Reviewing newly released MMOs is a cruel and thankless task. Often they show a great deal of promise tempered with real-world performance issues that lead the player to believe that the game never really got out of beta. So we review these games with a fair bit of conjecture. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a good example of this. 

On release our perception of Vanguard is mixed. This game is filled to the brim with some really pathetic bugs and performance issues. The state of this game, upon release brings to mind the debacle that was Anarchy Online, a game that was barely playable. Vanguard is certainly playable, but you’ve got to work pretty hard to make it enjoyable.

See the world… one frame per second at a time

Your first hurdle is performance. Vanguard is demanding.  Even brand new PCs are having a tough time running this game at high detail setting. Mid-range PC users will have to spend a lot of time tweaking the visual setting to get acceptable performance, and even then, the frame rate will occasionally take a dive for no discernable reason. Visit a city or a dungeon and your frame rate will drop most assuredly.

Sadly, all the attention spent on graphics is utterly lost on most players. Once a few visual bells and whistles are turned off, the game looks at best like every other game out there. At worst, it’s downright ugly.

The Quest of the Broken Quest

The next issue is with the interface and quests. While much of the interface in Vanguard mimics established MMO conventions, much of the implementation is surprisingly clumsy. The mini-map is too vague to be of much use. Your quick bar is taken up with too many useless buttons forcing you to switch off to different bars at potentially inopportune times. Worse yet, there is inconsistency in how items (especially quest items) are used in the game world.

During one long chain of quests as a Goblin Necromancer, quest items were either activated by right-clicking on the item, right-clicking on the object in the world, or left clicking on the object in the world. At least I think that’s the how it worked as there doesn’t appear to be any logic behind why it’s like this. This same chain of quests had two places where it completely broke down, forcing a relog and some bizarre series of step to get the quests to finish correctly. Some time later on the next big set of quests, I ran into another broken one and decided the ditch my Goblin Necro altogether.

It’s a big big big big World

This is all too bad because when they work, the quests can be quite enjoyable. Oh, sure, there’s not much new here in terms of hack ‘n slash adventuring. If you’ve played any other MMO you should know what to expect. Vanguard has plenty of quest content, a vast world filled with lots of different environments, and some very big dungeons to explore almost immediately. The game can also be mercilessly cruel in terms of difficulty.  Grouping is not only expected, it’s practically a mandate.

Get Crafty

What’s most interesting and what gives us the most hope for Vanguard is not the adventuring content, but the crafting economy and diplomatic aspect of the game. Crafting shares some similarities with EverQuest 2 in terms of complexity, but in Vanguard, it’s a much more demanding and time consuming task.  Players who would prefer to grow their character in this direction will find they have plenty to do. Instead of only feeding into the local player economy (which always leads to a glut of stupid items on the market) crafters can get work orders from NPCs as well. This keeps the player busy on improving their skills and allows them a way of earning coin.

Diplomacy is the most radical departure from MMO norms.  Disguised as a card battle game (and a pretty good one at that), diplomacy can actually have real (if temporary) impact on players in the world. Basically, group of diplomats can use their card battle skills to create city/region wide bonus that may be enjoyed by other players in the game.  It’s still too early to tell how any of this will play out in the long run, but it’s very easy to see how the developers might take this concept in some interesting directions.

Not Quite the Leader of the Pack

The run-of-the-mill level grinding in Vanguard is no better or worse than any other MMO. It’s a little disappointing that we still have to deal with crap like this. But there are some neat ideas in Vanguard. And these ideas have the benefit of keeping player busy with something other than smacking down a million giant rats with your broadsword. For that alone you ought to give Vanguard a shot, but you might want to wait until they’ve spruced it up a bit.

Article by: Greg Bemis
Video produced by: Michael Leffler