On the Subject of Age of Conan, and Vanguard

Lucy Pinder & Sophie Howard

So AoC is suffering at the moment from endless patches that break more things than they fix, as well as essentially being too quick to get to the level cap (a lot of people did it easily within the free month, which was a bit of a design flaw really), and the official forums are jammed-packed full of people whining and bitching and quitting very publicly just like they did with Vanguard.

What's funny is that some people are going from AoC to Vangaurd, and making like they've discovered some super-secret, amazing MMO that no one else knew about. I've already admitted to taking advantage of the current Vanguard free month for previous subscribers or whatever it is that's going on at the moment. I've also admitted to not being overwhelmed by the progress that hasn't really been made since I last played. Well, ok the frame rates are better but that seems to be because they've massively reduced the detail levels, especially of character models where there used to be about 10 pages of sliders to customise your look but now there are about 4, and each slider has less affect than before. And the game still hitches like hell as you run around and it tries to load assets. And the animations are still horrible.

It still has a curiously nice "feel" to the world that AoC is missing, like it's quite an immersive place to spend time, but the actual mechanics are still rubbish. I couldn't summon the motivation to play on my old characters so I made a new bloodmage, and it was going ok, nothing special, but then I reached an area where you start to find harvesting nodes, and I used to enjoy harvesting because of how you could just ignore all the quests and head off into the wilderness and discover "secret" harvesting areas. Except that's all been destroyed now by these ridiculously huge labels they've put over all the harvesting nodes which you can see from miles away.


It used to be quite tricky to spot harvestable trees especially, because they look very similar to all the others unless you hover the cursor over them at which point the cursor would become an axe. I think they used to have labels, but they were quite small and didn't appear until either you were quite close or had them selected, I can't remember which. Then you'd get more used to it and you've be able to spot them, and even which type or rarity they were just by looking.
I mean just look at that screen shot. Hmm, where can I find a weakened tangleleaf tree do you think? or some "metal", or "mineral"? It's such a simple thing but it just killed the whole game for me when I saw that. Strangely enough AoC also recently added harvest nodes to the mini-map, so of course you can never find any that aren't used up now.

Meanwhile Vanguard's in-game chat is full of "thanks AoC, without you I wouldn't be here" or "this is what EQ2 should have been" masterbatory bullshit from people who think they've got one up on the remaining AoC players, but who will soon discover that while yes, the first 20 or so levels are reasonably good fun, the game quickly descends into mindless, endless grind after that and still seems to have a lot of the bugs that it had a year and a half ago.

Of course Warhammer is the new AoC in terms of people claiming it's going to be amazing, except they've just announced they've had to cut 4 out of the 6 starting cities, and 4 classes (out of 24, across the 2 factions, I think) because they couldn't get them right or EA wouldn't give them any more time to finish it or whatever. So when that comes out the whole cycle will repeat.

Anyway up to level 42 in AoC and yes it's a bit dull, yes they keep breaking it, yes there are fewer people around every time I log in. The good thing about having low expectations for it in the first place is that I'm not disappointed.

On the Subject of Purists

Lucy Pinder

I've previously mentioned Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Sigil SOE's seemingly ill-fated MMO originally conceived (and subsequently fucked up) by Everquest designer Brad McQuaid. Quite apart from any gameplay or technical issues, Vanguard suffers from an insidious population of purists and self-styled "hard-core" players looking to turn back the clock and relive their MMO golden ages.
To go off on a brief tangent, anyone who thinks you can reclaim the sense of wonder and excitement you encountered in your first MMO is a deluded idiot. And you certainly won't find it by turning your current MMO-du-jour into a carbon copy of your first love.
But what bothers me about these people is how closed-minded they are when it comes to game mechanics. Any suggestion that a current game might deviate from the official gameplay guidelines laid down by UO, or EQ, EQ2 or similar is met with predictable, tedious derision. What's most irritating is that these people constantly mistake grind for difficulty, and have absolutely no idea what they even mean when they say a game should be more difficult (which is often, because they're typically fond of trying to prove how elite and hardcore they are by claiming they find everything too easy, especially in response to a normal player who might dare to suggest something's too hard).
I am reminded of this subject because of a recent Vanguard producer's post on the official forums where he reveals that they're planning to remove XP debt as a component of death penalty.
Unsurprisingly this had a lot of the elitist fools up in arms, claiming the death penalty is already too soft and the xp debt takes them little time to work off (in other words "I'm so good at this game I hardly notice the death penalty, look at me, look at me, aren't I special?").
I had previously had the unbridled nerve to suggest in another thread that xp debt was a pointless and stupid death penalty. Of course the fucknuts (I really need to come up with a good collective noun for them) missed the point of the post entirely and came back with the same old tired "no, it should stay, it takes no time to work off for me because I'm so good at this game, look at me, look at me". If it's so easy to work off, what's the point having it at all? Their point, really, is that they're scared of any change that might be viewed as making the game "carebear" (*yawn*). These are typically people who have nothing better to do than grind, grind, grind to the level cap and once there, they're terrified of anyone being able to achieve the same goal without having to put in the same hours of mindless drudgery and thereby diminish their achievement.
And that's my point. Grind is not the same as difficulty. Killing a thousand of the same type of creature for some ill-designed quest or simply to gain experience and level isn't something that should be applauded or recognised as a worthwhile achievement. Killing one creature that demonstrates sophisticated tactics (and not just sky-high stats) and provides a stimulating, unpredictable challenge would be far preferable to killing a thousand mindless zombies that simply stagger straight towards you. Improved enemy tactics are supposedly on the Vanguard to-do list, so that's something.
But the same old ignorance persists. "OMG don't reduce the grind! I spent X thousand hours grinding to the level cap and if other people can get there by playing through sophisticated, engaging content rather than mind-numbing tedium then I won't feel special!". Fuck off.