Vanguard disappears into memory

Vanguard closed today. This is my last screenshot, taken on 2013-02-23 at 23:20:19 EST. I was working on a quest series involving Unicorns that culminated in a Unicorn mount at the end. The mount wasn’t statistically as good as mounts you could buy for small amounts of money in the game’s Station Cash store, but in my mind I never quite let go of Roleplaying in games like this. When I play by myself the effect is compounded, so there I was trying to help the Unicorns.

I know that I could have logged in for Vanguard’s last day and maybe seen some of the things I used to know, but it wouldn’t have been the same. The most important thing about Vanguard for me is that it’s going away. That the game remained open gave me this permanent feeling like I should play it again, and try to recapture some of that feeling I missed. That was not going to happen of course, because the game has been fundamentally different for a long time now compared to how it was back then.

There was the gang harvesting, the crafters chat channel on my server(I think the server was Gulgrethor before any merges), the strange personalities all coming together for a game that, in our minds, gave us a freedom to do things that we were unable to do in previous worlds. Climb atop a mountain and see for a huge distance with your jacked up clip plane(your frame rate would suck though), find a Travertine node and call for help and have a team of 6 from the crafters channel to help you within a few minutes in their ridiculous harvester uniforms, pick out your housing plots next to your friends, work feverishly on building or buying your house/boat/etc materials.

I didn’t craft because I wanted to have a tool to help me level better, I crafted because participating in the world and the crafting ecosystem was awesome. I discovered server and world firsts making jewelry and had an ongoing market presence in the auction house. Diplomacy felt the same way to me, although I didn’t personally go that route very far. Adventuring felt like I was writing my own story, even though some of the quests themselves were pretty generic.

For all of the game’s problems which led me to never get particularly far in it(my highest is that 35 cleric there), Vanguard captured a piece of my idealism regarding online gaming in a way that only the EverQuest line and perhaps Anarchy Online have. This idea that I was fairly free to do what I want, even if it was an illusion, was really powerful. Normally a game’s funnel inevitably ends in a min/max build(AC), PvP advancement(DAOC), endless missions/faction grinding(AO), a crushing grind to keep affording housing that really has no point except as a money sink(virtually every game with housing), or whatever else developers did to ‘keep you engaged’(keep you paying.) Although I never got to the ‘endgame’ level-wise, in my mind I feel like if I had seen every piece of the world I would still have a feeling like I could find something new just visiting places and being there in the world.

I think this is something my friends don’t understand about why I can do things in games over and over and it doesn’t bother me. If I am engaged with my character and the game world, the 32nd time I’m running a dungeon is perfectly different from the previous 31 times in much the same way that I still manage to get out of bed in the morning in real life even though every day is pretty much the same as the day before. This is my character’s life, and I am living it in the context of how their world operates.

One sad element of Vanguard’s removal is that it is probably the only game that got player boats remotely right(in a game not centered around boats, anyway.) It had lag and control issues and you couldn’t actually haul cargo or anything like that, but goddamn, it was great to bust out my blue Kojani sloop(named ‘The Missing Eye’ for a story I had crafted up in my mind) and sail up the river rather than running up the shore. I had harvested most of the wood and cut it into boards for that boat myself(I was a stone crafter so there was some crossover), and an orc crafter named Swampfist did the woodworking-specific stuff and final construction.

To Dareak(who made my stylized plate my cleric is probably still wearing as he rides into oblivion), and, goddamn, all the other awesome people who I missed and lost track of because the only way I knew them was in Vanguard, thanks for everything. I wish I could have done better, but the circumstances at the time(mostly bugs and progression frustration) broke it apart. I consider early Vanguard to be the kind of situation I want to experience again, where I feel like I am part of something, and there is a persistent community of people around me who share common goals and attitudes. In retrospect, it’s probably the best MMO experience I ever had, although AO and EQ might have been equivalent.

I still have the system requirements sticker for Vanguard on my monitor at work, as I have since January 2007 when I received the game box, with its ridiculous(at the time) recommended system specs. Naturally my computer met the specs because I am a gaming nerd, but fairly few did. It always struck me as a little funny that they were worried about being able to get shelf space with such high requirements, and I think they had to nerf things to lower them at one point. When the game came out I had to run it at 1152x864 on my 1600x1200 native monitor because my system just couldn’t handle it(and 1024x768 was just a bit too crowded UI-wise.) I also had to run in full-screen mode because Windowed would half your frame rate. I guess it’s pretty weird to look back on chunky performance issues with a bit of fondness, but I think the reason I made all those compromises is because I had such a strong feeling about getting in there and engaging with the game, which is definitely something I miss having.

I’ve kind of rambled all over the place here in no particular order, so I’ll just cap it off with: Farewell, Vanguard – you did well, but at least now I can stop being haunted by your memory.

Those balance issues

I was quite surprised to see other classes doing very well in Vanguard. Harkening back to release, I figured my clerical powers to use my DoTs, melee, and damage shields to slowly solo stronger (3 dot, or '.3') monsters with relative ease was fairly unique. My mind is still clouded with stories from friends playing broken-at-release classes having many struggles, sometimes even with .2(solo) monsters.

Today, while fighting 34.3 mobs at 34, a level 30 Sorcerer rolled along and started killing those same mobs (+4 level to him!) about twice as fast as I was. I don't know what his gear situation was or how heavily that played in, but I found it quite impressive. I do know that he collected a tombstone as I arrived, so it wasn't as 'safe' as Cleric, but perhaps if he was the same level as the mobs, it would be.

Later on, I spotted a level 30 paladin fighting three .3 mobs at once. I figured he was probably screwed a couple times, but there was a wall separating us so I wasn't able to provide assistance. I was quite impressed with his survival.

It seems maybe I had a mis-perception of the relative power levels in Vanguard. I am interested in the other classes although I have no intention of grouping with them, or making any more alts. If you were looking to try Vanguard, now is the time.. you never know when it will be shut down, and it will never get any more balanced/fixed than it is today.

Solo->Small Group->Group, or How To Make Quest Lines Die

I’ve been noticing as I roll through Telon that many of the quest ‘lines’ I get(even in the level tracks suggested by the honorable Rift Keepers), have followed this pattern of progression wherein you’ll do 1-2 solo quests, struggle to solo a Small Group quest, then be dumped into Group Only mode. Then, you give up and move on.

I can almost see a justification for this.. if I was an adventurer in a strange world like Telon, would I expect to get batches of easily completed jobs to train my skills in one quick pass out of town, then return to get the next pass? No. But by adopting this style of difficulty-centric quest giving, they are giving up a lot of their ability to tell their story.

It seems that, as happened with Everquest 1, Brad & Co forgot that the thing they’re making is a Game and not an Alternate(Really Horrible) Reality Simulator.

On launch month with fully loaded populations, it was hard to get groups for these things. Now? The only thing groups do right now are some ‘key’ quest lines(I’ve seen people doing Trengal Keep) and grinding XP or Tier armor.

Everquest 2 handled some of this by revamping many of their old quests to be soloable. Vanguard appears to have handled it with ‘Screw you’ or ‘you’re an idiot for trying to do those quests anyway, grind mobs, it’s faster.’

Upon finding other players, run the other way

Ah, sweet home Thestra. Now that I am back, let me regale you a tale of why Vanguard will remain dead forever: Players are assholes.

But let us start at the beginning. I showed up at Wardship of the Sleeping Moon to do a couple quests and was trying to figure out where to single pill some 3 dot Troglodytes from the Leth Verael ruins when I receive a tell from Fryloc: ‘Hey come heal for our group.’

I explained to him that I have been away from the game for a long time, but he says ‘you’d be the second healer, it’ll be fine’, so I hop into the riftways and end up at the Seawatch Coast stone, in River Palace chunk, Qalia. As I am rounding the palace, Fryloc starts demanding I ‘come rez’ right away. Well, what the hell do you think I’m doing? It wasn’t immediately apparent how to get around the palace to where they were. One of the party members mused, ‘Rent a griffon?’, one of the things I was apparently supposed to ‘just know’ despite not playing seriously since launch in 2007.

Horses: Apparently only idiots use them.

I worked my way around where the rest of the group seemed to be, but aggroed a 3 dot level 34 cat that was in stealth.. I hadn’t joined up with them yet so I decided I’d just lose the aggro and come back. It put a poison DoT on me through my ward that I didn’t notice, so as I ran away I was bleeding HP pretty badly. This Fryloc guy comes running out and says ‘follow me’, while also picking up a cat on him in the process. I died to the poison DoT, as he did immediately after.. reaction?

Well, they had been dying repeatedly before I arrived, so it was all too much for good Fryloc. He rage quit the group(and as /who yielded, the game) practically as his body hit the ground. Then another person left, then I left. Thanks for making me cross the world, pals!

I suppose them repeatedly dying before I arrived should have been a sign. Maybe I was a bit too anxious to accept a too-good-to-be-true offer of ‘it’s no big deal, just show up’ when even things like ‘just show up’ are steeped in years of undocumented knowledge and expectations of an inbred populace.

I died one more time to cats trying to get my corpse back, but was able to get both corpses before Recalling. I could have pretty easily made it back to the stone and gated back to Wardship of the Sleeping Moon, which I’ll need to do anyway, but nothing says ‘to hell with this’ like Recall.

I noted that Fryloc’s tombstone didn’t seem to be there which means, with how fast he logged out, he must have eaten the XP loss by summoning. Hell yes.

Ah, archaeology.

It happens whenever you come back to something you abandoned.. Who knows how I ended up with these quests? Did I ever have a chance at completing them even then? I think it’s time to abandon them. My new role in Telon pretty much precludes doing Group quests, although maybe I could solo some of the older ones at this point. I’ve got a really lower level solo quest too, maybe it was broken at the time?

[35sG] Lover’s Quarrel

[32G] Recover the Stolen Supplies

[27G] Mostly Dead But Not All Dead

[26G] Meteoric Studies

[25sG] Spider Samples

[23G] The Crux of Castle Landsview

[18] Glimpse of the Past

While figuring this out, I was very excited to spot another player.

I upgraded some gear with cheap drops off the AH. For some reason it feels like it’s going to be all downhill from here though.. when I last played I knew a crafter who made me stuff, now I’m floating in a fairly shallow economy where the server-wide channels barely produce any scroll.

 

My silly built-in game character blog is here.

 

It turns out I’ve got some /claims coming to me. One of them(sadly 1 per account and not one per char) gives me a giant bag with a movement speed buff on it. Vanguard doesn’t seem to have horrible inventory problems like LOTRO, though.

It turns out there are some pretty creepyscary monsters out there, such as this one. Kind of your standard issue undead wolf I suppose, but it was pretty strong and had a good debuff.

One funny side effect of playing now, roughly a month after the final Vanguard server merge, is that you can get ‘new’ discoveries. This will likely happen a lot as I am clueless and keep wandering around doing content that is outside of the ‘optimal leveling track.’

Stuck!

Well no, I’m not really stuck.. and this screenshot is from my old collection. I have been noticing, however, that my cleric seems to be a bit further behind the curve than you might expect, when compared to release.

I know that Cleric was ‘overpowered’ at release, however some part of me wished that before Vanguard died it would have seen the light and improved classes to be powerful and fun in their own ways.

This seems not to have happened.

We’ve seen in some other games, where instead of nerfing down the strong classes, they bring everyone else up. In WoW this took years of smash-and-grab as the power scales tilted around all crazy like, and they were finally able to get it together after Burning Crusade, when all of the classes were finally available to both sides.



No such luck for Vanguard.

Lesser Giantville (co-starring Halgarad’s Pants)

Well the clerical business was fine and such, but Goodman Dachish wanted to try something new and exciting.



We started a couple of Lesser Giants in their default homeland.  I expected myriad shortcomings, since as we all know, ‘Shoulda gone to Isle of Dawn’ is a likely mantra for new characters these days.



Corpses littered the landscape in pretty short order.. and I noticed the disconcerting trend wherein newbie quests gave only 10% xp. Having recently played Vom, I should have expected the crushing xp curve, but I didn’t expect it so soon.



Successfully we plumbed the depths of the spirit realm, or some facsimile. The spawn rate was pretty much instant, which was silly because I’m sure we were the only people in the zone. Our indomitable Escaped Wolf Pooches joined us after a previous quest.. in other games they would despawn after we completed, but not Vanguard: Saga of Heroes!



Simultaneous levelling for amusing side projects is always something. Later on we locked in a Brotherhood so we could keep at it.



We are hideous.



It seems like an awful lot of effort to build things like this in a cave, but I guess if I was a gnoll with a lot of time on my hands, who knows.



Our adventure is concluded for the day. I learned that a) Vanguard Druid might not be so bad, b) Isle of Dawn quest concentration, rewards, and theme beat the hell out of original content(which is well on its way to dressing me in a multicolor clown suit with no stats to speak of on it,) and c) The game is still crushing progression-wise despite years of development and a gradual, impending doom of depopulation rising over it. That was before it died, of course.. I’m under no delusions about this thing ever seeing an hour of Dev time again.

First order of business

I awake at Konarthi point, and know one thing for certain: I have to get out of this place. There does not appear to be much to do here, and unfortunately I forget how travel works in this world. I believe many years ago I made jewelry here, however that is not something I’ll be looking into at present.

By land, or by sea? Konarthi Point is isolated in Southeastern Thestra, and it looks to be a ride across half of the continent to find something worth doing. It is a port, however..

..and my trusty boat the Missing Eye still seems seaworthy.

 

I stopped off at a small island to test out my combat mettle against a Menacing Swamp Krokodus.. an easy victory. I’m seeing a lot of houses along the shoreline where it was not previously buildable before, such as the swamp southwest of Konarthi Point. The depth limitation on my sloop (250 meters) is making the journey west harder than it could be.

The amount of people LFG for ‘X, Y, or any XP’ is kind of alarming, frankly.

 

 

I crashed my ship into the rocks near the Troll Coast and found the nearby island inhabited with Level 56 monsters with 4+ dots. This, if I recall, means full group level stuff (at least) and wasn’t the level cap 50? It would seem as though it’s not, because I see some people claiming to be 55 in LFG.

 

I put to ground south of Keldorin’s Wall, as the walls of New Targonor are unapproachable by sea except via the annoying docks district that I have no intention of running all the way through to get out to land. My destination: Southwatch, where hopefully some level appropriate fun awaits.

 

One thing I’ll say for Telon’s mountains: They’re steep.

 

A unicorn named Telordaen wants to know if I’ve seen the rest of his herd, which he believes was slain 50 years ago. No such luck.

 

I haven’t been doing very well at this ‘Finding a way up past the damn mountains’ business, but I did find some near (and thankfully unoccupied) ruins.

 

 

I figured I should be able to take out a 33.2 mob, being level 32 and all.. it was a closer fight than I’d prefer. And only worth .29% xp! It dropped a Collection item, no idea how to use it though.

 

Walking while casting is goddamned awesome.

 

This feels like the long way to Southwatch.

 

Mining is dangerous. Well, if you don’t clear all the monsters first and aggro 2 at once, anyway. Lessons learned: You lose a lot of xp when you die. It was about 6% of my level I’m guessing.. more than I had earned the entire session. You also lose any gear that is not soulbound. Mysteriously, most of my gear is Bind on Equip, but not actually bound to me(despite being equipped.) I’m guessing this gear was changed over the years with patches and the flags were reset. Inconvenient time to find out! The good news is if you recover your corpse you get ~85% xp back. Stuff from your bags even goes back to the same places it was before, provided nothing else occupies that space.

 

Take that, tree! <3 Vanguard harvesting.

 

Behold, Southwatch! It’s more like Westwatch, but I guess given Old Targonor’s position it makes sense. Sure isn’t much to look at. Time to take a well earned break.

Vom’s Telon adventure

Exploration of the dead worlds must of course begin somewhere, so let it be with my Cleric, Vom (seen above, only missing everything but his eyes and mouth.) The screenshot is old, I’m not sure you can still get this to happen.

Vom is still logged out at Konarthi Point, which if my memory serves is in Eastern Thestra(itself the northernmost continent of three.)