Vanguard NDA Lifted - Get your popcorn ready!!!

[serrathen]

A short History on Vanguard beta from the former Psionicist class leader / level 50 psionicist

First let me introduce myself to those that do not know me. My name is Dink. Dink Dimbwinkle to be exact. I was/am/will always be/ a proud member of Ascension, the first level 50 psionicist and the original Psionicist class leader in Vanguard beta. I was rudely banned from beta for speaking my mind, and naming names for why Vanguard is in the pathetic shape that it is in today. That aside let me just say that I truely feel Vanguard has an immense amount of potential, sadly that potential may never be fully realized with the current leadership on the adventuring dev team (Tagad & Talisker mainly).

To begin let me say that when I first found out about Vanguard I was psyched. Reading the FAQ (the original version before Beta 3 led me to believe that this game would be my home for years and years to come. Not only was this game looking back at older MMO's / MUDS to provide inspiration and solutions to problems that were present in current MMO's, but it was being made by a rather star-studded cast of developers. There was of course Brad and Jeff, but Nino doing sound, Tom King doing the UI, and alot of the same people that brought us EQ.

I first got in beta in the first days of Beta 2. Upon logging in my first time I chose (it was the only option at that point) Brennan's Stead. My initial impression was one of omfg this game is incredibly beautiful. I went around town hailing NPC after NPC (there were no indicators of quests back then) then made my way to the lowbie dungeon cave. I ended up playing every class up to level 10 at this point, just testing, experimenting, and trying to find a group of people to group with on a regular basis. I ended up picking a shaman and a psionicist to play in my early days, spending the vast majority of my time bugging bugs, replaying low level content over and over.

The experience was new, it was grand, combat was reaction based, much moreso back then, and as Oloh stated it was very much like playing Magic the Gathering, combat was slow, but different. Combat back then required you to react moreso to what the opponent was doing. You could see what the opponent was doing before they did it, so if you had a counter or saw a spell that needed to be countered, or you needed to stun the opponent from performing said action you could. Alot of combat was relying on chains to do the major damage to the opponent where The problem back then that everyone complained about though, was that combat was too slow. Litterally fights would last a rather long amount of time. So Sigil began to tweak, trying desperately to get this combat system to where it was fun and visceral.

Without going into the entire detail there wasn't a day that went by that I was not playing Vanguard. I ended up meeting a guy named Adamar and joining his guild Ascension. At the time it was just Adamar, a guy named Rune (didn't play much cause of school), and myself. We met shortly after the first class revamps were happening. Adamar and I began grouping together regularly. I ended up choosing a Psionicist for my main cause we found a delightful cleric to party with on a regular basis. Back then we shortly found out that there was still the holy trinity - a warror, cleric, and psionicist. Every other class could fill in as they wanted. We continued testing content (as much of it as was open at the time, which was really mainly the west coast of thestra. Definately some fun times, experiencing content no one else had really been to yet, experiencing dungeons such as Stormwynd Keep, basically attempting to expierience and bug as much as we could. Binding was only able to be done during this time btw at certain points (walls or cities). If you died it was a long corpse run, naked. People bitched, I didn't though cause I truly feel this is the way it should be. Backup gear was a necessity, well it was nice to have anyway, even though you could summon your corpse from pretty far away.

During this time there was hardly ever over 200 people on, really hardly ever. The main bitching was concerning no one playing, in the beta players mind because the low levels sucked, Brennan's Stead was god awful for a starting city and the first 10 levels were basically cave after cave. Combat was still too slow and you could definately sense that Sigil knew something was terribly wrong with their game. Invites kept pouring out, but people didn't play because fps was god awful, zones frequently crashed on a whim, and people just were not having fun it seemed, though we were having a blast.

I guess if there was a point in time that everything started changing it was when Brad sent out the email about the online questionaire, that used a rating system where 1 was good and 5 was bad, completely opposite than one would suspect. People were livid after realizing that they had filled out the questionaire wrong, employing Brad to scrap all the info from that quesitonaire and do another one, yet it never happened. Shortly after the questionaire combat changed again. Combat now had no global refresh, and was basically a spam fest, using chains to create damage. Amazingly this was when the greatest time in beta started. It was a time when more chunks opened (eastern Thestra), the invention of SPROING as Vanguard's DING came to be (by yours truly), NPC's got nerfed hardcore, and it was the beginning of the great AoE experience group boon. AoE experience was found out to be very simple - all you needed was a warrior, a psionicist, and a cleric, find undeads to fight and pull 6,8,10 or more at a time and nuke them down. We actually found this out by sheer dumb luck at the Ashendreg settlement, and it continued on for at least 10-15 levels. According to a unnamed dev source AoE was supposed to be useful in experiencing and was actually put in the game to be that way, anyway I digress... long story short was things were fun. Combat was fun because there were options to expierience groups (crawl, AoE, etc).

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It was at this time we expierienced the WONDER that will always be remembered : The expierience that was SPIRES KEEP, our first REAL AES expierience and the first ever experience of Vanguard's pseudo instancing.

Spires Keep was where New Targanor stands today. It was a series of Towers on top of a huge ridge overlooking the entire southeast of Thestra. The towers sat on huge spires that were only accessible via rope bridges. Each bridge had undead wandering to and fro, and in each tower there was at least one placeholder for a named. Each placeholder would drop a orb, and each was named after a numeral (i,e : aleph, bet, gamma, delta, etc..). There were 10 ph / named in all. It took several nights of attempting this to get it complete. Soaring hundreds of feet high grinding rope bridge to rope bridge was intense, as it was amazing. The view was again fantastic. You could easily see almost all of Bucanner's Cove, Spires Keep, Dead Glade, and probably into Gorgalog and Ruin Falls as well. The sight aside, once we killed all the PH's / named (crap loots btw), the final tower had an NPC stranded there. After hailing him he gave the group leader a disk. The orbs were then placed on the disk by the group leader (Adamar in this case, who was also Main Looter), and once all were placed on the disk the disk became right clickable. After a chunkwide (?) notification [and trying to contact our GM friend (not Daegarmo cause he/she/it is an ass and should IN NO WAY BE LEAD GM)], we clicked what would in turn be the best expierience any of us have had in Vanguard, ever.

Clicking the disk instantly teleported us to an unmarked, and unreachable location in the current chunk. It was a spire all to itself with a ruined spire. After exiting the ruined spire (again the view was incredible), the AES even started. A named spawned, then shortly after defeating that named, another named spawned, then yet ANOTHER NAMED!!! After all three were dead the boss spawned. Ventrillo was just omfg after omfg after omfg. We were yelling and shouting in excitement and amazement (I even woke my wife). We (sadly) rather quickly killed the boss and Adamar got a phat and I do mean phat breastplate.

Sadly in conclusion Spires Keep is gone. It is no longer there.
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Not too long after Spires Keep things changed...

It all started with the evil that is Global refresh. At first it wasn't bad (.9 sec). Then it slowly inched upwards. AoE groups became limited to 6 mobs max (the Gregor patch), NPC's got a boon of HP, AC and DPS (which really needed to happen, but again it got worse and worse). The scales of balance had begun. Ascension by now was in its 30's and was the only guild to have a full group every night to expierience with (we were not the only high level players though). Silky had a few members still playing, but players like Oloh, Perne, and Company were rarely ever around.

LET ME PAUSE FOR A MINUTE AND SAY THIS : I HAVE ALWAYS STATED AND STILL CONTINUE TO STATE THAT VANGUARD DOES NOT ACTUALLY START BEING GOOD UNTIL LEVEL 30+. For some strange reason it seems (or seemed anyway) that they spent the vast amount of their time designing the higher level content, and completely and I do mean completely forgot how to make the noobie/low level expierience fun.

New Targ is um let me just say its freaking huge, and its jam packed with nasty undead everywhere you go. One dots, two dots, 5 dots that have knockback, 6 dots with AoE's. Really good zone. There are also some excellent AES encounters and events there. And the fun only begins there. I will say that the upper level content I have seen (Dargun's Tomb, Portal of Sartok, High level raiding) will be insanely fun and challenging. You will need nights, weeks, and even months to accomplish the higher level content in Vanguard, and thats only on one continent. It will require alot and I mean alot of time, faction work, and questing. Not only that but it will involve skill, and lots of it. It just amazes me saying all this since this game is apparently geared toward a "core gamer", who in all honesty 2-3 hours a night would NEVER, and I mean NEVER accomplish.

Back to the story - We started to concentrate on Old Targanor and work our way towards getting the levels needed to clear Dargun's Tomb and get the uber lewts. The end of beta 2-2.5 was now upon us and we were either just reaching 50 or almost there. We raided the entire final week in hopes that we could twink in beta 3. *snap* oh well...

Anyway about this same time the new death penalty was being discussed. Brad wanted to try altars. I was furious, other people were happy. Oh well no biggie, maybe it would help. Then binding changed. Death would respawn you at your closest bind point, or in a safe spot in the zone. K I was really getting worried now, things are getting way too easy.

So beta 3 started. Altars came in and they looked god awful (and they were later changed to look even more awful). About this same time my good friend Talisker asked me to be Psionicist class leader. He had reservations you could tell, especially since people that know me and know my posts know I tell it just as I see it. Fuck the bullshit, I don't have time for that crap. I was a known hater of his rogue design, really of almost every class he had designed ever. They all sucked. Even when designs that were presented (such as Elidroth's rogue) that had paths!!! was presented he chose a more simple incarnation, one that I still feels sucks ass. Anyway, my "job" as class leader was according to Talisker, "Here’s the deal – You’ve no doubt seen the stickies on the archetype forums. You will each be responsible for one (some of you have co-leads) of those posts. Update them with Bugs and issues; keep us abreast of the details around each class. This will save us a ton of time as we won’t have to filter/wade through all of the other irrelevant stuff when we get to fixing things. That, from a high level, is your mandate. Pretty simple, yeah?". In return us class leaders were to get Test Characters (which we did get), forum moderators (which we also got), and special titles that would be visible on all forums (never happened). We also got Talisker and Avairs MSN Messenger addy, which we could use to contact them. Anyway none of this is really important, just wanted to clarify for the rest of you all what we were really there to do. Long story short Avair listened to my ideas, Talisker responded only when I flamed him for me getting banned for blaming the pathetic state of class design on him (but really its just as much Tagad, Brad, and Jeff's fault), after Brad's epic this is what we are doing now deal with it or leave post, which I still wish he or someone else in the community would share with the community at large cause they deserve to hear it as well.

So if you are still with me. Binding was next to be replaced. Oh goodie now my thoughts are how can they possibly fuck this up, eh? Well they put in bindstones. Hey, lets make it even quicker to get your corpse, since the death penalty is really harsh and the carebears are who we want playing our game. Not only that lets put them in every chunk!!!! Anyway the game got really boring really quick now. Fights took forever, crawls would almost always end badly, combat was not fun, just chain after chain, or in my case mez, mez, then dot, back to mez, mez, then nuke dead, repeat.

Ive kept up with the recent goings on, and gameplay seems to have gotten a bit better from what I gather, but I will only believe that when I see it myself. Revamps continued, but not all classes seem to have gotten attention (like the psionicist). I still am hoping that its more of a psionicist / illusionist hybrid than the enchanter / illusionist / psionicist hybrid it currently is. Psionicists once were incredibly powerful, and their chains at one point in time worked EXTREMELY well, exactly how chains should work imho - where the final spell in a chain produces the most damage. I long, and have longed to see a real Psionicist in an MMO. Vanguard's current version is definatley not it.

So in conclusion - Thanks for listening, and as you hopefully see the higher ups in Sigil really don't understand that their game is a HARDCORE game, not for the faint of heart, with an average PC, or those with a couple of hours here or there to spend. Vanguard is a game that has changed its Vision, scope, and purpose since the initial FAQ. In my eyes Vanguard development suffered from shift of focus, trying this then that then the other, instead of doing things right the first time around. There is alot of wasted time that can still be seen and heard, from the lack of content, to the gameplay, to the class design. Instead of building on the best concepts (AES, pseudo instancing), and building on them alot of rework was done (Thestra was redone, almost every class got at least 3 repasses, three different UI's, redoing character models at least 3 times, I could go on...), and alot of time and money was wasted imho. I would personally have rather seen Thestra by itself, fully finished and filled to the brim with content, well done class designs fully fleshed out and not WoW clones, character models that actually had tails and were complex in nature, and most importantly fun and innovative gameplay than what we will see at release. Contrary to what Brad thinks this game truly is not ready, and will not have the subscriber base that he thinks it will have three months in. It will take a full year, maybe more to fix what needs fixing (gameplay and content), and truthfully I feel that will be too late. The world is georgeous, and I truly feel will only get prettier as the game / engine progresses. The engine they picked is definately the best one and will last for years and years. Maybe Brad and Jeff can fix their mess. There are truly developers in Sigil that give a shit - Nino, Jerrith, Cylus, Avair, and maybe even Elidroth that I know would do a damn good job at fixing this game if given the chance. I hope so because I so want/wanted to call it my home.

~Dink Dimbwinkle

[Tagad Sigil]

For the record, Spires Keep is still there. The area just isn't reopened yet

~Tagad

[Sinter1]

Think that pretty much sums it up. Soo much potential but in the end it just seems to be another game in the WoW/EQ mode... nothin revolutionary or special about it.

[rinthea]

Thanks for that, a good read.

[Ayeshala]

The new post final revamp Psionicist looks great, we'll know for sure when the level cap is raised and we can test Mind Spies correctly.

Edit: But the Psionic Barrier change sucks nuts.

[Ham n Cheese]

The game has some of the ugliest character models ever and the combat is incredibly fucking boring

/end nda post

[Talenvor]

Thanks for the post Dink, that was interesting to read.

I was only in beta for about 2 weeks before phase 5 hit but I completely agree about the newbie stuff not being fun or exciting. I played a few different classes to lvl 10 and none of them blew me away. I was bored more often then not, which is a shame. Among other things. the combat just didn't have any livliness to it. I had heard so much hype about combat but all it is is button spam and hoping for some ho-hum chains to activate. I hope I can stick it out long enough to hit my upper 20's/low 30's when the "fun" supposedly starts...

[Jait]

Originally Posted by rinthea

Thanks for that, a good read.

Agreed.

I've laid off posting my clear loathing for Vanguard simply 'cause I deleted it about 2 weeks after playing in an early Beta. But clearly you gave it a lot more time and patience than I did. Putting in all that time and effort, you make for a pretty good "Expert Witness". You've sealed the deal for me.

I'd keep an eye outside your window for random Ferrari Drive-bys the next few weeks. If you hear some gunshots and "I'm Brad McQuaid Bitch!", duck..... fast.

[Dashal]

I'll have to re-read this. I swear these things you Ascention guys write sound like good reviews to me, yet you open up like you're about to trash the game to bits.

[Digits]

I always thought you guys who leveled to 50 in beta 2.0 and 2.5 were fucking insane. I completely agree with you about the one continent vastly preferred over three continents. Brad thought this was EQ1 all over again, where you could just throw a bunch of good ideas at the wall and people will fill in the rest. That would have worked for two continents, maybe, if the systems behind it such as social intelligence were much more finely tuned.

Although I think they fucked up the most with the 5 combat revamps they had, each one dynamically different than the last. They probably could have made the original system work out with enough thought and TLC, but they threw the cliche out with the bathwater and they're still scrambling to get something great. It's presentable and acceptable, sure, but it definitely isn't optimal or desirable.

[Flinch]

While I respect your opinion and I'm sure that Vanguard CAN be a good game, I have zero interest in games where I'm told 'by level X, the game becomes fun'.

This sort of fucked up reward system for MMOs is one of the things I hate about the genre, and it was one of the things WoW and, to a lesser extent, EQ got right: they were fun to play right at the very beginning, not X levels in.

[serrathen]

Originally Posted by Dashal

I'll have to re-read this. I swear these things you Ascention guys write sound like good reviews to me, yet you open up like you're about to trash the game to bits.

I am POSITIVE that other Ascension members will be posting their thoughts as well. Truthfully all of us gave ALOT (see: shitloads) of time testing, and I do mean testing Vanguard. We all truly wanted Vanguard to be the game it very well could have been, and there is ALOT of positive there - the crafting is well done, albeit a bit grindy, the diplomacy system is definately fun (even though I would have preferred it be more like a chose your own adventure game than a card game), and then you have the AES / pseudo instancing, along with the killer and I do mean killer High End game / Raiding Concept. Thing is its a game that yearns for the HARDCORE gamer, and plays like a bad WoW clone. There is just so much there that says "could have been" that its just sad... just sad.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by serrathen

Wall of Text hits you for 1000. Wall of Text crits you for 5000. Wall of Text hits you for 50. You die.

Anyway, interesting early stuff. What can I say I like the game, I like the models, I like the newbie areas (well Kojan), I like the combat. I don't think the other newbie areas are any worse or any better than anything I've seen in WoW or EQ.

With respect to the Wall of Text. I'm looking forward to 30. But as we're in open beta I just don't have the gumption to get any character that high right now. Too much work at this point for a char that is going to be deleted.

[Dashal]

Originally Posted by serrathen

I am POSITIVE that other Ascension members will be posting their thoughts as well. Truthfully all of us gave ALOT (see: shitloads) of time testing, and I do mean testing Vanguard. We all truly wanted Vanguard to be the game it very well could have been, and there is ALOT of positive there - the crafting is well done, albeit a bit grindy, the diplomacy system is definately fun (even though I would have preferred it be more like a chose your own adventure game than a card game), and then you have the AES / pseudo instancing, along with the killer and I do mean killer High End game / Raiding Concept. Thing is its a game that yearns for the HARDCORE gamer, and plays like a bad WoW clone. There is just so much there that says "could have been" that its just sad... just sad.

I get you, and I look forward to reading all of their stuff and whatever else you write.. I'm just saying a lot of Ascention guys tell storys of how amazing this and that was in the game. Very passionate about it. Then eventually it gets to "they added bind stones, altars then it just started sucking..." and I'm not clear what exactly happened heh.

[Vorph]

What's funny is that most of the things he hates about the game I think are fine, but there's an entirely different set of things that make me hate it.