Thursday, May 22, 2008

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.

3 comments:

Thallian said...

Thats good news Aspen, I'm not sure I could get myself to go back after I tried it in the beta and immediately following launch and had so many problems with soloing and staying alive and losing exp :( It really is a cool game though in many respects and I'm glad they have "softened" it.

Aspendawn said...

Beta wasn't playable for me back then so really not certain how the current difficulty compares. But it's very soloable; more so than EQ2 even. I really hope they don't cave to the complaints that it's too easy now.

Experience losses are more than other games if you don't collect your corpse. But the armor is all soulbound now and stays on you when you die, so in most cases I can just fight my way back to the corpse.

Thallian said...

yeah getting back to the corpse when your lvl 15 and the armor wasn't soulbound.. I remember that was bad :P Well it sounds like they've made a decent game out it. I hope they can do something to recover form their first impression. It seems to me that people place too much importance on how something looks at launch.. (see my article about static thinking versus dynamic content) http://thallians.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-mmos-versus-static-thinking.html