The newest MMO is now with us and brings next-generation technology to the fray. Set in the world of Telon over three continents Vanguard brings us 19 different races and 15 separate classes to battle with. The game play is consistent with the latest MMO’s such as World of Warcraft were your character quests solo until level 10 and then will group to reach end game level of 50.

There is plenty to explore in this vast world and some interesting in game games such as diplomacy. Crafting can be fun and some recipes can be bought when reputation allows letting the player specialize in certain areas. Although not as individual as the Star Wars Galaxies crafting system the Artisans amongst us are in for some fun. Players houses have been added although require high end crafting and are very expensive, Houses can be decorated a la Star Wars Galaxies style, this is not to be underestimated in a large MMO as many old SWG players will testify, shopping and collecting rare decorations became a large part of the fun.

The Graphics for the game are very demanding of your system and will not forgive you easily if run on a  basic machine, in fact it will not  run on anything under Nvidea 6800 and 1.5 GB RAM. Game settings let you customize all the Visuals well and some experimenting will need to be done to run the game smoothly. It’s a pity that the game is so demanding because the graphics on a well spec’ed machine are fantastic, if anything Vanguard is designed for next year’s PC’s.

Vanguard was released slightly early, just after the World of Warcraft expansion, and is still buggy which considering the player pays a monthly subscription is annoying and should have been ironed out in beta.

Overall Vanguard: Saga of Heroes looks promising and is not for the faint hearted. Invest time into your game and new patches will fix current bugs and bring in new content. Rest assured you will need a nice machine to run it well.

Darren Smith