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Has anyone bought this yet? I'm pretty interested in it, but I'm not quite sure about it yet. If anyone has any buddy keys I would love to have one ^-^ For those who don't know much about Vanguard, here is a post on some other forums that describes it pretty well(not written by me): Introduction
What is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes?
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, or just Vanguard, or VG, or "hey that new mmorpg from those EQ1 guys" is a new MMORPG from the makers of EQ1, now called Sigil Games. it was originally going to basically be EverQuest with a new look, but it got bought out by SOE and is now EverQuest mixed with EQ2 and WoW.
Why should I care?
Well, unless you are a sucker for MMORPGS, or really liked EverQuest, like I did, then you probably shouldn't. But hey, here we go anyway..
So what's special about Vanguard?
One thing I just need to mention is that you can have two targets at once, one offensive target and one defensive target. This is handy for healing while attacking or Rescue Moves (see below).
The game is big. Really big. And there are no flightpaths. This is pretty much the only EQ1 thing they really kept alive, and I kind of like it. You get mounts really early on (see below), and it really makes the world feel more real than other MMOs.
The game is also supposed to be seamless, but I've noticed definite load lines. When you cross them the game basically freezes for several seconds, and 50% of the time demounts you. God knows what'll happen if you're flying 20 miles in the sky at the time.
I don't think it's in the game yet, and no one has enough money for it anyway, but because the game is so huge, player housing will be real. You can have player made villages with hired NPC guards and merchants, personal economies and stuff. You can also make ships and explore the oceans.. when you have enough skill  .
When you die post-level-7, you leave a tombstone behind with all your items. There are two ways to keep items post-mortem:
Bind them with Binding Crystals. The downside is that you cannot sell bound items to other players once you outlevel them, and binding crystals cost money.
Keep a seperate set of items for corpse retrievals in your mount's saddlebags. I'm going to start doing this when I level up a bit more.
Once you get relatively close to your tombestone you can /corpsedrag it and loot it safely, getting back most of your lost exp and all of your items.
If you die in a completely impossible place, you can summon your tombstone to the altar you respawn at. However, you lose all the exp you.. uh.. lost, and all your items take a durability hit.
The thing I like the most is how the game is split into parts, or spheres, depending on how you want to play. There are 4 spheres, Adventuring, Crafting, Harvesting and Diplomacy.
What can I be?!
Races:
Races are split onto the three continents:
Thestra: Thestran Human (vanilla), Dwarf, Halfling, High Elf, Vulmane (wolf anthro), Varanjar (EQ1 barbarian) and Lesser Giant.
Kojan: Kojani Human (asians), Wood Elf, Half Elf, Orc, Goblin and Raki (kind of a dwarf wolf anthro thing).
Qalia: Qaliathari Human (Arabic), Gnome, Dark Elf, Kurashasha (lion anthro), Morbedi (negro..) and Varathari (weird arabic eq1 barbarian mix).
Race affects starting location, base stats and your innate abilities. Like WoW, each race gets special abilities. Obviously with the 3 tons of races you have a billion different abilities so I won't list them.
Classes:
Classes are split into 4 archtypes:
Protective:
Warrior is your basic tank. Good at dealing damage, but much much better at taking it.
Paladin, your healing warrior, less armour but makes up for it by being more universally useful.
Dread Knight, your anti-paladin, deals damage more than either other protector but takes less.
Offensive:
Rangers are awesome, masters of ranged and close combat, can dual weild (possibly from level 1, I didn't notice until level 10 though), can use longbows before anyone else, can tame beasts, can forage for ranger-useful items, have sniper shots, etc, etc. I am one of these guys if you didn't notice. Oh yeah we can also stealth (yes).
Rogues are rogues. Stealth, backstabbing, fast dagger attacks, etc. I'm sure they use poisons and FLASH POWDER and !@#$% later on too.
Monks are masters of hand to hand, and like.. wearing robes. Might be able to heal too, dunno. They also get like 50 battle stances, including DRUNKEN BOXING so yeah these rock.
Bards can play instruments, and are apparently good at it seeing as they are in the offensive fighters area. None of the animal races can be one though so I won't ever make one .
Healer:
Clerics are more like your traditional plate wearing healers than their weak WoW counterparts. Wading into the thick of battle with their warrior allies, smashing things to bits with hammers and pissing undead off like no one else, the clerics are pretty awesome. I'm going to make one some day.
Shamans are more like their WoW versions, being able to change into animals and wear medium armour. They also prefer more shamanistic weapons like spears.
Disciples are like monk healer things that weild martial weapons and wear medium armour. I don't know what they play like but I grouped with one and I didn't die so yeah.
Blood Mages are like emo clerics. They have mastery over blood and can transfer it from one target to another. I think they are like healing necromancers without pets. They can boil enemies blood or siphon it to a friend or probably make it spurt everywhere or make pretty pictures with it. Blood Mages!!!!!
Caster:
Sorcerors are Vanguard's wizards. They make things explode.
Druids in Vanguard are like naturist wizards. They call on powers of the earth and sky to deal huge damage and can even cause large beneficial effects. They can't fight, though, so yeah they are pure casters in this.
Psionists are mindfuckers. They charm, trap, mindblast and basically make combat very annoying. With their charm powers they can quickly change the odds in their favour, but they get clusterfucked if things go wrong due to their low armour.
Necromancers only get one kind of pet in this, apparently, the abomination which is sewn together from other bodyparts. However, they can take on undead forms themselves, such as ghosts, skeletons, and even liches. Apart from that, they are your basic DoT decay necromancers.
That's it! Whew. A few notes on races and classes, unfortunately not all races can be all classes, and there is a good vs evil thing going on. Orc, goblins, lesser giant, dark elves and I think one other race are the evil ones, and everyone else is good. However, like EQ1, you can gain enough faction to not be KoS in opposing cities! Hooray!
Adventuring
Adventuring is basically the EverQuest part of Vanguard. You go out, do quests, kill monsters, get exp, get money, get better items to do better quests and kill bigger monsters. We've all seen this part before.
Combat
Combat is an odd mix of EQ2 with WoW, I guess. It is more indepth than WoW, and feels faster than EQ2. When soloing it involves the normal hit abilities at the right time to whittle away at the enemies HP while taking as little damage as possible yourself. Enemies are classed by the amount of "dots" on their target panel. The more dots, the harder the enemy. IE a level 4 enemy with 5 dots would be more difficult than a level 6 enemy with one dot. Enemies with 3+ dots will definitely require at least one other person to bring down, and dungeons/caves are usually full of 3+ dotted enemies. So yeah, not much soloing going on past level 10 I expect.
When grouping, chains and stuff come into play. There are four types of chains, all set off by different types of abilities:
Chained Attacks can be used solo or grouped, and are just what they say. Hit the right abilities in the right orders to begin chains and use special abilities. For instance, if my ranger uses Blade of Winter twice in a row, it adds a Freeze effect (which is basically a stun).
Counters are used when you get hit, or you parry, or the enemy parries or whatever the specific ability asks for. Pretty self explanitory.
Rescue Actions target your defensive target's offensive.. target. Yeah. So it's pretty much a normal ability but you don't have to change targets to save your priest.
Sympathetic Actions can be used when characters use special abilities in combination with each other. I don't know what these are so I am quoting the manual.
So yeah that adds a bit of spice to group play, and as I said earlier combat seems faster. Me and 3 other guys ripped through a 3-4 dot wasp lair earlier pretty much without stopping. You regen really fast, which is nice.
Mounts
Because the game is so big, you get access to mounts relatively earlier than other MMOs. The first purchasable mounts are level 10, and are bought from main cities. You get a new tier available at 20, 30 and 40, and a bunch of non-purchased ones are out there too. Flying mounts are also available after high level quests, and seeing as the game is "seamless" you can pretty much fly everywhere after that.
Mounts also have equipment slots, for horseshoes and tacks for speed and durability, and saddlebags to hold extra equipment.
Crafting
Crafting is pretty deep, but not as annoyingly deep as EQ2's was originally. Basically, you have two types of crafting, real, item crafting, and Work Orders. While real crafting gives you a resulting item you probably wanted, they don't give much exp. Work Orders give exp and a bit of coin, but no real end items. Yeah, basically they make you grind crafting. Isn't that awesome?!
Once you get to your main city, you hopefully find your crafting tutorial NPC. S/he leads you through the process, and lets you choose your profession. The professions include, so far:
Artificing - Making items out of wood, stone and gems, including structures, furniture, boats, magical foci and jewelry.
Blacksmithing - Working with metal, making items such as weapons, heavy armours, and even tools for harvesting and crafting.
Outfitting - Using cloths and leather to make light armours, and even crafting/harvesting outfits and the like.
Each major city, and some outposts, have crafter forums. This is a building with trainers and vendors and taskmasters and workbenches and !@#$%. To make real items, you need the recipe (trainers), the items you craft with (harvesting, see below), tools (vendors), utilities (vendors) and the correct workbench. For refining, you use a refining bench, and for a finished item you use the finishing bench, etc.
To actually craft you simply click the workbench, select the recipe and start crafting. Crafting is split into stages. Stage 1 is selecting the base material, stage 2 is usually cleaning the material (with solvents or some such), stage 3 is like shaping or whatever, and stage 4 is the finish. Each stage has multiple choices, usually bargaining between point cost and quality. Oh yeah, you have limited points to use, and every ability you use takes points. If you run out of points before you finish, I guess the item dies or something. During the creation process, complications can arise to eat points, so yeah you need to make sure you have more than enough points to finish while getting the best quality possible. Higher quality "real" items will obviously have better stats, wheras higher quality Work Order items will net you more exp and money.
Crafting is way too complicated to really describe here, but I'll attempt to answer questions if you feel I haven't explained it well. I'll also take screenies next time I craft.
Harvesting
Harvesting is the best sphere imo. I don't know why I like harvesting in all games, but yeah there we go. Harvesting in this is almost the same as EQ2, except more restricted and the nodes are cooler. There are a whole bunch of harvesting skills:
Lumberjacking is obviously the decimation of trees for wood.
Quarrying is the mining of rocks and gems.
Mining is the mining of metal.
Reaping is the gathering of textile plants.
Skinning is the .. well, skinning of animals.
You can have two skills, one primary and one secondary. Like WoW, you can drop and learn a new one at any time, but the dropped one drops to 0. I don't think there is any other cost for doing this, though.
After getting your skills (and level 1, free tools: each harvesting skill requires a new tool, but you store these in your harvesting toolbelt which takes up one equipment slot on your harvesting page, which is awesome) you run out into the wilderness and look for nodes! Because of this, it's a good idea to level adventurer and harvesting levels at the same time. Lumberjack nodes are specific trees, which you actually do cut down and they fall and !@#$%. They respawn though . Quarry and Miner nodes are different rockpiles, copper for miners and basalt for quarriers, reaping nodes are plants and skinner nodes are.. well you have to kill the animals first.
once you find a node, you right click it and your guy gets to work. He smacks it with the tool and you see items building up. The higher level your skill, the more items you get. You might only get 5-10 wood from a tree at skill 1, but at 100+ you will be getting 20+. 20 of a resource stack into a "real" resource, and you use those for crafting. So if a recipe needs 5 timber, you need to go out and get 100+ wood from trees and stack them into 5 timber :/. Once you get 20+ from one tree though, this is no big deal.
Higher skill, better tools and better harvesting clothes increases the yeild, and so does group harvesting. Even if you do not have the same skill as a friend, you can help them harvest a node and you both get harvesting exp (there is a universal "Harvesting" skill which increases all yeilds, as well as specific skills (mining, lumberjack) which increases one type of yeild). You also get more items this way, but only one person can loot so you need to be in a group you trust.
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is weird. I like it, but yeah it's really odd for a MMO. It takes the form of a card game between you and the NPC. You have a set of cards that you build up as you skillup in Diplomacy and get quest rewards. I'll explain this more when I do some more diplomacy, as it's too hard to explain without pictures. The game offers tons of tutorials for it though, so if you get it yeah the game will explain.
You get a seperate Diplomacy suit, like crafting and harvesting, that all add bonuses to your differing diplomacy skills/factions.
Game Mechanics
Graphics
It's not the prettiest, and currently runs horribly due to it being new and badly coded. I hope they fix the framerates, but once you're out in the wilderness it's pretty smooth.
Sound
Pretty cool MMORPG music, although I've only heard about 5 tunes. Sound effects all fit, etc.
Controls
Basic MMORPG controls. WASD, although I find myself using the mouse far more often. Hotkeys and !@#$% all work familiarly.
Patching
At the moment they bring it down every day for 2 hours, but this is just temporary. If you hate patches, wait a few months until it settles down.
Billing
$15/mo like everything else. Payable through gamecards, I think, and CC.
UI
I think it's just as customizable as WoWs, and it has a MoveAnything! mod built in which is awesome. I haven't explored the UI customization scene much, but seeing as they are patching every day I expect they'll all be broken every few days :/.
Outro
So yeah, that is it. Vanguard is basically a very new basic MMORPG that brings little new to the table, but what it does bring is pretty awesome. I think, in a few months, when most of the major kinks are ironed out, it will be a pretty solid game. Of course, Conan will probably come out then, but hey I've had two MMORPGs at once before.
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