25.1. Will I need to use outside tools like parsing in order to effectively play my character?
Some players will choose to do this regardless, but we hope to provide the most meaningful, useful tools in-game.
Source: Official FAQ
25.2. Will there be Food/Water?
We're not big fans of regular food and water that you occasionally have to refresh and then auto-eats. Not ruling it out, but not leaning in that direction. If we do, I'd like it at least tied to how quickly you recover your stamina or something.
We ARE big fans of various consumables that give you temporary bonus stats, abilities, whatever. These could be in the form of holy water, magic bread, stone skin potions, etc.
If I recall, this originally came up because we're not keen on having a baking crafting class that just makes regular food/drink.
We plan on handling the creation of magical consumables via alchemy (it's not broken!), perhaps clerics blessing water, etc.
Source: Aradune Mithara
25.3. Will Vanguard support player character "marriage" in game?
Certainly player marriage is important to a lot of people and part of relationship/community building in MMOGs. To what extent we will support it, if at all, with in-game mechanics and/or our CS teams, it's too early for me to say at this point. At the very least, though, it could be a significant part of the 'last names' proposal I posted several months back.
An observation: some feel that these sorts of things should be handled by the players themselves, while others desire to see the developer involved and/or game mechanics and functionality to support it.
You bring up good questions... restrictions, customs, parallels to the real world (church bells), etc. My inclination is likely to let players handle this and do it the way they want to do it and not codify it, pardon the pun. January 2006
Source: Aradune Mithara
25.4. How can we expect to see Vanguard marketed?
We're about to start a press tour, visiting the major game pubs, etc., after which you should start seeing Vanguard coverage extending well beyond the fan sites and such where we focused on initially.
Then after that you'll start seeing advertisements, etc. as the Microsoft marketing forces start to come into play.
A decision to postpone the movie I promised a while back and to integrate it into this more formal marketing effort was made, which is why its been so delayed. I do apologize for that, but ultimately, looking at the big picture and the marketing/PR plan Sigil & MSFT have put together, I think it will turn out to be the right call. January 2006
Source: Aradune Mithara
25.5. Will Sigil host fan meetings or fairs for Vanguard?
Yes! Fanguards or Fanfairs.
After the game has been released, we will bring the Fanguards to many of the cities you have mentioned in this thread in due time. When I was overseeing the Fan Faires, we alternated the areas, sometimes East Coast, sometimes West and sometimes in the middle. We visited cities including Baltimore, Minneapolis, Orlando, Seattle, Boston and Dallas.
We plan to run the Fanguards the same way. So if travelling to one of these events is out of the question for you, hang on. We will get closer to you at some point.
But only after Vanguard has been released. Until then, we won't be leaving town. January 2006
Source: Abigale Seashadow
25.6. Can I go /anon in Vanguard?
Yep, similar to EQ, you can go /anon (anonomous)
Source: Aradune Mithara
25.7. Will there be an /Inspect ability? and can I turn it off?
Yep, or similar to EQ, you don't be notified that you are being inspected. I think the way we did it in EQ worked pretty well; same with /anon. - January 2006
Source: Aradune Mithara
25.8. How closely does the released Lore correspond to the actual game world?
There's an existing storyline for the world of Telon, it was contributed to by everyone when the company formed but primarily authored by the original senior designers. It spans from creation to the present (and future, actually). It contains the overarching storyline for the game and histories. In some cases, they may be detailed stories, and in others they may simply be bullet points. That sets the foundation for our lore, and some of the stories we've written are based around those bullet points.
For instance, our internal design docs explain briefly that the undead invaded Thestra, quickly overran the lower half of the continent and easily defeated any attempts to fight them back. In a last ditch effort before being overrun, a small group of human soldiers stayed in Old Targonor to fend them off while the rest fled north.
From that paragraph or so Willem's Stand was written. So the event and the places where it happened were from the overall game story, but the characters and all the details were created and written by the author, in that particular case -- me. Mike Butler has done the same in many of his stories, notably The Foundling.
There are also lore pieces though where we just had a story of our own we wanted to incorporate into Vanguard. Such was the case for Morgan's Tale or Andy Platter's lore piece, Outcast. Design needs to run through the story before it can be published to make sure it fits within the games vision, but with the detailed area descriptions and the willingness to have a very collaborative environment its pretty easy to make stuff fit into the world.
The road goes both ways though too, Mike and I have both contributed to the design docs simply by necessity while writing lore. A lot of our stuff dealt with Thestran royalty, thus, a detailed lineage had to be created. Lots of stuff like that.
Basically, what we did was take segments of a high level story and flesh it out. Tradionally, that's something the designers do while preparing to populate the world but in this instance, we were able to help to a degree.
Source: Glip the Gnome