Vanguard NewsVanguard Sage of Heroes

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.

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