Vanguard – Extreme Makeover Edition

I haven’t actively played Vanguard for about 5 months now.  I picked up Vanguard right after I got burnt out on TBC – around the first of April.  I played for about three months and got my dwarven cleric up to 40 on the Hilsbury (now Xeth) server.  It was a fun time but the game was just still too ridden with performance issues, bugs, and graphics that at times inspired me, and at other times depressed me.

So it was with interest that I caught site of this story today and decided to take a look at some of the extreme makeover the Vanguard team is doing with the city of Khal.  If you’ve never played Vanguard, Khal is a fairly large city in Qalia that is a hub for players on that continent, and a crossroads of sorts if you are traveling to other places.  In other words, it needs to look pretty darn impressive and I think the Vanguard art team is making great strides in making that happen.

Just take a look at some of the before and after pictures, especially the pics of the indoor sections of the city.  Wow!  I’m impressed.  Not only do they use better textures and skins, better carpets, plants, tiles, and decorative items, but the lighting (and actual lamps/lights) is 100% better.  I was pretty impressed with what I saw there.  If they can continue to give this extreme makeover to the rest of VG, players could be in for a real treat.  What was once fairly bland and “bleh”, now may start to actually look pretty dang cool.

I don’t know that it’s enough to make me start paying VG again, but I continue to keep my account active and the game patched, just so I can jump back in and check out changes just like these.  At some point I may give it another go, but I’m really trying to give the new VG team several months to make improvements to the game.