Vanguard -Saga Of Heroes - Starting A Dwarven Cleric

Greetings Gamer's

Today I am excited to share footage and screenshots from a game I discovered only yesterday. The footage above is from my first time logging into an MMORPG called Vanguard - Saga Of Heroes.

Last night in the early hours of the morning I managed to get the server up and running, create a character, and log into the Dwarven starting zone. There is no commentary on this footage as other members of my household were sleeping so I decided just to capture some footage. Future posts about this title will include commentary.

This game was initially released in 2007 by Sigil entertainment. It was a project which was led by Brad McQuaid, one of the lead designers of the original Everquest. This game can be thought of as a spiritual successor to the Everquest franchise. Releasing a few years after Everquest 2 and WoW, the developers got to learn what worked and what could be improved upon from those titles. Apparently, they had a budget of around $30,000,000.Most of this seems to have been spent creating a totally persistent world with very few individual zones. There are 3 large continents,19 different races each with there own starting zone, and 15 different classes with 50 levels of progression.

The live servers were shut down in July of 2014 due to the game having too much competition from other titles such as Everquest 1 & 2 , World Of Warcraft, Lord Of The Rings Online, and Elder Scroll's Online which had just been released in April of 2014.

When this game was live it required a $14.99 a month subscription to play and I guess instead of trying to turn the game into a free to play title it made more sense just to "sunset" it and let it become a forgotten gem , a game "lost to the ages" as it were.

Recently some fans of the game have launched an emulation server which you can find and download here.(Only the 4th download option from Mediafire worked for me)
https://vgoplayers.com/downloads.php?tab=client

There is a complete set up guide here which is easy enough to follow.I managed to download the game , create a character and login in roughly 2 hours without any problems.
https://www.vgoemulator.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4481

So now that we have the intro to this game and the emu server out of the way let's grab an ale and gather around the campfire for a tale of Dwarves and Kobolds!

As the footage above starts, I am wandering around a stone tower which is where we find our first quests and class trainer.

Standing on the top floor of the tower we can see out over the valley

As I watch the snow falling gently through the pine trees I am impressed by the skybox and the moving clouds

Inside this stone fortress we find some npc's and crafting tables.I have yet to explore crafting in this game but am very eager to do so!

Lets head out onto the front lines of the battle with the Kobolds and take a look around

Every Npc with one of these shield icons above their head has a quest for us. There are quite a few quests in the starting area alone.

These Kobold grunts with the yellow names won't attack us until we attack them.The very first quest has us kill a few of them to get to grips with combat basics.I haven't included that quest in the footage above.

Monsters with a red name above are hostile and will attack if we get within range of them.

One of the quests I have active requires us to collect 5 Griffin eggs.

Our main objective right now is to destroy 3 support struts in these Kobold tunnels.

Before we can destroy the support strut we have to take out the hovel guard

These little guys can hit pretty hard, taking of half my hp in one hit!....


I found I had to use my Healing touch spell a few times during this fight. It was basically attack then heal, attack ,heal until the hovelguard died.A fun and slightly challenging fight for a monster so early in the game.I found this exciting,it kept me on my toes.

With the hovel guard dead we are now free to destroy the support beam

This causes us to be caved in until we kill this enraged kobold...

*This fight is much the same as the previous fight , attack heal and repeat until the monster is dead.

I figured a lot can be learned about the game from watching this one fight needed for a quest update.I have cut this brief section out of the video.I guess if your reading this post so far and thinking this looks like a game I could get into your probably gonna tell from this short video if this is your sort of thing.

This quest has us destroy 3 of these Kobold tunnels in total.The other 2 are pretty close to this first one

I get lucky and loot a pair of rare boots from the hovelgaurd in the second tunnel. These require LV8 to use and raise my armor class by 31 , a huge improvement on the armor class+5 boots I currently have

With the 3 tunnels destroyed its time to head back to base and hand the quest in.

This gives us enough exp to hit level 4. The next thing Captain Irongaurd wants us to do is talk with the Healer trainer.

Before we head up to the Healer trainer I am curious to find out what each of our stats does.We have Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Vitality , Intelligence,Wisdom, and Armor Class

If we scroll over each stat it tells us what benefit we get from each of them.I cut this short video out for anyone that is interested to see this info.

The healer trainer is on top of the stone tower where we started our adventure.Hitting level 4 has opened up 4 new spells.

Recall lets us return to our bind location.

Strike Down does some damage with a chance to stun.

Hammer of Penance is a damage-over-time spell.

Ward Shield prevents the next 2 attacks.

I am curious to check out Ward Shield's spell effects, they look suitably cool and ward shieldy :).

Just as I am heading back down to get the next quest from Captain Iornguard another Dwarven player approaches.It seems this character is a Necromancer.Regnar Skullbeard is a suitable name for a Dwarf that studies the dark arts!

His pet Abomination looks pretty cool to! Its worth noting that there were only around 12 players online when I recorded this footage in the wee hours of the morning UK time. I feel grateful I saw one of them walking around the Dwarf starting area.

For the next quest, Ironguard wants us to head down to an encampment at the bottom of the valley.

I talk to a nearby Dwarf to see what quest she has available.

It seems she's looking for a crate of ale. There are a few other quests in this area but I decide to return to these later.

Let's head down the valley and find this Dwarven encampment.

At the bottom of the valley, I stop to look back to appreciate the beauty of my surroundings.

On the way to the camp we pass this deserter.

The camp looks pretty cool, I'm excited to check out the quests in this area.

This is certainly one of the prettiest lakes I have ever seen in an online game.

It seems there are quite a few quests on offer here.

For now I decide to rest by the campfire and take in all that I have experienced in this first day in a beautiful new fantasy world.

Conclusion:
I'm super hyped to have found this emulation server for this forgotten gem of a game.

I've played a hell of a lot of Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft and a fair amount of Project 99 Everquest but I can honestly the starting area in this game is way more fun and immersive than any of those games.

It's early days but I am very eager to get back in and explore the rest of this beautiful Dwarven area of the world. If all the other 18 races have their own starting area and quest's that in itself is incredibly impressive.I plan to look at a few other starting areas and race/class combinations over the coming weeks.

Knowing nothing about this world is exciting, I feel I have a ton of interesting content to wade through.

Hopefully some of you other RPG fans will jump onboard and check out this game.As I mentioned in the post when I filmed the footage there was only around 12 players online including me.

This small player population is also something I find exciting.I will try filming new footage on Friday night and over the weekend to see what sort of player numbers the game hits at peak times.

Hopefully, some of you enjoyed this video and post,stay tuned for a lot more Vanguard content from me coming soon.