Vanguard profiled in the New York Times

Ah, im a few years removed from EQ. Do i miss the grind and the good times? yeah. Do i regret quitting? of course not

sooner or later i'll try another MMO. It won't be Vangaurd. although I would like it to be a newly released MMO. Warhammer sounds like the obvious choice, but that game has failed to make a whisper since E3. Im very skeptical on LotR online. and i'll keep my eyes on the Marvel/Dc MMO. It seems like that whenever I do decide to invest my life in another MMO a release should be right around the corner

Don't you mean 22.5 million in subscriptions?

48+ mil is still a hell of a lot of money. MMOs are where it's at, kids.

Whoops, comma in the wrong spot. Thanks guys

Vanguard is really, really bad. Now granted, if you're a SoE 'Station Pass' player (may God help you), it's better than the trainwrecks that are EQ2 and SWG, but that's the only reason I can see that you'd want to play it. Oh, and maybe for the furries if that's your thing.

Otherwise, the game MASSIVELY lacks content. Stray from the beaten path and you'll be greeted with /nothing/. Miles and miles of randomly generated mobless, itemless nothing. The fanboi will tell you this is because Sigil wanted to design in a sense of vastness, but Google will tell you it's because Sigil ran out of money to develop the game so had to release it as-is. And when do you 'run out of money' in development? That's when investors think your game isn't worth funding further.

Even if you're willing to play a game with nothing really in it in hopes that some day a miracle will occur and the game will have a reason to play it, you still have to deal what what IS in it, and it sucks. Like the infamous newbie mission introducing you to the "lol, you thought you could play this without grouping?" game concept, which has you attempting to kill several named NPCs in a cave. The problem? The cave isn't instanced. "No problem, instances are for newbs" you say? The NPCs are rare spawns. "No problem, I can handle camping for a bit" you say? I cleared the cave out repeatedly for hours with a group when it was nearly empty and still didn't see them all spawned. "No problem, I played EQ1, I can deal with it again" you say? I cry for your soul.

With another couple years of development it might have been interesting, but with no money, they wound up releasing something far, far less and worse than WoW was at release, nevermind what WoW is like now.

"The most content I've seen in a game. Ever. 10x more than WoW, even with the "Expansion" (if that's what you want to call it)."

Besides '10x more than WoW' sounding like a Vista ad, I've got to wonder what you're considering content. Are you sure you aren't being just a tad defensive?

On topic, I would give Vanguard a try, but I'm stuck in WoW (as a favor to friends). After playing Galaxies, PSO, PSU, City Of Heroes/Villains, Matrix Online, FFXI, and EQ: Online Adventures (for three days), I can't possibly start another MMO without wanting to weep profusely.

Well, until the Firefly MMO anyway, provided it's anywhere near as great as the show was.

Maybe Age Of Conan. >_>

Seems like the comment replies in this post are a microcosm of what I have read and heard everywhere. Seems like the game is a slice of heaven for old-school MMO people and utterly hated by the rest. What is it about Vanguard that polarizes people so much for it? It doesn't seem to snap up the kind of love that other people have had with emerging MMOs like when Guild Wars came out. Why doesn't it resonate stronger with gamers?

I did play the Vanguard beta and quit for the same reason I quit FFXI. Forced grouping. I hate dealing with lol'ing morons to gain any progress in a game. I have to get an education, so I'm forced to be somewhat casual or play at odd hours. At least with WoW if I wanted to accomplish something on my own I had a lot of options open to me. Vanguard...not so much.

Nerpin, that is exactly why I play WoW and why I think it is so successful. I don't have the time to travel huge distances, camp mobs, make corpse runs etc. etc. I also don't have time to wait for groups, if I even want to group at all. I like to jump on, play for an hour, jump off.

I don't understand the "too easy" complaint. I'm glad I can get a character to a high level quickly, that way, I can see all the content and not give Blizzard 4 or 5 years worth of subscription dues.

@Rainbowblack
Agreed, FFVI > FFVII. Cloud was too emo for my tastes and Shadow was one of the coolest characters ever.

I can say that grouping ruined it for me when I played FFXI because of having to wait for a White Mage, all of the crappy exp you would get from having to fight crabs, and how easy it was for groups to dissolve. Granted my FFXI playing friend said the part I quit at was the suckiest part of the game, the first desert, but I only saw a lot of the same happening later in the game.