[MagicNumbers]

Come back to Vanguard: Sage of Heroes between June 26, 2008 at 12:01AM PDT and July 31, 2008 at 11:59PM PDT for FREE* to experience first-hand all the changes, updates and additions that have been introduced to the world of Vanguard. Telon Rides On, the latest game update, offers each of the races in Vanguard exciting New Mounts to acquire and befriend in their journey across the lands of Telon. In order to acquire one of these new mounts you must be level 30 or higher and gain Citizen Favor by promoting a race's starting city. Gain enough of a faction's trust and the right amount of Platinum coins and the new mounts can be yours!

Convert your account to an active, valid paying Vanguard or Station Access subscription account before July 31, 2008 at 11:59 PM PDT and receive a special in-game Pack Camel mount of your very own! This mount is colored especially for those players returning to Vanguard during this promotional period!**
Your account has been reactivated, simply log-in and join us in Telon for FREE for a limited time and saddle up one of the new Racial Mounts!
Telon Rides On offers much more than just the new mounts:
Blood Mages now have a recipe to craft bags to hold Symbiotes, Organs, and Vials of Blood, this will free up substantial inventory space - More Info

Psionicists will get two new abilities, Synchronize and Paralysis field. These allow you to reverse Time Trick effects and partially paralyze all opponents close to you for a short time - More Info

Many of the classes have received fantastic new visuals for their spells and abilities with new particle effects - More Info

We hope everyone experiences improved performance and smoother gameplay with the addition of the new "Anti-Hitching" code - More Info
Check out all the latest news, updates and changes

Each Game Update brings a plethora of changes, enhancements, optimizations and new adventures to the Vanguard game, stay up-to-date on all the updates by visiting the Vanguard Players site!

Vanguard Players Update Page
Come back to Vanguard today, we'll see you in Telon!
- The Vanguard Saga of Heroes Team

http://vanguard.station.sony.com/install/

[dwarfman420]

I reinstalled an tried to patch. My account has been inactive for over 3 months.

Says "You don't have a subscription" and wont let me any farther.

Gonna take a few days to reactivate all those accounts I guess. Will try again tomorrow.

[tdewey10]

Originally Posted by dwarfman420

I reinstalled an tried to patch. My account has been inactive for over 3 months.

Says "You don't have a subscription" and wont let me any farther.

Gonna take a few days to reactivate all those accounts I guess. Will try again tomorrow.

I'd send a note to SOE customer service. IIRC, when the did this in Christmas pretty much all were activated at around the same time. Could be your old account got missed for some bizarre reason. Might also post on the vg boards -- just my .02

[Moonchyld]

I got your free month right here Paco...

[Kurron Nye]

Well I have been saying the only way I would play VG again is if SOE compensated me in some way for lost play time (for the month of paid time I lost last year when I could not play due to constant crashing), and they actually (finally) came through with a free month of play.

As such I will take them up on it :-) VG is worth playing for free for a month.

[Loampounder]

It seems strange that they have another free month without inttroduction of the Newbie Isle. I know it's for old accounts, but one would think they should be done with the isle and could use that as a relaunch of sorts instead of doing things piecemeal.

[kcxiv]

I am thinking when the free month is up is when they will drop the trial island.

When people come back if they like it and if the game runs alot better for them (which it really should). I know for me after Wed Patch, i am running the game incredibly well. Its not WoW smooth, but its pretty damned good for me atm. Anyways, when people see that it has improved performance wise, they can tell their friends to try the trial.

[Amsra]

I signed back up for the free month, wtf right? Performance is a lot better from 3 months ago. I'm still ugly tho Let ya know in a week or so how I like it.....

[acrobat]

Hmm I've been dying to play again for about a year and a half

I think I'm going to take advantage of this and check the game out.


---edit---
My god that's one hell of a theme tune.. I got chills listening to that. The install looks so professional too. Damn Sigil... just... argh..

[Brikk]

Neat, now I can give away my 40 plat that I was saving for a flying mount... or trade it for some money in a game that I actually play.

[tdewey10]

Originally Posted by Brikk

Neat, now I can give away my 40 plat that I was saving for a flying mount... or trade it for some money in a game that I actually play.

lol. Hope all is going well in War Brikk.

Surf

[acrobat]

Why did you quit VG Brikk? Just ran out of content?

(im just patching atm)

[acrobat]

Well I'm back. I really love this game, and it's all coming back to me what I enjoyed and what I've been missing. The music is great, and the atmosphere is great in the game. The world seems so huge and it is so open.. There are no annoying instances that make it all feel artificial and virtual, and there are no major zone walls that make you feel boxed in. It's so refreshing after playing the likes of AOC... When it started raining it took me by surprise because I haven't seen that in a game for a long time. I'm not sure if WoW had it, and AOC certainly didn't. The distant views are excellent. I can see mountains far away and the sky looks amazing and the clouds go all the way to the far distance until they meet the ground. And the day/night cycle is so natural and detailed, it's almost so good that you can just stand still for a while and watch the day change gradually into evening and then night time.. The first person view is as good as any game, and this is one of the few games that I actually enjoy playing in 1st person view or third person. The customisation of the game is great too. I can setup the chat window and my keys and stuff however I want.

My class has improved a lot too. One of the main reasons why I quit the game back in March 2007, is that I was annoyed with my Druid. I had a mez spell which was extremely useful and popular with groups, but it was only working like that because of a bug... so they took it away from me and now it's just a mez for animals and fae or whatever, which means I barely got to use it anymore. I put up with it, but I also started getting people complaining at my DPS, and there was nothing I could do. Now, that has changed drastically. My mez (or lack of) is still the same unfortunately, but my DPS is massive now. My nukes and DoT's have all increased in damage, and amazingly, the Phenomena spells can now be used very regularly, because there is a new ability to completely restore all my Pheno points... I think it's every 20 minutes or something, but the result is that I can basically start just using my uber Pheno spells, along with my normal ones. And I don't need to save them for a bad situation, because I can just use my restore Pheno points ability for that situation.

Also, I was VERY happy to go to my trainer and find that I had about half a dozen new spells. Really good ones too. I can now go invisible. I turn into a little ant, and go invisible, and it lasts for about 3 minutes. Very useful! I have an amazing spell with a name like Caster Intensity or something like that, which basically makes me go ape, and increases my spell haste, but also massively increases my run speed. So getting from A to B is a lot faster now, and I love that. There were some other great spells too, which I am really happy to have.

There have been other improvements too. I know the rift teleports isn't popular for some people, but I love it. I always felt life is too short to be travelling long distances in a virtual world. I would be happy to do it if it was meaningful travel, but when I am basically just autorunning with the occasional weaving in and out of mobs, it just becomes chore like. So I was so glad to find that I could teleport closer to where I want to be, which saved about 10 minutes of run time. There is still lots of running to do... but the rifts cut some time, and the new fast running speed cut some time too, so long journeys are no longer a pain in the butt.

The game seems less buggy and more stable too. I played for about 4 or 5 hours straight and had no crashes and not a hint of slowdown. My frame rate has improved a fair bit too. And the game itself seems tidier now too. Better pop up help and stuff, it just all feels more professional, and no doubt there aren't many/any broken quests any more. I haven't got to see any of the new content yet, because I've spent most of my time just trying to remember how to play my class and stuff, but I can't wait to get stuck in to that.

There were a few negatives. The population of all the servers says, "Low", and running around in Tursh was quite empty. I did see a few players. One ran past on a horse, one was wandering around in the keep, and one was fighting newbie mobs. It's ok, but it's not how it used to be. Other areas seem better though. Near Trengal I saw several people, and there are lots of groups being formed, so no doubt there are larger groups of people in specific areas.

I was disappointed to see that the character customisation has been reduced drastically so that I can't change aspects of my face anymore. It's basically just 4 or 5 faces to choose from and then no customisation besides body size and shape and eye/hair colour. I never cared about that much though to be honest, but it's worth mentioning. The other negative change, is that they seem to have removed some of the higher quality textures in the game. So it just doesn't look as good as it used to look on Very High settings. It looks more like High now, or even just Balanced. I can accept that though, and I can understand why they did it, but I wish they would just improve things and add them back because I already have all the textures on my DVD's, I have no trouble with disk space, and my frame rate was fine even when I used to play the game in March 2007.. because I have a good graphics card and PC. So personally, I would prefer they put them back. But it's no biggie.

There were a few nagatives that are still there after all this time too. I still get a bit of hitching which is quite annoying. But I think that will go if I defrag. You should really defrag after installing something that big. The trees still flicker which annoys me a bit, but again, no major biggy. The one thing that bugs me the most though, is the "pop up" issue that has been there since beta. Basically I can be standing about 20 feet away from a fence, and I move forward an inch and another whole fence panel and a bunch of stones appear. Or I am running up a hill and I see a broken cart, and almost as I am right next to it, all the ripped bags of grain or whatever appear right in front of me. I'm not sure what causes that, but it bugs me. I also find that although the animations are nice and smooth now, some things look jumpy. For example, when you ride your horse, because the ground is still hundreds of very angular polygons, and the horse strictly follows the terrain, it changes it's angle by several degrees instantly, so it basically pops up and down constantly and looks really unnatural.

Overall though, the gameplay is better than it was, and the performance and stability is better than it was, and bug wise, it is much better than it was too. So I just wish everyone who played it would come back I love it, but I have an underlying feeling of sadness when I play it, because it's good but it's basically on life support. You only need to reach the top of a hill and look out to the enormous ocean, and think, "If that was filled with sea monsters and stuff, this game would be unbelievably good". But it never will be unless more money is put into the game, and that means more people need to go back to it. It's like I thought, they have improved it a lot, and now they have a fantastic solid base, and it's as good as WoW, AOC, EQ or anything else at it's core. Even better in fact. But besides the solid base, it only has a bit of raid content and not much else. It needs sieges to compete with AOC, and it needs masses of raid content and an arena etc.. to compete with WoW. It's catch 22, because it needs that stuff to really draw more people back to it, and yet they can't afford to do that without more people going back in the first place. And as each day goes by, it has less and less chance of it's fortunes ever changing, because it's once top of the line graphics are now just average or slightly above average, and in 6 months, they will be below average. And once a graphics overhaul needs to be added to the 'To Do' list, it's pretty much screwed.

Oh well. I will enjoy it for myself anyway. I'm sure I'll get a really enjoyable month out of it, and maybe I'll subscribe after the free period, and get a few more months out of it. I just wish more people were doing the same thing.


p.s. I really hope SOE understand why a LOT of people aren't going back. I hope they know I only went back because it's "Free". I don't care about much else. They send all these newsletters and I am never impressed with, "More stable, improved memory leak!, free camel!, better performance!" blah blah blah. They shouldn't really be hyping up the stuff that should have existed in the first place. The newsletter needs to say, "Now that Vanguard is extremely stable and polished and the performance is fantastic, we decided to focus on adding some killer new content and features! So now, come back to Vanguard for a free month and see: Player owned ships! Sail the high seas and search for sunken galleons and treasure, unexplored underwater worlds! But beware sea creatures and blood thirsty pirates! 8 new raid dungeons! 7 new/revamped adventuring dungeons from 1-50, and over 150 new high quality quests! Reap unique rewards in an arena where you can test your skills against a friend or a real opponent in a tournament!". If they add that, THEN I think lots of people will come back. Otherwise, it's only going to be a few freeloaders like me :P

[kcxiv]

Characters are getting new models and your going to be getting alot of your customization back. They said that the Male models are done and the Female models are about 2 weeks from being done.

[acrobat]

sweet =)

[etwynn]

Seradon is "Medium" atm and supposedly it's hit "High" at primetime within the last few days.

[acrobat]

Ohh cool thank you. I might play on that one instead if I start a new character (which I probably will sometime). Atm I'm playing my old character so gotta stay on this server. It's ok though, perfectly playable. It's just clearly not a healthy looking world unfortunately.

Also while I'm here, can anyone suggest anything I should do? My character is level 31 Druid, and when I quit in March 2007, I had spent most of my time in the newbie areas and the only mid level stuff I did was Trengal Keep, trash mobs in the Northern Highlands or whatever it's called, and one or two trips to some exciting mid-high level zones which I didn't really do anything besides grind for an hour or so. The last thing I did before I quit was to try to do the cloak quest on the continent with Khal on it. Besides that I haven't done anything.

Are there any special quests in the game now? Perhaps some druid specific quests? Or new armor quests? Or destiny quests or something like that? If not I'll just get busy with that cloak quest again and then look for any random mid-high level dungeons.

[etwynn]

Originally Posted by acrobat

Ohh cool thank you. I might play on that one instead if I start a new character (which I probably will sometime). Atm I'm playing my old character so gotta stay on this server. It's ok though, perfectly playable. It's just clearly not a healthy looking world unfortunately.

Also while I'm here, can anyone suggest anything I should do? My character is level 31 Druid, and when I quit in March 2007, I had spent most of my time in the newbie areas and the only mid level stuff I did was Trengal Keep, trash mobs in the Northern Highlands or whatever it's called, and one or two trips to some exciting mid-high level zones which I didn't really do anything besides grind for an hour or so. The last thing I did before I quit was to try to do the cloak quest on the continent with Khal on it. Besides that I haven't done anything.

Are there any special quests in the game now? Perhaps some druid specific quests? Or new armor quests? Or destiny quests or something like that? If not I'll just get busy with that cloak quest again and then look for any random mid-high level dungeons.

Go to the Celestine Ward riftway. The Vol Tuniel ("VT" in chat) is one zone south of that and is pretty popular.

Really, if you've been gone for months it's better to start a new character. But if you feel you can jump strait back in then VT is the place to go. Once you hit 35 you can do Dargun's Tomb (or continue with the Celestine ward armor and go to Theleseen...east of VT).

At 30 you could also go to the craigwind riftway, tons of solo quests there.

enjoy and gl.

Edit: and i wish people wouldnt use these forums. You'll get more responses if you just use the official forum. You can use their newbie forum even if you dont have an active account.

[acrobat]

Thanks I'll try all those places you mentioned, sounds really good. I've actually been gone for 1 year, 3 months... so maybe I should start a new character. I think I probably will, but this level 31 Druid of mine is really tempting. I figured out how to play it again and I got the new spells so I might give it a try from there. And I can always start another one on the side.

As for the forum thing, I never think about the official forum because official forums tend to be cesspits of horribleness. I will check it out though if I have any more questions.


------------edit-----------
Also, I messed up, when I said the graphics looked like Balanced, thats because they were I set them to max but they must have moved to balanced for some reason. I moved them back and now it's lovely.

[Kurron Nye]

I am giving the free month a whirl as well and yes performance overall is better when comparing VG against itself from a year agi, but is still mediocre when compared against still more polished games like LOTRO..and I will be making more comparisons against LOTRO given they are same genre. BTW, I am playing on Xeth.

While I am glad to see such conviniences as crafting tables and crafting NPCs out at all the housing plots, so far it seems that has servered to kill off the only significant reason people had to congregate in the cities. Now ya got banks, brokers, flying mount rentals, on top of what ya already had. There is no reason to 'go to town' and absolutely no sense of a social hub anywhere to be found. Just smaller locales whith knots of people (like Trengal Keep, Southwatch, etc)

Its kinda disturbing to see places like Aghram and Khal devoid of players, those big empty wharves.

It was also disconcerting to see such a lack of players under level 20 and seeing so many that were level 45 and higher. it was a bigger bummer being lvl 29 and seeing so many lvl 50s running around. it seems the progression bath for me is solo to lvl 50, then think about finding a group, or simply taking whatever group I can find even if I dont want to do the content they are simply so I can have a group.

I sailed up from the island where my house is on the southern shores of Qalia, and sailed all the way up to Khal today (bout noon, PST) doing a /who in each chunk on the way up, and saw about 5-9 players in each chunk on the way up, with the fewest number of people being in Aghram (only 3) and the most were up at the Gnome bunker north of Khal (26 people).

I bounced around Qalia then to Thestra and saw similar numbers of people, like 10 in New Targanoor, and around the same # at Trengal keep.

I have no doubt the L50s are all out of sight buried deep in the APW or the other L50 content.

Another thing sorta weirding me out is that nearly everyone I see has some kind of quest mount now. I guess the good ol ponies and camels are simply passe now? (just wondering if there is any point to getting the diplomacy mount anymore in light of the new mount options.) I think I might be the only person on Telon riding a camel.

Dont get me wrong..Vanguard is BETTER..better when compared to itself, and it is finally fit to be a released game in terms of playability but when I sit down and compare $14.99/mo fantasy MMOs, games like WoW and LOTRO still win hands down in terms of polish and performance.

I will grant you this, I think VG is superior to WoW in terms of content challenge even being an easier game to play than it was however I think LOTRO is still the better value and still has a brighter future (not to mention you can still play LOTRO for a measly 10 bucks a month and/or can still get $199 lifetime subs.) and LOTRO has a level of cohesion amongst its various content and mechanics that VG still lacks.

I see the OpenAL sound support is still glitchy as it was and still makes my Creative XFi card choke after playing for a while (yes I know, the Creative drivers arent so great, but VG is the only game that makes this happen). I just play w/o sound at all and performace is better over all so I count it as a wash.

So all in all, I do give VG an 'A' for effort but I cannot see how a game whose entire population is L45+, leaving over half the content unused and unoccupied is a healthy thing. Its got to be VERY lonely for the occasional brand new player. Even when they make it to the 'big' cities, they still hardly find anyone.

Not a good feeling when looking for a MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER experience. Seriously, roll up a new toon and see how many other people are there on the noob progression paths with you. Sooner they get Isle of Dawn live the better so the noobs can at least know there are other noobs in the game. (I feel really sorry for anyone playing a Vulmane or a Raki..talk about playing the solo track).

Anyway, my mind is still open as I explore the changes in game, but I am not getting the 'born again Vanboi' feeling just yet.