Vanguard

Although I don’t play computer games as often as I used to, the urge still comes and goes (seems it’s either games or motorcycles). These days I like single-player FPS’s, like Portal, the Half Life Series, and Crysis.

But I’ve also spent lots of time in MMORPGs. I played Asherons Call for a long time, years ago. Then some of my friends tried Dark Age of Camelot so I joined as well… but gave up after a couple of weeks. I’ve flirted with the 900-pound gorilla of the market: World of Warcraft (aka “WoW”), but gave up after 2 tries. Now I’m trying a new one: Vanguard:

Compared to WoW it lacks polish and players (I bet one WoW instance has more players than all 4 Vanguard servers).. but it does look nice (when you’re not experiencing strange performance issues). It has a complex crafting and diplomacy system that takes some getting used to: but right now adventuring and crafting have drawn me it.

Oh, and you get to fly fairly early in the game ! 🙂

Actual you-take-off-and-land and you-control-where-you-go flying, not like the WOW flying-on-rails transport systems. Yes, if you want a general-purpose flying mount of your own it’s going to take some grinding. But I think it’s a fantastic idea to let new players get up off the ground early in their virtual lives. So Vanguard is where I’ll be spending my spare time in the near future 🙂