You Bet Your Beta

Bloggin' on Vanguard Beta at Shay's Treehouse



Moving can take the wind out of anyone's sails, but for Shay, moving from Ten Ton Hammer's Turbine community sites to the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes site took the words out of her blog. But she's back now, and riffing on Vanguard's lengthy beta in contrast with DDO's. (How's that for a segue?)

Some say that all this beta testing with no launch means the game must be in trouble and that Sigil is struggling to fix a broken system. While I admire the cynicism, I’m more inclined to think that a good long beta is what’s needed to make a solid, content-rich game. After all, Vanguard isn’t DDO. DDO consisted of a bunch of instanced dungeons and zones that centered around a relatively large persistent city–Stormreach. Vanguard’s world of Telon consists of 3 seamless (that means no separate, stand-alone zones) continents covered with cities, villages, forests, and deserts, and separated, as continents often are, by oceans. (Oh, and there’ll be dungeons, too…but persistent ones; not instanced.)