vanguard
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Remedy is making a co-op shooter with Tencent
The free-to-play PVE game, codenamed 'Vanguard,' is coming to consoles, PC and mobile.
Activision drops 'Call of Duty: Vanguard' teaser ahead of official reveal
Activision has released a teaser for Call of Duty: Vanguard.
A closer look at Valorant's always-on anti-cheat system
How much do you trust Riot Games?
'Valorant' update lets players disable its anti-cheat software
Riot has made it easier to manage its anti-cheat client, Vanguard.
Working As Intended: The MMOs we lost in 2014
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about how Vanguard's early stumbles foreshadowed the changing MMORPG industry. In January 2007, when Vanguard lurched its way to launch, the genre was barely a decade old; it was booming, and it had never suffered hardship on a massive scale. In the west, we'd seen only three "major" MMOs sunset (Motor City Online, Earth and Beyond, and Asheron's Call 2), and only one MMO, Anarchy Online, had "gone F2P," though we hadn't yet thought to call it yet because it was such a rare and new thing. In fact, it wasn't until 2008's first big wave of AAA, post-World of Warcraft MMOs launched and mostly flopped that MMORPG players gave much thought to the future of the genre and how WoW had reshaped (and possibly broken) it. Maybe not even then. Here in 2015, sunsets are commonplace, and the vast majority of modern MMOs have adopted some sort of subscriptionless model. Last year, we lost more than a dozen MMOs, including Vanguard itself, all of them wiped from the face of the earth (at least until someone decides to resurrect them), and several more under development were canceled, leading to concern among industry watchers like those of us who pen for Massively. Let's try to get some perspective and revisit the MMOs we lost in 2014.
One Shots: It came from the comments section!
In addition to sending in your favorite MMO screenshots to oneshots@massively.com, some of you have taken to the comments section in these columns to share your pictures and stories as well. That's totally fine with me, by the way, as long as the email submissions continue as well! However, today I'd like to call attention to a few of these comments section shots and give them a little more attention up above the line. Our first entry is from commenter Ausj3w3l, and I have to admit that it made me laugh. I think it's something about the way that this character is standing. Fat and proud, just like Mother Nature intended! "Most of the armours in TERA are completely over the top but fabulous, but eh... nothing beats the fuzzball in swim pants," she posted. The fun doesn't stop here! We've still got three more smashing pics to go!
Perfect Ten: Looking back at the biggest MMO news of 2014
Well, my chums, here we are at the tail-end of 2014, having achieved all of our goals and new year's resolutions. Even better, we've survived what's turned out to be one of the wildest, rockiest, and most exciting years of MMO news in recent memory. This was the year of high-profile game launches, even more popular expansions, layoffs, and some epic-level studio face-palming decisions. It's easy to sit here and say that we predicted everything that was going to happen this year, but c'mon, you have to admit that you were surprised by at least one or two events in this industry. It's incredibly difficult to sum up the biggest news of the year without coming to grips with the fact that many stories aren't one-and-done; a lot of what I'm going to be talking about in this list happened over the course of weeks or months and still may not be fully over. That's how news stories are sometimes!
SWTOR's Vanguard, Powertech discipline changes detailed
Did you catch yesterday's Star Wars: The Old Republic dev blog about update 3.0's changes to Mercenaries/Commandos? Good, because now we're on to Vanguards and Powertechs. If you're just joining us, SWTOR's talent trees are going bye-bye in favor of disciplines when Shadow of Revan launches early next month. Click through the links below to learn what's becoming of your favorite class!
Halo: Spartan Strike goes top-down on PC, mobile in December
Microsoft announced a new top-down Halo spinoff today for PC and mobile: Halo: Spartan Strike. Developed by 343 Industries and Vanguard Games, Spartan Strike will arrive on Windows 8 devices and Steam on December 12 for $6. Spartan Strike bears strong resemblance to the developers' other third-person shooter that launched in July 2013, Halo: Spartan Assault, though it is not a direct sequel. Rather, the upcoming shooter is set during the events of Halo 2 and has players guiding a Spartan through cities, jungles and other environments while using an "all-new arsenal of weapons, abilities and vehicles" such as the series' popular Warthog vehicle. Spartan Strike will include 30 missions filled with Covenant and Promethean enemies. Head past the break for Halo: Spartan Strike's launch trailer. [Image: Microsoft Studios]
One Shots: The big plunge
For someone like myself who is mortally terrified of heights, MMOs are not a good form of immersion therapy. I still feel my stomach clench when I fall from a ledge or, in the case of our first screenshot of the day, witness someone else doing it. "This was my first jumping puzzle in Guild Wars 2," Reader Chiara said. "You don't forget those things. I was all excited when I found a secret passage -- I wasn't even aware of the existence of jumping puzzles back then -- and as luck would have it, I found one of the toughest ones. Of course. My character is always camera-ready, as you can see -- even when she's plunging to her death. I think she was trying to wave, actually." What happened next? In my mind, she'll always be falling, falling. Well, we all might as well take the big plunge into the rest of these screencaps!
One Shots: Falling through the world
Did you get a chance to say goodbye to Vanguard and perhaps take a screenshot or two in its memory before it shut down? Reader Agemyth did, submitting the following odd image and fascinating tale. "The Vanguard shot that looks like I'm in a cave is actually because I flew my griffon straight into the peak of a mountain. Thanks to Vanguard's being the lovely lump of lovable bugs it is, I fell off my mount and right through the mountain," Agemyth writes. "Silly Vanguard, I thought, but instead of falling to the bottom of the virtual world as typically happens, I fell on top of a dungeon of some kind! I never got to explore Vanguard as much as I had hoped, but what started as an annoying bug ended up being a shortcut to an ancient forgotten underground structure soon to be forgotten for good by the end of Telon itself. "In Vanguard's final hours, it showed me the beauty of its true open-world design. You never know what mysteries lie below the dirt when your world is designed to be lived in rather than 'progressed' through."
Former creative director eulogizes Vanguard
Former Vanguard creative director Steve Danuser has penned a eulogy for the fantasy MMO on his personal blog. Danuser describes a nightmare of a development environment featuring a lack of version control, "a database awash in the detritus of years of half-finished work," and significant bugs. Despite all that, Danuser grew to love the game and was part of a post-F2P SOE dev team who worked to see the game succeed. He attributes the game's ultimate demise to a combination of "many gaping holes to patch" and an MMO industry that exploded, "taking the genre in different directions (or at least featuring significantly higher production values) while Vanguard stood still." Danuser also mentions SOE's decision to keep the game alive for over seven years, when "most other companies would have pulled the plug after the initial downturn in subscriptions."
Global Chat: A blast from the past
As many of you know, Massively doesn't really believe in reviews of MMOs, as they are ever-changing and shifting targets. Instead, we've provided impressions and continuing coverage of these games during their lifespans (and even after), which is something that many bloggers also favor. In this edition of Global Chat, we have several hands-on impressions of MMOs both new and old from the blogosphere. What is it like to head back to Asheron's Call after a long time away? Is Guild Wars 2's and Lord of the Rings Online's new content hitting the mark? And what will we miss most of all now that Vanguard has departed? It's all there and more, right after the break!
Last Week on Massively: Hello to Firefall and Swordsman; goodbye to Vanguard and Wizardry Online
This post originally appeared on Massively from Editor-in-Chief Brianna Royce. At the end of every week, we round up the best and most popular news stories, exclusive features, and insightful columns published on Massively and then present them all in one convenient place. If you missed a big MMO story last week, you've come to the right post. The MMO world said goodbye to Vanguard and Wizardry Online this week and learned of the impending closure of heavily criticized mobile MMO Ultima Forever. Bringing balance to the universe were shiny new MMOs Swordsman and Firefall, both of which formally launched. Read on for a look at the rest of this week's top MMO stories.
The Daily Grind: I'll miss you, Vanguard
Hey Vanguard. I wish you could stay longer. Yeah, you've been hanging around my hard drive since 2007, but that first year was a mess. You launched right next to The Burning Crusade, which would have been the kiss of death even if you hadn't debuted with a bunch of bugs. SOE eventually fixed you up, and the result was a niche and highly enjoyable MMO world of the kind that no one wants to make any more. You were vast, you were an explorer's dream and, stutter-step chunk lines notwithstanding, you were seamless. You had more races and classes than I can remember, though I will remember the Dread Knight and the Disciple quite fondly. I wish more people had given you a whirl. I wish more devs would copy your crafting. I wish all MMO quests were as fun as that lengthy, lovely unicorn mount chase. I'll probably get in trouble for saying so, but I wish your labyrinthine code could've led to an emulator. Most of all, though, I wish you weren't leaving. You were the first themepark I actually enjoyed, and that's no small feat. You will be missed. Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Think Tank: Saying farewell to Vanguard
Vanguard is being retired forever next week, and this time there won't be a studio waiting in the wings to rescue it from doom. Today, Massively's staff hopes to give it a fond farewell. Join us in sharing our thoughts about the world of Telon.
The Game Archaeologist: The care and feeding of older MMOs
When an MMO has reached a certain age and dwindled to a certain player population, what do you do with it? Do you put it out to pasture, nurture it, or put it down? With some of our older graphical MMOs approaching their 20th anniversaries, the question of what studios should do with aging titles is becoming very important. It's not just important for the games in question but as a precedent to the population of games that will one day become just as old. Lately we've seen different studios act on this topic in a wide variety of ways, all of which I find fascinating. Some of these games have seen tragic ends, while others may be entering into the enjoyable golden years. If nothing else, it's shown me that there isn't just one set answer for this and that some devs are hoping to do the right thing by their companies and their players.
McQuaid: 'Vast majority' of early Vanguard players quit by level two or three
If you can't get enough of the sad saga that is Vanguard, IGN has published an interview with creator Brad McQuaid that might pique your curiosity. There are some interesting nuggets relating to McQuaid's early days as well as the relationship between Sigil and SOE that allowed Vanguard to release, albeit in an early and extremely buggy state. "The game sold very well at retail. Around 250,000 units just blew out of the stores. But the game wasn't optimized, the client wasn't optimized, and the server wasn't optimized," McQuaid explains. "The vast majority of people who played it early on left by the time their characters hit level two or three."
Perfect Ten: MMO features that were hyped but never delivered
Developers like to talk a big game. It's expected, it's encouraged by all parties, and it's part of the fun. When a game or big expansion is coming up, the spokespeople for studios like to hop on stage, grab that mic, and start proselytizing for all they're worth. And while some promises come to fruition, others are various shades of white lies, and still others never come to be at all. These are the features that studios would much rather you forget were mentioned in the first place, although this is the internet and the internet never forgets. Well, players who latch on to everything devs say as absolute truth never forget. Sometimes things happen along the way in development. Studios run out of time to get in all of the features and have to prioritize which make the cut and which do not. Features end up not testing as well as hoped and the studio quietly drops them because the PR hit for the features not going in is much less than the disaster that they might cause. And some developers like to flap their gums and spout brainstorm ideas that send the actual programmers and designers back at the company into spasms of agony when they try to figure out how to make them work. Today let's go through 10 features that were talked up but never delivered in MMOs!
Jukebox Heroes: Elf music
As probably many of you know, I am no fan of the Elven menace. I won't rehash the reasons n this space, but I mention that because I do try to be a fair man. When I'm not trying to eradicate any pointy-eared immortal know-it-all tree-hugger in sight, I have been known to appreciate the Elves' musical culture. That doesn't make me a hypocrite. It just gives me slight pause before ganking the next Drizzt or Legolas. For whatever reason, Elves bring out the magic and talent in MMO composition. Elven themes are quite often among the best that a particular OST has to offer, particularly if you like airy, magical, ethereal tracks that are big on imagination and almost devoid of percussion. I've been noting the trend of excellent Elf music for years and figured I might as well devote a week to it here before going back to my Elf-bashing ways.
