[Hedrif]

Originally Posted by Calren

What a boring whiney load of crap.

Grrrhhhhhh .... enough!

I haven't been here in eons. I'm making final rounds on all the boards to see what people are saying, and I don't much like it. I'm so tired of people beating on other people because they don't like the game. Sorry to pick on you, Calren, but your post is emblematic ....

Originally Posted by Calren

I keep seeing all these posts about crashes, about not finding groups, about roll-backs and all sorts of junk. You know what? Stop trying to run the game on highest settings with your adware ridden 486, tweak your system, keep it clean and happy and you won't crash nearly as much.

Well, then how do you explain why the brand new, uncluttered system I built expressly to exceed Vanguard's recommended system specs experienced lock-ups, black-screens, bsods and all manner of failure consistently when playing the game to the point that it just wasn't worth playing?

Originally Posted by Calren

Can't find a group? Join a guild, get involved, stop jumping in to crappy PUGs with all the other clueless idiots.

That's the spirit ... let's call people with whom we disagree "clueless idiots." I agree with your essential point, but could you be any more debasing in making it? Maybe call the poster a pig-f***er?

Originally Posted by Calren

The leveling thing, anyone that focuses too much on how long it's taking them to level is missing the point, turn your experience bar off and start taking some interest in the game instead of just the numbers associated with your character. If you can't do that then go and play something else, this game is about the journey as much as it is about end-game, infact I'd say at this point it's more about the journey.

The journey? THE JOURNEY?

I'm all about journey, my friend. I'm the kind of player who likes to wander, stop and help a fellow player, roleplay a bit, spend a night in the tavern, another in the company of a group so fun I couldn't care whether we finished a single quest. I consistently end up being the laggard in any guild I join because I view achievement precisely as a byproduct of playing the game, not its primary purpose, and that achievement doesn't always register in the kill count.

After I discovered Vanguard and read its wonderful lore a year ago now, I started pounding at Sigil's doors a year ago to let me in. I had a character, I had a storyline. I had plans, man.

What happened?

I couldn't make a character look like I wanted my character to look. So I had to settle on a guy who looked like an oily-faced Jesus wannabe.

I was unceremoniously dumped into a generic starter town facing a random NPC who stood their blankly staring at me until I tapped his shoulder and he told me brusquely to go kill some rats or something. There was precious little lore and history of the world told in the quest dialogues. That was all reserverd for Vanguard's precious card game (how is it that a playing a card game to argue with other people goes along with the sandbox, living world feel, anyhow?)

Everywhere I went, the world felt lifeless and cold. It kind of like a supermodel — stunningly beautiful after a fashion, but obviously artificial, unorganic, and oh so vacant. There were no frogs hopping in the marshes, no birds in the sky, no flowers. Ambient sounds, when present at all, abruptly turned on and off.

I was cold, I was lonely, I was bored and I couldn't even sit down and ponder my fate.

The journey? Some journeys just aren't worth taking. This was one of them.

Originally Posted by Calren

Quests are boring? Do you read them? Do you take an interest in the story behind each quest, the lore in that area? Probably not. Granted sometimes it's nothing special, but more than often the quest progession is quite interesting, if you let it interest you that is.

See above, but "nothing special" is a great way to describe the quest lines in this game. I don't know if the other poster read them or not, but I did, and they were insipid, for the most part, no better than the mission generators of SWG that would spit out random kill quests. And yes, I'd love to have known more about the lore, thank you, but that was all locked away for people who enjoyed that confounded card game.

Vanguard could, should, have been much more than it is. While I dispute there's a significant demand for a high-commitment slow-leveling game in the current market, I think at least a portion of players such as myself who gave up on the game after a month or two would have learned to live with it had we felt there was enough there to keep us hooked. I never found it, and I'm clearly not alone.

I don't doubt that many of you genuinely like Vanguard, warts and all, and I'm happy for you.

But I have to say that a lot of what I read in posts such as these sounds a bit like people who don't want to admit to themselves that the game they dreamed of for years has let them down.