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More Game Update #4
Rumblings

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February 25th, 2008 - By
Dalmarus

Before I get too far into this week's newsletter, I wanted to let
everyone know that the Ten Ton Hammer guild was created on the Xeth
server this weekend. Thanks to all the players that showed up for the
initial creation and the players that all wanted an invite. If you've
got a thirst for dungeon crawling and exploration is more important to
you than leveling quickly, post an "Invite Me" message href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=24277"> style="font-weight: bold;">here to be
part of the fun.



Now on with the newsletter!



Game Update #4 went to the Test Server this past week and as a result,
the Doom & Gloom Crew has come back into the community like a
bat out of hell. The number one culprits that have gotten the community
wound up this time are the upcoming changes in character customization,
a new visible DoT system, the indication of named mobs by all capital
letters, and needing to be in a raiding guild to get a wyvern flying
mount.



Before I go into my own personal rant about this topic (and others),
let's get a few things out in the open right off the bat.

The current character customization changes are an interim
measure while the team continues to essentially redesign the character
models. In order to get helmets to the player base sooner rather than
later, they simplified all character head models. See the post by
Silius explaining this further href="http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=28110"> style="font-weight: bold;">here. The visible mob dot system is an option that can be turned
off. No one is going to force you to play with it on. If you really want to play on a "hardcore server", prove it
by showing your support of href="http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?topic_id=28170"> style="font-weight: bold;">this thread
taken from MCP's suggestion. Silius has stated that he fully endorses
the idea as well. Don't get overly excited too early though. As Silius
has tried to explain repeatedly in the thread, without the numbers to
justify the time and cost an endeavor like this would require, it's not
going to happen. The more people that show interest, the better your
chances are though, so get moving! As a quick side note, this is a
project I would also support with at least one character. As has been stated time and time again and yet for some
reason still has not gotten through the heads of a number of players,
per the Vanguard development team themselves, Sony (and thus Mr.
Smedley) has remained hands off in all game play decisions. MCP has
stated this yet again in href="http://forums.station.sony.com/vg/posts/list.m?start=60&topic_id=28081#328680"> style="font-weight: bold;">this thread
where he also explains about having to make certain decisions "for now"
and that not everything is written in stone. He also takes some time to
explain various ways to make the game "hardcore" for yourself and
states he has great fun doing this, so you might want to give it a try.

style="width: 100%; text-align: left; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"
border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2">
style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Ten Ton
Hammer Guild Creation Crew style="width: 500px; height: 290px;"
alt="Ten Ton Hammer Guild Creation Shot"
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/vanguard/gallery/albums/Vanguard-Item-Pics/guild.jpg">

Now that some of the basic information is out, let me talk about
some specifics that have been bugging me through all this.



I've stated in the past that I love the passion of the Vanguard
community. That hasn't changed at all and I really do believe it's
still one of the most involved groups of players out there in a gaming
community. That being said though, I do wish it tended to be a bit less
reactionary on such a regular basis. How many times do we have to go
through this before we begin to realize that maybe the developers not
only have a pretty good idea of what they're doing, but that we're also
not privy to all the information available?.



The character customization "virtual riot" is a great example. While it
would have been nice to understand that this was merely an interim step
as they continue working on the character models, it wasn't the end of
the world like the forum boards alluded to.



Or what about "The Sky Is Falling" discussions we all had to put up
with when they made the decision to move away from the Equipment
Expertise system in favor of the Bind-on-Equip/Bind-on-Pickup system
instead? Yes, the EE system had some interesting concepts, but when it
was all said and done was it really even remotely as a big a deal as
many of the player base made it out to be?



These are the things I wish the player base, as a whole, would take a
little bit longer to think about before going off on a rant in the
forums.



Another point of contention with Game Update #4 appears to be the
concept of being able to get a slower griffon with solo/group content,
but having to kill Kosaroth at the end of the Ancient Port Warehouse to
get a wyvern. As a dark elf necromancer that chose the lich form, I'll
admit that it's a little disappointing that I won't have a wyvern mount
as I envisioned, but this is not an unfair situation.



An earlier href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=23137"> style="font-weight: bold;">poll we
ran showed the wyvern appeared to be far more desirable than a
griffon to many players. As such, why not make it something that people
would really say, "Wow" when they saw a character on one. I like to
think of it in the same light we saw players with their epic weapons
back in the early days of Everquest. Why shouldn't the players that
take the time and effort to complete the Ancient Port Warehouse be
rewarded with something that is easily recognizable?



Having the reasonable ability to get a flying mount is all that I
wanted. I never said I have to have the fastest flying mount, nor the
coolest looking. Yes, I really wanted a wyvern for character reasons,
but it's certainly not the end of the world.  Since I (along
with countless other players) will be able to obtain a griffon with
strictly solo/group content, that is perfectly acceptable to me.
Besides, maybe now I actually have a reason to want to try my hand at
eventually raiding the APW now. I doubt I'll have the time, but again,
I have no problems with that. Vanguard was never meant to be about
having everything handed to you and that's the way I like it.



style="font-weight: bold;">What do you think?

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