Long version: Hung out with a friend over the 4th weekend and him talking about WoW made me get that damned MMO itch again. Determined to not go back to WoW I came to the PA boards since it's always a source of good suggestions and stumbled into this thread. The OP answered my first question of "wait... what?" and now I'm intrigued and want to try the game out... then I saw that BARD is a playable class and I have to try it out. Seriously... any fantasy game that doesn't include bard as a playable class can suck it.
king awesome on
Bigsushi.fm
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
Long version: Hung out with a friend over the 4th weekend and him talking about WoW made me get that damned MMO itch again. Determined to not go back to WoW I came to the PA boards since it's always a source of good suggestions and stumbled into this thread. The OP answered my first question of "wait... what?" and now I'm intrigued and want to try the game out... then I saw that BARD is a playable class and I have to try it out. Seriously... any fantasy game that doesn't include bard as a playable class can suck it.
Man, this is how I feel. Can you imagine how pissed off I was when WoW's April Fool's joke showed off a bard class? I knew it was fake, but it pissed me off that it was fake; I've been wanting a bard class in that game since it came out!
Anyhow, I think someone here should have a trial code for you. If not, make sure to hit up the official Vanguard forums and ask someone there.
Long version: Hung out with a friend over the 4th weekend and him talking about WoW made me get that damned MMO itch again. Determined to not go back to WoW I came to the PA boards since it's always a source of good suggestions and stumbled into this thread. The OP answered my first question of "wait... what?" and now I'm intrigued and want to try the game out... then I saw that BARD is a playable class and I have to try it out. Seriously... any fantasy game that doesn't include bard as a playable class can suck it.
Man, this is how I feel. Can you imagine how pissed off I was when WoW's April Fool's joke showed off a bard class? I knew it was fake, but it pissed me off that it was fake; I've been wanting a bard class in that game since it came out!
Anyhow, I think someone here should have a trial code for you. If not, make sure to hit up the official Vanguard forums and ask someone there.
Probably shouldn't admit this... but I didn't realize it was a joke at first... I just saw the top headline "New class: bard" and I freaked out... then I clicked the link, saw the fake (but funny) screenshots and remembered what day it was
Thanks, I'll wait on here a few days then hit up the official forums.
king awesome on
Bigsushi.fm
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
Oh god, I was one of those people that would be sitting in WoW babbling on and on about how great Vanguard was going to be, and how I was just playing WoW to keep me occupied until Vanguard was released. I played EQ, way back before Luclin and Planes of Power and all the shit that SoE started throwing around after they squeezed the life out of Verant, so Vanguard was my holy grail, a return to everything I had wanted. Pretty sure you all know what happens next, Vanguard is released and I bathe in my own tears for weeks. Actually, I didnt even own Vanguard, My plan was to upgrade my system to run it, but before it got that far, a friend of mine got into the beta and well we both just sort of made sad whimpering noises at his computer.
Basically, The only thing I really need to hear to know if this Vanguard is right for is: is leveling primarily party based, rather than solo?
That is up to you, I soloed to 50 but I spend more the 12 months doing it, I played to have fun and not race to "end game" so I spend a lot of time on non xp giving stuff, and still do, becose I finde it fun.
When I did want to level up, it was all about finding the sweet spots for your level.
Anyway the game is not really forcing you to play in a special way, if you like to solo you might miss some grupe stuff, if you like to grupe you need to spend time finding other people, you can do it anyway you want, but dont start playing this game thinking it is all about leveling.
Ok, decided to roll a necro. Just not sure which race to pick. DE seems like a good choice, but so does goblin to me.
Please, someone pick a race for me
Goblin or wolfmen are the best two Necro races. DE is not far behind. However i'm a Qualitharian human and do just dandy, race isn't THAT big of a deal. I'm a 26 necro, btw.
Ok, I think I am going to go goblin. But maybe I will see how I like the other race. Just wondering, how do you like your necro? I still think the necro from EQ was one of the best designed MMO classes to date. I am hoping for a similar experience.
suadeo on
My 360 is [strike]back[/strike] [strike]bricked[/strike] back!
Can you obtain Plat coins for the racial mount through soloing or do you have to do dungeons?
There are some solo quest in the game ATM that gives Plat coins (Fu**ink gnomes) but they are non repatable and only nets you about 15 coins, so you still have to grupe to kill the mobs that drop coins, some are overland and some in dungeons.
Ok, decided to roll a necro. Just not sure which race to pick. DE seems like a good choice, but so does goblin to me.
Please, someone pick a race for me
Goblin or wolfmen are the best two Necro races. DE is not far behind. However i'm a Qualitharian human and do just dandy, race isn't THAT big of a deal. I'm a 26 necro, btw.
Ok, I think I am going to go goblin. But maybe I will see how I like the other race. Just wondering, how do you like your necro? I still think the necro from EQ was one of the best designed MMO classes to date. I am hoping for a similar experience.
I actually think this is the best designed Necromancer class in any MMO and maybe game to date. I'll give my Necro-credentials to share how much me saying this means.
Games i've played a Necromancer in: EQ1, EQ2, Oblivion, Diablo 2, Threshold MUD, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Adventure Quest(lols I know) and Vanguard. I think I might have missed some somewhere, too.
Man I had an awesome adventure last night. Garnoth and I (I'm Squirril in game) cleared out some place called the Asylum of the Wailing Winds, which was basically a big cliff side monastery overlooking a harbor/forest. Plenty of raving prisoners for the slaughter there. We moved on to a nearby tower on a floating island, Jalen's Crossing I think- riding some rented pegasi to scout it out first-hand before we landed. The quest was to travel to outlying floating islands and clear them, collecting the heads of the bosses as we did so. You had to clear all the way through the (quickly respawning) island, hit a button, and clear all the way back to the boss at the start. We only got the first of four due to bugs and disconnects, but I can say that this easily blows any WoW dungeon crawl out of the water just for location and challenge alone- and we're only level 14! Wailing Caverns and Deadmines have got nothing on the low-level content for this game.
Then we tried to take two unrootable 4-dot orcs on by ourselves and learned what our colons look like when they're turned inside out.
@Red Gear: This game is solo-able but the real fun and challenge is in the party stuff, and there's never a shortage of it. What I just discovered yesterday is that you can join what is called a "Brotherhood" with another player- maybe more than one, I haven't tried it. In a brotherhood you split all the XP you get, right down the middle, even if one person is offline. I.E. you don't ever have to outlevel your friends, ever, no matter how much more you play.
Related question: When do warriors become decent at holding aggro? Right now I can't go even one-third of my full dps or I will immediately draw the monster to myself. Is there some trick we should be doing? Druid/Warrior team here.
Tell your friend to read what his abilities do and use his taunts/pull/aggro abilities. I have a DK and he had some pretty awesome aggro generating abilities by 14, especially in a party of two where one can just set the other as a defensive target and use the skills that protect said target.
You can have lots of people in a brotherhood, I don't know what the limit is but I know some of the higher levels in the guild have one. It's just a matter of trust or willingness to possibly sacrifice xp to keep other players around your level, which I can imagine is tougher when it's not someone you know IRL.
We will definitely have to run the Fallen Lyceum, maybe tonight or tomorrow night if we can pull it off! It's a level 16-22 dungeon, but Djavoli are feeling gutsy at level 15 and want to give it a try. Otherwise we can do the Achlatan Spider Caves maybe, which is 14-20ish.
Also, come on over to Thestra! We were hanging out over near you, but once we saw Thestra, and the fact that there's more people to talk to, a better exchange market and (in my opinion) a better, more classical fantasy theme, we made the jump. I guess it's not a huge deal where everyone is, since it's so easy to teleport back and forth, but we're probably gonna focus mostly on Thestra for awhile, though I might keep crafting in Kojan.
Okay, reading up on warriors- apparently they get a defensive stance at level 10 but only if they get the quest. Probably would have helped if we'd done that, huh.
I've been kind of hesitant to join any serious parties when we're still complete newbs to the game mechanics, but I think it's definitely time to start looking at Thestra. What's a good place for a couple of people to start questing up there, Darkewolfe?
Go to the teleport crystal and look at the level ranges. I've been mostly in the Three Rivers and Vestra's Exchange areas. We just moved down to Kaon's Rush, and that's near that instance we want to do. One thing I noticed that seems to be worth noting. There are SO MANY quests that I don't think you could ever hope to get all of them done. If you're level 14 and get a bunch of level 11 quests that still take a bit of farming kills and don't have decent rewards, dump them and look for quests closer to your level. They're more fun, I think, since the fights are tougher, and the rewards are far more worthwhile.
Also, I checked the official forums as suggested... didn't find any particular threads of people asking for guest passes... which particular forum do people normally post that in?
king awesome on
Bigsushi.fm
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
I played this game late in Beta and for about a month after release. I really enjoyed the combat and overall flavor of most classes - I miss my blood mage like crazy!
I've been considering coming back during this free reactivation period. If I start with you dudes Saredon, would anyone be willing to level up an alt or something? I'm willing to play almost any class and I don't suck at games! At least, that's what my mom says..
Also, I checked the official forums as suggested... didn't find any particular threads of people asking for guest passes... which particular forum do people normally post that in?
Also, I checked the official forums as suggested... didn't find any particular threads of people asking for guest passes... which particular forum do people normally post that in?
Sorry I am not playing with you right now and dungeoneering. I am trapped at my desk, where they have locked me in my office forever. I don't think I'll be going home before after I need to go to sleep, so maybe tomorrow. If not tomorrow, I won't be back on till Monday night. Keep an eye out for Djavoli, he's my buddy and knows I told you guys we wanted to group.
I will never play because it will eventually be thrown in the crapper like all SOE games
SOE keeps all their games around, even the crappiest ones. It's part of their system where you can subscribe to them all at once. I mean, Star Wars Galaxies is still around, ugh!
ohhhhh lord. I have pretty much spent my entire day reading up on Vanguard and would love to take the plunge as it appears to be everything I have been wanting, which was essentially what EQ2 should have been. Speaking of EQ2 ... my current system was custom built way back to run EQ2 at its highest settings, so I'm wondering if i would be able to run Vanguard (probably at pretty damn low settings) on that without upgrading, or if anyone has tried running Vanguard on a macbook pro with WindowsXP installed how that has worked. I appreciate the help all you guys are providing, its really exciting to think that what was essentially my dream game might actually exist now.
Hey Karm, I'm Level 28. Probably would've been Level 29, but I didn't get back until later tonight from grocery shopping, and hopped on for a second to see no one there.
I am not looking forward to grinding 44 more sigils for my crafting recipes. I have ten total in fourteen levels of doing nothing but Batch work orders.
my current system was custom built way back to run EQ2 at its highest settings, so I'm wondering if i would be able to run Vanguard (probably at pretty damn low settings) on that without upgrading
Vanguard is far less of a hog than EQ2 is on highest settings. My machine can't run EQ2 on highest without dipping into single digits the moment I enter a city or see more than a handful of mobs, and it runs Vanguard niiiiiiiiice. There are a couple of areas where it begins to stutter for some reason (around Kojan's hub city); not sure why, the areas don't look any more details than the rest of the game.
my current system was custom built way back to run EQ2 at its highest settings, so I'm wondering if i would be able to run Vanguard (probably at pretty damn low settings) on that without upgrading
Vanguard is far less of a hog than EQ2 is on highest settings. My machine can't run EQ2 on highest without dipping into single digits the moment I enter a city or see more than a handful of mobs, and it runs Vanguard niiiiiiiiice. There are a couple of areas where it begins to stutter for some reason (around Kojan's hub city); not sure why, the areas don't look any more details than the rest of the game.
Thats great news! thanks a lot. I just ordered a collector's edition from Amazon upon hearing this. I guess that means I'll have friend keys or whatever to hand out to people who are interested. The thought of starting to play this reminds me of one of the quotes way back from the EQ kunark expansion box that claimed you should only buy this for a loved one if you never wanted to see them again.
Hey, I've been meaning to post here just to say hello. I'm one of the Arstechnica refugees - I'm "Hirobi" in the guild at the moment, but I have my requisite stable of alts floating around. Here's the meat though. I'm sometimes an anal-retentive numbers freak, and I was wondering about class balance both game-wide and within the guild, so I made spreadsheets. The overall data is from vgplayers.com and the guild data is just from counting in-game. I didn't count anyone below level 10 or anyone who hasn't logged in since before 6/25 (figured ~2 weeks). So the numbers may be slightly off for in-guild folk if there are people on >2 week hiatus from the game. At any rate... here are graphs.
Game-wide:
Guild:
Archetype breakdown...
Inner ring is L10-19, outer ring is total L10+:
So yeah... apparently we're not a touchy-feeling-healing-type bunch...
I was just about to post asking what the guild needs more, tanks or healers, but I guess that answered my question.
Yeah, unfortunately it sounds like the Shaman revamp went from "incredibly cool" to "incredibly lame" in less time than it takes to say "nerf". I'm not sure if y'all have discussed it here yet (only on page 27 catching up), but basically Shamans were going to get "Specialized Patron Forms" or "SPFs" that were powerful enough to put the shaman *almost* on par with the "parent" archetype (think WoW druids). Caster/MeleeDPS/Tank options... this was balanced by the fact that a) you have to choose one patron, so you can't do everything. b) you have to gear for your patron to be effective, i.e. you won't be in healing gear and able to just shift back to humanoid and heal. and c) a severe reduction in healing output for X amount of time after shifting out of a form. So again, you can't be merrily doing your DPS/Tank thing and then shift out to heal the group as well. It sounds like the shaman community was cautiously optimistic. Clearly you'd sacrifice quite a bit to effectively utilize your patron, but they sounded like they'd be worth those sacrifices, while limiting the potential for "omg overpowered".
There was, of course, mass outcry from other classes regardless of the attempts at balance and it sounds like they've essentially gutted the SPFs, removing the vast majority of the benefits while leaving all the drawbacks. So yeah... that sorta sucks. Other shaman complains: being the least effective healers available and lacking in any uniquely desirable group buffs... I don't know how much is just whining and how much is valid complaint, but the tenor of the shaman threads/forums has gone from "cautiously optimistic" to "reroll now and/or don't bother".
So that's a bummer. I wouldn't mind rolling up a healer, but Shaman and Disciple are the two that interest me most and we've already slightly disciple-heavy... Maybe I'll try out a blood mage...
Blood Mage is what I wanted my WoW warlock to be. I keep trying out new alts, but the only one that appeals to me nearly as much is the Dread Knight.
I'm obligated to roll a cleric and try it out (because of my healing fetish) but I'm just not that excited. Maybe it'll be fresh and new, but the character description doesn't have me very optimistic.
Sorry I am not playing with you right now and dungeoneering. I am trapped at my desk, where they have locked me in my office forever. I don't think I'll be going home before after I need to go to sleep, so maybe tomorrow. If not tomorrow, I won't be back on till Monday night. Keep an eye out for Djavoli, he's my buddy and knows I told you guys we wanted to group.
Ha! Not a big deal at all. We checked out the Qa riverbank last night, and wound up blowing through the Hive in about 10 minutes with Pelia and Fychan. We're steadily levelling up- hopefully we'll be more prepared for the Lyceum when we get a group together for it.
this has to be the only MMO ever where rogue is the least popular class. It's probably the most popular in WoW. Ironically, this is the first game where I've actually enjoyed playing a rogue...
Posts
Long version: Hung out with a friend over the 4th weekend and him talking about WoW made me get that damned MMO itch again. Determined to not go back to WoW I came to the PA boards since it's always a source of good suggestions and stumbled into this thread. The OP answered my first question of "wait... what?" and now I'm intrigued and want to try the game out... then I saw that BARD is a playable class and I have to try it out. Seriously... any fantasy game that doesn't include bard as a playable class can suck it.
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
Man, this is how I feel. Can you imagine how pissed off I was when WoW's April Fool's joke showed off a bard class? I knew it was fake, but it pissed me off that it was fake; I've been wanting a bard class in that game since it came out!
Anyhow, I think someone here should have a trial code for you. If not, make sure to hit up the official Vanguard forums and ask someone there.
Probably shouldn't admit this... but I didn't realize it was a joke at first... I just saw the top headline "New class: bard" and I freaked out... then I clicked the link, saw the fake (but funny) screenshots and remembered what day it was
Thanks, I'll wait on here a few days then hit up the official forums.
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
But.. now... it looks so neeeeat. If there's a key available for me, I'd love to snag it so I can experience the newness for m'self.
Basically, The only thing I really need to hear to know if this Vanguard is right for is: is leveling primarily party based, rather than solo?
BRAWL FC: 0516 6975 3419
Pokeymanz FC:5327 6840 5195
When I did want to level up, it was all about finding the sweet spots for your level.
Anyway the game is not really forcing you to play in a special way, if you like to solo you might miss some grupe stuff, if you like to grupe you need to spend time finding other people, you can do it anyway you want, but dont start playing this game thinking it is all about leveling.
not for exp'n.
Ok, I think I am going to go goblin. But maybe I will see how I like the other race. Just wondering, how do you like your necro? I still think the necro from EQ was one of the best designed MMO classes to date. I am hoping for a similar experience.
My 360 is [strike]back[/strike] [strike]bricked[/strike] back!
There are some solo quest in the game ATM that gives Plat coins (Fu**ink gnomes) but they are non repatable and only nets you about 15 coins, so you still have to grupe to kill the mobs that drop coins, some are overland and some in dungeons.
I actually think this is the best designed Necromancer class in any MMO and maybe game to date. I'll give my Necro-credentials to share how much me saying this means.
Games i've played a Necromancer in: EQ1, EQ2, Oblivion, Diablo 2, Threshold MUD, Lineage 2, Guild Wars, Adventure Quest(lols I know) and Vanguard. I think I might have missed some somewhere, too.
Then we tried to take two unrootable 4-dot orcs on by ourselves and learned what our colons look like when they're turned inside out.
@Red Gear: This game is solo-able but the real fun and challenge is in the party stuff, and there's never a shortage of it. What I just discovered yesterday is that you can join what is called a "Brotherhood" with another player- maybe more than one, I haven't tried it. In a brotherhood you split all the XP you get, right down the middle, even if one person is offline. I.E. you don't ever have to outlevel your friends, ever, no matter how much more you play.
Related question: When do warriors become decent at holding aggro? Right now I can't go even one-third of my full dps or I will immediately draw the monster to myself. Is there some trick we should be doing? Druid/Warrior team here.
You can have lots of people in a brotherhood, I don't know what the limit is but I know some of the higher levels in the guild have one. It's just a matter of trust or willingness to possibly sacrifice xp to keep other players around your level, which I can imagine is tougher when it's not someone you know IRL.
We will definitely have to run the Fallen Lyceum, maybe tonight or tomorrow night if we can pull it off! It's a level 16-22 dungeon, but Djavoli are feeling gutsy at level 15 and want to give it a try. Otherwise we can do the Achlatan Spider Caves maybe, which is 14-20ish.
Also, come on over to Thestra! We were hanging out over near you, but once we saw Thestra, and the fact that there's more people to talk to, a better exchange market and (in my opinion) a better, more classical fantasy theme, we made the jump. I guess it's not a huge deal where everyone is, since it's so easy to teleport back and forth, but we're probably gonna focus mostly on Thestra for awhile, though I might keep crafting in Kojan.
I've been kind of hesitant to join any serious parties when we're still complete newbs to the game mechanics, but I think it's definitely time to start looking at Thestra. What's a good place for a couple of people to start questing up there, Darkewolfe?
Also, I checked the official forums as suggested... didn't find any particular threads of people asking for guest passes... which particular forum do people normally post that in?
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
I've been considering coming back during this free reactivation period. If I start with you dudes Saredon, would anyone be willing to level up an alt or something? I'm willing to play almost any class and I don't suck at games! At least, that's what my mom says..
Wow, just wow. Here
Whoops! I have this tendency to not even see stickied things in forums. Probably should have used the search function
Listen to our podcast, read our articles, tell us how much you hate it and how to make it better
Sorry I am not playing with you right now and dungeoneering. I am trapped at my desk, where they have locked me in my office forever. I don't think I'll be going home before after I need to go to sleep, so maybe tomorrow. If not tomorrow, I won't be back on till Monday night. Keep an eye out for Djavoli, he's my buddy and knows I told you guys we wanted to group.
SOE keeps all their games around, even the crappiest ones. It's part of their system where you can subscribe to them all at once. I mean, Star Wars Galaxies is still around, ugh!
BRAWL FC: 0516 6975 3419
Pokeymanz FC:5327 6840 5195
You can easily catch up!
Thats great news! thanks a lot. I just ordered a collector's edition from Amazon upon hearing this. I guess that means I'll have friend keys or whatever to hand out to people who are interested. The thought of starting to play this reminds me of one of the quotes way back from the EQ kunark expansion box that claimed you should only buy this for a loved one if you never wanted to see them again.
BRAWL FC: 0516 6975 3419
Pokeymanz FC:5327 6840 5195
I don't even want to post them because they just dont do the game justice.
Game-wide:
Guild:
Archetype breakdown...
Inner ring is L10-19, outer ring is total L10+:
So yeah... apparently we're not a touchy-feeling-healing-type bunch...
I was just about to post asking what the guild needs more, tanks or healers, but I guess that answered my question.
Yeah, unfortunately it sounds like the Shaman revamp went from "incredibly cool" to "incredibly lame" in less time than it takes to say "nerf". I'm not sure if y'all have discussed it here yet (only on page 27 catching up), but basically Shamans were going to get "Specialized Patron Forms" or "SPFs" that were powerful enough to put the shaman *almost* on par with the "parent" archetype (think WoW druids). Caster/MeleeDPS/Tank options... this was balanced by the fact that a) you have to choose one patron, so you can't do everything. b) you have to gear for your patron to be effective, i.e. you won't be in healing gear and able to just shift back to humanoid and heal. and c) a severe reduction in healing output for X amount of time after shifting out of a form. So again, you can't be merrily doing your DPS/Tank thing and then shift out to heal the group as well. It sounds like the shaman community was cautiously optimistic. Clearly you'd sacrifice quite a bit to effectively utilize your patron, but they sounded like they'd be worth those sacrifices, while limiting the potential for "omg overpowered".
There was, of course, mass outcry from other classes regardless of the attempts at balance and it sounds like they've essentially gutted the SPFs, removing the vast majority of the benefits while leaving all the drawbacks. So yeah... that sorta sucks. Other shaman complains: being the least effective healers available and lacking in any uniquely desirable group buffs... I don't know how much is just whining and how much is valid complaint, but the tenor of the shaman threads/forums has gone from "cautiously optimistic" to "reroll now and/or don't bother".
So that's a bummer. I wouldn't mind rolling up a healer, but Shaman and Disciple are the two that interest me most and we've already slightly disciple-heavy... Maybe I'll try out a blood mage...
I'm obligated to roll a cleric and try it out (because of my healing fetish) but I'm just not that excited. Maybe it'll be fresh and new, but the character description doesn't have me very optimistic.
Ha! Not a big deal at all. We checked out the Qa riverbank last night, and wound up blowing through the Hive in about 10 minutes with Pelia and Fychan. We're steadily levelling up- hopefully we'll be more prepared for the Lyceum when we get a group together for it.
this has to be the only MMO ever where rogue is the least popular class. It's probably the most popular in WoW. Ironically, this is the first game where I've actually enjoyed playing a rogue...