VanguardFollow

i did the same. made a bunch of alts.

it wont be long before he relaizes how much time it takes to level 1 toon, much less 6, not to mention, the classes are dynamic enough you really have to switch your mindset to effectivly play a differant class. toss in tradeskills, and diplomacy, for whatever that does.... and its a long path.

you can solo all the way up, but, it is significantly slower and much poorer loot to do so. for instance, in a good group, you can make 1/3 of a level in 2 hours of continious fighting, soloing, about 1/10 of a level. its that drastic. Vanguard still doesnt quite get it when it comes to figuring out what most gamers want. easy in easy out. but what vanguard delivers is what all group orientated games deliver. begging for a group more than fighting in one, and spending alot of your time in a group sitting around waiting for a tank or healer.

loot wise, however, is not really an issue. the player made loot is very good in comparison to droped dungon loot. you COULD do nothing but trade skills and diplomacy and still aqquire enough adventruing loot upgrades to keep your toon well dressed with just the auction house. there is a very active auctiuon house now.

im at 30 now. grouping up to now wasnt too bad. there are like 4 major spots every one goes to, and you eventually can get in a group and finnish the dungon quests.

at 30, the bottom seems to fall out. havent been able to find a dungon group in over a week now. cant even find a popular dungon that attracks a large enough group of people to form one. people just dont want to group. there could be over 100 people within my level range, and yet, you open the lfg window and mabe you find 5 or 6 peeps lfg, and none of them a cleric or tank. none of them in the same continent either much less the same area.

the created a great EQ1 upgrade. better than EQ2. but the market doesnt want to group. they SAY they do, but when it comes right down to tagging yourself lfg, they dont do it. they solo along ocasionally looking for a group looking for more that might interest them as long as it isnt too far away and as long as they already have a tank and healer and are ready to go.

they are looking for easy in / easy out.

its not the game, its the people playing it. the game is great. the graphics are awsome.

had a blast till 30. worth every penny i paid for it. but unless something drastic changes, i may be done with this character and might start focusing on another. problem is, even though the world is HUGE and there are tons of places to fight, there are only a hand full of places people gather for groups. only one continent is very popular and active. the rest are just starting places for toons then every one migrates to thestera, weather they are evil or good. then they fight in three rivers and the level 15 dungon there, move to the ant hill, then to TC dungon till they ding 30, then they scatter to the winds never to be seen again.

i found a cave with a TON of quests, alot of them for small groups (3 dots), totally empty. perfect for my level, but totally deserted with the exception of an ocasional soloer here and there. so many quests, i couldnt take them all. not enough room in the quest journal for them. just no people,

do a search for level 30 peeps, get a page and a half of returns. no 2 in any one zone. do a seach for level 30 peeps taged lfg.....4 returns in 4 differant areas, and not a tank or healer amoung them.

its the people. they TALK group, but they dont actually want to PLAY group. that is why WoW has 8 million subscribers, and the rest MIGHT have 1 million all together to split between EQ1, EQ2, SWG, DAOC, AO, planetside, and now Vanguard.

awsome world, tons of quests, great game. wrong type of player targeted. too bad too. if this game had launched when EQ1 did, it would have blown them out of the water. certainly better than EQ2 is right now.

people want easy in / easy out. 90 percent of them anyway. a great game delivered to the wrong crowd.

With the set-up I have I'm getting 60fps out in the wild on medium settings with my clip plane at max. Last night, though, I entered my first large city, Khal, and my fps dropped in half. I wasn't surprised because I'd read plenty about that phenomena, and I wasn't really bothered by having only 20-30fps.

All in all, that's the biggest surprise for me, that the game does run so well.

I forgot to mention how the game runs for me and my system specs. I have the graphics set to Medium/Balanced and the clipping plane is maxed out. My resolution is 1680 x 1050 (20" widescreen monitor).

My system has a 3.73GHz processor, 2 Gig of RAM, and an ATI Radeon X850XT 256MB Platinum Edition video card. I plan on picking up a new nVidia card as soon as I can but I haven't really had a chance yet to review prices for the high end cards.

Bhodi, I humbly recommend creating a few toons and check out different starting areas. Some are far more interesting than others. Two that come to mind with some sense of story is my Half Elf Disciple and my Goblin Necromancer. The Halfling area was really great as well. The Dwarven area is still a bit disappointing to me. The Gnome area is pretty cool, good for hunting and starting out.



You are assuming that I plan to actually play them all up (8 toons, btw) to max level when all I'm really doing is simply checking out some different race/class combos until I settle on my "main" toon. Hell, I'll probably re-roll some more to try other combinations. As to the mindset comment, well, duh - diversity is far more interesting than playing 8 toons exactly the same way. I do appreciate your take on the diplomacy and tradeskills - that's why I'll probably only have one tradeskills toon but I have yet to check out tradeskills.

Also, I'm not really concerned with getting my toons maxed out quickly. This is definitely a game of exploration (which is far more interesting to me) and like someone else mentioned in this thread, I'm hardly paying attention to my leveling - I guess I was having too much fun to notice. I think if folks stop worrying about leveling up so much and focus on the adventure itself, the game is very much like the best parts of EQ back in the day. I also like that you aren't led by the nose (linear) like you are in WoW and LOTRO (to a lesser extent).

Definitely need 2gb of ram and a decent 256mb card. I am wondering, has Brad and crew lived up to their promise and provided a fix to dual cores?
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i have a amd duo core and it runs fine. 2 gigs of ram too. looks like crap on my amd 3000 though.
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You are assuming that I plan to actually play them all up (8 toons, btw) to max level when all I'm really doing is simply checking out some different race/class combos until I settle on my "main" toon. Hell, I'll probably re-roll some more to try other combinations. As to the mindset comment, well, duh - diversity is far more interesting than playing 8 toons exactly the same way. I do appreciate your take on the diplomacy and tradeskills - that's why I'll probably only have one tradeskills toon but I have yet to check out tradeskills.
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yea, im not too dissapointed about not getting a group lately. having a blast just exploring the differant areas. the graphics are just stunning. from the shadows on your toon, to the wake in the water, to boats, horses, and even the monsters. the dungons are high quality. definaly EQ1/EQ2 quality. much much superrior than anything in any other game including WoW. however....i did really enjoy the traps and hidden doors in D&D online. they rocked.

dont see alot of hope of actually seeing the post 30 dungons however. mabe ill start a healer. i dont know. havnet started the tradeskills, but many people have. i already see player made boats in places and a couple people in my guild are making bricks to build a house, working their way up to a guild house. i do keep my skinning up, tried keeping quarying up, but seems to be a shortage of the 2nd tier resources. i let it drop, now the places i hunt have nodes higher level than i can mine. /shrug.

i dont know how they will get people to group more though. there are just tooooo many places to go at any level, so peeps are spread out quite a bit, not counting the ones working on trade skills and diplomacy instead of hunting.

pondering a healer. but still having fun.

<burp>

Edited, Apr 16th 2007 11:15pm by GitSlayer

Don't confuse having the same layout for looking the same, cause they don't.

VG looks like ***, WoW's is infinitely more polished.

Bhodi, I haven't checked, but maybe you can provide your feedback about the ui to Sigil on their VG message boards - heck, it worked for you with LOTRO about the Dwarf beards!

Awesome shot, BT. I'll probably make a Half-Giant Warrior today.

I had a blast last night, but my biggest concern is frame rate in open areas - caves and indoors no problem, but it was pretty laggy/sluggish for me outdoors. I've got my settings on balanced and I had to set the clipping plane down to minimal. Hopefully, it was just a bad day - I didn't have to do that the other night (had clipping plane maxed out).

**Edit** I changed my settings from Balanced to High Performance and things improved dramatically. I was also able to max out my clipping plane again.

I'll be looking into a new nVidia card as soon as I can, because as it is right now, I'm not sure if raiding (at some point) or full groups will even be feasible right now.

I think BT mentioned last night that the framerate issue is being addressed, but I'll have to do some research myself.

Still, had a blast and I'm enjoying the game so far - it's definitely holding my interest.

Edited, Apr 17th 2007 11:17am by Snorre

Agree! The hairstyles are lacking, but at least they aren't plastic looking like EQ2.

Edited, Apr 17th 2007 2:52pm by Snorre

Actually I agree with you shadow, trains are not fun but they always added a layer of danger to the game that made it more alive, but then so did bad pathing so I am not going to complain to much.

*sighs*

Good times!

Paludal Caverns? Psshaw, that's not old.

Old are the trains that would come out of the depths of Blackburrow to meet you at the entrance if you aggroed one of those gnolls down in the pit.

I agree, though, trains and sharing dungeons with other folks are good for games. I really don't dig instancing.

As for the grouping thing, I'm nearly level ten now, with enough silver to buy my first mount as soon as I ding, and I'm planning to run my DK across Thestra to meet up with Smog--Snorre's dwarf pally. So at least we'll have two tanks. There's definitely a bit more involved in getting together with friends in this game, since travel is an adventure unto itself, but I'm looking forward to sight-seeing along the way.

One thing for sure, this is my new game. I could have an army of alts and not see all there is to see in this game, so that sells me. If you guys on Hilsbury want to put together a good, static group I'd be happy to reroll into something else, even, and level it to ten, get a mount, and then meet up. You guys have any idea what class your mains will be, or even what archetype, yet? I haven't found a class I don't like playing, really, but I think an obvious way to overcome the grouping issues SR mentions would be to have the base of a group already established, and then remain in relatively the same area so we could get together easily, and just add other folks as needed. Then again, I'm not even sure you guys are enjoying the game as much as me, in which case you can tell me to stop yammering like an excited kid.

Wrong forum, n00bs!

Was it Befallen that had the Scarecrow mobs with pumkin heads? That zone had some serious Train and pathing issues.

I agree with BT. I'll reroll just about anything if people are serious about grouping.