VG

Official Wikia Communities #Vanguardsoh #VGD

stargrace October 16, 2012 0Comment

Last week SOE announced ‘official wikia communities‘ for EQ2 and Planetside 2. I’ve been looking forward to these announcements for quite some time, but what I was hoping to see was one announced for Vanguard. Those who have played Vanguard over the years remember when the crafting web site came down – it hosted an enormous amount of incredibly valuable information and due to the lack of interest in the game the person hosting it just couldn’t continue. No one offered to take over, and eventually it vanished from the internet along with hours of crafting information. Losing information like that is a painful prospect for continuing players as well as potential customers. Especially for a game like Vanguard where playing without some sort of wikia (for crafting) is almost impossible. There are simply too many intricate combinations and ‘rules’.

I think the general idea is fantastic, although it’s certainly not new. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 host their own wikia that players can add information to. Wurm Online also runs a wikia for their game. Making these places ‘official’ and assigning a staff member to ‘oversee’ it is a big step, and gives confidence to players that 1. the information isn’t going anywhere and 2. it is probably relatively up to date.

Hopefully we can see some sort of official Vanguard wikia put in place eventually. There is a popular one that has been around a short while now called ‘Telonica” which I’ve suggested SOE team up with. We’ll see how that goes.

Soaring Through The Skies of Telon #Vanguard #VGSOH #VGD

stargrace August 14, 2012 1Comment

For those who may have missed the news, you can now explore Telon under the new ‘Free to Play’ model, and while I do have a few.. concerns, with this model, it’s nice to see Vanguard getting some attention.

One of the first things I did was visit the new marketplace and check out what was for sale. It follows pretty much the same pattern as the rest of the SOE games, there’s gear, potions, house items, mounts and the like. I decided to purchase a flying mount pictured above. There are two choices, one is a griffon and the other a wyvern. I was pleased to find out that gold members receive a discount to anything they purchase from the marketplace, although I have to admit I was less-than pleased with my new flying mount. It doesn’t handle very well at all, and doesn’t fly nearly as smooth as the mounts that you can rent in game from NPC. In order to use these purchased mounts you also must be at least level 50 in any one of the three spheres, thankfully I qualify because I’m a 51 mineralogist on my main, a blood mage (currently sitting at level 47 in adventuring).

When F2P was introduced there was also a slight revamp of loot drops for some bosses, and I expect they’ll be nerfed shortly if they haven’t been yet. People were linking loot that was far better than anything else you could obtain in game previously, with stats like 250 crit chance and other obscene numbers. There’s a patch today to fix some glitches and I’m hoping that the lag and disconnects that players may have been experiencing will also be addressed.

Telon is beautiful, and has always been. I’m pleased that more people will give it a shot and perhaps even stay a while. It’s nice to hear channels being used again (when they work), and as a long time player it’s satisfying to know that the game is getting at least a little more attention than in previous years.

If you’ve been away from the game for a while, there’s no better time to see how things have changed, even if it’s just to fill the lull between another game release. As always, happy gaming! No matter where you find yourself.

Exploring Greystone (Dungeon level 40-45) #VGD #Vanguard

stargrace June 28, 2012 0Comment

Between 35-40 I would say it is really hard to figure out where to level. Especially if you’re in a solo / duo in game. I had problems leveling my blood mage up past these levels, and now I’m finding I have the same problem with my shaman.

Hampooj and I decided to explore the first parts of Greystone, which is a dungeon suitable for level 40-45 characters. You can find it in Beranid Hills. The mobs along the bridge before the actual dungeon are level 40 and mostly 2 dots with a few 3 dots thrown in there. There is a tower on either side, with a named at the top (a 4 dot). Inside are quests, and some classes even have level 42 spells that they learn here.

The Telon Project and Silkyvenom both have partial write ups about the dungeon but one really annoying thing to note is that the quest components don’t drop from every encounter, and you need a LOT of them. They also won’t drop for every person in the group, so if you’re in a group completing the quests here you’re looking at spending a LOT of time in the area, killing thousands of mobs. I find that this is an issue with a lot of the dungeons in Vanguard, and it makes the content almost unplayable.We started to adventure here because we were just looking for something to do in between reaching 40 and moving on to newer zones. There’s a weapon quest located within the dungeon, and that would have been neat to complete.

These are the levels where dying starts becoming an issue. An issue because if you summon your corpse at an altar you lose a large chunk of xp (Hampooj died and lost roughly 25,000 experience) and if you are to wander back in to get your body you’ve quite a ways to go. Things respawn quickly depending on how long it takes your group (or duo) to kill, and it can get frustrating.

Despite all of that, it’s still why I love Vanguard. It’s complex, there are penalties, and it can be a cruel and unforgiving world. In a day where I feel that a lot of MMOs simply hand me rewards on a silver platter, it can be a pleasant change. Whether or not the game will keep this ‘charm’ when it goes free to play is something that players old and new debate on channels daily – myself, I stay out of the discussion. I’ll adapt with the changes because I see the game going free to play as a very good thing and in fact one of a few options. The other option of course being closing it down completely which is something I NEVER want to see for any video game. It’s astounding the number of times I hear “I’d rather see it closed down then see it get changed,” in local chat.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!