Vanguard: Beta Screenshots Leaked

[Zanchief]

The major thing vg has going for it is no instances.

going for it?

[Thon]

hallelujah, what really killed WoW for me was instances. it seems like a great idea, untill you run the same fucking mouse maze a million-bajillion times trying to get that one 1337 piece of gear that 90% of the other people your class and level have. instances seem like a cop out of making actual content.

but i can't go back to EQ, because of the downtime. in the name of christ, i don't know why they thought sitting down for 10 minutes to regen your mana and health was a good design decision. even a necro with Clarity 10 on(or whatever they have now) has a far longer downtime than anyone in WoW with something to drink

[Zanchief]

hallelujah, what really killed WoW for me was instances. it seems like a great idea, untill you run the same fucking mouse maze a million-bajillion times trying to get that one 1337 piece of gear that 90% of the other people your class and level have. instances seem like a cop out of making actual content.

Running the same instance 100 times beats sitting in the same camp for 100 hours doing the same pulls every damn day. With instances you actually have the opportunity to have cool interactive quests within the MMO. Without them you could never do that. WoW probably relied too heavily on them. It would be nice to have a few areas that weren't instanced that had viable loot rewards, but to just flat out say we are not doing ANY instances it either a lie, or a big mistake.

[Narrock]

Instances own. Instances were created because of guilds HOGGING dungeons and/or mobs and not letting others get a chance to go in and get the boss mob. Instances were a great idea through and through.

[Tikker]

Running the same instance 100 times beats sitting in the same camp for 100 hours doing the same pulls every damn day. With instances you actually have the opportunity to have cool interactive quests within the MMO. Without them you could never do that. WoW probably relied too heavily on them. It would be nice to have a few areas that weren't instanced that had viable loot rewards, but to just flat out say we are not doing ANY instances it either a lie, or a big mistake.

instancing made the world seem empty


it also showed how heavily WoW leans on scripted content

not that it's 100% bad or anything

part of the allure of EQ was that while there were some well defined camps you could still run into other peoples trains, or watch someone else to see how they did things

I really enjoyed WoW the first time around, but it just didn't have the replayability that EQ had

[Narrock]

or watch someone else to see how they did things

This coming from a former LOS'er is very L O L. How many times did we read on the boards where LOS was bitching about people following them uninvited? They cried like sissies about people following them to see how they pulled mobs. I can recall half a dozen of those kinds of threads. I believe one of the threads was entitled, "You are not welcome... you are not invited" or something like that.

[Thon]

the zones were made far more dynamic by the most dangerous, and stupid mobs: players. unrest might not have had any single mob as "epic" as in shadowfang, but the trains ran on schedule better than Amtrak.

Running the same instance 100 times beats sitting in the same camp for 100 hours doing the same pulls every damn day.

i would rather sit at one camp for 100 hours, knowing that eventually what i want/need will drop, than have to run through the entire dungeon each time with a small chance to get what i want

[Tikker]

or watch someone else to see how they did things

This coming from a former LOS'er is very L O L. How many times did we read on the boards where LOS was bitching about people following them uninvited? They cried like sissies about people following them to see how they pulled mobs. I can recall half a dozen of those kinds of threads. I believe one of the threads was entitled, "You are not welcome... you are not invited" or something like that.

Remember that whole subtlety conversation? I'd explain it to you, but it's not worth the time

[Zanchief]

i would rather sit at one camp for 100 hours, knowing that eventually what i want/need will drop, than have to run through the entire dungeon each time with a small chance to get what i want

But that's what I loved about WoW. You were doing something when you did an instance. You were completing something that had a beginning and had an end. In EQ you just joined the group and stayed until you got bored and then you left. There was no sense of accomplishment.

[Thon]

it was fun for me too, the first twenty times

[Narrock]

or watch someone else to see how they did things

This coming from a former LOS'er is very L O L. How many times did we read on the boards where LOS was bitching about people following them uninvited? They cried like sissies about people following them to see how they pulled mobs. I can recall half a dozen of those kinds of threads. I believe one of the threads was entitled, "You are not welcome... you are not invited" or something like that.

Remember that whole subtlety conversation? I'd explain it to you, but it's not worth the time

nice copout and/or backpedal attempt

[Zanchief]

Than move to the next one and stop farming, whiner.

[Tikker]

or watch someone else to see how they did things

This coming from a former LOS'er is very L O L. How many times did we read on the boards where LOS was bitching about people following them uninvited? They cried like sissies about people following them to see how they pulled mobs. I can recall half a dozen of those kinds of threads. I believe one of the threads was entitled, "You are not welcome... you are not invited" or something like that.

Remember that whole subtlety conversation? I'd explain it to you, but it's not worth the time

nice copout and/or backpedal attempt

how's it a copout/backpedal

feel free to point out where I said that's what I do
or what LoS does

you're the one drawing the conclusion

[Narrock]

By logical deduction and reasoning, one could validly assume that this comment made by you:

or watch someone else to see how they did things

means that you speak from experience.

[Donnel]

Than move to the next one and stop farming, whiner.

For true, by the time you've ran it twenty times, that thing you want so badly is most likely so outdated to not be worth the time.

That or your in a guild that has to run MC ten bajillion times because they have 3 thousand members or something.

[Thon]

Than move to the next one and stop farming, whiner.

and farm it 20 times, and the next. eventually running on a hampster wheel loses its appeal. i'll just keep the account cancelled

[Zanchief]

But that's exactly what you would do in EQ only you wouldn't have boss mobs and such.

WoW was not meant to have you run the same instance more than once or twice. Get your quests go through it. If you don't get what you want cry yourself to sleep and hope the next instance will be kinder to you.

If you slow down to get gear, you'll just slow down the progression to the end game content.

[Arlos]

I can't believe that no one remembers Lower Guk and Sol B pre-Kunark. A level 1 could enter the zone and walk from the beginning to the final boss spot in complete safety, because you had groups at roughly every single spawn point, and mobs would die within .28 seconds of spawning. If you were really lucky, you might have 2 spawn points of mobs to pull from. Even so, you spent most of your time sitting on your ass waiting for shit to spawn, being bored out of your mind. Old Sebilis in Kunark was great when it was just us LOS people in there, and there was tons to kill. By the time Velious rolled around though, it'd gotten nearly as bad as LGuk and SolB.

Even when dungeons WEREN'T jam-packed full of people, what did you do there? Everyone except for the puller sat in the same room for hours, waiting twiddling their thumbs while (in theory at least) they got spoon fed a steady stream of manageable numbers of mobs. (or non-manageable if your puller sucked). I dunno that I could've taken sitting in those spots that long if I hadn't have been the puller, and thus gotten to run around instead of sitting on my ass. Since loot dropping mobs were rare spawns, you never knew if you were actually ever going to see one, either. How many people went and camped a loot spawn location, only to never see the guy show up after hours of camping? I know I did.

I also can't believe that no one remembers the insanity of rare-spawn quest mobs. How many ex-monks are there that camped 40-60 in-game hours for Raster, while others camped even longer? How about Stormfeather? I sat there at his spawn point for 20 fucking hours straight once, only to find that I'd lucked into one of those times he skipped his spawn time. That killed questing for me in EQ, I never did a single other quest that wasn't required for either a raid-zone key or bane weaponry, or involved just a simple hand-in from something we got raiding.

Furthermore, I can't believe all the non-LOS people can't remember how much LOS was hated among the other raid guilds, simply because we so completely dominated all of the content. If other guilds got raid targets it was because they had a time zone advantage, there was too much other stuff up for us to get to it, or we didn't care about it any more. Period. Sure, for us in LOS it was great, we killed what we wanted, when we wanted, and laughed at the whines of the less skilled and motivated. I am sure for those other guilds, though, it sucked balls. Plus, I can just about guarantee that every server will have a guild similar to LOS on it, and will monopolize the lion's share of the raid content, if Vanguard is purely non-instanced content.

You want community discussions in instances in WoW, like the /ooc in OS, LGuk, etc., then use /1. Everyone in all of the various instances of the dungeon you're in will hear you just fine. Even EQ now has had to go more and more to instanced content because of all of the issues with non-instanced. Sorry, but there's no way in hell I'd ever go back to stupid quest camps, empty dungeons, hours & hours of camping with no guarantee of ANY loot, dungeon runs where you do nothing but sit staring at the same room for hours, etc. etc. etc.

-Arlos

[Tikker]

By logical deduction and reasoning, one could validly assume that this comment made by you:

or watch someone else to see how they did things

means that you speak from experience.

well, from seeing you play it was easy to see you didn't watch others to learn how to play~

[Tikker]

I can't believe that no one remembers Lower Guk and Sol B pre-Kunark. A level 1 could enter the zone and walk from the beginning to the final boss spot in complete safety, because you had groups at roughly every single spawn point, and mobs would die within .28 seconds of spawning.

that was more a result of there not being enough content for the volume of players


duplicating the content so that everyone can play the same dungeon at exactly the same time isn't a great fix IMO

Look at a game like UO

there was soooo much world for the volume of players that it was insane
I'm betting you could play for 2 years and not see every bit of the map

[Narrock]

By logical deduction and reasoning, one could validly assume that this comment made by you:

or watch someone else to see how they did things

means that you speak from experience.

well, from seeing you play it was easy to see you didn't watch others to learn how to play~

I did learn from my mistakes. In a couple CoA raids I nuked too soon causing mob ping-ponging. Big deal. Tons of people make that same mistake. I learned from it and stopped doing it. In fact, I only did that twice. I did it in "The Hole" and once in PoF. After that I played the role of a Druid quite well, but your ego won't let you be the big man and admit that.

[Narrock]

I can't believe that no one remembers Lower Guk and Sol B pre-Kunark. A level 1 could enter the zone and walk from the beginning to the final boss spot in complete safety, because you had groups at roughly every single spawn point, and mobs would die within .28 seconds of spawning. If you were really lucky, you might have 2 spawn points of mobs to pull from. Even so, you spent most of your time sitting on your ass waiting for shit to spawn, being bored out of your mind. Old Sebilis in Kunark was great when it was just us LOS people in there, and there was tons to kill. By the time Velious rolled around though, it'd gotten nearly as bad as LGuk and SolB.

Even when dungeons WEREN'T jam-packed full of people, what did you do there? Everyone except for the puller sat in the same room for hours, waiting twiddling their thumbs while (in theory at least) they got spoon fed a steady stream of manageable numbers of mobs. (or non-manageable if your puller sucked). I dunno that I could've taken sitting in those spots that long if I hadn't have been the puller, and thus gotten to run around instead of sitting on my ass. Since loot dropping mobs were rare spawns, you never knew if you were actually ever going to see one, either. How many people went and camped a loot spawn location, only to never see the guy show up after hours of camping? I know I did.

I also can't believe that no one remembers the insanity of rare-spawn quest mobs. How many ex-monks are there that camped 40-60 in-game hours for Raster, while others camped even longer? How about Stormfeather? I sat there at his spawn point for 20 fucking hours straight once, only to find that I'd lucked into one of those times he skipped his spawn time. That killed questing for me in EQ, I never did a single other quest that wasn't required for either a raid-zone key or bane weaponry, or involved just a simple hand-in from something we got raiding.

Furthermore, I can't believe all the non-LOS people can't remember how much LOS was hated among the other raid guilds, simply because we so completely dominated all of the content. If other guilds got raid targets it was because they had a time zone advantage, there was too much other stuff up for us to get to it, or we didn't care about it any more. Period. Sure, for us in LOS it was great, we killed what we wanted, when we wanted, and laughed at the whines of the less skilled and motivated. I am sure for those other guilds, though, it sucked balls. Plus, I can just about guarantee that every server will have a guild similar to LOS on it, and will monopolize the lion's share of the raid content, if Vanguard is purely non-instanced content.

You want community discussions in instances in WoW, like the /ooc in OS, LGuk, etc., then use /1. Everyone in all of the various instances of the dungeon you're in will hear you just fine. Even EQ now has had to go more and more to instanced content because of all of the issues with non-instanced. Sorry, but there's no way in hell I'd ever go back to stupid quest camps, empty dungeons, hours & hours of camping with no guarantee of ANY loot, dungeon runs where you do nothing but sit staring at the same room for hours, etc. etc. etc.

-Arlos

Hey Arlos, remember when that GM summoned a bunch of people to VP, bound them there, and wiped them all out? lol Good times. I can't remember if that was LoS, Cloud of Evolution, or Sanctuary.

[Naethyn]

Instances not only make for repeated content, but also limited content. If a developer can make one or two zones for each level group here is no need to create more.

The final concern is content. There has to be a balance. If a game has no instances with limited content there will be crowding. Somone could argue that there will always be the best places, the medium places, and the worst places. The key is to have enough places.

[Zanchief]

Instances in WoW weren't made for lvling. They were made for loot. It's a fun change of pace for overworld quests. It's the perfect balance. You can lvl with everyone else and when you want something more challenging you jump in an instance with your friends and get a little loot.

[Narrock]

Instances in WoW weren't made for lvling. They were made for loot. It's a fun change of pace for overworld quests. It's the perfect balance. You can lvl with everyone else and when you want something more challenging you jump in an instance with your friends and get a little loot.

QFT