All of Vanguard’s character models are being scrapped in favour of the EQII ones, while the world geometry will be handled by the Vanguard engine. While light on details, the press release did state that some of the mechanics will obviously have to change in order to meld the two games together, most notably a consolidation of classes. However, the majority of the content will remain untouched, aside from the engine changes.

The press release stated that no additional purchase will be required by current subscribers to EQII or Vanguard, and the content will be pushed down through multiple, smaller patches as the “go-live” date approaches. The release date wasn’t specified, although it was said an in-game world event will commence sometime in the fall of 2008. It’s assumed the world event will help explain how the worlds of Norrath and Telon will become one.

Obviously I wish I could tell you more, but there really was not a lot of detail in the press release. To say I’m excited for this change would be an understatement. I was always really impressed with the world in Vanguard and often wondered to myself what it would be like to see a seamless EverQuest II world. The logistics of this announcement are mind-boggling, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s the hard working people at SOE. I can’t wait, but until then, enjoy April 1st.

In one of the trials I was teleported to the top of a very high mountain overlooking Tanvu, and was supposed to talk with a Lao’Jin master, Master Chuun.  The view from the top of the mountain was incredible so I just had to look around and perhaps grab a screenshot or two before speaking with the Master.  I could almost see the entire island from where I was, including the city of Tanvu far below.  I inched my way closer to the edge of the mountain for a better look, but I apparently inched a little too far forward as I fell off the edge and began plummeting towards the ground below.  I uttered an “oh crap” but just then my quest updated with a ding and I successfully completed Chuun’s trial.  I never did speak to him, so I’ll just assume his trial was going to ask me to put my faith in Jin and jump off the mountain.

A little later on, while walking around doing some quests near Magi Hold, I came across Kagero Skyhoof, Pegasus Master.  After talking with her I learned that I could rent a Pegasus for ten minutes at a cost of ten silver.  I did a quick inventory check to find that I had 22 silver, and 98 copper to my name.  Ten silver was feeling like a lot of money, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

The ten minutes literally flew by, pun intended.  I ended up flying south to Ca’ial Brael and saw some pretty cool stuff along the way such as Jalen’s Crossing, the giant bridge pictured.  The ten minutes expired just as I was flying over Ca’ial Brael which is a gorgeous looking city.

I then headed west from Ca’ial Brael to Tawar Galan which is right on the coast.  I found a mount vendor nearby and decided to spend what little money I had left on a Young Dusky Brown Horse which left me with four copper in my pockets.  I had a long journey back to Tanvu though, so I figured it’d be worth it.  Hey, who doesn’t like having a horse?  The horse I bought is the slowest one available, but it’s still pretty cool trotting around on a horse.  I made my way back to Jalen’s Crossing where I found a teleporter which zapped me back to Tanvu which is right where I needed to be for my next set of quests.  I happened to see in the out of character chat that at around level fifteen or so I may be ready to explore some of the other continents, so I’m looking forward to that.  I may even get brave enough in the coming days to try grouping, but I’ll have to see, because I still feel like a complete noob in this game.

I didn’t spend too much time with the character customization.  I actually liked the pre-generated look that came up by default.  I changed a few sliders here and there, but I wasn’t too worried about the look of my guy.  I spent more time thinking of the name, Qae Zhynn, which ultimately came out sounding like a spice.  Ah well.

With all that done, I soon found myself on the shores of a small island amidst an invasion on nearby Shang Village by the Imperial Army.  As a member of the invading army, my first quest was to boost the morale of some fellow soldiers who were having morality issues with the fact that the village was comprised of just women and children and weren’t carrying out their orders.  It didn’t take long to discover that I was heading down a bad path, blindly following orders without thinking of the consequences.  A few quests down the road I was tasked with killing Master Fhungusu, the leader of Shang Village.  I became a little concerned when I saw he was level 50, slightly over my head as a level 2 character.  It turns out he foresaw my coming, and he reached out to my character, telling me it was time to be born again.  I was instantly teleported miles away from Shang Village to Dellerjuba, where my road to redemption was to begin.

I quite enjoyed this opening experience; it felt very dynamic.  It was neat to see non-player characters running around, fighting; for once I didn’t feel like I was all by myself.  It was also nice to know that this is just one starting experience among many, based on which race you choose. 

I’m still in awe over the world of Telon.  The world graphics are great, and I haven’t had any performance issues at all.  I’m currently playing with my settings on medium which looks just fine, and performs just as well.  I’ve even run around a bit with all the settings at max which looks even better and is still decently playable.  There has definitely been some optimization done since the beta period.

Before I get into some of the things that I thought were really cool, I have a few issues that jumped out at me.  Remember, this is only after two hours or so of playing.  First, the font over characters’ heads is butt ugly.  It’s so incredibly plain that it stands out, and I find it to be quite jarring.  Secondly, I can’t stand the targeting reticule.  It just seems so big and stupid looking.  I’d prefer it if it was just a flat circle around the target, rather than the three dimensional monstrosity that it is now.  Finally, some of the character animations are crap, plain and simple, especially while swimming.  I’ve heard that the character models are going to be revamped, which is sorely needed, because they don’t fit with the gorgeous looking world.

Here I go again about the world of Vanguard, which I think is top notch.  It was what sold me on Vanguard in the first place, back during the last hour of beta when I got to fly around Qalia.  This is the closest I’ve seen an MMO come to creating a play space that feels like an actual world.  What I wouldn’t give for a flying mount now…

Next, there was something awe-inspiring standing by the shore and seeing a player-made boat float down the river.  It’s hard to explain, but it definitely served as a “cooooooool!” moment for me.  That’s just another thing to strive for I guess, but at this point I have no idea what it would take to get one.

So after just a short time with the game, currently sitting at level six, I must say I’m enjoying it a fair bit.  Of course, it’s pretty hard to get bored of an MMO this early in to it, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

I’ve outlined my decreasing interest in EQ2 in a few earlier posts.  The long and short of it is I just don’t have the time to play it any more.  I don’t have the time to dedicate to leveling my characters up to 80, nor was I finding that process all that fun.  There’s just something about RoK that killed the experience for me.  To prevent myself from typing fifty pages worth of stuff about the subject, I’ll just say that the move to solo questing in RoK put the final nail in the coffin for me.  When I was max level at 70, it was easy to log in, join a group and hit an instance for two hours then log out.  I just didn’t find that experience in RoK, and it didn’t take long for all those solo quests to get really boring for me.  Again, I don’t want to go into too much detail about it because it’s been outlined here before and on a few other blogs.  I have no doubt at all that at some point I’ll return to EQ2, just not for a while.

With that said, why Vanguard?  Obviously the whole lack of time issue will still apply, but this is a new game to me (aside from my short experience in the beta), and the world will be all new to me as well.  The thing I like most about MMORPGS is exploring the world, and from a “world” viewpoint, I’ll argue that Vanguard has one of the best.  The other reason for giving Vanguard a shot is because I bought the game for $60 way back when and hadn’t even installed it.  If I’m going to spend that much on something, I may as well use it.  So I figured I’d give it a play for the initial 30 day trial period and then reevaluate after that time.  I’m leaning towards taking a break from MMOs altogether for a while, so Vanguard’s going to really have to knock my socks off for me to continue the subscription.

For the thirty days of Vanguard, my only goals are to have fun and enjoy the experience.  I’m not going to take it seriously.  I haven’t consulted any web sites to check which race is best suited to which class, which stats I’ll need to work on, etc.  I just selected a race and class that sounded interesting to me, and I have to say, this game has a lot of interesting sounding classes.  I haven’t checked any forums to see which classes are “good” or “bad” but just from reading the class descriptions in game I feel that Vanguard has some of the coolest sounding classes that I’ve seen in any game.  I chose the Disciple because I liked the sound of a monk type fighter that can heal.  I’m hoping it’ll serve me well as a solo’er.  I have no plans to join any guilds, and will spend most of my time on my own, so the solo-ability will be important.  I’ve also decided I’m going to read all the quest text I come across, and do all the quests without consulting any online databases.  I think I ruined a lot of the EQ2 experience by just rounding up all the quests I could find and then using EQ2 Wiki to blast through them as quickly as possible, so that will be strictly forbidden.

With all that said, I’ll try to post my initial impressions of the game within a day or two.  I will say though, that after just an hour or two of playing, I’m really enjoying the change; it’s very refreshing.  Anyway, more details to come!