An Ominous Interview

by Shayalyn

Don't worry, it's not as scary as
it sounds. Really, the only thing ominous about this interview is the
name of the guy I stalked to get it--Ominous. If you visit the official
Vanguard forums (OVF), you've likely stumbled across Ominous a time or
two...or three; particularly in the Off Topic forum. He didn't come to
have one of the highest post counts on the forums for nothing! So,
without further ado, here's Ominous.



How did you come up with the name
Ominous? Are you really all that menacing?



I'm not really sure how I came up with it. It just kind of came
to me. I try to use it on every website I register at, but you'd be
surprised how popular Ominous and its variations are. It took me eleven
tries until I found a variation not taken on gmail.



Show us your roots. How did you first
get into online gaming? What MMOs have you played?



I'm not a big MMO player actually. For one thing, when I get
hooked on an MMO, that's the only thing I'll play. I won't have
subscriptions to a bunch at the same time. Also, I won't play just
anything. I really, really have to like the gameplay and the content,
and it has to feel like a world, similar to Eve Online, instead of a
theme park, similar to World of Warcraft.



To actually answer your question, my best friend and I were playing Age
of Empires and Starcraft online pretty regularly when he suggested we
try one of the three "big" MMOs. He looked at Asheron's Call 1 and I
checked out EverQuest. After reading about zones and seeing how
unoriginal the monsters were, we both agreed we wanted something that
felt more like a unique world, so we went with AC1. I played Asheron's
Call 1 for 2.5 years, and Face of Mankind for 1 month. I beta tested
Ferentus for about 3 months, and I've played a bunch of Neverwinter
Nights persistent worlds, if you consider them MMOs.



Do you have a favorite MMO to date?
What was it about that particular MMO that makes it your favorite?



Asheron's Call 1 hands down. I honestly feel that its first year
and a half were the best of any MMO, but, since I haven't played that
many, I can only use other people's experiences for comparison, so my
opinion my not be worth that much. Anyway, the progressing storyline;
the huge seamless world; the ability to solo effectively; the fact that
there were no classes, only skills; the magic system where you had to
come up with the component formulas for your spells yourself; the
unique monsters; the melee auto-attack that let you choose where you
aimed and how much power you put behind the attack; and the fact that
all the best weapons and armor were random drops from mobs instead of
quest rewards all made Asheron's Call 1 the best. That last may throw
some people, but, if you think about it, there weren't hundreds of
people running around with THE Uber Sword of <Insert Uber Named Mob
Here>, because the random drops could be better. People could
actually own the only sword of its kind, because the chances of a sword
dropping with the same abilities, bonuses, and damage range were
absurdly low.



How did you first hear of Vanguard,
and what attracted you to the game? What are your favorite aspects of
Vanguard?



Well the same best friend and I were playing Battlefield 1942 a
lot, and it had been a while since I had played any MMO. Once I
remembered how much fun it was, I decided to check out WoW. I got him
interested in it too, but he wasn't happy about the fact that leveling
was easy in WoW. (Leveling in AC1 was obscenely hard. The first person
to hit the level cap, Tim the Enchanter, took at least a year to do
it.) So he began looking around for other games. He checked out
Vanguard and I checked out Darkfall. Similar to last time, the game he
checked out was the one we became interested in. Unfortunately he
probably won't play, because he is devoting most of his free time to
getting into Med School and isn't much of a grouper. Both Vanguard and
Darkfall attracted us because of the huge seamless worlds they offered.
Vanguard was favored because we are both roleplayers and not too fond
of FFA PvP.



My favorite aspect of Vanguard so far, besides the huge seamless world,
is what they are promising to do with their GMs--lots of live events.
I'm hoping they will go AC1's route and offer a progressing story that
the players can get involved in and affect, and lots of GM events are a
way to do that.



You’ve been a member of the official
Vanguard forums since February, 2005. What keeps you coming back to the
forums day after day to discuss the game? Surely there’s more to it
than competing with ChrisChairs and Atoyota for the highest post
count. 



Nope. It's mainly a desperate attempt to catch up with those two
losers. (I mean they have to be losers if they can manage to out spam
me. Who else has that much free time and is willing to spend it posting
on a game forum?) You'll notice I don't really discuss the game much on
the forums. I tend to stay away from the gameplay section of the
forums. Those people scare me. :p



Are you actively involved with any
other gaming communities or guilds related to Vanguard?



Well I was the moderator and eventually admin for the now defunct
Vanguard Roleplayers' Union. After we had trouble with our hosting
service, I moved to Vanguard Roleplayers and try to pop in there every
now and then. I also try to pop in on Ten Ton Hammer, Silky Venom,
VGTact, and others from time to time, but that's a whole lot of sites.
I do other non-Vanguard related things, as hard as it is to believe.
I'm also a member of the guild The Seraphim along with Chrischairs.



Based on your forum profile, EverQuest
doesn’t seem to be among the MMOs in your repertoire. There are a lot
of old EverQuesters awaiting Vanguard. Do you think not having played
EQ gives you a different sort of perspective on the game?



I almost played it, but it didn't strike the chord that AC1 did with
me. I think it gives me a very different perspective. I've actually
played and thrived in a non-zoned world. I have no idea what a train to
zone is like and I'm not too sure I'd like it. I'm used to tethering
systems and outrunning the mobs long enough hoping that they'll lose
interest. Sometimes you get lucky and they do and sometimes you are
unlucky and you die. I'm used to big open and quite barren expanses and
I love it. I don't need, and in fact dislike, the points of interest
every twenty feet. (If you couldn't tell, I'm one of href="http://www.nickyee.com/facets/bartle.html">Richard Bartles’
Explorer types.) Give me that huge world to explore. In fact, one
of the reasons I quit AC1 was because I had started to run out of new
places to see, not because I hit max level. Far from it. I wasn't even
halfway to max level yet.



 Given your current knowledge of
Vanguard, how do you think you’ll feel about boss mobs and raid content
in the game? Do you think Vanguard will satisfy your need for a
progressive storyline?

 

Today’s MMOs have to have static raids anymore.  The raid has
become an integral part of the MMO experience.  Vanguard will lose
the interest of a lot of people if static raids are not a part of
it.  However, I am hoping that there will be more than the static
raids with raid level GM events.  Maybe a particularly nasty
dragon descends upon New Targonor.  Everyone in the area rushes to
take part in slaying this uber-mob and that’s the last we see of him.



If you could change one thing about
the direction of Vanguard, what would it be? 



There is certainly more than one thing I would change, but if I had to
choose just one I would make the content truly dynamic. No repeatable
quests (unless it made sense for the quest to be repeatable); mobs that
migrate and decrease in population due to over-hunting; PCs able to
become the Big Bad Guy threatening the world and even becoming a "raid"
for others. Wouldn't it be awesome if you knew that the Vampire King
you and a bunch of other people were going on a Raid to kill was
actually another PC, instead of some NPC mob similar to all the other
mobs with the exception of being super-powerful? It would be a major
shift in direction, but hey, you asked.



So, you’d like to be a GM. (So sayeth
your profile.) Tell us about your professional aspirations toward
getting into the field of online gaming.



Yes, I want to be a GM.  My greatest desire is to design my
own MMO. Honestly, most MMOs rehash the same idea, even Vanguard. It's
DikuMUD with its own little spin. Now that's fine and dandy and I do
have fun with the DikuMUD style, but I had hoped that by now we would
have some MMOS that moved into some new territory. Vanguard, WoW, etc.
are all pretty much the same. The content is different, the mechanics
are different, and the lore is different, but they all boil down to
grinding and phat lewts.



Cake or pie?



How dare you even ask me that question! Jtoast, fire up the Volcano!