Vanguard is the first title released by Sigil Games, but years of experience underlie its development. Many of the team worked on Everquest, the first massively multiplayer game to bring online role-playing to the masses. Does this mean Vanguard is a masterpiece, destined to bring low the mighty World of Warcraft?
Well, no, not really. WoW has succeeded primarily because it’s easy. Everquest-lite, it eschews the long arduous grind for, um, a quick and simple grind. Vanguard, however, makes no concessions. It’s the Yorkie to Warcraft’s Milky Way – big, dense and proud of it – and clearly intended for a very different, and quite likely, smaller, audience. This isn’t to say that a newcomer to MMORPGs should be put off; the tutorials are easy to follow and explain the basics competently. To get the most from what is on offer, however, requires time – appropriately epic amounts of time, in fact.
Killing everything that moves is still the primary means of advancement, but crafting and diplomacy are two completely separate games, with their own distinct experiences, equipment and levels. Both are at least as complex and deep as the combat, which is itself a step up from other games. It’s completely possible, for instance, to reach level 50 in diplomacy without killing anything. Vanguard will be familiar to those who have played other games within the genre, but it does at least try to advance beyond what has gone before to provide a more engrossing experience.
Having said all that, it remains a slightly problematic recommendation, for one very important reason – it’s not finished.
Yes, it’s released, it’s in the shops, and you can play it, but it is not finished. Sigil, unfortunately, ran out of capital, and were forced into releasing Vanguard quickly; as a result, there are still some features missing and enough bugs to feed an ogre. They’re not game-breaking, but they can and do interfere.
Vanguard is definitely not one for those who want instant gratification. It will take time, both to explore all the possibilities and for the missing features to be added. If you have that time to give it, however, this is probably the best game of its kind available.
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