The Safehouse

The Vanguard Demos opened promptly at 10am on Saturday, and the room was quickly filled with excited fans and onlookers. Sadly, onlookers most of them would remain. The first few rows of chairs around the tables were crammed with fans huddling over the devs as they played. It was, as you can imagine, an oven. Can a Rogue get a little AC?

There were 4 machines set up to run combat demos, featuring a 4-man, 45^th level group adventuring in the ominous and foreboding stone vaults of Dargun's Tomb. The featured classes were Ranger, Dread Knight, Cleric, and an arcane caster which I believe was a Druid. It would not be an exaggeration to say that people generally weren't allowed to play because Vanguard isn't the type of game you learn to play, or even begin to understand, from a one page cheat sheet. This is even more so at the high end game (the current cap is 50 lvls) The 2 other machines were running the Character Customization demos, and players were free to play around on this to their heart's content. I'll start with these demos.

Character Customization

First of all, the specs on the machines are not certain. At least I got some smarmy answers from devs like “286 and a Voodoo Card” when I asked. Based on the kinds of cards they handed out for prizes during the dinners though, I'd guess they were all PCI-E 256 meg cards or better. I think it's a pretty safe bet that all the machines at the top of the line.

The Character Customization demo utterly fulfills what Jeff Butler outlined for me almost a year ago at E3. Everything has a slider. EVERYTHING! Except what you're thinking, sicko. To give you an idea.

Body

-Height
-Width
-Multiple Skins for each race (and by the sounds of it, some very exotic selections for Dark Elves besides black.)
-Tattoos (for some races)

Head

-Hair Styles
-Ear Size
-Ear Position

Arms

-Arm Length
-Hand Size

Legs

-Calf Thickness
-Foot Size

Torso

-Chest (or Breast) Width
-Chest “ “ Height
-Chest “ “ Slope
-Shoulder Width

Face

-Eye Spacing
-Eye Slant
-Eye Depth
-Eye Size
-Eyebrow Slant
-Nose Length
-Nose Tilt
-Mouth Width
-Cheek Height
-Cheek Fill
-Beard Styles

Are you getting the general picture? Utterly insane amounts of customization. And I can't even claim this an exhaustive list of options, there are more. Some qualifiers however. First, not all the restrictions set by race, and good taste, have been put in yet. Second, as you can expect, not all of that geometry morphs without flaws. What looks good at one angle may look very wrong in another angle. Third, not all the options were working, but most them were the incredibly minute details. All of these issues however are a matter of tweaking and adjusting. The majority of it was there and functional, and looked fantastic. So don't be alarmed by the absolutely ghastly model in the pic (which I think once was a Thestran Female), part of the fun of playing with the customization at the demo was pushing it to extremes.

Customization gone WILD!

Hrm, I don't think I'd hail you...

All in all, customization is shaping up nicely, some beta development issues with standing. I can safely say that I have never before seen this volume of customization in any MMO that I've played. Players just got about 5 steps closer to realizing the avatar they've always wanted.

The Combat Demo

Having seen Vanguard before at E3, and having reported on a lot of it's core mechanics already, I was taking a slightly different angle here. This time I had actually got to sit back and watch combat without trying to talk to 2 people at once as it was back in E3. And I was looking for how the game had changed since my last look.

For the most part, it was Brad playing as his Ranger Aradune, Talisker (aka Darrin McPherson) playing the Dark Knight, and Tagad (Bill Fisher) playing the Arcane Caster.

Various other developers like Doug Chronkite (aka Elidior) moved in and out of playing the demos over the 4 hours it was running.

Brad Mcquaid (foreground) and Darrin McPherson
demoing Vanguard

Graphics- Screen shots have never done this game justice. It's one thing to see a high res, high poly count image in mid-swing, in a single frame. It's a whole different story to watch it flow at 30fps. Vanguard's graphics are vivid, fluid, and gorgeous. The spell effects bloom into brilliant colors. And the mobs are truly something to behold. By now most fans have probably seen a screen shot of the trolls yes? Well he has a cousin. A big necrotic, purple, decaying undead cousin. Bone and sinew through rotting flesh, and dead white eyes stare out at you from sunken eye sockets. It's head is similarly sunken in and decayed, cradling a maw full of razor sharp teeth.

If that's how Vanguard makes you feel,
sign me UP!

If that's an incredibly graphic description, it's because Vanguard gives you that kind of detail with it's graphics. The player characters too had the same detailed design and polish. Aradune charged around with 2 flaming scimitars that really were flaming, their blades sheathed in swirling red infernos. The Dread Knight was armored from head to toe in plate mail that had swirlsand designs etched across every inch of it's surface. Over that he wore a thick dark colored cloak. The mage actually flung big balls of fire at the mob. Beams of white light around down on the group like a rain of light at his command. I could go on like this for quite a while, because the images are that crisp.

Again, I'll qualify all that by saying the FPS weren't flawless. There were a couple hiccups every once in a while, but again, that's not something that should be shocking for a beta build of the game.

To any Vanguard fan, I say, you have not seen Vanguard until you've seen it in motion, with all the eye candy set to ultra high.

Sound- Regrettably, sound was not something that was very distinct with that much human activity going on. I will say that combat is full of the sounds of swords clashing against armor and hide, the dull thuds of blunt objects, and the pained grunts of player and foe. The sounds are rich and full, and there are a lot of them during combat. To my ear, something didn't quite sound right with how they were all coming together in a big brawl, like there were too many going at one time, but it didn't ruin much. The spell sound effects deserve special mention for their richness as well, as a spell changes pitch as it casts, making the sound hit you in a wave. Music was something that was hard to pick up on, but Nino (aka Todd Masten, the Muzak-inator) has offered up quite a few samples already. (And maybe he can offer a couple more in the spirit of Fanguard :) ), so I wasn't too disappointed. I fact I'm listening to his work as I write this.

Gameplay- In a way, the same issue I had at E3 cropped up here. It's very hard to get a sense of what's going on when trying to take in the whole screen someone is playing on. There's a lot of activity. Player windows, enemy group windows, target windows, a couple chat boxes spewing information, an ability bar (or two), a set of boxes that flashed in response to an opportunity to take a reaction, and of course, the whirling chaotic mess of combat with 3 other group members and multiple mobs.

Darrin McPherson hard at work.

The pace of combat is definitely a little more frantic than EQ. No longer are you trying to chase down a single mob while his friend's are mezzed. It's more like a real breathing combat environment, but that means it takes a lot of attention to follow what's going on. The autoattack went off every few seconds, and abilities executed when clicked. Sometimes after using an attack, an icon with a little timer would appear in the reactions bar. Clicking it would sometimes allow another ability in the chain to be executed. A lot of abilities seemed to funnel into these chains (I mostly paid attention to the Ranger and Dread Knight). Following the chat text was pretty much impossible without sitting in someone's lap (and I think I was 10^th in line or so to try that). I did manage to get a look at the way Rescues and Intercepts work.

Basically, you have skills like Combat Awareness that determine how often you see the chance to intercept or rescue your buddy. (Defensive Fighters Rescue, Offensive Fighters intercept). When you see the opportunity, the icon pops up and you click it, and then you “attempt” to Rescue or Intercept. Failure means it didn't work and it's like you never tried. Success depends on what kind of Rescue or Intercept was being used. Some reduced damage, some removed it completely. And sometimes, a successful rescue attempt segwayed into another combo.

It was pretty funny listening to the Devs play, Brad would often be calling out, some what tersely, “I need a heal!....” Rangers, they just never learn. I guess it's hard not to get attention when you're carrying around 2 bonfires for weapons. The pace of combat, in my opinion, bordered on hectic. Fights were pretty quick, and I saw Brad and Darrin's life bounce around quite a bit. If I had to liken it to a game I've played before, the pace mind you, it would be CoH. Large groups, between 3 and a ton of a mobs. One mob would take maybe, 30 to 45 seconds to kill, then on to the next, with fights taking a couple of minutes at a time.

They battled against 6.5 foot werewolves and tattooed ogres that stood at around 15 feet tall. Dagrun's tomb, what I saw of it, had a very Gothic sort of feel to it. Large carved stone hallways drenched in shadows, that opened into huge vaults supported by many thick columns. I caught sight of some freaky skeleton monster that looked like someone had robbed an animal grave yard and built a pet. He had fanged skulls for hands and walked hunched over, covered in rags, with spines poking out of his back. I even caught sight of what had to be a boss, carrying his own sharpened bonfire (:P) It was pretty cool to see a named mob carrying some special to clobber players with.

The other locale, which I saw a bit less of, what a big forest of tall pines, some living, some toppled on to their sides, under grey skies. The devs fought the undead trolls there, and for a moment, I thought I was watching EQ. The caster would stand way back from the fight and nuke, and the mob would go charging past the tanks to crush him, and the tanks would curse and chase after it, and the caster would nearly die. I saw a lot of similarity to the way EQ flowed, cloaked in dozens of layers of mechanics and information, at faster pace. Don't worry though. Each screen was laid out different demonstrating how flexible the UI is. With so much information though (like the little boxes flashing around the UI that tell you what your fellow players and the mobs are about to do), playing without it could be a dangerous self-handicap.

The camera transitions fluidly from 1^st to 3^rd person, and it can extend out quite a ways, perfect for those screen shots of your raid. You can lock the camera to your position, or rotate it around yourself to take a cinematic perspective on combat. In 1^st person it looked like there was no attacking animation ala EQ, but Brad stated later during the developer panel that 1^st person animations were coming down the pipe line.

Jeters was one of the lucky few allowed to hop on a machine.
Either that or the devs just don't like sharing with guys.

All in all, combat and game play looks better, crisper, and more fluid since I saw it last at E3. (Although maybe that's because they had actual LCDs instead of plasma screens this time hehe). Combat gameplay looks like a mouth full and then some. For the truly dedicated information junky, Vanguard as it stands now is going to offer a wealth of information to parse, compare, and evaluate, depending on what you want to focus on when combat is going. So when is it too much? I guess that's a matter of perspective. Some people thrive and knowing mechanics like the back of their hand, like knowing exactly how much x monster should do against y player at z level with q quality of equipment. At the other extreme, some people thrive on the mystery of not knowing, feeling the mechanics instead of knowing them. The cool part is that it's going to be your choice how much you want to know. If you don't want to deal with it, don't want it cluttering up your screen or ruining your immersion, then you can most likely just turn it off. There are some things that you'll not be able to do without, like the reactions bar. A lot of the features of Vanguard flow through it. I've said it before, and I still believe it, I don't think you can be an effective player in Vanguard without the UI, but whether or not I'm right remains to be seen.

The Panels

Due to some confusion over the end time of the LiveQuest, I ended up missing a good chunk of the developer panel. As I mentioned earlier though, the rest of the Safehouse was there and caught it on video.

Developer Panel

First let me say that, Jeff and Brad have always been very careful about committing to something they aren't sure of. Many of the questions sought specifics, and they were often deflected away, for either being something that wasn't even in planning yet (money) or something that they weren't going to talk about (features). Even though Brad and Jeff didn't talk specifics, they painted a portrait of what they wanted, what they would accept, and where they eventually wanted to go. Add in a liberal dash of hard info and specifics, and all in all it was a very satisfying panel. Zack Karlsson did the moderation and selected questioners.

Brad and Jeff lead the Developer Panel

Zack Karlsson, Ph3rless Panel Moderator

There was a demo video running while Brad and Jeff talked, and we were specifically told not to film it. In it where brief shots of the game in action, mostly from a cinematic perspective. A Ranger running up to see New Targonar looming over the hills in the distance. Another character running across the desert sands of Qalia, it's landscape broken by tall, thin towers. A knight in full plate mail, his horse covered in barding, charging across a forest meadow with the light glinting off him. Huge 15 foot tall skeletal warriors that looked like the raised corpses of dead giants, their huge figures covered in furs and hides, weilding massive weapons. It was an impressive video even for someone that has seen the game a few times now, and I personally am egging Sigil on to share it with the fans.

Paul Luna is biologically incapable
of NOT hamming it up for the camera.

PvP, Rule Sets, and Game Architecture- As I walked into the panel, Jeff and Brad were taking questions on PvP, and there were lot of them. Will it be there at release? (Yes) Will there be limited forms on PvE servers (yes, and lots of types, from duels to arena battles that could involve groups). A particular point that they made, that I think is worth repeating, is that Vanguard is NOT going to face some of the problems EQ's PvP had. For starters, the entire game was designed from the ground up so that the core game mechanics could be changed, from server to server, with relatively little work. In Brad's words (I'm paraphrasing), “If we need to change a class because it's ability doesn't work in PvP, we will do it, because the way we built our game allows us to. EQ didn't”. What this means for PvP is that it could potentially have a very different rule set than PvE, using the same classes and builds, but with abilities tweaked to keep Player versus Player battles balanced. From this, questions of Realm vs. Realm rule sets came up, and roleplaying rule sets. Brad and Jeff said both were easily possible (but that's not a commitment for release). Brad mentioned Firona Vie (an oft used quote of his) as an example of what he'd already tried, and had found successful.

While neither Brad nor Jeff would commit to exactly what they would have by release, they said the alternate server rule sets would be there, and the sky was the limit in terms of what they could try. “We should have a server where everyone plays a badger!” indeed.

More of Sigil's Dark Overlords...taking questions

It was right around here that they made their standard disclaimer that this is a PvE game at heart though. To me that says the focus will always be PvE, and that it comes first. Take it for what you will. And before you PvP readers start gnashing your teeth, remember that Jeff Butler himself is an avid PvPer. He took a show of hands to see how many also considered themselves PvPers and got back almost ½ of the room, no small minority. Just because the game is PvE focused does not mean PvP won't get support. Just how much support it gets, only time and the release of the game can tell.

Weather, Housing, and doing things the Right Way

Zach and Paul focus their powers in an attempt
to make a questioner spontaenously combust.

They went on to describe how weather was coming to Telon soon in the beta. Rain that would change to snow as you went farther north, fog that was atmospheric as opposed to volumetric. The days, months, seasons, and weather conditions will eventually impact spell casting, damage values, failure rates, ect...(Reminiescent of FFXI actually) And it would be fairly simple to broaden that even further.

The duo also launched into a discussion of housing, likening it to Star Wars Galaxies. They admitted they had no problems with borrowing what they had enjoyedfrom games that they had played, the mechanics and implementation of features. For example, making permissions for your housing was a strong possibility. The question of housing and PvP came up, whicl led Brad into laying out his plan for player cities. Players would, as a group, move into an area and construct housing for themselves, probably near a lucrative adventuring spot. From here, players could launch attacks on content and have a nearby base of operations to return to. Of course, monsters would object to nosy adventurer's building on their prime real estate, and players would have to defend their cities against mob attacks or lose it all. Once players had been satisfied with an area, they could tear down their small city and move on to the next area. Brad extended this example to how PvP could potentially work with regards to player cities. Although none of this is currently in the game, and the first step is simply player owned housing, it's where Brad and Jeff see themselves going. A phrase they really liked using during the panel was “It's all about taking it to the next logical step”.

Developer Panel attendees

And while we're on the topic of the next logical step, the question of mounted combat came up. Oh, mounted combat. I've been in your corner since day 1. Sadly, Brad and Jeff were fairly certain it was not going to happen for release. But here's what they did say, and again I'm paraphrasing, about how they felt. “We like mounted combat. We want mounted combat. Right now, we could make a minor change and have people attacking and casting from horseback today. But that would trivialize the whole reason for fighting from horseback in the first place. It would be just like fighting as normal from your high movement speed, walking bank. We'd rather wait to have time to do things like, jousting, and to make it cool and fun, than do the bare minimum and have it be simple and without depth”. That's a philosophy that goes a long way with me. Just because you can do it in principle doesn't always mean it's a great idea. This Rogue is willing to wait for mounted combat. I have confidence that when it gets done, it's going to have been worth the wait.

Guild Management, Caps, and how not to Zerg

Naturally, guild management came up. While Jeff and Brad didn't elaborate a whole lot on their guild tools, they did affirm many of the questioner's requests. You will be able to view guild rosters, stats, and manage the guild all from inside the game. More than that was planned, but mum was the word.

And of course, that led right to another important concern, guild size caps. Specifically, Brad and Jeff said that they had no desire to break up your 400-man Guild of Powa. What they didn't want however was zerging, a natural result of having 400 people wanting to do something together. That was their main concern driving decisions about the guild cap, a debate that I believe is still going on internally at Sigil. Of course, this doesn't address the fact guilding isn't a requirement for zerging, but one issue at a time. Their possible suggestions for working around the need for a small guild cap involved limiting encounters to a large, but non zerg-like number of participants, allowing them to set difficulty for raid encounters according to a standard. That being how hard it is for the max cap of players to defeat the encounter. Obviously, this is one of those issues that is still in flux for Sigil.

Quality shot of the Panel room

Some things may have gone better unasked

Not only because Zack Karlsson was quick to shut down questions they didn't want to answer, but because Jeff and Brad are two pretty intelligent guys, and have a ready answer for just about anything. For example. Someone said they disapproved of tanks in full plate mail swimming at full speed, or floating at the top of the water. To his chagrin, Brad and Jeff both came back with a scenario that a tank drowns in a pond and every time he tries to loot his corpse, he drowns again. The crux of the issue was reality (believability, whatever) vs. what is fun. And Brad and Jeff firmly came down on the side of fun over realism.

Other questions that weren't answered were things like, “how much will you charge us to transfer characters between servers?”. Financials are like cryptonite to developers, they retreat from it as quickly as possible, and in their defense profit specifics and costs are usually some of the last things they think about.

That's all about I got out of the Developer Panel for the short time I was able to attend it. Be sure to check out our Safehouse video of the whole panel, so you can get the entire story, and so you can watch Brad and Jeff get surly with each other!

The Community and Affiliate Panels
Video Link

The Community Panel- I wasn't actually there for the community panel, but it featured Cindy Bowens, Nick Parkinson, and Paul “Teller” Luna. A good chunk of their time was consumed by questions about how to become a fansite, and how you police fansites. In what has become a reoccurring theme in almost all Vanguard Community discussions, the fan site buyout was a major concern of players. Cindy reassured the fans that all fansites must prove their worth to Sigil in terms of content and dedication to providing a service to players. And once they had met that level of quality, they had to keep it there, in addition to adhering to the standards and practices of being an affiliate, such as not running banner ads for a certain secondary-market provider.

The Affiliate Panel- After the Community Team from Sigil stepped away from the table, the Affiliates stepped up. Present on the panel was The Safehouse, Silky Venom, Vanguard Spheres, Vanguard Ten Ton Hammer, Vanguard Fighters, Vanguard Mondes Persistants (joining us from as far away as France!), Vanguard Crafters, and Vanguard Warcry. The Affiliates answered some basic, and important, questions about being Affiliated Fansites. Like, what it is we do? Why do we keep doing? Who the hell pays for all this stuff? Part of the reason for these questions is the mistaken assumption that all you have to do is sign on to a fansite and boom, you're in beta. Wrong. It's part hobby, and part job.

Your Vanguard Affiliates
(L to R: Mondes Persistants, VG Warcry,
VG Crafters, Silky Venom
VG Ten Ton Hammer, VG Spheres,
The Safehouse, VG Fighters)

For most Affiliates, it's purely a labor of love in writing news articles, write ups, fan art, and the dozens of other services we offer. Network sites are a special exception in that they are part of a larger web of sites that support them financially in return for putting them in charge of an entire site worth of content. Ten Ton Hammer and Warcry are two examples of Networked Sites. But for most Affiliates, the cost of running the servers (which increases as you bring more traffic to your site) and the time you end up putting in, ends up being costing more than any one beta account possibly could be worth. Let me put it this way. My primary responsibility as a Staff Writer for the Safehouse is gathering info and compiling it for readers in articles. Since getting back from Fanguard, I'll have put in almost 2x the hours I put into my final for a 400 level Anthropology theory course, by the time I've written everything.

So why do we do it? Because we like doing it. Because we want to do it. We want to bring this information to you, the people who want to know stuff, and it makes us happy to get the chance to. That's what being an Affiliate is about. Bear that in mind the next time you hear someone saying that being Affiliate is only about access to beta.

Uhm, Aidden, maybe you should put the camera
away....

Cough. Anyways, that is essentially what Affiliates, paid or otherwise, tried to get across the fans. We're here for you, it's why we started doing this whole fansite thing in the beginning in the first place. And when the Official Vanguard Forums close at the release of the game, we'll have a place waiting for you.

The Customer Service Panel

Leading this panel was Michelle Butler (Customer Service Manager), along with GM-Elaisu and GM-Fessius (my apologies if I'm missing someone). I only stayed for a few brief minutes, but I guess I entered at a high point. Michelle Butler was stating her and the team's commitment to one fundamental principle: they will do what is necessary to protect the integrity of the game and the game world. It's a pretty definitive statement. What's at stake is clarity, and equality. As I mentioned in Part 1, not even the President of Sigil is above the rules that are designed to protect Telon. Sigil's goal is having a clear set of rules so you the player know exactly where you stand, and so their decisions can be made quickly and with a clear conscious. If you, the player, find that line in the sand uncomfortably close to where you like to stand, then perhaps you'd best check your step.

No policy is immune from hard questions though. Kiranth from Silky Venom posed probably the best example in MMO history on tough CS calls. Of course he was talking about: How Feign Death went from exploit to legal tactic. There's no real good answer to a hypothetical like that. But the CS team did say that situations like that would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Another interesting question came up about zone crashing, due to population, and what could be done about. The Gms had a ready answer for this one backed by a real example from game. When they run Gm events, people tend to swarm to that zone in mass. It stresses out the server and affects everyone's game. One strategy they are plotting is to divide events across multiple chunks to alleviate the stress. So you might start the event in one zone and head to one or more others to finish it. Pretty snazzy, I thought.

So what can you say about Sigil's CS policy? Maybe it's too early to tell, but it sounds like it will be pretty hard nosed. Can you blame them though in this day and age? EQ's heydays were the golden years of innocence compared to today. The secret is out now, and everyone is looking for their special angle. When you've got that kind of opposition out there, and a promise to keep your game world pure for players, you have to be vigilant. And being vigilant means you can't let small things slide by your attention.

So how do I feel about the “game” experience at Fanguard?

The game is coming along nicely. In terms of what they said they'd do, and what they are doing, things seem to be in-line with each other. There was a post on the official forums pleading for attendees to say something “negative” about the game. Well, I think I've said plenty. I saw some frame rate issues, I saw some geometry that's a little wonky, sound effects are a little rough, combat is a paced a little too much like City of Heroes, as opposed to the 1 mob vs. 6 players dichotomy we are used to from EQ. Happy now?

And I say, so what? Everything I've seen is a matter of tweaking, adjusting, and playing with it until it's just right. The bedrock of the game is as strong and sturdy as a granite mountain. The paper designs have gone to game and they work. The “Vision” is working as far as I can tell. And no one, not even Sigil, has seen where the Vision ends really. It only gets better from here.

So I'll see you at next Fanguard.

I'd be a liar though if I said this was all the Safehouse had to bring you from Fanguard. We've got more coming, and I think you're going to like it :P. Keep checking back with us in the coming days.

Thanks for reading.

San Diego Fanguard Write-up Part 1.

Essential Fanguard Links

Essential Fanguard Links+

Safehouse Anthology of Telonian Lore by Nocte

Vanguard Affiliated Fan Sites

Top of Page