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Barely Second Generation

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 53 / 68
Date: January 30, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There was a whole lot of hype about how Vanguard was going to be a "third generation MMO" that built on the gameplay of its predecessors. Games like EQ1 and UO were classified as "first generation" and games like CoX, WoW, EQ2, etc. were classified as "second generation". So the idea was that Vanguard would advance the genre, and the FAQ about their design goals was impressive to say the least.

Unfortunately, that's not the game that released.

I'm not talking about graphics here. For graphics to advance much, hardware must first advance. In Vanguard's case, the graphics are in some ways truly stunning -- IF your computer can hack it. I have a powerful computer with a GeForce 8800GTX OC video card, and getting the game to look as good as Everquest 2 reduces playability to an unacceptable level. Vanguard chugs. But that's not my complaint because I never expected Vanguard (or any other 32-bit game) to exceed the current fare for visual quality.

My complaint with this game is the gameplay itself, which is very pedestrian. There's really nothing to make me want to leave the other games that I'm already playing. Your first few hours in the game are strictly ho-hum. There's nothing to really grab you and make you say, "wow, this is fun!" The newbie experience is probably closer to Lineage 2 with all of its grinding than any of the other MMO's that are currently popular. (In almost all starting zones, there are not enough quests to get you through the levels. Before you get to level 8 -- and in some cases, before you get to level 4 -- you WILL be spending at least part of your time running around killing random mobs because the developers haven't given you anything else to do.)

Those newbie levels are designed to get you experienced enough that you can team up with a group and go dungeon delving. For this you'll be in cramped quarters competing with dozens of other groups for the same mobs. Want to solo? Forget about doing anything in the dungeons. And if you don't want to spend your time in dungeons, then be ready for more grinding. A lot of it.

Character creation is nothing special. The characters don't look particularly great, with only a few face textures to choose from. Everything else is handled by morphs, and some of the morphs make them look terrible. Ultimately, the characters look about as diverse as DAoC or EQ2, which is to say that the differences are only noticeable if you're really looking for them.

Harvesting is another example of where the game did away with its original ideas. You originally had several harvesting skills that you could use during the harvest to influence the outcome and possibly get more resources. This whole system was ultimately done away with, and now you just click on the node (WoW-style) and wait until it's done. The only real difference from WoW is that you can get more from the node if multiple party members harvest it with you. Exciting, huh?

As for the world, yes it's very big and very pretty. But it's also very empty. Because the developers created a single supposedly seamless world, they had to leave large areas with nothing in them so that they can add more content later. Just getting from the newbie area to the next adventuring area usually requires walking. And walking. And more walking. All through landscape that is largely the same as what you've already seen, with few landmarks or other points of interest. Of course, you can get a mount so that you can get there faster. Or you can caravan in which case you join up with a group and log out of the game while someone else goes through the tedium of walking/riding to the destination.

I think that Vanugard has the potential to be pretty good after it has a couple of expansions under its belt. Unfortunately, it's just not that interesting now. Certainly not interesting enough to pull me away from what my friends and I are already doing! I'm not alone in this opinion, either. I have about 50 friends who were all anxiously looking forward to Vanguard. Once we played it, though, we all changed our minds.

I'm sure that this game will appeal to people who want things to be difficult for difficult's sake, like grinding, and believe that the game itself doesn't have to be fun if they have enough of an imagination to create their own fun. For everyone else, there are other offerings on the market.

Playing this game feels like work

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 33 / 45
Date: February 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First of all, this game is not for people who like to play solo. Once the level of your character gets into the teens there are very few solo quests, leaving the killing of countless creatures as the only real way to level. The problem with slaughtering a bunch of critters for your levels is that the creatures give a very small amount of exp; an hour spent killing creatures barely made a dent in my exp bar at level 15 and I hate to imagine what it'd be like at level 30.

The only way to play this game without wanting to bang your head against the monitor is by grouping. The problem with this is that the world is quite large and there are no convenient travel options in the game, meaning that setting up a group can be quite a pain. The large death penalty can also make pick-up groups not so fun; its no fun to be killed due to teammates that don't know what they're doing.

There are a ridiculous number of bugs in this game. Falling through the world, memory leaks, invincible enemies, players that can't be healed, being teleported into the middle of an ocean (no fun, trust me); this game has all of these and more.

I'll give this game another chance in a few months. It does have some potential, but it'll take a lot of work to fix it up.

The dissapointment sets in

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 24
Date: February 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I don't understand what happened to this hyped game. It feels so empty and shallow. The terrain looks pretty but it has no life, no substance. Everything feels robotic.
I love MMO's and I have looked forward to playing this game for a long long time. I am one of the few who LOVED Star Wars Galaxies (the first year).
The world in SWG, even though it lacked quests, Felt alive and interactable. You could make your own content if needed. This doesn't seem true for Vanguard.
I forced myself (as painful as it was) to played to lvl 10 and got my horse thinking it would start getting better..uhhnope. I just cant even bring myself to log into the thing again.
Yes, maybe it will get better after some patches but I wont be around to enjoy it. I managed to get into Lord of the Rings Online Beta a while back and it is MUCH better in Beta 1 and 2 than Vanguard is at launch.

Man, I am more willing to go play some EQ2 than play Vanguard. :(

Some of you may love Vanguard and I envy you. I just cant get into it.

Good fun if you can get it running

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 12 / 16
Date: February 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Nobody can screw up a highly anticipated launch like SOE.

I got my copy of Vanguard on launch day but during installation found that my dvd drive could not read any content on disc 2. Several people on the V:SoH tech support forums reported similar problems and the immediate "quick" fix was to install what you could from disc 1 and download the rest. The natural assumption being that the data on disc 2 was corrupted or the disc was shipped blank.

There really is no way to quickly download 8 gigabytes of data.

So after 12 hours spent downloading less than 20% of the data I needed, I decided to bite the bullet and pick up another copy. I intended to open a second account for my kids anyway and I hoped that I would be able to load the rest of the software from disc and spare myself 2 more days of agonizingly slow download time.

No such luck. Disc 2 from the new copy still would not read. I ended up spending 2 days downloading the game and for my initial investment, I came away with 2 maps, 2 instruction manuals and 4 matching Vanguard: Saga of Heros coasters. Not a good way to start.

My home PC system is several years old, but I've invested time and money into keeping it up to date. I sport a 3.2ghz Pentium, 2 gigs of RAM, a 256mb 6200 OC Nvidia card and more hard drive space than I'll ever use. Unfortunately it was not enough. I had to download two different versions of Directx 9.0c (FYI, go with the October 2006 version) to even get the game to launch and then I had to download OLD graphics card drivers (NVidia 84.12 if memory serves) to make it playable. So after two days of downloading content, I had to spend another 3 hours download downloading peripheral stuff to make that content playable. Not a good start.

IF and when you are able to get this game to launch, you'll find the inital stages of this game to be surprisingly entertaining. The scenery is breathtaking, although it should be noted than I am an 8 year UO vet...it doesnt take much graphical eye candy to impress me. Unless you have absolute top notch hardware, expect to have to turn graphics options way down to get a reasonably playable frame rate. As several other reviewers have noted, to world is massive, but although server populations are said to be 'high' you dont see many large groups of players because they're spread out all over the place. Progression in the early stages is fast if you advance by questing, but slow if you do so by grinding. Early quests seem designed to allow the new player to learn the basics (movement, basic fighting techniques, etc) through trial and error without forcing you through tedious tutorials. Your choice of professions is influenced by your chosen race and it makes sense, so dont go into the game hoping to carve your niche as an orcish paladin or you will come away disappointed.

I havent even touched the crafting system in game yet, or the highly touted diplomay system, so I wont mention those except to say that from what I've heard, each is nearly a game in itself. I had hoped to be to that point in game by now, but I started out three days behind the curve. For that alone, I take away two stars over all. The game will be fun for a while, but make this purchase keeping in mind what I said at the top: nobody can screw up a launch like SoE.

The pendulum has shifted

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: February 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Vanguard: SOH is excellent, even though it was admittedly released a bit early. I was a beta tester since Beta 3 and the changes to the game since are simply amazing. A large, expansive, beautiful, and difficult world that is truly the spiritual successor to Everquest, with a bit of the accessibility of World of Warcraft thrown in. For lots of people this will be exactly what they are looking for out of the box. If you are hesitant, give Sigil another few months to iron out the rough edges.

The graphics are suberb - a sense of scale and "place" that haven't been seen since the original EQ and its great early expansions such as Scars of Velious.

The dynamic music - half a gig's worth - is the best I've ever heard in any video game, full stop.

The classes are not revolutionary, but are quite evolutionary, taking the best concepts from previous games. Playing a healer has never been this interesting before, but almost all the classes are different and fun to play.

The diplomacy sphere is revolutionary - interact with NPCs to influence cities and people.

Performance - it doesn't take a supercomputer to run, *but* you should have a decent video card purchased within the past two years or so, 1.5 gigs ram, and a 7200 RPM hard drive.

Vanguard marks a possible shift of the pendulum to the slower, richer games of the "golden age" first generation MMO's, with some of the accessibility of the second generation (WoW / EQ2), but with the graphical splendor and successful "mixing" of new and old elements that does qualify it as truly third generation. Also, you've got the most dedicated set of "all-star" developers in the industry. Finally, a true "AAA" alternative to World of Warcraft (a very good, but very different, game than this). It does not yet have the fluff polish of WoW, but this is being improved upon day by day and the core engine, gameplay, and graphics are all far superior.

Basically, if you were a fan of the original EQ (like me), you will probably love VG. If you thought EQ2 was too easy or restrictive, this is the game for you. If you have gotten tired of WoW and are looking for something different and more challenging in certain ways, take a look at VG but make sure your system is up to spec.

Buggy, but a lot of potential

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: February 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ok, this game wasn't ready to release yet. We know that. There are a lot of bugs that are annoying that are being worked on. There comes a point in game's developent that the higer-ups say we need to release this game to replenish funds. That is fine, again, Sigil and SOE are in the business to make money. Every MMO that has ever been released had bugs. Even with the annoying bugs and occasionally boots to desktop, I still play. Why? Because this game is fun, and here is why.

The game is huge. 3 starting continents that blow away the size of any MMO to date. This makes traveling and exploring fun. This also spreads out the people on the server so pretty much you can have multiple groups in the same dungeon at the same time and not even know it. Unilke EQ2 there are lots of options to do at any level. There are lots of dungeons and camps for soloers, small groups, and well-equipped groups. If you are sick of going to the same ones, there are always 2 more huge continents to try.

The game supports lots of play styles. The crafting and diplomacy aspects of the game are fun and challenging. If you are a solo player you can still get nice gear and do lots of things. The game also supports small and full 6 man groups. I have not had the opportunity to raid as of yet, so I cannot comment on that aspect. Fighting takes thought and patience and is more that pressing a few buttons over and over.

The graphics are not mind blowing and are comparable to EQ2. The views I would say at some points are much nicer than EQ2. Music is average which doesn't bother me since I usually turn it off or play my own anyways. Overall, the thing that I like about this game is the potential. Once the bugs are worked out and the world is filled, this will be one of the best. So far it does remind me of the orignal in EQ in that dying is no fun, corpse retrieval is challenging, and you are just a small part of a huge world.

Big Disappointment

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: February 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really wanted to like this game but the bugs and performance of the game made it unplayable. This product feels like beta and SOE should be ashamed of charging customers to test their products. Besides all the technical issues the game is standarg mmorpg faire. The combat is similar to WoW's and the crafting is the same as EQ2's. The world design is beautiful, but feels sterile. There are no little creatures scurrying about, or any social hubs like Mos Eisley in SWG or Ironforge in WoW. I think the game will suffer from the great expanses of nothingness in a couple months and may become a ghost town. Anyways, save your money unless you absolutely must play the latest in SOE's lineup.

Not Ready for Prime Time

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: February 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The Vanguard MMO is disappointing. As a PvE game, it feels incomplete -- a nice start, but it still feels like beta. Mobs run backwards, or fight other NPCs invisibly. Lots of NPCs standing around waiting for quests to be assigned to them. Visually OK, but targeting mobs is difficult, and the performance was laggy.

Both Dark Age of Camelot and WoW are vastly superior MMOs. Vanguard still needs some development.

Better than most that I have played or reviewed

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: June 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Ok - so I have only played 3 other MMOs - Lineage II for 2 years, Archlord for 4 months, and WoW for about 30 minutes. I have looked at other MMOs in stores, and read the reviews, but I have only purchased and played the ones mentioned.

I have just finished reading all 66 reviews currently posted. For those of you who purchased VG before or just after its release and did not like it, I suggest that you go back and give it another try. Many of the issues have been resolved.

There are now so many quests that your quest log book can not hold them all. Yes, there are only a few for the beginning areas - but there are tons of beginning areas. If you do not like the quests in your area - go to another one.

However, that is not typically necessary - as the beginning quests provide enough experience to get to higher levels and more quests.

Which brings us to what is often referred to as the "GRIND". Killing mobs over and over and over and over again to get to the next level. It is my understanding that all MMOs require experience to get to the next level and this is typically done by killing monsters. Now, I came from Lineage II where the grind is truly horrible. You kill mobs all day long and only gain a small percentage of your level.

VG is not like that at all. Yes, there is a grind, but in addition to the actual quests, there are also missives in the small towns and outposts which offer excellent experience when you consider the time it takes to complete them. And, as an added bonus, you can turn in 10 of these missives for the chance at a decent reward. As an exmample of the experience for these missives, my level 30 warrior was able to earn 40% of the experience needed for his next level in about 90 mins. This would be unheard of in Lineage II.

Death penalty? Of course there should be a death penalty. If you are stupid enough to put yourself in a situation where you will die - you deserve a penalty. I have died several times and do not consider the penalty particularly harsh. You lose some experience. Other MMOs - like Lineage II - you drop equipment - which anyone can pick up and keep. Never mind that said equipment took weeks or months to earn - unless you buy $$ from gold sellers.

Which brings me to the other part that previous reviews have missed. The economy of VG. While VG does have its gold sellers, they are not as prevelant as they are in WoW and Lineage II. Lineage II in particular was overrun with bots and sellers.

In VG, it is simply not necessary to spend real money to buy fake money to get the items you need. If you truely need a particular item, you always have the option of starting an alt (alternative character) and leveling his crafting ability to make the item you need. Or making it yourself. My warrior is also an armorsmith and can make his own armor. If he needs something other than armor, he can trade items he makes for items he needs.

Many people complained about the lag, things disappearing, and no one to group with.

As far as I can tell, these have all been addressed. Things no longer disappear (That was annoying) I play on the Hillsbury server, and there are always people willing to group up. I have never had a problem find a group when I needed one. The lag is non-existent for me - barring the times I move to a new "chunk" (region)

Overall, I have found VG to be an exceptional game which does indeed address many of the problems other games have. For those of you who gave up - give it another shot. For those of you who are considering it - I beleive it to be a good buy.

Rough Start, Immense Improvement.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 13
Date: November 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I AM LEAVING THIS REVIEW HERE TO SHOW WHAT I ONCE THOUGHT TO NOW. THIS GAME IS NOT A PRIORITY FOR SOE IN MY OPINION NOR HAVE THEIR PATCHES BROUGHT NEW, GOOD THINGS; RATHER THEY HAVE MOVED BACKWARDS TAKING AWAY CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION AND CLASS DEFINING DIFFERENCES. THEY OVERPOWER CLASSES LIKE THE DRUIDS AND SHOW NO SIGN OF REALLY LISTENING TO THEIR CUSTOMER BASE. I HAVE CANCELLED AND STRONGLY WARN ANY POTENTIAL BUYERS THAT YOU ARE BUYING AT EXTREME RISK. THIS GAME HAD POTENTIAL BUT IT ISN'T GOING TO MAKE IT IN THE LONG RUN.

I bought this game on release and was amazed at how bad the performance was at the time. I had a standard range computer for the time and I couldn't run the thing effectively even at the lowest settings, which were awful to say the least, so I quit before my free trial month had even expired.

Fast forward to ten months later....

As I waited for a game I would actually enjoy to come out, I re-examined what had already been released out of sheer desperation since Guild Wars was beginning to bore me after I beat the expansion in one week of solid gaming.

I checked them all out again from WoW, to EQ2, to Shadowbane, DAoC, etc. To give you a background on my MMORPG experience I started gaming with Diablo, then Diablo 2 after which I went to EQ1 and absolutely loved it in the late '90s. I moved back to playing Blizzard games for a while with the release of Warcraft III before finally ending up in DAoC where I stayed for years and would still be if they had not completely negated customer service and unbalanced the RvR. I moved on to Guild Wars as a temporary fix until the release of certain games that didn't manage to release and it then became my permanent game as I waited for Warhammer or Age of Conan which I consider the two best options coming out in the future.

Now that said, I am back in Vanguard playing exclusively on the PvP server and I am very impressed at the strides forward they have made since their terrible release.

First of all they have fixed nearly all performance issues that I was having personally. I have an older Pentium 4 processor, 2 gigs of ram, and a 7000 series Nvidia 514MB video card with which I can run the game at the highest settings most of the time. There are areas where you will still encounter some lag such as when you open the doors to structures, when you cross the invisible zone lines known as chunks, and when too many players' avatars appear at once and have to be loaded. They have fixed the worst memory leaks and causes for most of the crashes. All in all I notice no difference in performance or lag in this game when compared to DAoC, WoW, EQ2, and other MMORPGs currently released, but this game is FAR superior in world graphics in my opinion. The developers have already announced more fixes to decrease the performance issues such as decreasing unnecessary bone structures on characters which should decrease loading times and increase framerates etc making PvP more viable for those with lower system specs as well. The future is very bright in this area and the devs are extremely competent in their performance fixes and tweaks so far although they are slow to release said patches. I personally am ok with this as long as progress is made and it is stable when released.

About the graphics, I cannot say enough. It is by far the best part of this game. There are other games out there with good graphics in the MMORPG world, but I think that this one is the best barnone. Even when not set to the highest settings this game is still astounding in its beauty. There are still some cool effects that could be added such as accumulating snow and maybe wind effects, but overall you will not find a more beautiful night sky or better swaying trees. Even the detail of the rocks is outstanding by my estimation and far superior to the cartoon graphics found in WoW and GW.

About PvP options. Let me first clarify that this game was created for PvE. It has a massive landmass with explorable water, mountains, dungeons, cities, and every other kind of landmass you can think of just about. You will be hardpressed to see it all in the first several months you are playing if you don't dedicate insane hours to it; another plus imo. However, if you are like me, Player versus Player combat (PvP) has to be effectively integrated as an option into any game in order for there to be the longevity and capacity to satisfy over the long term. This is the one area this game will need future work on, but don't despair. The PvP server suffices for these things for now. So far PvP is a Free for All (FFA) setup where anyone can be fought and killed anywhere after level 7 and it gets pretty fast and furious too. You may have the invisible Psionicist charm a high level city guard and attack you while never knowing where the Psionicist himself is but knowing that this guard is no regular mob and you will need help to just survive let alone kill him. Or perhaps you run across the ranger, who snipes at you from behind a windmill for incredible bow damage only to switch to dual wielding sword fury when you close the gap. Perhaps you will come across the Shaman who summons pets to serve him or perhaps transforms into a bear and proceeds to tear apart his adversaries healing himself when necessary. The sorcerer may just cook you in two minutes flat or the annoying bard may run circles around you laughing and slowly whittling away your health while she cannot be touched. But be careful for out of no where a great platemail clad Warrior may stride into battle and absorb your damage as though you spat at him before leveling his massive axe upon his target. You will never know the rogue is there until he strikes, and watch out for that plate wearing guy; it isn't another tank (Warrior, Death Knight, Paladin) its a Cleric and he can dish out some serious damage and take it equally well healing all the while. The Necromancer may have recently harvested a dead body and found a unique body part to graft into his abomination to deal out more damage just as he transforms into a lich or wraith and joins the pursuit. Suddenly the whole ground begins to shake and bodies fall around you for the Druid has unleashed an earthquake before the Blood Mage sets his blood to boiling, stopping the druids assualt, and then can begin to help heal the afflicted. But wait, he is intercepted by a huge lesser giant Death Knight who removes his invisibility and shadowsteps to the mage, uttering a word of power and swinging his weapon killing his target instantly. Needless to say, there are options galore for PvP in this game. They just need to balance the classes a bit, which they are actively doing, and they need to add a bit more purpose to it besides just FFA killing. Most player bases these days are crying out for more depth and purpose overall whethere it be defending property that is player built like in Shadowbane, or defending a realm like in DAoC, or castle sieges like one might expect to find in Lineage 2. None of these games has got it completely right yet, but if this game or any other works on this area I think you will see some really good PvP options that will carry the game many years into the future; this game has that potential by my estimation even though it is not there yet.

The downsides to PvP right now are that balance is not where it needs to be yet but they are addressing it. There are definate flavor of the month (FotM) classes like the Shaman, Ranger, and Bard that have unfair advantages in many situations and that simply must be addressed. You won't really notice it much on the PvE servers but you will hate it on PvP when you have to fight those characters and your skills are just not capable of competing against them. PvP deaths don't affect much overall though since the penalty for losing is money, which can be protected by placing it in the bank and not carrying it on you, and infamy points, which function as nothing other than bragging points. This too needs to be addressed as I personally can't stand useless look at me items. I want infamy to serve a purpose of some fashion and until it does I will care very little about it and not consider it an incentive for PvP. You may wonder, well what is the incentive for PvP then? Simple. The rush of adrenaline, the fame, and the ability to uphold certain ideals and exact revenge, honor, and fear amongst the player base. I have seen people who randomnly kill everyone they see and they are sometimes targetted by large guilds and either can't get groups to progress or are killed by nearly everyone since they specialize in making enemies and not friends. That kind of accountability is appealing to me personally.

The population is good, but could be a bit higher since the world is so big. There was a dramatic drop after the games release in this area due to the overall disgust of the general population, but that trend is slowly reversing itself as more old players return and some newer players are drawn in by the good news, rather than constant bad, that is beginning to trickle out. Guilds are a good thing in this game as well since allies and their resources are always a plus in the cutthroat environment this type of PvP provides.

About character creation: There are so many options for characters, classes, and race in this game that you can spend a good hour or more creating the perfect character. There still needs to be more options for character customization I think starting at physical appearance on down to armor and weapon options and class specific effects whether in combat, or casting abilities, but overall there is far more customization in this game than in most others currently out there.

About housing: Its there and the options are decent. There are lots of areas on the actual map to build player housing and guild halls. the houses range from small huts to huge castle-like structures, and the guildhalls are immense. The housing in this game is by far better than anything ever created. It takes what Ultima Online had, expands on it, and makes it 3D. These structures can be built to mirror the different styles of the continents which are European (Thestra), Asian (Kojani), and African/Middle Eastern (Qualia). You can store items in these houses, decorate them, port to them, and even fight around them if you are on PvP. There are also the boats, also customizable and designed after the continents, that you can sail around the vast world in.

About crafting: You can't talk about housing without mentioning crafting. This game has the most elaborate and interesting crafting system I have seen yet. It begins with harvesting the materials yourself. That might mean cutting down trees, skinning animals you have killed, harvesting stone or gems, reaping grass, etc. After you refine these materials you can take work orders or create what you want through the use of various tables and tools where you mix items in a process to maximize quality etc. There will be complications that arise that require you to react in certain ways and have certain additional materials on hand to deal with them. The trick is you can only have so many things on your table at one time and you can't change these materials once the crafting process is begun. This means that an experienced crafter can predict what he/she may need and ultimately make a higher quality item than is normal. It is not your standard click a button after buying some materials and wait longer, and longer periods to make gear. Needless to say crafters get rich and fast, like in most games, since there items are easily some of the best in the game.

Next is the diplomacy system: It is a card game played against the computer basically and the cards are collectable and tradeable if you don't equip them yourself. Diplomacy will first and foremost give you an alternative thing to do in the game. Secondly it will yield lots and lots of money over time. Thirdly, it will generate city wide buffs to increase everything from crafting attributes, to adventuring ones like hitpoints etc. And finally, it is used to help in the creation of castle like guild halls etc. There are lots of nice rewards from this system such as NPC mercenaries, mages, and merchants that you can summon to serve you at will for a period of time. There are shapeshifting items that drop as well, special diplomatic armor pieces you can create from rewards you receive, and lately even talk about special diplomatic housing. There is also the benefit of excellent lore to read here if you love stories, legends, plots, and intrigue. The system is currently being examined to give it more purpose in the overall world such as possible PvE encounters being advanced or made easier when a high level diplomat is present to do his or her thing; they have already done this with certain high level raid content. There are more ideas being thrown around for diplomacy as well and the talk is good. This is the only game that has ever tried and implemented something like this and I consider it one of their strongpoints.

About content: Currently there is a lot to do at the max level, but there needs to be more and the devs know it. I must point out that compared to the release the amount of quests and active areas to do things in has dramatically increased with each continent offering different quests lines, different themes of loot and armor/weapon drops, and of course different types of monsters to fight. That said high level players still claim to run out of things to do at this point. Very soon they will release what they are calling raid content in the Ancient Port Warehouse. (**This has already been released since this review was posted**) This area is intended for high level players in large groups in a PvE environment. There are still areas where the types of mobs feel a bit monotonous or where there is not anything to do at all. However, you will sometimes see things that are obviously meant to be something but that havn't been fully implemented yet. It is at times like these that you realize the game still isn't fully finished according to what the devs had planned, but it does not feel like a beta version anymore either.

There are flying mounts in the game (although not personal ones yet)(**Permanent personal flying mounts have been announced for the next major game update since this review was posted.**) and abilities like levitate that allow you to climb mountains and soar very high above the world while still seeing it in great detail below you. It takes what people hoped to see in Dark and Light and actually makes it work in this arena and again is an amazing testament to the beautiful world these guys have created.

Character graphics, armor, etc are also still lacking a bit imo. The characters themselves are nice looking and can be customized quite a bit although they need to put in more options eventually. It is the armor and weaponry that is kind of boring in my estimation. What's there doesn't look bad, but it is not flashy enough and there is not enough variety. Furthermore you cannot dye armor at this point, at least as far as I can tell, so your character won't always look as unique as you may desire. They have also not implemented helm art into the game yet, why I do not know, but it is on the list for future development. The only head covering you can get is through a cloak and that looks odd to say the least. All in all what they have is nice enough, but it needs more work. That said I remember how games like DAoC were when they released and they were awful for different armor and weapon options along with facial and body customization. They came out of it later on though and with each expansion they added more flash and flair. I expect the same thing to happen here.

As for population, the PvE servers are doing quite well and the PvP server isn't too far behind them although it is much lower in population. That again is because PvP is not what this game was created for though I think.

So to sum this up. If you want a huge, incredibly scenic world to explore with tons of options for class, race, character etc and liked the Everquest 1 ideas then head over to this game. If you like PvP come to the PvP server. At the very least this game is a great tide-me-over until other titles are released if you are bored senseless like I was. But be aware you may find you like this game more than you expected and those titles will fall on the backburner! Enjoy and I hope these opinions help in your decisions for this game.

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