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Wildstar has instanced zones. How can it be called a MMORPG?
wilberg
Member Posts: 182
Games like AoC and SWTOR that also instance their world zones should not be considered MMORPGs, as there's nothing massive or multiplayer about less people in a zone. I hope this trend dies.
EDIT: To clarify, I'm talking about the type if instancing that divides a world zone, such as a capital city, into several channels.
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Comments
Agreed. Sick of these instance and megaserver. Might as well be playing GW1 or PSO Dreamcast.
Server is full and takes 12 hours to get in, but then you enter a world without anyone because of instance.
Got to Thay and there's like 5 people in a full server.
I'm going to play Destiny since every MMORPG now is instance. You don't feel like you're playing a MMORPG anymore
I hope what dies is the constant whinging about instancing.
Tech doesn't exist yet that can render a AAA game with a limitless horizon.
Deal with itIt does. Ever heard of World of warcraft?
Deal with the fact that WoW doesn't instance and is AAA.
Point is there. I never experience EQ or DAOC, but from what I heard they arent instanced too.
you sure about that?
Asherons Call came out in 1999 has NO instances. just one huge seemless world, I can watch the sun rise on one side of the map run for a few hours to the other side and watch that same sun set.
arnt all of WoWs dungeons instanced? or does that not count ?
not to mention the pvp mini games, arnt those instanced to?
This. Channels are the bane of mmos and anyone who defends them is defending lazy server management / programming.
Even the so-called 'megaserver' and 'bigger server than most mmo' can't deal with it. They resort to channels, phasing and zoning, can't beat a 10-year-old mmo. A pity.
From the beta to forever, I have never dealt with channels/shards in WoW compared to games like SWTOR and GW. I do know they had Phasing, which ended up being similar to shards.
Lol, are you serious? Have you played WoW? It has tons of instances mixed with open world.
wow has instanced dungeons but it doesn't use shards ( multiple instances of the same zone )
Also if you'd read the above comments, TheHavok, it was pointed out that WoW has a seamless world -- ie. zones are not instanced, like in Wildstar or GW2. That's the important part in making a world seem cohesive. Instanced dungeons, in my opinion at least, are often a benefit, because you can enjoy the dungeon in a private group without griefers etc.
WoW does use "phasing" as they call it (shards), which does suck in many ways, but is a way to combat dying server populations without merges, or to make changes to the world through quests, etc. that only YOU can see.
While I understand why some would disagree, I kind of agree with the OP.
I feel the definition of MMORPG currently is too wide, or rather, it has become too wide in recent years.
Having a couple of semi-persistent zones, which in fact are instanced (or rather phased) themselves, that act as lobby areas for minigames, in my opinion, shouldn't give a game the right to call itself an MMORPG.
I cannot quite come up with a good definition myself, but what I feel is important about the whole idea of MMORPG is that the world feels persistent. It is difficult to put it in words.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
Haven't seen "instance" thread for a week or two...
I guess it never stop ameze me how some people are difficult to learn, accept and deal with changes.
Non-instanced worlds do not fit current mainstream design pattern, they are rightfully deemed as poor design and unlikely come back.
Deal with it.
This whole thread is full of people trying to use words and/or phrases that already have a meaning and trying to reinvent them.
Instance always has meant a different zone for an area/dungeon/whatever. You zone into your own instance. Has/had NOTHING to do with shards or phases. Shards were introduced as channels but was also a term for servers. Server limits STILL keep us from all being in a limitless, seemless world. Not sure where anyone gets that we have ANY mmo with a seemless world. Someone said AC...I doubt it. If EQ didn't do it, neither did AC (true to the seemless definition).
From EQ (or maybe earlier) on, there have been zones to cut back on lag and such. There isn't any good tech that allows the thousands of player to by on one server, in one huge zone. Get that into you head...is the truth. They now have "mega servers", but they also HAVE to use phasing. Which isn't working so well.
Please stop confusing terms. Seemless means you never zone, phase, load, or otherwise have anything but a seemless world. Whether you are in the open world, or entering a dungeon/house (including pub housing)/battleground....anything.
ArcheAge isn't instanced.
You can just /tell x
Both go to y and see each other without further actions
The world is also seamless except for a few dungeons that you need to zone into.
Remove this "sharding" and this post would have come earlier with the title "Game sucks, unplayable because of lag/server crash" etc. Instead of having a whole zone lag to hell and possibly crash the server because of overpopulation, new shards are started and the game runs on as smooth as ever. This thing alone probably contributed a lot to the smooth launch. The game has been running almost flawlessly since release.
Games become more complex with higher polygon counts and more particle effects to meet the demands. Corners have to be cut. You also have the "Game sucks, can't play it on my mom's 10 year old brick wall"-threads. Doesn't matter what they do, someone's going to bitch about it
Because instances and zoning have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not something is an MMO. In fact most of what you likely think makes something an MMO doesnt. The only thing that matters is whether or not it has a persistent online world where players can interact with and have an impact on eachother. ANY feature, mechanic, etc besides that is irrelevant. Whether or not you like how the game or any of its features are implemented is also irrelevant.
From a business perspective channels and instances make a lot of sense.
They cut down traffic in a sense that for example a players position only needs to be communicated within the channel he is in but not to everyone in the same "zone". This also cuts down the need for additional hardware as processing isn't as heavy.
Also to be clear here: MMOs like WoW, EQ etc. had a lot of less objects in their world and on most of them you can even count the polygons. For example in terms of collision detection it's a big deal - altough most of the times it is simplified on the server-side.
Nonetheless.... As a player I prefer my seemingless and channel-less world. I'm spoiled so what!?
Winning a discussion is not what it's about. If you could pass insight to someone or learn something from it in return - noone can really loose, can they?
Not true. I'd rather be split up from my buddy then get kicked from the server all day. On top of that, do you know what that would do to some peoples fps? I have a 770 GTX and an eight core and 16 gigs of ram and I still drop in fps in towns in ESO, FFXIV ARR, and Wildstar. Imagine if literally 5000 people surrounded a bank? Or any other vendor? How would you see or get to said vendor? People keep whining about player collision, so I guess walking through them is out of the question.
No it's not about being lazy, it's about being smart. Not everybody can afford Titans for their PC's.
They did it so people still running 2 to 4 cores can still play. So your video card and cpu don't over heat trying to render every single player a game has.
I know you people will cry and say, "Well Asherons call had everybody in one place and so did this and that game". Do some research and you'll see those games never had more than 300,000 players. Use google.
As far as instances go....who cares? I have an eight core. My load times are a few seconds. So I have to load for 3 seconds. Instances handle you PC hardware better too. When the load screen comes up it gives your card time to lower the power for a second. Dosent sound like much? I bet, but i'll squeeze an extra year outta' mine.
See mmorpg stands for
MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME.
It does not say : MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER OPEN SEAMLESS WORLD ONLINE ROLE PLAYING GAME.
So in those terms, yes, all games stated ARE and always WILL BE mmorpg's.
This thread is dumb. In nowhere does it say in mmorpg that it indicates an open seamless world.
It tells me this is a rpg you play with millions of people online.
The problem isn't instanced dungeons, the problem is having multiple channels for overland zones on the same server. I really dislike it because it breaks up the population of your server in a mostly random manner, and makes it difficult to grow a community as you're constantly placed in random channels with random people. The "megaserver" technology is basically built on having lots of channels of the same zone, and is basically exactly the same as the server system way back in GW1, but with added smoke and mirrors to hide the techonolgy. Megaservers would work better if you could choose channels, like you could in GW1.
WoW at release never had multiple channels for overland zones, neither did EQ or DAoC. Each server had one version of every overland zone, and that was it. Thus you never got into the situation where you couldn't see your friends, beacuse they were in a different channel of the same zone, an issue that currently plagues megaserver-based games like ESO. For roleplayers they're a nightmare.
You can always still talk to peeps in general chat in ESO if they were on a seperate channel. SWTOR lets you switch channels on the fly. Same with Neverwinter.
I mean do you really need your buddy in game right next to you, even if your not grouping, just to chat? No. Can't find your buddy and you want to group. then group and it gives you the option to switch channels. EASY!
Guy's they made it so easy a child could comprehend it. It's not hard. If you don't see your buddy, just group and go to their channel. Guess what, they will still see me in chat if im on channel 3 and my buddy is on channel 7, even if they are not on my friends list!
Yeah, they should have gone with separate game servers and then dealt with the ghost towns and server merges later. Or maybe they could have skipped the channels and left the servers relatively congested and laggy for the first month of inflated numbers and hyper-playing.
Hmmm... neither sound good to me, man. What's the proper way to do it, wilberg?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre