May
29

Vanguard – Update 5

8 Comments

Remember that part of my brain that was expecting to see Vanguard be a rising success story over the course of 2008? Well, he was quite excited to see that Update 5 has hit the live servers. So, if you’re taking a break from AoC, I recommend taking a look to see what’s going on in the game. The patch notes are here.

The big highlight of course are the racial mounts:

We have added a unique racial mount for each race in Vanguard! The mounts can be attained through a series of faction based quests that can be started in each race?s home town. If you happen to like another race?s mount better than your own though, worry not! With the appropriate faction, players will be able to complete any of the quests.

Faction? Noooooooooooooooooo! ;)

The mounts actually look really nice and if I were playing, I’d personally be going for the lobster mounts….with a bit of butter.

The patch notes themselves are huge and if you take a look, take note that the revamp to the Quest Journal takes up about on quarter of the bloody update notes. Lots of performance changes are included as well as a new particle system…although, I’m not too sure how nicely those two play together.

D out.

Posted in Editorial
8 Comments Posted by Darren

8 Responses to "Vanguard – Update 5"

  • Scott says:
    May 29, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Once everything was loaded up, I did indeed see a performance increase. I didn’t run through a chunk line so I can’t comment on how well the anti-hitching works yet.

    Factions? They were already in the game for Diplomacy. These new racial factions *seem* (don’t quote me on this) to be just for each mount currently, so if you’re not after these new mounts, no worries. They’re also completely separate from the diplomacy factions.

    They’re even re-vamping one of the lower level areas into a new raid zone, hopefully to be released prior to the holiday season. Who knows, maybe the new team will actually pull it all together someday.

  • wilhelm2451 says:
    May 29, 2008 at 1:33 pm

    “So, if you?re taking a break from AoC….”

    That almost warranted a spit take.

    “Damn, it has been a tough week here in the land of Conan.”

  • Ellyra says:
    May 29, 2008 at 1:56 pm

    I think “that part” of your brain is on to something! ;) The racial mounts are just the introduction to the new Citizen Favor faction system. In time there will be plenty of interesting rewards available.

  • Syncaine says:
    May 29, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    Is it really a break if you stop playing a game in the first few weeks of release…?

  • Scott says:
    May 29, 2008 at 7:51 pm

    Yeah, I’ll be honest, I’m still on AoC Live Test and every day I feel less and less like logging in to play. I haven’t even bothered to activate my pre-order key, nor take the plastic off the retail box yet. My initial decision was that I’ll play it but not for several more months so they can iron out some of the kinks, but now I’m wondering if this unopened box will take its place next to my unopened TBC box…

    In other news, I intentionally logged into Vanguard and chunked. The most recent episode of the Voyages of Vanguard podcast led me to believe this “anti-hitching” code was to improve chunking but, got news for ‘em, chunking was just as abrupt and lengthy as it ever was. So “anti-hitch” must be for something else. The good news is my average framerate is 50, with random hits here and there but never under 30. Yet.

  • Grimbone says:
    May 30, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    Did they ever revamp the character models? Seriously….wolf heads stuck on human bodies is pretty lame.
    AoC is lacking for numerous reasons, but that’s off topic and jsut more commentary on the stuff everyone here already knows.
    I’ll be cancelling tonight.

  • Scott says:
    May 30, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    Um, kinda. I think it was GU4 where they added helmets finally, but in order to do so had to remove a goodly chunk of the facial and head customization options. Some people are quite upset by it, but honestly… who zooms in that closely to someone else’s face to see if their nose juts out 3 pixels more than yours does? I don’t mind the models themselves, I’m quite fond of my orc dreadknight’s looks, but they do need to work on animations. Jumping especially still doesn’t have any actual animation it just looks like I’m a depressed mannequin flinging myself through the air not caring if I smash into pieces when I come down.

  • The Common Sense Gamer ? Vanguard…more Faction incoming says:
    June 4, 2008 at 10:15 am

    [...] (VG Community Relations) commented on the VG Update #5 post I had a couple days ago and WordPress spamed her. It spamed Julie!!! If I were in the right frame [...]

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