Vanguard Open Beta
 

Vanguard Saga of Heroes has gone into offical open beta.

http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions...a/landing.aspx

Oh it's open now? Tried the closed beta. It's ok, but nothing shocking.

You're better off playing Everquest 2 right now. Vanguard needs a lot of refining, which pretty much is going to happen during the course of 2007. Everquest 2 has similar content, but a lot more of it with a lot less bugs.

People say it takes 18 GIGS on the HD.
18!!!

after 24h of downloading this game so that it take up to 20gig space on my HDD, I uninstall it after only 20min of gameplay >.> like someone said, it's almost identical to everquest 2, from the graphic design to the gameplay (well there some difference but it's almost the same thing) and for a game that big I didn't find it really that pretty...I thought everquest, that is in the same style, look better...

really I'll pass on this one...

Vanguard is really nothing more than "True" EverQuest 2 considering the guys that made the original EverQuest (Verant) are the ones that worked on this. Verant was disbanded by SOE shortly before Shadows of Luclin came out for EQ1, and this is the result.

So yeah, expect EverQuest-like gameplay and graphcs if you dive into this.

20GB is fucking insane though

EverQuest was a great game when it first started out. I'd hoped the Vanguard team was going to take the MMORPG back to the 'world of fear, danger and consequences' mold, in opposition to the prevailing movement of MMORPGs today to be over simplified and penalty free, so as not to frighten off the casual player.

I'm dismayed to hear the comparisons with EQ2. Or are these comparisons only from those who haven't truly scratched the surface?

Nah, it's really nothing like EQ2. People just like to make that comparison because they use a similar "realistic" graphic style. spiritual successor to EQ, perhaps (I never played the original EQ so I wouldn't be able to tell), but it's on majority its own beast.

There's definately some.. a lot of performance issues that need to be squashed, but if you have the PC for it, it's a quality game. It's just not as all-encompassing as certain hard-hitters like WoW and such, as far as getting non-gamers and non-mmo players to start liking them. If you don't like MMOs, you won't be convinced to like it.

That said, I enjoy it a bunch. Was the rogue class leader in beta for a while, but stepped down to assistant lead since I'm really busy in rl lately.

If anything, check out the game for its Diplomacy system. Nothing quite like it's been done in an MMO before, and it really gives a neat storyline element to things. In a nutshell, you play an abstract card-game with NPCs in attempts to move through the flow of a conversation, gaining influence and social power in the world. Rewards affect all the elements of the game, so it's quite cool.

About the size... yeah, game's massive. Two continents and an archipelago of islands worth of content, 19 races with unique starting areas in most cases. There's also around 25 hours worth of music in the game, all really nicely composed. So that alone adds up to a good chunk of the client there.

If you're actually interested in the game, you can check out the wiki I help manage and update: http://www.vanguardspheres.com/wiki/Main_Page

Hey, wasn't really sure about making a new thread for this game so I'll post here instead. The games officially out for people who bought the pre-release and I just wanted to know who's out there in the world. I myself had the misfortune of ordering through amazon, who has neglected to send out a majority of the pre-order early access codes leaving me high and dry for the next few days. I definitely wouldn't mind having a few forum buddies to play with though.

I'm currently playing as the goblin Zallera on Florendyl, the RP server :)

Glad to see another Gamingforceite interested.

I'll check on that server when I actually get the game for sure. I never got into Everquest and my only experience with mmos are FFXI, PSU and WoW, not the best games for an RP experience but this game sounds like it could be pretty interesting in that aspect.

It has WoW's same combat feel and what-not in addition to EQ2's harvesting & crafting systems. I got into Phase 4 and found nothing new.

Just a 17-fuckin' gig game. Took forever and a day to uninstall. Nothing new here, so just move along. I promptly bought EQ2 after playing this, and I'm hooked. More polished, although not nearly as fluid as WoW's engine.

Twenty gigs?

*looks at his 120-gig HD with just over 30 gigs free on his data partition*

I'll pass, thanks. =\

I'm waiting for the retail release myself. My guild from Everquest and Everquest 2 have already moved over and are playing on Hilsburgh server so I'll be joining them soon. I'm looking forward to giving this game a try. From what I've heard and what I truly hope is Vanguard goes back to as Kolba said a world full of "fear, danger and consequences". I've grown tired of being led by the hand to end game content in recent MMOs. I want a high difficulty and steep learning curve and I want to be afraid of wandering about. Everything that made Everquest good I want in this game. I want to go back to the old days of spending 2 hours trying break the Fear Plane and looking at fields of corpses with people zoning in only to be summoned by Cazic Thule and get wtfpwned.