Working As Intended

As you can see in my lovely update on my guild’s website (Halcyon Affinity), we found a lil ole dragon all the way at the bottom of Stiirhad, a tier 3 raid area. For those that don’t know, Stiirhad isn’t even suppose to raid-ready for another two months (don’t quote me on that, quote Dave Gilbertson of Sigil Games Online). Even if you don’t dig Vanguard, you gotta give Sigil a round of applause for making a fantastic looking dragon model.

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, the game I’ve been playing primarily since beta phase 2 (early 2006). The game has struggled on my computer for over a year now, and it is finally getting to me. Many people know me for my high-tolerance, but it is reaching an end. I don’t have the (or any) income to buy a new system so my current one must keep trucking. It is by no means a crappy system, but in the year 2007 it sure isn’t the best. It has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0ghz), 2GB ram, 120gb 7.2k RPM Seagate hard-drive, and my lovely ATI Radeon x800 XL. It was a beast about two years ago, but unfortunately technology has no sympathy for time.

When I’m farming Rahz Inkur with a 6 man group, I’m happy when I break 10 FPS in combat. Double digits, amen! When I’m at the lowest of settings, I shouldn’t be worried about being able to hit the next ability in a chain every 2 seconds because of a horrible frame rate. I’m also enjoying the Flavor of the Month in Vanguard (also known as playing the most overpowered class), which as you may have heard is the Cleric. My guild mates and I decided to roll up a ton of Clerics, each choosing a different affinity (which is like picking a domain in D&D). We’re currently around level 30, and I’m sure glad that other people in the group can heal, because I know I can’t handle it every time. I picked Preservation, which is themed as defensive (at level 40 they even have Divine Arbitration, er, called Balance in VG, which may be the sole reason why I picked Preservation). Everyone in the group can heal, but I’m known for being on the ball when playing MMOs (yes yes, “the” reliable player, gee-wiz). So when we’re in a tough bind, or as tough as a bind as a group of Clerics can get in, I’m one of the primary healers. I’ll be frank; healing with all the performance issues is not a fun job. I love the class, and I love the melee damage they put out (though by no means should they be doing that much, see my post at Silky Venom on my most recent solo accomplishment), but its hell on earth! I can be in the Khal bank, looking down by the banker and be at 12 FPS. 12 flippin’ frames per second, looking down, lowest settings, in a small room, with maybe 2-3 other people (if that depending on the time of day).

On Thursday my guild decided to break in to Stiirhad with about 21 people. Is that place even finished? No, but we thought we could see how far we could go through it for fun’s sake. My machine only crashed once, and that was when I was taking a screenshot (got a few kill shots on good ole Faelor, huzzah). A few people who had high-end machines were crashing left and right, plus lock-ups and horrible FPS (as you can imagine with 21 people on screen). A lot of the players went back to the default UI and had less lag, but it wasn’t a ton of help. We figured that the offensive target’s debuff window (with debuffs and weaknesses) causes a lot of lag trying to update throughout combat. It just brings destruction to any machine, it is ridiculous.

I could continue ranting, but sadly I discuss this exact subject everyday in Ventrilo for countless hours.