Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Hands-On Preview
Sigil's long-awaited massively multiplayer online role-playing game looks as if it will live up to its epic billing, but what's it like to play?
For a game that, according to some rumors, is the second most expensive massively multiplayer online game made to date, the interest surrounding Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is justified. After all, the game is the brainchild of the same people behind the highly influential EverQuest franchise, and with the progress made in the genre by the likes of Blizzard, you'd expect grand ambitions from developer Sigil and publisher Sony Online Entertainment. With the game finally launching next week, we played through some of the early levels in the latest version of the beta test.
Vanguard has been in development for a number of years now, and when you first get an overview of the project, it's clear where all of the time and money has gone. The world is absolutely huge, and it looks really nice, as well. The visuals are more realistic than, say, those of World of Warcraft, and the textures on even simple environmental surfaces, such as rocks, really look the part. What's more, grass and trees sway in the breeze, and there are some lovely lighting and shading effects. The draw distance of key elements in the landscape is so far that it's possible to stand on one hilltop and look across a valley to areas that would take upward of 10 minutes of travel on foot to get anywhere near.
The setting for Vanguard is the world of Telon, which has three distinct parts. Thestra is a more traditional setting for a fantasy story, while Qalia and Kojan have more of an Arabian and Asian feel to them. To populate these regions, there are 19 races of playable characters, split roughly evenly between the continents. While the usual suspects turn up--gnomes, elves, dwarves, and humans--there are a number of interesting, more original races included, too. For example, the vulmane, raki, and kurashasa are races derived from wolves, foxes, and leopard-like creatures, respectively.
Choosing just how to start your life in Vanguard can be pretty daunting in itself. Although not all of the races can play as all of the classes, there are still nearly 50 combinations to select from. If you do know which class you want to play, clicking the relevant icon lets you easily see which races are able to take on that role. Classes are handily split into four basic types--offensive fighter, protective fighter, healer, and caster. What's more, even if you're a little overwhelmed by the amount of choices, Sigil's game design lets you get a pretty clear idea of what your character will be capable of over the course of the game quite early on. Most of the different types of spells or abilities that your class can learn will be available from just a few levels in, but they will, of course, grow more powerful and varied as you progress.
As usual, the basic premise of the game revolves around starting out with a level-one character and gaining experience by killing monsters and completing quests, with the current level cap being 50. Although there is a penalty for dying--a certain amount of experience you've gained is confiscated--this effect doesn't kick in until level 7. Also, you can regain what you've lost by returning to the place that you died and looting your corpse. However, this may well be more difficult than it sounds, because monsters respawn fairly quickly, and it's possible to work your way into trouble when the path you previously cleared closes up, cutting off any effective escape route.
In general, the quests revolve around the standard fare of killing monsters, delivering packages, collecting items, and so on. Most of them are fairly straightforward, and while you shouldn't have too much trouble understanding what's required, it's sometimes a little unclear as to the exact location of your objectives. Certain other quests require a slightly different approach to the standard kill or collect method, and Vanguard's diplomacy module is a prime example of this. The overall aim of diplomacy is to give players a new path to follow, something that runs parallel to questing and plays out a little like trading-card games such as Magic: The Gathering.
When you begin to parley with the subject of your quest, your general aim is to persuade your target to go along with your thinking, and you'll do this in a variety of ways. To begin with, the number of cards that you can choose from is limited, but as you gain more experience, you'll collect more, letting you parley with greater skill and efficiency. Your aim is to move the agenda progress bar toward your point of view, while the other person does the same. You manage this by playing various cards, which relate to four different verbal stances--demand, reason, inspiration, or flattery. Each card has a stance cost associated with it, as well as a specified result and a delay before it can be played again. You may place up to five cards in your strategy bar before each parley, and you can play only those cards in the ensuing conversation.
To play a card, you must have enough currency within each of the verbal stances to satisfy its demand, and on the whole, the more expensive a card is to play, the more effective it is at moving the agenda progress bar toward your side. Some cards that are cheap to play are good to fall back on while your better cards are recharging, but they can also give your opponent more currency points and even move the progress bar away from you.
It's a fairly complex approach, but anybody that's played a trading-card game should get the hang of it pretty quickly, and overall, there are a whole new set of tactical considerations to be made. Later in the game, players with a higher diplomatic rating will be able to gain access to certain non-player characters that others are barred from, unlocking new quests in the process.
The third main direction that Vanguard moves in, aside from adventuring and diplomacy, is the extensive and in-depth crafting experience. There are a variety of different types of harvesting that your character can learn, including mining ore, harvesting plants, and gathering wood. Those items will form the basis of the more advanced construction professions, which will let players make all kinds of objects, although players can only take a primary and secondary profession.
This specialization means that you'll have to focus on just a couple of areas, although that's just as well, because the variation possible in the crafting process is much more reminiscent of Star Wars Galaxies than it is of World of Warcraft. Every time you create an item, you have to go through a series of processes. For example, making an item from metal will require you to use a furnace, for which you'll have to provide the fuel, and heat it to the required temperature. Then, you'll need to work the ore, before shaping the item itself and applying the finish.
Each of these steps usually has a couple of choices, which generally dictate the differing degrees of quality in the final product. For each crafting process, you have a pool of crafting points, and each step of the process uses some of those up--finishing to a higher quality will use up more points, for example. In addition, there will occasionally be problems in the crafting process, and while you're offered solutions, they, too, will use up precious points. Most recipes or patterns will require more than one manufactured item, so you may have to construct or acquire some components first before getting to the final product.
In trying to address some of the economical issues that other massively multiplayer online role-playing games have come up against, Sigil has instituted a system called "work orders," which is where NPCs will commission, and then take from you, a certain number of created items. This means that while you can then go on to make more items to sell, it's less likely that the in-game market will be flooded with certain types of items. In this way, it's hoped that crafting can remain profitable, rather than just becoming a time and money sink.
One thing that's not a priority in Vanguard is player-versus-player action. At launch, most of the servers will run a normal rule set, which means that fighting will be between players and NPCs, with the exception of duels--consensual one-on-one battles where the outcome has no lasting consequences for either party. There will be support at launch for a PVP server, which will give players the opportunity to kill each other more freely, and it's possible that a permadeath server might launch in the future, on which characters that die cannot be revived.
With a playing area the size of Vanguard's, maps are an absolute necessity. There are currently large-scale maps that offer a basic idea of the environment's terrain, as well as markers to let you know where towns, cities, and quest-relevant locations are. The low level of detail on the wilderness maps does encourage you to explore, and striking out from the beaten path and just wandering around can be pretty rewarding. Of course, it's more dangerous away from the well-trodden highways, but you might come across the odd folly along the way, as in Oblivion. It's something that gives you a nice feeling of scale, and of being in a world that lives and breathes around you.
Along that theme, it's also possible later in the game to buy and manage housing plots, and there's a nice variety of running and flying mounts to be had. What's more, there aren't really any instances for dungeons and the like, which means that questing groups can meet others and interact. While this could make it possible for teams to steal kills, Sigil has taken the decision to make boss spawns untouchable for players outside of the group on that quest. In this way, although teams could work together in the build up to the climax of a quest, the group would have to work alone to kill the boss.
With the publicity that Blizzard has generated in the massively multiplayer role-playing market due to World of Warcraft, the bar is much higher now than at any time in the past, and every game released is judged against an extremely high standard. It's clear that Vanguard has, from its inception, been a game with a massive amount of ambition and potential. As of now, there are still some rough edges to be worked out, but hopefully these issues will be resolved by the time the game launches next week.
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