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Wildstar has instanced zones. How can it be called a MMORPG?
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Here's my take on the bolded parts:
The first bolded sentence in which you talk about getting kicked from the server, it's been done before. Many old games support large zones with tons of players playing in them simultaneously. Server technology as well as desktop power have both gone up, they should both be able to handle this kind of thing.
On to your hardware, the reason you're getting FPS drops is simply poor optimization on the part of the developer. WildStar isn't even a very highend game in terms of graphics, but it is poorly optimized. And indeed optimization is what I'd rather see developers focusing on instead of making the world feel way less massive and persistent. It's not like hardware power hasn't gone up from older MMORPGs which still supported large, unphased areas.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
Is this something the devs said or just some crazy assumption based on "cartoon graphics = not high end game"? Where is that "poorly optimized" coming from, and what aspect are you suggesting is poorly optimized? Net code? Rendering?
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
Actually Asherons call had a different method to deal with it, the Portal Storms. Too many players gather in an area, like a town, and suddenly they started being randomly portaled away. Really sucked if you were talking to a vendor or in your bank vault and got portaled. By the way, it didn't take many people in a town to cause the storm to start.
In all these games with a "seamless world" it's just smoke and mirrors, and that includes WoW. If you know what to look for, you can find the zone walls and other limitations, though it's a lot easier to do on high events.
Also, why the heck do you think they have limits on how many people can be logged into a server if not because of limitations. Shards or whatever you want to call them are just ways to let you onto your characters for that 'server' and not be slammed by the too many people in zone issues. Without that method, you'd just be unable to play either because you couldn't log in, or because you were sitting in a login queue for who knows how long.
The limitations exist on all games, and aren't going away, the only real difference is how they camouflage it.
Lost my mind, now trying to lose yours...
yes it does.. also considering the graphics in wildstar are far far far from cutting edge... there are many game engine available that could do it no problem without instances..
but games like wildstar would be pretty crappy with all the players in the same place killing the same quest mobs.. you would need to sit and wait in a queue just to be able to kill the mobs you need to kill.. it was almost like that in the beta anyway..
...except you don't, because WS has open tagging. Everyone could attack a quest mob once and get credit.
Hello
I have no problem with multiple channels within in a MMO. I remember when EQ2 introduced them to help with the influx of people when expansions where released. Also it made camping named mobs just a little bit easier. As far as i remember EQ2 remains to this day an MMO.
I do have a problem with the over use of quest phasing, and questing in general, but i do not think that this is what the OP was bitching about.
Nevertheless, i can understand how some people are upset and miss the old days of server crashes and rubber band physics.
Welcome Home
Rev.
And if it did come to server merges, honestly I would rather take them. It's not like they are a big deal - phasing affects the way a game feels way more.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
Why do people get in a tizzy about instancing? Most games that offer it split the zones into people of around 200. Can't you find someone to play with out of that 200? When does anyone group up with 200+ to do anything in the open world? (in today's games and yesterdays).
Also you can swap to an instances where your friends/group members are.
I've yet to see evidence of it actually hindering gameplay. I've seen a lot where it helps, dungeons for example, mob camping/stealing.
It's easily a better way of splitting the population than resorting to multiple servers.
It takes most new players to Wildstar a good 5-10 mins to realize they need to sync to group. It breaks immersion, especially if you are an RPer. It's unnecessary considering the size of Wildstars zones.
Immersion is subjective. Areas can be to overcrowded which just breaks it. Bree in LOTRO for example before instancing was terrible.
Capital cities are supposed to be crowded and bustling with life. It might as well not be called an MMORPG if the server can't actually handle whatever they set the cap to. Seems to me they are trying to charge $15 a month when they should be running a buy once game like GW2.
You know what I hate? Playing a game for the first time and trying to find the most populated server. For example a couple years ago I went to try LoTRO. Chose a server and got to level 27, then realized, I am practically alone. So I start a new character, after an extensive google search, on the most populated server. I load in and i'm surrounded by tons of tons of people.
This is why megaservers are needed. I hate choosing the wrong server and having to start completely over again. And no, not every game offers server transfers. I'd rather my buddy be on another channel then on another server.
An MMO has about twice the players at release that it expects to retain, if not more. This isn't a failure of the game, it's a success of the marketing team. This is known and expected. Compound that with people playing more sessions and longer sessions during that first 30-90 days of the game. In short, like with ANY entertainment service, you will have an incredibly inflated number of people piling in when the service goes live.
"Quite obviously" seems logical enough when you're really not looking at history or the bigger picture.
As for RIFT, if by "handled the launch pretty well" you mean "provided adequate servers for launch and were left with a lot of dead servers afterwards" then you are correct. RIFT went from 58 NA and 41 EU to 7 NA servers and 8 EU servers.
Going from 99 servers to 15 servers is one way to keep server population health. Another is to start with 22 servers that channel the high population areas and still have 22 servers a year or two later just without channels being generated because of the lower population. The latter is much less disruptive to the player community.
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
it can be done, and it has been done before.
darkfall has no instances
perfect world is like 10 years old and it has no loading screens whatsoever, and the world was huge plus you could fly from point a to point b on the map without ever seeing loading screen.
ah and despite PW being 10 years old game, it also had interactive water where you could actually go in and it was a huge part of the game - unlike some 'modern' mmos that claim how its next to impossible to make water anything other than fishing mini game :P plus for its tame it had rather advanced graphics too
Simply put, my opinion is that server merges are far less disruptive than mechanics that make the world feel way less immersive. That's with me having experienced quite a few server merges.
Its a question of opinion though in the end, and the group WildStar is targeting is probably fine with these types of features. The modern hardcore raider is most of the time not interested in the bigger picture but the raiding minigame alone - personally I love hardcore raiding, but if I don't like anything else in a game but the raids, I don't play the game.
That being said, with today's technology you'd expect them to have figured a way to include more players in a single instance on a single server. Phasing seems like an easy answer that has it's negative sides, but the target crowd of the game apparently is able to accept these negatives.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
This may be okay if the WS devs didn't already say there was very little instancing in the game, and overall, weren't shady about it all. They have yet to address channels and if they intend to do away with them in the future.
Yeap.. a persistent online world with massive players on it define a MMO.
But.
Is it persistent, when for every single zone hundreds of instances exist, and wil created or destroyed on demand? Is that persistent? It is not that any of those instances will persist.. they get destroyed and created on demand.
With other words the OP is right. Games, where every single zone consists of replaceable instances with limited player capacity(like AoC with a cap of 99 or 100 per instance) can be hardly called peristent.. and with that hardly called a MMO.
On the other side this trend was foreseeable. As long as most cry about bad graphics, and as long as the most single important feature is to have graphic quality like in single player games.. developer will do just that. And it will become worst.
Now most zones in those games at least allow hundred player at once.. i am just waiting till we see one with only 16 or 32 players allowed in a single zone(instance of a zone).. but then single player graphic would be absolutely possible.
As long as players care more about graphics, instead of persistents, gameplay, immersion or anything else beside graphics, we will get exactly that. Graphically blown up games with not a lot else. But the funny part is, that most so called MMOs with heavy instancing and player restriction still don't look that good.
MMORPG Definition
Persistant World Definition
You should probably fact check before making assumptions.
EDIT: "Instance dungeons[edit]
Instance dungeons, sometimes shortened to "instances", are game areas that are "copied" for individual players or groups, which keeps those in the instance separated from the rest of the game world. This reduces competition, while also reducing the amount of data that needs to be sent to and from the server, reducing lag. The Realm Online was the first MMORPG to begin to use a rudimentary form of this technique and Anarchy Online would develop it further, using instances as a key element of gameplay. Since then, instancing has become increasingly common. The "raids", as mentioned above, often involve instance dungeons. Examples of games which feature instances are World of Warcraft, The Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest, EverQuest II, Aion, Guild Wars, RuneScape, Star Trek Online and DC Universe Online."
Source: Just scroll to Instance
Although you have loading screens (ship travel) between one zone to the next, each zone is persistent within itself (you can see everyone in there, there is no lobby. So yeah they are mmorpgs IMO.
What i do not consider mmorpgs are games like Dragon Nest, Vindictus, C9, etc where the only persistent area is a city lobby for matchmaking and the rest of the game is instanced to a single player and/or coop, no matter how many people are on the servers.
And you should probably improve your reading comprehension.
For your Wiki link MMO Definition:
"MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player online RPGs by the number of players able to interact together, and by the game's persistent world (usually hosted by the game's publisher), which continues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and away from the game"
I repeat.. which conntinues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and way from the game. Well.. in those games every single instance of every zone will get destroyed.. they don't evolve in any way and don't exist persistent. They get destroyed and created on demand.. as i said above.
And onto your Peristant World Definition from Wiki:
"A persistent world or persistent state world (PSW) is one where the world is persistent, meaning the world (ideally) continues to exist even after users have exited the world and that changes made to the world state by its users remain intact."
And here i repeat "that changes made to the world state by its users remain intact", which is what exactly don't happen if any zone is a instance and get created and destroyed by demand.. well.. and again they don't coninues to exist..
With other words.. my arguement stands and your reading comprehension lacks dremendous.. i guess you just proved my point.
Edit to your Edit:
I don't talk about some areas, which get instances.. that would not change the fact that the complete other world would be persistent, and therefore the thing a MMO. Like WoW.. and noone would suggest that WoW is not a MMO.
But games, where every single zone exists only in hundreds or thousands(dependend on demand) instances, where every instance is not persistent, get destroyed and created by demand, and where nothing remains is not really persistent and therefore not really a MMO. It is much more like a lobby game and comparable to GW1.. just that they concealed it better that it is actually not persistent and just another lobby game. Though.. i did'nt say if that is good or bad.. just that is not persistent, and i gave even reason why they did it.
Another reason, as pointed out in this thread, is the Megaserver technology and the problem of server merges in persistent games. And that is a valid reason.
Yeap.. a persistent online world with massive players on it define a MMO. But. Is it persistent, when for every single zone hundreds of instances exist, and wil created or destroyed on demand? Is that persistent? It is not that any of those instances will persist.. they get destroyed and created on demand. With other words the OP is right. Games, where every single zone consists of replaceable instances with limited player capacity(like AoC with a cap of 99 or 100 per instance) can be hardly called peristent.. and with that hardly called a MMO. On the other side this trend was foreseeable. As long as most cry about bad graphics, and as long as the most single important feature is to have graphic quality like in single player games.. developer will do just that. And it will become worst. Now most zones in those games at least allow hundred player at once.. i am just waiting till we see one with only 16 or 32 players allowed in a single zone(instance of a zone).. but then single player graphic would be absolutely possible. As long as players care more about graphics, instead of persistents, gameplay, immersion or anything else beside graphics, we will get exactly that. Graphically blown up games with not a lot else. But the funny part is, that most so called MMOs with heavy instancing and player restriction still don't look that good.
MMORPG Definition Persistant World Definition You should probably fact check before making assumptions.
And you should probably improve your reading comprehension.
For your Wiki link MMO Definition:
"MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player online RPGs by the number of players able to interact together, and by the game's persistent world (usually hosted by the game's publisher), which continues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and away from the game"
I repeat.. which conntinues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and way from the game. Well.. in those games every single instance of every zone will get destroyed.. they don't evolve in any way and don't exist persistent. They get destroyed and created on demand.. as i said above.
And onto your Peristant World Definition from Wiki:
"A persistent world or persistent state world (PSW) is one where the world is persistent, meaning the world (ideally) continues to exist even after users have exited the world and that changes made to the world state by its users remain intact."
And here i repeat "that changes made to the world state by its users remain intact", which is what exactly don't happen if any zone is a instance and get created and destroyed by demand.. well.. and again they don't coninues to exist..
With other words.. my arguement stands and your reading comprehension lacks dremendous.. i guess you just proved my point.
Hey, Persistant World is NOT seamless open world. If you read my whole post you would see that I google Instances for you to so you can see the difference, and, sad to say, YOUR WRONG.
I didn'T talk about a seamless world. i did talk about persistents. WoW is not seamless either. as EQ1 is not seamless. Both do have some loading screens between zones.. but that does not change the fact that every zone in WoW or EQ1 is persistent.. and that is not true for games like AoC, or Wildstar, where every single zone consists of thousands of instances, where not one of those is persistent.
Have you ever tried Guild Wars 2's dynamic events and World vs World? or WoW's city raid? ESO's Realm vs Realm? Aion's Abyss war?
In WoW, players from the opposing faction are 'raiding' other factions' main city to kill its leader NPC. You probably know how much players would be involved in that kind of mess.
[mod edit]
MMORPG = Massive multiplayer online Role playing game.. aka Alot of people online at the same time,,
this goes for wow,wildstar,aion,Aoc,SWTOR,tera,rift, gw2,gw1 and alot more. Wildstar has instanced Zones just as all other games has
wow,swtor,gw1+gw2, aion and so on..
and wow does have instanced Zones... like outland and northen and so on.. [mod edit]