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Vanguard Saga of Heroes Introduction (2)
| However, while the world looks amazing, and the artistic style is frequently striking, there are several things that pull you out of the fiction. The first disappointment is how static the fauna is. Non-hostile creatures stand around waiting to be hunted down and battered into submission, while even hostiles don't always react even when near-neighbours are attacked. Of course, some of this is to maintain a reasonable difficulty level - you don't want the mobs ganging up at the opening of the game - but you can't help feeling that WoW handles its menageries better. There are also a lot of areas in which everyone just seems to be standing around, waiting for the player to interact. This has always been the case with MMOs, and may always be so, but there are times when Vanguard's illusion of its living breathing world simply isn't as compelling as WoW's, despite the clearly more advanced state of the visuals. |
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| The most serious issue, however, is the underlying game style. Vanguard wants to provide a world of epic, group-based adventure, so you can't expect the instant travel options and AI henchmen of a casual-friendly game like Guild Wars, but even given this there are long periods where Sigil's baby feels like a good old-fashioned grind. For a game that prides itself on non-combat routes to advancement, there's still a lot of emphasis on the classic 'bash x Grey Wolves then return to me' quest, to the extent that some quest-givers even give you a shopping list of monsters to be slaughtered. WoW and Guild Wars both do it to some extent, but both are usually better at hiding it. It's a shame, because there are occasions when Vanguard does a fantastic job with its quests, linking several together as part of one mini-crusade against a particular villain, or pitching you as a hero who can halt a dark conspiracy. |
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| At these points, the game really takes off, but there are huge periods where it doesn't and it all seems like hard work. Dying certainly doesn't help. Up to level seven you simply reincarnate at the nearest base - a nice sop to keep us noobs from throwing in the towel - but after that you're faced with a choice between paying heavy penalties or having to return to your place of death and loot the grave to get your kit back. In WoW, you could do so as a spirit and only had to get near the mark, making recovering your possessions a hassle but not a particularly perilous one. In Vanguard, however, you have to travel in your vulnerable, physical form without armour and with only basic weaponry, to pretty much the exact point where you died. This means you can actually die several times on the way to get your stuff back - not what I'd call entertaining. |
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| Vanguard also gets hard on solo players fairly early. Again, this fits in with the classic ethos, but it means the game isn't as flexible as WoW or Guild Wars. We don't always have our buddies on tap to play with, and it's not always easy to find a pick-up group to play with, particularly at times - and there are many - when the servers aren't so full. |
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| The main reason to persist is potential. While the early game can be a bit of a grind, there is a real feeling that, should you find a good group and put a lot of time in, there's a fantastic world to explore here. Telon has an almost dizzying sense of scale, and even in the early stages you can see epic narratives building up. All the same, do you really want to grind today so you can have jam tomorrow, when other games give you jam right from the start? |
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| Perhaps the real key to understanding Vanguard is that even though it looks third-generation, it's driven by an old-school mentality and how you respond will depend on how much you can share it. Like any good MMORPG - and this is a good MMORPG - it's addictive, huge and habit-forming. It's also well-designed and thoroughly gorgeous to look at. Yet it demands the sort of commitment that means it will never pull in the casual crowd that took to WoW and Guild Wars in such numbers. Provided player numbers stay up or even grow, Vanguard will give back everything that you put in. The question is, do you really have the time and energy to give it in the first place? |
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