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AOC Using Instanced World....
kdw75
Member UncommonPosts: 73
Could someone tell me why games like AOC and EQ2 choose to use instanced zones, correct me if I am using the wrong terminology, where as WOW doesn't and has one big world or at least appears to. I had seem somewhere that it was because this is a much more complex world than WOW but I would still think you could have the world broken up and load slowly as the person moved without having zones and loading screens.
Thanks,
Keith
Comments
Funcom stated that the high quality of graphics has limitations, therefor zone loadings here and there is nescessary.
And I could understand that.
Graphic do not addict me more then 2 weeks. I prefer less graphic and the felling of one big world wihout loading And most important without multiple instance of the same place.
Its why i play WoW with 350-600 ms and playing AoC with 100-180ms with wonderful graphics. By the way, I see enough ppl around me. I never think ohh this map is really empty. My server is recommended server even it isn't full and you can see many ppl in every square.
Ain't it true that most MMORPG-Players spend most of their playtime in instances (Zones, Raid-Dungeons, Battlefields, Arenas etc.), now matter if they play WoW, LotRO, EQII, GW or AOC?
Graphics has what to do with MS?
Summary
With the current technology there is a limit to how much you can put in one area without causing lag.
In the end, the developers come up with the best compromise for a particular game.
I would not really use the term "instance" for "permanent zones" that are duplicated because the "permanent zone" was overcrowded.
Background
Densely packed areas such as cities and some dungeons are usually put in a separate zones or you end up with massive lag while the data loads for local area. This is why WoW has a separate zone for its capital cities.
WoW gives the impression of a seamless world without zone loading by having a sparsely populated world with lot of empty open areas. The empty opens spaces load quickly and the time it takes you to run through an empty area allows time for the data to seem to download seamlessy for the next area. Flyff, for example, has big islands that are separated by empty ocean areas.
In WoW, structures and trees are permanent. The scenery can be stored or cached on you local drive because it does not change.
If you have played Sword of the New World you may have noticed lag in dungeons which are densely populated wtih monsters when you crossed an invisible zone line. The lag is really annoying in combat, even fatal. That pause when crossing an invisible zone line might be fine in an empty world like WoW, but it is not so good in areas that are densely populated by players, NPC's or mutable objects. A mutable object includes things like player custom-built structures, buildings that can be damaged, gates that can be left open or closed, trees that can grow or be cut down or change its foliage due to season/disease/damage.
EQ2 servers have the ability to dynamically duplicate its "permanent zones" if the player population is overcrowding a zone. Remember WoW and all the areas that are empty of players? These empty areas are duplicated on every WoW server! Having these empty areas duplicated on different servers is a waste of server capacity and prevents players from different servers meeting. The EQ2 method or something similar has the potential to bring a lot more players together.
Sword of the New World allows you to switch to a duplicate of your current zone by switching channels. Unlike EQ2, each channel duplicated every zone, not just the overcrowded zones/areas. However, even with 3 channels the overcrowded areas were still overcrowded, and the empty areas were even more empty. The EQ2 method is superior in that it dynamically duplicated a zone only if it became overcrowded.
On a new server the newbie zones are overcrowded and the high level zones are empty. On an old server, the newbie zones are empty and the end game zones busy or overcroweded. How do you manage the server population so that players have a fun experience in each zone, particularly when this experience will change as the bulk of the player population moves to more difficult areas?
EQ2 also had the traditional instances that were created for a limited time for a certain grouping of people for a particular dungeon, encounter or mission.
For the purist who only wants permanent zones, this may not exist in any game. Most "permanent zones" are reset during maintenance or server crashes, so they are not really permanent. Many games also have set intervals for resetting a NPC if it is not interacting with a player. Istaria (aka Horizons) with its player custom-built structures is closer to being a "permanent" world than most games.
The NPC reset may not be needed where NPC's never move, but including a regular reset as standard may reduce the impact of unforeseen bugs. In games like Everquest, NPC's (including merchants and bankers) would chase you across the zone if they did not like you. Players could kill the NPC or lead the NPC into areas not foreseen by the developers. The NPC reset at regular intervals was a good way of catching problems such as unforeseen bugs or player griefing/exploits. Players are inventive, so the NPC reset is one tool for dealing with the unexpected.
Compromises
Each game has to make compromises due to current technology limitations. Different game worlds require different solutions to make the best possible gameplay. It's a matter of balancing:
It's definitely a matter of preference for different players if they want lower graphics and less loading, or high end graphics and detailed characters with more loading/zoning/instancing.
I think that with the Conan IP they had to go this route. It is such a detailed and lushly written World that anything else would feel like a Bastardization of the IP. For that reason this game is definitely not for everyone, but it is definitely a great fit for some.
...and it is a terrible, terrible idea to have instancing for world zones in an MMOG. it misses the whole point of being an MMO.
that and AoC was based heavily on the source code for Anarchy Online, which was instance-based.
When it comes to heavy graphics, its obvious conan has quite alot of em at 32GB.
Not something you really want attempting to stream.
Grinding mid-battle = your death, and background loading can cause that when an asset becomes a priority to load.
They probably could have pulled it off, but it also might have shoved alot of extra time into production.
Instancing is there to help the game, not hinder it. It's a feature, not a draw back. Unlike guildwars, none of these instances are personal.
amazing six years after wow and swg etc our computers are MUCH better, dual and quad cores with graphics up to sli... but still they cant make it so you can be in an underworld dungeon without zoning back and forth with loading screen between five small parts?
I call it laziness...
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http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/182770
Graphics has what to do with MS?
Nothing, this is a thread about instancing zones. The number of people in the zone with you has everything to do with ping times. As far as graphics go.... the point is... playing AOC instead of WoW, he has better pings AND better graphics.
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Looking forward how long will people think that graphics have something with "lags" (ping, latency..call it as you want).. graphicals lags are something different.. but that's why all games have options and gfx settings..
First.. detailed graphics has NOTHING with server/client lag... Whole game is running from client.. server is not sending you position or animations or anything of grass, trees, rivers etc..So this excuse really doesn't work... for PC game..
where it works is console games.. console games don't have GFX settings and options.. so console players can't just set how many people they want render, how far they want see, how detailed textures should be etc.. that's why AoC is instanced and so limited.. AoC is console game.. deal with it.
the number of people in the zone only matters if the server or the network from server-client is overloaded.
Pls stop to say it's like that cause there are PC limits. FUNCOM still deny it but if you project a mmorpg to run both in PC and CONSOLE you have to make it for the less performant machine to run. The limits are obviously up to the XBOX 360. And most important about memory. If the game need to run on 2 different architectures, it has to run in the machine with lowest resources before, cause the other will manage everything flawless. What I really dislike about AOC is that it's not the best we can see about an mmorpg in terms of technical project. I'm waiting to see what really new generation of architectures can give us. I was not waiting about such compomised MMORPG. AOC is a good MMORPG after all but far away from what we can explect and we can already have on PC.
all eyes on on Darkfall. it's due for release this year.
With no beta stage whatsoever? Right.