Smart Streaming, are there any other games that use this?

Gishgeron

 

   First, let me start by saying I've been out of the game for a long while.  Recently, I decided to give another go at World of Warcraft simply because I had no other game to play with people and it was something I knew would be casual enough I wouldn't have to care too much about it.  I have several projects I'm working on as well as a full time job and a wife and kid to spend time with.  I didn't want something that would need to invade my project time.  So I went to the site and slammed the "Download Now" button and watched the launcher start up. 

  Almost immediately the "Play" button lit up and I was confused.  The game wasn't even close to being done, but I hit it anyway.  Imagine my surprise as the game started and I was playing.  At some point, they changed how the game installed and played such that the game would only download what you needed to play in the area you were at.  I didn't have to wait 10 hours for a huge download for a whole game, just 5 minutes to download one little island for me to play on and it would download the areas around that while I was busy in the first.

  Thats....look, for all the hate we give the game that was BRILLIANT.  I wasn't even sure if I'd be playing the game, was probably gonna play one of my other MMO games I already have while I waited for it to download and was fully expecting to get back into one of those.  Because of how fast and easy that was, I'm now playing that game again.  In a world where file sizes are huge and there is nothing we can do about that...this is a really nice feature to get your feet wet and get started.

  So, this returns me to the thread title.  I don't wanna sing praises about WoW, I want to know if anyone else has made use of this type of install and download.  Its possible this has become some kind of standard I'm not aware of...Blizzard is well known for stealing a good ideal.  If there are other games that do it, I really want to give them a fair shake as well.  If there aren't, then maybe we need to start sending a loud message to get it made into an industry standard, because this is how things SHOULD be done, without question.  I want to try lots of things, but barrier to entry is killing that.  I don't have time in my day to soak up 100 different 10 gig downloads. 

  Lemme know what games have this feature so I can get started!

Grunty

Don't have time in your day? Download it while you sleep.

 

Torcip

Quite a few games are doing this now.

-RIFT

-Tera

-Age of Conan

-Guild Wars 1

-City of Heroes- Game is dead but i think they may have done it first.

Probably a few others but I cant think of them right now.

Reklaw

Rift has it aswell. You can start playing after about 1 minute or so while the rest of the game downloads in the background while you already ingame.

Ridelynn

I believe this started way back with Guild Wars 1 if I'm not mistaken.

Granted, the folks that did it at ArenaNet were originally from BattleNet, but it didn't make it into WoW for a long time. It's also in GW2 in some capacity if I can recall, it's been a while since I played that from a fresh install though.

Neverwinter has this to a much lesser degree.

I think Sony put this in a lot of their games as well - seems like EQ2 did this a while back, and they retrofited some other titles to do it as well.

Torcip

Originally posted by Ridelynn

I believe this started way back with Guild Wars 1 if I'm not mistaken.

Granted, the folks that did it at ArenaNet were originally from BattleNet, but it didn't make it into WoW for a long time. It's also in GW2 in some capacity if I can recall, it's been a while since I played that from a fresh install though.

Neverwinter has this to a much lesser degree.

I think Sony put this in a lot of their games as well - seems like EQ2 did this a while back, and they retrofited some other titles to do it as well.

GW 1 did it a bit differently though. It downloaded maps on demand, it didnt download in the background.

expresso

Streaming is all the rage today but I think WoW was the first BIG MMO to do it,  Even the next gen consoles will be getting into streaming.

Gishgeron

Originally posted by Torcip

Quite a few games are doing this now.

-RIFT

-Tera

-Age of Conan

-Guild Wars 1

-City of Heroes- Game is dead but i think they may have done it first.

Probably a few others but I cant think of them right now.

 

  Thank you very much, this is exactly what I hoped for.  I'm not so interested in AoC, but I do regret having never tried RIFT or Tera.  I played CoH for a long time, it never had this during it.  That doesn't mean much, though, as I hadn't played the game in the last year or two of its life.  Its actually a little sad for me, I was poised to come back and was looking into it about a week before it died.  That game was my favorite MMO of all time.  RIP heroes of liberty city, with luck someone will emulate the hell out of you one day.

  If anyone knows of others, be sure to drop it here so I can give those games a fair chance too.

Gishgeron

Originally posted by Grunty

Don't have time in your day? Download it while you sleep.

 

 

  I should have mentioned this, but my provider is complete crap.  At some point in the night it tends to always kick off and come back on.  Most times I have to restart my modem, but even when I don't the break in connection usually kills my downloads.  That assumes my laptop doesn't do it when it goes into sleep mode.  That part is actually pretty annoying because I'm pretty sure it used to keep downloads going even in sleep. 

  Suffice it to say, my set up is really annoying right now and I very nearly have to be at the helm for a DL to finish without issue.  Not ideal, I realize, but its the hand I'm being dealt.

Silverbarr

I'm certain that Everquest and Everquest 2 also do this, seems like it's becoming standard procedure nowadays.

JamesP

I've built Streaming into Greed Monger's Client through Unity's Asset Bundles... Not only will it allow Players to download a smaller sized Client and Download Assets as needed it will allow us to release new Asset Content with out the need for a full Client Update. Streaming really is the future of Gaming!

Betaguy

Originally posted by Gishgeron

 

   First, let me start by saying I've been out of the game for a long while.  Recently, I decided to give another go at World of Warcraft simply because I had no other game to play with people and it was something I knew would be casual enough I wouldn't have to care too much about it.  I have several projects I'm working on as well as a full time job and a wife and kid to spend time with.  I didn't want something that would need to invade my project time.  So I went to the site and slammed the "Download Now" button and watched the launcher start up. 

  Almost immediately the "Play" button lit up and I was confused.  The game wasn't even close to being done, but I hit it anyway.  Imagine my surprise as the game started and I was playing.  At some point, they changed how the game installed and played such that the game would only download what you needed to play in the area you were at.  I didn't have to wait 10 hours for a huge download for a whole game, just 5 minutes to download one little island for me to play on and it would download the areas around that while I was busy in the first.

  Thats....look, for all the hate we give the game that was BRILLIANT.  I wasn't even sure if I'd be playing the game, was probably gonna play one of my other MMO games I already have while I waited for it to download and was fully expecting to get back into one of those.  Because of how fast and easy that was, I'm now playing that game again.  In a world where file sizes are huge and there is nothing we can do about that...this is a really nice feature to get your feet wet and get started.

  So, this returns me to the thread title.  I don't wanna sing praises about WoW, I want to know if anyone else has made use of this type of install and download.  Its possible this has become some kind of standard I'm not aware of...Blizzard is well known for stealing a good ideal.  If there are other games that do it, I really want to give them a fair shake as well.  If there aren't, then maybe we need to start sending a loud message to get it made into an industry standard, because this is how things SHOULD be done, without question.  I want to try lots of things, but barrier to entry is killing that.  I don't have time in my day to soak up 100 different 10 gig downloads. 

  Lemme know what games have this feature so I can get started!

I agree, I love seeing companies utilize their hardware/software technology. I call it Data Streaming.