Vanguard: Saga of Heroes review

When we finally did leave town we were a bit concerned. The player population at the moment isn’t that huge. Couple that with the size of the world, and you’re setting yourself up to rarely see another player. After a couple unsuccessful tries and some time learning the odd invite system, we managed to get a group.

This is a good time to point out that, frustratingly enough, this is a critical step - soloing doesn't seem to be much of an option. Vanguard practically forces you to party up, and further forces the players to get along with one another. It's not just due to an onslaught of quests that had monsters respawning much quicker than a single player could kill them. That's here, but it's deeper than that. For example, the MMO staple "instances", in which a game creates a dungeon or battle just for a small group, don't exist here. It's the quests versus everyone at once, and everyone at once vs the quests, for better or worse.