Vanguard: Saga of Heroes has impressive showing at E3

Sigil Games Online may have recently split from Microsoft after purchasing the publishing rights form the large corporation; the team was running at full force for this year's E3. Sigil was displaying a good amount of passion for their game and seemed to be pretty excited to provide us with information during the Affiliate Demo they held.

While at the demo, we were able to see the game in action with Jeff Butler and Brad McQuaid at the helm as they guided us through various aspects of Vanguard.

The demo started with a look at the character creation for the game. Sigil has promised an in-depth character creation system, and it seems as if they have delivered. For those players who really like to customize their characters, they should be able to draw a lot of enjoyment out of the process. According to the developers, they've been able to recreate the look of just about everyone they've tried in the game-even some classic fantasy characters and celebrities (lets just hope players don't try that to much). Also, not only will players be able to change their faces, but many aspects of the overall body as well.

To give some examples of the character creation, as the player can change characteristics of the ears, a player would be able to give a larger tuft to the ear of a Halfling, making them stick out a bit more for that more 'Tolkien-esque,' hobbit look. With a Vulmane (wolf-man) character, a player would be able to alter the cranium to create a more wolf-like mane, elongate the nose, increase the size of the ears, tilt them outwards and arc them down to create a much more feral look. All NPCs are also capable of this customization and will vary a great deal in looks.

Travel is being stressed with its importance in Vanguard. The world is quite large and there is no instant teleportation. Mounts can be gained at fairly early levels, but the demo gave a much deeper insight into mounts than Sigil has released before.

Horses, the main mounts that have been discussed before, come in multiple varieties. We were shown a horse with leather armor-and it was mentioned that a variation of that horse would be similar to an epic mount for a light-fighting class. Along with that, we were shown a plate-armored horse and a horse that was not equipped with armor, but was currently the fastest horse in the beta version of the game for players.

Yet, while the standard horses were pretty interesting, we learned that there would be a number of other varieties, such as Unicorns, undead, zombie-like horses, armored undead horses, skeletal horses, hell hounds, worgs, wolves, cats, and much more. Many creatures found in the game can potentially become mounts if it looks like you could ride them.

Not only will there be ground based mounts, but Sigil is looking at aquatic mounts such as dolphins and sharks, and they currently have flying mounts for higher level characters.

After taking a look at the mounts, Sigil displayed the player housing. As of now, according to Jeff, as far as permission lists, paying upkeep and everything related to that, along with decoration and object placement, already far exceeds what is capable in Star Wars Galaxies. For anyone who has played that game, this news should come as a pretty big shock. From what was shown at the demo, it seems as if they might be truthful in that statement.

Players can keep multiple permission lists for their houses for easy changes. For example, if a player wanted to run a bar in his house-done through RP-they can keep a permission list for themselves and their employees, allowing them to move objects around. However, at a certain time of the day, they can 'close up' and limit access to a much more limited group, and can even set permissions on the door-preventing people from access, even if they are on another list. These lists can currently be loaded and unloaded quickly and easily, but in the future the team would like to see an automated change, based on time. Thus, if a player knew they would be offline, they would be able to have their house lock at that specific time.

When placing objects in a house, the interface is pretty similar to EverQuest 2's, although a bit smoother looking. The object can be moved around the home and stacked on top of other objects. A player can even place objects on the various different shelves of a bookshelf. Also, when an object is placed, the mouse wheel allows the player to rotate the object, although when holding alt, they can change the latitude, and while holding control, they can spin it-meaning not only can they rotate a cup, but also lay it on its side, or turn it upside down. Every item has full 3D capability for positioning and the system seems very fluid.

Houses can be filled with a wide array of furniture and items. Merchants can place items that they sell on display, chests can also be placed in homes, providing extra storage space for players, adventurers can display trophies from battles can also be displayed in homes-in fact, when this was stated PvP came up and it almost seemed as if it were hinted that there might be lootable corpses on a PvP server, but that is far from any official announcement and may have just been idle chatter.

There are different lots where houses can be placed. A player can put down a building on these lots-although players are only allowed one building each-and each lot can allow different types of houses. For example, during the demo a lot was shown that allowed a certain type of building to be placed, in this case, it was a guard tower. Many lots will only a wide variety of buildings while others may allow only a few.

Guard towers in themselves are interesting in that they spawn guards for the player town. These guards can defend the town from mobs and also from other players for the PvP based servers.

Creating houses will not necessarily be a simple matter. It will require a combined effort of numerous crafting disciplines to create all of the materials needed for the final product of a house.

Once again, as travel is very important to Vanguard, Sigil spent more time discussing methods of travel. While they showed mounts earlier, they also showed ship travel at the demo. These ships do not run on rails and the players are free to control them while in the seas. There are multiple different kinds of boats, some which are built to stick more around the coastlines, while others are capable of deeper sea travel. Each of the three different continents have their own styles of ships based on their cultural style as well. On top of that, the ships are also customizable in their looks as well.

Ship travel, like several other systems in the game, such as spell casting, depends in part on the weather. The wind direction can prevent ships from traveling in certain directions or aid them in movement. Wind seemed to play a pretty important roll when navigating the ship.

As for the weather systems themselves, the weather is dynamic and realistic in movements. Storm systems will move over the land. A player could watch as a storm rolled into their vicinity and then watch as it moved on. In fact, if they wanted and could travel at the same speed as the storm, they could follow it across the lands. While traveling it may start as rain, but as the storm moved into the mountains, it would become snow. The weather system sounds and looks very realistic and very impressive.

The world itself is very big, but it doesn't seem to suffer much from looking to plain. While the world is large and seamless, Sigil has areas that react with different fog colors, different lighting effects, which almost creates the feeling of different zones with different looks, but within a fully seamless environment. To show some examples of this, we were shown the outside of a dungeon area, which had a menacing green fog and lighting effects, almost like a poisoned look in the air, compared to other areas we saw that were more natural looking.

Players do not have to worry about not seeing areas such as those until later levels only. Sigil wants to provide interesting looking areas to players across the full level range. As low as level 15, players should be able to visit visually interesting places for them to explore and fight in. However, players might want to be careful as the game doesn't provide 'easy cons', meaning that when you select a creature, it won't right out show how strong it is compared to you, but just whether or not it will agro you.

While exploring one of the dungeons in the game, a Necromancer's pet was stumbled across-a freakish looking abomination that changes based on body parts that the Necromancer pieces together from the corpses of other creatures, causing it to change forms. Different body parts unlock vastly different abilities for the creature to use as the Necromancer builds it up over time, switching out parts for new ones.

Sigil has a big focus on community, and largely in keeping friends together. The next wave of beta will be focusing on bringing in people who know each other-segments of guilds, for example. However, as a way to get people together in groups, Vanguard will be featuring its own 'matchmaking service' as part of its elaborate LFG system, allowing players to meet up with other players with similar interests to hang out and group with.

Even while they might be co-publishing with Sony-not bought out as common misconception-Vanguard will not be partaking in the Station Exchange, although it will be featured on the Station Pass.

Visually the game is very impressive looking: the animations are smooth, trees blow in the wind, great lighting effects, and impressive modeling. The world contains some fantastic looking environments and very interesting monsters filling them as well.

Vanguard is set to release this winter and should provide fans of MMORPGs with a very solid and exciting option.