Sony Bringing RMT To Vanguard 39
Eurogamer reports that Sony Online Entertainment will be adding the ability to do real money trading to at least some of their Vanguard: Saga of Heroes servers. It's the same service they opened for a pair of Everquest II servers a while back. Quoting:
"The service, offered by Live Gamer, allows players to sell items, currency and characters for real cash through a secure channel, authorised by the game operator. Most real-money trading in MMOs is a 'grey' market that doesn't have the operator's consent. ... Sony Online Entertainment recently said that it had no intention to bring its other real-money trading initiative — the Station Cash item shop — to Vanguard."
Sheer Rumour (Score:3, Informative)
Re:People still play vanguard? (Score:3, Informative)
I was wondering the same.
I played Van when it came out. Now, I've seen many MMO launches, from EaB and DAoC to WoW, but I've rarely seen such a bad one. Population was quite good (and lag absolutely unbearable when more than 5 people were in the same area), but balance was nonexistant (the Cleric of all classes was the overpowered one), 2/3 of the content (i.e. diplomacy and crafting) didn't work at all, broken quests wherever you looked (and some that worked were just braindead, one quest I remember contained an element of steering skill where you had to hop from one broken step on a ladder to the next or fall to a fiery death... mix with unbearable lag and questionable collision detection and you know how much fun that was). And so on.
I quitted after about 2 months, and seemingly I was anything but the first person to go considering how empty it quickly felt. I can do battle in other MMOs, and the "unique content" of Van simply didn't work.
Last year, I was invited back to see the changes. The game was dumbed down to cater to the WoW crowd, crafting was possible but utterly pointless (so much for the "choice of career"), diplomacy had gotten an overhaul (from not working to broken). When my warrior couldn't do his class quest I was told by support to go once around the world to the other trainer that would teach me (a trainer that's "hostile" towards me... without a chance to change that because the mobs I'd have to slaughter to change that can't be reached at my measly level 10). Little surprise, the two weeks of free time was all I used before I went away again.
And during the time I found actually a group. One. For about 3 hours. We went into some dungeon where I, as a Cleric (no, I didn't create it because it was overpowered at the start, I always play healer classes) spent more time casting offense spells rather than healing. It was simply unnecessary. Thinking back, I could have done the dungeon possibly alone, slower maybe, but if we went in alone, not as a group, it would not have made a huge difference.
Tell me again why I should play this game?