On the Subject of Vanguard

Some Model

It turns out there is currently a "free month" thing going on with Vanguard, and possibly some other SOE games, no doubt in attempt to suck up some of the AoC quitters. I've been seeing various "It's a whole different game to when it launched!!!111!"-type posts which are obvious lies but in the spirit of fairness I thought I'd give it a go. When the installer crashed half way through the download I knew it was the same old Vanguard.




My (second) first impressions:

• Still hitches like a motherfucker. Don't claim it doesn't. People who claim it doesn't are either lying, deluded, or don't understand what hitching is. Unless you stay in the same chunk the whole time and give it a chance to cache everything it's just painful. Of course the god-awful quest design usually involves making you cross as many chunk lines as possible.


• Higher frame rates than the old days (in between hitches), but also looks worse than I remembered.


• Still the same old soul-destroying, utterly mindless grind that EQ veterans mistake for gameplay.

And that was just the five minutes I spent in it. Plus the two characters I logged onto both sported shiny new helmets. Unfortunately my druid's helmet looks like some sort of crab claw.
Oh well, back to trying to find a Sanctum group in AoC.