A chat system everything else is optional depending on the type of game.
Oh hell i can do without a chat system, yeah i know it's covenient and people will just set up voip servers etc but i'd like to see a proximity based communication system.
No more listening to noobs discussing how 733t they are, lonely mouth breathers proclaiming their need for dps or heals, some guy pretending to be a girl flirting with the entire zone in a way that would make a hooker blush .... i can do without that.
Guess what you wanna meet someone, go to a towna and pay an npc to deliver a letter to them, with a time and a place ... go their and then endlessly discuss your mini/maxi tactics.
Wanna team up, go to the town center and shout and if i don;t want to listen to you i just leave town.
Oh hell i can do without a chat system, yeah i know it's covenient and people will just set up voip servers etc but i'd like to see a proximity based communication system.
One thing I do when I'm in an RP mood while playing WoW is turn off all channels except /say and /whisper (I leave that on, so friends can contact me when they come online). It really helps with the immersion if you can only 'hear' people who are nearby. As you suggest - go to the inn or local square if you want to get people's attention.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
OP: great thread created. After Blizzcon I was stunned by the fact Blizzard announced a very simple mechanic that all future releases should have: Clustered dungeon servers. All servers (or parts of) regroup players of every server to do common dungeon crawling. Oh I see alright the haters coming out of their caves (it will KILL immersive realm worlds etc), but it is a very practical solution to regroup players. A problem every fantasy mmorpg is facing. Like the clustered server battlegrounds created an ever launching number of Battlefields 24/24 hours, the dungeon crawlers will just love this for every dungeon throughout the game. Of course the world behind it must still be seamless and open and you can STILL have realm specific fights, but for the sheer play mechanism, this is a boost to ANY mmo with dungeon crawling. I think games like Diablo3 - as a pure hack/slash dungeon crawler - will benefit even more from this, but anyhow ALL future MMO's are all about hopping in and ... just game in groups. You can't do that with 4K people on one server.
EQ2 implemented a form of clustered servers. What they did was if a zone was overcrowded, they made a duplicate of that zone and you could switch between different versions of the same zone. Popular areas might have several duplicates, whereas unpopular areas only had one version running. It allowed more players on the same server.
Other games have also had duplicates when overcrowded. However, these games duplicated all areas, not just the overcrowded parts.
Instances is another way for many people to do the same dungeon simultaneously.
I too, would like to see the server barrier disappear that prevents people on different servers from sharing the adventure.
What Zondorf says is a great idea.
What SOE did in EQ2 was very different and in a bad way... it wasn't anything server cluster at all, it was creating different instances in the SAME server and it's the crappiest idea SOE has ever had. Wait.. scratch that.
edit: forgot to say the dead bird story was very funny. BAM! dead bird! Amazing
SoE's EQ2 was an early attempt to apply what Zondorf said about dungeons to outside permanent areas. While some did not like it, it was innovative and the best implementation I have seen to date. Many games make no attempt to manage population in the outside areas. As a result you end up with areas that are overpopulated with players, and other areas that are almost empty. For example, when I played Horde on WoW, almost all areas were empty of Horde players with the exception of The Barrens and the capital cities.
With the current improvements in technology, someone will come up with a better solution that used by SOE in EQ2.
I would like to see clustering applied in some form to the "permanent" areas as well. For example, in old games where the newbie areas are usually very low population, some form of clustering for the newbie experience would be beneficial so the world did not seem so empty.
Comments
Oh hell i can do without a chat system, yeah i know it's covenient and people will just set up voip servers etc but i'd like to see a proximity based communication system.
No more listening to noobs discussing how 733t they are, lonely mouth breathers proclaiming their need for dps or heals, some guy pretending to be a girl flirting with the entire zone in a way that would make a hooker blush .... i can do without that.
Guess what you wanna meet someone, go to a towna and pay an npc to deliver a letter to them, with a time and a place ... go their and then endlessly discuss your mini/maxi tactics.
Wanna team up, go to the town center and shout and if i don;t want to listen to you i just leave town.
Maybe i'm comming off a tad grumpy ....... good
One thing I do when I'm in an RP mood while playing WoW is turn off all channels except /say and /whisper (I leave that on, so friends can contact me when they come online). It really helps with the immersion if you can only 'hear' people who are nearby. As you suggest - go to the inn or local square if you want to get people's attention.
"" Voice acting isn't an RPG element....it's just a production value." - grumpymel2
EQ2 implemented a form of clustered servers. What they did was if a zone was overcrowded, they made a duplicate of that zone and you could switch between different versions of the same zone. Popular areas might have several duplicates, whereas unpopular areas only had one version running. It allowed more players on the same server.
Other games have also had duplicates when overcrowded. However, these games duplicated all areas, not just the overcrowded parts.
Instances is another way for many people to do the same dungeon simultaneously.
I too, would like to see the server barrier disappear that prevents people on different servers from sharing the adventure.
What Zondorf says is a great idea.
What SOE did in EQ2 was very different and in a bad way... it wasn't anything server cluster at all, it was creating different instances in the SAME server and it's the crappiest idea SOE has ever had. Wait.. scratch that.
edit: forgot to say the dead bird story was very funny. BAM! dead bird! Amazing
SoE's EQ2 was an early attempt to apply what Zondorf said about dungeons to outside permanent areas. While some did not like it, it was innovative and the best implementation I have seen to date. Many games make no attempt to manage population in the outside areas. As a result you end up with areas that are overpopulated with players, and other areas that are almost empty. For example, when I played Horde on WoW, almost all areas were empty of Horde players with the exception of The Barrens and the capital cities.
With the current improvements in technology, someone will come up with a better solution that used by SOE in EQ2.
I would like to see clustering applied in some form to the "permanent" areas as well. For example, in old games where the newbie areas are usually very low population, some form of clustering for the newbie experience would be beneficial so the world did not seem so empty.