Telon has been quite busy since the merge, which has been good and bad. The channels are bustling, which is good. However, every single item in Telon was re-set as far as discoveries go. If you’re not aware, you can discover not only crafted and looted items, but first time kills on mob encounters. Each time you get a discovery, a screen shot is taken of the event and it’s recorded in an automated blog over on VGplayers. As you can see from the link to my main Faydai – I’ve gotten a lot of discoveries. This is adding an incredible amount of lag to the server. In a few more days it should die down significantly (or so we all hope).
I’ve always loved Vanguard, but rarely were any of my friends playing it which makes for a lonely game. I’ve been playing since release, and get into spurts where I’ll want to play for a week straight and then won’t touch it for a month. My blood mage inched her way to level 45 yesterday, thanks to the double xp bonus that’s in effect. She also made her way through most of that level. I teamed up with a good friend of mine who I’ve known since EverQuest days and together we worked on obtaining Swamp Armor pieces. Swamp armor was ‘end game’ gear for a lot of players (before the cap was raised to 55) and before raiding. It consists of three factions, and each one gives you a set of gear that has different stats. It was a lot of fun, and some of the encounters were really unique. One in specific encounter that I can’t recall the name of except everyone called it “hag” consisted of an encounter that reminded me a lot of WoW – you’re required to tank the mob and at the same time, avoid glowing pentagrams on the floor. A number of these will spawn at a time, and if you’re standing on one you’ll die. In Vanguard encounters like this are rare, where as in WoW all I ever seem to do on named fights is jump all over the place avoiding things.
We also defeated Lord Faladrian, attempting to get my breastplate to drop (well, in my case a robe). We killed him three times and saw every other class EXCEPT mine. Go figure. I’ve always said that if I didn’t have bad luck, I’d simply have no luck at all. By the end of the day I DID manage to finish my pants, gloves, and hat which were all large improvements over what I had before. The down side (well, sort of) is that these pieces can all be upgraded with a crafted component. Of course, this crafted component is now selling on Telon for 50 gold – a HUGE amount of money to me. I barely have one plat. For now I won’t be upgrading the gear.
It was still a lot of fun, and I had a great time getting familiar with the game again. The graphics are amazing, the world is vast, and the crafting is the best I’ve ever experienced. I realize that not everyone feels the same way, but I’m pretty sure I always will.
Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself.
I’m glad housing is NOT instanced. Nothing in VG is – unless you count ‘shards’ for raids and even that isn’t instanced. There’s only so much they can do with resources as far as content. They’ve added a lot of free over the years, and do what they can with the resources available. Instanced housing zones would have completely ruined the feeling of the game for me since nothing else is instanced. The fact that players can wander along housing chunks and physically build a house in the real world, is fantastic and a key point to the game.
The thing that destroyed Vanguard for me was the way the handled player housing. When 20% of each continent is set aside for player subdivisions, it totally ruined immersion for me. The should have made instanced housing zones, and used the space for content.
I logged into Vanguard this week too, just to see how things were going after the merge. I *love* Vanguard, but I find it a little sad. It has these huge, beautiful zones that were obviously lovingly designed, and all this great content, but on Seradon before the merge, I could run around for hours without seeing more than one or two other players. When I run through a place like New Targoner (my favorite city, aesthetically), I can’t help but get the feeling that it was built for a much bigger population. It would be an amazing place with lots of players running around! That goes for most of the hubs. After the merge, I’m happy to see the channels are hopping, and there are plenty of people in the hubs that I frequent at my lowbie level. I still don’t run into people in the wilds much, but there’s definitely more life to the game. I don’t know anyone else who plays, which is why I keep hopping back to EQ2. I also tend to get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff to do!
It’s odd, I really want to play Vanguard but I’m not prepared to download it on my shitty internet speed, and I’m not sure about the endgame and EU population either. I think I’d love it now, played it at release and it was good, just not my thing then. But….I could see myself going for it now.