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Thank you to everyone in the community who continues to submit beautiful screenshots. You can view everything submitted in our player submitted screenshot database. We will be highlighting one recently submitted image submitted by our readers every day. SUBMIT YOUR SCREENSHOTS HERE.
Today's image comes to us from Gragnik and is titled "Stranded"
SOE posted a small sneak peak regarding the upcoming Ancient Port Warehouse. You can read the article here.
Beware Telon Travelers!
A friendly warning to all those who dare to enter The Ancient Port Warehouse: you'll find cleverly crafted monstrosities that are determined to defend their creators at any cost; including your life!
The Vanguard developers (big thanks to Andrew K. and John H.) have been kind enough to supply players with a bit of information that might help people survive in APW (and entice them to explore this dungeon in all its glory!)
New test server build 1885 patch notes show a bit more of what's coming up in the upcoming patch.
Vanguard Build 1885 Patch Notes 9/19/2007 � TEST SERVER
GAMEPLAY
GENERAL
-You can now swap items in your bank, even if the bank is full.
- Players' Locations for Renton Keep are now categorized correctly.
ADVENTURING
- Bard - Lowered the refresh of Lightning Kisses the Ground to 30 seconds, to better match the rest of the attack chain
- Bard - Shatter the Mountain now only causes critical vulnerability for 1 second.
- Blood Mage - Added a 3 second cast time to mental Transmutation and increased the refresh time to 12 seconds, up from 10.
- Blood Mage - Increased the energy cost of Entwining Vein
There's going to be an extended (24 hour) downtime for all SOE related games & websites on September 25th. You can read the post here.
Extended Service Downtime on September 25th
All SOE games, websites, message boards, Knowledge Base, Station store, and other services will be unavailable for approximately 24 hours beginning on Tuesday, September 25th. All SOE services will be undergoing upgrades to the authentication system and as a result, all logins for SOE services will be unavailable. Technical and Account support will only be available by phone during this time. Please keep an eye on this website for more news and information about this maintenance as it becomes available. We appreciate your patience and understanding during this downtime.
Ellrya posted the server downtime for tomorrow at 3am. The character transfers will resume, with Halgar possibly having extended downtime. You can read the post here.
Character transfers will resume tomorrow morning at 3:00 AM PDT. During this time, the servers will be unavailable. The approximate downtime is 4 hours, with the servers expected to be up around 7:00 AM PDT. In an effort to move as many characters as possible on Thursday, Halgar may experience extended downtime. Additional information and updates will be posted on the Official Vanguard Forums.
As an added reminder:
Mail and broker items will not transfer over with your character.
Characters are responsible for packing up their houses for transfer. Houses will not transfer over to the new server.
Thank you to everyone in the community who continues to submit beautiful screenshots. You can view everything submitted in our player submitted screenshot database. We will be highlighting one recently submitted image submitted by our readers every day. SUBMIT YOUR SCREENSHOTS HERE.
Today's image comes to us from Gragnik and is titled "Baying at the moon"
A new edition of "Getting to Know the Vanguard Team" is up, this time it's an interview with Hannah "HannahB" Brown-Damron, Vanguard's Senior Artist. It's a good read, you can check out the article here.
Getting to Know the Vanguard Team: An interview with HannahB
Your full name: Hannah Brown-Damron�Better known as HannahB.
What's your official title/position? Senior Artist
Where did you go to school and what did you major in? I attended East Tennessee State University where I earned my Bachelor's Degree in Engineering Technology with a concentration in 3D. I think went on to receive my Master's Degree in Engineering Technology with a concentration in Advanced Visualization - b asically, 3D Art.
SOE gave us the how-to and answered some questions regarding the free complimentary character move. Those interested in moving to another server to get with your friends, you should take a look at this article. You can read the post here.
the information for character transfers was part of the server merge email that went out. There is also supposed to be a link somewhere on the main page. I will paste the info in here as well.
Complimentary Character Move
Shortly after the merge is completed, we will grant all customers affected by the merge a one-time, complimentary character move to the server of your choice (subject to the PvE and PvP rules and time limit described below). For each customer with character(s) on a new server who requests a character move within the permitted time frame, the chosen character will be transferred to the selected server as described below.
PvP characters who are on the Sartok PvP server after the server merge will be able to move to one of the PvE servers. PvE players will only be able to move to one of the other PvE servers and not to the PvP server (Sartok). The PvP rule set on Sartok will be Free For All.
Across Telon, spectators are being amazed by the programming genius at SOE. SOE has developed a program for mounts to allow them to eat, sleep, and do various other normal bodily functions...
This unfortunately has had slight drawbacks, which developers are attempting to fix by game update #8.
The major drawback/bug, is that of the relieving process. It seems while walking mounts can reliev themselves of digested material in fairly unseen manners, what about the flying mounts??
And finally, on early wednesday, the local elves of the Southwatch Forest declared war on humans of New Targonor. Speculators agree that it probably had something to do with either a bugged horse or an immature human casting levitate, either way the horse flew all over the woods dropping lil presents for all the good lil elven boys and girls! Now, see! He was very generous, and the elves just blew it all out of proportion!!
Well, that is all for the news, thank you and good day!
Servers are going down tomorrow morning at 3AM for the first character transfer, you can read the announcement here.
The first cycle of character transfers will begin tomorrow morning, September 18th at 3:00 AM PDT and continue until 7:00 AM PDT. During this time, all servers will be down. Transfers will continue on Thursday morning, and subsequent cycles will happen on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Since Jan 25 until now, 9 months, and 37 comics later (regular comics and bonus comics) I figured it was paste due for some kind of celebration anyway. However, I also wanted to celebrate becoming a legit comic artist. Recently I was hired by TenTonHammer to do weekly comics there for all MMO's and PAID! I will still be doing comics here of course. So in celebration I am going to hold a comic contest (what other kind would it be hehe?)
These are the rules:
1. create a comic about vanguard
2. save it as a jpg, 550 x 400 pixels
3. E-mail it to contest@aboutvanguard.com
Then next week I will select the top 3 and also post the rest to enjoy. Then it's up to the polls to decide who the winners are!
1st place will receive a free poster of the "Vanguard: Saga of Losers" Comic, in addition to a custom forum title and 1 week VIP
2nd place will receive the custom forum title and one week VIP
SOE has an interesting article that tells us a bit about how the artists are creating art in Vanguard, as well as what they are currently working on. You can read the article here.
From concept and design, to in-game and living within the world of Telon; how is it that art is created? I've often wondered what a task it must be to create an expansive, living, and colorful world like what you see in Vanguard. How do you build a city's walls with a mouse, computer and code? It's certainly easier said than done, and the artists on the Vanguard team seem to do it by instinct!
Earlier this week I poked around the office, peering over the shoulders of the many artists within our building to catch a glimpse of what they are working on. The big project, it seems, is the revamping of Khal! Not only are the artists giving the enormous city a splash of color, they're also improving the overall performance of the zone.
Machail from Tentonhammer finally got an OK from SOE to post his Raid Test review. You can view the article here.
Raid Content
The good stuff! Raid content is a challenge. A very big challenge. The creatures in APW are unlike any you've seen anywhere else in game. The trash mobs have a lot of hit points and take a good raid team to take out. They'll throw a few tricks at you, like AEs when you least expect it. Every mob in this dungeon has a learning curve to it. Some steeper than others.
The strategies formed to defeat some of the boss mobs takes a bit of creative thinking. It took us many attempts to take down one in particular, who appears at the end of the first wing in APW. We were lucky that we were placed in such a position on test server that we could just reset and start again after every wipe, but this won't necessarily be the case on live servers. Guilds and raid groups will have to consider where they are fighting, and have a contigency plan in case of a wipe. And wipes will happen frequently until said group figures out the secrets of this boss. Once figured out though, the fight is fluid and relatively safe if your raiding group stays on their toes and works completely in unison.
Thank you to everyone in the community who continues to submit beautiful screenshots. You can view everything submitted in our player submitted screenshot database. We will be highlighting one recently submitted image submitted by our readers every day. SUBMIT YOUR SCREENSHOTS HERE.
Today's image comes to us from Arch Magi and is titled "Prepared for War"
You can read the server downtime announcement here.
All servers will be brought down tomorrow morning at approximately 5:00 AM PDT for a patch. The estimated downtime is about 4 hours, with the servers being brought back up around 9:00 AM PDT.
Below are the hotfix notes that will be live tomorrow after the patch:
GENERAL
- Fixed a bug with player chests where placing an item in a chest, moving that item inside the chest, and then placing a second item at the original location will cause those items to stack cause the first one to look like it was lost.
- Fixed a bug with player chests where stack counts were not being saved when stacking items inside a chest. This would result in stack counts being wrong when the server restarted and items would have been lost.
GUILD HOUSES
- Upkeep has been turned back on. This affects all housing plots.
- Made it so when you attempt to deposit escrow it cancels any trades you might have.
- Fixed an issue with fixture not showing up in some Guild Halls that are in densely populated areas.
CODING
- You can no longer activate an item, such as summoning your mount, if you are in the process of casting. This should fix both a known exploit and crash.
- Likely fix for the high level characters with certain gear not being able to chunk unless they unequip some of their items.
SOE is showing off some of the pictures taken from the recently constructed Guild Halls. You can view the article here.
Take a Tour of Telon's Guild Halls!
Guild Halls have been added to Vanguard, and no time was wasted in their construction! Although the quests have been active in-game for players to conquer, it wasn't until just a few days ago that plots to build on were available for purchase. After many hours of non-stop labor, quite a few determined guilds within the lands of Telon became proud owners of a grand Guild Hall! It was my pleasure to visit a few of these distinguished dwellings, and be given a guided tour through what is now home to many dedicated guild members.
Today's "Getting to know the Vanguard Team" features VG's Game Designer, Silas "Cylus" Morse. You can read the article here.
Getting to Know the Vanguard Team: An interview with Silas Morse
It's my pleasure to introduce to you, a name that's already familiar to many on the forums, Silas "Cylus" Morse, Game Designer for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Silas is a true fan of the game he works on. Plucked from the population of players to become a designer, he shelved the possible life as a distinguished doctor to work on his favorite MMO. In this interview, you'll learn a little bit about where his passion from gaming comes from, as well as his loathing of Gnomes.
How long have you lived in southern California?
I was born in Big Bear, CA. but moved to Southern Oregon when I was 6 months old. I've been back in the state for a little over a year now.
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