A game that has been beaten down by all of the judgements of the launch.
THE BREAKDOWN
There is no denying that the world of Telon is a beautiful sight. The graphics of this game is truely amazing. Unfortunatly for most of us, our graphics cards are going to limit us from seeing alot of what this game has to offer. The mobility of Vanguard reminds me alot of World of Warcraft. If you've played games like Guild Wars, you'll understand how frustrating it is to have very restricting gameplay. In Vanguard, if you are at the peak of a mountain and can look down and see all that is under you, you can venture down the mountain and actually get to the spot that you saw on the mountaintop.
Vanguard will NOT have you grinding. This game is abundant in things to do, whether its sitting in the city doing crafting work orders while gaining Bonus XP, or firing up some conversations to level up in Diplomacy, or going out in the forest to chop down some lumber for your next big crafting project, your never going to log on and think "Is there anything I can actually do?" because the answer of "Yes" will hold true whether your level 1 or level 50.
This game has ALOT of tips that will pop up when your starting something you've never done before. If you read all of these, this game is very easy to learn and your never going to be stuck thinking "What do I do now?".
The game has something called Brotherhoods. Brotherhoods are kinda like forming a group. Only you need 2 people for a brotherhood. Even if 1 of the people in the Brotherhood is offline, they still equal XP whenever someone in the Brotherhood kills something or turns in a quest. So if you have some close friends like I do, you can all level up at the exact same time, no one gets left behind.
THE BAD STUFF
I heard before I bought the game that there were bugs, but honestly, I havent found much of any. There will be spots where something wierd happens and I'm like "WTF just happend?", but its nothing that has effected anything in the game whatsoever for me.
This game is huge world, the problem with this is, I dont think SOE's online servers are build to handle some parts of it. I'm running a high quality graphics card with 512mb Vmemory, 2GB ram, Windows XP (cuz Vista would be hell on this game), and I run lagless in adventuring areas. But when you step in cities, its LagFest. I would have no problem if it were 10 seconds of complete locking up, but I've had it freeze for over a minute.
The Vanguard Development Team has said they are working on fixing alot of performance issues in Vanguard, and they are. These will, without a doubt, be fixed over time. And this game is stable enough to buy and enjoy for a very long time, and it will only get better as time goes by.
BOTTOM LINE
The game is great. Everything about it is wonderful. You should buy it, you wont regret it. The community is alive, the economy is kicking, and the players are all mature and helpful.