The guys at Sigil sure hope you like EverQuest. It's understandable, given that an awful lot of the people working on Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, including Brad McQuaid, were responsible for EverQuest and/or its expansions in the first place. That experience is an obvious influence, though the fact that it's harder to find a wall in their offices that doesn't have the late Keith Parkinson's EQ art on it somewhere is also a bit of a tip off.

EQ hasn't aged all that gracefully, but in its day it was a real ass-kicker. Hell, even now it still holds a lot of players in its grip. While more casual-gamer friendly Johnny-come-latelys like WoW have been breaking records, there's still a pretty hefty subset of hardcore MMOers who aren't satisfied with what that offering. EverQuest 2 was a particular disappointment for them, alienating many of the original's playerbase while failing to capture more casual players. Vanguard, on the other hand, looks a lot more like what EverQuest 2 was expected to be in the first place. It displays much of what kept EQ so playable for so long, along with a slick interface, greater depth to combat, reduced downtime, some really fancy graphics, and a whole lot of stuff to do besides beating up monsters.More...