Games are either simply built wrong, assembled wrong, planed wrong, or Destroyed and modified into the craper by complainers , whiners, people who want to change the game, and people who have no clue what theyre talkin about when it comes to mmorpgs.

When it comes to population, I agree I like a more heavily populated game if it doesnt interupt gameplay or disturb. Population isnt everything tho. a extremely good game with a spread out or simply, half there community isnt a game killer if the game itself is good enuff. The better game will draw more people as people play it and keep the people who do play it. Theres always a undrelying debate, is it too hard or too easy to A. find a group B. level/progress?. Probly always will be.

In closing and to sum up… I wish there was a incredible game out there waiting for me to play it. Most newer games are either Rehash, semi Rehash, or as i stated befor, built wrong, assembled wrong, deved wrong or modified into gimpness. It seems very hard to make a Extremely good game for those of us who have played such games as Diablo1&2, EQ1&2&EQOA, Ultima Online, SWG, Anarchy, FFXI, WoW, ect. We expect SOO much and really alot of games I think try to “Copy The Wheel” Rather then Reinventing or Inovating the wheel. Give us something like Vanguard, a EverQuest REHASH with a few bells and whistles and new classes/races and too many bugs and too few mobs and we will spit it back in the industries face.

I was impressed with the polish of WoW when I first played, but I lost interest within a month or so. I didn’t actually enjoy the game until over a year later, when I managed to get into playing with a bunch of former SWG and EQ2 guildmates. I guess it goes to show how much “Your game experience may change with online play,” as the disclaimers like to say.

- I recognize there are lots of bugs. I read about them all the time. And a few of my group-mates have experienced them first hand. But with the exception of getting booted on a vanishingly small number of occasions, I haven’t had the bad experience.

- Game performance both is and is not a huge issue for me. It’s a huge issue in that I can’t run any higher than balanced settings on my current rig … but then again, I really have no need for higher settings. In a way, I wish they’d developed artwork only to the ‘balanced’ level, and focused the money on perfecting the game play.

- Certainly the world is devoid of players. At the time I play, I usually see perhaps only 1 or 2 other players outside of my group. But then again, I’m not playing this game to group with random people. I play each morning before server restart with same one or two other people I always do. I find an hour or so of bland-high-fantasy-pixel-clicking to be a great way to start the day. Conversely, I have no interest in starting the day by hooking up with some random asshats for a party wipe.

- In terms of difficulty … I’m not (and probably haven’t ever been) a ‘hardcore’ (whatever the fvck that means) player. But I’ve found there’s enough to keep me interested. Healing vs. fighting (and switching well); managing aggro; timing progress through fast respawn areas; all the usual stuff. Sure it’s not rocket science. But it’s ok.

- Despite a lot of people going on about how the game was supposed to be hardcore … I don’t think that was ever the case … my understanding from beta-days was that it was to have some ‘old-school’ elements. Corpse runs, for example. I like them. On most occasions, a corpse run is just a time penalty. But once in a while, when you’re deep in a mob-infested zone, the possibility of having to make a corpse run helps to reinforce the desire not to die. It also makes you carefully pick your team members. Personally, I wish they’d remove the ability to summon your corpse to a bind point. It ruins the corpse run effect.

In summary: I am enjoying Vanguard. Sure, it’s not the worldy-game I’d hoped for. But I tolerate the problems because it’s delivering ‘acceptable’ fun for me right now.

I tried WoW just before launch (yes, I played all of perhaps 5-10 hours … yes I feel that qualifies me to talk about how I feel about it … if you have a problem with that, bite me). I though it was wonderfully smooth and well put together … but it didn’t grab me, and I never subscribed.

And that I think is the key. Vanguard isn’t (apparently) delivering what you’re looking for, no more than WoW delivered what I was looking for. The MMORPG market isn’t one homogenous group of players.

One point is, I applied a little bit of hyperbole. OK, Vanguard doesn’t SUCK. I’m just not thrilled with it. Part of the disappointment I then experienced is my fault, since I got sucked into the hype to a degree and was hoping for something almost on-par with the Second Coming. On the other hand, being inflammatory sure seems to have served its purpose — we got read, woohoo!

A good point one responder brought up was that I haven’t gotten very far in the game. This is both true and not; I tried a whole bunch of characters through the first few levels of adventuring. My designated “main” is in the teens for adventuring, and I made a serious pass at crafting as well. Still, I’d say I spent 40-50 or so hours playing Vanguard; if the game hasn’t “grabbed” me yet, I suspect it’s unlikely to. This is a comment I plan to return to in the near future… Why, exactly, is it that I haven’t given the game a fair shake, if I’m not interested in several hundred boring hours before things get “good?” Full investigation coming Real Soon Now ™.

Another great comment that I’ve heard many times could be paraphrased as “There’s no grinding, you’re always doing quests.” Whether I’m a min-maxer whacking rats in a field because my calculations show that I earn 13.02 more xp per second by avoiding travel time, or whether I’m whacking specifically-designated rats in a specifically-designated field becase Farmer Jones has an infestation, it becomes “grinding” when my attention wanders long enough that I feel the repetition deep in my bones. I have no magic solution; I think any game in the near future will be sufficiently repetitive or contain enough parts that we wish we could “skip by” that this will continue. I don’t even dislike grind, per se — hell, I still fire up Diablo 2 on occasion, and after your first 80,123,613.5 butcherings of the Prime Evils, that’s nothing but grind! But my specific complain about grind was that Vanguard promised DIFFICULTY, and instead I found a LONGER GRIND.

Several jabs were taken at my ability to analyze games, since I liked SWG. One thing that I’ve changed stances on is bugs in a AAA title; I was FAR more tolerant back then than I am now. Today, I’d probably flame SWG heavily for the bugginess levels. However, beyond the bugs and design flaws (AWFUL balance), SWG met a lot of criteria that I would dearly love to see in a new game. The levelling process was not “the game.” An experienced player could take a character from “brand new” to, effectively, “max level” in days or weeks. The endgame began almost immediately. And due to the need for players to craft nearly every item, house, and vehicle one needed to play, the game could easily become one of player interaction and world-building.

Contradictions are everywhere. I still enjoy WoW, even though it seems to be many things I dislike: leveling-oriented, “on-rails,” few “innovative” features, “cookie-cutter” iWIN builds, etc. We’ll see what I think about VG and other up-and-coming games as time goes on.