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Haelufir vs. Crom?

May 5th, 2008 - By
Dalmarus

As any new game gets closer to release, especially if said game could
be considered a potential rival, a number of players (I like to refer
to them as the Doom & Gloom Patrol) are going
to start talking about
how badly the new comer will affect the current population.
Unfortunately, even Vanguard: Saga of Heroes can not seem to escape
this fate. Since I tend to bite my tongue a lot on various forums, let
me take a bit of time to explain my views on the whole issue here.



In case any of my faithful readers (that means you, Mom) have been
living under a rock for the last couple of months, the current
challenger for the Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) crown is
Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures (AoC). If you haven't been keeping up
with the game and want to read more about it, feel free to go pester my
old partner in crime, Machail, over at the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aoc">Ten Ton Hammer AoC
Site. Since this newsletter is about Vanguard though, I'm not
going to go into great detail about AoC.



As is the case with so many games on the market today, I think
comparing Vanguard and Age of Conan is a lot like comparing apples to
oranges. Age of Conan is a game designed for players that love player
versus player (PvP) combat. Vanguard, despite what an extremely vocal
minority will try to convince you of, is not a PvP centric game. It
never was, and I don't expect to ever see it go that way in the future.
This doesn't mean I don't think there's a place for PvP in the game,
especially on its own server such as Sartok, but it's not the main
focus of the game. There - I said it. Sorry to those folks it may have
offended, but that's how I see it.



The upcoming release of AoC may indeed have a large impact on the
number of players that are currently playing Vanguard on the PvP
server. For the few individuals I've heard making this argument, I
think it's a completely valid hypothesis. It's the rest of the players
I would beg to differ with on this particular issue, especially since
it seems to come up every time someone even mentions another game. At
this rate, I'm already expecting to hear cries of a mass exodus when
the Hello Kitty Online game announces a new expansion.



For the player versus environment (PvE) servers though, I don't expect
much change in population at all when AoC releases. At least any
significant decrease that is. There will inevitably be a number of
players that have to check it out. I'm an MMO junkie myself and at
least test out every big name MMO that comes out. Despite what people
may say, I seriously doubt I'm the only one out there. As such, a lot
of people will check it out. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing
at all. Will it mean a drastic drop in Vanguard numbers? I don't think
so. In fact, I have a different theory.



As crazy as some people may think this statement is, I actually think
that the Age of Conan release will increase our numbers. Believe it or
not, I'm not joking. A number of PvP loving players will most likely
jump ship, so those players may be lost. It's the other players I
expect to have come back. A number of players have stated they left
because of Issue X and were waiting for Aoc to come out. I think a lot
of those players will be unhappy with the game and come back to see
what improvements have been made in Vanguard. It's as simple as that.



I use myself as a key example in all of this. I was a heavy Everquest
player for a number of years. I'd quit a few times, but always kept
going back to it. I played Dark Age of Camelot, Asheron's Call, Ultima
Online, Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, Horizons, Star Wars Galaxies,
Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons Online, etc,
etc, etc.... You get the point. Since I myself had left a number of
games, just to see what shiny new game was coming out, I expect the
same to happen here. I always kept going back to Everquest though...
until I found Vanguard. I haven't left once. That in and of itself says
more about the quality of a game than any hype coming down the pipeline.





href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=27085">What
do you think?

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