August 2010

Working Through Hunter’s League

stargrace August 10, 2010 3Comments

Another bonus experience weekend tucked away, and my shaman is sitting at level 26. I helped Hampooj obtain his Hunter’s League leggings, and then debated with myself over whether I want to begin the shadow hound mount quest, or the unicorn one – or bother with either of them. In the end I relogged over to my weaponsmith and created a bunch of pretty new harvesting tools to put on the broker as well as some weapons that I hope to upgrade one day. I really love crafting in Vanguard, it’s so rewarding.

There is a little lack of content at this level I’m finding. Well, solo content in any case. The only zones I’ve been directed to as far as leveling (via the Rift Keeper who offers those xp bonus pies) is Trengals Keep (which the quests quickly turn into group quests) and the point in Qalia where you work on the majority of hunter’s league, which is also mostly a group effort. That’s not to say that there isn’t solo content at these levels, there is, but it’s a lot less then you would find at the earlier levels.

Sadly, the lag spurts that servers experienced shortly after the merge are back ever since the patch yesterday morning. I’m not sure what happened, but a bunch of zones were down for the majority of the day, and every 5 minutes or so zones are hit with a few seconds of lag. It made adventuring difficult, and I can only hope that the issue goes back to being solved some time soon. If you’re not enjoying the game due to this lag I implore you to simply hang in there because that is not typically how vanguard runs.

Since New Targonar was down for most of yesterday and that’s where the majority of my characters happened to log out, I worked on my baby ranger. Qutey Patootie, the goblin ranger to be exact. She managed to reach level 10 on the isle of dawn, where I promptly gave up trying to get a temple group and left as soon as I could. Whether or not I will actually play the character past level 10 I haven’t decided yet.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, I’ll see you in Telon!

Level 24 – Panther Illusion Mask

stargrace August 9, 2010 8Comments

I didn’t take advantage of the double experience as much as I wanted to, but I still got a bit done. Some craft levels, diplomacy levels, and adventure levels were all in the mix. One thing I wanted to work on that I’ve never actually completed before was an illusion mask. It’s a solo quest that you can pick up at level 24. You can find the walk through for it at VGwalkthroughs. The quest is quite simple and even more so now that factions move by 3x what they typically move by. Imirial the seducer (pictured above – the lady with the nice breasts) won’t speak with you until you have 12000 faction with her people. In order to get this faction you need to kill miners in a cave just before her. Now, typically the miners (and the cave) would turn KoS to you which is the real hassle of this quest. However since factions have been changed a few months back (and not changed back as of yet) by the time you reach the faction needed, the miners are NOT KoS to you.

It worked out fantastic. The quest is simple. Kill in the caves until you earn the faction required, and then pick up the quest. There’s two portions, one requires you to kill 20 mobs (low and behold they are the same ones that you’ve already been killing) and then kill 4 enforcers who also reside in the caves. Once those two quests are completed, you’ve finished your illusion mask! Oh yes, except for one more small detail. Although the quest is level 24 to obtain the mobs within the cave are level 27-28. Now, they are two dot (solo) mobs, so they CAN be defeated without too much trouble but be careful because there’s a good chance you’ll be pulling multiples.

The mask was a huge upgrade for my shaman, and I also managed to ding level 25 on completion. The bonus experience is over today and log in servers are down for maintenance, but I’m excited about what comes next. It’s hard to believe that I’m already level 25, even in a brotherhood with three other members. Having weekend bonus experience has been a huge bonus. On Saturday Nomadic Gamers headed to Trengal Keep and completed the first of six quests. Aside from one wipe when a dragon popped out of no where to pay us a visit it went fairly well, and we had a lot of fun. We need a few more levels before continuing on, but I’m looking forward to it. You may hear people in channels looking for TK1 or TK6 – that’s the Trengal Keep chain. I’ve never actually completed it before, so I don’t have the faintest idea what the rewards are, but so far I’ve gotten a pretty nice hat.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Telon!

Fan Faire Updates about Vanguard

stargrace August 8, 2010 5Comments

Although I personally was not at Fan Faire this year, I’ve been trying to find any information at all about Vanguard, especially since Nomadic Gamers (the guild) is growing by leaps and bounds, and I like to keep players informed on what is going on. The only information I could find comes from Complete Heal, a great blog about some of my favorite games. They had this to say about Vanguard:

Vanguard

When SOE said Vanguard wasn’t on the official list of Fan Faire games – they weren’t kidding. I couldn’t find a single developer in Las Vegas this year for Vanguard. They didn’t make the bus trip. They also had a kiosk running the game last year but this year? Nope. There was a live quest on the schedule but I took my wife out to lunch instead. There was still a Vanguard banner hanging in the main hall but that was about it. The bold portions are added by me.

I did learn a few things about the game – even though the developers were absent. First, there are no plans to shutter the game. I spoke to John Smedley, President of SOE, directly about the game. Let me say that he was open and honest and we had a great dialogue. He was a pleasure to talk to and regardless of what people say about the guy he is a gamer at heart and cares about the games we all play – including Vanguard. I asked him if the game was in maintenance mode and he said it’s a step above maintenance mode. The truth is that the remaining developers are shared with other games (EQ2, EQ Next etc…) and they allocate time for them to work on Vanguard as the schedule permits. I basically understood it to mean that Vanguard doesn’t have any more full time developers. That was a bit of a disappointment but Smed stated that he thinks the game will stick around for a few more years. He’s also open to ideas on how to make the game more popular.

He acknowledged the chicken and egg problem with spending money on the game and I thanked him for all the effort and money they put in the game since they acquired it from Sigil. It’s truly come a long way. We also talked about doing some kind of free to play server for Vanguard but he wasn’t sure how the “core gamer” that’s left in Vanguard would respond to such a thing. Russell Shanks, EVP / COO of SOE was sitting next to him when we spoke and they both were interested in giving Vanguard a spark of life.

Another developer told me they might end up moving the Vanguard servers to the East coast. Not sure really what the point of that would be but it would be closer to me so that can’t be all bad. This same developer said VG was considering the F2P model but the recent staff reductions hit VG pretty hard and he didn’t feel like the resources were still there to invest that much time in the game. That was also a bummer. I was pitching an idea of a free to play Vanguard server to let people who bought the game come back and see how much progress had been made since release and maybe they would transfer over to the Telon server or subscribe to keep the game alive. At this point, why not do it? What’s the alternative?

Be sure to head over to the site to read the rest of the post, as he goes into some great details about the other SOE owned games. My personal thoughts? We all know Vanguard suffers from a lack of player base. Money. Developers. It’s been that way for quite a while now, and I don’t expect it to get any better. Personally I’m going to keep playing the game until it closes. I give it a year or two, which still gives me plenty of time to explore everything I want to see. It’s more time dedicated to playing a game then a lot of others I try. I will be incredibly sad to see it go – but thankful. I feel that it’s really one of the best games out there, that it fits my personal play style better then anything else at this time. Instead of running around screaming that the sky is falling, I’d rather get on my shadow mount, and enjoy the walk through Telon while it’s still around.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Telon.

Adrid, The Mace of Sorrow (and Other Quests)

stargrace August 7, 2010 0Comment

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of finishing off a major quest line and FINALLY getting that item you worked so hard for. Vanguard has this feeling in spades, and it’s great. For the better part of yesterday Nomadic Gamers between the levels of 20-22 worked on the weapon chain that you find at the Tomb of Lord Tsang. Pictured above is my new shiny mace (with particle effects!) as well as a shield that comes with it (also shiny). It’s called Adrid, The Mace of Sorrow and there’s a fantastic walk through up on vgwalkthroughs. While the site is not especially up to date any more it gives players a good basis on group quests they can work on if they wish and it also lists a fair amount of solo quests. Although the Tomb of Lord Tsang has been my favorite dungeon for as long as I can remember, I have actually never finished the weapon quest before. This was my first time, which only added to the euphoric feelings.

My shaman is now sitting comfortably at level 22, almost 23. There’s bonus experience going on this weekend which really helps out. I decided that I’m really the sort of person who enjoys working on all three spheres, so I managed to inch my diplomacy to level 13, and my crafting to 11. I’ve gone the rout of the tailor, not because it will help me out in any special way but because it’s the one crafter I had below level 20 out of the 6 available.

I’m looking forward to spending most of this weekend in Trengal Keep, working on a chain of quests available there. I’m also interested in the Panther Illusion Mask that you can begin working on at level 24. This mask has an ability called Illusion: Panther. It turns your character into a panther for one hour, and gives you a 20% run speed (does not stack) as well as a 5% attack speed buff. Since my bard is in the brotherhood still, she’s inched her way (while off line) to level 23, which I really like. It’s nice to know I’ll have another character option available when I’m bored of playing the shaman (though that hasn’t come up yet).

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Telon!