Vanguard: Saga of Heroes was designed to be the anti-World of Warcraft, a hardcore wonderland of endless exploration and adventure. Unfortunately, the resulting product was a colossal mess, a stew of decent to great ideas wrapped in epic-level bugs and a world that felt shallow and empty.
The biggest problem, naturally, was the game's technical issues. Creator Brad McQuaid himself admitted that the game was released early for "financial reasons" which forced early adopters of Vanguard to pay for what was essentially an early beta test. As in any beta, the game was plagued with graphical issues (headgear and helmets weren't finished at release, trees would flicker), crashes, character appearance issues, equipment that would fluctuate at every log-in and much more.
Worse, the world's enormous size made the problem of minimal and rather boring content even worse. Bad enough to follow the most generic "kill 10 X and brings me 20 heads" quests, but the game forced players to traipse through repetitive and empty wilderness for 15 minutes for the privilege. Unfortunately, while the game has improved since then (thanks to the diligent work of the folks at SOE who took over when most of the original staff was fired en masse in the Sigil parking lot), Vanguard never really recovered from its poor launch resulting in a huge world that's far too big for its fairly small population.
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes or Hellgate: London, which do you like better? Are both of them biggest disappointment of 2007? or do you have any other idea about the disappointing game of last year? Share your opinion to us.
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