Vanguard NewsVanguard Sage of Heroes

If you've been checking out your status on the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes servers and have noticed that you're still stuck on the same server, don't fret. Sony Online Entertainment has put up a new post explaining why you're still there and what they're going to do about it.

According to this new post, it seems there were a LOT of you who wanted to transfer servers, so much so that they weren't able to transfer everyone this week. To alleviate this, however, SOE will be moving the rest of the people in the transfer queue to another server on January 15, Tuesday. The transfer will coincide with the weekly server restart, so you guys should probably be used to the usual downtime that comes with server restart day.

In any case, you may want to sharpen those swords and go kill some baddies in the meantime. It's only a couple more days, anyway, which shouldn't detract much from your gameplay experience. Enjoy!

Gamasutra's weekly column , "Saling The World", covers the top five sellers for every available platform in the United States, Japan, and Europe, providing an important update of sales patterns worldwide. This week's charts, with data taken from

SOE: All future MMOGs console-bound - Gamespot News
President of Sony's online arm affirms that company is done with PC exclusivity; hints at new EverQuest. It didn't require a great mind to realize that Sony Online Entertainment would be taking a stronger look at the console space after being

next - Kotaku.com
A tipster who chooses to remain anonymous dropped us a line to let us in on a juicy little tidbit from the GameStop Expo in Las Vegas. According to the source, yesterday during Square Enix's presentation, mention was made of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of

About a day ago, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) sent out word that they would be temporarily shutting down all their MMORPGs to accommodate several big updates. Now, if you're wondering just what sort of tweaks this may mean for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, here's a heads-up. The MMORPG's official site has recently posted a complete listing of its share of updates from SOE's widespread maintenance.

Several new features have been added to the game's realms, including the arrival of its much-awaited permanent flying mounts: Griffons and Wyverns. The Griffon quest will require you to head for Southwatch, while the Wyvern quest will take you to Ancient Port Warehouse.

We've posted part of the official changelog below to give you an idea of what's new. Those interested in getting the full details on this Vanguard's fourth update will want to visit the official site, via the source link.

• Wyvern flying mount quest is now available
• Griffon mount quest is now active
• There are now no fly zones around certain areas of content.
• Helmets are now visible
• Riftways have been revamped
• Veteran Rewards are now available for those who have been around for 6 months or longer.
• All adventuring consumables now share three cooldown timers. Each consumable either has a 2 minute shared cooldown (for all health, energy, and endurance renewal consumables), a 5 minute shared cooldown (for all 'burst' buffs) or a 15 minute shared cooldown (for all long duration buffs).
• All 30 minute duration buffs from item clicks have had their duration reduced to 15 minutes.
• Anevka's Renewal now shares a cooldown with low cooldown crafted consumables.
• Named NPC items have had their item power increased.
• All named drop items are now BOP
• All named drop items are no longer deconstructable
• All named now spawn more often
• PVP - All fears should now stun in pvp. They will all be set to half the duration of your normal fear, with 30 diminishing returns and have a 25 chance to break on damage.
• Recasting mez on a target will no longer strip the previous mez. This is also true if the mez attempt is resisted.
• Refresh timers will now count down while offline.
• Quest timers will now count down while offline.
• Fix for a pet ability exploit.

Some of the most interesting stories involve tales interwoven with other tales. That appears to be the case with this latest Vanguard: Saga of Heroes story from Sony Online Entertainment (SOE).

The story is actually divided into two parts: one involves former apprentice Sage Hanrick Lantier, while the other involves a young man named Sage Rendil Wainscott. In the first half of the tale, Lantier's master, Dorrin Longreat, informs Lantier that the latter is ready to take an apprentice under his wing.

Despite the younger Sage's momentary surprise, he sees he eventually agrees. The two of them work out a compromise: Lantier has permission to employ some new teaching methods, on the condition that he inform Longreat of the new training methodology and allow the latter access to the new apprentice as required.

The drama then picks up in the second half of the tale. During a moment of truthful soul-searching with his father, Rendil Wainscott admits his secret wish to train as a Sage. His father then lets him go, and a new apprentice Sage is born.

In a nutshell, that is the current tale of Rendil Wainscott and Hanrick Lantier in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. If you'd like to read SOE's dramatic story in its entirety, just click on the source link below.

The Bay Area's Democratic House delegation is already soaring in the stratosphere, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco set to become speaker in the 110th Congress and three other senior members moving into key chairmanships. Now comes word that

Some of you may recognize the image above as a close depiction of the famous artwork entitled "Construction Workers Take a Lunch Break on a Steel Beam Atop the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center".

However, what happens when art aficionados playing Sony Online Entertainment's Vanguard: Saga of Heroes decide to add a little culture into their online gaming? The result would probably look something like the screenshot below, taken by team spirit guild member Torkyn of the Halgar server.

The image was featured as the screenshot of the week on the VGPlayers website and provided a rather amusing look at the game. Anyway, that's it for today's update on Vanguard. We hope you come back again to this spot for more updates regarding SOE's premiere fantasy MMO title.

Sony Online Entertainment's latest game update for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is getting ready to hit the test servers. While we're waiting for it to show up though, the folks at SOE have announced some of the big things coming for Game Update 5.

First off, there'll be new racial mounts in the game. These range from giant spiders to rhinos, and are faction point based. This means that you can actually take the questline for acquiring a specific racial mount once you've gotten into the good graces of a particular race, though you may end up being hated by another while you're grinding for tokens.

Game Update 5 also hosts some fixes for performance and overall coolness. These fixes include a new anti-hitching code that should increase performance, as well as some improved particle effects for certain classes.

Lastly, specific classes have gotten themselves some attention from the devs. We'll let SOE explain that one:

This update we have given significant attention to three more classes. Blood Mages, Psionicists and Sorcerers have all received a lot of developer attention. Abilities that may have been broken before have been fixed, spells have been tweaked and upgraded or updated and all three classes should be more in line with their intended vision in terms of power and utility. Specific tweaks and updates will be listed in the patch notes.

Good news, right? Expect to see some very happy players once the game update hits the test servers. In the meantime, feel free to check the source link below for more information.

SOE provides handy guide to cross-game communication in EQ

Filed under: Fantasy, Sci-fi, EverQuest, EverQuest II, PlanetSide, Game mechanics, Tips and tricks, The Matrix Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard

Sony Online Entertainment is responsible for quite a number of MMOs, and they've got a useful system in place to allow communication with people across their game worlds. However, many people either don't know about this system, or simply don't know how to wrangle it into doing what they want. To help with this, SOE has written a guide illustrating how EverQuest players can chat to their friends in other games.

The games that EQ players can send both private messages and in-game mail to are EverQuest II, Planetside, Vanguard, The Matrix Online, and Star Wars: Galaxies. It's also possible to communicate with players on different EQ servers, but many of the servers have abbreviations that must be used in the commands — these can be found in the guide. Now don't go acting all surprised when you're hiding from a guild raid on another server and your guild master sends you a tell!

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Vanguard: game update 4 patch notes

About a day ago, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) sent out word that they would be temporarily shutting down all their MMORPGs to accommodate several big updates. Now, if you're wondering just what sort of tweaks this may mean for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, here's a heads-up. The MMORPG's official site has recently posted a complete listing of its share of updates from SOE's widespread maintenance.

Several new features have been added to the game's realms, including the arrival of its much-awaited permanent flying mounts: Griffons and Wyverns. The Griffon quest will require you to head for Southwatch, while the Wyvern quest will take you to Ancient Port Warehouse.

We've posted part of the official changelog below to give you an idea of what's new. Those interested in getting the full details on this Vanguard's fourth update will want to visit the official site, via the source link.

• Wyvern flying mount quest is now available
• Griffon mount quest is now active
• There are now no fly zones around certain areas of content.
• Helmets are now visible
• Riftways have been revamped
• Veteran Rewards are now available for those who have been around for 6 months or longer.
• All adventuring consumables now share three cooldown timers. Each consumable either has a 2 minute shared cooldown (for all health, energy, and endurance renewal consumables), a 5 minute shared cooldown (for all 'burst' buffs) or a 15 minute shared cooldown (for all long duration buffs).
• All 30 minute duration buffs from item clicks have had their duration reduced to 15 minutes.
• Anevka's Renewal now shares a cooldown with low cooldown crafted consumables.
• Named NPC items have had their item power increased.
• All named drop items are now BOP
• All named drop items are no longer deconstructable
• All named now spawn more often
• PVP - All fears should now stun in pvp. They will all be set to half the duration of your normal fear, with 30 diminishing returns and have a 25 chance to break on damage.
• Recasting mez on a target will no longer strip the previous mez. This is also true if the mez attempt is resisted.
• Refresh timers will now count down while offline.
• Quest timers will now count down while offline.
• Fix for a pet ability exploit.

The Bay Area's Democratic House delegation is already soaring in the stratosphere, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco set to become speaker in the 110th Congress and three other senior members moving into key chairmanships. Now comes word that Read More

Gamasutra's weekly column , "Saling The World", covers the top five sellers for every available platform in the United States, Japan, and Europe, providing an important update of sales patterns worldwide. This week's charts, with data taken from Read More

A less tenacious, more sensible MMO company would have long left Vanguard exposed on the side of a mountain to languish until death, but not our friends at Sony Online Entertainment. No, big things are in store for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, starting Read More

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 20 /PRNewswire/ — Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE), a worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online games, is poised to revolutionize the way gamers stay connected with sophisticated new voice services where fellow gamers Read More

When talking about an MMORPG, one topic that occasionally pops up is the matter of account security. More specifically, those horror stories of players opening up their account one day only to find all their hard-earned loot stolen. With that in mind, we're letting you guys know that Sony Online Entertainment has released an article discussing account security in Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

For starters, the gamers will want to avoid sharing their accounts. After all, while it's convenient to have a fellow guildmate finish a quest for you in your steed, you can only trust them so far. This is how most guildbanks are cleaned out - when a supposedly trustworthy member is allowed access to sensitive account data.

Another lucrative scam players are warned about are phishing sites. These are sites that are intentionally made to look like another well-known or frequently visited site. Their job is to try to extract information from you, often in the form of seemingly harmless inquiries, GM announcements, or surveys.

As we said, phishing sites will try to look as legit as possible, so you'll want to keep a very sharp eye out in case something is amiss. SOE stresses that they will only be asked for your password when you log into their games, or when you visit the official Station site. The company further notes that its employees will never ask for your password. Those tips aside, SOE further added these security reminders:

• Use a unique Station name.
• Use an alpha-numeric password consisting of at least 8 characters; a mix of letters, numbers and special characters is best. Never write down your password!
• Never use the same word for your Station name and password; change it periodically.
• Never trust a troll in a dress.
• Always create a secret question when prompted (this allows for quicker password recovery and confirmation when needed.)
• Keep your registration information, including current email address, up to date in so that we can contact you regarding your account and for retrieving lost passwords. (SOE will not use your email for marketing purposes, unless you specifically opt in for newsletters and announcements.)

In the event that your account is hacked, you will want to contact SOE. If you move quickly, you may still be able to recover your characters. That's the lowdown on SOE's recent security advisory - drop by again in case we pick up any related news.

Sony Online Entertainment has unveiled its line-up for E3 2008 and it has plenty to show for on the PlayStation 3 and PC platforms. As expected, EverQuest and The Agency will be there with new assets. Without further ado, here's the full list:

• The Agency (PC, PS3)
• Free Realms (PC, PS3)
• EverQuest II (PC)
• EverQuest (PC)
• Legends of Norrath: Oathbreaker (PC)
• Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (PC)

As you probably know by now, E3 2008 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center on July 14, 2008. Watch out for more updates on one of this year's biggest gaming events.

Player of the year 2008!!
OK, so I didn't win. I'm not bitter. Free trip to Fanfaire 2008 in Las Vegas. I don't want those things. I've never wanted those…

Vanguard announcement: Xeth server, official site downtime tomorrow

Sony Online Entertainment has sent a couple of important announcements that concern every single player of the MMORPG Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Unfortunately, both updates are about downtimes.

The first announcement is regarding the official website VGPlayers. According to SOE, the website will undergo a maintenance tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. PDT. The downtime is expected to take as long as one hour and a half.

The other announcement concerns one of the game's server itself which would mean less Vanguard for some gamers. The affected server is the Xeth and it will go down tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m. PDT.

SOE further explained that this is to "correct some issues pertaining to character deletion." Aside from that, no other reason was given for the maintenance. This one should take around one hour to complete.

That's about it for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and just keep checking back here at QJ.NET in case we pick up some more updates.

OK, so I didn't win. I'm not bitter. Free trip to Fanfaire 2008 in Las Vegas. I don't want those things. I've never wanted those…

Too many transferees: Vanguard transfers to continue on January 15

If you've been checking out your status on the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes servers and have noticed that you're still stuck on the same server, don't fret. Sony Online Entertainment has put up a new post explaining why you're still there and what they're going to do about it.

According to this new post, it seems there were a LOT of you who wanted to transfer servers, so much so that they weren't able to transfer everyone this week. To alleviate this, however, SOE will be moving the rest of the people in the transfer queue to another server on January 15, Tuesday. The transfer will coincide with the weekly server restart, so you guys should probably be used to the usual downtime that comes with server restart day.

In any case, you may want to sharpen those swords and go kill some baddies in the meantime. It's only a couple more days, anyway, which shouldn't detract much from your gameplay experience. Enjoy!

There's lot to do when you hit level 45 over at Sony Online Entertainment's Vangaurd: Saga of Heroes MMORPG. And one of them is making sure your gear is up to par with your grizzled abilities. If you're especially adventurous, that means embarking on the MMO's swamp armor quest.

Vanguard's got three of these sets arranged for players, each with differing attributes that are ideal for a specific playing sytles:

• Gorgalok Armor: This set is focused on offensive statistics like damage, and critical chance. This set requires killing in Ichtakhta.
• Ichtakhta Armor: This set is focused on defensive statistics like mitigation, and absorption. This set requires killing in Flordiel.
• Flordiel Armor: This set is a balanced set, mixing statistics. This set requires killing Gorgolaks in Vsurog Moor.

Wondering where you can get this new gear? The Vanguard site has updated their database with a comprehensive guide, which will help you through the steps you'll need to take to acquire any of the three sets we mentioned above.

Since those sets are separated by factions, you may want to do some pre-planning. Acquiring one set may antagonize you with the other opposing factions, and while getting all three is possible, it's not easy. You will also want to have 2000 faction with your chosen city to complete your quest. The full tutorial awaits over in the source link.

Filed under: Fantasy, Events, in-game, News items, Vanguard

The Vanguard team has deployed its own (more modest) version of EverQuest's much-publicized Living Legacy campaign. Anyone who used to have a Vanguard account may play for free up through the 31st. SOE is touting performance enhancements and "new code" intended to make the game run more smoothly.

See, when the game first launched, it had performance issues about as bad as (or maybe even worse than) those of Age of Conan's open beta event. The game was virtually unplayable in major cities for all but the most beastly systems. With each major game update, though, SOE has tweaked and optimized the engine to make it run better. Apparently the team now feels that it's reached the point where it can reach out to old players and say, "Hey, we fixed it; come back and try again!

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Vanguard Game Update 6 goes live, adds free trial/newbie area

Filed under: Fantasy, Patches, News items, Vanguard

One thousand. That's how many bug fixes are in Vanguard's sixth game update, which has now gone live. In addition to the fixes, there's a new newbie area for levels one through ten called the Isle of Dawn. Word is that it will eventually serve as a free trial setting. For now, though, it's just an easy place to get a new character started.

SOE also redid character models, offering new customization options and making some changes that lower the models' system performance hit. You can keep your old look if you want, though.

The most controversial changes are a whole slew of class damage adjustments. SOE looked at every single class in the game and adjusted its damage output to ensure "that each lands in their correct place in the spectrum of classes." The details of all those changes are buried in the patch notes. Did you get nerfed or buffed? Read up to find out.

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