Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Rant

Occasionally a game really rubs a person the wrong way and they feel the need to share it with the rest of us. Such is the case with Elysium over at Gamers With Jobs, who has written a rather scathing "anti-review" of Vanguard where he lambastes the new MMORPG for being released too early. Although it's pretty harsh, he states outright that it's not a review and he doesn't intend it to be a complete examination of the game.

Elysium makes a few good points, but I'm not convinced that simply denying that your critique is a review gives you free license to make unfair comments about the game. To say that Vanguard sets a precedent for premature MMORPG launches is a stretch when you consider that most games in the genre have rough launches, and none of them ever seem "finished" or "complete" even years after release. Take World of Warcraft for example. Low to mid-level PvE was nicely polished at launch, but there wasn't much end-game content, no Battlegrounds, no Honor system, and no persistent PvP objectives. PvP fans had plenty of reasons to complain that it was launched too early, and yet the game received great reviews.

I've spent some time with Vanguard, and it does have issues, but I certainly wouldn't consider it unplayable. While another six months of development would have been terrific, and another year would have been better still, that apparently wasn't an option. In my estimation, even in its current state it could be a good choice for people with recent computers that preferred EverQuest to World of Warcraft. They might be a minority, but they deserve a sensible evaluation of the game. Mercilessly bashing the game because it doesn't suit your tastes, and then excusing yourself by saying that it's not a "review" is a bit of a cop out in my opinion. Perhaps the article should have been called "Why Elysium Hates Vanguard." (Thanks Slashdot.)

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