Age of Discovery

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May 25th, 2008 - By Dalmarus

Over the course of the last year and a half (give or take a month), Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has had its ups and downs. For anyone that's been following the game for any amount of time, that news is about as fresh as the dead horses I discussed last week. What is of interest though is the current state of the game and the waves it's making within the community.

With Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures going live last week (or earlier if you were part of the early access program), it appears that Vanguard has at least temporarily lost a part of its player base. With the release of any new game, especially one as hotly hyped as Age of Conan, this was certainly expected to a certain extent. The number may be higher or lower than planned, but in either case, I'm going to go out on a limb here and state this is a good thing.

As crazy as that sounds, I really do think it is a good thing. It's not the loss of any player I think is good, but the type of player lost. It seems the majority of players lost were those that felt the need to be more obnoxious than your average gamer. Call it a lack of age or, more accurately, a lack of maturity if you like, but in either case, I think Age of Conan may prove to be a better fit for those players. Obviously, this is a complete generalization, but it serves a point.

Over the last two to three weeks, there's been a change slowly coming over the servers in terms of general attitude. With the loss of players last week, it finally coalesced into something concrete enough for me to put my finger on. The game began to feel like Everquest again. Not the later years of Everquest, but the early days when the game was still new, fresh, and doing everything it could to not only hang onto the players it had, but to get new blood in as well.

The community took their responsibility to new players pretty seriously back then. The game was not intuitive and could be insanely frustrating at times. As such, the majority of the community went out of its way to ensure that new players coming into the game were made to feel welcome and helped them out any way they reasonably could. Whether this meant answering a few questions, passing out a bit of loot to ease their beginning travels, or even escorting them across half a continent for a naked corpse run, they did whatever they could to at least give fresh players a fighting chance in this strange new world they found themselves in.

I've noticed a distinct pattern of the same behavior emerging on the servers of Vanguard as well, and that's why I say the loss of some players may be a good thing, at least in time. I've continued to see an increase in the number of questions being asked in the regional chat channels over the last few weeks, and the responses to those questions have made me sit up and notice. They've been full of real answers, or at the very least, a point in the right direction. Amazingly, it's also been at least two weeks since I've had to preface my answer to any question with, "Just ignore the" asshats, dillweeds, jerks, etc.

The Doom and Gloom Patrol that roams the official forums is right about one thing in their ranting. For better or worse, a time of change is upon us. Rather than a coming Apocalypse though, I think Vanguard is getting ready to enter an Age of Discovery for new players everywhere. Let’s hope I’m right.


So am I correct or completely off my rocker? Tell me what you think here!

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