Today is July 31st, exactly 10 years since SOE sunsetted our beloved Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

I will indulge in some memories and later will search through my screenshot stash and maybe post one.

https://preview.redd.it/mvf3i7m47ybd1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fc4264b25fe8bd99cbea79444a3a0342e1989ab

https://preview.redd.it/yfe9iqa47ybd1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=9c770ab4d932f3cf976a78dc551f9493c7a91b4b

The level of detail of the early VG:SoH character models was amazing! Sadly they pinpointed performance problems on that and simplified a lot of it later.

If you put your char in between a rock and a hard place, you could nudge the camera right into the head and get some pretty amazing/creepy insights.

Just look at those teeth, eyeballs and eyelashes.

A mid-post earlier made me want to dig out my copy and flip through the books and maps. Took a glance over the system requirements page and could help but feel nostalgic for a time when 2 GB of RAM was high end (I.e. expensive to have).

Remember VAHSREN THE LIBRARIAN?

https://preview.redd.it/mhxt1zg72wvc1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=fc32e277f0ea3aeeed695add8b5ddfed392ad569

My monk had a pair of hand wraps that had a chance to heal myself, but Vahsren was immune against that particular magic type, meaning I did not get healed but damaged multiplied by a factor - BOOM! and instant death!

Very similar thing with one of the bloodmage group heals - instead of healing a group of 6 you killed your whole group.

So important to watch the combat log, and once you have learned what to use and what not, you changed gear and made sure to remove a certain spell from your bars.

Those Knights of the Old Blood in the ruins of Old Targonor were a lot of fun back in the days. That AKANDE guy was a b*tch, and SHORUL was a frequent cause for sudden deaths, too, but not as bad.

IIRC those were necessary in the long quest line to get your griffon flying mount. There were so many different steps in that quest line, it was amazing! PVE as well as crafting and diplomacy, and you had to do dungeon and open world content all over the three continents. I wish I could do all that again.

https://preview.redd.it/nbgd79gexovc1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=87e8199749e80e0ee4fe96573e09c8aeb15cc1c4

https://preview.redd.it/ql6rg9gexovc1.png?width=1680&format=png&auto=webp&s=4ba4bff4626c172ed90670ba53a03405890091a3

My memory is starting to fail me. No, not completely, but some VG details start to vanish or are harder to remember.

For the Ancient Port Warehouse prequest - to get the mystical key - you needed to kill that one six-dot mob that could either spawn in Kojan (Sundering Wastelands) or Thestra (Kaon's Rush?) and was roaming that zone. His skill was stunning the whole raid so the tank needed to turn him whenever that happened, so everyone got damage and was un-stunned.

I only remember him as "bramble guy" - does anyone remember, what his exact name was?

Edit: I think it was something with "wandering". Wandering Monstrosity or something? Not quite...

Edit 2: screenshot added

https://preview.redd.it/bhkij3cp8mvc1.jpg?width=901&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=761799726be7dc78fe30cb65d24117f793ce165b

Hello guys,

I never played this game before, but I am a big MMO fan - played and tried a lot of titles. Sometimes I found the Vanguard, but never had a chance to play at retail. I found this thread and some info about the EMU and I would like to ask, is it worth trying the EMU version? How about the player base? Is it dead or there are a few hundred players like SWG private servers? And about the game - which other mmo can you compare it to? Similar to Galaxies? Are there any active guild on the server?

Thanks for the info :)

Where have you landed? I know WoW is popular, and FFXIV is not far behind. Where have you gone after your days at the isle of dawn were done?

Because I just stumbled upon one and the nostalgia hits are chefs kiss got some jank in it but man forgot how innovative and deep games used to be.

Embers Adrift wasn't on my radar at all but it was suggested to me by a friend who played EQ and Vanguard. I started it this week and I can't stop playing it. I haven't played an MMO since Vanguard that gave me these feels. It's like a modern version of Vanguard and EQ.

The classes are interesting and feel properly old school: interesting healers, crowd control, etc. The combat is slower and not flashy like modern MMOs. It's got slow dungeon crawls, where death is around any corner if the party isn't focused. The dungeons seem to keep going and going, with so many surprises. It has quests but they aren't the focus of gameplay, the game encourages you to just explore and enjoy the journey.

My only gripes with the game at the moment are that it's low fantasy, so there's almost no magic and there's only humans as a race. However, those things aren't enough to stop me from enjoying good MMO feels that I haven't had in years.

If you really miss Vanguard, you're doing yourself a disservice not trying out this game!

Hi all, I'm a huge fan of shapeshifting in MMOs. I read online that shaman is a great shapeshifting class, but im a bit concerned because from what I read, you seem to pick a single totem and thats the only form you get for that character. There's nothing wrong with that per se, I'm just trying to fill the WoW Druid-shaped hole in my heart and I really like having multiple shapeshift forms i can swap between.

Is there any means to swap from bear to wolf to pheonix on one character? And does shaman have other shapeahift forms i didn't notice when reading the ability descriptions?

Hey Guys - I am thinking about trying the emus and stuff soon - unfortunately I am on a Mac, so there’s more huddle to get it running. But … in my thinking I had this memories of the game and the time I have spend … and there was one quest at the beginning where the player had to listen to a NPC saying a phrase to open a cave / portal … does anyone remember that phrase?

I want to get a tshirt for my wife with it, because he loved to play this game and it would be a nice gift. I simply cannot find anything … even asked ChatGPT ;). Thanks in advance!

Never give up hope! I really want to play this game again but the emulator would download probably because of fire walls or connection or something. The world really intrigues me tho! Someone harass the company untill we get those data files!!!

Is anyone able to help me install the vanguard emu on a Linux machine? I would like to play casually again but no longer have or am willing to have a windows computer.

As we've been getting deeper and deeper into our weekly static group (myself, Nathan Napalm, Bountycode, Sparoh, Binlin, and Maduros), we've been taking a look at the pros and cons of the Vanguard emulator, coming to the question of "is it worth it?" That's going to depend largely on the player, but I'd love to hear your thoughts in this week's video!

Ranger , Monk, Assassin, Bard

Looking for where to download the game. I played forever ago, and saw there was a free shard and wanted to check it out! How’s the status of the game? Any bugs/lag issues?

I'm sure some have noticed that myself + Nathan Napalm and some friends have recently started a new series of Vanguard streams. I recently posted a video about my new adventures in Vanguard a few weeks back, playing my ranger through Tursh, and now we've got a static group going every Tuesday mornings at 8 a.m. central working through group content. In the meantime, I'm continuing my guide series, with the latest on the harvesting system. Enjoy, and let's bring more light to Telon!

Last time I tried the emulator was several years ago. I had a couple of questions.

1. Is NPC line of sight in dungeons fixed yet, or does everything still swarm you?

2. How playable is the Dread Knight at this point?