In dem neuesten Bericht auf Gamecloud.com handelt es sich um die Präsentation des Spiels Vanguard : Saga of Heroes von Sigil auf der PAX in Washington.

It's clear from seeing the game demo at PAX and talking to the Sigil reps that Vanguard is still a ways off from completion but it looks like they are making progress and their claims of making the first real "third generation MMORPG" may come to pass. We will be following up on the progress of Vanguard in the coming months.

TenTonHammer kommt mit einem neuen Artikel an das Tageslicht. Dieser Artikel behandelt das Dasein eines Druidens in EverQuest und in Vanguard : Saga of Heroes und stellt diese im Vergleich zueinander.

“I decided I should try a druid like Jeff’s. After all, he had some very cool spells; he could teleport, nuke, cast potent hit-point buffs and damage shields, and run fast with his coveted Spirit of Wolf. I created a druid named Shayalyn, and 5 years and 66 levels later I’ve scarcely looked back—the druid fits me and my playing style through and through. Having reached most of my goals for EverQuest, I’ve searched far and wide for its successor. . In every MMO I’ve played since then I’ve looked for a druid or druid-like class. I now look to Sigil Games Online and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes with high hopes. I wondered what Vanguard’s developers had in store for my beloved druid.”

In einem weiteren Beitrag spricht Brad McQuaid alias Aradune Mithara über die Überlegungen seitens Sigil zu Solospielen, Powerleveling und Twinking. Sigil hat sich dahingehend entschieden, dass sie Solospielen zwar unterstützen werden aber das Hauptaugenmerk auf dem Gruppenspiel liegt. Was das Thema Twinking angeht, so will es Sigil nicht verbieten wird es aber einschränken.

Quick answer: time and experinece have proven that you can't go too far in either direction with many of the issues you bring up. Twinking can be harmful, but we believe it does more good than harm, and that balance problems can be achieved by soft level limits, etc. Soloing is fine, and we will support it. But Vanguard is mostly about grouping. Not just because we think grouping is more fun, but because it creates relationships and community and is therefore a great retention mechanism. But it's also important to understand the business plan behind a game. We're building Vanguard to last a LONG time. So to some extent we will have to curtail things that hurt long term retention but that might be more fun for some people. These are very hard decisions. I've voiced my concerns enough as to what could happen to a game long term if nothing is done. But we also know that crascking down on every little thing makes a game draconian and less fun overall. You have to identify the potentially harmful issues and then give them a severity level. Is allowing a high level player to buff up or heal a low level palyer in a low level dungeon a good thing? Probably not. But is keeping them from buffing them at all the right fix? I'd say no. TLC is another example. Bottomfeeding is generally bad. But if you implement TLC poorly, you can easily do more harm than good. Same goes for travel, keeping groups together, the level range in which you can receive experience while grouped, death penalties, etc. it's all about balance and who your target audience is. And it's no easy task, but I think we have some really good ideas. And if some of those ideas indeed do more harm than good in beta, I promise you they'll be yanked immediately.

Wir möchten unsere Glückwünsche der neuen Affiliated Fansite Vanguard Jeuxonline aussprechen, die nun einen neuen Platz in der Community gefunden / bekommen haben.

Our website is part of the JeuxOnLine network (JOL), a major reference for the French-speaking community. Created in 2000 the JOL network is now dedicated to more than 40 MMOGs and has more than 60,000 registered users. Our objective with our Vanguard: Saga of Heroes website is to inform and group together French speaking fans. We translate and relay all the latest news, write articles about the content of the game, and we animate debates on our forums.

In einem anderen Thread im offiziellen Forum beantwortet er eine Frage hinsichtlich der Kartographie im Spiel. Es wird möglich sein sich eine Karte anzeigen zu lassen, die allerdings Handgezeichnet ist und erst nach und nach mit neuen Informationen gefüllt wird. So sehen die Spieler auch immer nur den Teil der Karte, den sie bereits erforscht haben.

You'll be able to bring up a map of the region you are in. It's a hand drawn map and many things will be missing. It also doesn't all get revealed until you've traveled there. Waypoints in your journal can also show up on the map as a dot.

Im offiziellen Forum hat sich Brad McQuaid zu dem Spielfeature der Spielerhäuser geäußert. Neben bekannten Informationen, dass wir das Haus als eine Art sich nicht bewegendes Haustier ansehen können, welches Lebenspunkte hat und angegriffen werden kann betont er auch noch einmal, dass Häuser zerstört werden können und wenn sie nicht gepflegt werden zerfallen. Sigil schränkt die Freiheit ein, indem sie bestimmte Zonen markiert, die besiedelt werden können. Zudem wollen sie dafür Sorge tragen, dass es keine Geisterstädte geben wird; dafür werden Banken, Handwerksstaionen oder beispielsweise auch Bindepunkte dienen. Wobei Banken nur lokal und nicht global sind. Das bedeutet ich habe in meinem Bankfach von Neu Targonor andere Sachen liegen als in Khal.

We go in ahead of time and zone the world like a modern city does. If an area isn't zoned for, say, houses, you can't build there. 2. Houses will likely have an upkeep, but they are also in a sense non-moving persistent pets. They have HP, they can big configured, they have an inventory. And so they can die too. NPCs will attack your house if you build it near a dangerous area. And if you never pay your upkeep, my guess is something similar will happen. But that's where crafting comes in -- just a cleric rezzes your corpse, the crafter fixes your house, making it accessible again. Now, what if you leave for a year... obviously, there are some restrictions we'll be forced to place. 3. The plan is no instancing, even with player houses. Think SW:G in this case -- the houses are really there in the world. 4. It's hard to answer that. The general answer is that no content in the game is guaranteed, including owning a house. We'll have to see in beta how well we can accomodate people. But also keep in mind that you aren't supposed to keep your house forever -- you'll abandon it when you outlevel the area. Also, the world is BIG, so lots of room. And finally, if a group of people form a little town, while they can keep you out of their residence, they can't keep you out of their city (speaking about PVE servers). And cities come with publicly accessible buildings, crafting stations, places to bind, banks, etc. So even if you don't own a house, you will be able to take advantage while traveling of other's towns when you come across them. As for whether they will feel like a ghost town. Well, first you'll be able to set up offline merchants. You will summon an NPC merchant, give him the items you want sold, set prices, and when you log off he will stay there. Also, we hope to spawn other NPCs doing their thing too (this gets into city building and I don't want to get detailed as I don't know how much of our lofty goals and plans we'll be able to realize by release). You'll likely also be able to hire guards to protect your house from NPCs. Lastly, if we make having a house or a town compelling and an important part of gameplay, then people should be there. We certainly do not want ghost towns that are just storage units visited once a week by their owner.

Brad McQuaid hat sich im offiziellen Forum zu einigen Beiträgen und Fragen der interessierten Community geäußert.

Neben einer Gegenüberstellung eines MMOG´s zu einem First Person Shooter, bei der nach Brads Meinung nach das Onlinespiel in ein paar Bereichen wie Rassen, Sichtweiten, Kleidung und detailierten Charakter-Modelle unterliegt, gibt er bekannt, dass Vanguard : Saga of Heroes DirectX 10 unterstützen wird. [Mehr]

Now let's switch to MMOGs. You have zero control how many characters are going to come into view. You may be walking into an area where people have congregated (a wedding, a favorite trade spot, whatever). Or you could be in a raid and then encounter another group of people in the depths of a dungeon. So there is no limit.

It will certainly work with dx10, but as to when it's released and then also when we'd have time to start taking advantage of new features in dx 10, that's hard to determine other than to say that when it makes sense, we most certainly will (same with new Vista OS tech, etc.).

The time it takes for each round (swing count, whatever) is really fine, having been playing the beta a lot. Even at level 16 there is more than enough going on to make things not just paced nicely, but often frantic at times. You need to be watching what the NPCs are doing to you in order to counter, rescue, etc. You need to be cognizant of where you are, if you are in the right spot to use your abilities, spells, etc. Bridges and finishes pop up with only a few seconds to select them if you decide you want to, etc.

Hrm. Took me easily 45 minutes running from Three Rivers to the Vulmane village, taking the easy route, and running from mobs as opposed to fighting them all. That's about, I dunno, half of Thestra in width.

The engine can do it to some extent, but likely not to the extent you're talking about and I'm dreaming about How much will we use it? At least in the short term rarely. There are a lot of issues here.

We're shooting for a reasonable amount of downtime, depending on what you are doing. The other night in Khegor's I was often running out of stamina because I was using abiilities to mititgate damage when tanking and also to rescue mobs off of clerics and casters.

Silky Venom und Last Vanguard Fanboy haben heute ihre Fusion bekannt gegeben. Unter dem Namen von Silky Venom wollen beide Seiten nun weiterhin hochqualitative Inhalte präsentieren.

THE LAST FANBOY and VANGUARD SILKY VENOM have each provided a home to some of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes` oldest and most dedicated fans. Now, as Vanguard: Saga of Heroes moves into beta and beyond, the staffs of both sites are excited to announce that, effective today, THE LAST FANBOY and VANGUARD SILKY VENOM have merged. Under the Vanguard Silky Venom banner, staff members from both sites are even better poised to deliver the best and most up-to-date content to new and existing Vanguard fans.

Wie im offiziellen Forum nun eine Unterhaltung darüber entstanden ist, was die Spieler in dem versprochenen Video sehen wollen, wollen wir dies auch einmal von euch wissen.

• a sunset
• night time
• weather
• crafting
• diplomacy
• Ahgram
• a caravan

Der Programm Manager Leon Pryor von Microsoft Game Studios hat sich zu ein paar Themen im offizillen Vanguard Forum geäußert. Neben der Zusammenarbeit spricht er auch das Thema der Abrechnung und Autentifizierung der Spieler an. Sigil wird in diesem Rahmen auf die Technologie des MS Passports zurückgreifen, die wie bereits schon erwähnt in einer späteren Phase der Beta getestet wird. Weitere Produkte werden allerdings neben Microsoft Windows XP (oder Vista) und Vanguard nicht benötigt werden, um in die Welt Telons einzutauchen.

All of the in game systems including authentication and billing will be stressed via automated systems. We will also use late beta as an opportunity to generate stress numbers from real systems. Passport is a certainty for Vanguard because it lets us take advantage of billing and authentication systems that are prebuilt and handle millions of transactions a day. As for web/client - I wouldn't expect a web based authentication solution. Although web based account management is an industry standard and you can expect that with Vanguard.

The only thing you will need to run Vanguard is Vanguard and Microsoft Windows XP.(or Vista)

In einem ersten Bericht von Cobalt Katze, wird das User Interface einiger Klassen in Vanguard : Saga of Heroes beschrieben. Der Bericht ist das Resultat der Vanguard Präsentation auf der Penny Arcade Expo in Washington, welche letztes Wochenende statt fand.

In general, I was pleased with the combat shown. Though still at a low level, it looks reactive and pleasing enough to keep someone interested. The sorcerer UI in particular looks quite interesting. In contrast to a warrior's linear stance selection, a sorcerer gets a magical elemental wheel of sorts that lets them manage their elemental stances. At level 4, only Water and Fire were filled in at the North and West positions respectively, but there were blank spots for the other 2 base elements at East and South, as well as the complex elements at NW, SE, etc. It's much more pleasing and arcane than a simple list or line of icons. I also got to see behind the scenes of a psionicist, perhaps still under revision in the UI department. Their class-specific window had a bar with various brightly-colored sections marked off to indicate what was taken up by maintained spells and whatnot. It could probably use a bit lighter of a palette and better blended with the rest of the UI as opposed to a bright solid color.

In dem neuesten Editorial von TenTonHammer diskutiert Finchal darüber ob 17 verschiedene Klassen in einem MMORPG Sinn machen oder eben nicht. Er betrachtet zwei unterschiedliche Sichtweisen:

1. Wenn alle Klassen sich bei ihren Fähigkeiten lediglich im Namen und vielleicht auch im Aussehen unterscheiden, so wird das Spiel sehr langweilig.
2. Wenn die Mechanik allerdings gut gelöst ist, so stehen mit 17 Klassen sehr viele Möglichkeiten zur Verfügung das Spiel für sehr lange Zeit interessant zu machen.

Seventeen classes allows for such a wide variety of play-styles that this game will keep the MMO community entertained for a long time -maybe even longer than Everquest? If you're sick of your class and tanking mobs getting a bit old then you still have sixteen unique classes and three completely new archetypal "jobs" to choose from! With the addition of the Crafting and Diplomacy spheres (Each with its own set of classes and roles to fill within that sphere) the replay value on this game will be near infinite. I think what Sigil has revealed of Vanguard thus far has been the catalyst needed to excite the rest of the MMO community and astound the current fist generation with a completely breakthrough second generation MMORPG. For this reason alone I am almost positive we will not see skills and abilities recycled in Vanguard.

Wieso es nun weniger Screenshots als in den vergangenen Wochen gab, hat Brad McQuaid im offiziellen Forum erklärt, dass es an der Zeit ist etwas neues zu präsentieren. Da die Screenshots nun all das zeigen was sie auch zeigen sollten wird es erst wieder neue geben, wenn auch etwas neues wie die neu implementierten Effekte (Schatten, Weltlicht etc.) oder Motion-Capturing-Aufnahmen zu zeigen sind. Aber bevor es soweit ist hat sich Sigil Games Online vorgenommen ein Video mit der neuen Animationstechnologie zu zeigen.

First, we really need to get a movie out. The new animation tech that synchronizes things a lot better is in and I really like it. Some of our recent mo-cap is in, but still not enough. A lot of the screenshots we've released recently were to show gameplay and what's been going on in beta 0. We'll continue to release these sort of shots, but probably not as often. I think overall the reaction has been positive, but they've also been criticized for not being as artistically put together as other shots, and the engine is always in a state of flux and currently could (and will) look a lot better (shadows, world light, etc. -- I addressed this in a recent post). So my inclination at this point is to wait a bit until we have some new stuff to show as well as shots that look better visually.

Jetzt am Wochenende war es soweit, ein neuer Meilenstein wurde im offiziellen Forum mit 20.000 registrierten Benutzern erreicht. Zu dem neuen Ereignis hat sich Cindy Bowens, eine der Community Manager geäußert und bedankt sich für das Interesse der Community an dem Spiel.

I just wanted to say thanks to all of you. We set up the place for you to form a community. But you guys make it the fun and productive place that it is. Thanks to all of you that were here in the beginning to help define the atmosphere of this community. And thanks to all of you that have joined in as we have grown. Lots of people stop by to read and some move on. Those of you that have stuck around and become a part of the regulars have contributed much. Thank you all for your feedback, your support and your enthusiasm. We are looking forward to exploring Telon with you.

Im offiziellen Forum hat ein User die Thematik der "Dritten Generation" aufgegriffen und diese von dem Spiel Vanguard auf die monatlichen Gebühren transferiert und wollte wissen ob sich diese auch ändern werden. Jon Grande, verantwortlicher für Legal Affairs, VP und Biz hat sich zu diesem Thema geäußert und gab bekannt, dass keine Experimente mit den monatlichen Kosten durchgeführt werden und sie zumindest nicht ins unermessliche steigen werden.

Maybe a next gen MMO should have next gen topics on it's boards? Come on guys, yer all talkin' crazy! Sure - we have to wrestle with issues like costs and profit, but we also have to charge what the market will bear - and there's no realistic way that core subscription prices are going to go up. It's simple macro-economics ... if we up our price by 25%, we probably cut off 1/2 our audience - so we end down 50% in total revenue. Sure our profit per subscriber would be up significantly, but we'd be reaching a significantly smaller pool of people. We're not just in this for the money - we're in this to deliver an experience that can embrace, amaze and entertain as many people as possible. We're going to do a lot of revolutionary things and take a lot of risks - but gettin' all crazy with the subscription price isn't one of those areas.

Auf der Penny Arcade Expo in Bellevue / Washington am kommenden Wochenende werden auch einige Teammitglieder von Sigil Games Online vor Ort sein und das Spiel der Masse präsentieren. Welche neuen Informationen und Eindrücke dadurch bekannt werden ist noch unklar, dass es welche geben wird ist allerdings anzunehmen und so wollen wir dem Ende der Woche entspannt entgegen sehen. Link: Kommentare