Games - Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

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	Games - Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a high fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) in development by Sigil Games Online. The game is set to be published by Microsoft Game Studios, with gamers estimating a 2006 release date. Vanguard is currently in the second phase of beta testing.

Development

Sigil's Vanguard development team is notable for being composed of many EverQuest developers, including designer Brad McQuaid and the late artist Keith Parkinson. Most of the developers have worked on other MMORPGs and other EverQuest-related games. From its small beginnings, the team has grown to several dozen.

Development began in early 2002 and the publishing deal with Microsoft was announced in April 2002. The game's title was announced on March 16, 2004 — exactly five years after EverQuest was released. Sigil displayed the game's first screenshots in April and announced that Vanguard uses the Unreal engine in May 2004.

Community

Even with its distant release date (based on McQuaid's comments that an MMORPG takes at least three years to build) a community has begun to form around the game. Many of the fans have followed the development, recognizing the team's EQ heritage. Sigil has been periodically revealing concept art, screenshots, and the setting's history and lore. Some of the artwork was created by well-known fantasy artists such as Brom and Don Maitz.

Much of the community has formed around the website's forums, but there have also been events such as fans visiting Sigil, IRC chats, and contests. Fans that have visited Sigil are prominent members of the MMORPG community, including uberguild leaders, webmasters, and bloggers. A "Community Summit" was held on October 7, 2004 that showed Vanguard to a larger audience from the game's own community.

Vanguard was also the first game to implement a community affiliation program to support the fan sites that support Vanguard. Through this program affiliates are granted exclusive content to display on their Fan sites as well as exclusive interviews with development and artistic staff. The community fan sites are made of both old and new community based web sites dedicated to not only Vanguard but many other MMORPGs. This list includes, but is not limited to; “The Druids Grove”, “Silky Venom”, “Vanguard Stratics”, and “The Safehouse”

This is a truly unique program never before offered by a game developer.

Setting

Vanguard is set in a fantasy world called Telon that features wizards, monsters, warriors, and undead. So far, the most prominent continent is Thestra — inhabited by humans, elves, and others. The continents of Qalia, Kojan and Thestra have been mentioned, but little has been revealed about them.

In the game, Thestra has been relatively recently invaded by an undead army, forcing many of the continent's inhabitants to flee their long held cities and reform away from the menace. Most of the known playable races are from traditional fantasy: gnomes, humans, halflings, dwarves, elves, barbarians, and half-giants. Less traditional is the vulmane, a race of intelligent bipedal wolf-men (unlike werewolves).

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