Think of all the ranger jokes you ever heard in your EQ days. Then repeat them, if you dare, to Forsh of
The Vanguard Ranger. These guys mean business, in a rangerly sort of way, as witness one of the games they feature on their website. The game is a practice range where your avatar stands a distance away from your opponent (computer- or human-run), and the two of you let arrows fly at each other, as you calculate the range and angle of the arrow for maximum damage. You and the opposing archer keep on shooting until one of you is dead. Steely nerves, or what?
One of the first class-specific sites to hit the Vanguard community, The Vanguard Ranger was founded early in order to establish a place for the ranger community to communicate and get information prior to any IGE sites popping up. One of the things that the folks at The Vanguard Ranger are adamant about is that they want nothing to do with secondary merchants or their advertising. This is largely due to their experience with the former "Rangers' Glade" in EQ.
Forsh, co-founder and site admin of The Vanguard Rangers, talks about his feelings when the Ranger's Glade (a huge EQ class-specific site) accepted advertising from one of the more aggressive secondary market merchandisers, IGE. "We felt sold out," Forsh said, "sold out by the community when they offered space for advertising to IGE." This is no joking matter with the Vanguard Rangers. Forsh's goal is to keep the site free of any advertising. "We are aware of these types of predatory practices," he said, "and are not willing to allow this to happen on our watch."
The Vanguard Ranger was created by a few MMO ranger veterans. "It has been established to serve the ranger community as best we can," said Forsh. "I am not sure how many class sites exist, and indeed it is hard to form one with the game not being released yet, but we're a group of devoted MMO players who enjoy playing the ranger class and would like to have a nice place for the community to go to."
The driving forces behind the establishment of this new site are Forsh and Llantius. Forsh is a former ranger of EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot. He has been playing his EverQuest ranger for over five years. Llantius is a former ranger in EverQuest with the Blades of Wrath guild, one of the most distinguished guilds on the Torvo server. Players on that server might remember Blades of Wrath's several recent serverwide firsts when it came to conquering game content.
The two men met many years ago in EQ's Highkeep, where they battled goblins together. This camaraderie drew the two into a sort of ranger brotherhood, and they have been friends ever since. Llantius has since retired from EQ and is backing the development of The Vanguard Ranger. He also loves the ranger class and explains: "My reason for being a ranger is like the idea of light armored warriors...not meant specifically for tanking but do great damage and have a lot of versatility."
Llantius and Forsh both see the site as a service to the Vanguard community and especially the rangers in the community.
Forsh emphasized the principles upon which The Vanguard Ranger was founded and how the site will uphold these ideals. "We're here to make sure the Vanguard ranger community is in the hands of the people it should be, the rangers. You probably think that sounds silly, but you'd be surprised at the way a community can be torn apart when it is sold out to 'second market' MMORPG companies. Second market companies need access to server/class boards to drive customers through their doors with advertising--that won't happen on our watch."
When you travel over to
The Vanguard Ranger site to check it out, you will notice a scrolling news feed on the upper right of the main page, which displays and promotes Vanguard Crafters, one of the more recent sites to join the Vanguard Affiliates. I asked Forsh about this, wondering what the connection was. He replied, "My connection with Vanguard Crafters isn't really because of anything special, but you'll find that many rangers are crafters of some sort due to fletching being something they get really into. Having a [crafting] news feed just benefits the rangers by providing them a quick rundown of the headlines over there, and it helps the Vanguard Crafters by giving them a link over to their site. It's a win win."
That's the kind of thinking that makes the Vanguard community strong. Forsh and his crew contemplate carrying it a step further by applying for Affiliate status with the Vanguard folks. He told me, ”I would really like us to become an Affiliated site, and no I haven't started the process yet. I began looking into it only recently. I think it would be very hard for a class site to become one due to the fact that our slice of the pie is much smaller than the portals that talk about a wide variety of issues." Big is not necessarily always better, no matter what the ads tell you. If this site turns out as I think it will, the fact that it is small will in all likelihood have no bearing on its admissibility to the wonderful world of Affiliate-dom.
When I first visited The Vanguard Ranger, my initial impression was of a simple site, clean and clear, one that was gearing up to be of service to the community. I was also struck by the cleverly drawn art on the site and was surprised to find that Forsh had done it all, including the three that are displayed in this article.
Don't come away without trying their games…the archer one is really a blast (and yes, I killed the other guy, with lots of gory red blood splashing all over the place—you don't think I am in adventure/battle MMOs by accident, do you?).
The other game had me stumped for a while, and I am ashamed to admit that I had to get Forsh to tell me how to get started. I'll give you a hint—you are supposed to wipe out the dots, not put new ones in, sort of like Whack-A-Mole, only with dots. The game is there for the rangers to practice their reflexes—honestly, despite all the jokes made about rangers in EQ, in reality (okay, virtual reality), you wouldn't want to meet one of these guys or gals in a dark forest.
In our communications together, Forsh indicated he could use some help with the site from volunteers. His biggest need right now is a writer. "We have nobody to write and I think that is a very important thing for us to have," he said, "...a creative writer to draw people in." One thing the Vanguard community is NOT short on is good writers. So Ranger fans, there is an opportunity for you. Pop on down to the
Vanguard Ranger website and post on their forum...or send Forsh an email at
forsh_eisenfaust@hotmail.com
We wish them all the best in building their community and achieving the Affiliate status that is much harder to get these days, but oh so worth the time and effort. (Go
here to visit The Vanguard Ranger.)
The Vanguard Ranger article © 2004 by Raya
Original ranger drawings © 2004 by Forsh
All rights reserved.
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The Vanguard Ranger
