As I mentioned in my last post, Vanguard depresses me.  Having recently started Station Access back up, I just had to download Vanguard and have another go at the world of Telon.  Right now Vanguard is “celebrating” its 3rd year as an MMO.  I use the term “celebrate” lightly since, unless you happened to log in for the live event, you wont find much celebrating going on at all.

My ranger in Vanguard was hanging out near Misthaven Crossing and I decided to take the riftway to New Targonor for the 3rd anniversary quest and celebration.  In making this trip I saw NO ONE until I made it to New Targonor and went down to explore the town a little bit.  Here you have this massive, gorgeous city with no one in it, save one Blood Mage doing some crafting.  After a bit of poking around I decided to get down to business with the 3rd anniversary quest.

It took me a while to find the celebration quest giver.  Mostly because there was no in game graphics or fanfare going on to indicate any sort of celebration was taking place.  When I did find the little guy, he gave me a single quest, the reward for which was the 3rd anniversary present.  He did mention celebrating the history of Telon, which was great!  But the entirety of the quest was to just turn right around and turn the quest in.  There wasn’t even a speech about Telon or its history, just a “Happy 3rd birthday vanguard.  Have a box of stuff” message.

The items are great.  The bag you get is especially fantastic.  However, it made me really sad because it is so obvious that SoE had a skeleton crew create this event.  I couldn’t help but imagine the little halfling that gave me the quest delivering his lines in a high pitched monotone dripping with jaded boredom.  It felt less like a celebration and more like when you ask a friend if they are OK and they say “yeah” but you can totally tell that they are so totally not.

It is so sad to watch Vanguard die like this.  I think it not only is the best looking SoE game available, but it plays very well.  The interface is clean and easy to familiarize yourself with ( if you’ve played WoW, you know what to expect).  There is great diversity in race choices and while all the class staples are there, you have a handful of special ones like Blood Mage, or Psionicist that are pretty neat.

However, the scope of Telon is just too big for the community left playing it.  In fact, Vanguard has had a problem of bloated scope from the day it launched.  It needs people.  I can’t help but wonder if a free-to-play model, similar to DDO wouldn’t be in order.  It is abundantly clear to me that Telon wont survive without finding people to play it.  Asking people to pay $15/month for the game is a bit much at this point.  However, a free-to-play model could bring people in where they could, perhaps, feel compelled to spend some money in the in-game shop.

I would love to see this happen, but I doubt it will.  It feels like SoE has already put the game out to pasture.  Its sad.  I feel like there is so much wasted potential there.