Category: Gaming

Boats are an amazing part of Vanguard, and even if you don’t plan on using one, simply owning one is a sign of prestige. There are three types of ships in game, sloops (the smallest) caravels (pictured above) and galleons (massive gigantic ships). Each one can perform a different role, as in they can each wade out into the open waters at a different depth. They’re great for fishing off of and simply having fun. Yesterday happened to be a guild mates birthday, and so I purchased a caravel for them as a gift. The screen shot above is us headed to a quest destination which happened to be on an island off of the northern point in Qalia. It was a great little ride, and I’m glad he likes the gift. Ships remind me a lot of housing in Vanguard, they’re not instanced, and if you leave your boat some place others can see it and until you remove it it’s a physical item in the real world. To me that’s a key selling point in Vanguard.

The shaman hit 28! Part way through to 29. I wasn’t expecting to level last night as I spent the majority of my time working on grey hunter’s league quests for the bp and leg upgrades. Level I did though. I attempted to gather masks for the final weapon quest (which is a 2h weapon for shaman – never used a 2h before and I’m not sure if I want to start now) but it took forever and before I knew it my eyes were closing and it was time for bed.

On the plus side I’m almost into the next ‘tier’ of quests, and I’m excited about visiting some new areas to level up in. Hopefully Kanad solves his problems crashing and our guild meets up this weekend for some more adventures. I’m also hoping we see another bonus xp weekend – although that’s just me being selfish as we’ve had a few now and I shouldn’t expect them. It’s just so much easier to level when you’re earning 2x the experience. Especially for crafting and diplomacy.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself – I’ll see you in Telon!

As I mentioned previously, there is a small lack of content between levels 25-30 or so. Trengal Keep, CIS, and Hunter’s League are the three suggestions, and I haven’t found too much else for these levels (although there is also the unicorn and shadow hound mount). With the bonus experience over I was a little worried about how long leveling would take – I didn’t have anything to worry about. Last night Hampooj (Dread Knight) and myself as Velours (Shaman) headed to Trengal Keep to progress the chain there. After an evening of slowly making our way through the ruins, I managed to ding 27 and part way through, and Hampooj found himself at 28 (new spells, woot). As a shaman, starting at level 15 we have a choice of three patrons. One is a bear, the other a wolf, and the final one a phoenix. I had been using the bear form (pictured above, don’t I make a wonderful panda) for quite some time. It is a ‘tank’ patron, giving me a boost to mitigation and the like. It also focuses on some melee skills, and dps group buffs. I decided due to the smaller group make up that Nomadic Gamer usually runs with (it’s typically Hampooj, myself, and Kanad who plays a wolf shaman) it would probably be beneficial to go down the ‘healer’ line, which boosts things like regen. Since our groups are three people, they typically take a little while to kill encounters, and regen is really nice.

The down side to choosing the phoenix line is that it puts me in a constant state of levitation. If you’ve ever dealt with lev in VG you know how annoying that can be, because not only are you levitating, but you act as though you are constantly walking on ice, skidding to and from every step you take. I thought perhaps my panther illusion would negate this, but instead I just turned into a floating panther. Ah well.

I’m eager to get to 30 and have more zones open up. Some of my favorite quest chains are in those level ranges, and it’s only a hop skip jump away from level 40+ and from there 50+. Then of course there’s crafting and diplomacy to raise – and the alts.Pretty sure I’ll focus on crafting first.

I’ve really been having a great time exploring Vanguard again, and I can’t wait to see what area I’ll be off to next. Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, and I’ll see you in Telon!

Another bonus experience weekend tucked away, and my shaman is sitting at level 26. I helped Hampooj obtain his Hunter’s League leggings, and then debated with myself over whether I want to begin the shadow hound mount quest, or the unicorn one – or bother with either of them. In the end I relogged over to my weaponsmith and created a bunch of pretty new harvesting tools to put on the broker as well as some weapons that I hope to upgrade one day. I really love crafting in Vanguard, it’s so rewarding.

There is a little lack of content at this level I’m finding. Well, solo content in any case. The only zones I’ve been directed to as far as leveling (via the Rift Keeper who offers those xp bonus pies) is Trengals Keep (which the quests quickly turn into group quests) and the point in Qalia where you work on the majority of hunter’s league, which is also mostly a group effort. That’s not to say that there isn’t solo content at these levels, there is, but it’s a lot less then you would find at the earlier levels.

Sadly, the lag spurts that servers experienced shortly after the merge are back ever since the patch yesterday morning. I’m not sure what happened, but a bunch of zones were down for the majority of the day, and every 5 minutes or so zones are hit with a few seconds of lag. It made adventuring difficult, and I can only hope that the issue goes back to being solved some time soon. If you’re not enjoying the game due to this lag I implore you to simply hang in there because that is not typically how vanguard runs.

Since New Targonar was down for most of yesterday and that’s where the majority of my characters happened to log out, I worked on my baby ranger. Qutey Patootie, the goblin ranger to be exact. She managed to reach level 10 on the isle of dawn, where I promptly gave up trying to get a temple group and left as soon as I could. Whether or not I will actually play the character past level 10 I haven’t decided yet.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself, I’ll see you in Telon!

I didn’t take advantage of the double experience as much as I wanted to, but I still got a bit done. Some craft levels, diplomacy levels, and adventure levels were all in the mix. One thing I wanted to work on that I’ve never actually completed before was an illusion mask. It’s a solo quest that you can pick up at level 24. You can find the walk through for it at VGwalkthroughs. The quest is quite simple and even more so now that factions move by 3x what they typically move by. Imirial the seducer (pictured above – the lady with the nice breasts) won’t speak with you until you have 12000 faction with her people. In order to get this faction you need to kill miners in a cave just before her. Now, typically the miners (and the cave) would turn KoS to you which is the real hassle of this quest. However since factions have been changed a few months back (and not changed back as of yet) by the time you reach the faction needed, the miners are NOT KoS to you.

It worked out fantastic. The quest is simple. Kill in the caves until you earn the faction required, and then pick up the quest. There’s two portions, one requires you to kill 20 mobs (low and behold they are the same ones that you’ve already been killing) and then kill 4 enforcers who also reside in the caves. Once those two quests are completed, you’ve finished your illusion mask! Oh yes, except for one more small detail. Although the quest is level 24 to obtain the mobs within the cave are level 27-28. Now, they are two dot (solo) mobs, so they CAN be defeated without too much trouble but be careful because there’s a good chance you’ll be pulling multiples.

The mask was a huge upgrade for my shaman, and I also managed to ding level 25 on completion. The bonus experience is over today and log in servers are down for maintenance, but I’m excited about what comes next. It’s hard to believe that I’m already level 25, even in a brotherhood with three other members. Having weekend bonus experience has been a huge bonus. On Saturday Nomadic Gamers headed to Trengal Keep and completed the first of six quests. Aside from one wipe when a dragon popped out of no where to pay us a visit it went fairly well, and we had a lot of fun. We need a few more levels before continuing on, but I’m looking forward to it. You may hear people in channels looking for TK1 or TK6 – that’s the Trengal Keep chain. I’ve never actually completed it before, so I don’t have the faintest idea what the rewards are, but so far I’ve gotten a pretty nice hat.

Happy gaming no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Telon!

Although I personally was not at Fan Faire this year, I’ve been trying to find any information at all about Vanguard, especially since Nomadic Gamers (the guild) is growing by leaps and bounds, and I like to keep players informed on what is going on. The only information I could find comes from Complete Heal, a great blog about some of my favorite games. They had this to say about Vanguard:

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. The bold portions are added by me.

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?

Be sure to head over to the site to read the rest of the post, as he goes into some great details about the other SOE owned games. My personal thoughts? We all know Vanguard suffers from a lack of player base. Money. Developers. It’s been that way for quite a while now, and I don’t expect it to get any better. Personally I’m going to keep playing the game until it closes. I give it a year or two, which still gives me plenty of time to explore everything I want to see. It’s more time dedicated to playing a game then a lot of others I try. I will be incredibly sad to see it go – but thankful. I feel that it’s really one of the best games out there, that it fits my personal play style better then anything else at this time. Instead of running around screaming that the sky is falling, I’d rather get on my shadow mount, and enjoy the walk through Telon while it’s still around.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself. I’ll see you in Telon.