New Vanguard Previews!

[Lleauaric~EW]

Looking real good.
http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=18879
http://www.gamergod.com/review_display.cfm?reviewid=52

According to informed sources, McQuaid has said that Sigil will be steering away from instancing in Vanguard. Therefore, how the reduced camping for prized items will be implemented is something of a mystery, since traditionally in quests a generic free-for-all ensues when X amount of players all vie for one hotly contested piece of phat lewt. I'll be keeping my eye on that one to find out what ingenious method the Vanguard team comes up with to solve that problem.

Apparently, areas have been created to cater to different styles of play. One type of area will be geared to the casual player (soloing, duoing, trioing), another type to the group (no mention yet of the group cap number), and the last type to raiding--each type with its own ascending degree of time commitment. The harder the type of encounter, the greater the risk and, of course, the greater the reward.

From what I can see, after looking through the literature and reading some of the interviews of the dev team, Sigil is out to garner as much of the MMO market as possible, both casual player and hardcore gamer, by building on the experience of other successful games...what works, what doesn't work. Taking a leaf from their former success of making sure the end game was exciting, the Sigil team has adopted the motto, "Content is King." They intend to keep the challenge and throw out the snoozers. The tools the team plans to use to achieve these lofty goals are new technology (no zoning, no camping), titillating travel (pirates and ships, horses and carts), a crafting system that will work hand in hand with the socio-economic aspects of the game, and innovations that are working in other games--like player-owned property, in-game guild management, working PvP servers, and a generous supply of beautiful art and integrated styles.

[A Lizard]

Previews of what, the official FAQ and messageboards? All they did was rehash what's been known for months. I didn't see anything new.

lame

[Lleauaric~EW]

Yes, because EVERYONE follows as closely as you do, as a matter of fact, I posted this SPECIFICALLY for you, woe to me that I repeated what you already know!
And if you dont spend hours reading the boards and scouring for information "months" ahead of time, you dont deserve to know any of this.

Grats on your phd in Vanguard, heres a lollipop.

[Fammaden]

Looks nice. I dont know about the mob models, but it is way too early to care. I do like the sound of thier philosophies. "Content is King" indeed. CiK for the win!

[xilsharn]

I could be wrong here, but my feeling after watching games for a few years now is that too much innovation in one big gulp is going to disenfranchise the average player.

Innovation has to come slowly. Brad & Co. are going in the right direction by taking successful pages from other company's books, but creating a whole new gaming paradigm where little to nothing is familiar, regardless of how great the ideas are, is going going to alienate large segments of the consumer population, in my opinion.

[Eomer]

Thank god for no instancing. Such a cop-out way to get away with making less content.

[Warrik]

Originally posted by A Lizard
Previews of what, the official FAQ and messageboards? All they did was rehash what's been known for months. I didn't see anything new.

lame

Agree. I didnt read anything new here.

though, one site had this:

Genre: MMORPG
Publisher: Sigil Games Online
Developer: Microsoft
Release Date: TBA

Isnt that backwards? I thoguth Sigil was the developer and Microsoft was the publisher.

[Sampo]

h

[Sampo]

rox0r?

[Ravensign]

I liked instancing at first, but I am becoming a little more down on it as time goes on.

It starts to make gameplay a little to lather-rinse-repeat.

I think it's great for things like high end content to keep guilds from clashing for the same content, but if it becomes the crux of the game like COH and LDON for some people, I think it makes the game so bleh after a while, like luke-warm oatmeal.

I think they certainly can make a game without instancing thats viable, EQ made it along time and had plenty of non-instanced content before LDON.

[Lenaldo]

Thtas my opinion of instancing.... sure it feels great some of the time.. i mean how many times have you ggone to a dungeon to only find out that your spot is camped? But the monotony of alwyas knowing you can hunt at your "favorite" spot gets old quite fast... when you take the challenge out of any game it becomes boring quite fast....

[Szlia]

The problem with CoH, LDoN or Kod'Taz trials is that the instances are the same or on a same template. It has nothing to do with instancing itself. It would also be dumb without instancing if in EQ the layout of Sebilis was the Same as the one of Karnor.

Instancing does not mean repetitive content, it means uncontested areas in the content.

Since I mentioned Sebilis, the crypt there could very well be instanced. It would not make the crypt less unique, it would only mean that you would always be able to go to the crypt when you want to. In a way it makes the content more common, but also less frustrating.

[Wrathcaster]

Originally posted by Lleauaric~EW
Yes, because EVERYONE follows as closely as you do, as a matter of fact, I posted this SPECIFICALLY for you, woe to me that I repeated what you already know!
And if you dont spend hours reading the boards and scouring for information "months" ahead of time, you dont deserve to know any of this.

Grats on your phd in Vanguard, heres a lollipop.

lols

i hadn't seen any of this, but then again, i don't scour the net for infoz either.

as far as instancing goes, one aspect of it that disappointed me was the desegregation it brought to the playerbase. In my experience, it really seperated people and the sense of community you felt in entering a dungeon where other adventurers were fighting, and piecing together a group from that base of people, if you indeed did not have friends with you.

I'm not going to say that instancing doesn't have a place in MMO's, only that I liked the ability to meet new people and have fun outside of your guild/friend base... To me, that's what really snagged me into EQ. I think that instancing should be used sparingly, if at all, perhaps to give you the opportunity to get with an aforementioned group of close friends when you so chose. I like the idea of epic fights being instanced perhaps, but if there's one thing I've learned, a determined and talented developer can do anything if they set their mind to it.

[Eomer]

I don't have a problem with instancing if it makes sense within the context of the game itself. Say, alternate planes of existence or something. But simply making every group zone into their own dungeon, so that they can all farm the same thing, presents a whole whack of different problems. For one thing, dropped items become less and less desirable on the open market, because there is now essentially an infinite supply of them, whereas before their rate of entry into the economy could be controlled and tweaked.

And like the above poster said, these games are online games, you are SUPPOSED to meet other people. If every time you go to hunt for awhile you are in a closed off separate area with just your friends, how exactly do you meet new people?

Again, I just think it's the cheap easy way out for relieving the need to create more content to keep the player base busy.

Besides, look at EQ itself. I quit soon after SoL, but up to that point I didn't think EQ was overcrowded. Over-concentrated, sure. But that's because everyone wanting to exp at the higher levs was in one of three or so dungeons. Meanwhile 90% of the zones on every server had less than half a dozen people in them, because there wasn't much of a reason to go to them. Howling Stones was a great example of a pretty good zone that was ALWAYS empty. There are of course tons of examples of just outright shitty zones that deserved to be empty, as well.

[Lefazz]

I'm sure the final game will have amazing graphics. I mean, Keith Parkinson is on the art team, right?

But, I must admit, those screenshots look like ass.