Well UI is a complete rip off of EVE. Some icons are exact copy and some are just re-colored pictures. They haven't even bothered with modifying the stolen art.

I'm guessing they are heading for "EVE with Planets and stuff" kind of game.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by Nickless_man

*Snip*

 

Cached Ram for Superfetch =! Used Ram.

Vista quickly deletes any cache files over RAM if an application tries to tries to write into the memory. Essentially, it only uses some 20-30 MB for the service itself, then uses the idle RAM to cache the most used files into the memory. Remember, the key here is "CACHED RAM doesn't mean USED RAM". Repeat that few dozen times.

Does it improve performance? Perhaps, it depends on how you use your system. You'll only see start up hic ups if you have slow Hard-Disk, thats all. On a gaming system it wouldn't really matter.

 

Cached RAM = Used RAM, but windows frees it when you start a program that needs it.

I guess I am a minimalist, and get rid of the things that I don't use or that do not benefit me.

 

It obviously depends on the matter of preference, but, to be quite honest, Idle RAM really means wasted RAM. I see no reason to disable superfetch other than for the sake of disabling it. RAM is cheap, almost everyone have over 2GB RAM these days.

If anything kills WoW in the future, it will either be;

A) SWTOR

B) Next Blizzard MMO

c) WoW 2

I really don't see it happening anytime soon though.

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by Eben

Originally posted by CyberWiz

Originally posted by Eben

Because in a world where people have desktop PCs with 8 gigs of ram (like the one I'm posting this on), people still cling to the idea that 20-30 megs of ram in use by the OS for some service they don't fully understand is 'wasted resources'.

IE, they're clueless. 

 

Superfetch in Vista took away all your RAM for caching purposes. Often there was more than 2GB of RAM that was used as cache from a total of 4GB RAM. Superfetch seems to be improved in Windows 7, but still I don't see a good reason to use it when playing games.

I think you are clueless about the workings of superfetch.

 

 

Idle ram is wasted ram.  I think you are the one that is clueless as to the workings of superfetch. 

 

So instead of idle RAM you cache it with things you don't need? You claimed that superfetch only used 20-30 megs of RAM, that is the reason I called you clueless ( and because you essentially called me clueless ).

I don't need things to be cached if I only run a game on my computer. Besides that I really did not see my performance improve with superfetch, rather the opposite, and that is all what matters to me, real life performance.

 

Cached Ram for Superfetch =! Used Ram.

Vista quickly deletes any cache files over RAM if an application tries to tries to write into the memory. Essentially, it only uses some 20-30 MB for the service itself, then uses the idle RAM to cache the most used files into the memory. Remember, the key here is "CACHED RAM doesn't mean USED RAM". Repeat that few dozen times.

Does it improve performance? Perhaps, it depends on how you use your system. You'll only see start up hic ups if you have slow Hard-Disk, thats all. On a gaming system it wouldn't really matter.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by Nickless_man

First of all, with the current improvements on GPU on EQ2 engine, you do get improved performance with a GPU upgrade.

Second of all, World of warcraft on pre-wotlk was almost entirely CPU dependant, there is no need to discuss about this as this is a fact.

 

Now, I didn't expected any of you to understand MMO development cycle, post release support and acceptable risks. When you are making an MMO, you really need to think ahead and somewhat predict what future hardware might do.

I said this million times and will say again, the mistake SOE made was never touching the engine ever again. They only very recently realized their mistake and implemented experimental multithread and GPU support.

On todays market, its a death warrant not to support all kinds of hardware since post-wow people become too touchy about stability and speed. Back then, it was a whole different story.

 

1) 5 years later and EQ2 uses SOME portion of a GPU upgrade.  The game is still primarily focused on the CPU of the machine. 

2) I've never heard anything like this. Care to share your source?

 

SOEs first mistake was rushing EQ2 to market before it was ready.  That set the game off to a horrible start and created cascading problems.

The second mistake was pushing all the graphics onto the cpu to capture the low end market.  Combined with trying to create graphics that were so far ahead of current technology it would kill any machine without the best of video cards.  Please read that again before talking about looking how hard it is to predict the future.  Soe wanted the game to run well on low end machines, but somehow have the graphics that were years ahead of their time.  It is complete idiocy to design a high end graphics game and then code the engine to ignore the resources a computer offers (The GPU). 

Third, the eq2 engine actually caused problems for people with the biggest systems of the time (8800).  The choice to push graphics onto the cpu alienated the market that could actually benefit from their advanced graphics. 

Fourth, they gambled the future of the game on a technology that did not exist.  Even if soe did not have the forsight to see multicore coming, they had NO exit strategy if anything went wrong.  Their entire plan was "this will work, because we have no other plan".  That in itself shows that their deicision was not a smart choice.

 

 

Now through all of this I fail to see where the "smart" comes in.  It looks like management followed a recipe for failure, made poor choices, did not resolve those issues, had no contingency plan and the results are clear.  Imagine just for one second that Crysis was their with an engine to ignore GPUs and forced all the graphics onto CPUs with the hopes that someday 16 or 32  core cpus would bring the game to an acceptable level of play. 

 

I just don't see how anyone can say it was a smart choice and then whimsicly dismiss the results as "things just didn't work out like soe thought they would".  That is the regurgitated excuse some developer gave as to why the engine could not be fixed years after it was clear they could not resolve the issue. 

 

Your last line somewhat confuses me.  I understand that prior to the wow era, most mmos released in bad shape and managed to get subs, but I don't think that was smart business either.  To actively plan to release poor performance and expect people to pay for it doesn't make a sound strategy.  Perhaps that is why so few people (in comparison) joined the genre back then, because developers ran around with the mentality they could push any crap out and people will pay for the final stages of development post release.

Once again, you are ignoring what I said. EQ2 was released on a highly competitive year for MMO's. SWG, FFXI and EQ1 already had strong player-base in those days. Ultimately, WoW and EQ2 was released on the same month. It was pretty obvious 2 were going to be the major competitors in the market. Then, WoW just blew away EQ2 and became the giant monster it is today by having a better marketing campaign and a better development team, but I digress, this is not the issue.

Concentrating on CPU support enabled EQ2 to work on much wider variety hardware and bought SOE much needed time against their competitor, they weren't able to use that time but that was an entirely different story. Once game started to show the signs that its getting behind, SOE started spending less and less on EQ2.

Crysis example doesn't apply since its not an MMORPG, it doesn't have to be designed for years to come. It has been meant as Single-Player benchmark enthusiast game since the development started.

Problems with biggest systems of the time (8800 as you call it) happened 2 years after the release, by that time I'm assuming SOE didn't allowed engine modifications. Which is, as I've said million times earlier, was stupid choice. As I said;

Was it a smart choice to make the game CPU dependent at the start? Yes

Was it a smart choice not to support and expand it after launch? Hell no.

On the WoW being CPU dependent... Well, this is common knowledge. Just google it and you'll have tons of "source" about it.

Reason why people hate Paladins?

(link version)

Part 1: www.thenoobcomic.com/headquarters/comics/00054.jpg

Part 2: http://www.thenoobcomic.com/headquarters/comics/00055.jpg

I don't think it is that simple. You can't really think about Large Scale PvE without a Tank because most games are based on the holy trinity. You have to design the game and classes from upside down to be able to take advantage of a "tankless" environment. Otherwise, with current classic system in place, all you'll get is chaos.

I'd say for PvE, its a pretty cool system, it just "works" and its fun for most people.

Personally, this might be the final nail in the coffin for ND if they fail this time. Realistically speaking, JGE has very high chance of failure with ND's track record and constant delays on Beta and release date.

That said, I do hope this game delivers simply because there is no alternative for Space MMO's right now. Competition will do good for both EVE, JGE and other games. EVE has been the supreme ruler of Space MMO's for a while now, I love the game, but with prolonged lack of competition from other space MMO's, quality might suffer.

First of all, with the current improvements on GPU on EQ2 engine, you do get improved performance with a GPU upgrade.

Second of all, World of warcraft on pre-wotlk was almost entirely CPU dependant, there is no need to discuss about this as this is a fact.

Now, I didn't expected any of you to understand MMO development cycle, post release support and acceptable risks. When you are making an MMO, you really need to think ahead and somewhat predict what future hardware might do.

I said this million times and will say again, the mistake SOE made was never touching the engine ever again. They only very recently realized their mistake and implemented experimental multithread and GPU support.

On todays market, its a death warrant not to support all kinds of hardware since post-wow people become too touchy about stability and speed. Back then, it was a whole different story.

My background with the game;

I've been playing it since CBT4. Participated in OBT as well as Head Start. Switched 4 servers after making 2 +30 characters because of queues (I play on EU servers), now that its settled, I created another character on my first server (Gorgos) and I'm currently a L38 Chanter. My other characters are L32 Gladiator on Telemachus, L34 Sorcerer on Kalil. I had tons of other characters on betas but I cant be bothered with listing them all. Suffice it to say, I know the game well on the parts I played, that is, level 30's on each side.

With that out of the picture, I must say I am currently undecided whether or not to continue. I have a great "legion" that I group and chat all the time. There's just something about the game I can't put my finger on. Anyways, lets start with most common complaints. In no particular order:

Gold Spam: This was an ongoing issue until they implemented a simple chat filter. More or less have been largely dealt with after that. Response time was really slow from NCWest about this issue though.

Bots: This is way worse then what we had before blanket bans. Basically, When you enter a L30+ zone, you'll see more bots than you'll see mobs. You will be KS'ed by 3 higher level bots than you, should you try to kill something. They are everywhere and they're not even bothered with hiding themselves. They do it in front of the castle gate, in front of a popular quest hub, on main roads, main grinding spots (will get to that later), they're everywhere. Its virtually impossible to get to a place that doesn't have bots, other than the Abyss.

Worst part is, most of them are now L40+ and have been running non-stop for the better part of the last 2 weeks. So far we there is no concrete evidence that NCsoft is doing anything to prevent them.

Grind: Early levels are a breeze until you hit L17 mark where you get stuck with group quests. After you do every single quest (solo or group doesn't matter, I've done both), you end up at L19, depending on how much crafting and collecting you've done, you might possibly get another half level out of it. After that, you have to do some minor grinding when you run out of quest at that level until 22-23. There's nothing major before that.

When you reach L23 though, you will be out of quests unless you spent great deal of time killing mobs to get rare quests and/or materials. There is simply no other way than straight grinding to reach L25. I've done this many times in beta's and after release. This is simply the fact.

On L25 things starts to pick up and you will get shit loads of quests in no time. These quests will support you until L28-29 again depending on your blood thirst. L30's are mix of major grinds and little quests. I say little because when you reach this far, only quests that are worth doing are campaign quests. Regular quests give laughable amount of XP and you will run out of quests even if you do them all. Also, competing every single quest you can find is not a very smart thing to do as it might triple the amount of time needed for you to level. This is no exaggeration.

I can only comment on L40+ from other guild members experience. From what I can tell, its pretty nasty. Game desperately needs a quest xp booster after L40. You need 40 million xp to level at mid-late 40's and some quests still gives 70k to 100k XP (non repeatable).

Anyone who says there is no grind until L35+ or even L40 either haven't played the game, or they have very different definition of grinding and/or too trigger happy.

Group PvE: First group content starts at L16-17 and ends at L19-20. On both sides its on open world. After this, next group content comes at L25, at that level, you will also get the first instance, which lasts until L28. Another one opens at L30 and lasts until L34-35. They are quite short and straight forward. They can drop pretty nice loot but chances are you won't even see one if you don't enter the same instance 5+ times. Game uses a random loot system, most of the time you will leave the instance with empty hands.

Pre-40 grouping results in less XP points than solo grinding. It can be even slower than pure questing if you encounter a below average group. It will only be faster than solo grinding if you steamroll anything you see non stop with a 5-man group instead of 6. If you are a fast killing class though, even that will result in less overall xp gain per hour.

Grouping so far, doesn't have any advantages as far as leveling goes. On the contrary, it proves to be a liability for the most of time. I'm told it gets better after L40 but I can't speak from personal experience.

Lag and Queues: Network lag is truly non-existent. I think I only saw 1 server crash, other than that, NCSoft has a spotless record on server stability. I'm happy to say Queues are also non-existent. Servers also have quite balanced population.

Client Stability: This is a MAJOR issue right now. For most players Fortress battles are unplayable due to frequent crashes. Even walking around quest hubs or the main cities can get you crashed within minutes, if not seconds. More powerful systems are more prone to have this problem while low and mid range systems stays largely unaffected.

Situation is largely caused by a memory leak, causing the client trying to use more than 2GB RAM, because of the 32-bit nature of the application, client instantly crashes after it reaches exactly 2GB of RAM usage (this doesn't show on a plain task manager, use process explorer for accurate memory usage).

So far only possible prevention method is to disabling player model from rendering. Even this doesn't help and you will crash after spending certain amount of time in a place that has high player population. Big memory adressing and reducing graphic settings have minimal effect. So far NCsoft has acknowledged the issue, but have stated the problem might be deep in the CryEngine core and it will take some time fix this issue.

I don't know if they'll ever fix this issue though as customer support has been.. lets say questionable thus far.

Customer Support: There are no 24/7 petition support. Support is very limited and its almost always consists of copy paste responses. I haven't seen ANY in-game GM's for support or otherwise. On release there were some GM chat on servers for gold spammers, but it was more of a PR stunt rather than actually working on it. So far I've yet to see or hear anyone that has seen a GM on EU servers.

Official forums are a mess, It doesn't work most of the time, when it works, there is a good chance that your post will be deleted if you have slight tone against Aion and NCsoft. They are heavily moderated but ironically, have no developer presence.

PVP and class balance: Despite what everyone says, classes are pretty evenly balanced right now. This is no solo PvP game so you should consider that while thinking about balance. Some classes have problems but there is already a patch in works to address some of these issues.

I'll be brutally honest here though, so far PvP is all about zerging. Plain and simple fact. This game supports group PvP than anything else. Considering the terrain and the world PvP objectives, it is safe to say it will stay a zergfest for a long time. Only Dredgion, the Balaur Battleship instance supports small scale PvPvE (meaning, there are NPCs on the PvP instance), but that has its own issues.

PvP other than zerging is strictly consists of high level players ganking low levels via rifts or in Abyss.

Conquering fortresses yields medals which you can use for getting more abyss gear. Every fort you take also has a short PvE instance. Right now defending fortresses gives you a nothing. So we might see some Fortress ping-pong games where each side conquers a fortress and abandons it so it can get conquered by other side tomorrow, so they can re-conquer it the day after for medals. Basically, no real point.

PvP items are very well balanced but it is a huge grind to get them no matter where you look. I'd say at least 3 times worse than leveling to L50.

Lore and Atmosphere: NCsoft have actually done a really good job on this department. Quests are very well written and are a joy to read most of the time. There are lots of small details and references. Short stories on the game books are actually very good. Cinematics, while overused and useless on small ones, feel truly epic on main story parts. As far as I'm concerned, they have managed to establish the Lore in to the world really well.

Endgame: Can't really comment on this, but if this is supposed to be a PvPvE game, then it is safe to assume Fortresses and Dredgion are the main parts of the endgame.

Combat, gameplay and all other crap and a final take on the game as a whole: Aion is a pretty standard MMORPG. It doesn't take any risks (other than grinding and money sinks). Its your standard MMO that has a PvP focus with a wings fetish. Nothing more to say about it really.

I tried to be as objective as possible, but, this is after all, the sum of my experience with the game itself, so it is inherently subjective. Take it for what it is, and decide for yourself.

Originally posted by Daffid011

Originally posted by fozzie22 

QFT!!

 

In defense of SOE at the time they DID make the right call becuase if you recall when they set about making the game we where at the height of the gigahertz wars i think if we had a crystal ball back then no one could really see the c-change that came about a couple of years later..i mean back in what? 2002 who would have thought we'd have still been using 2 gig processors as the standard (ok with multiple cores),i think most of us would have assumed we'd be well into double figures gigahertz wise by now.

 

They flipped the coin and it came down the wrong side for them one of those things i suppose as for DX 11 cant see it making a jot of difference to the game becuase as you say the games will have to be coded for it from the ground up.

 

I don't think they made the right call at all.   The is a very good reason PCs were designed to use video cards and designing a game to ignore that resource is rather stupid.  Every other game on the market was going to benefit from CPU & GPU and I fail to see how ignoring that can be called the right decision.  

Early on the EQ2 devs said they used the processor to run the graphics so that people with low end video cards could play the game on low settings.  That is sort of a cheap shortcut to get the low end market. 

Instead of designing a graphic mode to compensate people with low end video cards soe ignored the basic designs of PCs and hedged the games performance on future technology. 

Did this design choice make the game run well at release?  No.

Did this design choice make the game run well long term?  No.

I just don't see anything that makes this look like a good decision.  Honestly it looks rather stupid to bet the health of an mmo on future technology resolving current issues. 

 

Thing is, EQ2 didn't played well on release because it had way too good graphics for its time. Even with GPU support, you wouldn't be able to max and play the game with anything higher than 5 FPS. Even today, EQ2 has better graphics than most new MMO's (exception is Conan).

Building a CPU based game isn't ignoring the basic PC design, its actually a smart choice, even World of Warcraft is CPU based and only recently started utilizing GPU with its new shadows. Its common knowledge that people have more powerful CPU than their GPU.

Here's the catch. No one without inside information would have predicted the turn CPU's was going to make at the end of the Gigahertz war. Even Valve built their Source Engine around pure single-processor power. Only recently they started supporting Dual-Core processors.

So where SOE and EQ2 failed? They failed at supporting it. EQ1 had so many engine changes, they built the EQ2 engine so that they would do as little modifications as possible, if at all. This resulted in NO engine modification whatsoever. Game continued to perform poorly because of the sudden standardization of multi-core processors. They should have started multithread and GPU support few years after launch.

Still, this is trivial to the real issues EQ2 had, I could write a book on what SOE should have or shouldn't have done, but thats for another time. In short:

Was it a smart choice to make the game CPU dependent at the start? Yes

Was it a smart choice not to support and expand it after? Hell no.

Isn't JRPG's are all about some girl looking dude teaming up with a rich chick, a chick from his home village and though guy, then going on about killing the god (or an evil corporation or whatever) itself while having crappy turn based battles in the middle? I mean, yeah of course there are some differences, but it basically comes down to this level if you try hard enough. Which is exactly what some posters are saying about western RPGs.

If you do answer this post with "there is more to it than that you silly little man" cliché, well, there is more than that to western RPG's as well, its just a matter of perspective.

Personally, I liked Black Isle games better, I also liked KotOR II more than the first. Still, I can't think of any Bioware game that I didn't liked loved. If its half as good as Neverwinter Nights 2 (surprise, another Black Isle Obsidian game), I'll be happy.

There is already a Vampire MMO in works, being developed by CCP/Whitewolf. World of Darkness is infinitely better than the T-word-book-movie-wannabe-vampires.

Seriously, here's the math.

(T-Vampire-movie) x Infinity = World of Darkness

This is why independent developers rocks. In your face Activision/EA

On patch days you will need to rely on cryptic servers still. Usually on big patches Steam gets the new build few days or a week or two later. They dont even update for small patches. At least thats what happened with EvE and Conan. Should be similar.

Open or not, a beta is still a beta. Even though it looks like a trial, it isn't. Open Beta's are really needed for mass testing. It's generally a better idea to have (even if it means very little) experienced people to test it. If you are paying for a gaming web site, then you probably do have the experience and the enthusiasm.

In any case, Open Beta doesn't mean free trial. The word "Open" does not grant anyone and their dog access the game.

It's a P2P game. If it was F2P, even I would agree with your post.

Originally posted by Spiider

CCP sucks but this video is true. EVE just as described.

There there.... Show me on the doll where the suicide gankers touched you

Hey kilkil. Awesome thread. Very informative.

I got some questions that are pretty common i think, but i never saw it got answered from the PvP perspective. 3 Questions.

1. Which classes are the least played classes in PvP and why? (only PvP)
2. Which classes will be the least played classes after 1.5 patch and why? (again, only PvP)
3. Since EU/NA will launch with 1.5, what do you, as an experienced pvper and an mmo player, think which classes might be the least played classes in EU/NA release and why? (still for PvP only)

I understand 2-3 are guesstimates, but as a DaoC and Aion player I think your estimates will be close to the real thing.

Reason I'm asking is, I don't like playing FOTM classes, for me, it sucks the fun and the variety of the game, so I want to choose a class from least played classes (except rangers, god, I hate rangers).

No point in debating, both are still in Beta.

On a serious note, I think Aion wins hands down. AoC had a nice concept, but its over. Unless Funcom makes the best comeback ever of the entire universe that is.

Originally posted by Tenken29

Originally posted by Nickless_man

Reality is this; WoW players solo because the game pretty much forces them to. Its not fun to do a rare drop quest with 4 other guys, its not fun to compete with those same guys because of a gathering quest. There are of course, new techniques such as spawning gathering nodes to individual players so only they can collect/see those nodes, in essence, you do quests faster with other people on your group, but you're essencially playing a single player game while doing it.

 

I agree with this, but I wouldn't say you level faster just because you quest faster in a group. These days I just see little benefit in grouping while leveling. Even with a group of friends going to play Aion, unless we are on the exact same quest chain we'll probably all be soloing to cap, it's kind of sad but it seems that's how mmos point you these days.

It was nice in older mmos where even a few levels inbetween did not matter if you were at a camp spot. These days even if you do group someone they must be on the same steps as you, other wise it is pointless.

Actually, I didn't said you level faster when you're in a group, I said, grouping slows you down, so they've implemented some changes so you can literally solo your way around while grouping.

I agree, you have to be at the same point at the same quest chain to even think about grouping. Slows you down even more if you've already competed few more quests than your friends.