When What’s Missing
Becomes What’s Next

By Shayalyn

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Every MMO has its trials when it comes to getting the right content into the game at the right time. For example, when Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) launched this February it was without any solo content. Turbine, the game’s developers, soon found that, despite the fact that pen-and-paper D&D is rarely played solo (or with one player versus a dungeon master), gamers want a game where they have something to do between groups. Just a couple months after its release, Turbine added some solo content to DDO, quite possibly in an effort to retain players who were quickly growing restless and looking for greener MMO pastures.

DDO added content to meet player demand after launch. You might think that a game in development, like Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, would have a golden opportunity to read the needs of the community and create a game based around those needs. The problem is...the community doesn’t always know what it wants. Also, the developers sometimes find that what the community seems to demand doesn’t exactly fit with their vision for the game. I’m going to offer up my best guess as to what could be missing from Vanguard at launch, and what might be added later due to popular demand.

Solo Content

Okay, let’s just lay it on the line--Vanguard is going to be a group-centered game at launch, whether fans like it or not. While there will definitely be some solo content (unlike DDO at launch), it won’t be as plentiful as it is in, say, World of Warcraft, where players can solo right up to the level cap. The rationale for this? According to Brad McQuaid, Executive Producer of Vanguard and CEO of  developers Sigil Games Online, Vanguard will encourage grouping to help foster a sense of community. Rather than having thousands of players running around on their own, McQuaid and his team envision a world where people will communicate with one another while enjoying gameplay as part of a cooperative group.

World of Warcraft earned its supremacy (a massive subscriber base of around 6 million) in part by offering solo-friendly gameplay. Is Sigil missing the boat by making Vanguard less soloable? To my mind, some solo content is crucial to the success of a game--DDO proved that subscribers end up restless and bored without it. There are times when a player with limited time wants to log into their MMO of choice, run a few quests, slay a few monsters, and feel that their progress is meaningful. Vanguard will have solo content, but how limited that content will be, particularly at higher levels, remains to be seen. It’s also quite possible that, as was the case with EverQuest (a game built in large part by Sigil’s principles, Brad McQuaid and Jeff Butler, President), some classes will solo better than others.

Best Guess: If Vanguard doesn’t have enough solo content at launch, solo content will eventually be added and tweaked to find a balance. A thriving community through group-centered play is certainly an ideal to strive for, but other games have proven that without some solo playability, gamers tend to find themselves bored between groups, and boredom leads to apathy, which in turn leads to a dropped subscription.

Lost - Berserker and Inquisitor. PST if Found!

Right now, it looks as though the Berserker won’t make it into Vanguard for launch. The Inquisitor is also suspect, although it may have a better chance than the ‘zerker. Major trauma? Probably not. Even without the Berzerker and the Inquisitor, Vanguard could launch with 15 classes, which is more than enough to keep adventure-hungry and alt-happy gamers occupied.

Best Guess: My guess is that the Berzerker won’t make it into the game by launch and will end up being the stuff expansions are made of. The Inquisitor, however, seems more likely to appear at launch, rounding out the group of Protective Fighter classes. It appears to me, from what we know of the current Vanguard set-up, that each archetype will likely have four classes at launch. In order to accomplish that nice, evenly distributed lineup, Sigil will likely hold off on the Berzerker (an extra in the Offensive Fighters group), and push to have the Inquisitor (the fourth member of the Protective Fighters group) in at launch. I may just be projecting my need for symmetry, though.

No, You Can’t Book a Flight on Druid International Airlines

How does one travel around Vanguard’s vast world of Telon? Not instantly, that’s for certain. You won’t find druids and wizards “portin’ for platz.” Nor will you be able to touch a portal stone or click on a ship’s bell to ring up an instant zap to the location of your choice. You won’t even be able to hop a random griffin.

What you will be able to do, however, is get your own mount to travel around on, a feat which you should be able to accomplish at an early level (unlike some other MMOs where mounts are only for those players with lots of virtual cash to burn). You’ll also be able to travel by boat; but instead of a boring and lengthy trip across the waves on some NPC boat, you’ll be able to own your boat. And your ship will also be vulnerable to attack on the high seas, making ocean travel far more interesting. Caravans will be yet another travel option. Join a caravan of friends, and wherever they travel, you’ll travel, even when logged off.

Best Guess: Sigil has held a hard line against instant travel. I find it very unlikely that instant travel by means such as portal locations will make it into the game at all, via expansion or otherwise. What seems a little more plausible is the idea of a few classes having special teleportation abilities. It's unlikely that teleportation spells will make the game at launch, but Sigil may rethink their travel stance eventually and grace some classes with special travel powers. Still, look for travel to be part of the adventure, and not an instant zap from point A to point B,  for a long time to come.

To the Death! Or is it To the Pain?

What happens when you die in Vanguard? As it stands right now, you’ll find yourself naked at your bind point and facing experience debt. Too harsh? Sigil doesn’t think so. In fact, part of the Vanguard vision is for experience debt and corpse runs to be part of a dynamic that makes the game challenging and--yes, really--fun. Sigil believes that players should fear death, so much so that they’ll work hard to avoid it.

Despite the experience debt and the need to run back to your corpse to recover your equipment (unless there’s someone around to resurrect you), Sigil doesn’t want death to amount to torment. You’ll have some sort of directional beacon to lead you to your corpse (perhaps a silvery cord, or a point on your compass). You’ll also rarely have to make a corpse run without your gear, as additional sets of gear should be stored in packs on your mount.

Best Guess Death is another something that’s unlikely to change either before or after launch. Sigil may eventually find other ways to soften the blow when you succumb to some vicious beast in a dungeon, one of those things being the scalable experience loss Brad McQuaid spoke of recently, but I believe there will always be a death penalty and corpse retrievals of some form or another.

When it comes to Vanguard, it’s certain that the team has a strong sense of direction. They know what they want to accomplish with this game, and they hold fast to their ideals. While every good game developer knows that some degree of flexibility is essential to making a great game, those developers also know that drastic changes of direction, either before or after launch, have historically proven disastrous for MMOs.

“As for the Vision ™, love it or hate it, love me or hate me, it is what it is,” says Brad McQuaid. “We do listen. [The Vision] does change when it needs to. But what it doesn't do is radically transform into another vision. It adapts. It expands. But the core is the core. In other words, to be more blunt, we're not going to suddenly decide we're taking on WoW directly and making a WoW clone, nor a DDO clone, nor an EQ 2 clone (although many have pointed out the obvious related heritage). Vanguard is its own game, built on the Vision, which comes from both EverQuest and from the MUDs we played before that. To that extent it is very consistent.”

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