You fight and control your avatar in a swift tense battle. Swift and tense battles is what Wow/TBC makes it really shine in MMORPG's these days. This coupled with incredible detailed data they get from the arena data stats makes it state of the art in microscopic fighting in MMORPG's.
In WoW battles are far from swift and tense. More like boring and predictable.
About a million internet movies prove you wrong.
Ever entered an arena battle and wondered why people throw computers and mouses at their feet.
Just try it.
I've played much WoW and the people who take those videos are simple, fetal alcohol simple as well as the people who loose those fights. Boring and predictable show me a build and I can beat it. Fanboi's... so annoying.
What? you mean there's no magic build that makes it so you win every fight? Wow i never knew that.
Personally, i agree with FC on this. I would sacrifice the illusion of a seemless world for cutting edge graphics, faster and more fun gameplay and good performance with EQ2 style zones (Not GW style linear rollercoaster zones).
And i don't know why people always say WoW didn't seem very seemless before the expansion. Go to the human starter area, Elwynn / Westfall / Darkshire, and tell me the zone lines there are tunneled. When the game first launched the zones already seemed very seemless to me playing a human. The zone borders are a mile wide, you can see across borders perfectly, static designs, mobs and players, and affect things from one zone while it is in the other, like pull mobs across borders during combat without noticing zone change or fight them with you on one side and them on the other. There are NO tunnels involved with zoning besides the landscape itself. If you can find a way to cross a zone border in an unexpected spot, it will work, trust me. If you have a WoW account, download a hack or something that will allow you to fly around Azeroth and see for yourself if there is a single invisible zone wall in the game, besides maybe around the 2 continents and the expansion planet. You will get banned but that game is old anyways, it's worth it. = P
Anyways, if they could make AoC with that type of world design and not loose any of it's more important qualities, i'm sure they would. Once it can be pulled off, someone will do it , and i will also play that game, lol. In the meantime, i can't see any real advantage other than cool factor to justify a demand for ''seemless zoning'' .
[edit]
Just read again what you said about tunnel loading. Just incase you think i was arguing that, when i said tunneling i meant the way you are forced to zone through a small doorway like EQ2 or other games like that do. I'm not a programmer and have no idea exactly how the static portals work, but i know they are NOT small portals.
I'll shoot the next idiot that calls WOW seamless. I do game dev work. It's not seamless. It's a classic design trick called tunnel zoneing. You actually zone to the next area half way before hitting the zone wall. It downloads slightly in the background to prepare the files. This is why dated machines will take performance hits while getting near zone lines. You couple the games tunnel zoneing with low requirements and small file sizes.. then you now have trick zoneing. It's easy as hell to do. I've done it in a few test games I made. It's NOT seamless. So stop calling it seamless. You're just being fooled. I also fail to see how one can even remotely consider it open world as it is not. Each zone is not physically connected to one another. You're being warped to a different cluster on the same server going though generic static portals located a long zone lines. It's dated technology that should be thrown in the garbage by now. It forces you to degrade visual and physical innovation for a poorly designed zone system. If AoC zone style isn't for you. Then pack your bags and get the hell out. I rather take 10 seconds to zone then stare at pile of crap cartoon artwork for my game time.
What the heck is this nonsense? With *simple* paging terrain and server hand-offs you can do better than your weird description of how you think WoW works, and you can do it with any quality level of graphics (including AoC). And as others have mentioned, flying mounts in Outland handily disprove your theory. Also, please tell me you don't actually think the surrounding landscape *ever* downloads even at zone borders... or was that just phrased improperly? All of the graphical details are already on the client computer, it just needs to know positions and movements of players and NPCs.
That said, the real reason AoC has zoning is BECAUSE of the instancing. It is far, far easier to instance a section of the world when it is split into zones - just spin up a new instance of that zone and send the overflow population there when they cross the zone border. A seamless world with similar instancing would be possible, just much more difficult logistically. The server would have to decide which instance you were going to end up in before you even crossed the border, then show you only the people from that instance when you are near. And if someone was running along next to you that would be assigned a different instance, they would effectively disappear upon crossing the border.
Just wanted to say that I like the open seamless world of WOW, especially when flying around in epic flight form.
And I like the sense of athmosphere and greatness when standing on a mountaintop in Hyboria, looking at other players from a distance far, far away.
I like the arena battles and BGs of WOW, although I would wish there would be world-pvp. I have yet to test the PVP minigames of AoC.
Also, I like the tense feeling of never knowing what to expect in the huge open landscapes of AoC. I only hope they do something about spawn-camping and quest-camping.
Come to think of it, I also like apples and oranges.
I was going to set _kyle_ in his place, but Xadrian beat me to it. WoW doesn't use tunnel zoning at all. In fact, there's no mention of the phrase tunnel zoning that I can find on the internet outside _kyle_'s posts on various forums. That's because it's a dumb idea. Instead of tunnel zoning you just render only what the character could see. The client has all the maps/graphics/objects and when you move your character, the server says "okay! you can see X, Y, and Z objects/npcs at A, B, C locations!" which is on the order of a couple of dozen bytes of data transmitted per object. I wouldn't be surprized if WoW could display a few hundred thousand objects every few yards given a decent system and connection.
There's really no excuse for loading times besides starting up the game. WoW does do instances for PvE content which have loading times when you enter. But given that the loading times are around 5-10 seconds and that once you enter an instance you don't have other loading times (due to previously explained mechanic) it's not so bad.
In a perfect world we'd have an mmo that starts up in 2-3 seconds, and has no load times for any reason. We wouldn't get lag, and our FPS would always be at least 30. All of that would be happening with graphics so real it looks like your computer screen is another dimension. In the real world, that won't be happening for a long, long time.
ya you can discover new stuff all the way to 80 in this game. In other mmo's you have seen it all at level 20
Some people will discover stuff at 80, like doubletapping forward will give you chance to stun enemy, and backwards will give you chance to evade more
but anyhow, since treath was hijacked about the zoning, what if you increase texture buffer in video options? will the game load some of the next zone in memory?
The only thing that bothers me with this game are the zoning after playing WoWs huge seemless world itll feel like im going backwards.
Ever noticed how WoW pulls off the seemless world? The game is comprised of chunks and uses a simple and clean graphics. You can't travel between zones from just anywhere, you can only do it from specific entrance and exit points. It's seemless to a degree, but not completely. Impassable walls around every zone does not a seemless world make.
in WOW - You CAN travel between zones at any point on the border. You must have completely forgotten about the borders on regions like Westfall and Elwynn forest where they have a big river and a bridge.. you can cross the river or the bridge and get the same place.
They use those entry/exit points and ROADS to give a flow to each region. To get from point A to point B.. to find the next town.. to locate the next quest. They use choke points and paths to give some direction to traffic. If there were no roads/tunnels/door, the game would be kinda boring, most people wouldn't know what to do next because they don't want to explore a featureless map to find content/quests.
The only thing that bothers me with this game are the zoning after playing WoWs huge seemless world itll feel like im going backwards.
Ever noticed how WoW pulls off the seemless world? The game is comprised of chunks and uses a simple and clean graphics. You can't travel between zones from just anywhere, you can only do it from specific entrance and exit points. It's seemless to a degree, but not completely. Impassable walls around every zone does not a seemless world make.
Yes but I find that much more preferable than constantly running into load screens. They just annoy the crap out of me.
Since this is becoming a WoW-bashing AoC thread I'll post my opinion, for what it's worth.
I thouroughly enjoyed my stay in WoW. Made good friends and had great fun. What eventually drove me away was:
Boredom. Eventually we all look for something different. I would have liked a sci-fi, vampire, wasteland etc (non fantacy) game, but none seem to launch this year.
Blizzard delivered an unfinished expansion with TBC. No itemisation over 80, no instances working besides Karazhan. A multi-billion corporation producing expansions that are not finished in the basic level. I found it acceptable for the original game, it was their first MMO after all. I barely tolerated in this expansion. I don't think I'll be able to take the same kind of abuse on the next one.
Blizzard basically does the equivalent of a character reset with every expansion. Again, I couldn't take it starting all over from zero. If I wanted to start from zero, I'd be playing a new game. Which I plan to do.
Blizzard's artistic style is great. However the graphics are by now so outdated, it's no longer pleasant to watch. UO was a great game but I can't find myself wanting to play it for exactly the same reason. The new expansion is going nowhere in terms of graphics improvement.
AoC has also issues. Zoneing is probably the biggest one (understandable in a way, since the areas in the game do not represent the whole of Hyboria but just parts of it). However it does feel like a fresh start. All WoW has promished so far is the same reheated soup we got with TBC, with added the bare minimum of what the competition is offering. If WAR and AoC were not to be realeased, the next WoW expansion would be Inland, with the same textures and gameplay, just the hue reversed.
Since this is becoming a WoW-bashing AoC thread I'll post my opinion, for what it's worth. I thouroughly enjoyed my stay in WoW. Made good friends and had great fun. What eventually drove me away was:
Boredom. Eventually we all look for something different. I would have liked a sci-fi, vampire, wasteland etc (non fantacy) game, but none seem to launch this year. Blizzard delivered an unfinished expansion with TBC. No itemisation over 80, no instances working besides Karazhan. A multi-billion corporation producing expansions that are not finished in the basic level. I found it acceptable for the original game, it was their first MMO after all. I barely tolerated in this expansion. I don't think I'll be able to take the same kind of abuse on the next one. Blizzard basically does the equivalent of a character reset with every expansion. Again, I couldn't take it starting all over from zero. If I wanted to start from zero, I'd be playing a new game. Which I plan to do. Blizzard's artistic style is great. However the graphics are by now so outdated, it's no longer pleasant to watch. UO was a great game but I can't find myself wanting to play it for exactly the same reason. The new expansion is going nowhere in terms of graphics improvement.
AoC has also issues. Zoneing is probably the biggest one (understandable in a way, since the areas in the game do not represent the whole of Hyboria but just parts of it). However it does feel like a fresh start. All WoW has promished so far is the same reheated soup we got with TBC, with added the bare minimum of what the competition is offering. If WAR and AoC were not to be realeased, the next WoW expansion would be Inland, with the same textures and gameplay, just the hue reversed.
No instances working beside karazahn? How much liar can you be ???
And what about the other 28(!) dungeons and raids, introduced in TBC.
Indeed 28 dungeons, raids and outland encounters and you speak of ....one ???
Not even talking of The arena system, the Bg's, the dailies, all down the drain for ... pixeld tits ???
And Blizzard graphics are FAR from outdated when you fly over Outland in a free seamless world you can land anywhere without a loading zone.
Outland alone is double/triple the size of your new Conan play toy.
Graphics is FAR more than number of pixels: it's animation, it's art, it's immersive open lands where at least you can MOVE freely without ANY loading screesn that take 30 seconds to a minute to load.
Does Conan have an underwater world and underwater dungeons, a free personal flight over the lands?
Of course not, because the graphics engine doesn't permit a free path in a world. The world YOU live in.
And it never will because your HD just doesn't spin at 50.000 RPM.
They call this game design.
Your point got through already, you do not like zones.
Why repeating the same stuff in every thread? Stop trolling plz.
And you seem to defend WoW ferociously. Do you work for Blizzard or get payed by them for trolling or something?
Grow up and behave on these forums, or else go play WoW (which I would be still playing but for some of the points Xasapis stated).
Since this is becoming a WoW-bashing AoC thread I'll post my opinion, for what it's worth. I thouroughly enjoyed my stay in WoW. Made good friends and had great fun. What eventually drove me away was:
Boredom. Eventually we all look for something different. I would have liked a sci-fi, vampire, wasteland etc (non fantacy) game, but none seem to launch this year. Blizzard delivered an unfinished expansion with TBC. No itemisation over 80, no instances working besides Karazhan. A multi-billion corporation producing expansions that are not finished in the basic level. I found it acceptable for the original game, it was their first MMO after all. I barely tolerated in this expansion. I don't think I'll be able to take the same kind of abuse on the next one. Blizzard basically does the equivalent of a character reset with every expansion. Again, I couldn't take it starting all over from zero. If I wanted to start from zero, I'd be playing a new game. Which I plan to do. Blizzard's artistic style is great. However the graphics are by now so outdated, it's no longer pleasant to watch. UO was a great game but I can't find myself wanting to play it for exactly the same reason. The new expansion is going nowhere in terms of graphics improvement.
AoC has also issues. Zoneing is probably the biggest one (understandable in a way, since the areas in the game do not represent the whole of Hyboria but just parts of it). However it does feel like a fresh start. All WoW has promished so far is the same reheated soup we got with TBC, with added the bare minimum of what the competition is offering. If WAR and AoC were not to be realeased, the next WoW expansion would be Inland, with the same textures and gameplay, just the hue reversed.
No instances working beside karazahn? How much liar can you be ???
And what about the other 28(!) dungeons and raids, introduced in TBC.
Indeed 28 dungeons, raids and outland encounters and you speak of ....one ???
Not even talking of The arena system, the Bg's, the dailies, all down the drain for ... pixeld tits ???
And Blizzard graphics are FAR from outdated when you fly over Outland in a free seamless world you can land anywhere without a loading zone.
Outland alone is double/triple the size of your new Conan play toy.
Graphics is FAR more than number of pixels: it's animation, it's art, it's immersive open lands where at least you can MOVE freely without ANY loading screesn that take 30 seconds to a minute to load.
Does Conan have an underwater world and underwater dungeons, a free personal flight over the lands?
Of course not, because the graphics engine doesn't permit a free path in a world. The world YOU live in.
And it never will because your HD just doesn't spin at 50.000 RPM.
They call this game design.
First of of, if you can't refrain from attacking personally somebody, you should refrain from posting on forums.
The dungeons were 'technically' there (at least the entrances were), but ALL encounters beyond Karazhan were unbeatable or downright broken. Grull needed a gazillion nerfs for more than a handfull of guilds to kill him. Magtheridon was broken. The whole Serpentshrine was either not properly balanced or broken. The Black temple was just an entrance.
There were no daily quests when TBC launched. These were added later with content patches. Same with the broken itemisation of half the classes. Some things were more obvious to me than others, being in a good PvE progressing guild.
BG PvP is a totally failure compared to the early World PvP. It's fun for a while but a grind towards insanity nowadays.
Graphics are severely outdated. As I said, art is great. But it can't cover any more the bland and simplistic graphics. I was very happy when I originally heard that they would revamp the graphics engine with the new expansion. I was also disappointed when I learned that they scratched that because it'd hurt their projective sales.
AoC will probably be a temporary home for me. WoW lost me when they stuck with the sales figures and sold out any resemplance of quality.
I just hate people who are only here to whine about AoC and praise WoW
well guess what? AoC does things different then WoW and some like that, and some dont (like you).. case closed
MMOs currently playing: - About to play: Lord of the Rings Online Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
As i mentioned couple days ago game has lot of good things but load screens are the biggest drawback takes away immersion reminds me a lot of Guild wars or city of heroes, i am currently 27 DT in Set not so much loadscreens but still you encounter every couple minutes. I have crashed when i am loading might be cause i have it on external harddrive.
Anyway supposedly Rockstar thinks it can pull off GTA like graphics on a MMO (seamless world) with its engine but no plans to do so thou, it will intresting if Bioware or even Blizzard license that engine for next gen MMO
As far as dungeon content and itemisation is concerned, Blizzard released TBC with the content prepared up to Karazhan. Anything beyond that was either missing, broken or unbalanced. To their credit they fixed it months down the line, however they did deliver the expansion in an unfinished state. We were discussing in our guild how they did things right by finishing the casual gameplay first and releasing with it in tact, while leaving the end game content that most would not experience to be completed much much later.
In the same sense AoC announced quite a few raid instances right from launch (something that WoW did not have at launch, although promised). Whether they are completed or not, remains to be seen as well.
I thouroughly enjoyed the time I spent in WoW and don't regret playing the game. I'm not a hater, most of my memories are excellent. I still have the urges to return from time to time. But ... well, the reasons that drove me away are still there and Blizzard doesn't seem to want to address them in the future expansion.
I love WoW flamers. WoW is crap, it's outdated, it's cartoonish, bunch of 10 year olds playing. Always the same arguements. What they never address, however, is that WoW has 10.6 mil subscribers. Now I will concede it isn't because of the uber graphics or the awesome content. IMO it is mainly because the game will play on a 5 year old cpu. The game is just playable no zoning, very little lag, heck it will even run on a dial up connection. I still say best way to not have peeps play your new mmo your bout to put out is ask them to buy a cpu from NASA to be able to play it. I was on the femce about AoC due to reading bad things about how it ran on mid to lower end cpu's, but it sounds like all that got fixed. So, I think I will try it out. If it runs like crap I guess there is always WoW.
Who's a WoW flamer? I thoroughly enjoyed my time in WoW as I have already mentioned. But not everything was roses when I was playing, I had my fair share of frustrations. It's just that at the time the enjoyment was bigger than the frustration. At some point the balanced tipped, so I mentioned what points tipped the balance. These are things that can happen with any MMO released.
It is true that plenty of people enjoy WoW. It seems that plenty of people will enjoy AoC as well. Now who will make me a wastlands MMO so I can enjoy myself a bit as well? Fallout Online anyone? (ah, I can dream I guess).
Just wanted to say that I like the open seamless world of WOW, especially when flying around in epic flight form. And I like the sense of athmosphere and greatness when standing on a mountaintop in Hyboria, looking at other players from a distance far, far away. I like the arena battles and BGs of WOW, although I would wish there would be world-pvp. I have yet to test the PVP minigames of AoC. Also, I like the tense feeling of never knowing what to expect in the huge open landscapes of AoC. I only hope they do something about spawn-camping and quest-camping. Come to think of it, I also like apples and oranges. What was this thread about again?
I'll shoot the next idiot that calls WOW seamless. I do game dev work. It's not seamless. It's a classic design trick called tunnel zoneing. You actually zone to the next area half way before hitting the zone wall. It downloads slightly in the background to prepare the files. This is why dated machines will take performance hits while getting near zone lines. You couple the games tunnel zoneing with low requirements and small file sizes.. then you now have trick zoneing. It's easy as hell to do. I've done it in a few test games I made. It's NOT seamless. So stop calling it seamless. You're just being fooled. I also fail to see how one can even remotely consider it open world as it is not. Each zone is not physically connected to one another. You're being warped to a different cluster on the same server going though generic static portals located a long zone lines. It's dated technology that should be thrown in the garbage by now. It forces you to degrade visual and physical innovation for a poorly designed zone system. If AoC zone style isn't for you. Then pack your bags and get the hell out. I rather take 10 seconds to zone then stare at pile of crap cartoon artwork for my game time.
WoW can handle zoning in and out from any point, how do you think the game handles player-driven flying mounts?
Also, if you get a levitate spell and jump off a high point in azeroth, you can zone wherever you want. Yes, it's optimised to other zones in certain places, but the engine can handle you zoning in from anywhere.
I don't care if you do game dev work, I'm a hobbyist myself, but you're completely wrong about WoW's zoning. Might actually want to play the game you're criticising. Just do a search on google for some levitation vids in Azeroth to see how wrong your ridiculous statements really are.
For all intents and purposes, WoW is a seamless world.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
WoW has millions of subscribers. So what? Britney Spears sells millions more copies of her garbage. Appeasing the lowest common denominator will give you numbers, but it's irrelevant to the discussion of quality.
I played probably 10-15 hours over the weekend. I saw a couple of bugs. I was spawncamped once. I restarted my client once to resolve a graphics issue in the Acheronian ruins (sp?). I never had a load screen that lasted more than 10 seconds, and even though my computer is newer, it's not top of the line by any means. I had a f****ing blast the whole time, and am in awe of the quality of graphics/sound. I love the fact that every single new player isn't crammed into the same instance of Tortage. Nothing detracts from the feeling of immersion worse than 500 people stacked on the same NPC, randomly jumping up and down and yelling infantile garbage to anyone who will listen.
Funcom made a good game. It's good to be critical, but be realistic about what you can expect. Some of you will bitch and moan until someone makes a game that gives you an orgasm and then cooks breakfast for you (and doesn't ask for cab fare). I suspect that when that game finally gets written, you'll start pissing about how it cooks your eggs.
I like WoW, but AoC isn't designed to be WoW. It's branching into new territory, and as with anything that heads in a different direction, it will experience the odd hiccup on the road to the final goal. It's a solid game that looks great and is eminently playable and enjoyable within the framework it was designed in. If you like WoW better, Blizzard is happy to keep your subscription active. As for me, unless there's a dealbreaker somewhere down the road, I'll probably let my WoW subscription lapse within a couple of months. But it will take a lot to make me go back to grinding arena points.
. I like WoW, but AoC isn't designed to be WoW. It's branching into new territory
Now, before I say another word...let me say that, Dekken, I actually do not mean to target you in any way by using your post as a quote. I just found that THIS sentiment followed well with what I am about to say. With that in mind, I'm gonna mosey right along.
I have seen most of these threads here...and throughout ALL of this "bash/love" madness I have yet to see you people actually address the game from a design point. When I say "you people" I mean the haters. I am actually getting irritated at the hate being focused on stupid minor choices regarding graphics and loading. Even if you really hate loading, its not the most important part of a game. Its just a means to an end. The real meat of the matter is inside design path, and the dev team has made some design choices I feel are way more important here than their decision to make the game pretty (though, I rather wish they had spent more time on actual content than pretty...bar fights would have been cool).
AoC IS designed to be WoW. Its designed to be EXACTLY WoW with some better visuals and a few nifty combat tricks. They have stated directly that raiding and raid gear are gonna be the "be all and all" for the games gear progression. I don't care if we all love that stuff (I don't), but I really hate it when we speak about Conan as though it were actually DOING something new. Its not, in any way, shape or form, doing one single thing different as far as actual gameplay design goes. Its following the Blizzard theory of continuation by running us through the stupid raiding treadmill again.
I hate them for that...because I was really loving the ideal of a blood soaked world behind the Conan IP several years ago. The only way to really get that NOW is to join a FFA PvP server...AND then get your face stomped in at equal level to some guy who has more time than you for raiding. I thought we all decided that raiding to PvP was stupid when we had to do it in WoW...but I suppose you all forgot all about that when you received those neato combat ticks and pretty trees.
Even through that though, I don't mind that some of ya like it. I also don't think its going to FAIL based on my particular side against it. I'm very glad it has the response it does...I suppose...and even more glad the the PvP servers are getting slammed. Maybe they will take the BLOODY HINT and rethink this whole "Gosh, raiding in MMO's is the BESTEST EVA" bullcrap we've been force fed for a decade now.
Recently joined the closed beta but haven't been over lvl 20 due to time restrictions.
What I DIDN'T like is that it's too "hold me by the hand" regarding quests.
They all appear on minimap, waypoint arrows...
Is it meant to be like that ?
I've played single player games with less linearity and I was hoping that it's different past level 20 but didn't get there yet so I'm just asking how it goes after 20
It doesn't run as good as I want on my PC (which is quite new - some EXTREME FPS drop when looking at certain areas don't know why really).
But it plays quite fun, looks OK in general...Definately gonna give it a try but It doesn't seem that it's gonna blow me away right now...
For one, it doesn't seem as polished but in general it's acceptable and feels like a solid game but it's not a revolution I guess.
Regarding WoW...I'm not a big fan of how the game/company/community works but you have to accept is a quite complete package.
Regarding gear/grinding etc. the game doesn't limit you in anyway, gives you lots of options but you gotta draw the line WHEN something is worth getting or not (Tier6 or badge loot ? your choice).
I don't really care HOW zoning in WoW is done BUT it feels good and there's no loading except 3 sec loadings when entering an instance or hearthstoning. In my book that's great I don't care if its called "zone tunnelling" or little gnomes patch up the world's chunks together for me to see.
It runs great on my PC and it looks good - They did improve the graphics a bit and using a "high quality" macro makes it even better...
. I like WoW, but AoC isn't designed to be WoW. It's branching into new territory
Now, before I say another word...let me say that, Dekken, I actually do not mean to target you in any way by using your post as a quote. I just found that THIS sentiment followed well with what I am about to say. With that in mind, I'm gonna mosey right along.
I have seen most of these threads here...and throughout ALL of this "bash/love" madness I have yet to see you people actually address the game from a design point. When I say "you people" I mean the haters. I am actually getting irritated at the hate being focused on stupid minor choices regarding graphics and loading. Even if you really hate loading, its not the most important part of a game. Its just a means to an end. The real meat of the matter is inside design path, and the dev team has made some design choices I feel are way more important here than their decision to make the game pretty (though, I rather wish they had spent more time on actual content than pretty...bar fights would have been cool).
AoC IS designed to be WoW. Its designed to be EXACTLY WoW with some better visuals and a few nifty combat tricks. They have stated directly that raiding and raid gear are gonna be the "be all and all" for the games gear progression. I don't care if we all love that stuff (I don't), but I really hate it when we speak about Conan as though it were actually DOING something new. Its not, in any way, shape or form, doing one single thing different as far as actual gameplay design goes. Its following the Blizzard theory of continuation by running us through the stupid raiding treadmill again.
I hate them for that...because I was really loving the ideal of a blood soaked world behind the Conan IP several years ago. The only way to really get that NOW is to join a FFA PvP server...AND then get your face stomped in at equal level to some guy who has more time than you for raiding. I thought we all decided that raiding to PvP was stupid when we had to do it in WoW...but I suppose you all forgot all about that when you received those neato combat ticks and pretty trees.
Even through that though, I don't mind that some of ya like it. I also don't think its going to FAIL based on my particular side against it. I'm very glad it has the response it does...I suppose...and even more glad the the PvP servers are getting slammed. Maybe they will take the BLOODY HINT and rethink this whole "Gosh, raiding in MMO's is the BESTEST EVA" bullcrap we've been force fed for a decade now.
This is valid criticism, but I'm not at all sure it will play out this way. Granted, FC wants to siphon as many players away from WoW as it can, and there are bound to be certain similarities between the two. After all, WoW established something of an archetype as far as PvP/PvE hybrid gameplay goes.
Whether AoC becomes what you fear it is, or something really new depends on what happens in the next year. I don't think that it will become a "raid to PvP" scenario, and I'll be disappointed if it does. However, it won't change the fact that AoC's combat mechanics are far, far more player-dependent than those in WoW. Over on the WoW forums, the "class balance" bawling that has been going on since 2004 can never go away, because WoW PvP is essentially a glorified dice game. In AoC, your personal skill comes much more into play.
I personally was not bashing AoC. Just pointing out that a lot of this thread peeps seem to be bashing on WoW. which is there perogative i suppose.
my point is that people who bash WoW never metion that the the game must be doing something right they have 10.6 mil subscribers. IMO and only IMo that is beacause WoW can be played on a fairly low end system with a not so great connection. that's not to take anything away from this game. Just IMO it's not going to attrack WoW like number of peeps due to system requirements is all I was sayin.
Like it or not from a business standpoint WoW is the standard by which other mmo's are judged due to the games massive success.
Comments
Thanks to good and Funcom.
After long time new mmorpg I can play 12 hours
without pissing every 10 minutes.
In WoW battles are far from swift and tense. More like boring and predictable.
About a million internet movies prove you wrong.Ever entered an arena battle and wondered why people throw computers and mouses at their feet.
Just try it.
I've played much WoW and the people who take those videos are simple, fetal alcohol simple as well as the people who loose those fights. Boring and predictable show me a build and I can beat it. Fanboi's... so annoying.
What? you mean there's no magic build that makes it so you win every fight? Wow i never knew that.
Personally, i agree with FC on this. I would sacrifice the illusion of a seemless world for cutting edge graphics, faster and more fun gameplay and good performance with EQ2 style zones (Not GW style linear rollercoaster zones).
And i don't know why people always say WoW didn't seem very seemless before the expansion. Go to the human starter area, Elwynn / Westfall / Darkshire, and tell me the zone lines there are tunneled. When the game first launched the zones already seemed very seemless to me playing a human. The zone borders are a mile wide, you can see across borders perfectly, static designs, mobs and players, and affect things from one zone while it is in the other, like pull mobs across borders during combat without noticing zone change or fight them with you on one side and them on the other. There are NO tunnels involved with zoning besides the landscape itself. If you can find a way to cross a zone border in an unexpected spot, it will work, trust me. If you have a WoW account, download a hack or something that will allow you to fly around Azeroth and see for yourself if there is a single invisible zone wall in the game, besides maybe around the 2 continents and the expansion planet. You will get banned but that game is old anyways, it's worth it. = P
Anyways, if they could make AoC with that type of world design and not loose any of it's more important qualities, i'm sure they would. Once it can be pulled off, someone will do it , and i will also play that game, lol. In the meantime, i can't see any real advantage other than cool factor to justify a demand for ''seemless zoning'' .
[edit]
Just read again what you said about tunnel loading. Just incase you think i was arguing that, when i said tunneling i meant the way you are forced to zone through a small doorway like EQ2 or other games like that do. I'm not a programmer and have no idea exactly how the static portals work, but i know they are NOT small portals.
What the heck is this nonsense? With *simple* paging terrain and server hand-offs you can do better than your weird description of how you think WoW works, and you can do it with any quality level of graphics (including AoC). And as others have mentioned, flying mounts in Outland handily disprove your theory. Also, please tell me you don't actually think the surrounding landscape *ever* downloads even at zone borders... or was that just phrased improperly? All of the graphical details are already on the client computer, it just needs to know positions and movements of players and NPCs.
That said, the real reason AoC has zoning is BECAUSE of the instancing. It is far, far easier to instance a section of the world when it is split into zones - just spin up a new instance of that zone and send the overflow population there when they cross the zone border. A seamless world with similar instancing would be possible, just much more difficult logistically. The server would have to decide which instance you were going to end up in before you even crossed the border, then show you only the people from that instance when you are near. And if someone was running along next to you that would be assigned a different instance, they would effectively disappear upon crossing the border.
Just wanted to say that I like the open seamless world of WOW, especially when flying around in epic flight form.
And I like the sense of athmosphere and greatness when standing on a mountaintop in Hyboria, looking at other players from a distance far, far away.
I like the arena battles and BGs of WOW, although I would wish there would be world-pvp. I have yet to test the PVP minigames of AoC.
Also, I like the tense feeling of never knowing what to expect in the huge open landscapes of AoC. I only hope they do something about spawn-camping and quest-camping.
Come to think of it, I also like apples and oranges.
What was this thread about again?
I was going to set _kyle_ in his place, but Xadrian beat me to it. WoW doesn't use tunnel zoning at all. In fact, there's no mention of the phrase tunnel zoning that I can find on the internet outside _kyle_'s posts on various forums. That's because it's a dumb idea. Instead of tunnel zoning you just render only what the character could see. The client has all the maps/graphics/objects and when you move your character, the server says "okay! you can see X, Y, and Z objects/npcs at A, B, C locations!" which is on the order of a couple of dozen bytes of data transmitted per object. I wouldn't be surprized if WoW could display a few hundred thousand objects every few yards given a decent system and connection.
There's really no excuse for loading times besides starting up the game. WoW does do instances for PvE content which have loading times when you enter. But given that the loading times are around 5-10 seconds and that once you enter an instance you don't have other loading times (due to previously explained mechanic) it's not so bad.
In a perfect world we'd have an mmo that starts up in 2-3 seconds, and has no load times for any reason. We wouldn't get lag, and our FPS would always be at least 30. All of that would be happening with graphics so real it looks like your computer screen is another dimension. In the real world, that won't be happening for a long, long time.
ya you can discover new stuff all the way to 80 in this game. In other mmo's you have seen it all at level 20
Some people will discover stuff at 80, like doubletapping forward will give you chance to stun enemy, and backwards will give you chance to evade more
but anyhow, since treath was hijacked about the zoning, what if you increase texture buffer in video options? will the game load some of the next zone in memory?
Ever noticed how WoW pulls off the seemless world? The game is comprised of chunks and uses a simple and clean graphics. You can't travel between zones from just anywhere, you can only do it from specific entrance and exit points. It's seemless to a degree, but not completely. Impassable walls around every zone does not a seemless world make.
in WOW - You CAN travel between zones at any point on the border. You must have completely forgotten about the borders on regions like Westfall and Elwynn forest where they have a big river and a bridge.. you can cross the river or the bridge and get the same place.
They use those entry/exit points and ROADS to give a flow to each region. To get from point A to point B.. to find the next town.. to locate the next quest. They use choke points and paths to give some direction to traffic. If there were no roads/tunnels/door, the game would be kinda boring, most people wouldn't know what to do next because they don't want to explore a featureless map to find content/quests.
Ever noticed how WoW pulls off the seemless world? The game is comprised of chunks and uses a simple and clean graphics. You can't travel between zones from just anywhere, you can only do it from specific entrance and exit points. It's seemless to a degree, but not completely. Impassable walls around every zone does not a seemless world make.
Yes but I find that much more preferable than constantly running into load screens. They just annoy the crap out of me.
Games I've Played: WoW, FFXI, SWG, CoH, EVE Online
Games I'm Waiting for: WAR, Stargate Worlds
Since this is becoming a WoW-bashing AoC thread I'll post my opinion, for what it's worth.
I thouroughly enjoyed my stay in WoW. Made good friends and had great fun. What eventually drove me away was:
AoC has also issues. Zoneing is probably the biggest one (understandable in a way, since the areas in the game do not represent the whole of Hyboria but just parts of it). However it does feel like a fresh start. All WoW has promished so far is the same reheated soup we got with TBC, with added the bare minimum of what the competition is offering. If WAR and AoC were not to be realeased, the next WoW expansion would be Inland, with the same textures and gameplay, just the hue reversed.
And what about the other 28(!) dungeons and raids, introduced in TBC.
Indeed 28 dungeons, raids and outland encounters and you speak of ....one ???
Not even talking of The arena system, the Bg's, the dailies, all down the drain for ... pixeld tits ???
And Blizzard graphics are FAR from outdated when you fly over Outland in a free seamless world you can land anywhere without a loading zone.
Outland alone is double/triple the size of your new Conan play toy.
Graphics is FAR more than number of pixels: it's animation, it's art, it's immersive open lands where at least you can MOVE freely without ANY loading screesn that take 30 seconds to a minute to load.
Does Conan have an underwater world and underwater dungeons, a free personal flight over the lands?
Of course not, because the graphics engine doesn't permit a free path in a world. The world YOU live in.
And it never will because your HD just doesn't spin at 50.000 RPM.
They call this game design.
Your point got through already, you do not like zones.Why repeating the same stuff in every thread? Stop trolling plz.
And you seem to defend WoW ferociously. Do you work for Blizzard or get payed by them for trolling or something?
Grow up and behave on these forums, or else go play WoW (which I would be still playing but for some of the points Xasapis stated).
That is all.
And what about the other 28(!) dungeons and raids, introduced in TBC.
Indeed 28 dungeons, raids and outland encounters and you speak of ....one ???
Not even talking of The arena system, the Bg's, the dailies, all down the drain for ... pixeld tits ???
And Blizzard graphics are FAR from outdated when you fly over Outland in a free seamless world you can land anywhere without a loading zone.
Outland alone is double/triple the size of your new Conan play toy.
Graphics is FAR more than number of pixels: it's animation, it's art, it's immersive open lands where at least you can MOVE freely without ANY loading screesn that take 30 seconds to a minute to load.
Does Conan have an underwater world and underwater dungeons, a free personal flight over the lands?
Of course not, because the graphics engine doesn't permit a free path in a world. The world YOU live in.
And it never will because your HD just doesn't spin at 50.000 RPM.
They call this game design.
First of of, if you can't refrain from attacking personally somebody, you should refrain from posting on forums.The dungeons were 'technically' there (at least the entrances were), but ALL encounters beyond Karazhan were unbeatable or downright broken. Grull needed a gazillion nerfs for more than a handfull of guilds to kill him. Magtheridon was broken. The whole Serpentshrine was either not properly balanced or broken. The Black temple was just an entrance.
There were no daily quests when TBC launched. These were added later with content patches. Same with the broken itemisation of half the classes. Some things were more obvious to me than others, being in a good PvE progressing guild.
BG PvP is a totally failure compared to the early World PvP. It's fun for a while but a grind towards insanity nowadays.
Graphics are severely outdated. As I said, art is great. But it can't cover any more the bland and simplistic graphics. I was very happy when I originally heard that they would revamp the graphics engine with the new expansion. I was also disappointed when I learned that they scratched that because it'd hurt their projective sales.
AoC will probably be a temporary home for me. WoW lost me when they stuck with the sales figures and sold out any resemplance of quality.
I just hate people who are only here to whine about AoC and praise WoW
well guess what? AoC does things different then WoW and some like that, and some dont (like you).. case closed
MMOs currently playing: -
About to play: Lord of the Rings Online
Played: Anarchy Online (alltime favorite) and lots of f2p titles (honorable mentions: 9Dragons, Martial Heroes, Dekaron, Atlantica Online)
As i mentioned couple days ago game has lot of good things but load screens are the biggest drawback takes away immersion reminds me a lot of Guild wars or city of heroes, i am currently 27 DT in Set not so much loadscreens but still you encounter every couple minutes. I have crashed when i am loading might be cause i have it on external harddrive.
Anyway supposedly Rockstar thinks it can pull off GTA like graphics on a MMO (seamless world) with its engine but no plans to do so thou, it will intresting if Bioware or even Blizzard license that engine for next gen MMO
As far as dungeon content and itemisation is concerned, Blizzard released TBC with the content prepared up to Karazhan. Anything beyond that was either missing, broken or unbalanced. To their credit they fixed it months down the line, however they did deliver the expansion in an unfinished state. We were discussing in our guild how they did things right by finishing the casual gameplay first and releasing with it in tact, while leaving the end game content that most would not experience to be completed much much later.
In the same sense AoC announced quite a few raid instances right from launch (something that WoW did not have at launch, although promised). Whether they are completed or not, remains to be seen as well.
I thouroughly enjoyed the time I spent in WoW and don't regret playing the game. I'm not a hater, most of my memories are excellent. I still have the urges to return from time to time. But ... well, the reasons that drove me away are still there and Blizzard doesn't seem to want to address them in the future expansion.
I love WoW flamers. WoW is crap, it's outdated, it's cartoonish, bunch of 10 year olds playing. Always the same arguements. What they never address, however, is that WoW has 10.6 mil subscribers. Now I will concede it isn't because of the uber graphics or the awesome content. IMO it is mainly because the game will play on a 5 year old cpu. The game is just playable no zoning, very little lag, heck it will even run on a dial up connection. I still say best way to not have peeps play your new mmo your bout to put out is ask them to buy a cpu from NASA to be able to play it. I was on the femce about AoC due to reading bad things about how it ran on mid to lower end cpu's, but it sounds like all that got fixed. So, I think I will try it out. If it runs like crap I guess there is always WoW.
Who's a WoW flamer? I thoroughly enjoyed my time in WoW as I have already mentioned. But not everything was roses when I was playing, I had my fair share of frustrations. It's just that at the time the enjoyment was bigger than the frustration. At some point the balanced tipped, so I mentioned what points tipped the balance. These are things that can happen with any MMO released.
It is true that plenty of people enjoy WoW. It seems that plenty of people will enjoy AoC as well. Now who will make me a wastlands MMO so I can enjoy myself a bit as well? Fallout Online anyone? (ah, I can dream I guess).
logged in to say this.
WoW can handle zoning in and out from any point, how do you think the game handles player-driven flying mounts?
Also, if you get a levitate spell and jump off a high point in azeroth, you can zone wherever you want. Yes, it's optimised to other zones in certain places, but the engine can handle you zoning in from anywhere.
I don't care if you do game dev work, I'm a hobbyist myself, but you're completely wrong about WoW's zoning. Might actually want to play the game you're criticising. Just do a search on google for some levitation vids in Azeroth to see how wrong your ridiculous statements really are.
For all intents and purposes, WoW is a seamless world.
Still waiting for your Holy Grail MMORPG? Interesting...
WoW has millions of subscribers. So what? Britney Spears sells millions more copies of her garbage. Appeasing the lowest common denominator will give you numbers, but it's irrelevant to the discussion of quality.
I played probably 10-15 hours over the weekend. I saw a couple of bugs. I was spawncamped once. I restarted my client once to resolve a graphics issue in the Acheronian ruins (sp?). I never had a load screen that lasted more than 10 seconds, and even though my computer is newer, it's not top of the line by any means. I had a f****ing blast the whole time, and am in awe of the quality of graphics/sound. I love the fact that every single new player isn't crammed into the same instance of Tortage. Nothing detracts from the feeling of immersion worse than 500 people stacked on the same NPC, randomly jumping up and down and yelling infantile garbage to anyone who will listen.
Funcom made a good game. It's good to be critical, but be realistic about what you can expect. Some of you will bitch and moan until someone makes a game that gives you an orgasm and then cooks breakfast for you (and doesn't ask for cab fare). I suspect that when that game finally gets written, you'll start pissing about how it cooks your eggs.
I like WoW, but AoC isn't designed to be WoW. It's branching into new territory, and as with anything that heads in a different direction, it will experience the odd hiccup on the road to the final goal. It's a solid game that looks great and is eminently playable and enjoyable within the framework it was designed in. If you like WoW better, Blizzard is happy to keep your subscription active. As for me, unless there's a dealbreaker somewhere down the road, I'll probably let my WoW subscription lapse within a couple of months. But it will take a lot to make me go back to grinding arena points.
Now, before I say another word...let me say that, Dekken, I actually do not mean to target you in any way by using your post as a quote. I just found that THIS sentiment followed well with what I am about to say. With that in mind, I'm gonna mosey right along.
I have seen most of these threads here...and throughout ALL of this "bash/love" madness I have yet to see you people actually address the game from a design point. When I say "you people" I mean the haters. I am actually getting irritated at the hate being focused on stupid minor choices regarding graphics and loading. Even if you really hate loading, its not the most important part of a game. Its just a means to an end. The real meat of the matter is inside design path, and the dev team has made some design choices I feel are way more important here than their decision to make the game pretty (though, I rather wish they had spent more time on actual content than pretty...bar fights would have been cool).
AoC IS designed to be WoW. Its designed to be EXACTLY WoW with some better visuals and a few nifty combat tricks. They have stated directly that raiding and raid gear are gonna be the "be all and all" for the games gear progression. I don't care if we all love that stuff (I don't), but I really hate it when we speak about Conan as though it were actually DOING something new. Its not, in any way, shape or form, doing one single thing different as far as actual gameplay design goes. Its following the Blizzard theory of continuation by running us through the stupid raiding treadmill again.
I hate them for that...because I was really loving the ideal of a blood soaked world behind the Conan IP several years ago. The only way to really get that NOW is to join a FFA PvP server...AND then get your face stomped in at equal level to some guy who has more time than you for raiding. I thought we all decided that raiding to PvP was stupid when we had to do it in WoW...but I suppose you all forgot all about that when you received those neato combat ticks and pretty trees.
Even through that though, I don't mind that some of ya like it. I also don't think its going to FAIL based on my particular side against it. I'm very glad it has the response it does...I suppose...and even more glad the the PvP servers are getting slammed. Maybe they will take the BLOODY HINT and rethink this whole "Gosh, raiding in MMO's is the BESTEST EVA" bullcrap we've been force fed for a decade now.
Recently joined the closed beta but haven't been over lvl 20 due to time restrictions.
What I DIDN'T like is that it's too "hold me by the hand" regarding quests.
They all appear on minimap, waypoint arrows...
Is it meant to be like that ?
I've played single player games with less linearity and I was hoping that it's different past level 20 but didn't get there yet so I'm just asking how it goes after 20
It doesn't run as good as I want on my PC (which is quite new - some EXTREME FPS drop when looking at certain areas don't know why really).
But it plays quite fun, looks OK in general...Definately gonna give it a try but It doesn't seem that it's gonna blow me away right now...
For one, it doesn't seem as polished but in general it's acceptable and feels like a solid game but it's not a revolution I guess.
Regarding WoW...I'm not a big fan of how the game/company/community works but you have to accept is a quite complete package.
Regarding gear/grinding etc. the game doesn't limit you in anyway, gives you lots of options but you gotta draw the line WHEN something is worth getting or not (Tier6 or badge loot ? your choice).
I don't really care HOW zoning in WoW is done BUT it feels good and there's no loading except 3 sec loadings when entering an instance or hearthstoning. In my book that's great I don't care if its called "zone tunnelling" or little gnomes patch up the world's chunks together for me to see.
It runs great on my PC and it looks good - They did improve the graphics a bit and using a "high quality" macro makes it even better...
Now, before I say another word...let me say that, Dekken, I actually do not mean to target you in any way by using your post as a quote. I just found that THIS sentiment followed well with what I am about to say. With that in mind, I'm gonna mosey right along.
I have seen most of these threads here...and throughout ALL of this "bash/love" madness I have yet to see you people actually address the game from a design point. When I say "you people" I mean the haters. I am actually getting irritated at the hate being focused on stupid minor choices regarding graphics and loading. Even if you really hate loading, its not the most important part of a game. Its just a means to an end. The real meat of the matter is inside design path, and the dev team has made some design choices I feel are way more important here than their decision to make the game pretty (though, I rather wish they had spent more time on actual content than pretty...bar fights would have been cool).
AoC IS designed to be WoW. Its designed to be EXACTLY WoW with some better visuals and a few nifty combat tricks. They have stated directly that raiding and raid gear are gonna be the "be all and all" for the games gear progression. I don't care if we all love that stuff (I don't), but I really hate it when we speak about Conan as though it were actually DOING something new. Its not, in any way, shape or form, doing one single thing different as far as actual gameplay design goes. Its following the Blizzard theory of continuation by running us through the stupid raiding treadmill again.
I hate them for that...because I was really loving the ideal of a blood soaked world behind the Conan IP several years ago. The only way to really get that NOW is to join a FFA PvP server...AND then get your face stomped in at equal level to some guy who has more time than you for raiding. I thought we all decided that raiding to PvP was stupid when we had to do it in WoW...but I suppose you all forgot all about that when you received those neato combat ticks and pretty trees.
Even through that though, I don't mind that some of ya like it. I also don't think its going to FAIL based on my particular side against it. I'm very glad it has the response it does...I suppose...and even more glad the the PvP servers are getting slammed. Maybe they will take the BLOODY HINT and rethink this whole "Gosh, raiding in MMO's is the BESTEST EVA" bullcrap we've been force fed for a decade now.
This is valid criticism, but I'm not at all sure it will play out this way. Granted, FC wants to siphon as many players away from WoW as it can, and there are bound to be certain similarities between the two. After all, WoW established something of an archetype as far as PvP/PvE hybrid gameplay goes.
Whether AoC becomes what you fear it is, or something really new depends on what happens in the next year. I don't think that it will become a "raid to PvP" scenario, and I'll be disappointed if it does. However, it won't change the fact that AoC's combat mechanics are far, far more player-dependent than those in WoW. Over on the WoW forums, the "class balance" bawling that has been going on since 2004 can never go away, because WoW PvP is essentially a glorified dice game. In AoC, your personal skill comes much more into play.
I personally was not bashing AoC. Just pointing out that a lot of this thread peeps seem to be bashing on WoW. which is there perogative i suppose.
my point is that people who bash WoW never metion that the the game must be doing something right they have 10.6 mil subscribers. IMO and only IMo that is beacause WoW can be played on a fairly low end system with a not so great connection. that's not to take anything away from this game. Just IMO it's not going to attrack WoW like number of peeps due to system requirements is all I was sayin.
Like it or not from a business standpoint WoW is the standard by which other mmo's are judged due to the games massive success.