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Phasing: Best new MMO feature I have seen
Elikal
Member UncommonPosts: 7,912
Right ahead: if WOW is the embodiment of evil for you, that's fine. Really. I respect that. I have strong & irrational opinions about a heck lot of things myself. JUST: please then stay away from this thread. Thanks. ^^
Hokay, that said, after staying away from WOW for years, tried it once 3-4 years ago for a brief time, half out of boredome and half out of curiosity of the Cataclysm, I got myself into WOW. Since my encounter with WOW was long ago and only a short time, my knowledge about WOW was mostly from what other people said. When trying it out myself, I found some things true, but also many things blatantly wrong. Like WOW being easy. After the sure easy start, I didn't find WOW particularly easier than the average MMO out there. True tho was my limited experience with the player base. Having met many VERY friendly gamers in Fallen Earth for instance, the contrast in WOW was depressing. Asking for any advise was sure to get a plethora of jokes, attacks, mockery and bad answers. But, that might be just a bad server, who can say.
Anyway. The most fascinating thing to experience in WOW was phasing. I had rolled a Gilenean Ice Mage (aka Worgen; actually they are humans, but infected... but thats another story) and experienced one of the two new starting zones, Gilneas. That alone was nothing short of breathtaking. Sure, bottom line is still, go there and kill X or gather X. What else can a MMO do? But it was so elegantly interwoven with story, it was really one of the most entertaining starting experiences I had ever seen. And I played almost every MMO out there, at least a brief time. Phasing is what makes all the difference. It means, for those who haven't experienced it, that a quest leads to a result, and then the world is visually permanently changed. For instance, there was an attack of Undead on some part of the city, and once you repelled them with a quest, the undead vanished and were repelled. They were not endlessly fighting, no matter what you did. Your doing made a visual change. Or the events of the story. Landscapes changed through events and by and by the world changed, by your doing or by the events of the story, and totally without any loading screen or any instances.
Then I went on to Stormwind, doing the questlines in Westfall and Redrige, and if you play WOW now or try it out, I can only highly recommend you: play those two zones quest lines. In both is an exciting quest line of events, a crime event in one and an invastion in the other. I won't spoil for obvious reasons, but the changes of the landscape triggered by the story, how the world literally and visually changes while you quest there... is really one of the most fascinating and cool things I have ever seen in a MMO. It is what I expect of any real next gen MMO, especially one based on story. (Yes, I am looking at you, SWTOR!)
One of the most irritating and sad things about MMOs for me has always been that whatever you do, it never has any impact. The world always remains as it is. You leave Qeynos to fight the Gnoll invasion, but no matter how many Gnolls you kill or how many NPCs tell you, you save the land, the world always stays as it is. Not so here. If there is an attack, houses are burned down, and then the STAY that way. You still play in the same open world as anyone, and yes, not all parts of WOW are changed in that way. Other regions still essentially stay as they are. And I am not saying, copy WOW or what. But for me, this Phasing is THE best feature I have yet seen in any MMORPG. It really gave me a feeling of impact of drama. Making a visible change in the world was really epic, and it is what I expect SWTOR to do as well, the MMO which still is my best hope for the future.
Those epic stories around the crime in Westfall and "Commando Bravo" in Redridge were really memorable events, well executed.
So for me the bottom line was: while WOW sure is not for everyone has it's flaws, people saying it is just crap are just saying BS. They done a lot of interesting things and this extensive use of phasing is some involvement of the player I have not yet seen in any MMO. They don't sell 4.7 million copies in a month for nothing.
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Comments
WoW, making other developers look like unmotivated by using an old system to such a well polished extent.
Phasing is not new. It has been around since the first MUD developer was sick and tired of other people interupting their quests in other games.
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i also enjoyed the new phasing story line of wow and think that most mmos will take it up in the future, which is a good thing.
Phasing is just like instancing good if you use it right. But if you are using it too much it gets crappy.
The whole idea of a MMO is that you and other players around you experience things together. With overuse of phasing it just make the game feel lonlier..
I believe more in dynamic events where everyone around you gets pulled in.
Still, if used right you can use phasing to tell a really good story.
I do have a feeling that Blizzard will use it too much in the long run, just like instances. But time will prove me wrong or right.
Phasing is a lot more than most people think it is.
It is not even an instance : all players still play in the same world, but coming "near" to certain quest points, avatars see different realities according to what they did previously without ANY loading screens.
There are different forms of phasing, but above is the one that's the most technical and awesome. A world change for everyone is trivial to accomplish. A world change for a particular avatar is 10 times more difficult to program both in the flow charts AND programming techniques behind it.
The most stunning thing is when you can see both avatars standing next to each other. They STILL see each other from a certain distance to the phased objective, but both see different realities (landscape) according to their questing status and when they go nearer to the phased objective.
History.
it all started with a daily quest back in TBC patch 3.4 where they used the first and more easy form of phasing (temporary seeing a changed "alternate" world without loading screens while doing the quest in the same zone/surface).
They perfected it in Wotlk, but added a little too many group quests in the quest chains. In Cata they corrected this and so we come to a new player experience used many times.
Oblivion type changing world events meet static worlds of traditional MMO's.
It is best used in single player leveling quests, but it is one of those steps that will be a "huge" wall to cross for other MMO's still to come out.
Blizzard did several things in the past that widened the technical gaps: so called full background loading of graphics (no longer zoning), full flying worlds of continents without loading screens (extremely expensive to produce) and now this phasing in the leveling department.
It all boils down to : when you've seen it once, you are spoiled.
It actually started in Ahn Quiraj when they used server phasing for the battle and opening the doors and such I remember reading it in a wrath preview.
Phasing is and has been very common in MMO's lol. When you said no zoning... well thats been done long before WoW as well lol.
Blizzard definitely deserves attention for the amount of polish they can put on something. They seem to be able to do a good enough polishing up old mechanics that people make posts like yours stating how WoW has changed everything with a revolutionary new mechanic even though the mechanic itself predates WoW by a good 5-8 years most of the time lol.
But I'm glad you guys finally got phasing in WoW it's a very nice mechanic that's been around for a very long time
Hope you enjoy it as much as I have the past decade or so lol.
GAH! Why was this moved to the WOW forum? I wanted to discuss a feature with every MMO gamer, not only with those who ALREADY know it! *sigh*
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That was simply a world change. Phasing in its current form is something far more technical and advanced as it delivers alternate realities for players standing in the same world and a few feet away from the phased surface.
one simple example:
when you do the so called Hitler (goblin) quest in Uldum, upon returning to the quest giver, who is in some barracks, you run back and around 20 meters away from the building, you are smashed back and see the building explode in front of you before you even could reach the quest award.
The leader is coming out, wounded but alive and he'll curse the ones who tried to kill him. The building is in ruins and it stays that way forever. He then orders you to execute the officers behind the murder attempt.
That simply is not possible in any current MMO.
... Don't tell me you are surprised.
As someone who spends most of his time grouped with one or more friends, there are more things that I dislike about phasing than like. This weekend I leveled my first goblin alt and I had a wonderful time. The quests were fun and the phasing allowed my actions to change the world around me, which is something I always felt WoW was lacking. It was something fun to do alone.
The phasing I dislike, the phasing I see on a daily basis is where I am grouped with friends who are on different steps of a quest or who have not started a certain quest line. Even being one step ahead of someone else, makes that player invisible and removes all interaction with them. They've even made mining/herb nodes part of the phasing. Some of the new quests were fun, but I hate the idea of having to do all the quests in a zone on every toon I want to use for gathering crafting resources.
If Blizzard could figure out a way so that friends/group members could still play together even if they aren't on the same quest and remove resource nodes from phasing, I wouldn't complain anymore about it.
I consider phasing a very useful tool to give questing a much needed diversity in the leveling department.
As such it works perfectly. Which group quests in Cata are you talking about that were phased? I don't remember exactly which daily that would be? Unless you talk about Wotlk.
The grouping on the maxed levels and certainly the daily ones are for 90% in the Tol Barad zones. That zone simply changes to the faction owners of the zone and is not phased individually but only to the faction - as a whole - that owns the place.
CoC is the only group (non-instanced) quest in Cata that I know of and it works fine. The quests I am talking about is any of the Hyjal, Vas'jir, Twilight Highlands, Uldum, or Deepholm quests that change/alter the zone in some way. If you are on part of the quest and a friend is on the other, you cannot see them, help them or any other form of interacting with them.
Phasing has been the source of the majority of bugs in this expansion. Pretty cool feature but it does have some limitations (such as what Murashu pointed out).
Sorry but that's false.
You CAN see them and interact within the same zones with them. Try it. You can not complete the same quests because when going near the phased quest you see a different reality (without loading screen) and so are on a different level of quest resolution.
That was exactly the same difficulty with ANY quest chain even before phasing. You always needed to be on the same level of the chained quest to do them as a group. But ... You can still see your friends and interact up to a certain point of the phasing, but at one time the phased reality takes priority. Mostly the default setting is around 20-30 "meters" standing from the phasing point.
Considering where the genre is heading, I'll be surprised if we even need a keyboard and mouse to be "involved" in gameplay in the coming years. All that may be required is a chair, a working computer, and a pair of eyes and ears that function properly. Fun, fun, fun!
Hey, at least it'll be F2P, right?
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Having gotten to lv 40 now, I see it hasn't been used too often, alas. Many regions are still old fashioned questing. Now in Western Plaguelands there is some phasing again. I find this most refreshing. I enjoy this visual impact of my doings.
I wonder, is it a sort of trademark, so other companies can not make something similar, or is it just lazyness?
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Phasing...heh...yeah
So they make "Phasing" in WoW. Which copies what has been done before and JUST SO HAPPENS to coincide with rifts.....but this isn't trolled or flamed...cause it's WOW doin it
mark me not surprised....
If I'm standing next to you and you can see something I can't one of us is hollucinating. Changes to the game world are cool but Phasing is just a lame lazy way to do it. If you change something in the world it should change for everyone or it just doesn't matter. Phasing is just one more step towards Massively Singleplayer Online Role-Playing Games in my honest opinion and is definately NOT a step in the right direction.
Bren
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I remember when LotRO was early in development at Turbine - they discussed some form of "phasing". I remember in this one inteview, they used a ruined bridge as an example. Players who had completed the necessary quest would see the repaired version - those that hadn't would see the ruined one. Granted, I believe the refered to it as layered instances.
However, to my knowledge, phasing in any shape or form is not being used in LotRO. The idea is not necessarily new, though Blizzard is definitely making good use of it from what I hear.
Interesting. I thought Phasing was one of the worst new features to mmo gaming. Like the over-use of instances, Phasing further bastardizes 'massively' and 'community' in mmorpg. It certainly accentuates 'single-player'.
I'd prefer a community-centric mechanism where the game-play environment changes based on in-game events that are dynamic, unscripted, require a coordinated multiplayer community effort to engage, and which changes the landscape of the environment that the server can cooperate within simultaneously, collectively, and again which visually and mechanically changes the environment based on the player-base' game-play.
I'm not commenting on WoW specifically, but the feature called "phasing".
IMO, if it doesn't affect everyone on the server the same, then it has no effect on the world.
Only your character is affected, if only you can see the changes.
The WORLD has not changed, YOUR PERCEPTION has changed.
If the WORLD was truly changed, then EVERYONE on the server would see the change.
I don't like phasing. I'd rather see actual changes in the world that affect all players the same.
Where's your examples? lol
I think Blizzard's next step will be to create group instances that also feature phasing but the zones themselves will be more like small, open world quest zones instead of the standard dungeon format. Sort of like the Culling of Stratholme but on a larger scale. And hopefully without a douchey paladin NPC leading the way.
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Are you implying that Blizzard copied Rifts in that area?
If you're not... then nevermind
.
If you are, then you're sorely mistaken, and I'll be happy to correct you.
1. Phasing was introduced in WoW's last expansion, WoTLK which came out a little over 2 years ago. They've expanded/improved on it in Cata.
2. Blizzard didn't just decide "Hey, there's this game called Rifts in development that is supposed to have some dynamic events.. We need to copy them quick!" and then design, develop, implement, test and release Phasing into WoW in a couple weeks. Hell.. was Rifts even announced when Lich King came out?
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Nothing like flying with my friends over some WotLK zones and watching them magically disappear into a magical realm of magical alternate reality because they get too close to a phased quest that I've already completed, then they magically reappear flying next to me once they leave the quest zone.
Its so magical!