OVERVIEW: 

Vanguard Saga of Heroes is a new MMORPG from Sigil Games Online. Sigil Games includes many of the people responsible for the first EverQuest.

Originally Vanguard was designed to cater to the more HardCore MMORPG crowd. Since EQ came out many gamers have found all the newer MMORPGs to be too easy, with too fast of leveling and not enough difficulty. These gamers went from game to game hoping to find one that is challenging and could hold their interest for a few years.

Vanguard was designed to give these gamers a home. Rather than opt for an easy game with little feeling of reward or accomplishment, Vanguard hoped to add challenge back into MMORPGs and make a players successes have meaning. A difficult game causes one to feel more attached to ones character.

Over beta, Vanguard has drifted away from its original design. It has added easiness and a bit faster leveling than originally planned. The success of WoW has filtered throughout the MMORPG industry. Hopefully Vanguard can stick to its guns and make a home for those who want challenge rather than fast rewards.

Vanguard takes place on a world called Telon. Telon is divided into 3 areas, Thestra, Qalia, and Kojan. Each area is home to 5 or 6 different player races and has its own theme. The newbie experience is replicated across many starting cities. As such, a large portion of the world is devoted to low level content.

Vanguard is a typical fantasy based MMORPG. Players choose one of 15 different classes, such as Monks, Paladins, and Sorcerors. It includes about 19 different races, each with their own racial abilities. Vanguard also contains 3 additional spheres, Crafting, Diplomacy, and Harvesting. As such there are many ways to spend ones time in Telon.

Vanguard is a group centric game. Grouping is encouraged. A nice MMORPG advancement is group harvesting. The more people who share in the harvesting, the more resources are gathered. Most Dungeons shall require a group if at the appropriate level.

CHARACTER CREATION:

Vanguard has extensive customization of Character models. Players can modify the arm thickness, nose length, bust size and lift, fatness, eye slant, ear height, and many other tweaks. Facial base options and hair styles are limited, but overall the customization is very good and on par with the best of the MMOGs. You can't look as cool as City of Heroes, but the characters turn out better than EQ2s racial clones.

RACES: 

Vanguard ships with 19 races, including Gnomes, Dwarfs, Wood Elfs, Dark Elfs, many differing Humans, Half Giants, and more. They also ship with 3 animal related races, the catlike Kurashasa, the small fox like Raki, and the wolfen Vulmane. None of these have an option for a tail.

Each race has its own racial advantage. Luckily the racial advantages are fairly powerful. We have seen games where the racial advantages were weak, and they were non fun. Some races get group buffs, while others get AoE snares and things. All of them seemed desireable.

Typically 1 or 2 races share an initial starting city. The Raki and the Wood Elves are at home in the Trees. The Kurashasa are actually interdimensional travelers, new to the planet. The Halflings have a traditional hobbit city with round doors and brownies and bees. All the parts of the world are unique feeling and quite fleshed out. It is a good experience. To enjoy the game fully, one should partake in Diplomacy to get all the lore of the land. It is excellent.

CLASSES: 

Vanguard ships with an initial 15 classes, and the promise of a couple more to come shortly. Vanguard is not ARAC (all races all classes). Ones race determines which classes are available. There are no Half Giant Psionicists, for example.

In an effort to reduce unbalance, Sigil divided the 16 classes into 4 archetypes. Each member of an Archetype is supposed to perform its role just as well as the others. The 4 archetypes are Protective Fighters, Offensive Melee, Offensive Casters, and Healers. We have played games with an archetype system before and they have been no fun. In the past they have reduced the amount of classes effectively down to 4 instead of 12 or 16. Luckily Vanguard has not fallen into this error. Each class plays quite differently from the next. And each class is quite cool.

Vanguard is a game of moderate strength, not weakness. The powers each character gets are potent and effective. For example, the Psionicist gets a Mez at low level, but it is not only a mez, but also a 10% slow, and a 60% snare after the mez portion wears off. This is quite nice. Other games have tried to make powers very weak in order to have balance. Vanguard gives us what we want, strong powers that we know are useful.

The classes all play very differently from each other. A Bard makes their own songs out of song components. Each Bard potentially has their own personal roster of songs that they play. Unfortunately there are not yet enough song components to fullfill this promise, but hopefully in the future each Bard can be more unique. Psionicists on the other hand get a normal set of spells and are typical Blasters with crowd control. They also get a group mind spell which lets all Psionicists with the ability active talk to each other in their own chat channel (and get a Mana buff to boot). Monks are melee specialists. In order to use their monk abilities they need to build up Jin, by using some of their more basic attacks. Get enough Jin and you can launch some devastating blows. Disciples are healers based upon martial arts. Their damage output is minimal, but they are quite proficient at healing. All in all, each class is Unique and quite interesting to play.