but they do seem to have the right size in order to make the city come alive. There is a lot of NPC activity and scripts (love the kids running around, the teacher with the schoolkids and stuff) and the players make the experience complete. But when you put the same amount of players and the same amount of NPC activity in a city like NT, it would still be deserted for the most part.

So where do you cut corners? Less epic, more liveliness? Or go epic and just make sure that at least some parts of your city are bustling? There is off course a limit to the amount of NPC scripts you can run too.

I am curious how the new "triple A" MMO's will handle this. I am thinking of the the new Bioware game (SW, the Old Republic) and the new game that 38 studios is working on. These are both big budget Western MMO's. I feel that cities in Asian MMO's are nothing more but glorified quest hubs so I am not counting those.Don't think I have ever seen even a single door in those "cities". :)

And then there is landmass. As much as I loved SWG for its vastness, I am thinking landmass can also cause your game to become stilborn right from the start. We have seen a few Indy MMO's with humongous landmasses but these obviously do not well for many other reasons(Dark and Light comes to mind).

When it comes to landmass, who do you think came closest to a good mix of epic vs liveliness? When it comes to landmass, I feel that devs do have more leeway: after all, it is not a bad thing when you have desolate areas, most explorers (like me) find them fun and immersive and mysterious. I felt the same thing in VG(exept the cities off course) untill I came upon chunks that were obviously unfinished and had no mobs in them. Then the "suspension of disbelief" crumbled.

Anyway, I think WoW is too cramped but it serves the game as it is, well. Again, for what they were envisioning, they made the right decisions. WoW zones obviously serve the purpose of progression, and they made the zones fun places to do so. But they do not serve the true explorer very well. Some will say that large empty zones are boring and do not see the point of exploring them when there is no "content" to be found in every corner. But I think this is where developers have to use other means of creating "content" and this is where we also go back to soms of the more old school features(which many hate these days).

Take West Karana in Everquest: this was huge zone for EQ standards and while us old schoolers loved this zone, many more recent MMO players thought the zone a bore, and *very* bad for XP. But for me this zone was filled to the brim with exiting content!

The Chintle/Trintle/Estle scripts, the Zonesweppers(nocturnal werewolf, the single Hill Giant and others), the Cyclops brothers, the Ogres (need I say more), bandit camps with roaming bandits, stone markers that mentioned mysterious lands far away (actually written on the stone, not through some techy popup), the Messenger Ghoul, the remote mrechant shacks (will they be KoS to me or not?), the farmers, the Miller farm, their odd farmhands(hmm, a Gnoll and an Ogre? That sure peeked my interest), the scarecrows, that guy on the roof (part of a very nice Quest), a barn filled with skeletons, bandits posing as farmers (so MEAN!), the Epic bridges(and the epic music..), the corrupt Guards and their bracelets(I so love the faction and KoS feature in EQ), the Guard towers that gave you safety, the Barb village(KoS??), a sudden creaking noise...OMG TREANT!!

Now a "modern" zone would not have 1 (or a few) of each, but dozens of them, in the right level range(XP), with 100% droprate, and scripts that repeated every 6 minutes....
But for the above to be "content" you need to bring back serious Faction again, a true racial landscape(roll an SK, be prepared for the consequences), lots of KoS NPC's, old school itemization(takes 15 levels before you fill out every Inv slot), bring back TRUE rare mobs and wanderers, bring back the "drops item 1 every 5 times" feature, bring back traveling again, yes, bring back player interdependance again (looking for a bind!).

Anyway, WK was never empty to me....so yeah, back to some old school features, then you can make large zones interesting again. Hell, put back in staring at your spellbook so I can pee my pants again when I started hearing that creaking Treant sneaking up on me(being an SK)!


Off course 99% of the players will not like this game but who cares, I will like it. ;) Anyway, will never happen but at least I have my EQ memories.

I am rambling, I am stopping. :D

[Arctic_Slicer]

What server do you play on and what time do you play? As a crafter on Seradon It's been quite some time since I have seen the zone as dead as you claim it to be. Only a month ago it seemed like there was always around 10-20 people inside of the zone at all times. I have quit since then due to the implementation of Live Gamer Exchange and if the game is now as underpopulated as you claim it to be it can only mean Live Gamer Exchange is having a far more devastating effect on the population than many people predicted.

[Treesong]

It was on Seradon, but I play from Melbourne, Asutralia, so probably not exactly prime time. I think it was early in the evening my time, that would have been 6.00 AM New York time and 3.00 AM Pacific Time so yeah. :)

I will try logging in in the morning tomorrow, that should be about prime time for US zones.

[acrobat]

I have had the same experiences as you, totaly agree. Apparently they did not change much to the Dwarf city since Beta since I also felt that the city was too humongous for the few Dwarves that seemed to reside there. I must say that even with WoW numbers, these cities would probably look empty, also because they lack NPC activity. There is *some* but not nearly enough.I even thought it was maybe better in Beta than it was on release. Because I remember they had some free teleport NPC's in Tursh during the beta, and they would send you to this Dwarf city. (Bordinar's Cleft I think it's called).

I didn't like the idea of instant ports like that, and I still don't, but at least there were some people there lol. When I went at release, it was dead. I ran around and there was really nothing to do, and it all seemed quite odd that such short little dwarves would have enormous, elaborate buildings, with ceilings higher than a cathedral.

The best thing about that place was leaving, and then I went up to the mountains. I teamed up with some guy, and we literally spent an entire day up in those mountains doing all the quests we could find together. It truly was one of the best days of MMORPG gaming for me. We had a lot of fun, there were a LOT of quests, and they were all pretty fun! I loved my class and I loved working together with his class too. The sad thing is, I added him to my friend list and he NEVER came back to the game after that day. I still played another month or so after that point and he didn't appear even for a second.


I also think it will be interesting to see what developers will do in the future, when it comes to landmass and size of cities. Yeah. There is an EverQuest emulator server which is really popular, but still only has about 600 people at peak times. To make it more lively, they basically set it up so that it funnels everyone in to just 2 major cities. It works great.

I love the huge world in Vanguard and I would never want it any other way, I think they could do a lot worse than do that in Vanguard too though. I'm not sure how though, without making the cities actually useful somehow.. But it would be nice if there were some really busy areas.


Truth be told, WoW cities do feel somewhat cramped and "miniature" in a way, but they do seem to have the right size in order to make the city come alive. There is a lot of NPC activity and scripts (love the kids running around, the teacher with the schoolkids and stuff) and the players make the experience complete. Yeah I agree the WoW cities felt a bit small. Almost claustrophobic at times, and in some places, everyone is standing on the roofs of buildings and stuff which makes it look even more out of proportion. Mostly though it was pretty good, and the high population meant everywhere was lively.

The kids running around and stuff was really great. I loved all that. I remember in the Elf town in Vanguard, there was a teacher teaching pupils too. Or perhaps they were all trying to work together or cast a spell together or something, I can't quite remember. I remember seeing it and being really happy that there was at least one area that had these modern WoW/EQ2 type features. Sadly there just wasn't much of it and some places had none at all.



So where do you cut corners? Less epic, more liveliness? Or go epic and just make sure that at least some parts of your city are bustling? There is off course a limit to the amount of NPC scripts you can run too. I would go with the latter for sure. Just like real cities I guess. I remember I went to Vancouver years ago, and there was this really pretty tourist area called Gastown, and then literally right next to it, was a kind of run down slumish kind of area. I remember walking and one minute I'm in the tourist bustling Gastown, and the next minute I'm in this shady area with nobody in sight, except some crackhead looking guy passed out on the pavement. That's a real town :D I wish game towns were more like that. Different areas with different vibes and busy locations and quiet locations. Something like the Baldurs Gate type games where they have shady areas of town and then a tavern which is full of people inside and quite a few people hanging around outside.

Some NPC's are easy enough, but mostly I think a lot of this is to do with getting actual players there. WoW did more than Vanguard and that's why the WoW towns were busier. Even just the "rested XP" brought a lot of people to towns, if only to end their session there.


I am curious how the new "triple A" MMO's will handle this. I am thinking of the the new Bioware game (SW, the Old Republic) and the new game that 38 studios is working on. These are both big budget Western MMO's. I feel that cities in Asian MMO's are nothing more but glorified quest hubs so I am not counting those.Don't think I have ever seen even a single door in those "cities". :)I don't know anything about those games tbh. I don't have much confidence in modern MMO's appreciating having a lively town. Although Bioware have made enough single player RPG's that they must know better than anyone how to make a place feel lively. In games like Kotor and Mass Effect and stuff, it's single player so all those little cities were populated purely by NPC's. Hopefully that will translate to their game.


When it comes to landmass, who do you think came closest to a good mix of epic vs liveliness? When it comes to landmass, I feel that devs do have more leeway: after all, it is not a bad thing when you have desolate areas, most explorers (like me) find them fun and immersive and mysterious. I felt the same thing in VG(exept the cities off course) untill I came upon chunks that were obviously unfinished and had no mobs in them. Then the "suspension of disbelief" crumbled. I really LOVE desolate areas. Nothing kills the feeling of a mysterious forest or a remote mountain region or whatever, like having hundreds of players running through it. I loved it in Vanguard when I first came across Hillsbury Manor and it looked like a scary old haunted house in the depths of a forest. And then I went to the far north east of that continent and you go up a huge long path that leads up and up, and you end up very high, and that felt really remote and really special too. I always felt like the original EQ was FAR too small to really allow that. The deserts (Oasis and South Ro) just didn't feel very special when I realised you can literally cross top to bottom or left to right in less than a minute, and there were people running around kiting sand giants and stuff. I was so glad when Kunark was released and I stumbled across Warsliks Wood and I was the only person in there. I finally felt like an adventurer and explorer which I hadn't felt before in that game, even though I started right when it was new.

So yeah, whoever will make it, I have no idea, I just hope someone comes up with a huge world that is spread out enough to have remote areas and yet well planned enough to have some towns that feel real.


Anyway, I think WoW is too cramped but it serves the game as it is, well. Again, for what they were envisioning, they made the right decisions. WoW zones obviously serve the purpose of progression, and they made the zones fun places to do so. But they do not serve the true explorer very well. Some will say that large empty zones are boring and do not see the point of exploring them when there is no "content" to be found in every corner. But I think this is where developers have to use other means of creating "content" and this is where we also go back to soms of the more old school features(which many hate these days).

Take West Karana in Everquest: this was huge zone for EQ standards and while us old schoolers loved this zone, many more recent MMO players thought the zone a bore, and *very* bad for XP. But for me this zone was filled to the brim with exiting content!

The Chintle/Trintle/Estle scripts, the Zonesweppers(nocturnal werewolf, the single Hill Giant and others), the Cyclops brothers, the Ogres (need I say more), bandit camps with roaming bandits, stone markers that mentioned mysterious lands far away (actually written on the stone, not through some techy popup), the Messenger Ghoul, the remote mrechant shacks (will they be KoS to me or not?), the farmers, the Miller farm, their odd farmhands(hmm, a Gnoll and an Ogre? That sure peeked my interest), the scarecrows, that guy on the roof (part of a very nice Quest), a barn filled with skeletons, bandits posing as farmers (so MEAN!), the Epic bridges(and the epic music..), the corrupt Guards and their bracelets(I so love the faction and KoS feature in EQ), the Guard towers that gave you safety, the Barb village(KoS??), a sudden creaking noise...OMG TREANT!!I loved that place! When I heard about a zone with bandits on the road, and a wandering werewolf, I HAD to go :) I wasn't disappointed.

In the lower levels, I used to hug the coast in that zone because it was safer. To me, even a very long, empty stretch of coastline, served it's purpose - which was to add distance to a journey. For me, I loved it on the normal servers because I used to hunt the McMannus brothers there with my Necro at about level 30 or so. The distance meant that there weren't many people around so that camp wasn't usually taken. I could setup camp there and kill them over and over in peace and it was so nice to not be fighting over spawns like in many of the other places (Cazic Thule and stuff) and avoiding other people's trains. I also briefly tried some of the PVP servers in EQ, and that place was also really good because of the long distance. I did the exact same thing, and someone attacked me. I thought uh oh! and saw someone else coming from the Qeynos direction. So the only way I could run was down that massive coast and I knew I would be toast. So instead I ended up running around the houses and making them chase me, and I managed to get enough of a head start to start running down the coast. They caught me and killed me because they had SoW, but it was extremely exciting for me :) If that North Karana zone line was close, it wouldn't have been as exciting.

Now a "modern" zone would not have 1 (or a few) of each, but dozens of them, in the right level range(XP), with 100% droprate, and scripts that repeated every 6 minutes....
But for the above to be "content" you need to bring back serious Faction again, a true racial landscape(roll an SK, be prepared for the consequences), lots of KoS NPC's, old school itemization(takes 15 levels before you fill out every Inv slot), bring back TRUE rare mobs and wanderers, bring back the "drops item 1 every 5 times" feature, bring back traveling again, yes, bring back player interdependance again (looking for a bind!).The danger is the thing I miss the most I think. Even as a level 1, just outside Kelethin, there were yellow con wolves wandering around and sometimes nasty Orcs too. Most places had dangers like that in fact. In Vanguard (and especially in WoW), there just isn't any danger. When I was in the Trial Isle the other day, I noticed this. When you run along at full speed, the text with the mob's name and the dot number appears over the heads of every mob, but unlike EQ, it appears really far away! Most areas don't even have aggro mobs, but even when there are, you really have very little chance of running in to one by mistake. In EQ, you can be running and the text ("A Dark Bone Skeleton" or whatever) will only appear when the mob is about 10 foot away from you or so. If you are running fast, it's barely more than aggro range that you see the name. So you have to watch where you are going and keep a sharp look out for mobs.

In modern MMORPG's, the mobs just don't seem to be there to present any kind of challenge or danger. They are just there, hanging around in groups, as big dumb XP receptecals. Thats one of the things I hated the most in Vanguard. Big groups of mobs all hanging around waiting to be tagged and kited. I miss the days of being in Lower Guk with a bunch of newbs and everyone is wearing crappy chainmail and bits of leather armor and all the mobs are blue white and yellow and some reds. As a full group, we wanted to take the Frenzied Ghoul room and yet we could barely even kill 3 mobs without someone dying. Eventually we did it because they SK used this amazing trick he had been practising called "Feign Death Pulling" (lol). It's about as close to being a true fantasy adventure as I've ever experienced. Part of the problem is that everyone is an MMORPG pro these days, but the games themselves should still do something about adding danger and challenge. But they aren't. The players have evolved and the games are not keeping up imo.


Anyway, WK was never empty to me....so yeah, back to some old school features, then you can make large zones interesting again. Hell, put back in staring at your spellbook so I can pee my pants again when I started hearing that creaking Treant sneaking up on me(being an SK)!

Off course 99% of the players will not like this game but who cares, I will like it. ;) Anyway, will never happen but at least I have my EQ memories.

I am rambling, I am stopping. :D

I dunno you know... As long as it's not tedious, I think there would be a LOT of people out there who would appreciate a game that offers a real challenge. I personally am squarely in the middle on all this stuff. I don't like harsh death penalties, but I at least want people to die! I simply just don't die in modern MMORPG's. You can med to full quickly before any fight, so I can win any fight. It's extremely rare that something unexpected happens because all the mobs in these games are standing around waiting to be tagged and killed. If something bad does happen (once in a blue moon), everyone has a "sprint" button or something that allows them almost a guaranteed escape to safety. In old EQ, that never happened :) You would be fighting an orc and it would be a close fight already... but you would get blind sided by another orc which would smash your face in, so you would run for your life, heart racing... and the orc would catch up to you and hit you again and again... Absolutely no mercy whatsoever. It would get you down to low, and then your character would start walking... Then the orcs would gladly finish you off without hesitation. You probably even picked up a wolf in your desperate dash too haha.

I miss you old challenging games...

[Romans DeMalum]

I don't want to start a new thread, but here is a question:

Since Silius/Soe took over, what percentage of developer time has been spent taking out what McQuaid originally had in, or didn't want in.

Does that make sense? Like the addition of lots of rifts or the removal of EE, changing of how harvesting works etc etc...that kind of junk.

-

I'd guess a good 18% of developer time. Maybe that seems high, but they must have spent a decent time period on"

Bikini armor
Re-worked quest drops like Heg
Re-worked ROVT evil faction
Re-Worked Swamp Armor Drops
Added IOD instead of just a 14 day trial of existing starter areas
Went almost no BOP to all BOP and then to some BOP (wtf?)
Several XP changes
Death Penatly change



The number of craptastic changes made by Silius/SOE is countless, but just off the top of my head, those are ones that sort of cover existing ground. Kind of like they were in a round room and kept trying to find the corner to pee in.

[dabble]

I don't want to start a new thread, but here is a question:

Since Silius/Soe took over, what percentage of developer time has been spent taking out what McQuaid originally had in, or didn't want in.

Does that make sense? Like the addition of lots of rifts or the removal of EE, changing of how harvesting works etc etc...that kind of junk.

-

I'd guess a good 18% of developer time. Maybe that seems high, but they must have spent a decent time period on"

Bikini armor
Re-worked quest drops like Heg
Re-worked ROVT evil faction
Re-Worked Swamp Armor Drops
Added IOD instead of just a 14 day trial of existing starter areas
Went almost no BOP to all BOP and then to some BOP (wtf?)
Several XP changes
Death Penatly change



The number of craptastic changes made by Silius/SOE is countless, but just off the top of my head, those are ones that sort of cover existing ground. Kind of like they were in a round room and kept trying to find the corner to pee in.


I think Silius' ego got in the way of a good game. He was determined to make his mark but unfortunatley he didn't really have anything to bring to the table. So he set about removing systems for the sake of change. This becomes all too obvious when you count up all of the NPC's and Mobs that were named after him.

[Romans DeMalum]

Oh I agree 100%. The thing is, he didn't need to make his mark. He made a huge and great mark with the crafting system. I was hooked on that baby from day 3.

I have a photo of Silius from Fanfaire. I started to use in a sig with the caption - "Wanted - For the Murder of Vanguard". But people get really sensitive, so I decided not to do that.

[Nepenthia]

I don't want to start a new thread, but here is a question:

Since Silius/Soe took over, what percentage of developer time has been spent taking out what McQuaid originally had in, or didn't want in.

Does that make sense? Like the addition of lots of rifts or the removal of EE, changing of how harvesting works etc etc...that kind of junk.

-

I'd guess a good 18% of developer time. Maybe that seems high, but they must have spent a decent time period on"

Bikini armor
Re-worked quest drops like Heg
Re-worked ROVT evil faction
Re-Worked Swamp Armor Drops
Added IOD instead of just a 14 day trial of existing starter areas
Went almost no BOP to all BOP and then to some BOP (wtf?)
Several XP changes
Death Penatly change



The number of craptastic changes made by Silius/SOE is countless, but just off the top of my head, those are ones that sort of cover existing ground. Kind of like they were in a round room and kept trying to find the corner to pee in.

The list has things on it that were changed when Sigil still owned the game and things that were changed after Sigil was purchased by Sony. Sigil itself did "make the game easier", change the way equipment was useable (the earlier level requirements, etc.) before it was purchased by SOE. SOE started cutting the Sigil staff after the purchase but it wasn't until Thom became the producer that things really started to change more dramatically away from the Sigil design. Silius (and this is a guess) probably didn't have much leadership until 8 to 10 months after release of the game, after Hasium and a lot of other devs left SOE. Even after he had more responsibility, he still had to implement what was ordered from above. Despite that, he has implemented much of what was originally designed at Sigil as best as the circumstances would allow ... like APW ... and to my mind, has defended Vanguard against even worse incursions that could have been imposed upon it by the producer and the SOE executives.

Silius certainly has his share of responsibility for what has been implemented in the game since most of the original Sigil devs left, but it's a huge mistake to assume he initiated changes like the introduction of IoD, etc. SOE has a humungous bureaucratic structure and while Silius and Jansen and Ikik and Tiraslee have to get the stuff out, they, unfortunately as is shown by how they got shifted over to LG stuff when they were in the middle of Pantheon, have limited to no say over the bigger decisions.

As far as things being named after devs ... that is one thing I've never been fond of ... having some of the gear, some of the mobs, and the housing areas and some of the adventuring areas named after people at Sigil ... Jalen's Crossing, the Deebs, the APW gear, etc. But, looked at in another way now, at least it is a historic record of the game names of the folks who really did imagine and build Vanguard.

Honestly I believe if you want to seriously consider who has the responsibility for keeping VG alive, you'd have to give credit to the devs who were there for awhile and to the devs (and there are only about 4) who remain. If you want to push disgust where it belongs ... look at the Producer and those above him. The later "wow" changes, IoD, and LG came from them.

[Hatto]

There was always the Vision and the WoW faction with the Sigil devs, and the later won. Not surprising they tried to make the game fit their ideas of a good one. It is rather unfortunate that Sigil did not manage to sort this out during beta, that's where one of McQuaids leadership failures is. Either a Vision or a WoW-Vanguard would've been more successful than the Chimera we got. One does not rebuild the ship while sailing without risking to sink.