phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.

Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.

Originally posted by ssstupido

phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.

Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.

You realy have no first hand experience with it, have you?

This technology is by far the most story enchancing tool I've experienced in all the MMOs I've played so far. I'm just hoping that SW:TOR is looking at this, because it can make such a huge implact into actual storyplaying instead of mere storytelling.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Originally posted by ssstupido

phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.

Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.

 

You realy have no first hand experience with it, have you?

This technology is by far the most story enchancing tool I've experienced in all the MMOs I've played so far. I'm just hoping that SW:TOR is looking at this, because it can make such a huge implact into actual storyplaying instead of mere storytelling.

Ohhhhh great way to put things.  "storyplaying instead of mere storytelling". WoW still does this "storyplaying" in a linear fashiion.  While it is still fun to me and many other people, I can see where the argument arises that the phasing portion is minion, compared to what it can be.  Assault on undercity anbybody?  Truly amazing. YET!!!!!!!! Imagine for one second that you were the first level 73 alliance on your server, and you did start the quest.  Imagine that you, and you alone were the first person to do the quest, and stake your holding in undercity, and assult Thrall while doing so.  THEN, the server changed, because of you, because of your actions.  That is a different version of phasing, but I think its what many people on this forum hope for. 

I dont know the answer, but it sure as hell is fun testing out the current solutions

Originally posted by Xasapis

Originally posted by ssstupido

phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.

Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.

 

You realy have no first hand experience with it, have you?

This technology is by far the most story enchancing tool I've experienced in all the MMOs I've played so far. I'm just hoping that SW:TOR is looking at this, because it can make such a huge implact into actual storyplaying instead of mere storytelling.

that's what single player games and books are for.

Really? I guess being part of an adventurers group going out on an epic quest never crossed your mind when playing MMOs.

the fact that this thread is [presently] 11 pages long speaks a lot for the impact WoW has on the market.

Everyone is rushing to build a wow grinder and dip into the pie but WoW offers very little that is new. Blizzard are experts at making games fun.

If Blizzard would make Blizzard games and other companies would make sandbox games i'd be happy. The frustrating part is the current produced by this WoW fandom strips away any chance for a real mmorpg to emerge.

Originally posted by grimal

I am not discounting the cool technology behind phasing, but then making the huge leap in saying that Blizzard now leads the path to future MMOs is overstating it a bit.  I guess this is one of the very few new things Blizzard has brought to MMOs.  They didnt change anything in so much as other titles before it.

Blizzard has never been about new or innovative ideas with WoW.  For all it's polish, many still say that Blizzard has done more harm than good to the genre.

 

 

11m said it good, how many said it harm?

Originally posted by ssstupido

phasing is the worst thing that can happen to MMORPGs. The world is no longer unique, shared by players. Its a different world for every player, its like playing a single player game with lots of bots that affect nothing your experience. Now, its not enough that you got to rescue the same princess that 5000 players have rescued already. Now, you even see the forest that has already been burned down on your same server hundreds of times already.

Anybody praising this need to try a real online world.

Agree. I think that if they apply this technology to some quests thats fine, but this is a MULTIPLAYER game and applying "phasing" to the whole world it's going to ruin it. I guess that the solo players that like to pay monthly fees and play MMOs like single player games will love it though.

Originally posted by Xasapis

Originally posted by Elikal

WOW is not my kind of game, but anyone who says WOW hasnt brought a ton of changes to the MMO genre is simply fooling himself. You may really make a difference between "changes I like" and "changes which became influental".

The genius of the Blizzard devs is not inventing everything new, but perfecting things and making them popular. They didnt invent radar or symbols over quest givers head, but they caused those things to become standard in most MMOs. Is just as it IS. Now you are free to hate those changes, but saying they dont exist is like covering your eyes with your hands and yelling "you cant see me".

Yelling someone down because he is 18 and WOW his frist MMO is plain dumb. If experience would make humans wiser we would have a gerontocracy and live in paradise by now.

I really would like to know what this phasing exactly is? Can someone describe it to me please?

I'll describe it as I've seen it in four occassions. This is from personal experience. If you're looking about mechanics, you need to speak to people more qualified than me.

1. Starter areas. Death Knight starting area is a big demonstration of this technology. I won't go into spoilers but the whole area around you changes with every quest line you complete. For example, first the fields have farmers running away from their houses, later on the same houses are burning etc etc. You're never alone. You can still see all the people on the starting area, but they see the world around them differently, depending on their actions. For you the farmers may still evacuating the areas, for them the villages is already burning.

2. Daily quests. Dragonblight daily to defend the tower have you attack dragons while you're mounted. The difference is that you get many more aggressive dragons when you get the quest than they normally fly on the area.

3. Story telling progression quests. Same zone, once you completed a certain long questline, you participate in a storytelling event in a part of that zone. From that moment on, that particular side of the zone changes for you.

4. Raid bosses. Blue dragonflight dragons (the time shifters) create paralel realities. You're in the same place with the rest of the raid and you're not. The transition is seamless, no loading screens etc. It's like putting a filter in front of your eyes and suddenly you can see the shadows but not part of the real world any more (hope that made sense).

Anyway, they use this in various spots. It's a really storytelling enchancing mechanism. To whoever said that it's not the same with LOTRO starting area, he is right, it's not. LOTRO starting area is cut off from the rest of the world. In this case we're talking about a transition that is happening in and out of in real time, sometimes having temporary effect on the character, sometimes a more permanent effect.

Lets hope that other storytelling MMOs pick up this technique, because it does enchance the experience and the illusion of playing in a changing world. To whoever brought the sandbox argument into the thread, get a grip with reality. This is not a sandbox game, nor it was ever meant to be, why you're blaming an apple for not being an orange is beyond me. For those more akin to enjoy a good story, I think they will like the use of this particular technology.

Sounds like a really cool novelty to me. So far I havent seen something like that, and it sounds like a cool thing, when your actions really have effects on the world. I mean, isnt that what makes so many MMO quest lines dull, that you defeat the uber boss X and his minions and 1 minute later he still roams the world as if nothing happend? Sure, it cant be changed in every detail, but if some central story lines are changing the world like this, and you still share the world with others, it sounds like a good concept to me. I still dont play WOW, but the idea is good nevertheless.

Originally posted by ssstupido

 

You realy have no first hand experience with it, have you?

This technology is by far the most story enchancing tool I've experienced in all the MMOs I've played so far. I'm just hoping that SW:TOR is looking at this, because it can make such a huge implact into actual storyplaying instead of mere storytelling.

that's what single player games and books are for.

So wait ... you want to say that mindless grind is what MMOs should be and that all storyplaying should be reserved for books and single player games? ... who are you to decide that. Maybe it is not what is important to you, but it is sure as hell important to alot of people.

one of the biggest challenges of MMOs IS that the world never changes and whatever the players do it is the results are imaginary. For many players it is what gives the biggest feeling of futility. You want to be a part of a living online world, you want to immerse yourself into the world and yet, whatever you do, the results neevr show on the world arround you. That is one of the biggest if not THE biggest challenge that MMO world design faces for probably more than half a decade now.

What WOW made in WOTLK is again a step into the right dirrection. The feeling of DK starting area where as you progress towards the stronghold of the Scarlet Crusade, the world is changing as you progress and it gave me some of the best feelings of immersion I've ever had in any MMOs. I wasn't that glued to the screen in a MMO for years. 

One could say that Blizzard lacked originality and added nothing to the genre four years ago with the original Wow release.  That isn't true now (battlegrounds, flying mounts, new crafting ideas, lots of different world pvp experiments, expansive instances, etc)...  While every idea that they make implement now may not be completely original, they flesh out those ideas in ways that no other game has. 

The Death Knight into (levels 55-58) was awesome (phasing, drama, carnage, etc).

We're not at the point where massively multiplayer games will allow players to affect the world.  I'm annoyed by that too.  But from a dev perspective, why put tens/hundreds of thousands of $ into a quest for ONE person/group to do and then it's over and the world changes?  Wouldn't it suck to not be in that group even if you were the first to level to cap but had to go to a wedding or work the night the quest/event/expansion/whatever became available?  Phasing is at least an acknowledgement that we want to get there some day and gives us something cool to work with in the interim.

I have a feeling that the real reason that there are no good sandbox MMO games out there is that they are ridiculously hard to do.

Above poster summed it up great on why "world phasing" would not work. Having a few change the world for the many is not very profitable.

... Also, technically, "world phasing" was already put into WoW. Anyone remember the ringing of the gong at Ahn Qiraj? Yes, it was a horrible lag fast that ended up restarting the server a few times whie trying to take down the giant bug outside.

World phasing on a grand scheme would ultimately make an MMO flop these days anyway. Blizzard changed WoW's raid progression allowing 10-mans to do every instance for a reason. Because people with a real life (aka most of the playerbase) don't want to put up with a large group of people for hours on end a few nights a week. With world phasing, it would be just another "Hey, look at me! Look at me!" race to the top. At least with the acknowledgements, it's not an in your face thing.

Guild Wars: Nightfall.

Sunspear Sanctuary Command Post.

there are no vendors, skill trainers, or other NPCs in the zone until after you complete a series of quests. it is completely empty except for a questgiver.

you have to rescue/recruit a set of NPCs with each quest, and after the quest is finished, the NPCs from those quests become vendors and skill trainers. 

if you haven't done the quests, then you don't see any of the vendors in your Command Post. but if you zone into someone else's version of the Command Post and they've done the quests, all the vendors are there.

that is "changing the world FOR GOOD" based on story progression.

Originally posted by Kaelaan21

Above poster summed it up great on why "world phasing" would not work. Having a few change the world for the many is not very profitable.

... Also, technically, "world phasing" was already put into WoW. Anyone remember the ringing of the gong at Ahn Qiraj? Yes, it was a horrible lag fast that ended up restarting the server a few times whie trying to take down the giant bug outside.

World phasing on a grand scheme would ultimately make an MMO flop these days anyway. Blizzard changed WoW's raid progression allowing 10-mans to do every instance for a reason. Because people with a real life (aka most of the playerbase) don't want to put up with a large group of people for hours on end a few nights a week. With world phasing, it would be just another "Hey, look at me! Look at me!" race to the top. At least with the acknowledgements, it's not an in your face thing.

It's not so much about one changing the world for many as you changing the world for yourself. I don't see world breaking events as a consequence of single or a small group of player's actions as being viable any time in the near future from the technical standpoint. Wether it would work or not in technicaly ideal conditions is a question of (currently non-existing) design, so wether it would work or not is highly speculative.

I'm thinking more of a change on the small scale that affect your own character and his immediate surroundings and has not much impact on the grand scale of things, giving you the sense of accomplisment and moving forward in the storyline, but still not altering the world for the players that did not yet come to that point in the story. I think that what they did with phasing is a good step and a good basis for upgrading it in the future.

To elaborate - I don't necesserily mean that if I kill Arthas, he will be dead and no one else will be able to interact with him or kill him after that - that would not work, at least not at this point. I however think that if I go and torch a building, or cut a tree, sink a boat, steal a pumpkin etc, those type of actions have direct results - I see the building burned down, the boat sunk, no trace of a pumpkin, while in the grand scheme of things those don't mean absolutely nothing, it gives me as the actor in those events a feeling of accomplishing something visible and thus altering the world on the small scale. That is what "phasing" does and that is why I think it's a good thing, adding another level to the, albeit illusionary, interactivity to the world.

Originally posted by Aethios

Originally posted by strategy

Crazy. Just plain crazy and a first in the MMORPG field, because these world changes arre happening in full adventure lines (not at a beginning or intro or not in between a temporarely shifting of a quest).

 

It's absolutely NOT a "first in the MMORPG field."

In Runescape, phasing is used on farming plots so that each plot can be used by every player. You see only the crops that you have planted yourself.

They also have dozens of quests where mobs or objects appear/disappear based on events happening through the storyline (and most of their quests are considerably longer than Blizzard's).

Plus, when they do phasing, you can still see other players and they can still see you, which in some cases means your friends can help you with quests or activities they have already completed.

When Blizzard can allow players to change servers at will (and for free), have phased content that still allows you to see and play with your friends, and use phasing to its full extent (not just where it's convenient for them) then you can talk about "crazy." Right now it's just dabbling with technology.

The OP made me laugh too. Appearently WoW is the only game he played.

LOTRO also used this kind of phasing technique (unfortunately not on all, but a lot).

WAR has this kind of phasing as well. Also unfortunately not everywhere, but still.

So Blizzard isn't the first with this.

Cheers

Originally posted by Guillermo197

 

The OP made me laugh too. Appearently WoW is the only game he played.

LOTRO also used this kind of phasing technique (unfortunately not on all, but a lot).

WAR has this kind of phasing as well. Also unfortunately not everywhere, but still.

So Blizzard isn't the first with this.

Cheers

I think it was implemented in LOTRO in a slightly different way, although I might be wrong, besides I find "who did it first" debate irrelevant. I'm interested more in how the different solutions were and what were the good and the bad sides.

Lotro has it more like GW (pre and post searing Ascalon) ... although I haven't played the endgame much and didn't touch Moria yet. It was more having two instances of the same world in which you had two groups of people - ones that did the event went into one, and ones that didnt went to another. I might be totaly off though.

From what I saw it is not the case with WOW. Both groups share the same overlaping world and are not in the different instance, but they see the world slightly different. Not so much about mobs but more about static things in the enviroment (cut the tree quest - pre quest the tree is there, post-quest it isn't but we still share the same game area except that I see the tree differently).

Originally posted by Aethios

Originally posted by Daffid011

So which is it?  Blizzard is doing everything that everyone else has already done or they are blazing a trail to a bad destination?

 

They can't do both? They don't seem mutually exclusive to me.

How can you blame a company for leading the market to ruin and at the same time blame them for doing nothing different than previous games have already done.  I've seen people stupid enough to blame Blizzard for the lack of sandbox games on the market...

Would Warcraft be the industry leader if EQ2, SWG, Vanguard, Conan, Tabula Rasa, Gods&Heroes, Mythicas, UO2, Auto Assault, Hellgate, D&D, POTBS, Warhammer and many other titles had released when they were ready?  How many game releases have to go down in flames before we can stop blaming one of the few companies who did something right for the overall condition of the market?

The competition is making it stupid crazy easy for Blizzard to steal the entire market. 

Originally posted by Moodah

Originally posted by ssstupido

 

You realy have no first hand experience with it, have you?

This technology is by far the most story enchancing tool I've experienced in all the MMOs I've played so far. I'm just hoping that SW:TOR is looking at this, because it can make such a huge implact into actual storyplaying instead of mere storytelling.

that's what single player games and books are for.

 

So wait ... you want to say that mindless grind is what MMOs should be and that all storyplaying should be reserved for books and single player games? ... who are you to decide that. Maybe it is not what is important to you, but it is sure as hell important to alot of people.

one of the biggest challenges of MMOs IS that the world never changes and whatever the players do it is the results are imaginary. For many players it is what gives the biggest feeling of futility. You want to be a part of a living online world, you want to immerse yourself into the world and yet, whatever you do, the results neevr show on the world arround you. That is one of the biggest if not THE biggest challenge that MMO world design faces for probably more than half a decade now.

What WOW made in WOTLK is again a step into the right dirrection. The feeling of DK starting area where as you progress towards the stronghold of the Scarlet Crusade, the world is changing as you progress and it gave me some of the best feelings of immersion I've ever had in any MMOs. I wasn't that glued to the screen in a MMO for years. 

 

you are putting words in my mouth that i never said. where did i speak about mindless grind? Mindless grind is what WoW offers, quest after quest, only to get a better gear, so that you can complete even more quests, to get even better gear, to complete more quests...

About me not wanting the world to change, you are completely wrong. i wish that MMO worlds would change, but on a global scale, not instanced for a single player. like the example someone put above me. on GW you didnt see any vendors until you completed a certain mission. THAT SUCKS!!!! what are we? living on parallel worlds inside already parallel servers? if that means inmersion to you... to me inmersion is when my acts affect the whole world i am playing, not only my watered down copy of it.

worlds changin is what horizons did (i think it was horizons, but it could be ryzom). Players had to work together to discover new territories that were later added to the game. Also, if i recall right, new races were added also when players discoverd them. and those changes were made for every player, not just a single hero.

world shaping is what SWG had with player made towns. Towns that were there for everybody, not just those that built the city. Or EVE Online conquerable regions and player made settlements.

What WoW has done is to close even more the already narrow gap between single player games like Oblivion and Online Worlds. To me, that is a big step on the wrong direction.

Sigh. CoX had a complete 3D world as far as movement is concerned years before WoW.  And this "phasing" is nothing new and exists in other MMOs.  LOTRO has been doing similar and I would say more developed things like this since its release.

I can't believe people fall for this Blizzard is innovative crap.   Especailly in regards to flying mounts.  Give me a break.  You can actually fight and fly in CoX.  Complete my foot.

Originally posted by grimal

I think you're hyping up this expansion way more than it really needs to be.  I tried it and was bored after an hour of play.

That is just you.

Me and everyone in my guild is hooked on WOTLK. It is *really* fun. Vehicle combat, phasing, new abilities .... the quests are even better and more fun than those in BC.