Originally posted by Tayah

I'll be playing GW2 and it looks to be a really well made game, but one thing about the game is very disappointing. It's not a wide open world like say WoW or Asheron's Call was. In WoW you can fly or ride your mount from one end of the map to the other. In Asheron's Call I could run for days and still not have seen everything.

In GW2 it's instanced a lot. I can understand why, but I really don't like heavily instancing, (But at least it doesn't take several minutes of load times between zones like SWTOR does) I'd much more prefer a wide open world. I'll be playing GW2 but it's mostly for the WvsWvsW, the heavy instancing is a real annoyance to me. What makes the instancing bearable is the liveliness of the world. Arenanet did a great job making the whole world feel alive, from the npcs/events/weather/landscape/character models, everything is so detailed and well thought out.

That's exactly why the world is zoned (not instanced; nothing in the open world is instanced. Portals = zones). With the amount of detail in the world as well as the dynamic nature of the events, the world has to be zoned to lower resource costs (at least in large part).

For example, Everquest 2 was huge but lots of locations felt like useless spaces. Anet gave every corner of Tyria a meaning and life, making them places rather than spaces. It really feels like a living world. Although the zones may bore some ppl but you barely see one as the zones are huge. Cities are awesome, You cannot even find such detailed and alive cities in single player roleplaying games. I wasnt expecting much in terms of huge world but anet surprised me, also for the others games as you level up in a single zone, other zones that have the same level lose their meaning for your character, in gw2 every single place still matters and is playable (enjoyable) thanks to effective level system.

Originally posted by Butregenyo

For example, Everquest 2 was huge but lots of locations felt like useless spaces. Anet gave every corner of Tyria a meaning and life, making them places rather than spaces. It really feels like a living world. Although the zones may bore some ppl but you barely see one as the zones are huge. Cities are awesome, You cannot even find such detailed and alive cities in single player roleplaying games. I wasnt expecting much in terms of huge world but anet surprised me, also for the others games as you level up in a single zone, other zones that have the same level lose their meaning for your character, in gw2 every single place still matters and is playable (enjoyable) thanks to effective level system.

Very true.

I haven't played EQ2 but SWTOR is the same way.

What I found during the BWEs is that if you just run around the main areas of a zone, like just waypoint to waypoint, it can feel a little small.  But, as with just about the entire game of GW2, if you slow down a little and look around, you will find all kinds of things that eventually show you just how big the zones really are.

For example, during BWE 1 I just ran around Queensdale (human starter zone) doing Hearts and DEs, etc.  It made the zone seem a little small, but I was kind of ADD during that BWE since everything was so new to me.  For BWE 2, I slowed down a bit in Queensdale, where my character had already been for quite a bit, and started really looking around.  Next thing I know, it's about 2 hours later and I'd discovered caves, jump puzzles, etc. and I realized I still had about 1/4 of the zone to go before it was really "finished".  Even then, I probably missed some things.  And of course, I wasn't stopping to do DE's or anything that time.  So, slowing down a bit - which is really important in this game from a PvE point of view - will make you see that the zones are actually pretty large.

The trick is to not compare the emptiness of a large zone in other games with the fully packed, but somewhat smaller zones, in GW2.  IMHO just because a zone is empty and large, doesn't mean it's great for exploring.

Originally posted by Delvie

Probably should also mention that all maps have three levels to them and underwater is an entirely different exploration feeling.

Ok. Stop. Turn back. Explain!

I am looking for a bloody info on that. I played the last BWE but could not figure it out what is this layering all about? Is it like Heroes of Migh and Magic's underworld or what? Explain please.

Maps in GW2 are very vertical. Most mmos actually are very flat, in GW2 you will find a lot of elevation and caves, chasms etc. I was pleasently surprised how much lower and upper lvls a map can have.

Originally posted by Ovum

Originally posted by Delvie

Probably should also mention that all maps have three levels to them and underwater is an entirely different exploration feeling.

Ok. Stop. Turn back. Explain!

I am looking for a bloody info on that. I played the last BWE but could not figure it out what is this layering all about? Is it like Heroes of Migh and Magic's underworld or what? Explain please.

No its essentially not separated.  The maps sort of just decide how to show things.  Like the map of a caves may be on the lower layer and outside might be on the mid layer.

Its partially elevation partially location.  Its purpose is basically that its impossible to show an underground cave map and the outside map simultaneously.  And since this happens alot in GW2 the map has a "smarter" inerface involving multiple layers.

But there is no explicit "underground" like in HOMM.  I am not even sure its reuly elevation based, per se.  I think the content designers get to decide which layer that particular section will transfer to for the map.  But basically there are too many things at multiple elevants for one map to handle well.

GW2 feels like a big world to me. Zones are seperated by portals, but size-wise they feel as large as pre-Cataclysm Barrens, or several smaller WOW zones merged together.

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Originally posted by gestalt11

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Originally posted by Naqaj

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Originally posted by Lord.Bachus Most people dont realise it, but GW2 has more sandbox features then any other Themepark MMO, even better, if you play the game like 2 sepperate sandbox games PvE and WvWvW,  with a sandbox attitude, it might feel surprisingly much like a sandbox. 

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GW2 has dozens of great features, but 'sandbox features' ...? No, really not. It has less direction that your typical themepark, but that doesn't make it a sandbox, nor is it a 'sandbox feature'. Nor does it need sandbox features!  

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WvW has many sandbox feature yes.  But the PvE really has only a few and those are quite transitory. In other words, like Rift, there are some points NPC (friendly or unfriendly) can take owner ship of.

 

Its a mistake to say WvW in not sandboxy just because the stuff you do is not permanent.  The stuff you do last for weeks and you can do ALOT of construction.  ALOT.  And its VERY important.

 

WvW has a never ending cycle of creative construction and desctruction.  But that in and of itself says nothing about sandbox.  Sandbox does not need to be permanent.  You may want a game that gives you this and that is fine.  But sandbox is about building.  And in the strictest sense of the word everything you build out of sand is impermanent anyway so in reality WvW fits the term better than EvE.

 

I think sandbox fans are really shooting themselves in the foot when they insist on permanence.  You will see far fewer games that come close to your tastes if you try to denigrate anything that doesn't have it.

 

The static games of the past have no player building in a shared area at all.  That is truly what distinguishes them.  Nto whether said building lasts longer than 2 weeks.  The extent to which these things last is a design choice.  The ability to make them is what DEFINES a sandbox.

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In eve little is permanet, most player things can be destroyed or taken over, as is the case with most sandboxes. Permanence is not something boxers insist on. We insist on our actions having world changing reactions.

Originally posted by Ovum

Originally posted by Delvie

Probably should also mention that all maps have three levels to them and underwater is an entirely different exploration feeling.

Ok. Stop. Turn back. Explain!

I am looking for a bloody info on that. I played the last BWE but could not figure it out what is this layering all about? Is it like Heroes of Migh and Magic's underworld or what? Explain please.

Using the Norn starting area as an example one of the points of interest doesn't appear on the map until you switch level view.  You switch your view in the mini map area - there's like diamonds on top of each other and you can click on the level you want to view.

There are also quite a few items that don't appear on the map at all - whether they just haven't been added or are purposely not there I'm not sure.

There is more exploring in this game then anything made in many many years and you get rewarded for it. I think explorers will be very happy if you take the time to get off the beaten path,

Originally posted by Fdzzaigl

From what I've seen in the BWE's and from looking at the map, I'd say medium.

The zones are large but not that large that you can get lost in them or have to spend large amounts of time traveling across them. There are some real nice touches with jumping puzzles and underground caves or areas above the main zone that add to the exploration feel.

A negative is that you need to load between each zone, but that is understandable as well, with all the events going on in a given zone.

 

Compared to other recent MMO's I played I'd say: larger than Rift's zones, smaller than most of TOR's planets, larger than TSW zones (beta experience only), comparable to WoW's size of zone.

It's a large world. In BWE2, they opened up Gendarran Fields, a level 25-35 zone. To me, it felt as big as The Barrens in Vanilla WoW. Looking at the world maps, this zone was slightly bigger than the previously accessible zones, but it looks like it's about average for the game and there are some zones that are even bigger.

So, I think you are close on your zone size comparison, but I would say that the average GW2 zone size is bigger than vanilla WoW's average zone size. Pretty large zones, by MMO standards. However, GW2 beats them all, except for WoW, in that the game not only has large zone sizes, but a lot of them. There are 26 PvE game zones, not including the 6 massive cities and the 4 massive WvW zones. The others feature roughly half the number of zones we see in GW2.

Another thing to consider is many MMOs have factional zones, which usually means that a fairly large portion of landmass and content are not available to an individual character. In GW2, there is none of that. All world content is open and available to all characters. When you factor this in, I think that GW2 probably comes very close to offering the same amount of world space available to a given character as vanilla WoW did.

For explorers, I spent about 5 hours exploring the above mentioned Gendarran Fields zone near the end of BWE2 and I still hadn't seen the entire map and I definitely hadn't completely explored the areas I did experience, or done much content.  I was also impressed by how wide open the zone was, with out frame rate issues. This is not an MMO that forces you into narrow corridors with in a larger zone, making the game world feel more like a big maze than an organic world. If there are zones like that in GW2, it will be because it befits the effect they are trying to achieve for the locale, not because the game engine requires it.

It's one of the largest MMO worlds since WoW and based on what we have seen so far it seems to be perhaps one of the most explorer friendly worlds to date.

You have to remember with GW2 its not just horazontal exploration. They do a lot on the z axis as well. Going deep down in caves and under water caves. Jumping puzzels that take you way up into the sky. Also they added more jumping puzzels for BWE3. Some are small but there are others that are epic. Fun thing is I have found areas that have no pointer to them and it was huge, with missions and dynamic events going on. Just because I stuck my head in a small cave hudden by 2 trees. I dont know how people can say this game has very little exploration.

Originally posted by Fion

I just wanted to add that one of my biggest pet-peeves in MMOGs, as an explorer, are invisible walls combined with the inability to move up surfaces that have n angle above 45’. These both are used to box players into the defined zone and I didn’t run into either in my over 60 hours of playing from BWE1 and BWE2. In fact I often found that if a mountain side looked like I could jump and ‘climb’ my way up it, I often could.  I never once encountered a steep hill I couldn’t run up because of some arbitrary limitation to keep me boxed in. The only time I ever came across a steep angle I couldn't climb was if it was 'realistically' steep, like a cliff face or a sharp hillside, but even then sometimes I could jump my way up it.

The removal (to my knowledge), of these two hindrances found in most MMOGs goes a long way at making the game feel even more open and ‘alive’.  These and other things have really opened the spirit of exploration for me after a series of MMOGs that might as well have been wide corridor’s will wallpaper scenery. I could name a few MMOGs that are exactly that.. *cough*SWTOR*cough*. ;)

 

I found one slope that I should have been able to get up on, that I couldn't(and only one) above the Dam near DR. You could get up to a first ledge, but it looks like there is aledge above it, but you can't get up there, not even using teleport skills.

Originally posted by Butregenyo

For example, Everquest 2 was huge but lots of locations felt like useless spaces. Anet gave every corner of Tyria a meaning and life, making them places rather than spaces.

And they have only filled in a small portion of the full world map... Future expansions, I guess.