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Download zones and content
permster
Member UncommonPosts: 102
Guild Wars reminded me of this topic and I thought I would post about it. What do you think about the zone based loading of content?
For example, the Guild Wars client leaves a really small footprint on the hard drive. But when you zone into someplace new it downloads the files it needs for that area and they are cached permanently on your hard drive.
Doesn't this seem like a much better way to go sometimes? I was just looking over the media for EQ2 and it's like 10 CD's or it comes on 2 DVD's. That just seems crazy to me. When will it ever end? Soon you will have games that are 6 DVD's and you can't even get them in CD format anymore.
Perhaps Guild Wars is like that just because it's a world preview, but I don't know.
The beta versions of EQ2 and WoW were over 2GB downloads. That is an insane download size even for broadband which I have. It still took over a night to download. However, it took me like 5 seconds to download Guild Wars and have it up and running. I thought the way Guid Wars setup the client download was great. I was in the game playing in no time.
What do you all think?
Comments
With storage space becoming cheaper, I don't think it will be issue. Heck in the early 90s a desktop came with less then a gig of storage, now they come with 50-100. With a 200 gig external hardrive costing about 150-200 dollars.
I think its more realistic to assume that games will do what FFXI did, and that is INCLUDE a hardrive. Like they sold the game bundled with a 40 gig hardrive for 100 dollars, this is only 50 more then the common selling price of most games.
Possibly even external hardrives with the increase in use of USB technology.
And a secondary benefit was it makes the game load faster by drawing directly from drive instead of CD. This in turn should allow for higher end games to run on lower systems, if the trend persists.
Perhaps I should have made myself a little more clear. This wasn't the type of reply I was looking for. I'm not interested so much in hard drive space saving or load times. Load times on broadband are minimal with the download as you go feature. Plus after you download the content, it stores locally on your hard drive. I wasn't really concerned with the footprint, but more with the reinstall time.
Have you ever had to completely reinstall EQ1(Live) with all expansions plus then download the updates? It takes the better part of a day to do that.
So what I'm saying is have the game be like one or two CD's or one DVD. Then have all the rest of the content online and only download it when you zone into someplace new in the game or if there are updates to a zone you already downloaded. Doesn't that make more sense then having to reinstall the game from scratch which for 10 CD's will take you a few hours to install?
...Afterall, why have to wait through the download of content for a zone you may never go to?
I think it'll only really work for people with broadband connections, and though the people with broadband are in the majority these days, it does mean those without are at a bit of a disadvantage.
In Guild War's case, zones weren't downloaded until you entered them, and in the case of missions you usually went in with a group. If you're not on broadband and having to download 20-30Mb, the group are probably going to be kinda annoyed after waiting 10+ minutes for you to zone.
So in the future, when broadband is a household item, I think it might be the way to go, but for now I think we should stick to CD's and DVD's.
Truely it comes down to the Network setup and the programming behind the game client and server client. GW requires less of a footprint on the players computer because less info is require for the foundation and structure of each zone, mainly because the zones are smaller, have less active/passive enviromental features, graphic engine, and one big factor is that pretty much every zone is pathed. What I mean by pathed is that you cannont venture into the background or off the path that is set, sure you can go back, but you will run into a lot of invisible barriers. Now givin there are areas that you cannont venture into even in most MMO's but they are few and far between, every area good or bad has a consiquence with your actions.
With most MMO's the games textures and layouts are stored upon the players side because there truely is alot more involved with the zones and the majority of the dynamic variables are controlled on the server side.
If you would like to know more about the technology behind GW here is a link to an interview with Jeff Strain at IGN;
http://pc.ign.com/articles/534/534454p1.html
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Okay, how about this - I would rather spend half a day installing then to have each zone and new thing I encounter trigger a downloading session. Even a 25 mega-byte thing (which isn't really that big or small) takes about 5 mintues or so on my computer, and I'd rather not have these delays, without real notice, when Im trying to play.
Dang! 6 gigs! You would think they would use a dual layer DVD so it was only one disk. Funny how they don't mention free hard drive space in any of the system requirements I've read thus far for the game. 6 gigs is a lot of space for a game alone. Whether hard drives are cheap now or not my goodness that's a lot of space for a game.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is 5 gigs. So there are a few games starting to get up there. I'm just glad EQII didn't turn out to be 10 gigs like they said a few months ago. I think that must have been before they tried compressing the files or something.
---------------------------- Desolation Guild Website ---------------------------
Currently:
Alpha: Guild Wars
Playing: City of Heroes
Interested: WOW & EQII (yeah, both... deal with it)
Currently:
Playing: WOW & GW
Hmm, time to get me a new harddrive, I think. My 40Gb is starting to creak. That 708Mb free just isn't going to cut it.
Lucky I started a new job this week, really.