Journeys with Jaye

Vanguard News. Yay.

Boy am I glad that tomorrow I’m going to my happy place. The timing could not be better after the latest news from Vanguard.

Here is the official announcement. Cut to the chase – Hasium is gone, and PhAtHoM is in. Yes, that’s how he spells it. Every time I see it all I can think of is that scene from L.A. Story – “Big C, small a, small n, big D small e big E…” I just hope he’s been a fast learner since he first introduced himself to the Vanguard community.

Top it off, Aruspex is gone too. What a big effing buzzkill. I can only assume this means that diplomacy wasn’t popular ($) enough to keep around. Last week, there was some news that future diplomacy development was suspended, and those concerns were allayed by the fact that Aruspex and his team were moving over to work on putting in the optimized NPCs, and that they would return after that was done. Now both Aruspex, and the guy who posted that, are gone.

Vanguard is a game that *literally* has layers of content still buried under pixelated mountains. But as the team shrinks, and the original faces leave, the chances of seeing that content diminish as well.

For me right now, this feels like EQ’s Plane of Mischief all over again, only on a much larger scale. Sure, PoM had a lot of flaws and broken quests, but it had a really tight and cozy community of players who had devoted their time exclusively to this zone. The hope was always that there would be some polish put on the quirky, broken, quests. Instead, it was turned into a cookie cutter, bland, easy-to-reach revamped zone that was far less popular than the original version. My fear is that this will happen on a gamewide level here in Vanguard. I’m sure many will say this has already been done.

Personally, I expected that things would be more or less quiet until the end of the year, when the planned PR campaign for Vanguard would kick off. The fact that this happened, in October, just a day before GU #3, and a week after Cylus announced his departure, well, how the heck do you put a positive spin on that?

What really kicks me is that I finally reached a zen-like state in running a guild, and yet there’s non stop drama from the top of the game. Rich.

Someday, somewhere, someone needs to seriously write a book about all of this. Seriously. Until then, I’ll head over to Silky Venom over my morning coffee and bemoan the fact that yet another dev on the tracker no longer works for the Vanguard team.

On a positive note, I bought a new gaming system. I guess upgrading my computer is my version of the whole “eat a pint of ice cream” reaction to the news. Pricey, I know, but fewer calories.

Bring back the puppets god dammit.

Beach time.

Posted by jayernh under Archive | Comments (3)