This just in..round 4!

[Pirotess]

A new batch of screenshots were dispatched to Vanguard Crafters and Tentonhammer this morning! Brad also posted a teaser in BMP and JPEG formats on his website since the shots were sent late and werent expected to be up until this morning. Brad had this to say about the shots.

Originally Posted by Brad McQuaid

This is us playing near and around a small ant dungeon in Rindol Woods, near the Village of Tursh. We had some problems fighting in the dungeon and spent most of our time in the woods surrounding it making back experience debt from our deaths inside. I also played with some of the different UI elements and skins.

These shots are gorgeous and the immersion of the teaser shot is amazing, you literally feel like you are in the forest with the party. Brad also had a retraction to make about the size of Thestra. Previously it was reported that Thestra was massive to the point that many felt it would be difficult to populate and hand craft content for it. Brad had this to say.

Originally Posted by Brad McQuaid

Ok, so we talked a bit about how big Thestra was at the Fanguard.

We is bad at math

I believe it's about 288 sq. km., which isn't nearly as big as we reported.

We've added an homage to Jeff's little error here.

Cindy Bowens also wanted to stress that the next Fanguard gathering should be happening sometime around mid to late October so if you missed this most recent one start planning to attend the next one now. While she was on the boards, Cindy also posted a beta update. Here's a snippet of the post.

Originally Posted by Cindy Bowens

Right now, we are in Beta 0 which is very literally for friends and family. The people getting in now are spouses, parents, siblings or friends of people here at Sigil.

During Beta 1, the winners will receive an invitation to the program just like our friends and family did. They will have to go through the same process of submitting their system specs, showing they have some game experience, that they will be a benefit to the program and most importantly that they will not be a disruption. Other factors that are considered are things like their association with the industry. For example, a developer for a competing project or a member of the press might not get into an early stage of Beta.

There are slew of new writeups about Fanguard up as well. Laurel over at Vanguard Crafters talked with Associate Producer Paul Luna extensively. You can read some of his impressions here. Tentonhammer put up a compilation about what the Cleric class in Vanguard is intended to be as per Talisker. The comments about clerics being more battle involved than just watching health bars sounds pretty exciting. Finally Havelock has posted part II of his Fanguard Report which recounts many of his experiences during the demo of Vanguard this past weekend.

[Aazenius]

That teaser shot is just .... nice.... On the right it looks like the sun is shining through the leaves... and way off in the distance you can see a tall mountain behind the forest. Going to have to upgrade my graphics card for sure...

I love the eye candy!

[Persious]

experience debt

I hated this system so much in eq2. Just take my damn xp please or dont take it at all debt just made me feel like i was progressing painfully slow. Hopefuly it isnt shared...

[Korelin]

Aye no love for experience debt here either... *sigh*

[Guanott]

I, for one, am a fan of the experience debt. This prevents people from fighting monsters that are much higher than themself with no penalty if they are killed. It throws in a caution that prevents you from trying something potentially hazardous that isn't there without a death penalty. I feel that it helps a lot.
It does, however, reveal a problem when your group is plagued with a healer who doesn't pay attention, or a puller who doesn't know the area. This is where we all hate this feature, and is possibly why so many people hate death related penalties. I think that something should be instituted where the group can shrug a higher death penalty onto another group member who was responsible. May not work, but it almost makes sense

[Persious]

Originally Posted by Guanott

I, for one, am a fan of the experience debt. This prevents people from fighting monsters that are much higher than themself with no penalty if they are killed. It throws in a caution that prevents you from trying something potentially hazardous that isn't there without a death penalty. I feel that it helps a lot.
It does, however, reveal a problem when your group is plagued with a healer who doesn't pay attention, or a puller who doesn't know the area. This is where we all hate this feature, and is possibly why so many people hate death related penalties. I think that something should be instituted where the group can shrug a higher death penalty onto another group member who was responsible. May not work, but it almost makes sense

Not quite, and when I say I hate debt, infact I mean I hate debt. Not penalties for death, 2 completely diffrent statements. Shared debt is rediculous for example if someone is running to your group isnt even on your half of the zone and dies you get debt yay! cause clearly you wernt doing your job in helping him run there thus you share in the penalty. Secondly if you indeed went with a system wher eyou could dump debt on people from a death whats stoping me from forming an alliance with the other members of the group and we all agree to just dump the evenings debt on some poor guy we dont know.

K.I.S.S. I die. I lose experience. Dont give me some pink bar of doom that is so generous that it splits my exp pools automaticaly to make sure i pay off my debt. Only way i would be satisfied with debt is if it had a toggle that i could work of my debt by contributing 100% of my experience to it or a veriable amount similar to how AA worked in EQ1.