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Best Environments in a mmorpg
nomadian
Member Posts: 3,490
Right all these what is the best mmorpg gets annoying when theres so many aspects to a mmorpg that are good or bad. So dividing up these into categories which could lead to some interesting debate. So, from your experience and by your standards what has been the best environments in a mmorpg you have come across?
My nomination is WoW.
Comments
I bet alot of people will vote WoW because of it sheer popularity and alot wont because some people hate it. However i do agree. I love WoW because not only am i a huge fan of the Warcraft series, the people at Blizzard did an mazing job. I like how the characters look, the skills you get, the pure customization in the form of weapons and armor and how you can never be the same as the ohter hunt because of the talent points. I love the combat system, and the sound is pretty good. I like pvp, its good, but they could have definately made it better (With like seiges of cities, and the ability to use mounts in battle would have been nice) Overall i love this game.
Am I ever wrong??
The best damn environment I have ever seen in 50+ mmorpgs I have looked specifically at environment for is without a doubt Hero's Journey. Check those environments out they are so incredibly amazing.
Trust me I am a 3d modeler and I have touched working on levels, and those environments are simply incredible. You should really see them to believe them.
The saga of Ryzom has some amazing environments, not just for the stunning scenery but for the AI too. Preditors will hunt Herbivores, who will migrate around in packs, if a preditor comes near a pack of Yubos (low level mob) they will all scatter for example.
It has to be experienced to be fully understood really
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Kibs
Avatar by Ema
Playing: The Saga of Ryzom since march 2004
2.I don't think you have heard the term 'cookie cutter talents' before because pretty much everyone follows 1 of the few 'cookie cutter' styles there are and follows that. It minimally changes your perception on their gameplay, except for maybe a mage because you can visibly see whether they went Arcane/Frost or Arcane/Fire or a warrior because they have 2 axes or 1 polearm. Other than those 2 exceptions there are very few people who use a different spec for their class than the one that most people use.
I loved SWG, and I am no super big SW fan or anything. I just felt the atmosphere and the game worlds were really well done, as were the creature and character models. I used to love just hanging around in a cantina listening to the SW music, and it was extra fun with a fight would break out. Creature mounts were cool and vehicles were fun. I think I had more fun with exploration in SWG than any other game I have played. Too bad the game lacked in content and it seems to only be going downhill.
SWG feels pretty realistic, the views you sometimes happen upon are quite amazing. Links to some screenies:
http://www.maddocmatt.com/swg/Mustafar.jpg
http://www.maddocmatt.com/swg/mustafar2.jpg
http://www.maddocmatt.com/swg/Naboo.jpg
http://www.maddocmatt.com/swg/corellia.jpg
Apart from the views, your character is visually very customizeable. You can adjust nearly ever feature of your character and nearly no character looks the same (I can spot people out in a crow just by their looks). You can also change the looks as often as you like by finding someone who is an Image Designer, who can give you even more details then the original character creation screen can. As well as that there's a wide assortment of clothes which you can have made in many colour combinations and armour too can be made in many different colours.
While yes, the game is currently in the middle of undergoing a dramatic change, it is still fun to play. There is a trial available at www.tryswg.com if you're interested
Hero's journey not heard of that one.
SWG, not bad pictures.
In terms of pure atmosphere: World of Warcraft. It has a wonderful style, it's all handmade (unlike SWG) and it feels realistic. No game out there has high mountains like Wow, no game has deep ravines like in Wow. The trees in Wow are placed on placed where it feels realistic for trees to grow, not just in a random pattern. Few other games have made me go wooaw when I approach a epic landmark. Most other games look so small, the mountains never reach epic hights, they all looks so bloody flat. World of Warcraft's enviroments are seamless and not instanced, very very important features for immersion. There is nothing like finding a cool place and to be able to ride there without having to go through several loading screens.
I'm also a big fan of the Warcraft storyline, and it's very cool to find remains of the epic battles in the previous games, scattered across the world.
In terms of realismn I think it's Ryzom. The weather effects are the best out there so far. Nothing like seing the palms in the wind @ a stormy day. Lovely. Shame that the rest of the game didn't fit me.
I'd say for fantasy with pure feeling behind it, then yes I'd go with WoW for sure, I mean some of the area's they made are just amazing, from the deep forests of the SV to the Salt Lakes near Tanaris, just very very well done. I also loved L2 with alot of their go really big sceens, cool stuff.
Overall though, my favorite would go to MxO, but mostly just because I was a huge fan of the movies and the world. I think (other then the game completely sucking) they did an amazing job at getting just what the matrix would look like and I loved it.
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After running myself in circles for the past 30 mins to get my adrenaline flowing before i type this post, might of been a bad idea.
Well anyways.. I would have to say that Eq1's imersment of the community is what pulled me in for 6years, and anything that can hold my attention that long, has got to of done something right. I like Eve-Online for the fact of constant new htings are needed always, due to the massive PvP and crap always getting blown up, keeps the crafting in that game alive, and the player driven economy is remarkable.World of Warcraft made me happy that it was an easy game to get my girlfriend to start playing, and introduce her to the MMo universe of pencils papers and geeks =p Hopefully she will never find out the horrors of the forums trolls... no +10 to charisma Burger king hat will help her there. but BASICALLY add these elements together and receive a good game
1) Community, you need a solid newbie friendly player base, this comes on luck of advertising to the right type of people. (EQ1)
2) Make it newbie friendly ( WoW ) Over 80% of WoW subscribers this is their first MMO. Nothing worse on trying to get people to play a game they cannot understand in the slightest way.
3)Make the crafting part of the game meaningful, make the player seem like that if he does not make that mining barge, or sharpened sword or what have you, all will be lost. (Eve-Online)
those key 3 things is what truely makes a game. IMO. At least one that will make it a year passed launch. =p
I would have to say WoW even tho I dont even play it anymore but I still liked it the most.. EQ1 was great to start and got better after Kunark and Velious.. then went downhill.
Without compare Ryzom has the best **environment** of any MMORPG I have ever played. Agree with the other poster who said it as well. To SEE it is to believe. They did a really great job with that aspect of Ryzom.
I don't play the game because while the environments are flat out awesome the game itself is lackluster, imo.
But as far as Environment goes: Saga of Ryzom
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Eve , Jumpgate and WoW are my top 3.
If only your weren't locked to certain paths in GW it would also be on my list. Pre-searing is really beautiful!
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How on earth can you say the "ENVIRONMENTS" in EVE and Jumpgate are 'top notch'???
They're just wallpapers on a 3d box! There's nothing to them but pretty pictures.
Mind you: EVE is a very well done game... but it's environment is simplistic. Hell you can fly through planets and even stars and other ships. For some reason an asteroid will stop ya cold though
As to Jumpgate: I dunno if 30-50 players on at peak time really qualifies as an MMORPG... I play on Freelancer (CORPG space game) servers that have more players (some have as many as 256) on them.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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Yeah it's actually true. There is really no enviroment, only a picture stretched around the world sphere.
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I will have to say also WOW
Not playing that anymore but was fun while it lasted and for the record i think it will take years before there will come game that is really good in pvp and in pve because with todays hw and connections it is impossible.
"latency ganks you again"
They were asking about environment.... not fun.
And, for the record:
DAOC is fun in both PVE and PVP
AO is pretty fun in both PVE and PVP
L2, if you can get past the grind, isn't bad in PVE (not great) and is fun in PVP
UO was a blast in both PVE and PVP
What do they have in common?
All are OLDER than WoW.
So it has nothing to do with hardware. It has everything to do with whether the producer wants it to be in the game.
Currently Playing: Dungeons and Dragons Online.
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i would have to say L2 and DAOC lineage two has some fantastic graphics character models aside, it also has beautifully varied environments and Execution grounds to cruma tower the variety is awesome i love the environments there.
DAOC has a lot of good variety too each realm has a different set entirely IMO
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i would have to say L2 and DAOC lineage two has some fantastic graphics character models aside, it also has beautifully varied environments and Execution grounds to cruma tower the variety is awesome i love the environments there.
DAOC has a lot of good variety too each realm has a different set entirely IMO
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Maybe so, but handmade usually means restrictive pathing. SWG too has a handmade enviroment, Kashyyyk. SWG's world is dynamic, you could go from server to server and the wild areas will all look different to each other (apart from Kashyyyk and Mustafar). There's also plenty of high topped mountains that you can walk or drive your speeder up and you get a view of the dynamic view around you (it's quite cool to drive up the mountains near Theed and get an aerial view of the "suburbs" and Theed city). Tatooine is full of canyons, as is Dathomir.
On top of that, every planet is full of POI's from the Star Wars universe, like the ancient Jedi temple ruins on Dantooine, Obi-Wans hut on Tatooine or Jabbas Palace on Tat. Yep, SWG also has weather from cloudless sunny days to a full on thunderstorm (and sandstorms on Tatooine) and everything in between
i go with
1)SWG
2)EQ2
3)WoW
in that order
For me, it's Eve and SWG tied, then WoW.
EVE is awesome for sheer immersion... a battleship is tiny compared to a station, and that station in turn is tiny compared to the planet or moon it orbits. The scale in the game was really well done I think.
SWG had awesome enviroment, especially in the early days when people *gasp* role-played. It was just fun to sit in a cantina for an hour, listen to the music, watch the entertainers, and get into in-character discussions with people.
WoW takes the cake for how well the enviroment looks. The game has an awesome style, that being the key word. sure, the character models aren't uber realistic, like Eq2 or whatever, but they are stylistic.