[Gwen Rockpounder]

I've not quite finished the island yet, I'm at the temple which I presume is the final area.

Someone earlier asked for island thoughts from old players. I've tried a couple of times to play VG before, i was even one of the loons who bought it at launch. The VG you see now is night and day from the old one. The graphics finally run decently on my machine and damn some of the views are nice. I get the odd hitch here and there and so far I think I've only chunked a couple of times on the island which seemed to pause for only 2-3 seconds instead of the horrible old 20-30 second ones. Combat animations for a 2handed weapon using human are very nice and flow very well from one movement to another. I've not tried any of the freakier races and only saw humans, dwarves, gnomes and one dog so far from the 100+ (yes, it has been that busy at the weekend!) different players I've seen kicking about. Population wise it's been the busiest I've seen VG since I played at launch which was helpful as some of the quest areas are tuned with very quick respawns and multi-mob aggro's which could overwhelm someone new to the game very quickly. However with the death penalty not kicking in until presumably you have left the island it's mostly a case of just rebuff and head back to where you were, dying in the temple at the end is a bit more of a pita as you have to re-hire the flying mount to get there.

Yes, flying mounts feature very early in the levelling process and it's a decent carrot. You get to hire one for 10 minutes for 25 copper. Once you've flown around the landscape for a bit and seen some of the gorgeous views the engine is capable of it's an incentive to get off your arse and try and get one yourself at some point. Not knowing bugger all about VG atm, I hope it's not level 50 before you'll see one again.

One thing I've always liked about VG is the random nameds they pop into almost very area that has some monsters. Bash away for a few minutes in a camp and more often than not something with a different name will spawn that has at one item in its drop table that is decent for the level and area. Doing that around the island has netted me half an outfit of decent gear to go with the loot that the new quests provide.

They've gone the EQ2 TimDeep way of gearing up players with loot from initial quests, it seems to be much better than it used to be in the earlier levels and doesnt make you feel like you are still wielding a pointy stick and dustbin lid at level 10. There is no access to mail or /claim items whilst on the island and no way to get back once you leave.

One thing that always annoys is bag space. Someone in a focus group must have noticed that new players always have issues with it so they have bags dropping from mobs very reguarly and bags from quests as well, however the amount of stuff that drops means these still get filled up very quickly. Unless I'm blind and missed it, there's no banker in the early stages so you have to carry all your crap around and if you start harvesting etc as well bag space is a constant juggle.

Anyways, this is turning into a ramble so will wind down here. If you got the mail and haven't tried VG for a while, give it a look! Whether it will be enough to sub you after a month, i don't know. I'm enjoying it at the moment which is good enough!