EQ Never
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Lleauaric
Sparkletot Monger
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I think what EQ1 did that was unique was that it was the first game that successfully transported to a meaningful degree the pencil and paper Dungeons and Dragons experience.
Most people who played early EQ had some D&D familiarity. Suddenly you could play a game that gave you that fix but frees you of all the barriers that playing an evening of D&D came with. Log in, join a group, bullshit for a bit, get a couple levels and new item, log off. That was the beauty of EQ. Those gamers have moved on though. Nobody is looking for that anymore because so few have that experience, and the ones who do like the gaming group thing.
WoW was awesome because it took enough from EQ to bring in those gamers but added a bunch of stuff and upped the pace to bring in the Diablo/Quake/early gamer generation and so exploded.
The popularity of "hard games" recently gives me some interest. I believe that gamers are going to be looking for that Dark Souls/Bloodborne type experience. Its really hard to play Diablo III after playing Souls games. EQNext is betting on hitting paydirt with the Minecraft/Terraria generation of gamers who want to take that experience to the next level.
Who knows, maybe. Maybe not. There are untapped markets out there though.
Most people who played early EQ had some D&D familiarity. Suddenly you could play a game that gave you that fix but frees you of all the barriers that playing an evening of D&D came with. Log in, join a group, bullshit for a bit, get a couple levels and new item, log off. That was the beauty of EQ. Those gamers have moved on though. Nobody is looking for that anymore because so few have that experience, and the ones who do like the gaming group thing.
WoW was awesome because it took enough from EQ to bring in those gamers but added a bunch of stuff and upped the pace to bring in the Diablo/Quake/early gamer generation and so exploded.
The popularity of "hard games" recently gives me some interest. I believe that gamers are going to be looking for that Dark Souls/Bloodborne type experience. Its really hard to play Diablo III after playing Souls games. EQNext is betting on hitting paydirt with the Minecraft/Terraria generation of gamers who want to take that experience to the next level.
Who knows, maybe. Maybe not. There are untapped markets out there though.
Big_w_powah
Trakanon Raider
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Dark Souls/Bloodborne the MMO? Motherfucking yes please. Make different classes play to varying degrees of DrkS and BB.
Big_w_powah
Trakanon Raider
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This comment makes me think you're assuming by making an MMO the single player games would stop flowing. I am by no means advocating that. But DrkS/BB combat mixed in with a few MMO staples like a more dedicated healer and taunts? Yeah, it would be a solid game that I'd play the shit out of it, if it wasn't half assed.
Flobee
Vyemm Raider
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Tera did it fairly well and really the combat between the two games isnt all that different
Skanda
I'm Amod too!
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Never played Tera enough to be able to argue the point but on further reflection I guess you would be encountering the same latency in Dark Souls PvP invasions. So I take it back.
Plenty of games out there on the internet that allows for decent twitch based gameplay. The real killer is for MMOs because they allow for 100s of people in the same space where almost every other game limits the amount of people in a game. It's all the client to server relationship that is the real bottleneck for most games.
When we get the tech to have thousands of players in the same general area without any slowdown, that is when MMOs will return to glory. Right now, if too many players congregate in one area, games either slows to a crawl or just crash out. And really, as MMO gamers, we are all looking for those in-game moments when dozens or hundreds of players come together, either to fight or simply be together in one space.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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But yet there is Planetside 2, which is a SoE / DB product no less, which handles hundreds of players in the same areas all of the time without issue. As it is a FPS, it is very time / latency sensitive too.
What is the excuse again? They have the tech, they lack the innovation to make a quality MMO with substance.
The excuse is probably any other team doesn't build their own engine. Next interesting tech demo would be to see how Camelot Unchained operates.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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God, thousands of players in an area sounds absolutely horrific. Hundreds is bad enough. I think, for the content at hand, EQ had a pretty decent number of players -per server- with the rough 2-3kish numbers. 1k people in EC though, even if technology permitted? Absolutely nope hah.
With 100+ people nearby it makes it difficult to differentiate between people, and localized chat is a constant stream of text that is borderline unreadable. Imagine combat of any kind with more than 50-100 people at your same location. Unless every attack is some weird AE deal, it would be horrendous to target/fight anything, even if it was all butter smooth. Sure, people zerged back in the day, but that was what, 200ish people at max? Unless your content DTs like the Sleeper or something.
2-300 at most in any given area is probably as reasonable as it gets, otherwise there is literally too much shit happening in a small area for any of it to be really meaningful without just being AE spammy crap. I think modern broadband connections can handle that traffic, and depending on graphics settings and the game engine most modern graphics cards could handle that many moving sprites. But man, there's a reason why instancing is used to reduce people in an area, and it's not all based on technical fidelity.
With 100+ people nearby it makes it difficult to differentiate between people, and localized chat is a constant stream of text that is borderline unreadable. Imagine combat of any kind with more than 50-100 people at your same location. Unless every attack is some weird AE deal, it would be horrendous to target/fight anything, even if it was all butter smooth. Sure, people zerged back in the day, but that was what, 200ish people at max? Unless your content DTs like the Sleeper or something.
2-300 at most in any given area is probably as reasonable as it gets, otherwise there is literally too much shit happening in a small area for any of it to be really meaningful without just being AE spammy crap. I think modern broadband connections can handle that traffic, and depending on graphics settings and the game engine most modern graphics cards could handle that many moving sprites. But man, there's a reason why instancing is used to reduce people in an area, and it's not all based on technical fidelity.
Jysin
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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That came about from people insisting on their own little special snowflake character needed equal pixel distribution.
Malakriss
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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They killed named loot dropping mobs in the world and moved them to dungeons, they also did away with poopsocking competition for open world bosses and to the victor go the spoils ideas.
Instancing is done cause people would a) whine about their crappy hardware, b) whine about someone else beating them to limited content, c) devs think you should only be allowed to bring X number of people and no more because the fight must be done in one specific way in the mechanics allotted before god mode activates on an enrage timer. aka making up for their shit coding, horrible itemization ideas, and failure to make an encounter interesting without scripted DDR.
Instancing is done cause people would a) whine about their crappy hardware, b) whine about someone else beating them to limited content, c) devs think you should only be allowed to bring X number of people and no more because the fight must be done in one specific way in the mechanics allotted before god mode activates on an enrage timer. aka making up for their shit coding, horrible itemization ideas, and failure to make an encounter interesting without scripted DDR.
Rezz
Mr. Poopybutthole
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I'm not talking about instanced dungeons at all, I specifically referred to them using instancing to control populations in zones. You'll see this in most new games or initial expansion pack zones in popular ones. They use instancing so that you don't have 400 people fighting over the same bear ass, or standing on top of the quest giver/whatever until the population evens out. And by evening out, it means having a reasonable amount of people in a given area at a time. A thousand people (Felmega's number that I was referencing in my post) in an area at once would be absolutely retarded. 400 people at once is pretty retarded, technical limitations or no. Aside from chat being a blur, and the optical issues of having hundreds of people doing shit at once on your screen, it's just not a good idea to have that many people in an area at once. Unless you are strictly talking some weird WW1 trench warfare charge type of gameplay, then sure. Otherwise, the game would have to be designed around having that many players doing shit in a very small area at once. Instant respawn or something similar, players having minimal individual effect on the outcome of any event, etc. That would be substantially worse than any DDR shit-mechanic in modern raiding, imo.
Just imagine trying to target -anything- when there's 400 players on your screen at once time. You'd need a search bar instead of a mouse pointer.
Just imagine trying to target -anything- when there's 400 players on your screen at once time. You'd need a search bar instead of a mouse pointer.
