Age of Conan

Originally posted by red_cruiser

My toon is level 60, and I"ll say that world design is a major weakness of the game.  It's not so much the reason that I won't be resubscribing as that I just couldn't convince any of my RL friends to play. 

The design of the zones feel like they were built for a  single player game.  You don't even need to explore because you just follow the on map icons to your quest objectives.  I don't want to discourage anyone from trying the game because it's decent, but the world design is bad for a MMORPG.  There is no argueing that.

I'm only level 35 - but I agree

ohh what a bummer to read all these posts :( Instanced world sounds bad...

Originally posted by red_cruiser

My toon is level 60, and I"ll say that world design is a major weakness of the game.  It's not so much the reason that I won't be resubscribing as that I just couldn't convince any of my RL friends to play. 

The design of the zones feel like they were built for a  single player game.  You don't even need to explore because you just follow the on map icons to your quest objectives.  I don't want to discourage anyone from trying the game because it's decent, but the world design is bad for a MMORPG.  There is no argueing that.

Now that you mention single player game, they did say the game was coming to xbox360 later in 2009

I wonder if that is one of the reason why the game feels that way.

It's not as bad as the haters make it sound (aka, instancing outside Tortage islands doesn't seem to exist) but it's not roses either (the world would feel a lot better if there was some sort of mechanic that would imply travel, instead of making it instant. I say this because the territories presented in the game are not physically connected together in the game world map).

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I would just like to point out that even in Warcack you are zoning. Just because you dont see the shimmering portals on the borders of the zones, or the buildings, doesnt mean youre not. Blizzard was just smart enough to make the world look like there wasnt any zoning.

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That's exactly the point. I  I don't want to SEE the zoning as a player.

As as for the instancinng, people will say that it's not a big deal, but for a PvP game, it is. I don't want to chase people accross different instances. I don't want people to be able to jump to a different instance to get away.
Competition over quest mobs? Solve it with PvP, not with magical parallel dimensions.

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Why has funcom done the implementation this way, it is because of the demanding graphics?

 

They probably have a good reason because it's quite obvious that this is not  progress in mmos but a step back.

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As someone who have worked as a programmer on AoC for a while (my name ended up in "additional programmers" in the credits, along with all the others who left before the end :O), I can explain why things are that way.

The reason is legacy code, legacy content development tools, and legacy content management systems. AoC wasn't quite built from scratch. Anarchy Online's code and tools were used as the starting point.
Most of the subsystems and tools were rewritten over the years of development of AoC. But when you rewrite things piecemeal like that, you never have a chance to break the mold and rethink the overall architecture of the engine.
And going from a zoning system like in AO to an open world like in WoW would have required some fundamental redesign of the engine, as well as the tools and content development processes.

This is a huge step backwards indeed, though.

Originally posted by Nadia

Originally posted by red_cruiser

My toon is level 60, and I"ll say that world design is a major weakness of the game.  It's not so much the reason that I won't be resubscribing as that I just couldn't convince any of my RL friends to play. 

The design of the zones feel like they were built for a  single player game.  You don't even need to explore because you just follow the on map icons to your quest objectives.  I don't want to discourage anyone from trying the game because it's decent, but the world design is bad for a MMORPG.  There is no argueing that.

I'm only level 35 - but I agree

HOWEVER. The game is awesome. The graphics are fantastic (even on my laptop with an 8400M GT). The gameplay is brilliant, and Funcoms little tweaks and characteristic events and jokes give it that little bit more. The zoning really doesn't affect you in any noticeable way after level 20, in fact as it will reduce lag in busy areas, prevent over crowding, and allow superior graphics, I actually welcome it.

Originally posted by red_cruiser

My toon is level 60, and I"ll say that world design is a major weakness of the game.  It's not so much the reason that I won't be resubscribing as that I just couldn't convince any of my RL friends to play. 

But, I hope to never see another online MMO game take AoC's approach.  The world feels small. The zones are small. The only reason it takes along time to run back and forth between areas is because they make you corkscrew around the terrain.  Quests have to send you back and forth to the same camps at least twice.  There's one quest in the Field of the Dead that sent you back to ALL of the other camps you had already visited.

Vanir are spitting distance from packs of wolves and bandits.  NPCs are camping by packs of cannibals.  They seemed to use very little logic when they distributed the mob population, and usually the only thing keeping cats and dogs from living together is a piece of jagged, impassible terrain.  It has way too much artificial sandbox feel to it.

The design of the zones feel like they were built for a  single player game.  You don't even need to explore because you just follow the on map icons to your quest objectives.  I don't want to discourage anyone from trying the game because it's decent, but the world design is bad for a MMORPG.  There is no argueing that.

Also, someone said that dungeons were shared. Not so. Many (most that I''ve seen through  level 40) are individual or party shared only.

Again with these posts?

Age of Conan...typical MMo where you sacrifice ONE WORLD ONE SERVER for stability and choice of 100 servers and instancing..... so the game can be played, rofl

This thread is so funny, we all are on the same page, we are all in agreement  in wanting everybody to be together in an MMO in a seamless world at same time..but sadly it just doesn't work that way

This is the best solution the developers can come up with...INSTANCING and  100 severs to choose from

I just wonder if the day will ever come where some geek will figure it all out and allow everybody to play together at same time in the same zone on the same freaking server

sigh, i won't be holding my breath