I am seriously considering remove the Vanguard link from the probablynot main page. Seriously.
In case you missed it, Brad has been dropping mini-videos of gameplay on their forums. You can get some of them from Ten Ton Hammer, or you can go straight to the V:SoH forums.
In short… Brad has done it again, almost exactly. The game looks like EverQuest, with a touch of World of Warcraft and the graphics engine of EQ2. For something that is supposed to be a next generation game, its looking to be a last generation game that requires a next generation investment.
The NPCs seem to all just stand around, rigid. Sure, most games are that way, but that’s the point… you can’t claim to be next gen if you don’t improve anything, and requiring me to upgrade my computer isn’t improving anything. The combat looks to be just like every other combat around these days… auto-attack and some button mashing. I thought there was supposed to be this whole chained attacks and opportunities thing going on, but if its there he doesn’t show it in these videos. One thing of note during the combat… notice the way the group stands… tank in front, everyone else to the back and sides. I assume this means we will see more of the EQ game mechanics of NPCs with area attacks that you have to avoid by being out of the forward arc. Boring. Age of Conan impressed me with its model interactivity (player and monster actually making contact, a grapple move actually grappling the opponent), but Vanguard is sticking with the everyone is independant method of animation. So I could look forward to huge mobs with large bounding boxes whom I don’t have to actually be near to hit as long as I’m in range of his hit box. *sigh*
If this is all Brad has to offer, I’ve got no reason at all to stop playing WoW and plunk down the money for a new PC.
Thanks to Heartless Gamer for the heads up on the future of tedium.
If you read all of Brad’s posts (like I do, Vanboi that I am), you would know that the animation system has not been implemented yet and that they have yet to give static animation (to get the NPC’s to lose some of that rigidity). UI was turned off through most combat scenes, so of course you wouldn’t see chains. Plus the game has, you know, 4 MONTHS LEFT IN DEVELOPMENT.
I’m going to play Vanguard for the incredible game world that has no zone lines whatsoever, the travel (flying mounts, player-owned ships), the absolutely gorgeous graphics, player-owned housing, diplomatic sphere of advancement, great crafting system, ridiculously detailed and versatile character creation/customization, full Z-axis (underwater, underground, and aerial content), and EQ-style questing system. You can’t tell me that Vanguard isn’t unique with all of these features.
I can’t tell you whether I’m in beta, but let’s just say that I can’t wait till the NDA is lifted. I absolutely love the game.
Age of Conan does have the best combat system around, but it is so heavily instanced (even the first 20 levels are single player), so small (the whole game is about 30 zones, according to devs), and so focused on PvP that I would never play it.
First off, saying 30 zones is small is misguided until you know how big a zone is. For all we know, a single AoC zone could be as large as an entire WoW continent. We’ll just have to wait and see. And sure, Vanguard has no zone lines now… when they release an expansion, we’ll see if they make you zone to it or not.
As for Vanguard’s stuff… I have said it before and I’ll say it again, show me. Right now, all I see is EQ all over again. Back then Brad talked lots about what was going to be in the game, and ultimately, over half those features were dropped before going live. All the videos he has released haven’t shown any of his “cool stuff”. So until he lifts the NDA or shows something worthwhile, I’m going to side with history and believe those things may never exist.
Honestly, I probably won’t even play Conan because I just don’t care for super-realistic graphics that require the latest $500 video card and a $2000-3000 PC to see it the way it was intended. WoW proved a game can be beautiful without pushing the technological envelope, and frankly Vanguard is just unimpressive. The animations are rigid (if new ones are coming, great, but he’ll have to show me first), and the graphics look almost exactly like every other game that is coming down the pipe. WoW, at least, was distinctive.