What Do You Want Most?

By Ralsu

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September 18, 2007
In November of last year, Shayalyn posted a poll asking readers eager to play Vanguard what they'd want to see in class guides on our site. While the poll showed winners and losers, the difference between the lowest-ranked items (solo guides and gear guides) and the highest-ranked (racial stats and spell stats) was not that large, roughly 17%. Basically, our readers told us that every thing was important.

Fast forward a year, and now we are at a point where I am curious to know your thoughts again. We've been publishing Vanguard content about 5-7 times per week for the last 10 months. We've definitely got quantity over any other site around the Internet. And I feel like most of the stuff is of high quality. But none of that matters if it's the wrong stuff!

I can't promise that we'll completely change our way of life around here, but let us know what you think and we'll try to work on some things. As always, I'll keep in mind the silent majority who is too lazy, too scared, and too uncomfortable to register for our forums to vote. For sure, we Community Managers will at least have a discussion about the results of this poll and see if it changes our approach.

Class Content

This was the area the first Vanguard Ten Ton Hammer Community Manager (Lady Sirse) promised our readers we'd work on most. When Shayalyn took over, she assigned that role to me, and I have worked on it since. With 15 classes, it hasn't been easy. We set our sights on the following things for each class:

• Class overviews
• Creation guides (levels 1-10)
• 11-20 Progression guides (like the one for the WAR)
  
• Spell lists
• Class-specific quest guides (SHM patron quests, NEC form quest)
  

Quest Guides

It's always a good idea to have some quest guides. Changul and I started some, but after she left the site I lost my quest partner. Shayalyn ran the United Races of Thestra quests on a Cleric and wrote about it. Machail has been doing the Pantheon of the Ancients series. He's looking ahead to Coterie Infineum Sanctuary and some upper level quests. Someguy gave us a nice guide to Kalendra's Coven.

Crafting

Long ago, Shay decided that we would forgo extensive coverage of the crafting sphere to focus on classes. Besides, Vanguard Crafters seems to have it covered extremely well, and it is one of the few sites where developers still post. We did a Beginner's Guide and a handful of others.

Diplomacy

See Crafting above, only insert VGTact as the site. We did a Beginner's Guide and stopped there.

Armor Project

Since the gear in Vanguard is so cool, Shay conceived of the Armor Project. These pages show the stats of the gear and a picture of a character wearing it.

Monster Project

Blown away by the cool mobs in the game, I once suggested the concept of the Monster Project to Shayalyn. It was slow to start but is taking off now. These pages show some of the cool mobs in Telon and tell a bit about them (level, dots, location).

Blogs & Editorials

We really consider opinion pieces to be of low value to our readers. We figure that everyone has an opinion and that you want some hard data. Are we right? I seem to get a lot of responses to my blogs (now turned into the weekly newsletter). I've had to trim it back to once per week so that I can get out some other content.

Screen Shot of the Week

More than once, I have had a forum poster suggest we display a screen shot of the week. Everyone likes eye candy. But how much do you like it? Would you rather see it than one of the other types of content above?

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Now it's your turn. What content should the Vanguard Ten Ton Hammer site make its focus?

VOTE IN OUR POLL! What Content Do You Want Most? Class Content - Leveling/Progression Guides Class Content - Spell Lists Class Content - Class-specific Quests Quest Guides Crafting Guides Diplomacy Guides Armor Project Monster Project Blogs/Editorials Screen Shot of the Week VOTE HERE (voting ends 9/30/07)