Dev Chat Logs

Vanguard Developer Chat Log

WarCry: Welcome to the Vanguard WarCry Dev Chat. I hope the Spirit of Glorian has been good to you all. We thank you all for stopping by tonight. If you haven't already done so you can send your questions to @[QT]QuestionTaker. General chat is available in #warcry and we will have a log file up shortly after the chat at http://vs.warcry.com.

WarCry: And now onto our honored guests to introduce themselves! w00t!
Ellyra: Hi everyone! I'm Julie "Ellyra" Burness, the Community Representative for Vanguard. I'm thrilled to see so many of you in irc tonight, and cannot wait to see what questions you have for the team!
Head-GM-Moonlite: Hi there! I am Sharon "Moonlite" Morris, Senior Customer Service Manager. I am responsible for all your in-game petitions, and the GM team :) Glad to see you all here tonight!
Phathom: Hello everyone, I am Thom Terrazas, Producer for Vanguard. Thank you for coming. Lets get this chat on the road!
Gebron: Howdee folks! This is Ryan "Gebron the Demented" Elam, hub of blame for Vanguard. It's great to see everyone show up. The frame rate is great in here!
GlipSOE: Hey all, I'm Nick Parkinson, aka the most handsomest production gnome to have ever lived. I'm kinda like a mini-Thom only way cooler. :P
Phathom: cooler as in less hotter
* Head-GM-Moonlite rolls her eyes
GlipSOE: I'm gonna take the high road /nod
Gebron: Nick is so cool, we keep drinks in his office instead of the fridge.
Ellyra: For those of you that read the interview with Nick, you also saw the photo of him "locked" in the fridge.
GlipSOE: I was just testing it out. I could get out whenever I wanted

WarCry: elGrim: I can't be here tonight for the chat... can someone ask them to make flying pigs? That would be a fun mount.
GlipSOE: We need elGrim's contact info so we can hire him on our marketing team. I think they could get behind that :P
Silius: Evening all
Silius: Sorry I am doing a couple of things at once here
Phathom: thats ok... we still love ya
Phathom: :)

WarCry: Tusk: Will the expansions add new levels or AA´s to vanguard? Or will the level cap stay at lvl 50 for some time to come?
Phathom: Currently we do not have an expansion slated that addresses new levels nor AAs. However, we are planning on these items being placed in our development calendar for the next year
Phathom: As far as level caps, we do have the a level increase planned this next calendar year as well.

WarCry: Nemoen: In recent months there has been a push towards attracting a new playerbase for Vanguard's future. With all the focus on attracting new and old players alike, are they any plans in the works for rewarding those of us who have been here since the very beginning and never stopped? Anything unique in game?
GlipSOE: We definitely want to reward players who have been with us for a long time. We've already started handing out veteran rewards with each update and that will only be expanded to include more things in future updates. We've actually got some pretty cool plans on how to give things like veteran rewards for players that you'll start seeing next year. Stay tuned!

WarCry: Toreg: Will group content offer comparable gear/progression to raid dungeons, or will raids be the only means of progresion at end-game?
Gebron: As someone who plays both group and raid content personally, I can definitely understand someone's concern that "raid gear is the only gear". However, what you get from your group experience plus the rare items that crafting can generate definitely supplements any lack of raiding you may do.
Gebron: Most of the upper-eschelon raid gear really helps the raider do more... raiding!

WarCry: Starocotes: Work on diplomacy was susspended for update 3. What have you planed now that update 3 is out and when will we see work on diplomacy started again?
GlipSOE: We did indeed kind of put diplomacy on the side for a little while to focus our attention on the main issues related to Update 3. Its funny you ask that though, because I actually just got out of a meeting before coming to this chat where we were discussing the plan for diplomacy for next year.
GlipSOE: So we absolutely plan to pick it back up (and to be fair, we've been fixing bugs the whole time, so it was never truly put down) and start adding new content. I really don't want to get into too much detail about what that new content will be yet, but I can say that if you're an adventurer or crafter - its stuff that you'll be motivated to do.
GlipSOE: To answer the last part of the question, we'll start serious work on it again when we come back from the holiday break. However, don't expect tons of stuff to go in right away, we'll need to pace ourselves.

WarCry: teviko: will they ever split the RP server back out into its own server again? The merging of non-rp servers with the one and only RP server kinda killed it for us RP'ers
Phathom: It is possible. What that will entail is population increases first. So what we are currently doing to the game is working on promised or unfinished game features as well as optimizations and performance increases.
Phathom: Additionally, we will be putting in new features and will be leveraging our work towards attracting players back with new players. When the populations increase, it will give us the best shot to gain more servers.

WarCry: Hid_Sartok: In the past people were told that an update to Unreal3.0 is possible and could happen in an Expansion, is this still planned ? what would such an update imporve in the game ?
Gebron: As you may have already noticed, there is a big difference between the Unreal 2.0 that you may have played in the past, and the Vanguard engine of today. At this stage, we don't have a pressing need to convert over to Unreal 3.0, but it was never something that we considered "off the table'.
Gebron: Today, with the resources we've gained from SOE, and the talented team of graphics programmers we have on the team now, we are already greatly improving the fidelity and feature set of the graphics features of the game.
Gebron: Check out the Dynamic Weather for a case in point!