Well well... It is that time again, time for news from Vanguard. Although our last news update from VG was almost 5 months ago, as usual a lot has happened in VG and in Xanadu since then.
Early 2009 passed by while waiting for the next Game Update and the new content it would introduce. However, the update kept getting postponed time after another and no one was really sure when we should expect it to go live. Until suddenly without any warning on May 19th, after nearly an 8 months wait Vanguard had its seventh "Game Update". This patch introduced the much anticipated dungeon revamp of the "Pantheon of the Ancients" and also brought us the level cap increase from level 50 to 55.
After such a lenghty period with only minor updates, the expectations for GU#7 were high among the Vanguard community. Some liked what the patch introduced, some who had their hopes high up in the sky witnessed them coming crashing down. Several people left the game and a few guilds disbanded as a result - but how has Xanadu survived through the new challenges that the level cap increase brought? Read more to find out...
When the patch finally went live people were more than eager to find out what would await them inside the Halls of Pantheon. However, before the halls could be entered an access quest needed to be completed - due to the difficulty of the access quest at level 50 the amount of people focusing on it turned out to be surprisingly low and we were able to complete it with relatively little contest on any of the mobs or tasks. After breaching the barries protecting the halls, we found ourselves in a strangely familiar looking dungeon which had been re-textured and revamped to look a little more epic.
Although Xanadu had several people with the dungeon access, pretty soon it became clear that the pantheon was far too deadly for the level 50 characters and more levels would be needed before we could uncover the story of the great architect Artera and get our chance to prove to the gods of Telon that we are worthy of their blessings.
Being a hardcore raiding guild, we wanted to set up some sort of schedule for us to reach 55. However, the task turned out to be a lot more time consuming that anyone had anticipated. With pretty much no new content to level on, we had to turn out attention to the old areas and attempt to find an optimal route of leveling. Soon it became clear that simply AOE-grinding mobs at the Old Targonor would be the ideal source of xp from 50-51 and the guild proceeded to spend hours and hours at OT to grind XP which moved roughly at a 5% per hour of nonstop mob slaying without quests in a well built group.
After the first people had reached 51 level and were on their way to 52, things at Telon started to take strange turns. Old Targonor would shut down without a warning and come back online with every mob turned in to solo mobs in order to stop the AOE grinding, people moved to new spots in the old areas to grind and soon after a GM would appear, the chunk would shut down and come back with either the mobs buffed up or somehow the XP gain nerfed. Eventually people progressed through the levels and at 53 we decided to give the Pantheon another try.
Pantheon itself turned out to be very similar to what the dungeon had been back closer to the launch, in order to progress further you would face the trials set by the avatars of the gods.
During the phase when Pantheon was on the Test server, the dev team wrote that the dungeon would be balanced around a group which was geared in "Swamp Armor" which at the time was some of the nicer quality equipment you could obtain from single group content. After tackling on some trials it was clear that somewhere between the Test server and going live that idea had changed and some of the trials were challenging, some even borderline impossible for a non-raid geared group under level 55. In a way this was nice news for us raiders, as this meant the content would also prove challenging for us.
Some time after the first few from Xanadu reached the 2nd floor of the Pantheon of the Ancients and we finally found out the specifics of the content at PotA. We would first need to make a choice between Order and Chaos, whichever side you picked you would then become KOS for the other side thus making adventuring inside PotA a little more dangerous. However, to progress further at the Pantheon we also found out that we will need to grind almost 28k faction for the side you chose by donating souls of the fallen foes at a 10 faction per soul rate. These souls would only drop at certain locations and they were not guaranteed drops.
The grind to level 55 continued and after a bit over 3 weeks since the patch the first few people in guild had dinged level 55, after grinding it purely with mobs and repeatable quests in the old content areas. A little further on people kept working on both PotA and their levels and eventually majority of the guild had reached 55 level within our planned schedule. This allowed us to start raiding again, although currently there is only 1 contested overland mob that is aimed for level 55 raiders but most of the old content is still viable in terms of getting some nice loots.
Thus we have been busy killing the usual mobs such as Fengrot, Guar, Varking, Slimjim, Nerksawl and the IoG summoners in order to get back to the raiding routine after the grind phase where we had our raids on the hold and also working on progressing even further in the Pantheon by overcoming the faction grinds awaiting us. In general I suppose you could say that determination and dedication to the game are the keys to tackle on Vanguard after this level cap increase, even though as of late it seems the dev team has also noticed that perhaps they went a little overboard with some of the things they introduced in the GU#7 and are now changing them a little in various minor patches.
For close future, we hope to give some serious attempts on Karax Foulfeather, the overland mob that was boosted to level 59 after being unbeatable for ~1 year. In long term we are waiting for the dev team to push the "mysterious" turtle overland mob & Garuzamut overland mob to live. As well as releasing the raid portion of the Pantheon of the Ancients, called Halls of the Shattered Souls where the Pantheon story arc is supposed to continue and the players will be able to uncover the truth behind the gods of Telon and their years of silence. Although the next large raid dungeon "Nexus" was shelved due to lack of resources, it will be interesting to see what sort of challenges the dev team will be able to come up with for the Vanguard community.
Last but not least, heres some quotes from the past few months... And some of these quotes were so shocking that even the most brave paladin would go pale (or something) when noticing them in the guildchat:
Even though raiding can be awfully exciting, people should calm down every now and then...
Time to start stacking that +int gear.
Oh dear... Grinding for hours does funny things to your head
If there would be a best typo of the year contest, this would win the grand prize...
And a few hours later... They're at it again
[ Last modified by Ayame 2009-07-22 14:12 (Full Log)]
Ayame
