Vanguard Emulator

Xenich · Post by **Xenich** » March 6th, 2026, 21:56

So, have any of you looked into this, kept up, etc...?

It has been going on for quite a while. I checked it out from time to time in the past, but they have come a long way, fixing a ton of the problems and stability of the live servers over the years. I think they hit a wall at some point (ie ran out of the data collection stuff they had people do before sunset) and tried to reach out to Daybreak to help, step in, or something to see this to "realization", but apparently they denied it.

Brad even was a big fan of what they were doing, I had seen him log in a few times and comment on their progress in the past when I was on the Pantheon forums.

They still seem to have a Discord up and the main developers are still hammering away, improving, adding, etc...

I loved Vanguard (hated it at release because it was a buggy mess that took a Cray to run it), but I did visit a bit back when Sony took it (and eventually screwed it over) and really enjoyed its design and play.

Here is the site if any are interested in playing around: Mostly dead BTW in terms of communication on the website (go to the dev side to get anything remotely recent, but discord is where they are active).m

https://www.vgoemulator.net/

This is the discord:
https://discord.gg/hxKQZmk

By the way, for you programmers, they may still need some help if you want to cut your chops on some work, so... there is that... and if any of you have solid memory or experience with Vanguard, you might be able to help in other ways. Regardless, I hate to see this project die. Vanguard is a bit... well modern to EQ (I dislike some features), but the bulk of Brads concepts and design from EQ are there, so it is still a very cool game.

asf · Post by **asf** » March 6th, 2026, 22:05

so if you are a player you go to the gay site

Xenich · Post by **Xenich** » March 6th, 2026, 22:13

asf wrote: ↑ March 6th, 2026, 22:05
so if you are a player you go to the gay site

Only if the sites software detects that you are gay.

anvi · Post by **anvi** » March 22nd, 2026, 19:18

I really love it and played it a fair bit. It took them ages to get it to a good place. They didn't have any database leaks or much data mining from the live game. So apparently they had to reverse engineer everything themselves and remake all the content by hand, using fan sites and things. And many of the fan sites disappeared so they had to use wayback machine and stuff to get the fan sites back first.

I just tried to forget about it for several years because I didn't want to play an empty game. I first gave it a try about a year ago. It was really good but it had a few annoying issues like mobs constantly falling into the ground. They have since fixed that.

It now feels mostly like the real game. But there are some things not done yet. The mobs don't use spells yet so they all just rush you and melee you. They increased the mob melee damage to compensate. Last year it was too hard because dungeon mobs would kill me in seconds. But they have since toned them down so it is a lot more doable now. They also recently added some spells to some mobs. Also some areas are not done yet, and there are some minor bugs with quests that are already done. But so far I played through all of IOD and that was perfect. Then I made a new character and played through Tursh and the area above that, Themnwar's Shield or something. Also the big dungeon Khegors End was perfect. And 3 Rivers is nearby that was done too apart from the missives. (They have been added in some places recently but I dont think everywhere). But missives were never much fun anyway. The quests are good. I also played through the Silverlake area and that was all done too.

Then this year I made a new group and ran it through a different starter area (Kojan). That all worked well too. Last year when I played there was still some important stuff missing like the various forms classes have. But they added those since then so now the classes are working properly. There are some big areas that aren't done yet like the Arena, but they are working on that at the moment. From what I can tell there are some major dungeons that are all done like The Ruins of Trengal Keep, Vol Tuniel / Wardship, and Dargun`s Tomb. Some of those dungeons are so big you can get several levels in them. Lots of quests in them too.

There are some key areas that are not done yet which I hope to see done soon. Veskals Exchange is WIP and I assume the place north of that. SOE ****** it up by changing that region to a different level range, so the emu team are resetting it back to how it was. They are working on Kaon's Rush at the moment which is next to that. I heard Thelasseen is not done yet either and it was never done properly in the live game either. It was full of mobs placed well in groups and things, but not many quests. So I don't think they are that motivated to work on that yet. If you find areas that are not done it probably won't be much fun. But I played to about level 20 in a few different areas and the were great. I know I can find plenty of places that are done from 20-40 ish too. I think 40+ it gets a bit more sparse.

anvi · Post by **anvi** » March 22nd, 2026, 19:22

The team working on it seem really good. I reported a few bugged quests and they replied instantly and then it was fixed in the patch notes just a few days later. They seem to have one person working on crafting, one person working on back end tech type stuff, one person working on quests, and some other people working too. They all seem skilled at what they do. Because like I said when I played last year there were mobs falling in the ground a lot and the tech guy has fixed that since then.

I haven't tried crafting or diplo at all but I hear that they are in good shape now too. Not so sure about diplo but crafting seems largly done up to level 30/40 ish. I love the game. They also added a teleport command so you can play in any starter area you want, then teleport to the IOD around level 10 and do the last quest which gives you a flying mount. Playing this game with a flying mount is so much better.

anvi · Post by **anvi** » March 22nd, 2026, 19:29

The population is low though so playing it solo could be limiting. I don't mind because I always liked to multibox anyway so I can go anywhere and do anything.

Xenich · Post by **Xenich** » March 22nd, 2026, 21:49

Yeah, they had very little data collection because Sony dropped the "sunsetting" of the game within a couple of months of shutting it down. It was a blind side. Not a surprise, Sony devs were ******* ******** when they took over after Verant EQ and it was no surprise they would **** up Vanguard, especially with the way they did it... rumor was that Smed wanted to kill the project because he was worried about it taking subs away from Sony and when they took over (ie "helping" Brad out after MS ****** him), all they did was turn the game into a modern FTP gimmick. Also, they could never figure out how to solve the Chunking issues, but Xinux and crew solved that one pretty early on with the Emulator.

They did try to go to Daybreak to get some type of deal to continue development (ie either help them with some information, or take the project over to bring it to release), but that turned into a no go from what I heard.

Too bad though, game had a lot of depth to it in numerous systems.

I think at one time Brad even toyed with trying to buy the game from Daybreak, but that never panned out. I think it was again, due to "we don't want you to compete with us" type of thing.

anvi · Post by **anvi** » March 22nd, 2026, 22:09

Yeah SOE are devious scum. I bought a bunch of their cash to play Vanguard and then they announced closure shortly after and they wouldn't refund me.

Although I heard the main issue with Vanguard was licencing. The Unreal Engine they used is old and modified and they had to pay Unreal an ongoing fee to use it. So even running 1 server was more hassle than it was worth for them. They also had licenses for various middleware like the clouds and speedtree and a lot of music. But I think the modified Unreal Engine is the main issue. It gets brought up sometimes on their Discord. A lot of people wonder about buying it from DBG with a crowdfund or something but the engine paperwork is a problem.

Post by **rusty_shackleford** » March 22nd, 2026, 22:11

Shame only SWG got leaked and not the rest of the games

Post by **J1M** » March 22nd, 2026, 22:17

I could see myself doing something similar to what we did with FFXI at some point. I don't think now would be the right time, however. Midnight is fresh and with the weather getting better it's usually not peak MMO season.

I bet Tim Sweeney would let people out of the engine contract if it could be connected to a win for him in some way.

anvi · Post by **anvi** » March 24th, 2026, 19:25

J1M wrote: ↑ March 22nd, 2026, 22:17
I could see myself doing something similar to what we did with FFXI at some point. I don't think now would be the right time, however. Midnight is fresh and with the weather getting better it's usually not peak MMO season.

I bet Tim Sweeney would let people out of the engine contract if it could be connected to a win for him in some way.

Like good publicity for him? I could see that.