Vanguard death mechanic changes

PC News | No more chasing after your corpse.

According to a post by the developers of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes on the official affiliate fansite Vanguard Spheres' forums, they are looking at removing the much discussed corpse run from the MMORPG. Part of what originally set the the game apart from others in the current crop was the heightened level of difficulty that this feature provided to players. For many though, navigating hordes of quickly respawning enemies to make their way back to their dropped items was more of a chore than a challenge and it seems that this may be something that the developers feel was holding many back from embracing their new title.

The list of current changes being tested are:

- You will no longer leave a corpse when you die; instead you will drop an essence.
- You no longer leave items (Soulbound or not) on your essence.
- Essences will return a large amount of experience upon retrieval.
- Your essence will decay after 70 hours.
- Altars will still allow you to summon corpses from before the patch on 3/30/07 (Build 1799), however, you are unable to summon essences.
- The amount of experience lost when you die has been decreased.

The post goes on to say, "These changes are part of our ongoing plan to improve your experience while playing Vanguard without removing the risk involved. Please realize that these may be changed and modified as we continuously test them to ensure the best gameplay experience is achieved."

Nearly all MMORPG's undergo changes throughout their lives. Star Wars Galaxies showed that these changes are not always successful, however World of Warcraft has undergone several changes over its lifespan, and has triumphed as a result. This is a development of quite a large amount of significance to the game. Whilst still in testing and not implemented as of yet, it will be interesting to see if these alterations to the gameplay of Vanguard will cause a player uproar or instead entice more to the world of Telon.