February 16, 2006

Vanguard preview @ IGN

Vanguard : Saga of Heroes is in a media blitz and IGN has a review up and I have it in my crosshairs. It has me more than disapointed... it has me downright angry. Angry because of the setback this pile of steaming crap will be on the MMORPG market.

Read the preview for Vanguard here.

Lets start with the stand out comment of the article; "The actual game mechanics should be familiar to anyone who's dabbled in MMOs in the past few years."

- Holy fizzle... Vanguard really is Everquest 2.0 (not to be mistaken with Everquest 2 from SOE). Read that quote again. Translated to human speak the previewers impression was "This is Everquest with better graphics."

Something about housing that caught my eye; "Once you start racking up a lot of dough, you'll eventually have the resources to build your own house and you can create a list of specific people who are allowed to enter it. Housing is not instanced, but the world has tons of open space for staking your claim."

- OK I'm going to calm down a little bit because they are the first MMO really since UO to attempt this in the fantasy setting. This does have potential.

Next on the chopping block is this beauty of a quote; "(Right now, the plan is to have a level cap of 50 at launch. With the current content balance, one beta tester took over four months, playing twelve hours a day, seven days a week, to reach that point.)"

This of course is followed up by this dandy; "That's primarily why McQuaid has a 30" Dell LCD powered by a Radeon X1900 XTX -- because they like to play."

- We already knew this game was made for the hardcore and I'm over that fact. What really hits hard is Brad's PC setup. Way to keep it real Brad. For bloomin' sakes... you would think they may want to test/play this game on a system THAT MORE THAN 10% OF THE GAMERS OUT THERE OWN OR COULD EVEN AFFORD!!! Just my opinion of course.

There is another preview up at Gamespot which I'll digest later, but for now I am pissed off so no need to bite off more than I can chew.