And Still I Play

A few weeks later I am still really enjoying Vanguard. Because of the guild, I've been splitting my play time between Vanguard and EQ2. If it weren't for that and Station Access, my preference would be to focus solely on Vanguard.

I've become addicted to diplomacy. I am one that doesn't enjoy card games. But although you use cards in your diplomacy, it just doesn't feel like a card game to me. Unfortunately, diplomacy is a bit bugged in certain starting areas and it took me a few tries with several alts before I found a good flow. My high elf in Leth Nurae has had the most luck with it and she's been spending more time on diplomacy than adventuring.

We've come across named mobs in our travels quite frequently. And it's always great being able to find upgrades that way. Drops from these type of mobs tend to be soulbound, so while I can't pass them along to alts, there are no frustrations of mobs being camped.

For me the world is truly immersive. Some cities I just love being in and interacting with the npc's. If only I could have a house there. I thought back to this post in which a Vanguard developer revealed that the game was pretty much put together in a year by people with no previous experience. They must have been some pretty darn talented people because it's an amazing world.

And I think the existing team has done an amazing job in "softening" the game a bit. I know a lot of the vets aren't happy with the changes that made mobs and travel a bit easier. But I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much back then. Long travel times are not how I want to spend my time gaming.

Honestly, this is the most I've an enjoyed an MMO in years.

The Fun Stops Here

I've been noticing a trend with the majority of my guild mates. Very few make it past the 30's before starting a new character. I even heard one make the remark that they lose interest in their characters when they hit 30. Looking at my own alts, I have several between 29 and 35 that I haven't played in quite awhile and actually dread logging in.

EQ2 is designed in such a way that things get a little tougher as you level. I find the starting areas to be very fun. I absolutely love Antonica and the levels there go too fast. The area is wide open and huge, with lots of quests found in various spots. From there I used to move on to Thundering Steppes, which starts to get tougher to navigate with heroic mobs placed here and there. However, these days with the Faydwer expansion, I move on to Butcherblock to draw that fun out for a little longer.

At 30 you're left with Enchanted Lands and Zek. For a soloer, Zek has a limited number of quests. The front half of Enchanted Lands has a number of quests; however the second half of the zone is nearly all heroic mobs. Except for high level harvesters, this section of the zone is usually empty. There aren't enough quests to get you through the 30's unless you group, which is rare these days, so it's time to do a bit of grinding.

At 40 the only option used to be Feerrott, since both Lavastorm and Everfrost are all heroic. In Feerrott, you only have a small portion of the zone to work with as a soloer and must do a lot of dodging to get some of these quests done. Fortunately, Steamfont is now an option. But by the time 50 rolls around, I'm just really done with this zone.

The 50's and 60's get even more cumbersome. Leveling becomes more and more of a chore as you progress.

I really have mixed feelings on this. I'm one of those who likes to stick with one character when I start a game and see it through to the end. I use that character to make money and then buff up my alts so they are not such a struggle to play. Even though it's grindy, I'm just stubborn and determined to see it through. And when you get to the end, you sort of go "Whew, I made it". In WoW, when I maxed was more like "Ok, now I'm up here with everyone else".

But how many times will people keep rolling alts that make it to the 30's before they tire of the game and move on? I don't want them to make it as easy as WoW, so the server is full of level 80's. They'd have to add new zones just to add more harvestables to accommodate. Getting some things done would become a nightmare. But I think something needs to be done from the mid 30's to 70 just to make things more fun and tolerable. I'm really hoping the expansion they're working on addresses these levels, rather than add more little used raiding zones.

Speaking of Vanguard...

The Age of Conan forums over at mmorpg.com are reading nearly identically to Vanguard's forums last year. "The game runs terribly!" "You do realize this is still beta don't you? It will be great in a couple weeks." blah blah blah

Being a Fileplanet member, I spent two nights downloading AoC. Only saw black screens when I attempted to log in last night. Finally made it in this morning with my resolution at lowest setting and all graphic settings as low as they can go. Knew I was in for trouble when I had lag and delays at character creation. Five minutes after hitting play I still wasn't in so cleaned house for awhile. Finally logged in and couldn't move. Took a couple steps....freeze....a couple more steps....freeze. Seeing as everything was cut down to minimum, world was just a blur. Logged out and deleted game. I could almost hear my computer rejoicing at gaining more breathing space.

Performance is worse than Vanguard ever was. Yeah they may optimize it some but doubtful it will be playable by the majority of gamers.

Vanguard - If Only...

I mentioned earlier we had picked up Vanguard. Gamestop had the collector's edition on sale for $19.99. We have Station Access, so considering we are already paying for the subscription that wasn't a bad deal at all.

I had intended to hold off on posting until I had reached higher levels, but after three weeks my highest is only 16. This is only partly due to experience gains being slower than other games, but mostly due to trying out various alts as well as crafting and diplomacy. Here's my take on some areas of the game:

Character Models - Character creation is still limited. There are 4 hairstyles and 4 faces. Despite the limitations, the models are decent enough looking and I was able to find combinations I was happy with. If nothing else, I definitely like them better than EQ2 models. The run animation for females is one of the best I've seen anywhere.

Gameplay - Quests flow better in some areas over others. In Halgarad, I had more quests than I could complete before outleveling. In Tursh, I ran out of quests at level 7 or 8. Those offered me were red. So I had to grind mobs to catch up. However, combat experience is not too bad, so it is feasible to level without questing. But for low levels, the differences in the starting towns will not be such an issue in a few months. They will be introducing a starting isle where you will remain until level 10.

But I do like the overall gameplay very much. It's much more my style of play. I don't feel annoyed by the quests as I did with LOTRO. They are usually completed not far from the quest giver and more often than not involve evil enemies rather than animals. The game presently is very soloable. Veterans complain it's too easy now and classes are overpowered. But I disagree. I think it's quite fun and hope this part doesn't change. Dungeon mobs are another matter though and do involve bringing friends.

Classes - I'm finding several classes to be very fun to play. My shaman had to pick an animal patron at level 15. This determines what pet I get, as well as what buffs. I went with the bear. The disciple is also fun. It's sort of a healer/monk class and she solos really well. The bard was probably one of the more interesting bard classes I've played. You compose your own songs to create a personalized buff. My highest level is a druid. Vanguard's druid is not a healer, but rather is classified as a spellcaster. They do have a minor heal though and from what I see so far are very effective soloers. With all classes, there are counterattacks to watch for so you can do some tremendous damage, or stop the npc from casting a spell, etc. I think it's a nice added element.

Travel - Travel is longer than most other mmo's, even with the new riftway system they introduced. It used to be you had to run to the main hub on the continent and take a boat to get to another continent. But now you can get there through the riftway. The riftway is a stone that brings up a map and it shows all the areas available and the level range. This is pretty handy for finding places to go in your level range. Unfortunately the regular maps in game don't show you where these riftways are. You just come across them eventually in your travels.

Speaking of maps, the game maps are some of the most vague I've ever seen and sometimes aren't very helpful at all. It's just basically a brown blob with some dots indicating only certain areas. There are no roads displayed and if you're in a large city trying to find your way around, it's still just a brown blob. I remember trying to find a trainer in New Targonor. I could see the dot where she was but never could figure out how to get to that spot. I ended up gating back to my starter town in frustration.

But back to travel, at level 10 you can purchase a horse. It's 10 silver which is actually a lot at that level. I had 25 silver. The mount is 40% run speed, but if you buy 5% horseshoes and a 5% bridle, you bring it up to 50%. Since my shaman had 30% run speed, we decided to not spend all our money on this and wait for the faster horse at 20. So overall, travel is not unreasonable.

Economy - Occasionally, we could find a nice affordable item on the broker, but for the most part it was just slightly out of our price range. On the plus side, most every piece of armor I put up for sale will sell. I price them very reasonably as I'm just happy to get more than what the vendor pays. So either there are a lot of new players or a lot of vets making new alts, or a combination of both.

Crafting - Crafting is complex and can be quite frustrating. You have a set amount of action points and have to click on various buttons in order to both make the item progress and give it durability. It starts out at grade D so the higher the grade, the better the finished product. If you run out of action points before completing, you end up with nothing. I lost some rare components because of this and found it very aggravating. When I first get a recipe, the best I can do is grade C. It seems I have to outlevel the recipe quite a bit before I can reach grade A.

One nice aspect though is that you can level doing tasks for the taskmaster and it doesn't use any harvestables. So technically you can level without having ever made a real item. But the crafting process is slow and does feel grindy in comparison to adventuring.

And if I could offer one suggestion....make the darn fuels stack to 200 or more rather than 25. You go through nearly 25 making one item.

Diplomacy - My first day in the game I was offered a diplomacy quest and I found the whole thing confusing and didn't know what I was doing. So after a week or so I came back to it and actually read the tutorial this time. Initially, I thought it was something where you'd actually be having to choose the right words to progress. But in reality, it's a card game. My first experience with it was in Tanvu. You have to do a series of quests in order to gain more cards. One of the final quests involved an npc I just could not beat. I looked up the quest and saw lots of posts of people having trouble with it. The few that said they finally beat it listed the cards to have on hand. I sat there with my pen and pad and wrote down which cards he played in response to mine and tried every combination I could think of. After two hours I gave up. And I couldn't progress further without completing this quest.

Determined to have at least one character advancing in diplomacy, I gave it another go with my Qalia alt. This went much better. However, when she reached level 4 the only quests offered required me to be level 5. So again I was stuck. I saw posts on the forums about others not being able to progress past level 4 and added my own two cents to the post.

Ok one more try. Maybe it's just the area. I logged in my Halgarad character and picked up the first quest. But it was bugged and wouldn't advance. Another visit to the forums showed others with the same issue and a dev posted that we should petition it. So I did. And within the hour a GM advanced my quest for me. For now I'm letting her bonus experience build up before advancing. Hopefully, that will get me past level 4.

But geesh, diplomacy is one of their selling points. They should have had this stuff worked out by now. I think if it actually worked, it might be something fun to do once in awhile.

Geography - There are three continents - Thestra, Kojan, and Qalia and 14 starting areas within those continents. This world is huge. First impressions mean a lot and not all starting areas are equal. So far I think Halgarad is the best area to be in. Not only because there are plenty of quests but also because the city is straightforward and manageable. Some of the other cities are just too big and confusing.

My character in Qalia has to go to Khal for training. This city has an inlet of water separating the two sides of it and I'm constantly swimming back and forth across this place. Considering swimming itself is annoying...this constant struggle with the mouse to stay afloat...I just don't like this place. I did eventually find a tunnel that connects to the two sides, but it's out of the way and involves more running.

Each of the three continents has it's own flavor. Most of Qalia is desert which generally is not my cup of tea. Kojan is a series of islands and much smaller than the other two continents. Thestra is more your standard fare offering forests, mountains and open fields. Each of the three continents has its own chat channel and the Kojan channels are definitely less active. While I prefer Thestra overall, the main city of New Targonor is to be avoided like the plague. You have to run through a long series of empty tunnels just to get to the entrance. Part of the city is underground and you must take a lift down and run through some more tunnels. The other is above and is just a tight confusing maze. From what I hear everyone crashes here as did I.

Housing - I love being able to have a house but honestly don't know if I care here. One day I thought I'd do some exploring. There was a huge section of the map that had no markings indicating what was there. So I set out in that direction. What I came upon was a housing area. I'm not talking about neat villages side by side as in DAOC. Here I found maybe 5 lots and then I'd have to hike quite a ways with no paths or roads till I found another spot. Lots were ridiculously expensive with high upkeep. And then you have the cost of building. You have to find crafters to provide certain components just to build. There were some areas with houses, but for the most part just empty lots.

They were so far off the beaten path and so cost prohibitive, there's just no point. I think everyone should be able to afford at least a small hovel. Housing should not be an elite thing requiring you to go on a week long hiking trip to get there.

Community - I can only base my opinion on my server. Before I chose a server, I took a look at the Vanguard players site to get an idea where all the power players hung out. Those were the servers I wanted to avoid so found myself on the Halgar server. This is considered to be the European server. The general chat channel has been very pleasant. For the most part players only use it to look for groups or fill groups or to ask questions, so you don't see a lot of nonsense going on in chat. The grouping requests take place mid 20's to 50.

One of the things I've missed from my EQ1 days is being able to buff people, but it's back in Vanguard. I am constantly getting drive-by buffs wherever I go and give them out whenever I can. In my opinion this contributes to community and often leads to striking up conversations with strangers. I was chatting with a fellow in the crafting hall. He brought up how he struggled with crafting and we discussed in general how things were just a little tougher here. He said he liked it that way though because it keeps the kids out.

Performance - Here's the big one that I've saved for last. During the final weeks of beta it was not playable for us. It has come a very long way since then. I don't experience crashes often; however, my husband does. We have identical systems but he keeps his stuff updated while I'm a bit lazy about that. So maybe laziness pays off here. I have my settings at medium low and the game still looks good to me. I do have graphical glitches on occasion. I know my video card is not up to par. But really for the most part I've not had too much trouble and don't get aggravated over performance.

In spite of the flaws I've mentioned, I am enjoying myself tremendously and have gotten quite addicted. I'll let you know if I still feel the same way in a few weeks. If only they had more staff to work on this. If only they would fix diplomacy. If only they'd fix the bugged quests, especially in your early experiences. If only I could have a practical house. If only performance could be optimized further. Then it would be closer to being what it should have been all along.

EQ1 - Best Left in the Past

Having no interest in the MMO's scheduled for release this year, I've been feeling a bit restless to play something different. Since we have Station Access and I came across Everquest - Secrets of Faydwer on sale, I thought I would pop back in to my old stomping grounds and catch up on all the expansions since I left.

I thought maybe some aspects of gameplay had changed and even perhaps had become a bit more user friendly. However, while there have been some changes, for the most part nothing has changed. After the release of the Luclin expansion, I switched mains to a beastlord and it was the most enjoyable class I've played. I thought about leveling her up and experiencing the new expansions. But the new expansions are pretty much like all the others after Planes of Power. At that point EQ became a raid-oriented game and the expansions that followed assume you are raid geared.

We did have some success hunting in The Serpent Spine expansion. This was the expansion that introduced the new Drakkin race. However, adventuring in other expansions resulted in mostly running to zone lines and a few deaths. I thought well ok so we can still hunt in one zone, let me go pick up my spells in advance. I went to bazaar and looked for beastlord spells through the 60's. There was not a single one. After a bit of research I discovered in order to obtain the spells for some of those levels, I have to hope someone loots a certain parchment off a raid mob, turns it in to a beastlord trainer to obtain a spell, and then decides they don't want it and puts it up for sale. Fat chance of that happening.

There really was no point in leveling her if I can't obtain her spells, so we rolled some new characters in the Drakkin area. There were some quests, but I just wasn't enjoying the experience at all and had no desire to log in.

This is still a game requiring much patience and not one that can be played casually This is still a game intended mainly for raiders. So......time to move on to something else. And now I've landed in Vanguard for the past few days. I'll wait a bit before saying much further but so far I'm having a heck of a lot of fun.

A Little Break

Seems the whole household is having a string of illnesses. It started with taking my son to the emergency room one morning, coming home and realizing he'd been misdiagnosed (thank God for the internet), followed by quick surgery the next day. I've got my own string of tests and x-rays scheduled. And to top it off we've all come down with some sort of virus that's lasted two weeks now.

I'm ready for warmer weather and healthier days. I'll be back then!

The Formula for THAT Game and Improving on It

There's that certain game everyone talks about in some form or fashion and too often every other game is referred to as a clone. Honestly, I have yet see a clone so don't know what people are talking about sometimes. If questing and killing mobs makes it a clone, well okay I guess they're all clones.

So what exactly do they have that the others don't? Obviously, it's not one thing but the combination together that works:

1. Low-end graphics - This is huge yet few take it seriously. An extremely large population buy their systems already put together and keep them for years without upgrading individual components. Even three years after release, people still complain about their computers not being able to handle one of those other games. Yes there are serious gamers who upgrade frequently so there is a niche for them. But if you're seeking to hit the million mark, this is the first priority.

Low-end does not mean ugly. There are certain MMO's that look quite beautiful and can run on older systems.

2. Non-forced PVP integrated with PVE - Only one other game comes to mind that had something similar, the difference being you had to travel to certain zones to engage. In this one, however, you might see the enemy player attacking the guards in town. You can go your merry PVE way or choose to attack them. I've seen many players who never wanted to PVP change their minds when they see their town attacked and the excitement of other players around them running around in the fray. But it's not forced on you. The choice is yours.

Past PVP MMO's have not been overly successful. I have no intention of ever participating in PVP, but obviously its existence in this particular MMO has worked to its advantage because it was accommodating to both types of players and even some in between.

3. Variety of Terrain/NPC's - Most MMO's have their rolling hills, snowy areas, and deserts. But the selection in this one was more than I'd ever seen anywhere - deliciously spooky zones, prehistoric dinosaur jungle, and autumn-colored forests, just to name a few. And mobs are extremely varied and appropriate to their setting. Odds are when you see a skeleton, it is not standing in some pretty field, but somewhere dark and ominous. Also, you don't just kill higher level versions of the same mobs over and over.

4. Sense of Humor - I have laughed from quests and npc's in this MMO more than I ever had. Seriousness has its place too, but mixing in the fun stuff is important. I seriously wondered if they hired some joke writers for some of this stuff.

5. Ease of Play - Leveling was for the most part stress-free and enjoyable. You didn't have to look up quests to figure them out. You didn't even have to figure out what zones to level in as you would eventually be led there. And of course you could solo most everything. Many consider this hand-holding but for folks who are stressed all day, this offers a sweet release.

I've played a large assortment of MMO's and haven't seen most of the above in any of them. So there are no clones as of yet.

So why am I not playing it? Because it's missing some things. I'm not the typical player I guess. I'm part of that "mom factor" group. To get me to play, I'd like to see:

1. Housing - Has to be available to everyone, with even new players able to afford something small. And if we can decorate our yards too as one MMO was able to accomplish, even better.

2. Crafting - I'm not huge on crafting but it's something extra to do when I don't feel like adventuring. So if I'm going to be doing it, I want it to be somewhat interactive and useful such as the current game I'm playing or the one I revisited a few posts down.

3. Better Communities - In smaller MMO's it's not as big a problem but when you start reaching the proportions of this game, I just refuse to deal with it and leave. It's not a simple matter of turning off chat channels. I like helping people and want to be able to hear if someone has a question. I want to be part of a community, not exclude myself from it.

The only way around this that I can see is offering Roleplay-Enforced Servers. By this I don't mean forcing people to roleplay. What I mean is keeping chat clean and restricted to game related chat in general channels.

My tolerance for dealing with rude players grows smaller as I get older. I don't want myself or my family exposed to it. This is a big determining factor in my sticking with a game. Everyone has their bad days and sometimes things slip. What I'm talking about here is those that get their jollies belittling people on a continued basis. Rather than silence them, most of the mature community turns off chat, while others view the offender as cool and join in.

The community in the game under discussion is horrendous and the absolute worst experience I have gone through. Restricted servers is the only way I can see around this and I would bet they'd become pretty popular. And I'm not talking implied restrictions. This needs to be enforced.

4. Casual End Game Content - Raiding has its purpose for other players but not me. Give me something to do, something to work towards. I want nice items too, and if I have to do some solo quests building faction or accumulating some special gems that allow me to purchase one nice armor upgrade after two months of play, then I will have something to work towards for a couple years. At the least, add instanced dungeons that can be done with two people with a chance of something nice to drop somewhere in there.

Forcing full groups on me to get things accomplished is the equivalent of raiding. I don't have lengthy sessions available to me for waiting around to fill up that perfect group. I want to log in and play. If I'm able to do this for 59 levels, I expect to be able to do it at 60.

These are just minimal things I expect in an MMO to keep me playing. Of course there are other things that I'd love to have as well such as being able to set up a shop in your home, attractive armor, having an entertainer class, etc. But that would just be icing on the cake. Currently, I'm still waiting for my cake.