Originally posted by arctarus

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by leojreimroc

I'm wondering why is it that only blizzard can make a truly seemless world?  For me, this was one of the most impressive parts of WoW, that you could go from one end of the world to another without zoning once.  Why is it that more games don't also do this?

It's not truly seamless, evidenced by the fact that you go to a loadscreen if you get teleported any significant distance.  It's just that the loading of resources is very well done, and those resources are teeny-tiny now, given the age of the game and the speed of modern machines.

 

If you're talking about wow, there's no loading screen throughout the whole of kalimdor or eastern kingdom except instances. If a game 7 years ago can do it, I really wonder what's wrong with the games now.

You misunderstood.

He was saying that the resources for the next area are loaded in the back ground as you approach. However if you try to travel a long distance (say use a hearthstone) you'll notice that you face a load screen rather than it be instant.

He was just explaining how the areas are loaded in WoW is all. :)

Thanks Bill!  I hadn't seen that article you wrote.  Thanks for elaborating.  

Simply too much going on to pay attention to everything. (in fact, I re-read the article thinking that I noobed it up and didn't read the obvious)

Since I've only played Guild Wars 1 I don't have any real experience at crafting, so anything will be interesting to me. All there is in GW1 is take these materials and this amount of money to armor or weapons crafter or consumable crafter and they'll give you your armor, weapon or ressurection scroll.

Originally posted by arctarus

 

If you're talking about wow, there's no loading screen throughout the whole of kalimdor or eastern kingdom except instances. If a game 7 years ago can do it, I really wonder what's wrong with the games now.

You've never taken the train, then?  Or had a Mage teleport you?  Or taken the port to the docks at Kalimdor?

To the last question, files are bigger due to higher rez textures, etc.   

A fully featured MMO that is B2P without a sub...

This will truly be a sight to see...

Looks good too, I am not on the hype train yet, but as it gets closer around the time it "could" release I will be watching very very closely..

Originally posted by Robsolf

Originally posted by arctarus

 

If you're talking about wow, there's no loading screen throughout the whole of kalimdor or eastern kingdom except instances. If a game 7 years ago can do it, I really wonder what's wrong with the games now.

You've never taken the train, then?  Or had a Mage teleport you?  Or taken the port to the docks at Kalimdor? 

Or rode any of the boats between continents.  Cleverly packaged loads are still loads.

Originally posted by Gagelish



The zones are way less walled in than ToR but they're only the size of The Barrens? I'm sorry but there are plenty of planets in ToR that are way bigger than The Barrens and at least the convention of them being different planets somewhat justifies loading. It's not like you could seamlessly walk from Tatooine to Hoth.







Guild Wars 2 will probably be excellent but this is just needlessly biased. I get plenty of spin from the primaries, I don't need nonstop BS from my gaming sites too.

 

LOL. Some people get really worked up I suppose. He said that they are 'at least as big', implying that they're probably a bit bigger. And where's this 'spin' you speak of? He listed 5 positives and 5 negatives...seems to me like he was pretty thoroughly impressed.

Instance and zone are 2 different things Ppl should finally educate themselves.

I am only concerned about crafting. That's really something I need in a good MMORPG. I don't really care about crafting interface, but the fact it should really be useful - e.g. main source of items and consumables. In WoW/SWTOR the crafting is just a little extra to the endgame raiding/grinding/PvP, not really useful except for some consumables. I would love to see the theme parked  game where crafting and player economy is as important and  essential as the combat (like it was back in Ultima and is in EVE).

Teleportation? - I love that. I love to feel like the demigod in game - being able to easily teleport and move through the world like in DCUO. It really helps to explore it not vice-versa.

Originally posted by Kimmyboy

Originally posted by BillMurphy

It's not really "instanced".  It's a HUGE freaking world.  But you do have to "zone" to go from one map to the next.  

No it isn't stop pretending.

Instanced and zoned world to load up all the graphics.

 

Just like GW1 but slightly bigger zones.

 

 

You might as well have COD MW 3 graphics then.

 

So their world will be instanced, their "world vs world" will be instanced and their "traveling" will be by hopping through portals.

 

In a time when Blizzard includes dynamic world changing events without a loading screen in sight, you try to make us enthusiastic about ... LOADING SCREENS everywhere ???

 

Regression, all the way.

 

 

Who's trying to make you enthusiastic about a loading screen? LMAO, take a pill man...seriously. Most games i've played have a loading screen when transitioning zones, lol...seems a small price to play if the game plays as well as this reviewer claims it does. I've seen you post on the GW2 forums here though, so your comments really don't surprise me at all. The explanation for loading was explained...this game is far more advanced than WoW is currently. Basically, you have an 8 year old game being run on the most current hardware available...

Also - teleportation or/and extremly fast travel is the only thing that makes world PvP dynamic and involving. It is not funy at all to run 15 minutes to the place where the enemy was ganking your faction noobs to find the ganker is gone. In DCUO you can fly to the supposed enemy position in 1-2 minutes and kick some ass before they vanished. I'd love to see something like that in GW2.

Well, I personally would like to thank the MMORPG staff for the articles.  Those of us who have to wait to try the game could feel your excitment for it through your writing, and it just makes the wait all the more painful!

As someone who loves to craft, I'm bummed that the system is kind of stale, but all other things being what they are, I can live with this.  I expected GW2 to be the best theme park any of us have played in ages, and it sounds like it will be.  Themepark games get themepark crafting.

On the upside, if the game is really as polished and fun as it sounds, then perhaps rather than complain about a myriad of faults and shortcomings, as we often find ourselves doing with modern MMO games these days, we can focus on coming up with ways for ArenaNet to improve crafting, and possibly see changes in patches or an expansion.  If not, then so be it.  I know I can expect more exciting crafting in games like ArchAge and other sandboxes.

On teleportation: As someone who is a sandbox player, and has no problem with long travel systems as long as the world is alive, I really didn't mind fast travel in GW1.  The fact is that the maps take so long to traverse, that if you want to be able to move around and meet up with friends and guildmates quickly, you will need teleportation in this game. I've come to expect it in games these days, and as long as I am not frequently zoning while playing *AND* having to teleport, then I can deal with teleportation no problem.  Like I said, it never bothered me much in GW1 at all.

One thing I will disagree with.

SWTOR being walled in. This makes 0 sense to me as there's so little zoning except for when you go in and out of your ship.

Really none of those downers seem bad to me. 

Zones are large, so instancing them off is beneficial. Could you imagine trying to WvWvW PvP with the entire world loaded? We're not talking about games from way back when things like ambient lighting and normal mapping were hopes and dreams, games of today take way more resources to run for a reason. They're far more complex, and if you were lagging to hell in PvP because too many things were trying to load at once, you'd be pitching just as much a fit.

Teleporting, totally okay with. Immersion takes a backseat to gameplay, far as I'm concerned. I don't remember being immersed in Dr. Mario but I played the hell out of that game way back when. I sure as hell don't want to travel this huge world, without a mount, each and every time I want to do something. Teleporting ftw. I hope they eventually go a step further and let you set up your own way points or summon friends to you, and yes I want to be able to see a list of every one of the thousands of events and which is running and how far in it is so I can go right to them. Exploration is a first-time endeavor, it's no longer exploring once I've seen it the first time, including back-tracking and making alts.

Hate crafting, so the worse it is the less I have to deal with it. I understand that's a biased and unfair view of a system many people like, but I just don't, and no game has ever been able to make me like spending hours hunting for specific materials to craft something there's already dozens of on the market, just because people overprice the shit out of their wares. Not in the least bit interested in it.

No sylvari makes me sad, though. I was curious about the designs you could make with their character creation, as I've seen some that were less 'planty' and looked more alien and animalistic (horns and husks and such). I was curious if you could make asura look a little less like mogwai, too, but not as much.

"On the other hand, teleporting is an “immersion breaker” in an otherwise very cohesive world." "The zones are absolutely huge, and there are so many of them it will take hundreds of hours to fully explore everything." Is it just me or am i missing the negative here? "It may be unfair, as we haven’t had enough time with it, but crafting in GW2 seems very “blah” so far." yep considering the whole game isn't available i'd say yeah it's too early.

Originally posted by Valentina

One thing I will disagree with.

 

SWTOR being walled in. This makes 0 sense to me as there's so little zoning except for when you go in and out of your ship.

 

That bit I missed.  Yeah.  the planets are big and if you stay on them, you'll pretty much never encounter a load screen.  That's a pretty big deal, especially on non-urban planets.

When you DO get to a load screen, however, those load times can be pretty hefty in comparison to most MMO's.   Load to ship and load to fleet aren't bad, but the planet load times are as long as the planets are big.

OH MY GOD! Bill Murphy likes GW2. This game is SOOO DOOMED!! 

But I kid the "Optimistic One". I have one question here Bill. Does the personal story add flavor to your characters journey, or totally overshadow and dominate it as the personal story in "that other game" did?

Originally posted by TwilightEdge

Instance and zone are 2 different things Ppl should finally educate themselves.

True.. An instance is an area usually separate from the main gaming area that can have multiple running copies at a time.. Each catering to a different group or individuals during a single session.. The new technology for instancing has been phasing, where instead of loading into a different (sometimes smaller) area, the character is placed into his own copy of a particular section of a map (Like SWTOR when you walk through those green barriers and everyone dissapears)..

Zones are basically like boundaries to a map connecting other maps to it.. These could be present in any type of game where 2 large maps are connected but do not want to share or waste resources on updating and rendering objects that far from the player. Vanguard has a huge main world map, but it is broken into zones that allow the clients to only load and keep in memory the area for which they are currently travelling for the sake of performance.. These are SHARED areas for the most part and anyone present in the currently zoned area when the player arrives are who they will see when they "zone" in.

When does the two meet and confuse players? Everquest 2 features a system where each zone can have multiple copies of itself to accomodate players as needed. These seperate instances are not bound by a certain party or individual more of a sinkhole for overflow if a certain area becomes too crowded and degrades performance..