CHAT: 

Chat in Vanguard is fairly nice. Vanguard does not have voice chat, chat moods, in-game languages, or automatic Chat Animations, but it is quite well done.

One can set up and join custom made global channels like "Craft" or "Bard" or whatever the players want to create. Built-in Chat Channels are quite numerous and each region has its own chat, accessed by /ooc.

Vanguard includes the newer /NickName slash command. NickName is great in that it lets each player make up nicknames for other players. So if someones name is "Illigorienne" one can type in:

/nickname ill illigorienne

Then they can thereafter type in

/tell ill Dude, your name is too hard to type.

Each NickName is created by the user for other players. One persons NickName list shall be different from anyone elses.

Vanguard has a wide assortment of Slash Commands such as /ttd which sends a /tell to your defensive target and /cancelability which stops you from Evacing when you accidently pressed the wrong hotkey.

Hyperlinking of items is possible but it is not intuitive. Vanguard does not implement drag and drop hyperlinking and instead player must Shift Click to get an item HyperLinked in chat.

Vangaurd includes a full slew of animated Emotes.

GUI: 

The GUI of Vanguard is fairly nice and full featured. Players can make as many chat windows as they want and assign different chat channels to each. Each channel can be color coded as the user desires.

A maximum of 5 hotbars can be onscreen at once. 3 of the Hotbars can have their abilities tied to keyboard commands (1 - 0 plus - and = keys).

Players can move around most all UI components and can adjust chat window sizes. Chat Windows are tabbed by default, but the tabs can be dragged off to make a new chat window.

Vanguard includes a Mini-Map and a full scale map. These maps are rudimentary and do not allow for player notation.

The compass in Vanguard includes a small waypoint finder as a red line in the compass to lead you to your destination.

Inventory and Character sheet information is fairly basic and uninspired.

Vanguard allows players to make hotkey macros out of most any Slash Command. Each macro can have multiple commands in it (although there are a few limits). Macros cannot contain any timing information. But the macroing is fairly powerful. One can make a macro to equip multiple items in one key press. A bard can make a macro to equip his drum and start up his Run Song.

Vanguard ships with all the basic Slash Commands such as /follow, /assist, and /loc, as well as many other Vanguard specific commands. % macros include %to and %td which expand to your offensive and defensive targets respectively.

GRAPHICS: 

The graphics of Vanguard are excellent. You shall need a fairly modern video card in order to run Vanguard. A Geforce 4 is not supported and older cards may have trouble with framerates.

Character Models are quite nice and monsters look very good. The world itself is beautiful and varied. Underwater environments are quite well done. We look forward to finding some underwater dungeons.

Particle effects are normal for the genre but overall the graphics are top-notch.

ITEMS: 

Vanguard is designed to be an item centric game. So far we have not seen many cool items and the gear seems fairly generic. Activated wands hit for 10% of the damage of a spell, for example, and are too weak to consider using, though they can be macroed to fire at the same time as ones spell. At lower levels no items seem to really inspire us and make us want to get them.

Horses and horse shoes are cool though. Running fast is always of great benefit.  High Level Gryphon mounts look great. 

Armor and clothing look excellent and varied. But their stat boosts seem uninspiring.

Vanguard has implemented item decay. Item decay is no fun. Maybe good for the long term to help keep items from accumulating over time, but typically item decay is just a nuisance to the player base.

Items come in a few power levels, from common mundane items to the Rare drops from boss mobs.

Higher level items can be utilized by lower level characters to a degree. This allows for a small bit of twinking, but nothing overboard. Each character has a limited pool of twinkability and an item that is too high would consume all of this pool and be unusable.