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Originally posted by Homitu
This immersion breaking feature, as I see it, is further accentuated by the fact that upon entering many inter-zone portals, you are given the option to mysteriously travel to any one of a number of locations (usually 2 or 3).  I assume these are other nearby zones that could perhaps connect via the mysterious, nonexistent in-between space that is bypassed on the world map.

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You already said this before in 'Couple of questions from a former hater', and I already corrected you then, but since you obviously didn't read it, I'll copy paste it here:

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Originally posted by Elifia

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Originally posted by Homitu
... What's more, some of the transition loading screens seem to give the option to travel to one of a number of locations.  It seems as if there was a transitory passageway that they decided to forego entirely and just have players teleport past. ...

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I've seen a couple of these too, but that was only because of it being Beta. If the zone that a portal would normally lead to wasn't available for the Beta, it would sometimes give you the option to go to a different zone instead.

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Palladin did play the beta, he was in the MMORPG guild on Istan along with myself and a few others. If i remember right he got to about level 22 or so.

I don't know why he thinks the loading screens are so bad, maybe he was jumping around the world checking out different zones every ten minutes?

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I myself played the human zones only for the most part and went for 100% completion on them, I managed it for Queensdale and was quite close to getting it for Kessex Hills as well.

I maybe went through a loading screen maybe once an hour at most but then again I didn't die often and didn't jump around different zones every ten minutes or jump between my personal story and then a few DE's then some more story.

The zones in the game are fine, they are absolutely huge in comparison to other most other MMO's both in terms of size and content. There is no narrow corridors to run down or anything like that to funnel you into new questing areas and pretty much anything you see in the distance can be walked to/up if you can find a way to do so and indeed you can be rewarded for finding those spots.

The loading screens don't even take that long, I had the game loaded on a normal HDD and the zones themselves took maybe 10 seconds or so to load and jumping between waypoints in the same zone was almost instant as was releasing after dying.

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I didn't see Palladin complain about loading screens when playing the game but then I wasn't much watching what zones he was in either other than occasionally checking to see what level people were at.

Honestly though. You can do everything from stick stuff up for auction to leveling your trade skills in the zone you are in and there is generally no need to switch zones for long periods of time. I think the longest i went without switching zone was probably in the region of 3-4 hours. I wouldn't even consider the load screens from jumping around waypoints in the same zone to actually be load screens, yes they are that short.

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For those complaining that they want it to be 'seemless' without any zone loading all you need to look at some games that do this..

Look at Darkfall and Xsyon for shining examples of why 'seemless' worlds don't work well for all game types.

Even if you managed to get around all the other issues a seemless world brings there is one issue you cannot overcome and that is that even 'seemless' worlds are broken down into bounderies where your character will transition from one server to another and generally this is where the majority of lag and sync related issues in games like Darkfall originate from. In Darkfall you could tell if people were nearby simply by the fact that the game hitched very slightly for no apparent reason.. it got the point were you could get a sixth sense and it was actually difficult to surprise people in the quieter areas in the game.

Another example would be Xsyon, there were numerous issues relating to the zones set up and there were some really nagging issues where characters would desync and some zones would experience strange issues. There was also an issue with the boundaries between the zones actually showing tears and seams in the terrain itself. Now I don't mean to make the devs of these games seem bad. I totally understand the challenge of making the game 'seemles' and to be honest it's just not possible to implement realistically in some games and I would firmly agree that GW2 is one of those games for numerous reasons. Overflow servers and content density being the two biggest imo.

I like using EVE as a good example of why it's acceptable to still have zones.. the networking behind the systems in EVE is incredibly complex and it enables them to bring down part of the game if it is having issues and barr people from entering until the servers are back up. It's also possible for them to reinforce systems where they are expecting large scale fights or big trade hubs that see a huge amount of traffic compared to other areas.

I expect GW2 will be using similar technology with it's overflow servers and the guesting system and seeing as the engine is based on the one used in GW1 it also stands to reason they will stream assets and content for zones onto your computer as and when it is needed rather than forcing you to download the entire client all at once. If they are clever about this then it also becomes possible to load up changes to the game without having downtime since the revisions can be downloaded the next time players enter the zone. I think this may contribute to why some people are complaining about long zone load times? I'm not sure if those zones were already downloaded or if it streams the content to the client while the load screen is displayed during the beta. I did notice that WoW, and probably some other games, have recently implemented similar technology into their clients to try and smooth the gameplay experience by streaming content as it is needed. I'm not sure if they have the infrastructure to make changes the same way EVE or GW2 does though as something tells me your servers have to be built with this sort of thing in mind and it isn't something you can just tack onto the end as it were. (Which WoW is quite good at doing seeing at it copies mechanics and gameplay from pretty much every decent game that comes out)

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At the end of the day there are some seriously compelling reasons to remain with zoned content and coming running into this discussion gun blazing commenting that it's completely unnacceptable only shows you have not put any thought into it at all.

You can argue that you would prefer GW2 to not be zoned but you would then need to describe what benefits that brings and what changes could be implemented to the game to accommodate that change without totally breaking everthing. If you don't do that in a constructive way then you might as well just not say anything.

This is one of the reasons I get so annoyed at beta tests these days.. there are thousands of people out there that get invited to beta tests and don't even provide feedback on the game. They just see it as a chance to play around with something earlier than normal and it prevents people who would have provided a lot of feedback from getting the chance to do so. Unfortunetly it's not so easy for devs to tell who is who.

Originally posted by Homitu 

Of this, my absolute favorite component is traversing brilliantly executed zone transitions.  The walk from sunny Redridge through the groomed, cultivated understory of Elwynn and into the haunting, gloomy forest of Duskwood in WoW comes to mind.  The sun fades away through the haze; shadows slowly encroach; the vegetation thickens; spider webs appear in the tree canopy; lanterns begin to line the road to fend off the growing darkness.  Then suddenly a lone wolf's piercing howl echoes to complete the mood transition. 

These moments are responsible for the my personal greatest sensations of MMO wonder and awe.  They define the mood for the upcoming environment and story.  You can't tell me I don't enjoy them, or that I would or should enjoy a loading screen just as much. 

I wanted to tackle this comment seperate from my post above as I think you are suffering from a serious case of rose-tinted glasses here.

Pretty much all of the zones in WoW had terrible zone transitions, even after catalcysm. In fact once you could get flying mounts into any part of the game you could see the total lack of effort that went into zone transitions as plain as day. Some were done better than others, for example The Barrens to Stonetalon Mountains, but that was usually due to the areas being similar. For the most part the zone transitions even on foot ranged from something like a river or bridge seperating the entirely different ecology and geography to just blatently stopping one colour of ground and starting with the next.

I'm not saying it wasn't acceptable, I didn't have any issue with it, but it certainly isn't anything like you are describing. Hell I would go so far as to say that the biome transitions in Minecraft are just as good as those in WoW.

It seems something I said in this thread got me banned for a few days. :)

Originally posted by Palladin

It seems something I said in this thread got me banned for a few days. :)

 

GW2 fans play for keeps.

Originally posted by Atlan99

Originally posted by Palladin

It seems something I said in this thread got me banned for a few days. :)

 

GW2 fans play for keeps.

hehehe ya they are fanatical it seems.....funny thing though is I am a GW2 fan myself I was only airing my opinion about one aspect of the game I dislike and the flames came rolling in. :) and I did get a bit pissed at one point.

Originally posted by Palladin

Originally posted by Atlan99

Originally posted by Palladin

It seems something I said in this thread got me banned for a few days. :)

GW2 fans play for keeps.

hehehe ya they are fanatical it seems.....

oh please...

People get banned on every game's forum every day for saying stuff, it has nothing to do with 'fanatical' GW2 supporters.

You people constantly trying to move this from a conversation about games to an attack on a (non existant) community just make things worse for everyone.

Maybe it was just what you said rather then the other sides 'fanaticism'.

Originally posted by Atlan99

Originally posted by Palladin

It seems something I said in this thread got me banned for a few days. :)

 

GW2 fans play for keeps.

This is a pun, why come people no realize this a good one too, prob not original tho.

I know in GW2 i will play for keeps :)

Edit- dis be troll thread?  the loading is iniquitous in nature , in that so many people seem to hate it, it must be back if i have to wait..... (And typicaly i would agree). But to say that without experincing it si silly, because its flippin fast in GW2 and rather innocuous instead.