by Dalmarus on Nov 05, 2007
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November
5, 2007 - By Dalmarus
Everywhere
you look, change surrounds us. Sometimes the
change is small and sometimes not quite so much. Now while I think
it’s safe to
assume that old Heraclitus didn’t have taxes on the brain
while writing this,
he certainly makes a good point. Change is all around us and without
it,
nothing new or exciting would ever come about. We all go through
changes
whether we wish to our not.
Vanguard
and Ten Ton Hammer are no exception. The past weeks
have seen some pretty incredible changes for both. Last week
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href="http://ralsu.blogs.tentonhammer.com/?p=58">Ralsu
announced
that he was moving on to harvest ponies for Ten Ton Hammer
and handing
the
reigns of the site over to me. I still haven’t managed to get
a hold of our own
Shocky Monkey, but everyone is working so hard, even if we did, he
wouldn’t
have an excuse to zap us back to work anyway.
Change is certainly on the wind for
Vanguard, much as it is
in some form for every evolving MMOG on the market today. Even though
winter is
fast approaching for those of us in North America, this wind has the
sweet
scent of a spring breeze – filled with the promises of
rebirth and growth.
There
is no denying that Vanguard had a very rough
beginning, the details of which have long been hashed out in a
multitude of previous
discussions, so let’s allow that dead horse to rest in peace.
In the past
months, server merges combined with drastic performance increases, have
drawn
back a number of old players and has begun to lure new players in as
well. As
I’ve scoured the various Vanguard forums this week,
I’ve continued to see a
steady stream of “I’ve Come Back” or
“New Player Here” threads. This can only
mean good things for Vanguard and our community.
With the Vanguard development team
safe and back to work,
they were kind enough to take some time and give us some Halloween
event
excitement. Although the timing certainly could have been better for
myself
(since I work odd hours), there were a number of people that had a
chance to
come out and play with the development team. I managed to catch the
tail end of
one event just long enough to get a decent shot of an
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Troll.
The news for the week
didn’t end there though. Thom
Terrazas, Producer of Vanguard posted a great
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href="http://vgplayers.station.sony.com/newsArchive.vm?id=317§ion=News">Producer’s
Letter. There’s a
lot of great information in there, but what really caught my eye is
this:
“In
the past few weeks, the
team has been examining all of
the fundamental game mechanics and discussing what we think it is fun
to play
and what is not. The great thing is we are not holding anything back
–
everything is fair game!”
Now although we can all see the
potential pitfalls with this
kind of statement, be sure not to take it out of context. Thom goes on
to state
in the letter that the players will be the major influence on changes,
and even
talks about opening a forum section devoted to “If I was in
charge” ideas.
Along with everything else, Thom
states they are going to
make a more concerted effort in communication with the Vanguard
community.
We’ve all heard this before, and we’ll all hear it
again, but I’d like to have
a little faith that we’ll actually see it. Despite the fact
that many players have had some rough reactions to the way SOE has
handled games in the past, improvements have been seen. Look no further
than EQ2 for a good example of this. Week by week, the game continues
to bring more players into the fold, so they have to be doing something
right.
Even
with an increase in
communication, there will still be plenty of players that
won’t feel we’re
getting enough, like the forum poster that demanded daily updates to
the “Works
In Progress” section of VGPlayers. Any increased form of
communication will be
a boon in my eyes.
The stage is set everyone. Vanguard
has been making headway
in the improvement department and I for one am hoping it continues to
grow.
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