Recently I had a chance to chat with a Vanguard player who was not only not ashamed of playing a game whose name makes many of us cringe, but who's actually really excited and involved in the community that she shares. Many of you may find her enthusiasm misplaced. The rest of us understand finding an MMO home that few relate to! It is to those people I say: "Embrace a fellow crazy person! She's here to stay!"

Vendolyn plays solely on the Seradon server, though she freely admits she has alt-itis. She plays a different character depending on what she's looking to do in game. Grouping and soloing bring out her different characters, and therefore different appeals for her, though she notes that Vanguard's skill system does not require this for succeeding in the world, it's just a personal preference. This was a shock to me because I'd always heard (and believed without merit apparently) that Vanguard was looking for the "hard core" player who would have to group to succeed. Apparently this was true back at the beginning of the design cycle and while it turned many players away from paying more attention to the game as development progressed, it quickly became clear to the designers that such a system was not being embraced well throughout the community. If only that were their only mistake. So I asked how the game responded now, to such accusations. "I don't think it's overly difficult. I played EQ for 6 or 7 years. That was hard! Vanguard's difficulty, I'd rate slightly above EQ2. It's still super easy to level and there's so much content that you can solo to 50 if you chose. You can also choose to level to 50 in one of the other spheres without killing anything. There are also nice quest lines that offer pretty good rewards set at group-level difficulty."

On May 13th Allakhazam posted an interview conducted with Thom Terrazas, a Producer on the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes team. In this interview Thom discussed the changes that have been made to the performance of Vanguard. He stated that the changes to the game’s optimization are night and day compared to the launch product, going so far as to say “I’ll even flag your account for free for a period of time if you want to go in and prove me wrong.” I decided that I’d take Thom up on this offer.

My first task was to contact SOE to see if indeed this claim would be backed up. I submitted a ticket to customer service, citing the article on Allakhazam and what Mr. Terrazas had said. Within a few hours I received an update to my ticket saying that customer service would indeed honor Thom’s word and grant me a 3 day flag to play the game again. After a quick email back confirming my Station account info I was granted my access.