pankor-zhi
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SOE Live 2013: Looking at the future of Vanguard
"The little game that could" is how Mark Tuttle introduced Vanguard at the SOE Live keynote, and although the game has had its share of struggles through the years, it forges on with a strong community, lots of recent changes, and a roadmap of future endeavors. Now that the free-to-play transition is up and running, the team took some time at SOE Live to give fans a rundown of what it's been up to and what players can look forward to seeing.
Vanguard producer's letter talks Pankor Zhi, bug fixes, and a new network layer
Well, what do we have here? Is... is that a Vanguard producer's letter? It is a Vanguard producer's letter! SOE's Harvey "Rahtiz" Burgess does the honors, and he says that those of you who've been away from Telon for a while will notice some changes starting with a new network layer. "While this won't solve all of the issues that we have had since the launch of Vanguard," Burgess explains, "what it will do is help us track down problematic areas of latency where we will be able to examine and resolve. Before this, we didn't really have an adequate way of troubleshooting these issues." The Vanguard team has also squashed over 50 long-standing bugs and is also still working on Pankor Zhi, though Burgess notes that it "is definitely going to be a long-term project for us." There's more to the letter, of course, so head to the official Vanguard site to read it all.
Vanguard team shares initiatives for the new year
Creative Director Steve Danuser shared the philosophy of the Vanguard dev team in his latest design update when he wrote, "We can't change the past. What we can do is make our best effort to improve things going forward." How? Danuser and his team are focused on several key initiatives, including putting in modern tech to improve performance, polishing the existing content, adding new challenges for experienced players, working on better character progression, designing introductions for crafting and diplomacy, and broadening the title's free-to-play plan. Danuser also teased the next big content addition for the game: "The next zone we will roll out for high-end players is Pankor Zhi, which begins a storyline that will carry forward into future content. The team is really enthused about revisiting this under-utilized area and adding a compelling new experience to the game. Pankor Zhi will feature content for soloers, groups, and raids. Obviously this is an ambitious undertaking, but we feel we have a realistic scope that can be achieved with our team." [Thanks to John for the tip!]
SOE Live 2012: To City of Brass and beyond for Vanguard
Though off the radar for a long while, at least where updates were involved, Vanguard has enjoyed a resurgence of late. Inspired by the recently rebuilt (and still growing) development team and increased support from Sony Online Entertainment, excitement has burgeoned for the rebirth of the five-year-old game. So while Vanguard may not have presented the as many panels or pulled in as many fans as the bigger titles at SOE Live, player and developer dedication and enthusiasm was abundant. Besides attending the "The Future of Vanguard!" panel, I sat down with Producer Harvey Burgess to get his thoughts on how the game has performed since the move to free-to-play and to learn both what's around the corner (City of Brass, finally!) and what's on the horizon for the fantasy MMO.
