[DeadHead]

Nej nej, blanda inte in mig i det här tack!

Frågan är vilken färg han har? 

[guest1327]

Japp, det som hänt hittills är att Panto fastnat i nån slags dödsloop med respawn i luften x antal ggr på raken. Själv har jag haft två stycken CTD. Så det händer grejer minsann!

Jag teleporterade mig från Kahl till Ahgram, hamnade väl rätt men ca 100 meter upp i luften. Försökte väl skydiva lite åt vänster för att missa bryggan men, nepp Krashade illa och dödde på fläcken  

[Tahlanos]

Har du inte grindat "LIght Feather" så du kan använda "slow fall" ??

[Pruneboy]

Ny patch

http://www.silkyvenom.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19737

[DeadHead]

CODING NOTES
- There is a new programmable shader caching system to reduce hitching. You will hitch a bit more than usual while programmable shaders are cached the very first time you see a different material type in game. This is the last time *all* shaders will need to be recompiled. Hitching should be greatly reduced afterwards.

Håller tummarna!

[DeadHead]

Någon dag gammal info:

Founders Title Now Available!
04/23/2007

Greetings players!

As a special thanks to all those that have helped bring the world of Telon to life and continue to help it grow all players who have actiavated their accounts on or before Marth 31, 2007 may now claim a founder’s title signifying their contributions to Vanguard. To claim your title type /claim in game and claim the appropriate reward number. Once you have claimed your title you may set it as you would any other title. Thank you!

See you in Telon,

- The Vanguard Team

* * *

För övrigt så tycker i alla fall jag att spelet flyter på bättre iom senaste patchen. Har iofs inte varit i något känt "lag-område" än, men den allmänna känslan är att det funkar bättre.

[Tahlanos]

 

[DeadHead]

http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=8569

[DeadHead]

Stora förändringar på gång:

So here's the first topic, starting with the current official statement from SOE:

"SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad.  Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community.  We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future.  The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind."

What does that mean?  It means that right now Vanguard is doing decently but not as well as we hoped.  If you haven't read my last long post that outlined some of the things that went wrong during development, etc., please do. So the bottom line is that SOE is going to be getting more involved with Sigil and Vanguard - our relationship is going to become even tighter - much tighter.  At this point I can't say much more than that.

Does this mean an acquisition? I can't say at this point.

Does this mean more or less people at Sigil?  I can't say at this point.

Does this mean management changes at Sigil?  I can't say at this point.

What it does mean at this point is that both companies agree that we need more of SOE's involvement if Vanguard is going to continue to get the support it needs to both continue to be worked on and improved and debugged and optimized.   When people start getting burned out of the Warcraft expansion (pardon the pun), we need to make sure that the game is more polished and will play on lower end machines.  As people continue to level up, it means that we need additional higher level content, including raid content.  If we are going to change our marketing message effectively to target those who played a lot of EverQuest but who have ‘grown up' such that they have jobs, families, etc. that they cannot and will not play another EverQuest even though they enjoyed they game years ago.  We've done studies and it's not atypical of an old EQ player, when they hear about Vanguard, to assume that because many of the people involved in Vanguard's development worked on EQ as well, that Vanguard must simply be an EQ 3.  From that point they don't even give Vanguard another look.  They don't do any more research on the game.  They don't go to the official sites. They don't go to the affiliate sites.  Instead they think to themselves, "ah well, were I younger and had my life not changed, I'd give it a shot, but I just don't have the time for another EQ with better graphics right now."

And that's it - they don't give Vanguard another thought   EQ peaked in late 2001 at almost 500k subscribers.  In its lifetime it's sold over 2 million units.  Putting EQ in a vacuum and that's a lot of people who played and who aren't playing anymore.  And the total number of subscribers didn't start going down until sometime 2002.  I'm also pretty sure up until its peak that the average lifespan of a player was nearing 9-12 months.  And as I mentioned in my last lengthy post, this group of people who played but don't anymore could arguably be put into two sub-groups - those who look back fondly at those months and even years and those who don't.  I have read posts and received emails from people who claim to have played to max level and then quit very angry - the "I just played your game for 2 years and now I hate you" emails.  But realistically how big is that group?  Even if it was half (boggle) the other group is still pretty big.  So ignoring all of the people who have quit or who are growing bored of their current MMOG (WoW, FFXI, DAoC, etc) that need to be reached (and in a very different way, especially the WoW player), both a word of mouth and a formal marketing campaign targeting these people clearly needs to launched.  These people need to know that Vanguard does have the ‘EQ feel' in many ways but that it is much more soloable than EQ was, especially the early EQ days.  They need to know that you can play for short periods of time and advance.  They need to know that the ‘end game' is not all about raiding into the wee hours of the night.  Some subset of these people will still feel burnt out of MMOGs period, but I think there's a lot of people who haven't been reached and our and others research supports that.  False assumptions are being made by a lot of people.  The reality is that Vanguard *is* the game most of these people are looking for - it has the good they remember, but has eliminated a lot of the tedium and necessary long hours that don't fit into their lifestyle anymore.

Then there are the people who are growing weary of their current MMOG.  Given how much larger the MMOG gamespace has grown since EQ's zenith in 2001 (arguably 7 times as large worldwide, and at least 2-3 time as large in North America alone), we have to take advantage of this.  At some point these people are going to want to start a new MMOG (especially after the WoW expansion newness has worn out, which for most of the non-hard-core would be when you really have to start raiding in the expansion).  LoTR Online is an x-factor - reviews from beta testers seem to indicate that the game is more casual like WoW, a small game, and that it looks really good but can run on a lower end system much better than Vanguard (just as WoW can).  So at least for a time the more casual bored WoW player may migrate to LoTR Online.  How sticky (e.g. how long that game will hold onto players) is unknown, but I think it's safe to say that a significant percentage of the more casual bored WoW player will head to LoTR - at least first, given the franchise around it.  Conservatively this leaves the more hard core WoW player (which in Vanguard or EQ terms would be considered either a hard core or, more likely, a core gamer).  That number, even just taking the North American and European gamer is still potentially a large one and needs to be targeted (given Vanguard's high system specs, the time it will take to localize, and Blizzard's name recognition and pre-existing proven marketing ability in Asia, I wouldn't count that group, although a very significant one, until 2008 or so.  Targeting that group is for a future discussion).

Lastly, there's the very real issue of Vanguard's system specs, even for the core and hard core gamer in North America and Europe.  For a variety of reasons and mistakes on our part that I won't get into right now, Vanguard was released with system spec requirements that were too high for January 2007.  Continued optimization will help to a degree, but the game's big hope here is simply Moore's Law and that by the second half of 2007, and certainly by the end of the year, the system spec issue will have been greatly diminished.  The big problem that remains is that you still pretty much need a new system as opposed to, say, simply a new graphics card.  But eventually, gamers do replace their systems.  Given what Vista (especially the Ultimate edition) takes to really run, combined with other games that come out by the end of the year that really push technology, many people will be compelled to buy new systems.  Unlike EQ, which was one of the first hardware only games, Vanguard needs not only a fast graphics card, but also a system with pci-express, fast memory, a fast FSB, etc.  With EQ, you just needed to buy a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 - the rest of your system is fine.  With Vanguard, however, just plugging the fastest AGP card into your 2-3 year old system doesn't cut it.  In fact, Vanguard runs pretty well on a 2 GB system with a decent pci-express video card and fast memory in a 2.6 GHz Pentium; conversely, run the game on an older AGP system, the fastest AGP card you can buy, and a 3.2 GHz CPU and you'll have framerate issues.  The game is simply not CPU bound, nor just graphics card bound, but rather mostly bound by the data that it needs to constantly move from the CPU to main memory to the graphics card, and then all the way back again.  It's all about the various bus speeds and caches - moving data around efficiently is arguably more important than processing that data on the CPU or GPU.   The only fix here, again, is time.  Vista (especially the Ultimate edition, which is what's being pushed to gamers) wants fast components.  Direct X 10 hardware and software will help a lot, especially when there is a DX10 version of Vanguard.  A native 64bit client of Vanguard will eventually help a lot too.  Bottom line:  by the end of 2007, a lot more people should have upgraded, especially if Microsoft succeeds with Vista and native DX 10 games.  And if they really push Gaming for Windows like they did, say, the Xbox 360, the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 should be a very different landscape for PC games in general and Vanguard specifically.   Was the Vanguard tech ahead of its time?  Yes, and there has been a price to pay for that short term (although many people are able to play with older machines - why? Different configurations, different settings, different thresholds for lower framerates, etc.).  But MMOGs ideally never end and if you've architected your engine to both push the limits of existing and near future technology as well as easily employ future technologies, then you have a game that doesn't look dated one, two, even three plus years down the road.  And that's what we did with Vanguard - so we feel some pain now, but if we can keep the momentum going, this decision pays off in the long run (big time).

In summary, there are arguably a lot of people who by mid to end of this year in the MMOG gamespace for whom Vanguard could potentially be very attractive.  What the game needs is a re-launch of sorts, including targeted marketing campaigns, an all-around successful move by gamers to the next generation of hardware, continued good word of mouth ‘viral' marketing by those who are already playing, enjoying, and re-subscribing.  And all of this could and should ramp up by the end of the year, all the while the Vanguard team is putting in more content, the live team filling out high level content as well as adding to areas of the game's vast seamless world which are a bit empty.  Then a re-launch towards the end of the year plus the first expansion (which is looking like first quarter 200SMILEY8), one that would add RTS style city building, ship to ship combat, jousting, and a second ‘half' of the Kojanese Archipelago that makes ship travel meaningful - and by meaningful I mean not tedious, rewarding exploration, with lots of new areas (both in the existing world and in the extension of the archipelago).  And I'm talking about some re-use of existing art, combined with new art that fits into the existing continents, and then finally some all out new stuff - different styles of terrain (islands) and ocean to look at while making your journey to found a new player city while constantly being attacked by exotic sea creatures, leviathans, and other traditional members of fantasy and crypto-zoology.  Not to mention pirates with canons, or other players and their ships on the PvP servers.  And who knows, could be first expansion or second, but eventually you need to pull from Mesoamerican mythology, encounter empires based on Greco-roman architecture... it goes on and on, it's all planned out, and Vanguard can do all of it given sufficient time.  The tools have matured, both in terms of art and design, and the art process orders of magnitude more efficient because of years of Maya scripting, an in-house terrain generator that creates what you want as opposed to spitting out algorithmically generated hills and valleys, and an art team that has this process down pat - for example, they were able to re-create Tursh and Leth Nurae in a fraction of time it took them to create the original, smaller, and much less interesting ‘versions'.

"SOE is in discussions with Sigil regarding the future of Vanguard and Sigil Games in Carlsbad.  Talks are going well and first and foremost, our primary concern right now is what's best for Vanguard and its community.  We want to ensure that this game and its community have a healthy future.  The specifics that we work out over the coming days will all be with that single goal in mind."

So what does that mean again? Again, I apologize for not being able to go into details and it's the details that need to be worked out.  But I think it's safe to say that both Sigil and SOE see the potential of a mind blowing game by the end of the year.  What's needed, bottom line, is some time, and how to get that time is what's being worked out.  And so I still see a 500k+ game, I was just off by a year for a variety of reasons, some under my control, many not.  And I think SOE sees this as well.  To pull it off however, requires a funded and supported Sigil and a well marketed Vanguard with these different target audiences identified and solid plan on how to reach them all, and then a solid execution of said plan, hitting them hard, pushing these ‘WoW everywhere' point of purchase materials from the front to the very back..  In the meantime, the Vanguard that was launched in early 2007 continues to move forward, with much of what I've talked about patched in over time, and the rest in the first expansion (or re-launch, or whatever we all agree upon in terms of product and service placement).  Bottom line, Vanguard continues to march forward, a solid and fun game today, and an even better one tomorrow.  More ‘state of the game' posts by me, a regularly updated ‘In the Works' http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/inTheWorks.vm. And whatever kind of increased partnership between Sigil and SOE is necessary to make this vision a reality.  And again, as for what that means exactly, more on that later TM.

[Ceder]

Men kul.... Tror nog det blir Age of Conan istället...

Continued optimization will help to a degree, but the game's big hope here is simply Moore's Law and that by the second half of 2007, and certainly by the end of the year, the system spec issue will have been greatly diminished.  The big problem that remains is that you still pretty much need a new system as opposed to, say, simply a new graphics card.  But eventually, gamers do replace their systems.  Given what Vista (especially the Ultimate edition) takes to really run, combined with other games that come out by the end of the year that really push technology, many people will be compelled to buy new systems.  Unlike EQ, which was one of the first hardware only games, Vanguard needs not only a fast graphics card, but also a system with pci-express, fast memory, a fast FSB, etc.  With EQ, you just needed to buy a Voodoo 1 or Voodoo 2 - the rest of your system is fine.  With Vanguard, however, just plugging the fastest AGP card into your 2-3 year old system doesn't cut it.  In fact, Vanguard runs pretty well on a 2 GB system with a decent pci-express video card and fast memory in a 2.6 GHz Pentium; conversely, run the game on an older AGP system, the fastest AGP card you can buy, and a 3.2 GHz CPU and you'll have framerate issues.  The game is simply not CPU bound, nor just graphics card bound, but rather mostly bound by the data that it needs to constantly move from the CPU to main memory to the graphics card, and then all the way back again.  It's all about the various bus speeds and caches - moving data around efficiently is arguably more important than processing that data on the CPU or GPU.   The only fix here, again, is time.  Vista (especially the Ultimate edition, which is what's being pushed to gamers) wants fast components.  Direct X 10 hardware and software will help a lot, especially when there is a DX10 version of Vanguard.  A native 64bit client of Vanguard will eventually help a lot too.  Bottom line:  by the end of 2007, a lot more people should have upgraded, especially if Microsoft succeeds with Vista and native DX 10 games.  And if they really push Gaming for Windows like they did, say, the Xbox 360, the end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 should be a very different landscape for PC games in general and Vanguard specifically.   Was the Vanguard tech ahead of its time?  Yes, and there has been a price to pay for that short term (although many people are able to play with older machines - why? Different configurations, different settings, different thresholds for lower framerates, etc.).  But MMOGs ideally never end and if you've architected your engine to both push the limits of existing and near future technology as well as easily employ future technologies, then you have a game that doesn't look dated one, two, even three plus years down the road.  And that's what we did with Vanguard - so we feel some pain now, but if we can keep the momentum going, this decision pays off in the long run (big time).

[Johnny Hazard]

Precis min tanke Ceder. jag är så förbannat utled på lagg, buggar o annat ofärdigt så det behövs banne mig inte mkt för att få mig att avsluta mitt VG abonnemang. Och har man inte fattat att folk inte går på skitsnacket om att det är hårdvaran och inte deras sketna kod som är problemet så kommer nog VG saga bli en kort än!

[DeadHead]

Jag håller med er till viss del, gubbs.

Det som kanske framför allt skiljer min erfarenhet från de flesta övrigas så här långt, är att jag spelat säkert 80-90% solo. Nu är väl inte tanken att man ska spela solo i ett mmorpg, men det är bara sån jag är. Det var samma sak i World of Warcraft f.ö.

Solospel i Vanguard funkar väldigt bra, om man valt "rätt" klass.

Det stora problemet med VG är, vilket jag som vissa vet debatterat om en hel del på Silky Venoms forum, prestandan i grupp alt. när det är många spelare i närheten. De har helt enkelt gjort de mest detaljerade texturer och flest polygoner som någonsin skådats i något spel, vad gäller karaktärerna, vilket sinkar prestandan nåt oerhört i grupper/tätbefolkade områden.

Är detta en sunt val? Nja, inte i dagsläget, vilket vi ju sett flerfaldiga bevis på till dags dato.
De har däremot, tyvärr, satsat mindre på miljöerna. Jämför gärna med LOTRO (där har man lagt, så vitt jag kan bedömma utan att ha spelat spelet i verkligheten) stor vikt på miljöerna. Ett i mina ögon mycket klokt val, i alla fall i dagsläget.

För att riktigt uppskatta grafiken i VG så bör man spela i förstapersonsvy, något som inte är alltför vanligt i spel av den här typen. OM man gör det så ser man nog ganska snart att detta spel faktiskt är extremt välgjort åtminstone vad gäller karaktärerna. Att jämföra med ex. WOW ter sig närmast skrattretande, och det klår "t.o.m." ett spel som Guild Wars med hästlängder.

LOTRO, som i dagsläget är den stora konkurenten om man ser till nya spel i denna genre, har valt att köra på "säkra kort", dvs inte köra järnet på att bygga en extrem grafikmotor, utan deras spel är något som bef. wow-spelare kan hoppa till rakt av utan att behöva uppgradera sina system.

Så, vad är det största felet med VG?

Tja, det är många naturligtvis, med tanke på det skick spelet är i idag. Men att spelet släpptes minst ett halvår, för att inte säga ett år, för tidigt är nog spelets största dilemma. Att släppa en betaprodukt på marknaden, och därigenom få så oerhört mycket negativ kritik är fruktansvärt dumdistrigt.

Spelföretagen borde ha lärt sig kan man tycka. Precis samma sak som VG genomlider idag, led exempelvis EVE Online av i början, vilket ledde till att massor med spelare hoppade av för att aldrig komma tillbaka. EVE idag är något helt annat än det var när det släpptes, men övertyga de som var med från början om det - det går nästan inte.

Vad som talar för VG i ett längre perspektiv, är att spelet faktiskt är byggt från början som något som ska överglänsa det mesta på mmorpg marknaden. Huruvida de lyckas i slutändan är ju en sak, men ambitionen finns där, på ett helt annat sätt än i nuvarande och i närmsta framtiden kommande spel i genren.

Diplomatidelen, craftingsystemet, möjligheten till egna hus, strider till havs via egna byggda båtar/skepp, möjligheter till att ta över och äga hela städer, grafiken, komplexiteten osv. osv. visar på en enorm ambition spelets skapare har haft i åtanke sedan dag ett.

Många gamla woware kommer med stor sannolikhet gå över till det betydligt mer lättgreppade LOTRO, eftersom de så specifikt har riktat in sig på just denna målgrupp. LOTRO skulle lika gärna kunna kallas för WOW 1.5 eller 2.0, med tanke på de enorma likheter som spelet presenterar för denna målgrupp.

För min egen del, som hardcore tolkien-fan, så känner jag att rädslan för att bli besviken överstiger nyfikenheten vad gäller just LOTRO. Visst känner jag ett sug att prova, men om det enda jag blir erbjuden är just ett WOW 1.5 / 2.0, så känns det lika bra att stå över. Dessutom, ett WOW utan pvp del (pvp i WOW är enligt min mening den absolut bästa implementeringen av hur pvp ska fungera i denna typen av spel, hands down).

Slutord, i detta något förvirrande inlägg - jag tror på VG, jag har bestämt mig för att fortsätta spela det här spelet. Sen om det slutar med att jag blir ensam kvar från hela OG att lira VG så må det vara hänt, det finns säkert många andra (svenska) spelare där ute.
Är jag mer tålmodig än er övriga? Kanske. Med tanke på att jag med största sannolikhet sitter med det sämsta systemet utav oss som idag spelar VG så är det rent av troligt.

Oavsett, den som orkar med och inte ger upp spelet i första taget kommer att hitta mig därute!

Väl mött i VG, gott folk!

[Pruneboy]

Jag blir också kvar i VG. Jag kommer dock att börja fluffa till mitt spelande med andra spel såsom Guild Wars och en del singleplayerspel jag har liggande. Jag har för det mesta en bra upplevelse i VG, men det beror också på att jag bara rör mig i adventuringsfären, har en paladin som är en väldigt buggfri klass samt att min maskin puttar runt VG på balanced/high utan större problem. Utan tvivel tror jag att LOTRO är mycket mer strömlinjeformat och lättilgängligt, men frågan är hur länge det spelet håller? Finns ingen PvP och inga saker som player housing osv.

Jag följer dock utvecklingen av Age of Conan med stort intresse och kommer att ge detta spel stort utrymme i mitt spelande när det släpps.

[DaddyLongLeg]

Jag har (som ni märkt) lagt ner VG igen. Jag ville verkligen tro på det här spelet, men efter två helhjärtade försök att gilla spelet har jag gett upp för den här gången.

GW är det som gäller nu ett tag.

[Johnny Hazard]

Spelet i sig är ju ganska så standard i dagsläget då lull-lullet inte är implementerat. Det skiljer sig inte nämnvärt från t.ex. DAoC. Visst är det betydligt snyggare, men jag spelar hellre ett grafiskt enklare spel som är lagfritt än ett snoffsig lagfest. Visst tillför den snyggare grafiken till en mer realistisk känsla, men det tappar man raskt när spelet börjar stamma eller när belöningen för ett uppdrag både är för fel klass och inte kan ges bort eller säljas till nån annan spelare.

Dessutom saknar jag RvR delen från DAoC som verkligen ger spelet en annan dimension.

Men jag gillar VG och kommer nog fortsätta ett tag till, det råkiga är ju att man måste antingen välja en soloklass som t.ex. necron eller söka sig till andra grupper då det är väldigt få OG kvar i spelet.

Edit: Posten blev mer negativ än det var tänkt. Spelet ÄR inte ospelbart, då det sällan laggar när man fightas utan i städer eller vid andra folkintensiva platser. Vet inte varför folk tröttnat på spelet, då de flesta spel har problem i början och jag har sett betydligt värre problem i andra nya spel. Största problemet för mig nu är bristen på andra OG att spela med då det är betydligt roligare att gruppa o snacka skit i TS än att sola, även om min necro-bitch är en elak liten djävul som troligtvis kommer att bli nerfad.