There is nothing wrong with pushing technical boundaries.  That is how most lessons are learned.  However, this is far from a doom and gloom situation.  The one thing I've noticed in OB is that performance has been getting better(even without patches) and the game runs relatively smoothly.  And lets be honest here, FunCom knew what the consequences of their choices were in deciding to push the technical specs.

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by jzuska

The masses will not play a game that their shitty machine will not run on. The masses will not buy hardware to play a game. My mom and dad play wow because it runs on their work laptops.

Loading screens SUCK!!! DO NOT WANT

Why does the world split you up into instanced versions of itself? Stupid Funcom.

 

AOC fails. Just fails. It's a horrible horrible game.

Time and again we hear this whole "Don't make the graphics TOO good or the masses won't be able to play it on their mom's laptop" shit. I wonder why this only seems to be an issue in the MMO community... gamers of every other genre welcome and expect the graphics in games to improve as technology advances.

Everywhere else it's a given that, as time passes, software will become more demanding (and of course more visually stunning) to make the most of new hardware available. If anything I'd have thought this should be more rather than less so in an MMO, since it has to do everything other games do but with thousands of players in the same space at the same time. Understandably graphic effects have to take a hit to account for this, but surely logic would dictate that they would continue to progress and improve at much the same pace as the rest of the gaming world (albeit a notch or two behind).

So why are all the ranting Luddites crawling out of their holes waving their angry billboards when Conan tries to do just this? MMO's should be under more pressure than other game types to deliver the highest quality graphics possible, since these are games the devs are hoping will still have people playing them 2, 3 or more years from now... unlike other releases, which have a play life measured in weeks or possibly months. And while it's understandable that people might be bitter that they can't afford to spend the kind of money needed to stay on the bleeding edge of gaming, unfortunately that's the nature of free market economics: spend or get left behind. It's the same with everything from clothes to cars, from mobile phones to BluRay movies... why expect any different from MMO's?

Because it's the intention of an MMO to be a vast seamless virtual world. Not a console "You have just entered world 1-3" game. The whole world is supposed to be one world, and have a one world feel. Gameplay is just as important as graphics. If you just make the game pretty, but unplayable, it becomes Vanguard. Bad press in the MMO world spreads at the speed of light. I have canceled my AOC Preorder.

Originally posted by jzuska

Because it's the intention of an MMO to be a vast seamless virtual world. Not a console "You have just entered world 1-3" game. The whole world is supposed to be one world, and have a one world feel. Gameplay is just as important as graphics. If you just make the game pretty, but unplayable, it becomes Vanguard. Bad press in the MMO world spreads at the speed of light. I have canceled my AOC Preorder.

 

That's just one (your) perspective. Obviously the directors at Funcom have decided that low-end low-poly graphics and flat, artificial worlds are more immersion-breaking than loading screens, and since current technology doesn't allow for both solutions they've opted for the latter. To say that this approach is "wrong" is as pointless and ignorant as saying that people who prefer art over science are wrong.

This game is far from unplayable (unless you're running a three-year-old laptop), even with the current buggy, memory-leaking beta client. I'm confident that the release client will be an improvement, and bring the game well within the playable limits of many gamers who were turned off by their first stuttering glimpse of the IGN beta. It's already a million miles away from what Vanguard was in open beta, and infinitely less ugly.

Brad McQuid thought the same thing as you stated in the above.

Originally posted by warulven

 

Originally posted by urbanmonkey

 

Seriously, if AoC had run with a wow cartoon style engine, I wouldn't even have considered playing aoc. I've played wow for so many years now, and I want a mmorpg with proper graphics.

If you select your MMO based on the graphics engine, then enjoy AoC.

 

I for one want interesting quests and dungeons, balanced classes, some sort of crafting, proper chat tools, a large seamless world to explore without loading screens every 10 minutes.

 

If you'd actually read anything that I've written, you would have seen that I've several times written that I want both content AND graphics.

AoC's content problems are fare greater and harder to solve than its stability and performance problems. Maybe in 6 months time...

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!

  ....I'd say WoW is perfectly seamless.

  There aren't mountains around every zone...there are mountains en masse around mountainous zones.  Having ONE load between two halves of the world really doesn't make it 'boxed in'.  Especially when that one load is a total of maybe 3 seconds long at worst.

  I suppose if you want to count the outlands its 2 loads....but THEN you hit massively seamless in that you can fly across its landscape.

  When people talk about a world not being seamless....they usually refer to having a load between each zone, building, town, and castle.  They also use it to refer to 'guildwars' syndrome, where the pathing is super linear and you can't even so much as move off a 10 inch drop without walking clear around the globe to get around it.  Trying to use WoW in a way which detracts from those two angles is really stupid if you ask me, because it does not contain either of those elements.

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Brad McQuid thought the same thing as you stated in the above.

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Brad McQuid thought the same thing as you stated in the above.

So does every other progressive software developer in the world. Just because McQuaid screwed the pooch doesn't mean software should stop trying to push the boundaries of technology and, in the case of MMO's, future-proof itself against rising expectations in the future. It's hard enough as it is for a 2-year-old MMO to maintain current and attract new subscribers, without it looking like it has 5-year-old graphics.

People look at graphics cards and think Wow. This should be great, without realising that those graphics frst have to be downloaded from your hard disk to your video memory.

It all adds up. More data, means more manipulations, means more code and in MMORPG's it means more unexpected codes than in any other game (FPS, Adventure, RPG).

Is it THAT dificult to grasp???

Or is it just being stubborn.

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Brad McQuid thought the same thing as you stated in the above.

So does every other progressive software developer in the world. Just because McQuaid screwed the pooch doesn't mean software should stop trying to push the boundaries of technology and, in the case of MMO's, future-proof itself against rising expectations in the future. It's hard enough as it is for a 2-year-old MMO to maintain current and attract new subscribers, without it looking like it has 5-year-old graphics.

AoC has indeed "future-proofed" itself, but in the opposite sense that they've effectively denied their game a future. 

An MMO is the last place you want to try out an unproven, "cutting-edge" graphics engine.  There are other factors which are far more important to players of this genre than graphics.  Story, immersion, grouping, balance, social aspects, etc.

If you're going to write your own engine, either 1.) make it simple and solid (e.g. WoW), or 2.) license a third-party technology (e.g. Unreal engine), from people whose business it is to make such engines.

I am so sick of these MMO companies thinking they are so awesome that they can both create an entire world and make a kick-ass 3D engine.  In business, it's called sticking with your "core competencies", which simply means "do what you're good at, and hire others to do what they're good at."

As I've posted previously, imo, what will kill AoC is technical issues more than anything else.  Their engine has never been solid, was not well-designed, and is choking underneath the burden of what they're asking it to do.  There may be a great game hidden in there somewhere, but if people can't actually get to it, no one will stick around.

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Brad McQuid thought the same thing as you stated in the above.

So does every other progressive software developer in the world. Just because McQuaid screwed the pooch doesn't mean software should stop trying to push the boundaries of technology and, in the case of MMO's, future-proof itself against rising expectations in the future. It's hard enough as it is for a 2-year-old MMO to maintain current and attract new subscribers, without it looking like it has 5-year-old graphics.

 The majority of us regular guys with with our ancient PC's just want to play games.  five year old graphics were good enough for me then and they are good enough for me now.  I have nothing against  people who want to have the latest technology.  But your argument that MMO's should have cutting edge graphics falls flat because they are meant to attract large volumes of players in order to be economical.  How many people are willing to go out and spend hundreds of dollars more in upgrades just to play a game and then do it all over again when the next one comes out?  Not as many as you think I bet. Not anymore because they see graphics almost as good on their consoles at a fraction of the cost of PC gaming and without  90% of the bugs that plague PC games these days.

 And how much better do the graphics in a "game" have to be before you people are happy?  Sure immersion is a good thing, but its a game, on a PC.  Use your imagination a little bit and just enjoy the game.   After the first initial oohs and aahs of playing a new game with nice graphics you quickly forget about them and concentrate on the game itself.

Its the game I want to play not the graphics!  Without the game graphics are just pretty pictures.

Anyway I hope the beta issues get worked out and the game succeeds to some degree.  If many more MMO's continue to die quick deaths, we could see a lot fewer companies willing to spend the big bucks on development.  That would be a shame.

Originally posted by Zorndorf

Originally posted by Greek_Matt

Originally posted by Elsabolts

Brad McQuid thought the same thing as you stated in the above.

So does every other progressive software developer in the world. Just because McQuaid screwed the pooch doesn't mean software should stop trying to push the boundaries of technology and, in the case of MMO's, future-proof itself against rising expectations in the future. It's hard enough as it is for a 2-year-old MMO to maintain current and attract new subscribers, without it looking like it has 5-year-old graphics.

For some people like you it is really difficult to understand the limits of On Line play ...

People look at graphics cards and think Wow. This should be great, without realising that those graphics frst have to be downloaded from your hard disk to your video memory.

It all adds up. More data, means more manipulations, means more code and in MMORPG's it means more unexpected codes than in any other game (FPS, Adventure, RPG).

Is it THAT dificult to grasp???

Or is it just being stubborn.

 

Of course there's a lot of information to process, but we're not living in the nineties anymore either chief. Constant advances in chip and vid card technology and expansions in bandwidth are allowing a far greater transmission and processing of data than existed three and a half years ago when WoW appeared. Contemporary multiplayer FPS games offer split-second trajectory calculations for bullets and destructible environments that MMOs don't have to process, and ultra-realistic graphics and animation which put 3yr old FPS games to shame... what on earth makes you think that MMO games can't improve at a similar pace? Ignorance perhaps...?