Due to the new character joining Stout Henry in his further adventures, AND due to me using Vanguard to generate illustrations for the story, Stout Henry was delayed until I’d leveled up a gnome enough in VG so that he could pose for screen shots.
I finished that last night, and I think he came out pretty well 🙂
VG’s Isle of the Dawn was still really laggy on my computer, but the superior gear that comes from it makes it a bad idea to skip it.
I started off with a blood mage, but quickly re-rolled him as a rogue. Rogues are pretty awesome 🙂
Vanguard is so close to being a great game. If it ran well on my laptop, and had a better UI (especially the map), I might be more inclined to give it a real shot. But when moving a character feels like pushing it through a room full of honey, I’m thinking too much about the game itself than getting into the character and forgetting the game entirely.
I expect Spellborn’s character customization to be as good or better than Vanguard. That’s likely going to be the end of VG on my hard drive, unfortunately.
Anyway. Story tomorrow…
6 thoughts on “Stout Henry and Vanguard”
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SOE has me in their kung-fu death grip right now. I shut down my station pass account a couple months ago. Buying the seeds EQ expansion and having a total blast with it, I find myself directing my browser to stuff concerning the new EQ2 expansion. I have also not been in Vanguard in a while and the feeling of curiosity at the new starting area and whatever changes they have made in my absence are slowly chipping away at my resolve. So I have been entertaining the thought of starting my station pass up again. I have zero interest in WotLK ( I think it will be great. I just am busy with other stuff ). The Mines of Moria expansion COULD be interesting … but this is mostly because the Moria section of LOTR was the part of the book that hooked me when I read it in high school.
Playing Seeds of Destruction changed all my plans. I now fully plan on getting The Shadow Odyssey, at which point I will be paying for two SOE games … and at which point I might as well just re-up my station pass. I will likely keep on playing EQ though. I like EQ2 a lot, but my highest level character is only level 30, and the one I enjoy playing the most is only level 22 so I don’t think I will get much out of the expansion. Plus, I have been tooling around Norrath with my new healer merc in tow and having an absolute blast. 🙂
I kept saying this about VG also…but I said the same thing about LOTRO…and everyone thinks it is a system issue..
The games run like crud…
Yet, this same system can run AoC, Crysis. etc, without those issues…weird.
I just think the engines in these two games are showing their age like EQ2 was (as I know they took old graphics engines and updated them…badly I might add)…
But, I plan to try EQ2 soon to see if the dual core fix helps.
As to Spellborn. Still have high hopes.
I so hope it is good…
I have heard that EQ2 is heavily CPU bound, as opposed to fancy graphics hardware. Does EQ2 take advantage of dual core/multi-processor systems?
Maybe I have much lower standards on what I find playable, but I have never had huge issues with Vanguard. I have no idea why. At the beginning of this year I bought a brand spankin’ new system, fully decked out to take on modern games, so I am not surprised that Vanguard runs like buttered grease. Well … I DID have an issue with Vanguard crashing when I would enable SLI mode on my video cards, but disabling SLI everything still runs great. Buying into SLI ( two cards ) was a pretty big waste for me. EVery game I have played plays great on a single card. :\
Yes, EQ2 does take advantage of multi-core CPUs — it will use two cores, no matter how many you have. One for animations, and one for everything else. It’s a big improvement on my system; I’m pretty happy with it.
EQ2, btw, as far as I know, runs a custom engine. I think SOE built it themselves; could be wrong there. I bet that’s the last time they go that route…
Almost every game ran fine with me until my desktop computer blew up. Replaced it with a gaming laptop, and after that, everything runs like crap to a lesser or greater degree. For VG, greater. I am budgeting for a new computer early next year, and it would be really great if games like, oh, EverQuest 1, worked well on it.
I’m sure VG runs great on good hardware. But I have the computer that I have, and it runs like it runs, and knowing that it runs great on someone else’s computer doesn’t make my gaming more fun 😛
I do have the Station Pass, so it’s not like I can’t just reinstall it when I have newer gear. I never give up on anything…
Station Pass is, imo, a good deal if you plan on playing one of SOE’s new games, though I am not sure about the revenue model of any of them. Free Realms will be somewhat F2P, but who knows how they will monetize The Agency or DC Universe Online? Gamers don’t expect to pay to play a FPS (The Agency) when Call of Duty 4 (very similar, from what I can tell, aside from the genre) is included in Xbox Live. DC Universe Online is so incredibly arcade-y… I just dunno, but likely Station Pass will help in some way with them.
Just playing both the EQs makes it worth it to me. I canceled it when I was just playing EQ2.
I highly recommend taking advantage of the Christmas sales that companies will have. Last year I bought my new PC during a christmas sale from:
http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/
and I got a pretty awesome deal: 3.0 Ghz core 2 duo, 4GB RAM, two Geforce 8800 GTS 512MB cards for SLI, 320 GB HD, and even a 24″ widescreen monitor, all for about $2000. If you don’t need a monitor, that will save you a bundle. Getting only one video card ( which I recommend ) will also save you a bundle.
Either right before, or right after Christmas I am willing to bet that they will have some sort of great deal if you are ready to buy.
I should also say that while I have been very happy with the system and have had no troubles, this is the only thing I have bought from them. They seem alright as a company, but I really don’t have a long history with them to speak of. 🙂
Well, unfortunately, having to pay for my son’s second semester of college, Christmas presents for my family and a trip to California to visit my daughter and her family after Christmas means, much as I would like to, a gaming PC has to wait until after the holidays 🙁
That’s definitely a nice price, though!