Originally posted by Caldicot

 

Originally posted by Psiho246

 

Originally posted by urbanmonkey

Well, actually it proved several things:

1. 2008 video cards are just not powerful enough to run an MMORPG using "realistic" graphics engine. At least not in MMO mode. I mean look at the 88800 Ultra. A card released 18 months ago and still nothing can beat it. I remember times where you bought the best card only for it to be crap a year later. Sure Crysis looks great at full settings but only 0.1% of PC gamers have a rig that can run that decently (read MAX settings in DX10). And Crytek only had to deal with the engine and AI. No quests, no balancing, no crowded areas. In short, do the decent thing and stick to cartoony graphics as in WAR, LOTRO and WOW.

2. The best part in an MMO is the fact that you feel like you are a character in a parallel world. A seamless world just waiting for you to discover it. So what is the last thing you need in it? Loading screens. That is your greatest enemy. And AoC is basically a loading screen experience spiced up with some gameplay. I kid you not. That is why with all its shitty graphics people still play WOW. You can take a horse and run from Booty Bay to the Eastern Plaguelands without ever seeing a single loading screen. Try that in AoC.

3. Releasing a game that requires a high end computer to run at medium settings goes against the whole point of an MMO (FYI the first M stands for Massive). Anyone with a computer older than 2 years will not be able to play this game at all. Sure some people run dual 8800 GTS in SLI mode, but even them don't run the game very smoothly. These problems can be reduced after release, but a crappy game engine is a crappy game engine.

If WAR can avoid the loading screen plague and have the game running on average machines, it will have a decent shot at success. If the gameplay and combat are good of course :)

Well, you are quite wrong.

 

1. 88800 Ultra doesn't exist yet and if you are referring to 8800 Ultra that is a overpriced card and you can buy HD3870X2 for half the cost of Ultra and also HD3870X2 performance is around 25% better then that of Ultra. Also there is 9800GX2 and both HD4XXX cards that are just about to be released and 99XX cards that are probably going to hit the market in a month or two.

2. WoW is not seamless and if you are talking about riding your horse around those mountains that you can't climb which COMPLETELY surround every area then ok . Also try riding your horse from Kalimdor to Eastern Kingdoms.

3. Again you should check req. for AoC as it does not require a High end PC. Ofcourse it does for High end graphics but on Low the game still looks amazing and is playable on almost every piece of crap PC there is.

 

You sir are a troll!

 

You know that water is separating Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms?

 

You sir are an abuser of smileys!

This is abusing a smiley ->    

I buy a new rig each 3rd year. And I dont think thats expensive for a worker like me.

AOC dont focus on people that are younger then 18 years and play games on mamas laptop.

So my conclusion is if you are younger then 18, play wow on your mamas laptop or a cardgame on your cellphone.

/LV

Todays and past 2 years computers can run the game. Period.

If your computer is older, then don't cry because they finally made a game for those who like to take advantage of the technology. You like cartoons, 3 feet tall ears and funny looking trolls, stay on WoW. But don't come shit on AoC because you can't afford it. The clan I am in will play this game. Only about 20% will change hardware. Not because they can't play the game but because they want to maximize performances. Only 1 didn't have requirements and it will cost him $150. lol 2010... I really hope we won't take WoW as example in 2 years. If you guys like WoW that much, why are you looking for another game? Unless you have more then 60 hours a week to put in gaming....

Anyways... TODAY'S COMPUTERS RUN THE GAME JUST FINE.

So typewriter users please stop that!!!!

Originally posted by LVLV

I buy a new rig each 3rd year. And I dont think thats expensive for a worker like me.

AOC dont focus on people that are younger then 18 years and play games on mamas laptop.

So my conclusion is if you are younger then 18, play wow on your mamas laptop or a cardgame on your cellphone.

/LV

AMEN

Originally posted by mmonkeyboy

 

Originally posted by elvenangel

No offense Matt but your problem is that you think yea lets build this awsome cool shit..and then no one can play it...except for a small portion of the PC population...that doesn't FLY with investors in a world where Money is needed to build said awsomeness.   A good developer lets its design team come up with awsome stuff thinking forward but when it comes time to solidfy the plans they have to take into account alot more things than being 'progressive' because beign 'progressive' for progresses sake...only ends up in major crash and burn. 

In the MMO market its all about numbers..massivesness..you can't expect the entire world to just suddenly update from a 6 series to a 8 or a 9 series just to play a game..it won't happen.  Trying to keep up with the speed in which hardware comes out is the dumbest way to run a business and game development is a business..a HUGE one.  Expecting everyone to update everytime something new is out is incredibly limiting your game..and limits the money that people are willing to invest.   If you can't prove that your software will be useable on a massive scale ... people won't give you money to survive.  

Game Development is not an experimental market where you can just push the button without any sort of Marketing or Business sense anymore.   Its also not an experimental market where you can' t think about the limitations & future probabilities..there are still parts of the world and even the US that don't even have broadband capability or where computers especially mid to high end ones are incredibly expensive.  

Plus what good does it do your game to look like a fantastic beautiful theme park if there's nothing to do other than stand around and look at it?    Balance is necessary and developers that can't balance between graphics, good game play, realistic user capabilities, realistic broadband capabilities in major market areas, and expected needed income from users ... will fall flat on their face.   

I'm not saying games like AoC  will suffer this...but I think the numbers they Need in order to make back the costs may severly hurt them in the end.   It definitly hurt Everquest 2 they had to struggle and redesign and constantly release expansions in order to make up the money they were not able to recieve from the hopeful expected user numbers.   EQ2 expected masses of people but only got a respectable amount instead due to the heavy hardware requirements.  Yea you could play it on mid to low in spec'd computers but it looked like ultra crap and who wants to pay 50 dollars for a game plus an additional 15 to play on the lowest crappiest settings...it didnt' work for me thats for sure and I loved Everquest (i had a mid end spec'd pc for that game).    I ended up loving the look and world of WoW enough to play it..but in the end their inability to make a balanced endgame killed it for me.

 

btw .. making a game with crazily awsome graphics is NOT in any shape or form some awsome original idea or even a creative Move at all.  In Games ... Original Ideas & Creative game play innovations are from games like Spore...or Portal.   THOSE are true innovations in the market for games.   Graphics are just the shiny extras that SHOULD be reigned in adn heavily controlled so that games look good but dont' BOG down & destroy what a game is...A Game.

 

Yeah, I'll second all that, and add a little more. (Okay, maybe a lot more.)

Without getting too pedantic about it, all engineering/software problems have to fall within given constraints.  In some cases, you don't know ahead of time what all the constraints are.  In the case of a PC-based game, you have no idea what hardware your users will have, not only when you start your project, but more importantly when it finishes.  You are basically trying to hit a (sometimes quickly) moving target.

So what do you do?  You do what engineers always do, you plan conservatively.  You assume from the start that users will have the lowest-common-denominator PC with some reasonably average network speed, and you design towards that.  If you have time, you add bells and whistles for the high-end customers.  But only if you have time.

AoC made their assumptions years ago.  Unfortunately for them, they guessed wrong.  They assumed people would have hardware that it turns out they don't actually have.  This is an easy mistake to make, because during the early adoption years of PCs, users really were willing to update their rigs at least once a year.

However, as the PC market has reached saturation point, users now have systems that are "fast enough" for 95% of their needs (which at this point is basically accessing the Internet.)  Except for notable exceptions, most people are totally unwilling to upgrade their entire system for one game.  Not all people, but most people.  And as stated by others, the MMO market is all about "most" people.  These games thrive or fail based on sheer volume of subscriptions.

But Funcom made a second, and more unforgivable, mistake.  They ignored the feedback they were getting from their testers, and did not make adjustments accordingly.  Software is unique in that it can be morphed relatively quickly to fix problems that are discovered much later.  Funcom should've recognized that their new engine was not viable with current PC technology, and either redesigned it, or scrapped it altogether.

In the behind-the-scenes interviews with Blizzard developers, they talked about their first iteration of a 3D engine for WoW.  It had realistic graphics and everything.  And ran like a sloth.  So they completely scrapped it for the simpler engine you see today.  They admitted their mistake early, and solved the engineering problem.  Funcom did not. 

Which leaves them two options.  Release now, and accept a smaller fan-base.  Or wait til the year 2010 to release, when (maybe) everyone will have the hardware necessary to run this game.

 

Playing the AoC OB has been nice, and it is definately very pretty, runs decently on my machine (Which is a beast by today's standards), and it seems like things won't be as bad as I once thought they would be...

I will have to see how the game plays on current WoW machines, and I think that will prevent the game from reaching huge numbers. <- Which is by no means a bad thing, your population might be smaller, but if it is enough to keep a game going, have a Good community, and provide a good experience... I will call it a success.

Provided they balance their servers right, they can still provide the "Huge PvP experience" that I keep hearing about and make the world seem populated. 

Quoting your posts for others to read, adding my two cents, and I wanted to say: Good Posts!

Originally posted by Slater1979

Todays and past 2 years computers can run the game. Period.

If your computer is older, then don't cry because they finally made a game for those who like to take advantage of the technology. You like cartoons, 3 feet tall ears and funny looking trolls, stay on WoW. But don't come shit on AoC because you can't afford it. The clan I am in will play this game. Only about 20% will change hardware. Not because they can't play the game but because they want to maximize performances. Only 1 didn't have requirements and it will cost him $150. lol 2010... I really hope we won't take WoW as example in 2 years. If you guys like WoW that much, why are you looking for another game? Unless you have more then 60 hours a week to put in gaming....

Anyways... TODAY'S COMPUTERS RUN THE GAME JUST FINE.

So typewriter users please stop that!!!!

If WoW is a cartoon, then AoC is a comic book.  I leave it as an exercise for the reader to understand the difference.

Don't get me wrong, comics are totally rad.  But I don't want to play in one, one frame at a time.

However. When it comes to creating new content to MMO games. Blizzard releases new content very slowly, comparing how much they would able to effort. Even their expansions show it.

However if MMO game does not enough well. When people whine in that case that developers are not pushing new content enough fast and are lazy. Are those in games where content developing team is very small because it would otherwise cost too much to keep game up. In that case game has some factors what not encourage it make much more popular like it deserves. Like people who think their machine must be able to max game like in screenshot and not know how to use options and that why not buy game or leave it after first month.

Originally posted by urbanmonkey

Well, actually it proved several things:

 

If WAR can avoid the loading screen plague and have the game running on average machines, it will have a decent shot at success. If the gameplay and combat are good of course :)

That people can play the same game and have totally different experiences.

As to your last statement... I can't wait until they have their "open" beta with the NDA lift...  Oh and Yes I can say that I am in that closed beta and have been for some time...

Why are people surprised by AoC's requirements?   They make perfect sense if you look at the game and what Funcom is doing with it.

AoC is a guild-centric game.  It always has been, even back when Funcom first described thier game design.   They may have made concessions toward casual players but the real content is guild-vs-guild keep conflict and raids (which need guilds).

Guilds tend to be made up of more dedicated players.   More dedicated players tend to have higher end systems.  This is completely consistent with Funcom's game design and target market.    

It's also one of the reasons I won't be playing AoC, but that's not to say the game won't find an audience.   I'm just leery of developers who seem to be clinging to so much their graphics.    It reminds me too much of developers who have spouted other catch-phrases like working 'realistic' ecosystems or single massive servers.  Perhaps I'm wrong about Funcom, we'll see by the end of the month.   

Originally posted by Vallador

I start having feeling that all this crying about poor performance in AoC OB is caused by disappointment over one’s own PC. It is easier to blame the game than to admit, that one’s own rig is too weak to run it with desired level of details. Majority of people tries to run it on recommended spec, without paying attention to recommended resolution listed next to it.

I have stability issues with the client, I even had to reinstall it already because I couldn’t pass the loading screen, but in-game performance never caused me any trouble: I have steady 40 fps almost all the time playing 1900x1200 No AA 4 AF bloom off.

How's Vanguard doing now?

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by Gishgeron

 

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

And no, this has nothing whatsoever to do with the size of my 3P33N (my own system is well due for an upgrade) and everything to do with taking pleasure in seeing something new and beautiful rather than wallowing in the same ol' same ol'.

 

 

  I would much rather the game play be moved forward BEFORE the graphics.  The truth here is, all you are getting is a reskin of 'the same ol same ol' instead of something new and beautiful.  IT sounds to me like you would find more entertainment from the pure art industry.  That industry is founded around 'new' and 'pretty'.  Gaming markets are based around