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linear zones
Rohh
Member Posts: 87
so... Do you guys think AoC will have a huge world to explore or alot of small linear zones cramped with tons of mobs?
I hope not really been looking forward to playing this.
Comments
From what I understand, the game will be broken up into three continents, and each continent will be broken up into smaller zones.
For instance, take WoW - each area sort of had its own look and feel, but those areas put together made up a much larger peice of a map... a continent. I think AoC will be like that to some degree, only the areas will be much larger in scale, and there will probably be loading times between each area.
I don't think they will be instanced though... not to the point of say GW, where each instance is your own private Idaho. More like in EQ2 where once one instance reaches a max number of players, a new instance will be born. I could be mistaken though, where it doesnt instance at all... it just is. I do know though that it will be broken up into zones like EQ2. You have one peice of the a city in one zone, and another in another zone, and so forwarth.
So, basically... it'll be a lot like how EQ2 works. I hope that answers your question.
But, WoW doesn't do that. As far as I know, WAR doesn't do that. Not even ancient UO did that.. I'm pretty certain that AoC will never reach the subscription numbers of WoW, or even close to it.. so I just can't see a player cap for zones.. that's just a horrible idea, whats the point of having a server of 15-20,000 players if you can't play with them all? I would just imagine that they would just create a server cap at a lower number in order to avoid that sort of problem.
All speculation ofcourse.
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Ethion
You're probably right. at least, for the sake of server lag and things like that. On release day that's a pretty good idea too, but correct me if I'm wrong. I seem to remember reading something about the island of Tortage being a 1-20 (approx) level instance for the new player. They can choose to skip it and they can also choose to bring friends along.. maybe my memory is off.. but I thought I read that somewhere.Something like that could alleviate most of the server issues. I think it will still be really cool to log on launch day and see all of the other washed up slaves and bombard the island together. Immersion is key for me.
DDO would instance the parts of town if they got too crowded. It wasn’t a problem once you figured out what was going on, and you could switch which instance you were in to meet up with friends/party members.
It wasn’t horrible, but I’d hope AoC can avoid that and just stick to using instances for dungeons. Instancing the intro when you are learning how to play and going through your storyline doesn't bother me either. But, too much of it takes away from a mmo in my opinion.
so u all say, the world of aoc is not a big open free one like in wow where u can walk from one end ot the continent to the other end?
i wish a beta player would awnser the question.
cos i think u r not that sure as i can read ur posts.
"11.3 Will Age of Conan use instancing?
Yes. Funcom was the company that pioneered the use of instancing in Anarchy Online and we will do so again in Age of Conan. Our design philosophy has focused on providing extremely detailed areas. For example, trees and grass move in the breeze, boats rock gently on the seas, and NPCs roam, wander, go off to get drinks and come back, and so on.
Perhaps most importantly, instances will also allow us to set certain areas aside for the individual player and keep things fun, engaging, and intimate. There are also wider, more open areas with lots of people for those who want the feel of a big crowd around them at all times. This is a tricky decision to make, but we feel the level of detail we’re able to put into an instanced world makes for the best, most immersive MMO experience to date."
http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2328&table=CONTENT
A little hard to figure out exactly how things will look and feel like from this. But it does say they will use instances.
Maybe it's just available to people who are anti-social and miss the point of what MMO means. I don't know, I still don't like the idea.
I don't know about all of the zones but I've heard that there isn't a whole lot to explore in the first few zones. There's only a handful of predetermined paths you can follow, kind of like a single player game.
You're probably right. at least, for the sake of server lag and things like that. On release day that's a pretty good idea too, but correct me if I'm wrong. I seem to remember reading something about the island of Tortage being a 1-20 (approx) level instance for the new player. They can choose to skip it and they can also choose to bring friends along.. maybe my memory is off.. but I thought I read that somewhere.Something like that could alleviate most of the server issues. I think it will still be really cool to log on launch day and see all of the other washed up slaves and bombard the island together. Immersion is key for me.
Any game that is successful will have overloaded zones for awhile and potentially based on events. Caping the zones is a great way to ensure that Me the paying customer always has a good playing experience. There is NO way to design a game that I can think of where a zone can't fill up and become unpleasent. Even if it doesn't become a lag fest it still becomes a pain due to too many players and lots of things like kill stealing and other issues. Get too many people in a zone and it becomes unfun fast!
And yes AoC is instanced similar to eq2.
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Ethion
im not really sure about the predetermined routes part but the first 20 levels are instanced and a solo experience.
pro: when you come out of the HUB and into the "real game" you'll have a lot less ppl that dont know there doing.
con: rolling more than one char is going to suck.
and no you dont choose.