Servers are merging into one on July 7... then we'll be bitching that we're getting spawn ksed =)

No jump killed GW for me, no swimming killed Aion.

Its really this simple.  MOB is on that 4 inch tall ledge pounding me with range and I have to run around to the ramp to get to it, usually after fighting through his buddies.  Not fun.  Or the world is perfectly flat with no terrain gating, equally unfun.

That said even if there was jumping I haven't seen anything in FF XIV that really looks interesting compared to existing MMOs let alone those coming down the pipe.

I created a trial account a few nights ago to have another look see since I left when Halas was released.  Its a pig for sure.  But playing around I found the massive hit is shaders.  On Extreme Quality but no shadows the numbers double even with shader distance at 200.  Drop shaders to -1 and numbers rise again but where I could learn to live without shadows, but hurts big time to lose environment shadows, no shaders makes everything flat and I couldn't live with it.

But no shadows, on my rig I was at a pretty steady 60fps, sync on.  The joke is that I used to think flora was a massive pig but it was actually the shadows for the flora.  So GF is not a slideshow with flora now.

That said its still a pig for what I get look wise on my rig.  VG, AoC and others look better and perform better... visually.

KotOR 2 and NWN 2 were not made by Bioware.

DX10 engine is not optimized.  Use DX9, on high and call it a day.  Your AoC numbers should smash EQ2, not LotRO though.

In order of importance...

Big World

Instances

Loading Screens

But its kind of a silly question.  I want a large game world, but it better be accessible and varied.  I want instances but mostly for where it matters.  An instance of a bar... not cool.  An instance of a zone or dungeon giddy up.  And load screens, well I prefer one to a blank screen and they're a great place to throw up your concept art.

I'm with my no compete brother.  PvP bad in the open, sharing spawns bad, gear gating to the point that the gate becomes the goal bad.

You don't but the price at retail is dirt.

Missing the reasons MMOs fail...

Buggy launches

Poor feel from  UI

Whether the game is fantasy, sci-fi, post apo doesn't matter if its buggy and unresponsive.

I think I'd fall asleep playing.  I'd have to rewatch it to be sure but it looked like two mobs running through their attacks almost as if the other wasn't there.  Very mechanical and still for the times.  It is FF though so, some slow combat and stand around could pass as being true to the franchise.

Best estimate based on server maximums... AoC 80K subs, LotRO 220K.  LotRO has been server merge shy so pure guess I'd put that number closer to 110K.

As a new old returning player I see a lot of crying for this and that and reasons given mostly by people not playing VG as to why they should not play VG.  I'll be plain... VG needs to stop any huge development and continue to do focused bug bash updates.  Beyond anything else its the bugs and general feel of the UI that sends people packing not that there is a limited end game.  Because frankly end game doesn't factor into leaving while still on the trial isle ;)  And VG isn't a licensed IP so it won't shutdown like Matrix did.  We're very soon to be on one server, which further reduces overhead so keeping the game in supported but not advanced status is cheap.

Not true and don't need fancy keyboard to see it.  Open task manager, performance tab and go play the game.  On exit you'll see one core pegged at 100%  and another at 40% with the others doing windows tasks.  Because of this my friend with the i7 gives BOINC the other 4 threads with no performance drop.  Keep in mind each core with hyperthreading shows as two but its logical so if you see 4 active its still just across two cores.

Mentoring has made leveling up much better since veterans are more than happy to jummp down to help you finish hunter's league, bounty, urt, swamp, shadowhound...

Nah no SOE hate, EQ2 is a good game but built on a terrible engine and with a very gear gated endgame.  T2 w/ Myth is pretty standard for entry raids.  Tanks better have T3/4.  Which would be fine if people were interested in running now old content to gear new people but we don't because if you can clear it the SF instance gear is retarded good for dps.

Pop is good, will be better after the merge.  Merge also means... no PvP server.  Not sure about the time line but a few end game raids were added as well as group content.  Also the whole hero levels of 51-55.

Originally posted by Mardy

Not sure what you're talking about, perhaps you aren't familiar with how there had been Vanguard discussion panels at SOE fan faire all the years before.  This is the first time they're dropping Vanguard.  And at the same time, citing the lack of playerbase interest, Planetside will have discussion panels even though they have even less fan faire signups.

 Yeah, not really sure where you're going with your comment, but things aren't going well for Vanguard.

More that I'm not an alarmist.  The other MMOs under SOE aren't getting a panel either.  Are you suggesting they are tanking the rest of them too?  The point of a media event is to fill rooms and pump the hype machine on your terms.  PlanetSide has competition now in its MMO space and SOE probably wants to turn the hype machine on to snag players who left GA.

No high level character in their right mind would buy something off broker to up TM.  You chrono and just fly through old content without breaking a sweat.  A lot more fun than standing around waiting for the next raid and you can easily fill your bags in 30m to an hour.  Don't confuse for sale, with selling.  Yes adepts sell but not for great money.  I sold mine for what the vendor would pay plus 1-10g depending on level.  So even level 90 adepts weren't lining my pockets.  Certainly not enough to put a dent into the 24P the jewelers want for MC gear and the 12P kab clusters cost.

EQ2 is not in any way GPU limited.  When I has an nVidia 8800gts it sat at about 50% usage as seen by the monitor tools.  Now with an ATi 4890 I sit around 30% usage at 1920x1200 on high quality.  EQ2 is all about CPU single thread performance and now to some degree two thread performance.

To set the record straight, EQ2 was launched in 2004, developed long since before that and uses the same engine as SWG.  The idea was to add DX9 features missing from EQ and make the zones, characters and so on look good now and later to avoid another engine update like EQ had.  At the time GPU power was err not great and not really on an easy to predict roadmap.  CPUs on the other hand were doing one thing... competing on GHz.  The hope was for P4@5GHz a few years out... didn't happen CPUs went multi core and improved instruction sets with a... drop in GHz.  We are pretty much just now getting back to where we were in 04 as far as straight brute force x86 instruction set computing.  

Lesson learned... never ever release for tomorrow if you aren't a major player in what tomorrow brings ;)  VG though also silly high requirements at time of launch was built with the Unreal 2.5 engine so it was a safe bet it would scale to whatever direction PCs went.  Which is why in EQ2 I get ~40fps where in VG I get ~70fps and frankly preferences aside VG is technically more challenging in poly/texture but built on a better engine so... its better.  Oh and armour sets looks great =P

Thats a little excessive but then estimates are just that.  Also the streaming client you could use.

Our alliance's top tank is a female fae berserker decked in pink appearance gear.  Race means nothing for anything other than quality of life options.  Fae/Ari get slow fall and a bunch of fun skills so many roll them.  Iksar get fall damage redux, under water breathing so I go for that.  Rat looks like pimps so... you get the point.  Whether you have 1400 str or 1433 don't mean squat.