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Continuous Open World?
Lurv
Member UncommonPosts: 409
One of the many thing I loved about WoWo back in the early days was the fact that there were no boundaries on land for the most part. All the enviroments connected. Barely any "invisible walls" existed. I could go virtually anywhere I pleased. And that for me is crucial to an MMORPG. People these days fill it with all kinds of content through gear, items and battle features sacrificing the one quality that makes exploration in an RPG fun. Worlds that are instanced. Having to teleport/loading screen just to go anywhere. I know Tera is pretty open but I am wondering (and this question has probably been asked already) if Guild Wars 2 is going to have an open environment. Being able to go where ever I want. Jumping off a 1000ft cliff if I felt like it without being blocked. If so then I'm preordering April 10th. If not.........then %^#& GW2. Not my cup of tea.
Getting too old for this $&17!
Comments
No. GW2 will feature open persisten worlds but they are not seamless. There will be loading screens in between it's zones, however the zones are large and will take hours to complete before you will feel the need to move on and experience a load screen. I asked this question to a beta tester and got that answer.
this is accurate from what I have read as well. Also a side note stressing open persistant.. this means NOT instanced
I have a question about this too, we already hear big world persistant world. But even in big worlds they are often full of invisible walls.. Do you know about GW2. Like will there be a beach with a maximum distance i can go or is there is "fatigue" system like wow?
invisible walls bothers me more than loading
I agree, I dont like invisible walls and from some vids its a natural border but someone pointed out that couldnt work on coastal areas.. but I havent seen how they work the border there. So I guess the answer is only partially known right now.
^
If you watch the beta videos some of them show this as well. The load times appear to be fairly quick though, faster than TOR, about even w/ WoW from what's been shown.
Thanks for the reply
it completely baffles me how people can call loading screens a "continuous open world".
Mortal Onine is a continucous open world. the only loading screen in MO is the one to load the game. DF is a mostly continuos world with the exception of a few dungeons that are separate instances.
GW2 is not. it's like AoC. it's a zoned game where you have to load the next zone every time you go from one the the other. just like the original GW.
Knowing ArenaNet, if you swim too far you'll simply get eaten.
I mean that in a good way. Wait... not a perverse type of good way, I mean an innovative type of way to enforce that all worlds to have boundaries.
Oderint, dum metuant.
Yeah have to agree, zoned means it's not an open world it's a zoned one.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Not just like the original. The original, your party created personal instances when they left town. No one else got in, just you and your group. Now, even though it prevented you from running into other people, it did allow other interesting mechanics, such as being able to vanquish a zone (kill all the bad guys).
GW2 isn't like that... the worlds/zones are fully persistent and open to all. The zones may have portals between them, but when you step through you meet everyone else already there.
Oderint, dum metuant.
I'm hoping with my SSD my load times between zones will be incredibly quick.
Anyone who did beta comment on load screens?
Anyone who diid beta use a SSD versus a standard HD?
To be honest, I haven't seen the press mention load screens at all. We know they're are some out there, but apparently not enough to make mention of.
Oderint, dum metuant.
as i said, exactly like AoC.
GW2 is what is known as an open persistent world, in that you can run into other players out in the world like wow, and unlike GW1 where everything outside the cities is instanced.
However, you can only cross into a new zone through specific portals, which is when you get the loading screen. You cant just wander off in a particular direction and cross into a new zone.
Also, all of the personal (ie main) story content is instanced
Cluck Cluck, Gibber Gibber, My Old Mans A Mushroom
there is mention at least by yoggscast from the 1st press beta, the load times seem negligible.
and come one distopia.. thats a REALLY old laid to rest argument. Just because there is a portal at the start of a zone its not an instance. It will actually make the game play better once optimized as the zones can be on separate servers. Think like how in WoW each continent was on a server.. and how much issue that had because of that.
There are zones and load screens in between them, but I believe the zones themselves are huge.
I didn't say they are instanced, I said they're zoned which they are, huge difference.
Instance = copy of a zone...
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
There is a good reason for this.
The press, and anyone else paying attention, already knew there would be loading screens. Nothing really needs to be said about them unless they are intrusive or otherwaise a detriment to the game. Also, videos showing load screens have shown them to be fairly quick. GW1's load screens were pretty fast too.
I used to TL;DR, but then I took a bullet point to the footnote.
pretty sure you have argued tooth and nail about the game being instanced in the past. If not well I appologize. The term zoned vrs open persistant in this way doesn't really mean anything though. Its sorta like saying skinny vrs thin.. one is slightly derogatory but they mean the same thing.
One thing to keep in mind is that you can have really big zones. They don't have to be tiny.
In the videos we've seen and in Guild Wars 1, there are zones which are expansive. There are also smaller zones which are incredibly highly detailed. Just take a look at the maps and the videos. These zones are huge.
The thing is is that there were zones in the first Guild Wars that were so big that they made Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms feel tiny by comparison. Nightfall especially had some magnificent areas.
Instancing doesn't hurt the game so long as the game is big enough.
Does this look at all limited to you?
What? Only an MMO noob would call zones instances.:P This has been a popular misconception since the EQ2 launch days. I actually thought GW2 was fully Open World until the 1st press beta, search my post history you'll find me telling people that mistakenly months ago.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Jakd.. I think you're taking Anet's comment out of context. It wasn't said as a gotchya move to try and convince people that their game was all one instance. They've even came out and said multiple times that the game will have zones, minimal instancing and loading screens.
The comment really was in direct reference to the first game. As was said, in GW1 you could only go out and adventure with your party. Everyone had their own instance of the world in which they played in. No one could intrude. If you wanted to invite a new party member you had to leave the instance and reset it.
They wanted GW2 to be different, and by 'persistant and open' they mean that the vast majority of the world is shared by everyone, and anyone can get in and experience it. This appears to be true.
This semantics argument really seems to only have been introduced by avid sandboxers, when this game was never intended to be a sandbox.
*holds up hands* I was mistaken! =P I surrender!
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
While that sounds good you shouldn't take it as a fact.
For all you know might it be on a SSD or 6 raided disks, there are ways to minimize loading times.
Hopefully is it not so but you never know until you played it yourself at home.