Vanguard Saga of Heroes - to be or not to be?

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Sturmlocke, Aug 7, 2022.

  1. MightyMeaghan Well-Known Member

    Ownership and licenses with Vanguard are problematic. SOE no longer exists as an entity, having been sold off and morphed into Daybreak. I've heard that Microsoft still had a stake in the game. Then you have licensing for the Unreal engine that was heavily modified, which in itself required negotiating additional terms with Epic. I'd imagine it was more headache than it was worth to maintain a property that wasn't profitable, was tied up in licensing and multiple stakeholders, and that Smed had only acquired as a favor to Brad to begin with.
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  2. AOE1 Well-Known Member


    And that was one out of how many that died and stayed dead? There is already a glut of games out there similar to EQ1 and EQ2 and not enough people to play them all for any length of time. As it is people bounce from one game to another and unless most all are f2p, it can get rather expensive. If you are a sub to any of them, it can get quite expensive to just pick up and leave for a whim. And if you do and then decided to go back you find yourself trying to play catch up and frustrated with many just leaving again. If they die, leave them be. Move on. I will stick with that opinion.
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  3. Elskidorr Active Member

    I wanted to give it a chance when it went All Access but failed to talk anyone in trying it with me. With the recent buzz it's been getting lately I'm curious about it all over again. Maybe in between slow times of TLP/TLE expansions I might give it a whirl. I imagine it's very group needy so the population would need to be there.
  4. Siren Well-Known Member

  5. Siren Well-Known Member

    Cryptic Studios (original CoH devs) and NCsoft (the original and only publisher of CoH from its April 27, 2004 launch through to its November 30, 2012 shutdown) parted ways in 2007, long before CoH was shuttered near the end of 2012. Paragon Studios (originally set up by Cryptic as a 5-person end-of life team that we players called "The Fab Five") took over running and developing CoH after Cryptic sold off CoH to NCsoft in 2007. Once Cryptic exited CoH, they began work on Marvel Universe Online (which was later canceled, and its remnants eventually became Champions Online). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptic_Studios#City_of_Heroes/Villains.

    The Paragon Studios team size was gradually increased by NCsoft over the years, and CoH had actually seen an increase in profits since it had gone F2P. It was doing better than ever financially when it was suddenly shuttered by NCsoft at the end of 2012.

    It was in fact a Paragon Studios employee (rumored to have been the server operator) who leaked all the source code, complete with all player characters, to CoH player Leandro Pardini right before shutdown in 2012. This was obviously so the entire CoH player base could play CoH once again as an emu.

    However, Leandro caught the CoH ball, then promptly took it home to kick it around in his back yard with a very small group of his closest friends for 7 years instead (friends he later paranoidly tracked on various charts and graphs as they used CoH, making sure they didn't spill the beans to the entire CoH community about his hidden private server, and the fact that they freely used player characters that they had cherry-picked from across all original CoH players' accounts).

    https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/15/score-city-of-heroes-emulator-leak/

    https://techgage.com/news/player-ousts-city-of-heroes-private-server/

    https://massivelyop.com/2019/04/16/...-stand-on-the-secret-city-of-heroes-emulator/

    https://www.polygon.com/2019/4/17/18411040/city-of-heroes-score-private-server

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/be8eos/i_am_willing_to_forgive_leandro_pardini_if_he/

    Finally, in 2019, one of Leandro's pals from his CoH private server outed him, after which Leandro was repeatedly pressured by the CoH community at large until he finally posted all the CoH code online. However, Leandro never did release the code for all the original player characters, because he and his pals had been using them freely for 7 years, logging in with whatever ones they liked that the general player base had created during all the years that the live game ran. Peoples' characters likely had been changed over time. Clearly this character usage shows that Leandro had zero intentions of ever releasing a public CoH emu server at any point in the future, despite his protestations to the contrary once he was outed.

    Private server emu City of Heroes: Homecoming (Homecoming forums are at https://forums.homecomingservers.com/ along with current launcher info), and other private server emus like City of Heroes: Rebirth, arose from those ashes in 2019. It was at this point that NCsoft realized it could either play whack-a-mole for the rest of its life while attempting to shutter private server after private server of CoH, or relent and set basic ground rules for the biggest emus like CoH Homecoming, to make darned sure that none have or ever will profit financially from these new private server ventures. Clearly, NCsoft chose the latter, and here we are 3 years later.
  6. Jesaine Well-Known Member

    Well, if devs can't do anything here, because they're understaffed, I think City of Titans gets a pass there as well. They've kept the public regularly updated, have a launcher available, even for MacOS, and are a good bit further along than Baldur's Gate 3, which Steam seems to somehow consider a game at it's stage in development. Even with a "full" development team, a normal sized game takes 3 to 5 years to fully develop on average.

    Ship of Heroes... A few months off from full fledged release. We're literally splitting hairs on this one.

    As far as the CoH history goes. Some of it I was off about. Some of it I've heard different accounts of from other sources, including people who knew the devs. Paragon Studios was never an end of life creation, for example. It was a separate subsidiary just like Darkpaw is for Daybreak, which is a part of EG7. Paragon was also supposed to buy out the Rights to CoH from NCSoft but got screwed at the last minute. There's alot of spin regarding what may or may not have happened with Leandro also. The kindest stories have him keeping the code secret at first due to legal fears and trying to figure the code before release. I don't really buy that anymore than I do the version put out by NCSoft and his disgruntled friend. The truth is somewhere in the middle I figure (but probably leaning more towards the NCSoft side of things). I'm not willing to spend all day splitting hairs on who may be lying how much about specific issues regarding another game though. It's a distraction from the main topic.

    The bigger point here relating to the topic at hand was that Vanguard should just be allowed to die because it'd be too hard to bring it back and games fail. I know I'm in the extreme minority on this point in today's society, but "difficult" and "the other person couldn't do it" are NOT reasons to quit or not try to do anything. EVERY great invention in history never would have come to pass if people took that attitude. The "games fail" excuse alone means no game should ever be developed.

    The demand for Vanguard wouldn't even be there if people didn't crave old school MMO mechanics similar to EQ2's early days also. That's something that all these other MMOs that AOE1 mentioned are missing. Even Amazon's New World fell short there in a few ways.
  7. VGScastaway Member

    I only started playing Eq2 after Vanguard sunsetted. To me, this game doesn't really hold a candle to Vanguard - I know it was buggy, it crashed occasionally.... No different than this game really. The classes were far more fleshed out, unique and didn't become all diluted. I could go on and on; this game seemed like a big disappointment after coming here from there. Eq1 may have been a better fit for me, honestly, but I seriously couldn't handle the graphics.
    Jaden likes this.
  8. Sturmlocke Linux enthusiast playing EQ2 via Proton.

    Hm, interesting discussion you guys have here. Will comment a bit more in detail later, time is a bit short rn, but you all have good and solid points tbh. I just wish that we could find a way to reunite the communities that were lost along the way and make it work for both us players and the powers that be (engineers). The games in DBG former arsenal were unique to the mmo market in many ways... and they still are.

    I actually just bought back my SWG and VSOH retail boxes. So now, in addition to my beautiful EQ1 and EQ2 collectors edition that I recollected some time ago, these two puppies are back in my possession as well.

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  9. Sturmlocke Linux enthusiast playing EQ2 via Proton.

    Btw, I know that a lot of ppl are looking forward to Pantheon or EQ3, and that's great, but at least Pantheon is still many years away from us.



    or



    Would be fine with both tbh, if you get what I mean :D The world wasn't ready for the likes of Vanguard and SWG back then, and these games were never going to attract millions, but instead a rather small, dedicated and loyal fanbase of players that cherish the more sandboxed, barrier-free, community driven and classic approach to the genre more than anything else. Great things have small beginnings.

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  10. Jovie Well-Known Member

    The thing from vanguard that i really miss is that mini game with communication between the player and npc, and they used skills to move the conversation around for different things. Forget the name, but it was neat.
    Sturmlocke likes this.
  11. Sturmlocke Linux enthusiast playing EQ2 via Proton.





    What was it called? Wife and I really liked the dipl card game and I absolutely loved the idea of ship sailing around the world. I must say though, the water graphics in Vanguard have aged badly. If it comes back one day, a poor engineer has to copy and paste the dx9 water effects from EQ2 into Vanguard ;) Does our EQ2 team have any type of connection to whoever might be able to tell us what exactly it would take to bring a single server for Vanguard SOH back online and how much it would need to make cashwise in order to keep the lights on? @Jenn Chan, Accendo, Ttobey, Angelina: Is there anything that you could try to find out using your elevated position in the company?

    A server that can take 500 ppl at the same time would suffice for now, seeing how the emulator is hitting around 100 ppl online concurrently. I can see that number growing ofc, especially if the community continues to create content for its audience on YT, Twitch and the likes. If absolutely nothing is possible, no hard feelings ofc, but it would be totally wild if someone could answer the call of the small but dedicated fanbase that is still there for Vanguard.

    I agree with:

    Newgen mmos are for a different generation of ppl. A much younger gen that prefers linear and on rails theme parks without the ability to swim, and that's fine, but us old mmo gamers are craving for something different, for something that we many of us grew up with. Personally I really enjoy the vast virtual sandboxed exploration of seamless open world games such as Vanguard, or even Black Desert Online for that matter, which is why I asked if we could make EQ2 more open in the future. I like taking in the scenery, music, weather, wildlife and water conditions without boundaries in the form of loading screens. Helps me relax a bit. Others will prefer the group focused gameplay and the lesser handholding that a title like Vanguard can offer - and so on. On a sidenote, I asked Nathan if he would focus his efforts on streaming Vanguard related content on a regular basis, if someone would bring it back from the dead, and he said yes. Eldergamer Girl has started streaming Vanguard recently, and she's having a blast so far. Bunch of other ppl on YT are following suit ofc, some even streaming in 4k and 60 fps.

    I really enjoy exploring virtual worlds more than anything else in game tbh:

    Jesaine likes this.
  12. Sturmlocke Linux enthusiast playing EQ2 via Proton.

    Remember who you are @DBG:

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    Found here: https://en.riotpixels.com/games/vanguard-saga-of-heroes/screenshots/page-3/



    You must take your place in the circle of mmos. You must remember who you are - the one true former mmo king (EQ). As player I was most proud of one thing, having you guys as the only entity on the market capable of great(er) things (EQ, SWG, EQ2, Dcuo, Vanguard). Remember who you are for the sake of the mmo genre. I believe only three companies can save the genre from becoming increasingly stale, pale, linear and without open vision. And you are one of them. The mmo genre is stalling rn, rise to this challange and help save it from itself.
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  13. MightyMeaghan Well-Known Member

    We're still pretending Pantheon will ever launch?
    AOE1 and Dude like this.
  14. Sturmlocke Linux enthusiast playing EQ2 via Proton.

    Point taken. It's been in development for so long, that's a valid and understandable argument ofc. It was supposed to be in Alpha by the end of 2018, but like so many other similar projects, time passed and that didn't happen. Now it's in a better state ofc, but I honestly don't see it releasing in the next three years, if it actually gets out the door that is. That said, that's just one more reason for Vanguard to return.Vanguard is here right now, and by the looks of it, the community surrounding it are really enjoying their time. I remember how SWG emus started out with a handful of ppl and now the two most popular swg servers have around 2000-3000 ppl online most of the time. Pretty sure Vanguard can achieve and even surpass that, if the community gets behind it and helps push it to greatness this time around.

    Not everything new and shiny is actually better:




    Same goes for videogames. Vanguard and the EQ franchise are still rock solid in so many ways and can still go the distance.
    Breanna likes this.
  15. Sturmlocke Linux enthusiast playing EQ2 via Proton.

    In case anyone around here wants to know how a new player reacts to SWG in 2022:



    In other words, mindblown by what you guys created all the way back in 2003 / 2004. I'm telling you, just like EQ2, both Swg and Vanguard were years ahead of the competiton. All of this reminds me of the old days when Sega vs. Nintendo - Game Gear vs. Gameboy was still a thing. The Game Gear was by far the more powerful and more advanced system, had great games too, but lost against the Gameboy for a couple of reasons. Personally, I always preferred the Game Gear though, no matter how good those Nintendo ads were, the hardly readable and monochrome green screen of the Gameboy was just too crappy chappy for me to digest. Even though the Gameboy was more popular, it wasn't better in my eyes.



    Jaden likes this.
  16. Jovie Well-Known Member

    It

    It was the diplomacy card game. Loved it so much.
  17. AOE1 Well-Known Member

    The music in Vanguard was beautiful but I must add that the music in most of these mmo's are beautiful. Now if the games were as good and as stable as the music it would all be wonderful.
    Holdolin likes this.
  18. Geroblue Well-Known Member

    I played Vanguard in what turned out to be its last year... it was pretty much a solo game at that point. I could see, if I remember correctly, other players in chat. But they weren't in my zone. Nice graphics.
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  19. MightyMeaghan Well-Known Member

    All I can say is, if you miss these games that were taken from us, support your emulator communities.
  20. AOE1 Well-Known Member


    I will when I win lotto
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