Vanguard Review: The Evolutionary...

As did Blizzard with World of Warcraft, it's clear that the Vanguard design team studied how previous games have done things, and improved on them wherever possible. But, just because Vanguard implements all the standards doesn't mean there's nothing new. Even with similarities, there are several areas where Vanguard has tweaked the formula enough to take particular note.

One major aspect is in character development. Like in EverQuest II, crafting has been split off from combat progression into a completely independent progression path. For each of these paths, every character maintains a completely different set of equipment, one which impacts only those character actions. There are also three other sets of equipment - harvesting, player mounts and their accessories, and the completely new diplomacy (which I'll get into more later). All are worn simultaneously, and are switched to automatically whenever needed.

The crafting process itself has also been significantly improved. For virtually every MMORPG with a crafting system to date, advancement means hours and hours of churning out worthless items, usually at a financial loss. Vanguard has taken a different approach by providing crafting taskmasters that provide crafting missions. These missions provide limited use, material-free recipes to the crafter, and when completed provide experience, coin, and random item rewards. This moves level progression away from item creation, which is limited to more valuable items, and makes crafting a self-sufficient character option.

Within its character progression, Vanguard still isn't a purely class/level-based system. Taking a page from Ultima Online, each individual ability advances separately through use, and the total is capped (though by skill group, and not as a total). As an example, a character might have 3 different possible crafting skills that are capable of reaching 90 points each, but only have a total of 200 skill points available to distribute between them (both caps will increase by some degree every level). Using controls in the character skills section, a player can set different skills to increase or decay to get where they want to be, but it's impossible for a player to maximize each ability they have access to. At some point, all characters need to specialize, even within their chosen profession.

Mounts also have their own unique twist. First, unlike most modern games they're no longer considered a luxury - all players can obtain a mount for free at 10th level and will continue to quest for or buy upgraded mounts as they progress. Players can also upgrade their mounts with saddlebags, which act as an additional inventory container, horseshoes, barding and other riding accessories. Like World of Warcraft, at high levels players can also obtain a variety of flying mounts.