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[quote="Glenzig"][quote="Moonshadowe"]It seems I remember another one of those little sunken dungeons i the Trengal Keep area that didn't seem to have anything tied to it. I always wondered about that. I agree those little dungeons really always got me excited then there was the realization there was nothing going on with them and it was another missed potential situation. I wouldn't mind seeing some more content go into highlighting the lore of the game. After signing up for this project I became hyper aware of how much I never got to know about Vanguard while I played it.[/quote]

I think you might be talking about Cainsworth? Maybe?
If so, it did have a small questline attached to it. It was actually very fun and really challenging. I remember doing it twice. Once early on, and once very near sunset announcement. The issue was that it didn't have a really good reward compared to easier content if I'm remembering correctly. You got a yellow ring I think? Not great stats for most classes, and you were going to wipe about 3 or 4 times guarunteed, unless you had some elite supergroup of players.
So it never really got utilized in the way it should have. My memory is a bit foggy, but I think that the questline tied back into TK in the end, which was pretty cool.[/quote]
Cainsworth was actually part of a bigger quest line that involved 3 ruins and ended in trengal keep. The final quest gave you a heart and something else, but the heart was never used as the quest line was never finished (or so everyone believes).

That is very possible. My brain is foggy. I do remember coming across a few of those sunken dungeons in the game and really only recalled the location of the one close to Trengal Keep because I wondered why it was there so close and not involved. Now I know it was, but sounds like I didn't miss much. I think we should discuss (either on this thread or another) those seemingly awesome quests, dungeons and locations that ended up being underwhleming and do something to make them better. It could be something as simple as perking up the written quest or giving out more appropriate rewards to turn some disappointing situations into good memories. As for the real topic...

[quote]It has, but it's a good indication of why the man-power put behind Isle of Dawn was a bad thing. There were more existing opportunities that could have been used instead of... This.[/quote]

Couldn't agree more with everything Korralith has said so far.

Not to give SOE any credit here, but I believe the original idea and need for the IOD was to make it a trial for people who might be interested in subscribing to the game. It came out years before F2P. And while it had the side effect of funneling players together, you still had to pay once your trial was done.

To give an interesting example of how much the game was made easier:

I started my rogue in 2007, on launch day. I had early launch from preordering, so my husband and I make sure we were on when the game released, so we could get our character's names (Which I was so happy about). So, that's when I started my rogue. I couldn't solo worth beans. I mean I could kill stuff quick, and didn't really have any real problems, until I hit level 7. I had to go into that cave near Dahknarg with Yuanik (or something like that). And I could not solo that on my rogue. It was way too difficult. I don't think I'm a top notch player or anything, but that was hard as hell. I had to wait for my friends to come on and help me.

I remember looking over my gear and trying to figure out why I couldn't kill stuff, and all the quest rewards were mostly greens, with some blues that I picked up here and there. Not all of my slots were filled. My stats sucked.

I started a rogue on IOD just to see what all the fuss was about. Same race and everything. This was several years later - and granted, I was much more familiar with the rogue class then - but it was also after a lot of changes were made to ease everything.

I soloed the entire IOD. The entire thing. I soloed the temple. I killed Iku Dai. There was nothing that rogue couldn't do. Almost all the quest rewards at that point were yellows. All of my slots were filled. They left out nothing. The rogue was, to date, the easiest class I ever played to solo on the IOD -and I had them all, from disc to ranger. The rogue made it much easier.

I was just really surprised. That's a way different experience than I had on my launch rogue.

That sounds like Bloodhowler Caverns around Dahknarg. I think there are a lot of dungeons around level 7 that are tuned for 2-3 people. A few such as Arcanium are soloable. Most of the ones that come up around level 12 and thereon, are aimed at fuller groups. There are a few off to the side that aren't; Darkeye Drop or something like that. It's good to have something to do, when you can only find one or two other people, that's above the soloing quests.

If it's intended as a group encounter, it really should not be soloable. And you can do IoD temple.

I remember back at launch, the entire game was just harder. You didn't see anything but green and maybe 3-4 blue pieces of armor until level 10 or so. You probably couldn't even use 2 of those that you did see! I don't think I got anything yellow until level 20. It felt a lot like EQ. Once IoD came out everyone went there because the gear was insanely overpowered. Then everyone started to complain about it so they bumped up all of the other starting areas and added yellow gear to EVERYTHING.

I much rather have the original version. It got people to group instead of soloing everything. It also made crafting gear worth something. Just about every piece of grafted gear was equivalent to blue dropped/rewarded gear. On top of that you could get your crafted gear upgraded to yellow/orange. So at the low levels, when you couldn't really find anything but junk gear, crafted stuff was way better. The only reason why crafted gear became less good as you leveled is because you ended up spending more time leveling and so you had a better chance to get good gear from drops. The fast way was still to buy upgraded crafted gear though.

[quote="Ratief"]I remember back at launch, the entire game was just harder. You didn't see anything but green and maybe 3-4 blue pieces of armor until level 10 or so. You probably couldn't even use 2 of those that you did see! I don't think I got anything yellow until level 20. It felt a lot like EQ. Once IoD came out everyone went there because the gear was insanely overpowered. Then everyone started to complain about it so they bumped up all of the other starting areas and added yellow gear to EVERYTHING.

I much rather have the original version. It got people to group instead of soloing everything. It also made crafting gear worth something. Just about every piece of grafted gear was equivalent to blue dropped/rewarded gear. On top of that you could get your crafted gear upgraded to yellow/orange. So at the low levels, when you couldn't really find anything but junk gear, crafted stuff was way better. The only reason why crafted gear became less good as you leveled is because you ended up spending more time leveling and so you had a better chance to get good gear from drops. The fast way was still to buy upgraded crafted gear though.[/quote]

Its hard to say if Sigil did that on purpose or if that difficulty was just a case of incomplete, spotty itemization given how much was crammed into game in the days leading up to January 30, 2007. I tend to think it was not intentional given how spotty overall content/loot drops were in the early days. I mean I recall how close to launch that Sigil up and re-did all of Thestra...and how new Kojan was and how much was still left to be done on Qualia.

Either way, I personally loved the feeling of EQ. I remember starting in EQ and not getting any armor with stats until around level 10-15 or so! I was so excited when I got my first piece of gear with +1 int.

Exactly i was the same playing EQ i would get so excited getting a +1 or a +2 item. EQ was doing a good job of item bumping for the first two expansions RoK and Velious then it just started getting more and more silly each expansion.

I still think that is what's wrong with a lot of today's MMO's they feel each expansion they have to double the power of items it just get's silly after a point.

I used to love old EQ also. But back in the early days past the bottom few levels you HAD TO have a group to progress very quickly. I hated spending all my time on LFG and not being a select class. (Though I was on the Firiona Vie server where you could only have one character- wouldnt do that again!) I liked that in Vanguard you could solo when there were no groups around. The biggest disappointment I run into in MMOs is generally the way economy has such an important part on gameplay only to have devs make economy breaking changes to the game. Meaning you can go out and harvest and get resources to sell on the auction house, you can do crafting and sell your wares on the auction house, you can sell item drops etc. Then one day you log in and there is a cash shop where you can buy armor and weapons or an NPC sitting somewhere just giving away free boats or a flying reindeer with no effort on the part of the player. It really feels like a punch in the gut when the effort you put into tradeskilling becomes nothing more than a timesink. I think just enough should be given in the game to allow people to excell at a decent rate, so its not a grind, but let the other spheres of the game have their place also. Otherwise you always end up with the only survivors in MMOs being raid guilds and the true lovers of the game who see the potential and not whats really there.

Also on a side note, I liked whoever made the suggestion to have the wyvern quest become a permanent although slow flying mount. Its obtainable that way through a longish quest and its a very cool reward that fits the game, instead of a year round flying (hideously ugly) Christmas ornament.

[quote="Jakkal"]Not to give SOE any credit here, but I believe the original idea and need for the IOD was to make it a trial for people who might be interested in subscribing to the game. It came out years before F2P. And while it had the side effect of funneling players together, you still had to pay once your trial was done.[/quote]

People keep saying this, but I just dont think it is actually true. I personally had the experience of losing potential players specifically because of IoD. It just wasnt a good reflection of what VG actually was.
In fact, if you watch this series of videos, youll see that even to a new player, IoD was a lot of times pretty underwhelming. If you watch the first two videos, where he is leading his friend through the isle, youll probably notice that she likes some aspects, but just kind of sounds bored overall. When they start toons on the mainland (in Tursh) her reaction is totally different. She says "Oh I like this much better."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwy3EiSWUbk

Its a pretty long series of video, and it was really close to sunset I believe, but I still think it speaks to the fact that IoD just wasnt what VG ever actually needed. It didnt fit the overall feel of the game. It caused itemization issues for low level content, it essentially forced everyone to start in one place if they ever planned on crafting or diplo. And from my own experience in trying to bring players to VG, it really gave a bad impression of what the game was actually going to be past level 10.