by Karen Hertzberg on Aug 28, 2006
Recap by Medeor
It was Sunday night, which means two things: my kids are whining about school, and it was time for Reverenced Ire's (RI) Vanguard Vent. This is the weekly program that I can't Tivo so I have to go to it live. I enjoy the free flow of ideas and information on these chat sessions, if you haven't stopped by, you should.
Before I break into the recap of what we talked about (yes "we", I finally got a mic that doesn't make me sound like Darth Vader) I wanted to discuss something unique about RI. Speaking with the Guild Leader Xaices last week, I realized that RI has created more of a verbal and real-time guild community than most guilds. From their website, you can post real-time shout-outs to whomever happens to be online, you can see who is on the vent channel and they use Ventrilo as a neighborhood bar - I may nickname it Cheers. People stop by whether they are in game or not and can shoot the breeze, ask questions or just hang out. This is true community-centered guild building in my mind.
Egads, I sound like a commercial. So with enough sunshine blown up places where the sun typically doesn't shine at all...I give you the recap:
I'll post them by topic and then just a couple of my notes (I'll call this my stream of consciousness recap).
Screenshots -since last week, a ton of screenshots have been posted. While we mostly agreed that these are excellent to look at, the proof is really in the animation pudding. As we all know, the movement is what makes the game, not static stills of action.
We also discussed the details shown in the video mostly of the boats and the boat animations. The resolutions for both the screenshots and the video are amazing which brought up topic number 2.
The video and screenshots are shot at pretty high resolutions on boxes that probably push the $7,000 mark by today's standards. Will we be able to enjoy the beuty and magestry if we aren't running dual core CPUs and quad-SLI boxes? Sigil says "Yes," but we'll have to wiat and see. We are only in Beta 3 so there is a lot of optimizing and condesning that will take place prior to launch.
Aye Aye Captain! - in the Glip interview, and other posts, the boating aspects have been discussed at length. It was stated that wind will affect boats direction and speed so we'll all have to learn (or relearn) how to tack and jib...err...whatever) One idea we discussed was how or if Druids would be able to change the wind (or all out break wind...lol). It has been posted that they would, but would that be just for the druid's boat or an AoE or could you change the wind of other's boats - push a pirate ship away? Another question on boats arose, can land damage boats, or just NPCs or other players? This is the first I've heard of potential for bad captaining bringing the end to a ship. Again, something to watch for in the future.
Flying mounts - we learned this week that flying mounts (as seen on the videos) will be high level niceties. The two new items are that you will have to watch your back as there will be mobs in the air, and you will need to provide upkeep for your flying mount. What this means, we don't know just yet. It could mean that you pay rent on its stable, or food for it, or a hundred other ideas. I think it would be fun to find your mount attacking you if you don't feed it, and then it runs away. I doubt that will be the case, but I can dream.
Things we should vote on - best voice actors for games (my vote will always to go to either James Earl Jones or Steve Buschemi) - honorable mention to Sean Connory. Should Devs play and provide in-game events?
We talked at some length about the lack of Official Vanguard Forums after launch and the continuiing controversy about certain sites getting a lion's share of the materials. There is quite a bit of concern as to what will happen when there are no forums, but one attendee (I believe it was Faelor of Vanguard Rangers) did discuss the possibility of SOE taking over the forums if there are real problems (he has traded emails with SOE at some level). There is nothing to say that a "Non Sigil Forum" can't be an official SOE forum I guess.
At about this point of the session my neck of the woods started having some fun lightning storms and my wireless connection went on the frits (and no, I'm not stealing my neighbor's connection as far as he knows), so I had to call it a night.