Complete Heal

Fan Faire 2010 has now officially come to an end. There are a number of sites that have been covering the event this year such as EQ2 Wire, so my plan is just to recap some of the conversations that I had with various developers and point out some things that I found interesting. I apologize for the wall of text and any typos that follow as I don’t have much time to proof this post before it’s time to get some sleep for the night. I’ll clean up the post and get a good number of pictures on the site once I get back in town on Tuesday.

Overall

In my opinion, this year was a bit subdued vs. prior years. The main game hall seemed to be toned down and most of the focus was on new releases including DC Universe Online, The Agency and the Clone Wars. I didn’t see any official game stations running EQ, EQ2 or Vanguard. Sure there were tournaments and game room machines in the back of the main hall but it just seemed to be a bit light on the bling factor this year – at least as far as the AAA MMO titles were concerned. I think attendance might have been down a bit this year too. On the subject of new games, I will say that DCUO looks amazing. I think that game has a great future. I also really enjoyed talking with the SOE guys this year from Smedley on down. You can tell they are passionate about making games and they enjoy getting feedback from their customers. It’s a really unique dialogue that goes on between developer and gamer at these events and it’s one that doesn’t happen in many other forms of entertainment. WIth that said, the following is a recap of my thoughts on the weekend.

EQ

The new EQ Live server will be a time locked progression server. The developer I talked to about this said that they know players want it out earlier but the team is focused on releasing the new expansion – House of Thule in October. They don’t want to take the focus away from the expansion and the new content that follows so the current thought is to wait a few months after the expansion releases before the new server is released. The current projection for the launch of the new EQ progression server is the second week of January.

The new EQ expansion will include another 5 levels as well as player housing. My understanding is the player housing will be connected to the guild lobby but it will be a separate zone with stand alone houses.

The EQ population is relatively stable and depending on which numbers you look at the game still has about as many subscribers as EQ2. The games go back and forth as far as which has the larger population. Speaking of population, the devs have considered a free to play approach (something like all servers are free to play up to level 50) but nothing like that will be coming soon. They aren’t really in favor of going the route of EQ2 Extended where the F2P model is on separate servers. They are also very aware of the overall EQ Live community feelings about paying for power vs. earning what you have and will tread lightly on this front. One last thought, one developer I talked to referenced Nike’s “Beat Adidas” campaign in regard to the EQ Live vs. EQ2 mix. In other words, when Nike came out their sole goal was to one up their rival. It sounds like internally, the EQ guys are still mixing it up and trying to compete with the newer and sexier EQ2. I really liked hearing that – a little rivalry can be good for everyone.

Vanguard

When SOE said Vanguard wasn’t on the official list of Fan Faire games – they weren’t kidding. I couldn’t find a single developer in Las Vegas this year for Vanguard. They didn’t make the bus trip. They also had a kiosk running the game last year but this year? Nope. There was a live quest on the schedule but I took my wife out to lunch instead. There was still a Vanguard banner hanging in the main hall but that was about it.

I did learn a few things about the game – even though the developers were absent. First, there are no plans to shutter the game. I spoke to John Smedley, President of SOE, directly about the game. Let me say that he was open and honest and we had a great dialogue. He was a pleasure to talk to and regardless of what people say about the guy he is a gamer at heart and cares about the games we all play – including Vanguard. I asked him if the game was in maintenance mode and he said it’s a step above maintenance mode. The truth is that the remaining developers are shared with other games (EQ2, EQ Next etc…) and they allocate time for them to work on Vanguard as the schedule permits. I basically understood it to mean that Vanguard doesn’t have any more full time developers. That was a bit of a disappointment but Smed stated that he thinks the game will stick around for a few more years. He’s also open to ideas on how to make the game more popular.

He acknowledged the chicken and egg problem with spending money on the game and I thanked him for all the effort and money they put in the game since they acquired it from Sigil. It’s truly come a long way. We also talked about doing some kind of free to play server for Vanguard but he wasn’t sure how the “core gamer” that’s left in Vanguard would respond to such a thing. Russell Shanks, EVP / COO of SOE was sitting next to him when we spoke and they both were interested in giving Vanguard a spark of life.

Another developer told me they might end up moving the Vanguard servers to the East coast. Not sure really what the point of that would be but it would be closer to me so that can’t be all bad. This same developer said VG was considering the F2P model but the recent staff reductions hit VG pretty hard and he didn’t feel like the resources were still there to invest that much time in the game. That was also a bummer. I was pitching an idea of a free to play Vanguard server to let people who bought the game come back and see how much progress had been made since release and maybe they would transfer over to the Telon server or subscribe to keep the game alive. At this point, why not do it? What’s the alternative?

EQ2 Extended

As you all know, EQ2 is coming out with a F2P service called EQ2 Extended. It’s currently in Alpha and beta begins on August 17th. The Senior Producer of EQ2, Dave Georgeson, talked about the philosophy behind this “experiment” and spent a lot of time listening to players and getting their feedback. It’s clear that he is trying to breathe new life into EQ2 and I think that’s a good thing.

EQ2 Extended is basically an attempt to get more users into the EQ2 universe and really to raise brand awareness for Everquest in general. It’s not designed to replace EQ2 Live. According to Dave, EQ2 is their most important product in their stable of games. EQ2 Extended is going to run on separate servers and will release with only one PVE server. They would like to add a PVP server under the service but it won’t come out right out of the gate. Characters transfers off EQ2 Extended won’t be allowed because of “duplication exploits” and “EQ2 Live players don’t want to play with characters who bought their way to power.” Seemed reasonable to me.

Many people lamented losing the 14 day free trial and were concerned that this would dry up the number of players coming into EQ2 Live. The devs stated that very few players convert to a paid subscription after going through the free trial so their take on it was that it wasn’t very effective at getting new players anyway. They are hoping EQ2 Extended will be more productive and cited all the good press they have gotten recently – even being in the Wall Street Journal.

The devs are prepared to offer special incentives on the EQ2 Live servers should the population start dropping such as mounts, armor sets etc… with multiple month subscriptions and they want both services to succeed. You will be able to copy your character from the Live servers to EQ2 Extended for a $35 fee. Players from both PVE and PVP servers will be able to copy characters over into the new servers.

Dave also confirmed that no new items with stats will be coming to the marketplace on EQ2 live. That was good to hear. He said the EQ2 population has been stable since the release of the SF expansion and any perceived drop in population is more a result of people transferring over to AB and Nagafen (the higher population servers.) If EQ2 Extended takes off, there will be more money for advertising an investing back in both models of the game.

EQ2

GU57 is coming soon and is all about bringing new players to the game. It features new spell effects, greater performance out of Shader 3.0 and much improved ability to render Flora without framerate hits. They eventually will be using the EQ2 Extended streaming launcher for both versions of the game and from what I hear that thing is very slick. GU58 is due in October and will feature the Guk Spire Dungeon, new items on SF bosses and a redo of Greater Faydark.

The new EQ2 expansion was announced and as expected we are going back to Velious. The official title of the new expansion is EQ2: Destiny of Velious. I think it’s interesting the expansion, due out in February, is referred to as “part 1″ of the Velious story. Will the rest of it be in future game updates or in the 2011 expansion? No decisions have been made as far as I know on that subject. The expansion will not have a level cap but there will be more AA available. The biggest news was that we will get flying mounts in all zones. The first flying mount will be questable. I bet one day we will be able to buy them with station cash – just saying

Server merge discussions are ongoing. The new expansion zones are level 86+.

EQ Next

A new Everquest game is coming and right now it’s PC only. It’s going to have the name “Everquest” in the title although right now it’s referred to as “Everquest Next.” We had two surprise panels that were not on the official schedule about this game. A few notes follow. First, there is a very senior team on this game right now – including the director Clint Worley. The game is going to use a modified version of the Free Realms Engine but the concept art and in game screenshots that they showed us didn’t look very Free Realms like to me. They are going to have PVP in this game from the beginning or as Smed said “pvp done right.”

Who else is on this team? I was told by another developer that some of the Vanguard guys have been moved to this project. I didn’t get specifics but he also said that Sillius continues to spend a good bit of time on EQ2. He’s probably working on the new expansion. There was a lot of talk about immersion and with the Free Realms engine there will be no zoning in overland zones. It will be like WOW where you can basically walk anywhere above ground without zoning. There will be instanced dungeons and solo, group and raid content.

Things will look familiar if you are a veteran of Norrath. They mentioned that they are considering “corpse run servers” or “hard core servers” to appeal to the old school core gamer. That comment got a loud round of applause. There will be fewer classes than EQ2 and classes will have more defined roles – think Enchanters and Bards from EQ Live. The team has a lot of old school EQ developers on it and they are leaning on that experience a bit more than EQ2 when it comes to vision and direction for the new game.

The new game is very colorful and vibrant. Characters have big shoulder pads – almost WOW style. The engine is very scaleable so it will run on most laptops and yet still look amazing on high end gaming rigs. The game world is up and running now internally – they can move around the world etc… It’s still going to be a while before it comes out though – probably at least a year maybe two or more.

EQ2 PVP / Battlegrounds

They are focusing on improving class balance, increasing the efficiency of the matchmaking service, dealing with AFK issues, and making daily quests funnel players into specific battlegrounds – perhaps generating greater rewards such as AA or tokens etc… They want to reward players proportionately vs. time spent so longer matches / instances should yield greater rewards in the future.

They are also considering allowing character transfers to and from the PVP servers in the near future. They are thinking about 1 vs. 1 PVP matches and ranking ladders. They also addressed giving mentored players on PVP servers the ability to fight back if attacked – this may happen one day but no guarantees. There was talk of a “Battlegrounds Hub” where players who go from their home server to the battleground server could remain on that server to form groups with people etc… This would cut down on the performance hit that battlegrounds are having on the Live game as people zone back and forth between servers. Finally, they talked about how well the new hardware has gone on the Nagafen server. That’s it for me tonight – need some sleep.

All good things must come to an end, right? In Vanguard, that means the servers are going down for maintenance in the morning and “double experience weekend” will be over soon. These weekends draw a fair number of players out of the woodwork and the server really comes alive. I’ve had a blast over the last few days in Telon getting reacquainted with my Bloodmage while managing to get up to level 43.5 at the same time. I spent time soloing, playing with some random pick up groups and hanging out with a group of guildies who are in their 40’s as well. I even had the chance to fight Lady Gaga!

Don’t you think the mob pictured above looks like her? Too bad we had to “poker” face – LOL. Sorry, couldn’t resist. Anyways, I had the opportunity to explore a good bit of the dungeon called Graystone over the weekend. This dungeon can be spotted from what seems like miles away due to it’s trademark huge tower which looms in the distance. Once I got closer, I discovered hoards of undead mobs and great group experience. There are a number of quests associated with this dungeon and some really spectacular looking mobs to fight along with some Diablo like atmosphere with hanging corpses etc…

As an added bonus, I found a number of experience pots in my inventory and learned that experience potions stack with rest experience and double experience weekends. I made some crazy experience after popping a 1 hour 100% bonus experience potion. Too bad the refresh timer on popping another potion is 5+ hours of in game time. I seem to remember that dying wiped out any potions you had running back in the old days but the rules must have changed because I managed to die a few times tonight but kept the pot up through the deaths. I’m pretty happy with how much I was able to accomplish over the last few days and I’ve gotten the urge to creep up to 50+ to experience more end game content. I’d like to visit Ancient Port Warehouse, the original premier raiding dungeon in Vanguard, as well as get my FanFaire pet wyrm his wings so I can fly around Telon on something other than a red nosed reindeer. I’ve still got a ways to go and my time will be split between leveling up in Vanguard, beginning progression raiding with my 65 Enchanter in EQ Live and perhaps even working on AA and gear on my 90 Warden in EQ2. That’s a full agenda when combined with work and family responsibilities – there just isn’t enough time in the day! I don’t know how gamers such as Stargrace pull it all off.

As much fun as I’ve had playing Vanguard recently, I have to mention that the game has been suffering from spouts of random lag where groups just sit there frozen while mobs continue to beat on them. We haven’t wiped yet due to the lag but I know it’s caused some players to get frustrated. I’m hoping it’s something the devs can fix in short order vs. just a side effect of a higher population server that will fix itself as people get tired of it and leave the game. I’ve also found a few bugs in the last few days ranging from flying through a mountain only to fall through the world to the dreaded blue screen of death uncovered while moving around in a dungeon. In the picture below, I am in the middle of Graystone but you can only see one side of the room – bizarro. In some respects, Vanguard is like an unfinished work of art. Let’s hope people keep going to the museum.

Vanguard is down to two servers – Telon (US) and Halgar (EU). I suppose they still have a test server but for all practical purposes the population that remains in the game is split up between those two servers. As you all know, with server consolidation comes pros and cons. On the positive side, Vanguard is a huge world with no zone lines (unless you count chunk lines) and what used to feel rather empty due to low population now feels vibrant and alive. At least it was this weekend – probably due to the bonus experience which runs through Tuesday morning. If you combine one US server with a bonus experience weekend you get a glimpse of the critical mass needed to make this game shine. It’s just a shame that it isn’t that way every day. Oh what could have been!

Every time I play Vanguard, I’m just blow away by its visuals. This weekend I was also blown away with how smooth the game actually played. I guess style is a personal preference and beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but as someone who has spent a lot of time in many different online games there is something about Vanguard that just captivates me. It really feels like the true successor to Everquest.

SOE recently announced that they are offering a new F2P (free to play) service for Everquest 2. It’s called Everquest 2 Extended and it’s basically a streaming client that can be downloaded quickly that allows new players to test drive the game free of charge. Once this service goes live, new players can check out the game (with limited functionality) enough to decide whether or not it’s the game for them. If they wan’t to play casually, without all the bells and whistles, they can continue to do so. The idea however is that they will get out of the newbie areas and truly get a feel for the game. Once they get a taste of the depth of content and the game in general, they might become subscribers or buy items from the cash shop. Say what you want about cash shops and free to play games, I guarantee their new F2P server is going to feel vibrant and alive and have a high population. Perhaps that’s just what Vanguard and EQ need as well.

On the Vanguard front, SOE spent the last year or two squashing bugs and adding content while making the game more newbie friendly. It really is a great game but like so many other titles – once the game isn’t on the shelf it’s up to viral marketing and digital downloads to get new players interested in trying the game. When a game has had bad press – it’s tough to convince players to drop their current game and invest their hard earned money in a monthly subscription to “test the waters” again. What happens? Eventually the developer ends up consolidating servers as existing players get burned out and they reduce overhead to try to continue to make the game profitable. Finally, the servers get shut down. Does it have to be that way?

I think SOE is figuring out that cash shops offer a great alternative revenue stream to the standard $15 / month subscription model and I hope they see enough life and future in both EQ and Vanguard to at least put one separate F2P server up for each game. I’m thinking something similar to the EQ2 model where new players can get far enough along to decide whether or not they want to invest in the game.

I hope to track down some SOE developers at FanFaire in Vegas next weekend and see if they have any plans to go down this road. It’s clear that they are interested in the F2P model but I’m not sure they will invest the resources at this point in EQ and VG. I think separate F2P servers with a little marketing could be great for both products and would enhance the bottom line for SOE. How can that be a bad idea? Bring on the newbies! I want full servers with groups going on in all level ranges. I want the masses to be able to experience these great games. Will it happen? I guess we have to wait and see. In the meantime, I took advantage of the bonus experience this weekend to spend some time in Dargun’s Tomb and Plains of Anguish. Ding 42!

Howdy strangers. So here I am roughly six months since my last post and it feels like it’s been even longer. Where have I been? Well, I’ve been gaming on and off over the last few months but mainly I’ve been focused on RL activities (work, family, picking up some new hobbies etc…) Life is great though so I can’t complain – things are calming down enough that I should be able to get back to updating the site more frequently.

What’s new in my online adventures? First of all, I spent a few weeks playing World of Warcraft with my priest but it just didn’t stick. I even bought tickets for Blizzcon but now I’m not sure that I’ll even fly out to Anaheim later this year. It’s probably too late to sell my tickets so I’m may be out $300. At the same time, I’d save a few thousand dollars by staying home so that might make more sense in the end. Who knows maybe I’ll end up going after all as attending a Blizzcon would be something to check off my gamer bucket list. I have to be honest with you guys though, World of Warcraft just isn’t my thing – no matter how much I try to force myself to get immersed in it. In the end, I think it’s all the instanced dungeons. EQ2 has the same problem. I just miss open world dungeon crawling and being somewhere with a group only to see another group of people run by on their own adventure. Don’t get me wrong WOW and EQ2 are great games they just lack the immersion factor for me these days and without that factor I’m just not that into it anymore.

I tried some Age of Conan with the Godslayer expansion. I even leveled up to max level with the “free level” feature that they put into the game recently where you are awarded a level or two a week just for keeping an active subscription. I didn’t enjoy leveling up in that game very much so my theory was that I could get to max level and have a fresh start but it just didn’t feel all that fresh. There is a whole new expansion worth of content to check out but I’m not motivated to play AOC at the moment. Age of Conan feels like a cramped fish bowl sitting on top of a mountain. You see so many interesting things but just can’t get to them. EQ2 held my attention for a few weeks as I got my Fury on Nagafen up to max level and then betrayed and made him a Warden. I did some entry level raids in the new expansion but it seemed like group content and overland pvp dried up due to the implementation of battlegrounds. Needless to say, battlegrounds got old quickly for me and playing a Druid just seemed way too common so I put EQ2 back on the shelf for a while.

As the list of titles that interested me dwindled, I found myself deciding between Vanguard and EQ. I really wanted to spend more time in Vanguard but it’s hard to justify a large time commitment to a game that is effectively down to a single server. Granted, the world of Telon is huge and having all the players in one realm probably makes a lot of sense but I don’t know how long a game on a single server (other than Eve) can survive. Last week SOE laid off 34 employees and early rumors had several of the remaining VG developers getting their walking papers. Fortunately, these rumors seem to be off base as it appears the developers in question remain at SOE. What would make me want to spend more time in Telon? Honestly, some direct communication to the players from the developers regarding their master plan for the game and reassurances that the game isn’t going anywhere. Those reassurances plus details on new content in the coming months would go a long way to calming my Vanguard jitters. Until then, my 40th level Bloodmage will remain on the fence – waiting to see what happens.

With all that out of the way, guess what was left? Everquest of course! As the title of this post indicates, absence makes the heart grow fonder. In the last month or so, I’ve leveled up an Enchanter on the recently combined Luclin / Stromm server. He’s now locked at level 65 with about 80 AA points and has joined a new casual paced progression raiding guild called Visceral. The guild is planning on going through all EQ content starting with the Planes of Power expansion with a two day a week raiding schedule. It’s exactly what I was looking for. Sometimes coming back to EQ can be difficult because players are two boxing or using mercenaries and groups at low levels can be hard to find. At the same time, high level veteran players have so many AA points that the gap seems monumental. However, in this guild I’ve had groups almost instantly upon logging in each day and everyone has a great attitude. At the moment anyway, people are playing because they love the game and everyone is helping each other out. It’s a guild full of EQ veterans, returning players and people looking to relive experiences they had years ago. I know it’s not a novel concept and many guilds of this nature don’t make it very long but I’m hoping this will be different. I could really see myself leveling up with a group of people over the coming months and experiencing a good bit of EQ content that I missed over the years as I went looking for the “next best thing.” Perhaps, sometimes we are staring it right in the face but we just don’t notice it.

The guild is currently recruiting all classes and all levels (below 65). We have about 115 members now and had our first little mini raids this afternoon – taking down the Dragon Xanamech Nezmirthafen in Plane of Innovaiton which gave us keys for the Factory. Inside the Factory, we killed the Manaetic Behemoth which was a fun fight. Our raid split into two groups and each group was charged with keeping a constant stream of adds at bay (go go Enchanter) long enough for other groups to down the boss. That’s it for now, back to Norrath.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a few months since my last post. It’s been a busy time for me as work has kept me on my toes and I’ve had very limited gaming time. Since my play times were more limited than normal, I chose to spend what little time i had in game vs. posting about games. You might be surprised how much time even a low key blog like mine takes. As we move into the new year, my goal is to get this blog rolling once again. My apologies for the interruption.

Where to start? Let’s start with Vanguard. By now, most of you have probably heard about this post over on the official Vanguard forums. Vanguard has had it’s share of ups and downs but this might take the cake. In a nutshell, Silius announced to anyone who would listen that just about all the future content that was either in progress or had been promised would be suspended indefinitely. Instead of finishing off things such as alternative advancement, new raid content and class revamps – the developers are going to focus on squashing more bugs and adding single group content. I appreciate his honesty although it’s a bit untimely. It would be better to promise low and deliver high vs. the other way around. Seems like I learned that somewhere. Anyways, my Blood Mage is still stuck at 40 and with the announcement linked above and server merges coming (which may take the game down to a total of 2 servers) I’m on the fence about investing more time in that game. To be honest, I haven’t really played much since FanFaire. It’s still a great game but it’s clear SOE isn’t very interested in putting more money into what appears to be a sinking ship. Of course, people have been saying the ship would be swamped by now but it’s still plodding along with a number of leaks in the hull.

Since my last update, Everquest launched it’s new expansion called Underfoot. I’ve been debating making a return to that game on either the Luclin server (where I have a 75th level Cleric) or on Mayong (where I could dual box characters up from 51/50). After rolling up my cleric, I got a bit disillusioned when npc mercenaries were doing so well in group content and it was hard to convince people to take a low level healer with light AA points and ghetto spells over the well equipped mercenary with what seemed like infinite mana. Fortunately, in the new expansion group content, the mercenary healers aren’t doing as well and clerics are rejoicing. I got into a group yesterday for Ashengate since it’s the 75+ hot zone and had a good time. Perhaps I’ll invest my efforts in EQ once again – not sure currently.

The last time I talked about EQ2, I had rolled up a Templar on Antonia Bayle and joined a progression raiding guild. They took the holidays off from raiding and I took the holidays off from EQ2. Well, that is until I got the urge to return to my pvp roots and rolled up an Illusionist on Nagafen. I’ve managed to level up this new character to 57 so far and have ambitions of hitting 80 with him before the new expansion Sentinel’s Fate hits in mid February. I’d also like to continue to do some progression raiding with the Templar. Speaking of the next EQ2 expansion, I saw some new screenshots yesterday that left me scratching my head a bit. Floating islands and panda bears? Hmmm, where have I seen those before? I hope there is more originality on the way and not rehashed Kingdom of Sky zones with World of Warcraft pandas. I have faith in Brenlo as the EQ2 producer so let’s see what happens.

I also had a decent run in World of Warcraft where I managed to get my Priest all geared out in Epics and did some raiding. It’s fun but doesn’t seem to have that intangible factor that just makes me want to log on every night. I’m not sure where I’ll be spending most of my online time in the first quarter of 2010 but wherever it is you can bet I’ll be sharing my journeys with you guys. I’m going to enjoy the holidays with my family for now but just wanted to stop in and give you all an update. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone!

I haven’t posted much in the last two weeks primarily because I’ve been pretty busy in real life and was out of town last weekend. On the gaming front, I’m excited about spending more time in the final Aion closed beta; which starts tomorrow and runs through the end of the weekend. I have mixed feelings about investing a lot more time leveling up my Aion beta character since it will get wiped soon. If I’m going to grind, I’d like it to count – know what I mean? Be that as it may, I will try out some different classes and look around a bit more this weekend. I hear they are going to have some live events so that should be pretty cool.

What have I been up to in the virtual world recently? Well, I tried to give Warhammer and AOC another shot but couldn’t get into either game. I lasted a few hours in Warhammer over the course of about a week and about 15 minutes in Conan. Both games have their strong points but not enough of them to keep me playing. They just aren’t fresh – at least to me. Speaking of another game that isn’t particularly fresh, I did manage to gain a few levels in World of Warcraft since my last update. I took my blood elf priest up to 77 from 75. The best thing about hitting 77 is that you get cold weather flying which enables your character to fly in Northrend. A recent patch increased the regular (non epic flyer) mount speed to 150% so you can really haul ass if you know what I mean getting quests done. After running around for 6 levels, it’s nice to fly once again. It’s also nice to be able to fly without a timer (Aion) and without being 50+ (Vanguard.)

My priest also picked up the dual specialization option so he now has a healing spec and a shadow / dps spec. You can switch between specs for free in town and your spell bars update automatically between the two specs. There is no charge to switch. Very cool… Another thing I noticed while leveling up is that the game is incredibly smooth and polished. Everything just works and it feels right. The quests for example have great variety to them. So far I’ve gotten to unleash rats on npc corpses, unleash termites on a lumber mill to spawn a mini-boss, fight dragons while flying, rescue Undercity from siege, torture a few guys and a few more interesting things.

Another cool thing about World of Warcraft is that the seas are actually populated with interesting things. In other news, I read today that they are going to bring Onyxia back soon for the 5th year anniversary celebration and that might be just enough to get me motivated to grind out those last few levels to hit 80 before Aion releases in late September.

Vanguard had a double experience weekend last weekend and I missed it once again. That’s a bummer. The party I was running with a lot has continued to grind through the 40’s and last time I checked they are 45+ now. That sucks for me because they will be out of range soon and I’ll need to find some more random folks to try to hook up with. Personally, the solo content in Vanguard just seems a bit stale. I know it’s there and doable but it’s pretty difficult on my blood mage and just doesn’t have the fun factor to be honest. At least not compared to a few other games. Vanguard shines in the group environment so I’m going to need to find some new groups. My blood mage is still stuck at 40 but he should have quite a bit of rest experience by now. I’m still planning on leveling him up to max level but it may take me a while. The rate at which new content is released is rather slow, so I don’t really see any reason to rush it. In other Vanguard news, the spell animations have been fixed and they patched in a new overland raid mob this week. I’ll be back with another update in a few days.

It’s been over two weeks now since the last Vanguard update was released. One of the side effects of the last patch is that the character buffing animations stopped working. The devs acknowledged the issue shortly after the patch and said they had it fixed but to date it hasn’t been fixed in the live game. It’s now been two weeks. Can you imagine something like this not getting noticed while the patch was on test? Can you imagine leaving this in the live game for two weeks?

I thought I’d post a few screenshots to show the casting animations in all their glory. The screenshot above is of my blood mage casting one of his powerful buffs. Looks cool, doesn’t it? Although I’m casting, you can’t see me doing anything. Check out the screenshot below for an even more exciting picture of me casting another group buff.

Seriously guys… In the last two weeks I’ve gone to work at least 10 times, slept a bunch, played the Aion beta, leveled up some newbie characters in Warhammer, gone out a few times, had a few beers, ridden my motorcycle, taken the family out in the boat and watched a couple of movies. In all that time, we can’t get working cast animations? I know the Vanguard developer team is small but this is crazy. Please fix this and soon as the natives are getting restless. As for me, I’m going to sit this one out until they get things squared away once again.

In Vanguard, you have to walk before you can run. I ran across some excellent introduction videos that cover the major aspects of the game for a new player. A player named Saeino who plays on the Seradon server has been making these short informational videos going over the major systems. I think they are pretty neat and hope you all enjoy them. Keep up the good work Saeino!

Free Trial Concepts and Overview

Crafting and Harvesting

Mounts and Flying Mounts

Combat

Death

Dungeons

Boats and Housing

Diplomacy

I’ve been pretty busy with work and other real life activities over the last few days but I’ve still managed to sneak in some Vanguard time. I managed to hit level 40 a few minutes ago – which is the highest level character I’ve ever had in Vanguard. The cool thing about hitting 40 was that my FanFaire wyrmie now has wings! I think I’ve said this before but all of us who went to Vegas this year received the pink wyrm. The wyrm starts off as an in game vanity pet that grows in size as you level up. In your late 30’s, spikes start coming out of him and by the time you hit level 50 he serves as a flying mount. Getting to see this guy with wings at 40 was a major motivator for me to push as far as I have to date. Now, I’m ready to push to 50.

I got a late start tonight in Vanguard due to watching a movie with the wife called Revolutionary Road. It wasn’t my first choice of movie but it’s one of those things that happens when you give your significant other your netflix login information and she starts messing with your queue. I went from Iron Man, Dark Knight and some Jackie Chan movie to Revolutionary Road and Driving Miss Daisy. Ouch! Anyways, after the movie I got in game and found a group for Thelaseen.

Vanguard used to have “no fly” zones – areas of the world where you would get a warning message if you traveled through them on your flying mount and would be dismounted shortly thereafter. Typically, these areas would be over large dungeons etc… I suppose the theory was that they didn’t want you skipping content but for some reason these no fly zones were taken out in the patch last week. I forgot about this and ended up flying over the dungeon getting an update calling the area something like “Land of the Drake Riders”. I thought that was a pretty interesting name for Thelaseen. Especially since a good portion of the area is infested with drakes, riders and a bunch of eggs – reminiscent of the whelps from World of Warcraft. Leeroy Jenkins was nowhere to be found.

We fought our way into a tower and got the weird aggro bug again drawing way too many adds. We actually stayed alive longer than we should have but in the end a wipe ensued and there was nothing I could do about it. There were simply too many adds. I’m not sure what the deal is with pulling the tower but something is buggy. There was no reason we should have pulled adds from the floors above and below us and this is the second group I’ve been in where we have had a problem at this location. They adds just kept going and going – like the energizer bunny.

I wasn’t really on my game tonight. We had a few wipes once we got to a room with a named mob and his two golems. The wipes weren’t necessarily my fault but once I got rezzed up with a rez item I did something stupid twice in a row. You see, blood mages have three stances. Our offensive stance drains our life – like a lich spell for a typical necromancer. If you die in offensive stance and then get rezzed up, you come back with very little life. You also come back in offensive stance. If you try to rez up a fallen group mate and forget you are draining your health you will die again before you can cast a second spell. I managed to pull off that smooth move not once but twice tonight. Needless to say, I wasn’t very proud of that lack of attention to my stance but my group stuck by me in spite of my lack of common sense. I had to laugh a bit the second time. I felt like a total noob.

We had other issues tonight such as trying to figure out how to kite golems around while fighting the named mob and met an untimely fate more than once. It seemed like I was always gaining experience (two steps forward) only to die and lose half of what I just gained (one step back). This must have happened at least 10 times over the course of the night. I’m still not yet level 39 which is a bit frustrating as I’m hoping my pet wyrm will sprout wings at 40 so I’m pushing to get there as quick as possible. Of course, I also want to get to 50 so I can use the wyrm as a flying mount but that’s a ways off I’m afraid.

At the end of the night, I managed to get a new staff off one of the named mobs in the dungeon. It’s not great stat wise but it was a nice reward for a nights work. I hope to push to 40 by the end of the week and have some new pictures of that pink wyrm to show off. That is unless I get stuck watching Driving Miss Daisy in the meantime.

After a nice weekend at the beach, I’m back home once again and ready to get back to MMO goodness. Recently, I’ve had this interesting dilemma when firing up my station launcher. I look at the thing and see EQ, EQ2 and Vanguard loaded and ready to play just staring back at me. Sometimes I think I’m the only person out there that has the urge to play all three games and spends 5 minutes just hovering over the buttons trying to figure out what’s going to be on the agenda for the night. I’m a bit jealous of those one game people. I used to be like that but there are elements of all of these games that I enjoy so I’ve tended to bounce around a bit recently. I guess that’s the reason I’m not max level in anything anymore (except for my old EQ2 Fury on Nagafen and that’s just because the last expansion didn’t increase the level cap). To me, the station pass is a great deal. For $30 bucks a month you get access to just about all the SOE titles. What a great value. But I digress.

Speaking of digressing, my brother who played EQ2 with me for a long time on Nagafen, was on vacation last week paddling his kayak out in Colorado and came upon a dead body. Apparently, there were two guys ahead of them on the river and one of them got pinned or something and drowned. The guy’s buddy tried to do CPR on his friend for about 30 minutes and finally gave up going up the river bank to find help. A few minutes later my brother and his group came by and saw the guy laying on the side of the river. They tried to bring him back (they are med students) and had no luck. Damn…. That’s pretty depressing stuff right there. Puts things in perspective for sure. At least he died doing something he loved. I’ve known people who died driving to work. Sure it’s all the same in the end but just makes you think a bit.

Anyways, back to the Vanguard stuff. Tonight I got in another group with the Aequinox guild. I grouped with several of their guys a week or two ago and had a blast. I saw a “looking for healer” request in general chat and jumped on the opportunity. Actually, I’ve noticed a lot of looking for healer requests recently – especially in the 50+ content so I’m pretty optimistic that my blood mage will be needed in the higher levels. The area to explore tonight was called Plains of Anguish and since I’d never been up there before I had to ask for directions.

Like most things in Vanguard, you can reach Plains of Anguish by a short riftway trip followed by a rentable griffon. Within about 5 mintues, I was at my group and ready to get underway. It’s kinda funny because when they were shouting for a POA healer I had some newbie idea in my head that they were going to a low level of Pantheon. I guess that doesn’t exist anymore. I suppose Pantheon is POTA while Plains is POA. Go figure.

There are a ton of quests for players in their high 30’s and low 40’s in the Plains of Anguish. We basically spent most of the night roaming around killing mobs and doing quests. The guys in my group were doing lots of harvesting as well – as the screen shot above demonstrates. In Vanguard, you can harvest in a group and get more resources vs. harvesting solo. I haven’t worked on my harvesting skills in quite some time so I kinda just stood there and supervised. Isn’t that the Dark Elf thing to do?

At the end of the night, I made about 1/2 a level of experience into 38 and ran around a bit with the veteran reward dragon illusion shown above. We had a great time and I’m looking forward to more Vanguard goodness. I guess I still have that kayak guy on my mind so I’m going to wrap it up for the night. Until next time.