Vanguard previews

With the Vanguard NDA just having been lifted, I'm not the only one to have blogged his first beta impressions. Van Hemlock has a list of links to Vanguard previews. He is also complaining that there is too little beta testing going on in a beta test, which is certainly true, but not something I tend to get angry about. A beta test doesn't just need people trying exotic things, but also a large number of average players just doing what they would do in a real game, and just reporting the bugs that stopped them from doing normal stuff. Van Hemlock proposes to ask "What happens if I try to combine my crafting kit with that Paladin Trainer while I'm a ghost?", but even if something bad happened when you do, it wouldn't be high on the list of things to fix.

I reported a couple of bugs in the Vanguard beta: a spell description saying my spell dealt 419 points of damage, when in fact it was only around 50; a quest which was impossible to finish because you didn't get the quest item when you should have gotten it; and the fact that the boat didn't show up in 40 minutes of waiting. Broken quests, and especially broken public transport, are a lot more serious than obscure situations, unless of course the obscure situation leads to a duping bug. So if most Vanguard beta players do like me and just play and report the important bugs, it does already a lot of good.

And while companies *call* it a beta test, I doubt they aren't aware of the marketing implications. Open betas are part of the marketing strategy of any new game nowadays, not unlike free trials. At the very least it allows the company to measure interest in the product, and do some sort of server stress test, even if not a single bug is reported.

Anyway, Van Hemlock also writes a passages I couldn't agree with more: "Personally, I always knew that Vanguard wasn't going to be for me. I'd done my time on the grind, I've played 2000-era EverQuest 1 for my crimes, and feel that my debt to society has well and truly been repaid. I'm here for the EZ-mode, and don't care who knows it. Any game looking to differentiate itself from World of Warcraft by being more difficult, is probably not something I'd enjoy nowadays. Still, I'm old, bitter and twisted - there's millions of youngsters who have only ever known WoW, and it's good that they have the option of 'Challenging' if they want. Whether that actually turns out to be 'Challenging', or merely 'Frustrating' is another matter." Makes me want to write a blog post about the concept of "challenging". I'll probably do it sometimes this week.

Finally, although the link is in Van Hemlock's post, I'm linking to The Common Sense Gamer's Vanguard preview here too, because it is well written and comprehensive. Read it.