Ten Ton Hammer's Danny "Ralsu" Gourley is always looking for a quality free-to-play (F2P) game. In this week's Top Ten Free-to-Play Games, he says it's apparent he isn't the only one:
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F2P gamers, our day has arrived. In the past week, as many as four F2P games have appeared in The Pulse, sending a clear message that F2P is here to stay. Games from this Top Ten list (including Atlantia Online, Dungeon Runners, Mabinogi, and Runes of Magic) have ranked higher than subscription-based games like EverQuest 2, Vanguard, EVE Online, and Tabula Rasa.
Show me one game that has the sheer depth of exploration opportunities and depth of different character classes as Vanguard and I might be willing to give it a shot.
For those that don't believe me, download the free trial and see for yourselves!
Perfect world is about on par with vanguard. personally i feel vanguard is way WAY too easy (that and tomb stone dragging is just the sissy way to get things done). PW can actually compete with it visually though and there isn't really THAT much creativity in the vanguard classes..unless paladins and shamen are something new to you (compare to venomancer).
a pal and i tried cronous last year, and all i can say is good luck with that. i would rather play R.O.S.E. online with all its flaws (example of said flaws: 0 npc text while playing under vista) than do cronous again.
unless paladins and shamen are something new to you
Perhaps I should have been more specific in that all 15 classes have a unique feel to themselves. For example, there are 4 arcane caster classes (Necromancer, Psionicist, Druid, and Sorcerer), yet they all feel very different to play.
Perfect world is about on par with vanguard. personally i feel vanguard is way WAY too easy (that and tomb stone dragging is just the sissy way to get things done). PW can actually compete with it visually though and there isn't really THAT much creativity in the vanguard classes..unless paladins and shamen are something new to you (compare to venomancer).
a pal and i tried cronous last year, and all i can say is good luck with that. i would rather play R.O.S.E. online with all its flaws (example of said flaws: 0 npc text while playing under vista) than do cronous again.
I am wondering if you were playing the same Perfect World I did, the graphics were no where near vanguard, and limited customization, I don't like being forced into a random anthrogirl to play a class. It felt like a shallow generic MMO to me, no real outstanding features that I ran into, besides being populated by mostly morons . But hey I did not give the game a huge shot because I was not drawn in at all
Some of them games on the list are good though, Atlantica Online was pretty fun with its unique combat system, and Runes of Magic looks like it will be good though I can't say as I have not played it.
Show me one game that has the sheer depth of exploration opportunities and depth of different character classes as Vanguard and I might be willing to give it a shot.
For those that don't believe me, download the free trial and see for yourselves!
I just recently decided to download and play through the new trial island, and have to say I'm impressed with how much the game has improved in nearly all aspects. The Vanguard I remember from the few months I'd played it post launch was a solid game that I thought showed a lot of potential, and it's nice to see some of that's not only been realized, but done so well. I didn't encounter a single performance issue, and in fact the game ran better on high settings than WAR does for me on 'balanced' or lower on the same machine.
As a side note, it was also nice to see the area so full of players - there seemed to be a good mix of returning or new players, while others were there on alts running around looking for cookies.
Oh, and side note number two would be a suggestion that they change the trial's name to: Vanguard, Totally 80s! - with quest names like "Knowing is Half the Battle", "Living On A Prayer" and "The Right Stuff" all coming from just one of the quest NPCs the new name would totally fit.
Oh, and side note number two would be a suggestion that they change the trial's name to: Vanguard, Totally 80s! - with quest names like "Knowing is Half the Battle", "Living On A Prayer" and "The Right Stuff" all coming from just one of the quest NPCs the new name would totally fit.
discipline and monk felt anything but unique to me, i saw a lot of parallels in most of the classes (though i did love being a psionicist), i even got station access so i could try em all (and then they upped the slots available anyways).
i wont deny that PW is full of morons, but it fundamentally has more innovation going for it than vanguard really, pvp that isn't pointless for example. though its a shame they have left out most of the good stuff on the international game, like using your real face on your characters.
some games have it so you are a mage, as such you can excel at 1 of several types (fire/earth/water,etc.) or a hybrid of all, to me vanguard just used the opposite formula of forcing you to decide what kind of mage you would be. i mean props for making a psionic class and putting it in the game! world needs more of it, but at the same time they should have just added a hard core server if they wanted to be anything but formulaic.
the terrible crafting grind and the utterly boring diplomacy quests did not feel like additional content to me, just something to do if i was truly dying of boredom. that and the god awful AA on the stairs are what i will remember most about vanguard (aside from everyone exploiting tomb stone dragging).
Top Ten Free-to-Play Games
. But hey I did not give the game a huge shot because I was not drawn in at all 
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