[Labyrrinth]

Dave Gilbertson, former Sigil employee and current SoE Director of Development for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes put up an introductory post over on Vanguardsoh.com. In his post he promises better communication, performance improvements, and certainly the most exciting news for a lot of people, server mergers!

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks here at Vanguard as we get integrated into the SOE family. As you can probably imagine, it can get a little hectic as we get everyone set-up with email along with getting offices, cubicles, and computers moved around. I had hoped to get this letter of introduction out to you sooner, but between integration fun and a bout with the stomach flu it took me a little longer than I expected. So here I am. My name is David Gilbertson and I am a recovering crunch-aholic. I’ve been working on Vanguard since the beginning, some 5+ years ago. I’ve had my hand in most aspects of Vanguard with most of my later time spent producing. I’m looking forward to continuing working with Vanguard and our team as the producer and Director of Development with SOE.

The integration process is ongoing, so please have a little patience with us as we get everything up and rolling. We haven’t forgotten about you! We released an update last week and we are working on another update this week to fix some exploits. While we are working on a Game Update for the upcoming weeks, we are mainly focusing on bug fixes and polish. We have come a long, long way since release, but we know we have a ways to go still.

One of the first things on the list is planning out the best way to merge servers. We should have an announcement in the next few weeks on what the plan is. You, our players, have been asking for it and it's needed. The world of Telon needs be a healthy a place with plenty of players to group, trade and adventure with. That’s our number one priority.

We are also working on improving performance across the board. Programming is working on optimizations while Art is optimizing all the NPC humanoids. When the latter is completed, you should see a significant boost in performance whenever you see NPC’s. The Design department is fixing bugs as fast as they can in addition to adding Raid content to the game.

In the not so distant past, our communication to you certainly wasn’t the best. Going forward that will change, I will do my best to level with you and set realistic expectations.

So, I want to say thank you on behalf of the Vanguard team and SOE, for your patience and for being a part of the Vanguard Community. We are excited about the new possibilities and we hope you will join us for the upcoming adventures. I know I’m looking forward to it.

David Gilbertson aka Hasium
David "Hasium" Gilbertson
Director of Development
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Full introduction can be found here

[Navid]

2 words... sweet!

[troldan]

how about some refunds for the people that can't play without a CTD every 5 minutes from the issue with vg and 8800gtx.

[Hoarder]

Good News!

and troldon... the cutting bleeding edge is often not fun.

[Atoyota]

at least now the small percentage of those who actually like this game can "maybe" fill a few servers... Depends how aggressively they merge.

[Nunyo]

Originally Posted by Atoyota

at least now the small percentage of those who actually like this game can "maybe" fill a few servers... Depends how aggressively they merge.

Be careful what you ask for. While I agree that the current population density is hard on grouping, there are far too many areas/quests on Telon that are already too slow for lack of enough mobs. If they increase populations, I hope they increase respawn rates or mob density along with it.

[rhagz]

Originally Posted by Nunyo

Be careful what you ask for. While I agree that the current population density is hard on grouping, there are far too many areas/quests on Telon that are already too slow for lack of enough mobs. If they increase populations, I hope they increase respawn rates or mob density along with it.

Or get rid of the stupid idea that every quest should require killing 100 of the same thing.

[Clover]

this might actually make me come back. I made the mistake of rolling on one of the lowest populated servers(or so i was told). I know a lot of servers had grouping problems when I was still playing, and its one of the main things that drove me away from the game. Despite its bugs I really found the game fun (albeit a bit bland in some areas). LOTRO is just way too easy for me. I've owned the game for two weeks now and I'm 11 levels from the cap. And I haven't grinded once yet or tryed to level. Its just designed that way heh, although it does boggle my mind that turbine was able to make such a good looking game run on almost anything where as Vanguard.. nevermind, that is not the issue at hand :P

So i can't wait for this. You can bet I'll give this game another chance if they merge the servers, now the only question is do i play a rogue again or try something new... hmm

[solthar]

Originally Posted by Clover

this might actually make me come back. I made the mistake of rolling on one of the lowest populated servers(or so i was told). I know a lot of servers had grouping problems when I was still playing, and its one of the main things that drove me away from the game. Despite its bugs I really found the game fun (albeit a bit bland in some areas). LOTRO is just way too easy for me. I've owned the game for two weeks now and I'm 11 levels from the cap. And I haven't grinded once yet or tryed to level. Its just designed that way heh, although it does boggle my mind that turbine was able to make such a good looking game run on almost anything where as Vanguard.. nevermind, that is not the issue at hand :P

So i can't wait for this. You can bet I'll give this game another chance if they merge the servers, now the only question is do i play a rogue again or try something new... hmm

I loved vanguard, but I too had grouping problems. And since I wan't paying to play a massively singleplayer rpg, I cancelled my account. If the merger pushes player densities up to a point where you can find a group within a reasonable time period I just might come back.

... But I've gotta admit, ever since the mess they made with SWG (Oh how I miss my Bioengineer!) I've been wary of Sony...

[Purrrr]

Originally Posted by Navid

2 words... sweet!

Sweet is 1 word O_o lol

[firudesu]

Originally Posted by troldan

how about some refunds for the people that can't play without a CTD every 5 minutes from the issue with vg and 8800gtx.

i use a 8800 gtx and never had any issues with the game

[Malbolgia]

Originally Posted by firudesu

i use a 8800 gtx and never had any issues with the game

I too use an 8800 and rarely crash.....although it seems at the worst possible times it.

[Darklor]

Character names and plots of land ... two things I would like to know how they are going to manage.

I sure as shit don't want to lose my house nor my character names.

[Atoyota]

Originally Posted by Darklor

Character names and plots of land ... two things I would like to know how they are going to manage.

I sure as shit don't want to lose my house nor my character names.

yup all valid concerns...

With a merge there will be casualties, the only way to avoid that is to "start over" which of course is not an option

[Defmetal]

Well people losing their character name is enough to make a lot of people quit, i'm sure a lot of you would quit if you logged in to a "Your character name has been taken, please change it"
and using Recall Home to find that its not your house anymore

[rhagz]

Originally Posted by Defmetal

Well people losing their character name is enough to make a lot of people quit, i'm sure a lot of you would quit if you logged in to a "Your character name has been taken, please change it"
and using Recall Home to find that its not your house anymore

If a character name is all that is keeping people in the game, then there are bigger issues than just server merges that need addressing.. or maybe those types of people are not what is good for the game anyway and the sooner they quit the sooner the game can get back on track.

[Breyth]

So excited about the server merge. It's hard to find anyone worth killing anymore. This will mean good things for PvP, I'll have a bunch of new people to kill.

[Fable]

Originally Posted by troldan

how about some refunds for the people that can't play without a CTD every 5 minutes from the issue with vg and 8800gtx.

Maybee you should upgrade to latest drivers, the old drives for 8800gtx really sucked.

Too many that whine and let others do the thinking.

[Sakuma]

I run with an 8800 GTS and the game runs perfectly fine.

An occasional CTD but nothing serious.

Before I upgraded and built this new machine I used to run a real piece of
cr-p.

Seriously the machine was running on 512 mem, 512 ati card, 2.4 intel .

Used to CTD about 20 times in an hour, but I still kept playing heh.

Once I built this new machine - nothing to expensive alittle over 1,800. all the pain faded away.

Game runs smooth for me now, and I can acctualy run around explore without stareing at the ground while running everywhere.

There are Hitches in the game yes and the occasional CTD - but with the updated drivers from Nvida its perfectly fine.

3gig now no more 512 and running on an E6600.

-----------------

As for the Merge, Four things I hopeto not loose:

1) My Plot

2) My house (including ALL of the materials used to construct it)

3) My remaining Rent money I have paid on the Plot for the entire year!

4) My initial PLOT Purchase money that I had paid for the Plot.

But I dont think that will be possible sadly.

So, at least give us the following please:

1) ALL of our left over rent money that we donated on the plot.

2) Give us back the Original plot purchase price we spent please, since YOU (soe/sigil) are Forcing us throught the hardship of starting over again.

3) Give us back ALL of the materials used to construct our home.

Really for some of us it took alot of hard work to craft the materials in order to create those T5 homes.

Please SOE/Sigil many of your remaining customers who still play this game are hoping to not get screwed over.

Whats left of your population server wide isnt much and they are dropping like flys as each day passes.

If Vanguard was going strong in numbers, I guess You wouldnt be condensing merging the servers now would you.

There are several reasons why the population is no longer playing your game.

So for the rest of those who still do play, I hope that you hear some of our concerns please.

Those who have been standing by this game "paying to play this game", Reguardless of all the Issues, Rollbacks, CTD's,broken content, broken plots, unfinished quests, annoying gold spam sellers(every minute), partial optimized game.

We still pay to play because some of use still believe VG has hope.

So, I hope you folks are considering some of these things as you Code for the merge.

Otherwise if it turns out to be a complete hurricane, the remaining fragmented population just might fade away.

Start over you could, but you might end up just merging again if this merge has a negative impact.

I am for the merge, I am just another Customer hopeing for the best.

But honestly SOE's past reputation for online gaming customer service has been ........well, I think alot of people have been disappointed.

I hope it works out.

[Founder Apache]

Originally Posted by Purrrr

Sweet is 1 word O_o lol

They claim they are working on better communication and they turn and announce a merge of team pvp with FFA - no vote, no chance to change their mind - guess killing pvp subs is part of their clean up plan.