It's on the way, but it isnt there yet.
To begin, no review of a MMORPG just two weeks after release can do a game justice, because there is no way all content available can be evaluated. Despite that, I feel that there are parts of a game that are worth reviewing for players, and potential players. Designed by parts of the original Everquest team, Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, Sigil has been in development for near five years, and had an amazing 30+ million dollar budget during that time.
The Hardware:
Vanguard has a beefier system requirement than most MMORPG’s do at this time. I’ve played the game on three separate systems, from AMD Dual Core 3800 with an ATI 1950 video card and 2 gigs of RAM, and at the low end, AMD 2800 with a gig of RAM, and an ATI 9800 Pro video card. In early January the game went to Beta 5, or it’s open beta, and there was an outcry from people who had beefy spec’s, but their performance suffered to the point where they game was near unplayable due to hitching and lag. Sigil suggested that there would be a 10% increase in performance at release due to debug code being eliminated among other things. On all three systems, I’ve done combat, exploring, and tested different areas in the game, and am happy to report that I seem to have few, if any graphical issues. The clipping and lag that I experienced during beta was gradually eliminated and at release, I rarely if ever suffer from those problems. If I do see clipping, it’s in the largest and most detailed cities, and it’s night and day different than it was just more than a month ago. The single biggest helper I’ve seen personally, and from talking to people on the forums and in game is RAM, 2 gigs seems to be optimal. There is what appears to be a memory leak in game, which has required people to flush their engine cache from time to time, or to log out and log back in. This isn’t a game breaker for me, and I find it a fairly typical item at release.
Telon:
The world of Vanguard is Telon. This is a massive, and I do mean massive world in which you live. There are three distinct continents with a different theme. Thestra, the northernmost continent has a typical fantasy theme, with the world having a central European theme. The continent of Kojan has an Asiatic theme to it, with thatch homes, and a very unique theme to it. It is not so much a continent as an archipelago of islands. Qalia the southernmost continent has an Arabian theme, and is distinct for its deserts. Each style is different, and the world reflects this. Even simple items bear a flavor from whence they came. A sword from Qalia may look like a scimitar, from Kojan a katana, and Thestra a longsword. The ability to see this continental flavor help define a characters look, helps toward the ability to feel unique. Sigil took this one step further, as a crafter who learns recipe’s in Qalia, will learn Qalian crafting, and his items may have the same stat as someone crafting in Thestra, but his item will have a unique look. Granted you can learn in different places, but this helps the world seem bigger.
Game Spheres:
Sigil created Vanguard with the concept that they would have three distinct spheres for players to enjoy. They wanted someone to have the ability to enjoy adventuring, crafting, and diplomacy. While some games have multiple spheres, it often seems that one sphere or another lacks use, content, or value. Adventuring:
This is the typical sphere that most MMO veterans know about. Current max level is set at 50, and at one time it was suggested it could take up to 1200 hours of play to reach max level. I don’t know how accurate that will be, only time will tell. What I feel comfortable saying, is that Vanguard leveling wont be fast, and there could be points where you will feel that you are grinding to level. There is plenty of content for the early to mid levels, but as many MMO’s, there could be less content available for high levels. While I don’t think 1200 hours will be accurate, this will definitely be a process, and unlike other MMO’s, where the game does not begin until max level, Vanguard truly begins at level one.
Vanguard is also not utilizing instanced areas. So instead of having a dungeon to yourself, and your group, you are once again, as in days past, sharing it with other groups. Sigil has tried to code in some ways to insure that if you do something to trigger an event, or NPC, that will belong to your group exclusively. This can be both a positive and a negative, but as people have to leave groups, it does allow groups to merge, and for adventuring to continue.
Crafting:
Crafting has always been an interest of mine. The concept of making your own weapons, armor, or other items has been fun to me. Other MMO’s have struggled though to find a balance, I feel, either crafting was a grind and even as you reached max level, you found that unless you got lucky, you rarely had any items that you could craft and sell for any kind of profit. In Vanguard, what I’ve been seeing is that crafting truly is useful. I choose to become an Artificer, and then a Carpenter with an eye on building ships one day. The side benefit was the ability to make bows, and staves as well. As a level fifteen carpenter, I’m able to make a level 25 bow. The items aren’t easy to find, and you find yourself paying quite a bit of attention to crafting grade (A, B, C or D). According to developers, crafting will be important, and it’s shown to be so far. However, all is not roses with crafting, as there are some fairly large issues. At this time, most people are making “average” items ( C-grade ) and finding that truly, average is average. To make better than average items, you’ll need to be of a higher level than the recipe you are trying to make. You’ll also have to deal with complications as you craft, and how you deal with them will impact your item. Without a doubt, this system is potentially enjoyable for those who like crafting, it needs some more polish, but is truly a great second leg to this game.
Diplomacy:
I was admittedly not very interested in diplomacy when I first heard about it, but as time went on, my curiosity began to grow. Imagine taking a quest where you need to see a King, but as a common citizen, how are you going to complete it, after all, how can you get in to see a King? Well, in Vanguard, you have faction with nobles, soldiers and others. As it turns out that diplomacy is in essence a mini-card game. The idea is that each person has a set amount of dialog points, and thru the use of cards, you try to eliminate your opponents. There is actually excellent back-story to the game told via diplomacy, it allows you to gain access to different items, and so on. This idea is fairly well fleshed out, and I have to admit, I spent 3 hours doing it one night, and never had any idea I was at it for that long. While this will probably not prove a central selling point for most people, it does certainly capture the attention of people, and add something to the game. I’ve got guild mates who are addicted.
Races/Character Creation:
There are currently 19 different choices for race, although that number does include some duplicates. For instance humans appear on all 3 continents, but each one has different looks, as you might expect based upon their regionalisms. Each race has a different back-story and there are plenty of starting areas, although some races do share starting areas. Sigil has boasted that they wanted to give people more choices than any other MMORPG has before them. In practice there are plenty of things that you can change, but there still needs to be more done, in some cases there are as few as four hairstyles for a given race, and that does little to help make you feel unique in the world. Classes:
Sigil went back to some roots from the pen and paper RPG’s, but still managed to put their own stamp on classes. In general, every class breaks down into one of the four main templates, protective fighters, offensive fighters, healers, and ranged casters. From the Orwell lesson, some pigs are more equal than other pigs, however in this case the idea was to allow all protective fighters to tank, even if they all went about it slightly differently. It’s early in the game, and the ever dreaded balancing is still going around, but this was an ambitious goal that seems to working out fairly well.
Protective Fighters: Warriors, Paladins, and Dread Knights. These are the tank class of Vanguard, and each one seems quite able to fulfill their main role. They may each have a niche, and an ability to tank certain things better than others, but all three can fill the role of a tank.
Offensive Fighters: Monk, Bard, Rogue, Ranger. These are the melee DPS of Vanguard, and they do their jobs very differently. For instance a Ranger can go ranged, does some of his best DPS melee, and also has a small heal, and poison cure making him a jack of all trades. DPS is put out by all three, but just in different ways.
Healers: Cleric, Blood Mage, Shaman, Disciple. These are the primary healers in Vanguard. A cleric with his/her plate armor and shield has fabulous buffs, can stay in the fray, and toss of great heals. A Disciple stands in, and uses his “Jin” points to heal, which is very different. Healers are not healbots as I’ve found in Vanguard, each of them able to output a reasonable amount of offense as needed.
Ranged Casters: Sorcerer, Druid, Psionicist, and Necromancer. With a different method to their madness these are the ranged casters of Vanguard. A sorcerer uses the traditional fire and ice, the druid the weather, and so on, and so on, but each tries to serve the same need.
Graphics:
Expect an oil painting, not a cartoon and you wont be disappointed. The defaults set you up with a fairly long draw radius, so you can see an awful long way, and it looks good, but again, this is going to be up to personal taste. The combat animations also are a matter of taste as I’ve seen them slammed for being simplistic to complimented. Positives and Negatives:
Has Sigil released a truly evolutionary game? Well, it had the benefit of learning from the successes of the first and second gen games, so Sigil is truly a third generation game. There may not be anything totally revolutionary here, but what Sigil has in essence done, is take some of the most successful ideas from past MMORPG’s, and incorporated all of them together in Vanguard. From non-instanced player housing, to a deep and rich crafting system, with a simple UI that just about anyone who has played an MMO in the last 5 years with would feel a certain level of comfort with right off the bat. Grouping and questing seems to be the larger goal, and the best way to get experience, and Sigil’s concession to the soloer is about 20% of the content. They’ve promised epic quests in the end game, that can net the soloer gear that would be on a par with the raider, or the epic crafter. What those quests are, how long they take (McQuaid suggested they might be a chain that could take up to 20 hours in the formerly posted FAQ) we’re not really sure, since we have not seen them. Sigil made a curious choice to not have official forums, but to have their dev’s join the communities of affiliate sites. This has made communication difficult, made it harder to see a community form, and for someone looking for information, much harder, as you’ll find yourself searching four, five or even six different sites. Contact post release with Dev’s has been a little more limited than most people would like, however the developer interaction over the past few days is much increased, and that is to be expected as immediately after release they were focused on bugs, and other fixes for patches.
This in some ways reminds me of my early days in Ultima Online, because nobody really knew how to do anything, we had to learn things as we went. Vanguard however is many times more complex, and knowledge on how to do things is equally hard to find. Right now in some cases it can be a toss up of what takes more time, getting to the NPC in game to talk to, or searching the message boards looking to find out who the NPC is you need to begin with.
In a New York Times Interview, Brad McQuaid stated that “People ask me, are you releasing a finished game? And the answer is no, we’re releasing a game that is good enough to launch, but it’s not finished.” With that being said, I’ve seen better releases, and worse releases from other MMORPG’s. There is class balancing, quest fixes, and other bugs that still have an effect on the game. With most releases there is work to be done, but with the size, scope, and massive world, it becomes evident that Vanguard needs more of this work.
The 800 lb Gorilla:
I debated this section, but in truth, I think because of it’s impact in the genre of MMORPG’s, no review is complete with out a least some talk about World of Warcraft. Reason being, before World of Warcraft we can estimate that between 7-8 million people were playing this type of MMO, and Warcraft has doubled that. It’s expanded the existing MMO playerbase.
It’s my personal opinion, that Vanguard wont ever be a threat to WoW in terms of subscriptions. What WoW has done right, is create a cartoony but good to look at world, filled it with content, and made rewards come fairly fast and easily. It also did all of this with fairly low computer specs, which allows even more people to enjoy it.
All that being said, Vanguard is most certainly not World of Warcraft. There is a steeper learning curve in Vanguard, it feels infinitely more complex, and also feels to be a much deeper game. There is much less simplicity, and there is much less in the way of hand holding that the game does. Once you hit level 10, you definitely feel like you are out on your own in the world, and you’ll have to figure out what to do. There is pro and con to that approach, but it will simply come down to preference.
Vanguard will not be the game for everyone for this reason, and while it may appeal to some who are tired of WoW, for those very same reasons, it will alienate an entire group of players who are used to the fairly fast, and easy reward system that WoW has in comparison.
My Tilt:
I’ve done my best to try to explain the game, and illustrate that all is not 100% perfect in the world of Telon. There are things that need to be addressed, and Sigil has it’s work cut out for them. The future of this title very much will hinge on how Sigil continues to clean up bugs, work any hardware issues out so it’s easily playable for most people who at least have the basic specs, and adds content. I’ve had an absolute blast with the game so far, I haven’t experienced the hardware issues, despite playing on systems that appear to be far lesser than some people who claim to have had issues. The game looks to be deep, although it has plenty of it’s own time sinks in place.
Updated: 8/2/07
After playing for several months, I've definitely changed my tune about VG. Sigil ended up selling out to SOE, but from a player point of view, the game's bugs and issues just eventually ended up being overwhelming. Sigil definitely modeled this game after EQ, but they missed the boat in seeing that the genre had changed.
Non-instanced dungeons turned into fights between groups, and the inability for people to complete quests. Too many open and empty areas. Too many crash to desktops. Lore told in a funky manner.
I hate saying it, but while I enjoyed the game for some time, the inability ot fix bugs, and the problems were manifested even more with time spent in game.