One thing Vanguard has that Horizons didn't is Sony Online Entertainment.

McQuaid and SOE have a long relationship.  Severed and broken, now mended I'm sure that they will work something out.  Look, Sigil needs to put their ego aside and sell the game to SOE before irreversible damage is done.

SOE will give it the re-work and approach they did for EverQuest 2 after launch, and that turned out to be a fine MMO.

Regarding the Monk class, I logged in today after 3 weeks away and not much had changed.  Despite the few dozen notes in recent Patches, I still found myself completely owned solo.  At 23 I am relegated to running grey and green quests.  Groups are almost non-existent these days.  Truly sad for a class with so much potential and a game with limitless innovation -- both squandered.

Wasted talent.

Baba, I'm 33 and the last green quests I did were faction grind quests for the Wardship and the Panther Mask quest. I didn't do them out of level-based necessity, I did them because I wanted the rewards. At other times, I do white to red quests, of which I can do the white ones solo most of the time.

My intent isn't to bash the game. In fact, it's far from that. The major underlying issues with the game are much bigger than just monk balance though. Yes, I've been as frustrated as any monk out there with the state of our class but that's not what truly concerns me right now.

What concerns me the most is the overall health of the game in its current state. It has major design flaws that will undoubtedly take quite a bit of time and energy to correct, and that's assuming someone at the top admits these mistakes and takes the corrective action to fix them.

If it were just the monk class, I would simply play one of my alts as a main until monks were fixed. But it's difficult to play new characters when there simply isn't enough new players coming in to group with.

They have no active campaign strategy in place at the moment to get new players. In fact, they never had one.

Brad targeted 350-500K subs at peak for VG and estimated it would take 12-18 months to reach that. They aren't even anywhere close to the pace to reach that mark. If anything, the trend is declining.

They thought a mostly group-centric game could still be very succesful. Now it still remains if their theory was wrong or if the implementation of their theory was incorrect, but either way, they missed the mark...badly.

The lack of strong organization and solid management is both suprising and disappointing. People with those resumes should not be making the kinds of mistakes they've made.

Gross mis-management of investment dollars. Enough said.

Lack of community. Great concept, but for whatever reason, it simply has not clicked on a mass level.

Lack of ANY high-end content (i.e., raiding). I've been stuck at lvl 33 for weeks but if there is one group of the playerbase who is probably the most dedicated to the game, it's the hard-core, high-end raiders. And while an argument can be made that these folks have no one to blame but themselves for now having nothing to raid, an equally valid argument can be made that it's Sigil's fault for not having even one high-end raiding chunk, area or target at release. Eventually, even the most dedicated followers will lose interest waiting.

It's also a major design flaw that arguably the sole reason for the lack of raiding to begin with is because of terrible performance.

Now the rumor is that SOE will announce sometime in the next week or so the purchase of Vanguard from Sigil. While this is purely rumor at this point, it says two things to me:

1. The state of the game is even worse than I thought. If this indeed does happen, then I venture it truly is because current subs aren't even high enough to sustain the game for the long term with it's current ownership.

2. There may just be hope for Vanguard after all. Like SOE or hate them, the reality is they have more experience successfully managing MMOs than anyone (yes, including Blizzard), and have proven they can turn things around even for ones like Vanguard that are floundering severely (such as EQ2).

This is primarily why I've not been playing much recently and have been stuck at 33. Even with all of these issues, the die-hard inside of me wants to tough it out with a wait-and-see approach. I know that every one of these MMOs goes through some tough times early on and that memorable times can be had on the other side once they get them straightened out.

Perhaps I'm just not the player I once was because a larger side of me simply says, why bother?

This is a very telling comment

I've been stuck at lvl 33 for weeks

If you are stuck at at any level lower than 45 then I would suggest you are not branching out very far. There are extensive quest lines that give a lot of XP and very good equipment, much of it soloable and all duo'ble with almost any class. Southwatch to Tarjanor to Craigwind back to Tarjanor to Jaethreads Twist to Strandon to Dragon's Backbone to Tethanami's Harbor

There is no reason to be stuck at any level below 45 at this time in the game.

The only people that I see in guild that are getting frustrated with the game and falling behind in levels are those that do the faction grinding quests like Wardship, unable to get groups for the armor and the like. Travelling around and skipping the grinding till you get to upper 40's where you are almost out of levels then grinding the top tier armor quests imho is the way to go, that way you enjoy All the game.

As to comparative ease of solo kills of one class vs. the other. I will give you this one story that happened to me in my mid 20's. I was out solo'ing turtles in the Strand of the Ancients, I would kill 1 then eat, rinse and repeat, seemingly slow while I sat on the beach longer than I was fighting. I watched some caster just decimating turtles, easily 4 to my 1. He was even a level lower than me at the time. This went on a couple days over the weekend and I was a little disappointed in my performance compared to his till I started to notice that he would die many many times througout the day while I had only died once when I rushed without healing to full health. Now 20 levels later I noticed I am still a level or 2 higher than him. The point is, evrey class does something better than us, but then again we do things better than every other class. If your benchmark is to be able to kill same level 4 dots then your in for a long wait of disappointment. If your benchmark is to kill 2 dot reds with little fear of dieing in areas that others are afraid to solo because of adds then you will find it is much easier. But I guess it's all about priorities.

Does our Class need more work? Sure it does, but so does most every other class. Get out there and enjoy the rest of the game and let come what comes. There are lots of areas to do things well past level 33.

Soulfyst
45 Undead Monk of the Drunken Fist

Thats pretty much what I am trying to say.  To top that off....They targeted, for the most part, a certain demographic in gaming.  They then later decided to target every demographic possible.  Personally I think they should have stuck with a certain style and STUCK with it.  Now its like they are trying to please everyone but mostlly they are pleasing noone.  If someone likes long levels and tough content they will not be pleased by quick xp and easy encounters...and vice verce.  Sure you may half please each crowd but its not enough to keep either side for very long.  They need to find out who the hell it is that they want to attract and design that game.  Enough of the "I think we can please everyone" bullSNARF...Its obvious at this point that you cant.

Here's the other side of that argument though.

Instead of changing their design in mid-stream to be more player-friendly (obviously in response to WoW), suppose they had stayed true to their initial design of more player interdependence? How many active subs could you then realistically have targetted?

What I mean is, if Brad stated they thought they could hit 350K subs under this model that some refer to as "WoW-ified", how many subs would be attainable for an even more niche product that caters almost exclusively to the hard core player that can afford to play 12-14 hours per day? 200K? 150K?

Now you're a potential investor listening to this guy named Brad sitting in front of you asking for investment funding, and telling you that while this other product is rattling off millions of subs, he's asking you to invest your money into a product that at it's peak, will reach a max of 150K subscribers.

Personally, I think even Brad wanted to create something a little more player friendly but even if he didn't, I'm willing to bet he would've been forced to by those holding the purse strings.

According to your story, this caster sucks.  Plain and simple.  It may depend on what type of caster he is but my necro could easily kite around 3 3 dots of equal to +2 lvls without breaking much of a sweat and come out on top without getting touched.  If my mana is low i use vile ritual on each corpse and its back to full.  Same deal with the druid, except they nerfed taproot so now he isn't as capable as the necro.

On our fear of dying...
If we can solo the red 2 dot, any class can solo the red 2 dot (except maybe a rogue).  Our fear of dying is equal to most other classes ability of succeding.  We may not die, but we will not necessarily win.  Most other classes such as the necro, fear dying even less than we do because not only can they FD, they can also kill virtually anything.  Clerics can easily solo multiple mobs (and multiple players on PVP servers for that matter).  Virtually every class has an advantage over us in some way.  The only think monks have over MOST other classes (excluding necros and disciples) is FD.  That's it.  Only FD.  That's the only thing keeping our class from being removed from the game because unless we had FD we would be pointless.  In fact Necros DO make us pointless. They can FD, their pet can tank better, and they deal much more damage.  They can even buff others.  They can crowd control better too.  I assure you I have tested just about every class thoroughly with the exception of heavy fightesr to see how they compare to monks.  I have a 25 druid, 27 necro, 26 cleric, 19 rakurr shaman (24 hayatet shaman in beta) and a 43 monk.  I have experimented with the bard, rogue, sorceror, disicple, ranger all to lvls between 10-17, and i've recently been experimenting with the Psi.

I can assure you many other classes are playing perfectly, if not overpowered.  I have no problems with the Cleric or the Necro exactly where they are, except for maybe some graphical tweeks.  DK i haven't played personally but my best friend plays one and he loves it more than his paladin.  My other best friend has a 44 warrior and he has few complaints also.  Druids are basically fine, they do many things well.  Sorcs are pretty good too.  Shamans are very tough like most other healers (my brother plays a blood mage and loves it).  Psi's seem to be fairly happy with their class also.  Rangers i rarely hear complain, and their damage is doing fine.  Bards have so much utiltiy they are too busy having fun to complain.  Honestly the only classes i hear who are consistently complaining are monks and rogues.  These 2 classes need some help (but rogues have extra utility now so monks should be fixed first).   

The monk plays just fine in a group.  Fine, but not spectacular.  This is the only time i don't feel obviously pathetic compared to other classes.  Monks still need lots of attention, or at least enough attention for the devs to realize his DPS should be a LOT higher for all of the other things he sacrifices.

P.S.  It IS getting harder to find groups.  If grouping were easier my complaints about monks would shrink sizeably (i mean so what if he's gimper than others, no one really notices in a group), but things are not getting better.  Therefore my obligation to rant increases.  I'm not really ranting either, im just pointing out that playing to a classes strengths displays the obvious power of that class.  There are no strengths to the monk compared to other classes, therefore he feels weaker.  (Thanks for nerfing RiTW devs)

Monks vs. Necro

Your joking right? Necro's are always overpowered. So are you saying that we should be equal to a necro in our solo'ability? Really? Thats where you want the Monks to be? And that wouldn't 1) Nerf your Neccy or 2) make this already easy game completely mundane.

As for FD and the Necro vs. Monk. Let's see, 2 hours into a growing purple dungeon, same level neccy, dead cleric, who survived the attack on FD failure  because noone beleives your dead but yourself to survive to res the cleric with a stone, so the whole group doesn't have to summon corpses. Monk wins. No HP to surve 1.5K hits and 2K nukes  and the neccy gets 1 try at FD, I can get 3. Not sure what the reuse timer for Neccy's is but Diciples is 1 min, thats 1 shot for them too. Don't discount FD and our surviability anywhere. Neccy pet tanking better than me? heh, you will have to show me that. I can hold agro when I want for as long as I want and I have yet to see a cleric run out of mana in this game unless it was a huge pull where we would die no matter who was tanking, trying to heal me when I am the tank of the group. But I play with a neccy friend all the time, I will let him use his pet as tank in the next dungeon to see how well it tanks.

Soulfyst
45 Undead Monk of the Drunken Fist