Vanguard, ghost town of the new year...

First, my gout is now pretty much under control. It still hurts a bit, but so far the Allopurinol seems to be preventing a flareup. That's good. My gut problem is still around... a visit to the doctor a few weeks ago suggested it was a mild hernia. That's bad, since if he's right it won't ever get better without $urgery. I'm not sure I believe him though, as it seems to have moved around a bit, and I didn't think hernias did that. Still, it's mostly bearable, I just can't sit at the computer for hours on end anymore, and I also don't dare lift much of anything over 25lbs (not that I want to anyways).

With that out of the way, my report on Vanguard. I loved that game. It's incredibly immersive. The terrain graphics are phenomenal. The character models are not so great, but they're sufficient to not break the feel that you're really exploring somewhere. I've said before, Vanguard is the only fantasy game I've ever played where as I look around the world, I really have the feeling that everything I can see is somewhere I can go.

That said, it's becoming more and more empty as the months pass. Right now, as a level 20 character I see maybe a dozen other people in the 4 to 5 hours I play. A /who in the areas I'm in typically shows 20 people or so online. My roommate is level 35, and has a few more people to group with, but even so.... it feels very empty most of the time. Brad made a huge mistake by launching the game before handing control over to SOE.

Yes, you read that right. If SOE had been in charge back in January, I think they would have fired half the team (which they did) and put their own people in charge of fixing things up for a launch in April. Given the extra 3 months with a full experienced staff of developers, it might have had a successful launch, and might be maintaining a small but vibrant community, instead of the handful of stubborn folks it has now. The poor launch suckered 200K people into buying it, and 150K of them ran away screaming and won't go anywhere near it now, no matter how much it improves.

I think it is destiny that when I went to Silky Venom's site today, I saw a banner ad for EVE-Online. Pirates of the Burning Sea isn't going to be out in June, and no firm release date has been given (perhaps late July?).

Blizzard has announced Starcraft II! It looks amazing. So much so, that I pulled out my old Starcraft CD's and am trying to get the guys to play a few games over the net.